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Vigo County Oversight BoardJan 12, 2026

About this transcript

Automatic transcription, not the official record. This is what speech recognition heard at the meeting; it mis-hears names and numbers, and no editor has checked it. The clerk's minutes are the official record. Every line links to the moment in the recording — check anything that matters.

Voices were separated automatically and named from the meeting's speaker roster where the evidence supported it. An unnamed voice shows as Speaker 12 — a machine label, not a person's name.

Meeting
Vigo County Oversight Board · Jan 12, 2026
Length
1:40:01
Lines
272
Transcribed by
mlx-community/whisper-large-v3-turbo
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  1. 0:00:00 — open the recording at 0 secondsSpeaker 0 To the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible,

  2. 0:00:10 — open the recording at 10 secondsSpeaker 1 with liberty and justice for all.

  3. 0:00:15 — open the recording at 15 secondsSpeaker 4 (chair) Good morning, everyone. First item on the agenda, we have approval of the minutes that were emailed out to the board on Friday. There's no conversation, I'd entertain a motion.

  4. 0:00:30 — open the recording at 30 secondsSpeaker 7 We'll make a motion to approve.

  5. 0:00:32 — open the recording at 32 secondsSpeaker 9 I'll second.

  6. 0:00:33 — open the recording at 33 secondsSpeaker 4 (chair) Thank you. All those in favor say aye. Aye. All right. Jump right into it. Dr. Hemsall, do we have you? We have Gibraltar. Who's up first here?

  7. 0:00:43 — open the recording at 43 seconds We've got both of us.

  8. 0:00:43 — open the recording at 43 secondsSpeaker 11 I think we're going to kind of go back and forth. Great.

  9. 0:00:51 — open the recording at 51 secondsSpeaker 14 First of all, good morning. Thank you for the opportunity of continuing.

  10. 0:00:56 — open the recording at 56 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) Based on what we talked about the last time, Our focus this time is more on how did we start narrowing the focus down and landing where we landed. So with that being said, we have a PowerPoint here that I'm going to try to operate correctly. So we're going to go over what the primary objectives were, what we were trying to accomplish, and then the feasibility study process, which is where we asked questions and they went back and studied stuff. And we asked questions and they went back and studied stuff.

  11. 0:01:25 — open the recording at 1 minute 25 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) as well as where we were with those options when we started narrowing things down and where did we land with the options there at the end in a summary so with that being said we'll start with the objectives and I'll let Jim talk about it from the standpoint of what does Gibraltar when they get involved in any project like this where do they from what angle do they come from

  12. 0:01:48 — open the recording at 1 minute 48 secondsJim (consultant (Gibraltar Design)) Good morning everyone. Nice to see you. Happy Monday. So, yes, for any Gibraltar design school planning study process, how do we think about what are the values, what are the characteristics of the school building, how is it going to serve learning, how will it serve learning for the next 20 years with all of the changes and things that go on in public education affordability to operate with utilities and efficiencies and all those things so this does a nice job summarizing almost like priorities or what are we measuring the questions that get asked what are we measuring those questions

  13. 0:02:32 — open the recording at 2 minutes 32 secondsJim (consultant (Gibraltar Design)) against in terms of data and information so obviously things like function in terms of its ability to have a school building serve the needs whether it be how the students move around the building, size of classrooms, the assets that are needed such as gymnasiums or if it's a high school athletic field those types of things and then right right up there with if there's a 1a and a 1b value which means you know if we're investing what's the return on investment we're getting for those dollars you probably all realize whether it's your house or

  14. 0:03:12 — open the recording at 3 minutes 12 secondsJim (consultant (Gibraltar Design)) your neighbor's house or a school or this school you know buildings are not always equal and identical so some cost more money so the investment is greater maybe the return is better so there's those types of factors there's definitely efficiencies and then if we land at the bottom one like school for future or think of it as like future forward thinking your school district your school board we would commend them and and most in the community that we've been around you know everyone is thinking how about the next 10 or 20

  15. 0:03:48 — open the recording at 3 minutes 48 secondsJim (consultant (Gibraltar Design)) years because the dollar investment needs to carry through those next 10 or 20 years some districts sometimes things change within a year or two and they are are able to quickly pivot, we like it when the investment says, well, you can go this way or that way. The investment's the same, so the building's agile, if that's a word that resonates with you. It's an agile building, so it can go either way, depending on the moment. So that's how we look at any question that gets asked for a feasibility study.

  16. 0:04:19 — open the recording at 4 minutes 19 secondsSpeaker 23 I didn't disappear I just went and sat down.

  17. 0:04:28 — open the recording at 4 minutes 28 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) So from the bigger perspective how do we attract and retain students, staff, families and make it a place that businesses want to relocate here because we're providing educational opportunities. How do we improve educational opportunities for our kids especially in meshing with the workforce development that's happening. So whether that's getting ready for college, whether that's getting ready for apprenticeships, whether that's going directly into the workforce, how do we make sure that we're laying the foundation for those things?

  18. 0:04:59 — open the recording at 4 minutes 59 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) How do we make sure that we're doing our part in being part of the economic development across Vigo County in a positive way? How do we reduce how much we spend on an operational basis every year? How do we make sure that we are being as frugal with our dollars as possible but still meeting the needs of our kids prior to prioritizing any Diego County tax dollar the biggest responsibility of the school board besides hiring the superintendent and supervising him is to make sure that we are being frugal with our dollars and that we are being

  19. 0:05:37 — open the recording at 5 minutes 37 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) fiduciarily responsible and that's what school boards constantly asking us is how do we make sure that we're doing the most we can with the least amount of dollars that we can maximize the right sizing of our schools and our investments and create fiscally responsible situation so when we break that down where do we get to specifically how do we modernize all of our schools because they're clearly not and they're clearly not meeting all the modern learning experiences that employers are demanding children to have how do we increase the learning and extracurricular opportunities we know

  20. 0:06:17 — open the recording at 6 minutes 17 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) that there are opportunities that kids can get in other communities that are taken for granted and here we don't simply because the building gets in the way or because we have such small learning cadres that there aren't enough students to offer the opportunities in a fiscally responsible way how do we align with the realities of where we're at with our current enrollment and the forecasted enrollment as it was noted in the Tribune Star recently this is not a new problem this has been going on for basically more than two decades and in

  21. 0:06:49 — open the recording at 6 minutes 49 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) the last two decades we've seen a steady decline in enrollment align the preventive maintenance needs there have been all kinds of changes in school funding which limit the amount of money that we have to take care of our buildings it is not a blank check and we have to live within that so how do we try to reduce the amount of money we need on an annual basis for preventive maintenance but not because we short change the buildings but because we are closer to being right-sized and then how do we align the staffing expenditures and needs with the available information since 2008 we're

  22. 0:07:25 — open the recording at 7 minutes 25 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) at the mercy of the state on how we fund the people side of things unless we do an operational referendum which we are very fortunate that our community has done so and about two and a half million of the dollars that is what the operational referendum is an investment in our teachers but that cost continues to go up because the state is has not historically and I don't mean this as a detriment to any of the current or local legislators but it's just a fact that the school funding that we're receiving from the state has not kept up with the

  23. 0:07:59 — open the recording at 7 minutes 59 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) inflationary expenses so therefore we have to figure out how do we cut expenses and how do we get more efficient with what we're doing to come closer to fitting inside that so that passing a or needing an operational referendum either becomes the smallest number possible or at least less needed as we move forward then we took a look at what do we need what what needs do we have that are currently not being addressed we do not have enough alternative school space we have many students who are in need of alternative settings and we don't have

  24. 0:08:35 — open the recording at 8 minutes 35 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) enough space to handle all of them we need more athletic field space and the demand for gyms the demand for outdoor facilities exceeds what we offer and that's the reason why we've got a varsity basketball team practice in elementary school because the demand for the gym space is so great and the reason for that is because things have changed over time when north south and west were constructed title nine had not passed and there were no ihsaa girls sports things such as soccer wasn't necessarily a common thing to find in high schools

  25. 0:09:17 — open the recording at 9 minutes 17 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) back in the 60s and 70s there were many opportunities that have come up flag football is a new one for our girls athletes there's now girls wrestling at the high school level which did not exist until recently we now provide opportunities for our special needs students through the champions together program which gives opportunities for students with more severe disabilities opportunity to participate in these types of activities these are all changes these are all things that we have to figure out how to adapt to and because of that then when

  26. 0:09:58 — open the recording at 9 minutes 58 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) you add on top of the fact that you have percussion ensemble and winter guard and things like this there's a premium for space in all these different areas the Career Center we are saying no to some opportunities that kids want to be a part of simply because we don't have enough students at one particular high school to offer the opportunity but if we were at one facility where we could combine all those students we would probably have enough to offer the opportunity that would particularly be true if we had a location that was near

  27. 0:10:30 — open the recording at 10 minutes 30 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) Ivy Tech and we were able to generate and partner with Ivy Tech to offer opportunities where there's a small number of kids who have an interest but because of our if our location was near Ivy Tech we may be able to have that partnership more seamless and offering that opportunity for them that's a critically important in terms of economic development when we think about preparing for the different jobs of the future we've particularly got into these kind of conversations when in tech was having their conversation about the

  28. 0:11:01 — open the recording at 11 minutes 1 secondDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) partnerships that we have between Ivy Tech and the school corporation and what kinds of things we offer at the school corporation not only that but I'll mentioned that if they were not if we had a dedicated space it would also be easier for us to be a more willing partner with our neighboring districts so that we can also accommodate their programs where they have two or three students who want to access a program but because we don't even offer it ourselves because we don't have enough to offer it that centralized location

  29. 0:11:29 — open the recording at 11 minutes 29 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) allows us to be in that position outdoor learning spaces the best way to learn about farming and agriculture is actually to work on a farm and agriculture and so therefore there's an assumption that the only people who are in the FFA or agriculture programs are those who reside on a farm and the reality of it is is we do have students who are interested in farming and agricultural employment opportunities that don't live on a farm they don't have access to that so how do we provide that how do we provide situations where we can take

  30. 0:12:02 — open the recording at 12 minutes 2 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) environmental walks and things like that on our campus without having to travel somewhere else because we already provide those outdoor learning spaces gardening and different other kinds of things where things come alive for students to be able to learn and having the space on site to be able to do those things so those outdoor learning spaces can can be a tremendous opportunity the other piece of it is that we're running out of lots to build in our building trades program in fact we are currently looking for new lots as we are getting

  31. 0:12:30 — open the recording at 12 minutes 30 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) ready to build on the last lot of our subdivision we have lots on where the building trade students actually learn how to build a house from scratch from the ground all the way up and learn those skills that go along with it many of those people do go into either the IBEW with the electricians or they go into the pipe fitters or they go into the actual building trades themselves and get in the construction business our community it's it's not been shy for people to share that we need more daycare and pre-k opportunities and our

  32. 0:13:05 — open the recording at 13 minutes 5 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) role in that is in the pre-k with the three and four year olds and we want to make sure that we provide those opportunities especially given the fact that we have a waiting list for our current preschool programs transportation we do a lot of busing throughout the day to get kids from one location to another location because we don't offer all the programs in all of our facilities so for example if you want to offer the high ability or the gifted program you and you live in a school that is not Dixie Bee or Lost Creek then you have to be bused

  33. 0:13:40 — open the recording at 13 minutes 40 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) to that situation the same is true with some of our special education situation so the question is can we increase the can we increase student population in a building to where there's enough students in that building so that they can offer their own program without having to be bused somewhere else and the more we can do that the more that we reduce the transportation costs during the middle of the school day aspect of things which is actually the most expensive part of doing it is during those times when we do it during the

  34. 0:14:13 — open the recording at 14 minutes 13 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) school hours equity how do we create a benchmark so that we have a standard that is true of all of our schools gym space media center space the size of the classroom the amenities that are inside a classroom in terms of technology resources our buildings are not equal they were all built at different times there is not a benchmark there is not a consistency that says at a minimum all of our elementary schools at least have this I'm the same is true with our middle schools in our high schools from that standpoint that they are not created equal and there are opportunities and some that are not

  35. 0:14:50 — open the recording at 14 minutes 50 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) available at others and we see that as a problem and something that we need to address so that regardless of where you live in the city you have access to these minimum standards or benchmarks within a particular school so that was kind of our starting point those were the things that went into how do we go about doing this so after we found out the condition of the buildings that we shared with you the last time we took a look at those reports and we started asking questions and this process began last basically November December into

  36. 0:15:23 — open the recording at 15 minutes 23 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) January and those were things such as which schools are actually in the best physical condition which schools have the most significant needs which existing

  37. 0:15:38 — open the recording at 15 minutes 38 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) schools all can already serve 600 or more we learned the other day that 600 or more becomes that magic number in terms of reducing the need of sharing a PE teacher between two buildings or a music teacher between two buildings or having enough students in a building that we don't need to bus them to a different part of the city to access a program but we increase the likelihood that we can access we can offer it right there in that building in the school that the parent is choosing which schools are not viable options to get

  38. 0:16:09 — open the recording at 16 minutes 9 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) to 600 students whether that's because of lot orientations and size of the lot

  39. 0:16:15 — open the recording at 16 minutes 15 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) like Sugar Grove and a Wabash as well as information such as Wabash being in a

  40. 0:16:20 — open the recording at 16 minutes 20 secondsSpeaker 21 flood zone or the limits of size of parking lot playground and the building lot like Farrington Grove and Davis Park

  41. 0:16:32 — open the recording at 16 minutes 32 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) which schools do have enough acreage and the space to expand and I will make a

  42. 0:16:43 — open the recording at 16 minutes 43 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) point there that debate consolidated in Fayette we will need to talk to neighboring landowners to expand that parking that aspect but both of those issues even as they stand today with no changes do not have adequate parking and and traffic flow and so forth and are in need of us talking to neighboring landowners about whether or not we can recapture some of that land in order to take care of parking and traffic flow and those types of things also point out that hoosier prairie is also unique similar to wabash it's not in a in a

  43. 0:17:22 — open the recording at 17 minutes 22 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) flood zone per se in the same manner that wabash is but during the winter thaw in the early spring rains water mitigation is definitely an issue that we have to deal with at Hoosier Prairie it does eventually mitigate and the current building has there are safeguards put in there to make sure it doesn't affect the current building but if you've ever been there in the spring during the rainy season I recommend that you not wear your brand new pair of shoes there and travel and go through the water and the mud and the and the puddles that are going to be in

  44. 0:17:53 — open the recording at 17 minutes 53 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) place for on your walk up to the school which we talked about the middle schools being at 900 to a thousand which ones already conserve at least a thousand

  45. 0:18:03 — open the recording at 18 minutes 3 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) kids as you can see there and then we did ask the question is there other facilities that have the capability of getting to this and one of those is the

  46. 0:18:13 — open the recording at 18 minutes 13 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) current district office which is West Vigo Elementary School it's probably better for Jim to talk about what the issues are there but there are substantial renovation issues with that particular building when you're dealing with a bunch of adults who are there as an office it's not as big of a deal as there would be if there were kids but anyone who's been in my office or other offices know the roof leaks and that we definitely have hot zones and cold zones for those of you who have been at meetings you've been there during those

  47. 0:18:42 — open the recording at 18 minutes 42 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) days when the HVAC is being worked on and you're either in a room that is extremely cold or one that is extremely hot usually if it was during rainy time also surrounded by trash cans collecting the water that is leaking from the roof those would have to be addressed if we were going to use it as an elementary school not to mention the fact that we would need to increase the size to be able to get to six or seven hundred which then limits and takes away some of the playground and outdoor space that they currently have Rio are also

  48. 0:19:13 — open the recording at 19 minutes 13 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) mentioned that the learning lab is on there with the meadows the learning lab right now is taking care of the boys and girls club is taking care of Purdue 4-H extension we also have a partnership with Union Health and with junior achievement as well as our own adult ed program and the need experience which provides hands-on opportunities for our fourth and seventh graders we would need to find a location for those things as of right now there's a there's a myth out there that we are paying for all of that building and we are not we are

  49. 0:19:47 — open the recording at 19 minutes 47 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) sharing with other community agencies in the cost of that building and it does not fall solely on the school corporation as we do get rent to help offset utility costs and custodial costs and even the Boys and Girls Club did some renovations on their own and did some upgrades to their part of the building so that is truly a partnership and that partnership would definitely probably we need to be replicated elsewhere given how pop given how positive of a situation it's been we also took a look at who's closest to where the students

  50. 0:20:20 — open the recording at 20 minutes 20 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) are and who's furthest away from where the students are the further away you are from the students the more transportation costs there are closer to the population center the we reduce the transportation cost situation that we have one particular school that has two buses that go out and like that takes care of their stops you know like two stops and that bus is completely empty and we have another bus when you're in the rural areas that you drive around for nearly an hour before you finally either fill your bus or or empty your

  51. 0:20:51 — open the recording at 20 minutes 51 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) bus because there's just so much space between the stops that you have so that density of population does make a difference so all these questions came up and you saw the answers down below of the different schools those were the questions that we asked Jim and Gibraltar and said where are we with these things Jim if we have questions regarding the logistical issues of particular buildings Jim's going to be your best answer to that but some of our buildings just have logistical issues that make it difficult for us to work through for

  52. 0:21:27 — open the recording at 21 minutes 27 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) example north and south both have logistical issues that make it very difficult to do renovations with students on site and at the same time even though current with the building additions and the additional classrooms that were added on in the 90s provide us with the capacity to be able to combine them now with the loss of enrollment that we've had through the years I'm not sure we have enough working bathrooms to be able to accommodate all those on a the on its consistent and sustainable way again Jim would be able to speak to

  53. 0:22:03 — open the recording at 22 minutes 3 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) those types of questions more directly so therefore we got down to can we really afford to stay what we're doing and not change we quickly came to the answer of no that's really not possible that's the whole reason why we're in the situation that we're in is because staying the status quo has not been working there isn't enough funds to keep up with the building maintenance as we talked about last time on average we need about 23 million dollars per year just to do annual maintenance and that's assuming that the buildings were in good shape

  54. 0:22:37 — open the recording at 22 minutes 37 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) when they started and there's only 9 million available and if you have a shortfall of 14 million year after year after year after year you get the situation that we're in it's not because of an individual it's not because of a group of individuals it's because the math simply doesn't add up for us to be able to keep up with those things so based on what we talked about before or at the previous meeting where if we stayed within that realm of 550 to 800 students and we narrowed it down to 600 to 750 students what's the fewest number

  55. 0:23:11 — open the recording at 23 minutes 11 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) of schools we would need and the answer to that question is nine elementary schools I can tell you that if we were to go to nine elementary schools it would be really tight it would be really tight and we would have almost every one of our buildings near its capacity that may not be the best answer if we think that there's a possibility that the whole idea of modernizing our schools is to also retain people and not lose them and possibly regain students and so that may not be the best possible answer the same is true as we went to a

  56. 0:23:40 — open the recording at 23 minutes 40 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) thousand students per middle school we could get away with three middle schools we would also have to think about the logistics of the river we would need to think about the logistics of how tight that space would be and whether or not that accommodates any future opportunities if we were so lucky as to have this enrollment stabilize if not increase a little bit and the question

  57. 0:24:03 — open the recording at 24 minutes 3 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) was can we just do one high school and the answer to that is yes we can do just one high school but there are logistical issues to consider in that

  58. 0:24:15 — open the recording at 24 minutes 15 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) regard so with that being said after having back and forth with the board and the information and having meetings with them and them asking me questions and I writing the questions down and presenting them to Jim and Gibraltar and as well as our own internal discussions what happens if we were to build a new high school on a new site that just serves the entire county what does that look like what happens if we were to take one of our existing schools like north or south and renovate it to be one high school for the entire county

  59. 0:24:53 — open the recording at 24 minutes 53 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) what happens if we were just to keep all the schools we currently have even though intuitively it doesn't feel like we can do that from the ongoing issues of living within the means on staffing the realities of teacher and applicant shortages as well as the funding that's available to maintain the buildings we did go down that path to find out if it was something that we can consider what happens if we were to combine north and south and have it located at North High School and do two high schools where we also have a renovated West Vigo what

  60. 0:25:27 — open the recording at 25 minutes 27 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) happens we're combined north and south and have it at South High School again with two high schools with a renovated West and what if we were to build a new high school on a new site that combined north and south and also at the second school so those last three options were if we go with the two high school model the third one is if we kept all the schools the first two is if we did just one

  61. 0:25:58 — open the recording at 25 minutes 58 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) as we go through this

  62. 0:26:02 — open the recording at 26 minutes 2 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) please ask questions as we go through this you want to wait till the end that's fine but if you have one that pops up and you want to get it out we're not going to be offended by that

  63. 0:26:12 — open the recording at 26 minutes 12 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) so when we started with the one one large county-wide high school

  64. 0:26:20 — open the recording at 26 minutes 20 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) that we leveraged north south and west high schools to be middle schools which actually

  65. 0:26:24 — open the recording at 26 minutes 24 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) help with the equity part because all three middle those three middle schools if we convert into middle schools all three of them would have been former high school facilities which bring amenities that you may not include if you were to build a middle school brand new from scratch but to take but at the same time since they're already available at the high school that they would be replacing we could still utilize those those assets maximize our elementary schools for learning opportunities remove costly elementaries those smaller ones the ones that don't have the

  66. 0:26:57 — open the recording at 26 minutes 57 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) capability of getting to six or seven hundred and then leveraging our current middle schools to serve as elementary schools the interesting thing is that through this process i learned that otter creek used to be an elementary school or at least a k-8 building and it was interesting that when jim actually showed what could be possible at otter creek in terms of where kindergarten first grade second grade it actually made more sense as an elementary school than it did as a middle school and i shared that information with someone and they said well you do realize it was originally

  67. 0:27:28 — open the recording at 27 minutes 28 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) built to be an elementary school which is why it was clear as to why it floats so well from that standpoint so if we were to take a look at this we would need a new high school for about 3 200 students that does not mean it's the capacity to let you know that you we typically at a middle school and an elementary school you typically go with your high your schedule and if you're on a seven period day you usually have six classes in a room each each day with one class one period during the day where there's no class in there and that's the

  68. 0:28:04 — open the recording at 28 minutes 4 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) teacher's prep period where they're using to get ready for the other classes that brings it up to about an 85 percent capacity which gives you growth that if you ever added new students unexpectedly or with a little blip your your capacity is actually 10 to 15 percent greater than that number so at a school with about 3200 students we would actually have room for another 320 to up to 400 students teachers may not get to have their room for their prep period may have to do what I did my very first year of teaching which is to be in a different room all six classes that I

  69. 0:28:41 — open the recording at 28 minutes 41 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) teach because I just moved from room to room to room on a cart that's not ideal that's not perfect but that helps you take care of bubbles and population or or an unexpected increase that doesn't necessarily look like it's going to be long-term and sustainable on what you can do. So when you look at these numbers, keep that in mind on capacity.

  70. 0:29:01 — open the recording at 29 minutes 1 secondSpeaker 51 (board member) So we're looking at 85%, 90%. These numbers are kind of replicate, I guess, 85%, 95% capacity. Yeah.

  71. 0:29:08 — open the recording at 29 minutes 8 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) If we come up with a building that can handle 3,200 to 3,400, you can multiply that by 10% or 15% and add to it, and that would be the true maximum capacity. and that's in middle school is the same thing middle school are typically work on an eight period day so they're going to be closer to 87 88 percent capacity up front so you're going to have a room for about 10 to 12 percent in a high school many high schools do a seven period day which puts

  72. 0:29:34 — open the recording at 29 minutes 34 secondsSpeaker 51 (board member) you at about 84 85 percent put you on the spot with this one what are we at capacity wise just

  73. 0:29:39 — open the recording at 29 minutes 39 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) broad average we're much lower than that we we have enough space we have enough space to educate

  74. 0:29:47 — open the recording at 29 minutes 47 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) up to over 6,000 high school students and we're around 32 or 3300 right now at one time West had more than a thousand students 2200 students at North and South were common and we've since added more classrooms which increased the capacity of each of those buildings by four or five hundred so when you consider that that means North and South does have the capability from a classroom perspective to be in that 26 2700 range and West used to have over a thousand students at one time and they have since added new spaces since they had the 1,000 so based on that it's pretty easy to say that we could

  75. 0:30:25 — open the recording at 30 minutes 25 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) accommodate more than 6,000 students in terms of what that exact number is that that's not been determined there are things that would be done differently today than when those buildings were built such as wider hallways is much more common today so that it doesn't have quite the same crowded feel you think about where you put English and social studies and math in a way so that you decrease everybody coming to the same intersection during a passing period and you have the entire student body at the same hallway intersection

  76. 0:30:59 — open the recording at 30 minutes 59 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) between classes but you schedule your classes or you position your classes throughout the building strategically so that you don't end up with those situations where all the students end up in the same hallway intersection at the same time those are things that are done today that weren't necessarily done back when these buildings were designed

  77. 0:31:20 — open the recording at 31 minutes 20 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) we're looking then if we do the new high school north-south-west Woodrow

  78. 0:31:25 — open the recording at 31 minutes 25 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) Wilson would continue and the reason why we included Woodrow Wilson as I stated that last week is to take that the relief valve off of having them all right at their capacity but having a little bit of room so that they're not 100% at their total capacity as we just mentioned ideally in a middle school we're talking about 87-88% is what we're trying to get to.

  79. 0:31:46 — open the recording at 31 minutes 46 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) The elementary schools, you can see there. The remaining schools, Davis Park, Dixie Bee, Farrington Grove. The reason for Dixie Bee and Hoosier Prairie is because of Hoosier, Honey Creek being so close.

  80. 0:31:59 — open the recording at 31 minutes 59 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) The reason for Farrington Grove and Sugar Grove is because of its proximity to Sarah Scott. There is an argument for Fuquay. Fuquay and Sugar Grove was one of the things that we had to think about and talk about. The reality of it is that the lot orientation at Fuquay is more conducive to adding on to get to 600 or 700 if that becomes necessary in the future than does sugar growth.

  81. 0:32:24 — open the recording at 32 minutes 24 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) And we understand there's some people who may disagree with that, but that's our best analysis of that. if we were to do the same thing but instead use one of the existing high

  82. 0:32:41 — open the recording at 32 minutes 41 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) school sites and the one we chose for our example is North High School and we'll get to a little bit of information a little bit later as to why we chose North High School I think it'll become more clear a little bit later same thing we're trying to leverage the assets that we currently have but now instead of having we're now going to have to keep otter creek as a middle school since we're not going to have north converted to a middle school so now that otter creek is now a middle school that means that Rio Grande needs to stay in

  83. 0:33:12 — open the recording at 33 minutes 12 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) elementary school because we don't have anywhere to absorb those students that creates a transportation issue for us we understand that Rio Grande gets transported all of our kids already get transported Rio Grande we don't have walking zones to Rio Grande so our students are already on the bus the question is where does the bus end its journey does it end at Rio Grande or does it end at Otter Creek or Tarrytown in that particular area we can make our route such that we start with the outside and draw in to reduce those things down instead of start from the inside and move out which is what we

  84. 0:33:48 — open the recording at 33 minutes 48 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) currently do to get to Rio Grande but with this happening that means we're either gonna have to have Wabash or Tarrytown students bust out to Rio Grande which currently we don't do so therefore we may lose some walking zone areas and if we do lose walking zone areas losing walking zone areas not to a school that's closer to the population center but further away from that population center that does create a question for us we did not do an analysis on transportation I want to let you know redoing bus routes is extremely complicated and I'm not going to ask our transportation to recreate

  85. 0:34:25 — open the recording at 34 minutes 25 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) potential bus routes until we have it focused as to what we're talking about instead of doing this option and this one and this one and this one over here because it's extremely complicated and they need to devote their time to providing transportation to our students right now not chasing hypotheticals so those are some things that are different so you'll notice that there's fewer schools remaining at the end to either be closed raised or repurposed because now Rio Grande is off that list and now we're using Rio Grande because North is no longer a middle school and Otter Creek has to remain a

  86. 0:35:04 — open the recording at 35 minutes 4 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) middle school and it's no longer an elementary school

  87. 0:35:14 — open the recording at 35 minutes 14 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) so if one high school and the other aspect of things with the one high

  88. 0:35:18 — open the recording at 35 minutes 18 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) school regardless of which one we use if we do the one with an existing site like option two or we do the one with a new site like we did an option one there aren't very many bridges that cross the Wabash River that are inside our county and that's a logistical thing that we have to think about when we think about the west side how do we help kids who live on the west side get to their school to and from and what happens when there's bridge maintenance or bridge construction that happens if you live in a community such as Indianapolis if you

  89. 0:35:56 — open the recording at 35 minutes 56 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) you know if you go up to Indianapolis and you start driving around rarely do you think about where is the White River and the road and the bridge that crossed the White River in relation to where it is I need to go in Terre Haute that is a definitive answer before you leave to go to the west side you first need to think about where on the west side are you going and does it make more sense to to travel on the interstate, to use the Cherry Street, Ohio Street bridges, or to go up 63, which puts you on the path up to Clinton. And that's something that we have to think about.

  90. 0:36:28 — open the recording at 36 minutes 28 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) And the fact that we have to stop and think about it indicates that it's not seamless going to and from the east side and the west side of the river. And that's a logistical thing that we have to think about. The reality of it is that if the 63 bridge is going to get, have bridge maintenance or construction on it, and heaven forbid, it's one of those where it ends up needing to be shut down for a period we still would have to transport kids and figure out how to get them to and from school the other reality is that the

  91. 0:36:54 — open the recording at 36 minutes 54 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) community was pretty clear to us that they like the idea of having a smaller school option even though we're talking about combining north and south puts us in the 25 to 2700 range that's currently the capacity of north and south and when we took a look at adding the classrooms in the 90s that's exactly what those additional classrooms did in the 90s is it brought it up to where north the current north and south can handle 25 to 2700 students not everyone wants an experience with 2500 or 2700 students which is the reason why that small

  92. 0:37:29 — open the recording at 37 minutes 29 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) school option is something that for as long as we can afford to make it happen I think there's a desire of many families in our community that they want us to try to make that happen so when you add those two things up with the logistical aspect of the bridges and the seamlessness between the north and west or the east and west sides of the river and you add that to the fact that there's just some people in our community who really like the small school option and even if they don't choose it they like knowing that they

  93. 0:37:55 — open the recording at 37 minutes 55 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) have the option to do so with something that our board considered so with that being said we took a look at what does it look like on the west side well we

  94. 0:38:07 — open the recording at 38 minutes 7 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) could build a new high school on the west side just like we do on the east side if we do so then that means we could have the current West Vigo middle

  95. 0:38:17 — open the recording at 38 minutes 17 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) school take over the current West Vigo high school that helps us from the equity aspect of things in terms of providing opportunities that are similar to what we would do if we were to convert north and south to middle schools but it also means that consolidate or Fayette one of those is going to need to close and if you recall those were two of the best condition buildings we have the entire district both of them were constructed in 2004 and they're both in really good condition if truth be told if there has to be a choice consolidated

  96. 0:38:48 — open the recording at 38 minutes 48 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) is closer to the population center than Fayette is has nothing to do and we talk about any of these schools that we're talking about closing or repurposing it is not because we don't love those schools and we don't love the work that's going on we do love the work that they're doing and I think that if we could wave our magic wand and we didn't have to worry about the finance I think board would be 100% be on board with continuing with 23 schools and continuing with the smaller learning environments the reality of it is is

  97. 0:39:15 — open the recording at 39 minutes 15 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) that we don't have a blank check and we do have to live within the realities of

  98. 0:39:19 — open the recording at 39 minutes 19 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) finances if we renovate West Vigo high school then we have the choice of either

  99. 0:39:28 — open the recording at 39 minutes 28 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) having Fayette or consolidated serve as an elementary school and the other one serve as a middle school. In our reorganization plan we chose consolidated as the choice for the middle school and I can tell you that the reason for it is because of its proximity to the other middle schools when we start thinking about the logistics of extracurricular activities as well as the fact that it seems better for a seventh and eighth graders to access a two-story building than it does for kindergarten and first graders. That doesn't make it wrong that's just

  100. 0:40:01 — open the recording at 40 minutes 1 secondDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) part of where we landed because we needed to make a choice in both cases neither of them have the land space to be able to do athletic facilities unless we were to talk to local landowners and it is our intent to provide those opportunities we don't want to get the cart before the horse we would need to talk to the landowners and we're not going to talk to the landowners until we know that we're moving forward with this plan we do not want to have unnecessary

  101. 0:40:27 — open the recording at 40 minutes 27 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) conversations in that regard the other option is to keep west vigo

  102. 0:40:30 — open the recording at 40 minutes 30 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) where it is West Vigo Middle School at its current location if you have questions regarding why we're recommending it be raised I'm sure that Jim could answer those questions but when I asked Jim which is the worst building in terms of physical condition the physical condition not the people inside it I want to be clear about that we're we've got great people in every single one of our schools but when we look at the physical condition West Vigo Middle School is probably the worst condition building that we have and it

  103. 0:40:59 — open the recording at 40 minutes 59 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) is one that has caused us a great deal of grief in terms of roofing and HVAC and all kinds of things particularly the roof is is definitely one of those but if we were to raise it and reconstruct it on the same campus then we lose the advantage of having a dedicated high school experience for our high school students and we're back to choosing between consolidated and Fayette with one staying open and one closing just to be clear we did consider the district office being returned to an elementary school because it is truly

  104. 0:41:35 — open the recording at 41 minutes 35 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) closest to the population center and would create walking zones that are not existent with Fayette and consolidated but the renovation costs and the needs of that particular site are so great that it does not worthy of vacating two of the best condition buildings that we have these options can apply and overlay on any of the different options so whenever you see and basically from our perspective we chose to relocate West Vigo middle school so that we could use the consolidated and Fayette but wherever you see West Vigo middle school in the

  105. 0:42:15 — open the recording at 42 minutes 15 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) future slides as being one of the buildings that could be vacated that could be replaced with Fayette or consolidated if we made a different choice there

  106. 0:42:31 — open the recording at 42 minutes 31 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) so if we take a look at the option three what we just kept all the buildings

  107. 0:42:36 — open the recording at 42 minutes 36 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) basically as we pointed out we would not be able to to stay within living within our means we already know we can't live within our means and do that the current operational referendum would be insufficient we would need to greatly increase it in order to have the funding to be able to maintain our buildings especially in light of centered enrolled Act 1 one of the aspects of centered enrolled Act 1 is that we are no longer going to be permitted to do a general obligation bond to supplement these building maintenance needs we are no

  108. 0:43:10 — open the recording at 43 minutes 10 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) longer going to be able to do that every year there's going to be a limit as to how often we can do them so therefore as of right now we've been doing somewhere between six and twelve million dollars a year with the general obligation bonds to supplement what we have in the operational fund to try to help catch up to where we are but even with that number it falls short when you add it to what we have in the operations fund it typically falls short of being able to maintain the buildings if we had them all up to speed and now we're using them to

  109. 0:43:39 — open the recording at 43 minutes 39 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) try to catch up so now that Center enrolled Act one is there that one piece of leverage that we have is going to be going away. I also want to point out down there at the bottom this was on the previous slides as well we did not make and get into the weeds about final decisions about what would go into a Career Center and what would go into an early Learning Center in terms of the specifics of those classrooms. Do we have keep the aquatic center do we have a pool in each of the new height the new buildings or renovated buildings do we have a gymnasium or outdoor facilities

  110. 0:44:24 — open the recording at 44 minutes 24 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) that would allow us to host IHS a events we did not go down that path once we

  111. 0:44:30 — open the recording at 44 minutes 30 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) know what we're doing we understand that that's a aspect that the community will want to have a say in and there are some very strong opinions in our community that we know that get into those things but I want to point that out because

  112. 0:44:42 — open the recording at 44 minutes 42 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) that's at the end of each of these slides mainly as a placeholder so that we remember we do need to have that conversation about the specifics of those particular facilities so when we do this we don't have any all of our schools continue to be used so we haven't reduced any of the annual

  113. 0:45:01 — open the recording at 45 minutes 1 secondDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) maintenance we haven't reduced any of the utilities we haven't reduced any of the property casualty insurance or liability insurance aspects because all schools we currently have continue I do anticipate that some of the property

  114. 0:45:13 — open the recording at 45 minutes 13 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) casualty insurance costs would go down a little bit or at least become stabilized because in the process of modernizing these buildings we would put in

  115. 0:45:21 — open the recording at 45 minutes 21 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) modernized things such as modernized fire suppression equipment with sprinklers and things like that that don't exist in all of our buildings and because of that we do pay more for property casualty insurance than we would if they had it as part of the modernization process I am pretty

  116. 0:45:38 — open the recording at 45 minutes 38 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) confident that that would be an aspect that we would be doing because once we touch the building there are certain codes we'd have to come up to speed with

  117. 0:45:47 — open the recording at 45 minutes 47 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) so then we took a look at what happens if we were to construct it at north or

  118. 0:45:54 — open the recording at 45 minutes 54 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) construct it at south this one's going to look very similar to the situation we had before on the slide that had north on that option two so if we had Terre Haute North and West Vigo high school as our schools first thing you're going to notice is that we don't have 32 to 3400 in one building but we have up to more like the 25 to 2700 or 24 to 2600 26 to 2800 with 500 to 600 at West Vigo

  119. 0:46:27 — open the recording at 46 minutes 27 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) and that's currently where West Vigo has been predominantly in the low 500s here

  120. 0:46:30 — open the recording at 46 minutes 30 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) recently we have Terre Haute South repurposed as a middle school but like we talked about on the previous slide Otter Creek will still need to be a middle school which means that Rio Grande or Wabash or some other schools

  121. 0:46:44 — open the recording at 46 minutes 44 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) going to need to remain as an elementary school we chose Rio Grande

  122. 0:46:47 — open the recording at 46 minutes 47 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) because of the land the space and so forth other than that you're going to find that this slide looks very much like the slide that we had on option two

  123. 0:47:00 — open the recording at 47 minutesDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) earlier. So what happens if we were to combine the high schools and have it at

  124. 0:47:09 — open the recording at 47 minutes 9 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) South? Terro North because stays a middle school which means that Otter Creek can

  125. 0:47:17 — open the recording at 47 minutes 17 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) become an elementary school but if South is a high school that means that Honey Creek is going to need to stay a middle school as will Sarah Scott which

  126. 0:47:27 — open the recording at 47 minutes 27 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) means that we greatly reduce the number of elementary schools that we can vacate and either close or repurpose because we still need to have they can't go to Sarah Scott and Honey Creek as elementary schools because they would stay middle schools we could increase by a couple schools on there if we were to add classrooms at Honey Creek so that we could still have Sarah Scott serve as an elementary school or or vice versa the problem there is that the lot size of middle schools are already pretty tight to be able to do middle school purposes

  127. 0:48:00 — open the recording at 48 minutesDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) with especially given the fact that as as some of you we have had individual conversations there's a phenomenon where lots of people don't have their kids ride the bus anymore and they drop their kids off which create a whole new era of traffic flow issues that were not prevalent at the time these buildings were built in fact I would venture to say that this idea of dropping kids off to school instead of having it on the bus is actually more like somewhere between 2012 and 15 because when I first started as a superintendent people rode the bus and we didn't have these

  128. 0:48:37 — open the recording at 48 minutes 37 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) traffic flow issues and as I went through my superintendency I've learned that there's more and more student parents who want to drop their kids off which create more and more traffic flow issues at each of our schools and that's really exaggerated in a district like ours where our buildings were built long before we had to think about traffic flow around around the schools so because of that we're definitely not able to close schools or have them available to repurpose when we use south the alternative would be on each of these options four and five is if we wanted to build a new elementary

  129. 0:49:15 — open the recording at 49 minutes 15 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) school or a new middle school in order to activate the other parts of the plan but then we're back to finding another site and finding another space and our belief was is that if we're going to build a new building why would it not be a high school which has the greatest number of specialized needs instead of an elementary or middle school which has still has lots of needs but they're more generalized not to disparage anything that our elementary or middle school teachers do but when you get to the high school and you're starting talking

  130. 0:49:47 — open the recording at 49 minutes 47 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) about robotics and physics and chemistry and biology and different things like that there are

  131. 0:49:52 — open the recording at 49 minutes 52 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) some specific specialized needs in particular rooms that we don't have at the elementary and

  132. 0:49:58 — open the recording at 49 minutes 58 secondsSpeaker 63 (board member) middle school levels i was just going to ask could you share with options four or five reusing one of the current north or south spaces the logistics that it would take to actually heavily renovate

  133. 0:50:11 — open the recording at 50 minutes 11 secondsSpeaker 65 those into new and modern facilities during that time like if I understand

  134. 0:50:24 — open the recording at 50 minutes 24 secondsJim (consultant (Gibraltar Design)) the question you're thinking about having students occupying the schools and we see that they're already full so how on earth could you mobilize construction equipment construction workers and do things so the challenge is primarily are going to be building new somewhere on that campus finishing well not disturbing the students finishing that aspect of the building addition or new construction moving some most of the students into that new portion therefore they have vacated the old part and then you would either demolish or renovate the part they just vacated so it becomes almost like a

  135. 0:51:15 — open the recording at 51 minutes 15 secondsJim (consultant (Gibraltar Design)) domino effect so you build an addition kids move in you then can do something with where they left in the existing building and you keep doing that that can increase construction costs because you're doing even more in a sort of confined site and building area there's also the day-to-day operations of the school all those things can be monitored and managed it just adds additional layers of precautions and expense and so forth is that broadly stated that's

  136. 0:51:50 — open the recording at 51 minutes 50 secondsSpeaker 73 (unclear — possibly a Gibraltar-team fragment, possibly a board/staff) basically the logistical challenge

  137. 0:51:59 — open the recording at 51 minutes 59 secondsJim (consultant (Gibraltar Design)) so more of an issue at West or less of an issue at West Vigo the north and south would be that at West Vigo the ability to add on essentially to the front of the building in that parking lot the additional space and then move the students in make that much more feasible because of the configuration of the building on the site the other aspect at West Vigo is we find that some of the pieces of West Vigo would be fairly moderate in terms of an update because if you're familiar the for example the two gyms and the Viking gym varsity gym

  138. 0:52:46 — open the recording at 52 minutes 46 secondsJim (consultant (Gibraltar Design)) those are in fairly good shape and so you could come in over spring break or the summer and refresh those Terre Haute North and Terre Haute South high schools much much more extensive across the entire building so in addition to finding a place for the students to move into new at Taro North and South, there's also the magnitude of the work in the existing larger spaces that becomes challenging. So you might conceive perhaps even closing down a portion of the existing one of the gyms or the auditorium for a period of time until it can be refurbished at North and South.

  139. 0:53:24 — open the recording at 53 minutes 24 secondsSpeaker 63 (board member) And can I ask something that's been brought up a lot in the community since the plan was released is the idea of if you're going to pick South as like the new the renovated or new high school site why not move all the students to North like could North plumbing or electrical

  140. 0:53:39 — open the recording at 53 minutes 39 secondsSpeaker 65 or you know bones actually sustain that number of students in its current state it could not the

  141. 0:53:46 — open the recording at 53 minutes 46 secondsJim (consultant (Gibraltar Design)) just plumbing system alone would be exceeding capacity but not only with building code which the practical matter of underground pipes and underfloor piping and the quantities of fixtures and the way the whole just the plumbing system alone that would tax too greatly the existing either existing building to try and move all the students to that location

  142. 0:54:15 — open the recording at 54 minutes 15 secondsSpeaker 82 Just in terms of underground.

  143. 0:54:23 — open the recording at 54 minutes 23 secondsJim (consultant (Gibraltar Design)) Yeah, so it's not uncommon back in that day that they would just be finding the shortest routes for sanitary sewer lines that run underground to just run underneath hallways, for example, of the existing building. So imagine if you're trying to replace all of that what's going to happen to the how are the students possibly going to move around

  144. 0:54:57 — open the recording at 54 minutes 57 secondsSpeaker 51 (board member) dr. himself in option four or five tarot north their hook south estimated you know would be around 25 to 2700 that's much more than 85 percent capacity that's pretty more full full capacity for those schools in their current existing

  145. 0:55:14 — open the recording at 55 minutes 14 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) aspect yes right again if we were to build a school to accommodate 2,500 students we would build it in a way that that's about 85% of what we could attain we also understand that if we have a Career Center we would never have

  146. 0:55:28 — open the recording at 55 minutes 28 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) a situation where we would have all 25 to 2,700 students in the building at the same time but we don't have the Career Center currently so that would not be something that we can accommodate in the short term but in the long term that's part of the reason why I'm having the Career Center is because it actually reduces some of those building needs. So let's say worst-case scenario happens, we do this and the population continues to decline and we have to come back and have other conversations. If we were to close Woodrow Wilson, where it's possible

  147. 0:56:01 — open the recording at 56 minutes 1 secondDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) that we could put 12, 13, 1400 kids at North and South high schools and middle

  148. 0:56:05 — open the recording at 56 minutes 5 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) school now as a former assistant principal the building that had about 1,400 6th 7th and 8th graders I don't think that's a very good idea I think Chris talked about the last time is that there's a tipping point when you're too big being a principal of a building of 953 and being assistant principal the building of 1,400 I can tell you that that tipping point is definitely in between 953 and 1,400 you're talking about a lot of puberty in the building at that particular point in time. The other aspect is that if we continue to decline and we get to the point where 20 years from now,

  149. 0:56:43 — open the recording at 56 minutes 43 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) we only need two middle schools that can accommodate 1,000 students, we've got 1,000 students in two middle schools that was built to accommodate 1,400. Whereas if we keep Woodrow Wilson open and 20 years from now, the population continues to decline and it comes point in time where we say, we can't continue to operate Woodrow Wilson and we need to have that up that conversation and we're going to go to two middle schools we're at two middle schools that were designed for a thousand kids instead of designed for 1,400 kids that are in those spaces the same would

  150. 0:57:13 — open the recording at 57 minutes 13 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) be true here at the high school by having the West and in the North let's say that 20 25 30 years from now we get to the point we say you know what we can't sustain continuing with two high schools our population continues to decline and that's not feasible anymore if we constructed a school that was made for 34 3500 students and we drop to where we only have about 23 or 2400 students we have 23 or 2400 students in a building that was designed for 3500 whereas if we do the two high school options and that happens and we have to

  151. 0:57:48 — open the recording at 57 minutes 48 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) go to one high school we're back to we're staying in that right-sized aspect of things if we have a dedicated Career Center we don't have to build the building to have every single one of the students in the building at the same time some of those school students would be at the career center and that's something that's very common having been in other school districts where we partnered with other school districts to create a career center and never was there a time when we had every single student in the building at once because

  152. 0:58:16 — open the recording at 58 minutes 16 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) of the Career Center and those opportunities that existed which reduced the number the building needs so we're putting in there about 25 to 2700 right now because that's based on the demographic studies and when you take a a look at we're projecting that north is probably going to fall under 1300 south is probably going to fall under 1400 and when you combine that you're going to be in that 25 26 2700 range that's why we put that number on there

  153. 0:58:44 — open the recording at 58 minutes 44 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) does that answer your question so then when we took a look at these kind of things we came back to our goals our goals were to reduce annual cost our goals were to try to become as efficient

  154. 0:59:00 — open the recording at 59 minutesDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) as we could the options that allowed us to continue to offer the smaller

  155. 0:59:05 — open the recording at 59 minutes 5 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) elementary schools though we love them though it would be our preference if we

  156. 0:59:10 — open the recording at 59 minutes 10 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) could wave the magic wand and funding was not an issue it is an issue and our reality is is that we need to take a look at it the same is true with our middle schools it would ideally we'd be able to stay in that six or seven hundred range and not get to the nine hundred to a thousand range the question is how do we find those efficiencies and still be able to do things effectively and that's why we we talked about what our other school districts doing that so how do we maximize these different opportunities and that is where we did come up with

  157. 0:59:43 — open the recording at 59 minutes 43 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) the new high school if in order for us to gain those efficiencies in options four or five is by adding or building a new middle school or a new elementary school why would we not look at a new high school instead as I mentioned before because of the specialized aspects of what goes into a high school and how we're going to need to build a high school in a way that does continue to evolve in terms of changing technologies and changing ways that we prepare kids for the workforce and that's where we came out with a new high

  158. 1:00:16 — open the recording at 1 hour 16 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) school east of the river and whenever we say that with West Vigo West Vigo is basically going to become a new school it's just that their bones are much easier to work with and are in better condition or located in areas that make construction and renovation at the same time much more conducive than they are at North and South we can cut if I'm not mistaken Jim again is a better person to ask but I think we can cut in almost half the construction time of North and south if we can renovate them without students being on site and being present

  159. 1:00:49 — open the recording at 1 hour 49 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) so our hope is that if we can build a new high school we can vacate north and south and then renovate north and south for middle schools with middle school amenities with middle schoolers in mind as we construct it and then raise the parts of the building that we don't need anymore so that we're not heating and cooling those spaces we can do so in a much shorter period of time because we're not reconstructing them and renovating them around the kids but doing it without the kids being there which I believe if I remember right like

  160. 1:01:19 — open the recording at 1 hour 1 minute 19 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) halves the amount of time that we would have to do that which it seems to me as though if a contractor only had to commit to two years instead of four years of being on site we're gonna get better bids if they only have to be there for two years then if they have to commit and think about being on site for four I

  161. 1:01:37 — open the recording at 1 hour 1 minute 37 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) could be wrong about that because that's not my business but it seems that It seems logical that that would be the case.

  162. Highlight drawn from this moment: Plan would raze West Vigo Middle School as Terre Haute North and South become middle schools

    1:01:45 — open the recording at 1 hour 1 minute 45 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) So when we do that, the north and south can become middle schools. We believe that consolidated can be brought up into a middle school that has the bones, and it's a very good condition building that we can make into the middle school. And Woodrow Wilson does have some limitations. There's no question. When you have a building that's 100 years old, there are some limitations.

  163. 1:02:07 — open the recording at 1 hour 2 minutes 7 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) I will also tell you I think that Woodrow Wilson might be the most solidly built building we have and it's probably the one that is the most worthy of being renovated because

  164. Highlight drawn from this moment: Plan would raze West Vigo Middle School as Terre Haute North and South become middle schools

    1:02:18 — open the recording at 1 hour 2 minutes 18 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) it was built at a time when it was built to last and it was built to go through different iterations like we're talking about here. And then we take a look at the elementary schools. You'll see down at the bottom we end up with eight buildings that could either be repurposed or closed or raised. and we are suggesting that West Vigo Middle School be raised so that we take advantage and enlarge and enhance the the high school campus at West Vigo as it becomes a dedicated high school campus and recapture that space that is

  165. 1:02:50 — open the recording at 1 hour 2 minutes 50 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) currently under roof housing the middle school for different entrances into the auditorium or parking or those different kinds of things which are an issue there traffic flow is still going to be difficult because there's not going to able to have a loop around the building because of design but this would still be better and we'd be able to have a situation we may be able to better separate student driver traffic from bus traffic and so forth which is a common best practice so then when we line them up what we end up with is we have two of

  166. 1:03:26 — open the recording at 1 hour 3 minutes 26 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) the options end us with 16 schools two of the options end up with 15 schools One we kept all 23 and the other one has 18. We are proposing in our reorganization plan to think about repurposing one of our elementary schools as an elementary school. It is true that we could incorporate the Career Center as a part of the new high school. But we think that the partnership with Ivy Tech is awfully strong and the proximity of Dixie B, that possibility of a partnership with enhancing the partnerships we already have with Ivy Tech outweighs the convenience of having it on the same

  167. 1:04:08 — open the recording at 1 hour 4 minutes 8 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) site as the new high school especially given the fact that we're already going to have to do some transporting the air the the programs related to the airport are still going to need to be done at the airport the programs with the career center are still going to have to be or with the building trades are still going to have to be done at the building site the program and opportunities that we have with Union Hospital are still probably going to still take place at Union Hospital so we're never going to get to the point where we have zero of

  168. 1:04:37 — open the recording at 1 hour 4 minutes 37 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) those kind of transportation needs having them all at one location and having a morning group in an afternoon group is definitely something to think about the idea of having one of those buildings be repurposed into an alternative school allows us to rethink the spaces that we have for kids who need alternative programs to do more proactive things at the middle school and elementary school so that maybe we reduce the need for alternative education at the high school those are all possibilities and then we also think that repurposing one of those buildings as a pre-k facility is something that

  169. 1:05:13 — open the recording at 1 hour 5 minutes 13 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) may be in our best long-term interest as well there are some other needs you know we have two of the two of the schools are in the rural areas that may be be conducive to agriculture or FFA space and so forth, they would not necessarily need a building. What they need is open land to be able to put into practice the things that they're doing in the classroom, especially if they don't already live on a farm and they don't already have access to those kinds of things. But there's all kinds of things that we can take a look at. We also know that the law in terms of what happens

  170. 1:05:48 — open the recording at 1 hour 5 minutes 48 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) with facilities that close is dynamic it's constantly being looked at and possibly could change so we've been we've not given very a whole bunch of specifics on the buildings that we have not identified for potential repurposing but we have the opportunity of either recapturing all eight schools that are closed as savings from utilities and maintenance and so forth or reducing it by one two or three depending on if we want to repurpose it for those other things we just talked about because of the cost benefit to the community and to the kids who are going through it.

  171. 1:06:25 — open the recording at 1 hour 6 minutes 25 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) I think the career center and the alternative school have direct benefits for students. And I think the pre-K facility not only benefits students, but benefits the community as a whole, especially when we think about employers and daycare for employees and things like that. And though we don't do a lot with infant to age two, with three- and four-year-olds, we do put them in a dynamic situation where we're laying those foundational academic skills that we think are going to pay off as they progress into elementary school and we're already

  172. 1:06:55 — open the recording at 1 hour 6 minutes 55 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) seeing that from students who go through deming and how they transition into their elementary school experiences they they transition much much better than those who don't so that is the reason why on june 23rd we announced that down there as that option six as the new high school east of the river with a renovated high school at west we then convert north and south to be middle schools we chose consolidated to be a middle school because of the two-story aspect and its proximity for extracurricular activities to other middle schools

  173. 1:07:36 — open the recording at 1 hour 7 minutes 36 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) there's not a right or wrong answer in terms of Fayette and in sugar creek consolidated that was just our take on it we think a one-story building is really nice for elementary school particularly for kindergarten first and second graders it's possible that we could put preschool classrooms in existing facilities so we don't need a dedicated facility but we just what we've seen with Deming is that when you have a building that's dedicated to pre-k education there's a lot of amenities and benefits to the students who are there because it is solely designed to take

  174. 1:08:10 — open the recording at 1 hour 8 minutes 10 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) care of preschool students and we don't have a fifth grade aspect of things that trying to take care of three-year-olds and an 11-year-old it is solely designed for three and four-year-olds and we've seen a lot of benefit from that aspect of things we also are able to provide transitional kindergarten at Deming early learning center which is something that we think has been a very positive and what transitional kindergarten is is that students who finish preschool who are still not ready for kindergarten and they need the extra year having the transitional kindergarten

  175. 1:08:49 — open the recording at 1 hour 8 minutes 49 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) at demming without the future baggage of starting kindergarten in one school and repeating it and then always having kids for the rest of your educational career remember weren't you in my kindergarten class way back at whatever why are you a grade behind me now that's baggage that we don't have to have when we have a dedicated situation and they take that transitional kindergarten in a separate building and they're not in there that is something that you talk about retention whether it's kindergarten

  176. 1:09:22 — open the recording at 1 hour 9 minutes 22 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) first or second grade there is a there's a set of baggage that goes with it because the other kids who remember you being in their class when you were younger they remember that as they get older and that is an issue and an obstacle that has to be worked through and could be definitely correlated and I'm not going to say it's a cause but definitely correlated as to issues that happen with the fact that kids who are retained have a much higher dropout rate than kids that are not

  177. 1:09:56 — open the recording at 1 hour 9 minutes 56 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) in the future what we'll be bringing you is numbers that associated with each of

  178. 1:10:01 — open the recording at 1 hour 10 minutes 1 secondDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) these what are this cost savings in terms of utilities what are the cost savings in terms of property casualty insurance what are the cost savings in terms of the annual maintenance where are we at with the renovation costs and the reason why we don't have those today is because we need to update them because those were done back in the spring and inflation has occurred since then and we need to update those things so that you can see a more accurate depiction of what those numbers are today versus what they were back in the spring given the fact

  179. 1:10:29 — open the recording at 1 hour 10 minutes 29 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) that those inflationary costs have definitely hit in the construction industry and now we're seeing what those bids may look like and can give you a more accurate depiction of those things so we are working on it we understand that especially when you consider that four of you are accountants are finance people that you definitely have a great deal of interest in that side of things and we're

  180. 1:10:49 — open the recording at 1 hour 10 minutes 49 secondsSpeaker 51 (board member) going to make sure that we get those for you what do you think is realistic in terms of when you may have those numbers starting to get pulled together given the fact that this is the busiest time of

  181. 1:11:02 — open the recording at 1 hour 11 minutes 2 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) of the year of the business office we're hopeful that by the end of the month

  182. 1:11:05 — open the recording at 1 hour 11 minutes 5 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) we're hopeful that by sometime after Martin Luther King Day we can do that Don and I were actually just talking about having an update meeting on where we're at in gathering this information and making sure that we have chances to double check the numbers so that we feel confident when we put them in a public

  183. 1:11:21 — open the recording at 1 hour 11 minutes 21 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) setting and so forth but we're trying to get done for the week of Martin Luther King Day but the week after that would definitely be realistic Thank you.

  184. 1:11:34 — open the recording at 1 hour 11 minutes 34 secondsSpeaker 4 (chair) Thank you for the presentation. All of these options call for keeping, renovating, or repurposing north and south. So is it more of a logistical issue of why option six was adopted or endorsed by the school board? Or is it, can you explain, I understand the logistics, you can't relocate to south while you renovate north. and and then vice versa but what about you know i assume they're empty when you renovate them into middle schools what's the difference in the scope of the project to repurpose it into a middle school

  185. 1:12:12 — open the recording at 1 hour 12 minutes 12 secondsSpeaker 4 (chair) versus remodel it into an existing high school for one thing they're currently designed to be

  186. 1:12:18 — open the recording at 1 hour 12 minutes 18 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) able to handle in the 25 to 2700 range and as a middle school we're going to do it as 900 to a

  187. 1:12:23 — open the recording at 1 hour 12 minutes 23 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) thousand so there's tremendous there's big parts of the building that we would no longer need and so we're going to be doing that aspect of things in terms of raising the pieces of the building that are no longer needed in terms of when the sewer pipes are directly under the main hallways and those main hallways are constructed of terrazzo not having students in the building is going to be much easier for us to redo those sewer pipes and relocate them to areas that

  188. 1:12:53 — open the recording at 1 hour 12 minutes 53 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) make more sense. Am I saying this correctly? Because I'm now I'm remembering you may want to come up here and make sure that I say this correctly and I

  189. 1:13:03 — open the recording at 1 hour 13 minutes 3 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) don't say this wrong. That is an aspect of it that has to be taken in consideration. We also went back to getting down into you know option four is the one that makes the most is the most viable is the closest one have we created one of the goals was to create equitable learning opportunities in the buildings if one is South High School one is consolidated one is Woodrow Wilson and one is Otter Creek what's it going to take to make those comparable learning environments with similar types of resources and amenities that was a factor that played into it when we think

  190. 1:13:50 — open the recording at 1 hour 13 minutes 50 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) about the evolving aspect of middle school extracurricular activities they also are evolving just like we talked about with the high school and that there is more and more demand for the middle school to provide some of these opportunities than there were back in the day because there was a lot more like where I grew up baseball was not part of the middle school because we We had the Babe Ruth program, and I played in the Babe Ruth leagues, I think is what they were called, testing me because that was a long time ago. Now it's becoming more and more common that there's more and

  191. 1:14:23 — open the recording at 1 hour 14 minutes 23 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) more schools providing that opportunity in the middle schools, especially given the fact that travel costs for travel sports teams is becoming so great, and we serve so many students that do not have the economic resources to take advantage of those travel sports opportunities. Those are just some of those examples, but that also is evolving the same way it is at the elementary school. We now, as the school accountability aspect, the new accountability measures that are being discussed and debated currently by the State Board of Education, is that we're gonna provide high school opportunities

  192. 1:14:58 — open the recording at 1 hour 14 minutes 58 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) at the middle schools. Those are no longer gonna be nice to have things, but they're gonna be requirements, because it's gonna be one of the ways that middle schools are gonna be judged by the state of Indiana as to whether or not they offer some of those high school opportunities, whether that be algebra class or geometry class or social studies or English class that's at the high school level, some of those types of things that used to just be a nice thing to have that you address when you had really bright kids

  193. 1:15:25 — open the recording at 1 hour 15 minutes 25 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) who were coming through and you knew that they were way ahead of the other middle school kids. Now it's going to become a requirement that we do that kind of thing. So those are all aspects that went into it. None of those are set in stone, right, wrong, and so forth. But we know that we compete with people who offer these opportunities. We compete with other communities that take it for granted that these opportunities exist. We're talking about an 18-month to two-year renovation project if we were to do north and south without people in the building.

  194. 1:16:03 — open the recording at 1 hour 16 minutes 3 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) We're probably talking about three and a half to five years, Jim, if we were to do it with people in the building. Jim can elaborate more, but I know that at least one of the buildings, I think it was south, has water mitigation issues that we would have to work through as well in terms of if you're creating construction site and you're building off site, you've now created a new space where you've got to have the water go somewhere that may have been green space before. where does that water go and that's a bigger issue for us at south because of its proximity

  195. 1:16:35 — open the recording at 1 hour 16 minutes 35 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) to the mall to the river to the hospital versus at north where we actually own the operations center beside next door to it and it has more open space and it's not located near a mall that has a whole bunch of concrete and asphalt and so forth that has its own water mitigation issues that have to be thought through we have not went down the rabbit hole to know exactly what those are and how easy or difficult those would be but we know they exist

  196. 1:17:02 — open the recording at 1 hour 17 minutes 2 secondsSpeaker 4 (chair) and we know we would have to work our way through those so i think it's been a while since i've been in both high schools but i believe both are the same and that when you walk in the front doors to the right kind of the academic areas of the high schools so you're saying those they're repurposed into middle schools we would demolish those side we actually have two options one is to

  197. 1:17:25 — open the recording at 1 hour 17 minutes 25 secondsSpeaker 92 completely raise the entire academic wing and rebuild it the other one is to tear down the

  198. 1:17:32 — open the recording at 1 hour 17 minutes 32 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) parts you don't need keep the parts you do need and do a complete renovation basically gutting back to the studs and rebuilding it from that standpoint but keeping the core bones that option is much less expensive than the one where you tear the whole thing down and reconstruct the whole thing back up but that's one of those things that the board has looked at both of those different options. Again, a final decision has not been made because at this point, the high school issues are the bigger issues. And we approach this also from the standpoint of we don't want

  199. Highlight drawn from this moment: District says it can bond for one new high school without raising taxes, but not two

    1:18:07 — open the recording at 1 hour 18 minutes 7 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) to get to the point where we have to pick and choose. We know that as a school district, we have enough bonding capacity inside our current debt service that we can do a 20-year bond to to accommodate and help with one high school. We do not have the bonding capacity without increasing the rate to do both high schools. And that's part of the reason why we're here today. Is because one of the questions is, does the county also have bonding capacity inside its existing rates

  200. Highlight drawn from this moment: District says it can bond for one new high school without raising taxes, but not two

    1:18:40 — open the recording at 1 hour 18 minutes 40 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) to help partner in this situation so that we can do both high schools and affect every single student in the entire district without having to choose either the east side or the west side. That's the reality of why we're here, and that's part of our core mission here. I can't speak to county finance. That's the reason why you guys are talking about having an independent party come in and do an analysis, and that will be later that you're going to have other people present on the county side of things. Can we do a new high school east of the river with the commitment from the Casino Foundation?

  201. 1:19:17 — open the recording at 1 hour 19 minutes 17 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) We think it might be possible, but we've not went down that rabbit hole. We've not had that conversation. At this point in time, we just know that our 24-set, .2424 debt service tax rate can accommodate a 20-year bond that would allow us to address one of the high schools. schools and that's assuming we get going because the more we delay the cost of that project continues to go up because of inflation so

  202. 1:19:44 — open the recording at 1 hour 19 minutes 44 secondsSpeaker 4 (chair) so hypothetically you you build a consolidated high school east of the river but you have to use your bonding capacity to do it what happens with north and south they just sit there and they continue to educate kids during the

  203. 1:19:59 — open the recording at 1 hour 19 minutes 59 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) process in terms of I mean as I have stated from the very beginning we're

  204. 1:20:08 — open the recording at 1 hour 20 minutes 8 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) trying to do as much as possible without raising the tax rate we cannot do the entire plan without raising taxes or having an increase in assessed value to help spread it out what we're trying to do is can there are there big chunks that we can take care of that don't increase taxes and build some momentum and get an understanding as to what we're talking about doing. If North and South, if our community decides they don't want to put the money into renovating them, I mean, in order to renovate them, we would probably have to go through the referendum process

  205. Highlight drawn from this moment: District says it can bond for one new high school without raising taxes, but not two

    1:20:45 — open the recording at 1 hour 20 minutes 45 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) under current law unless those laws were to change before we could go and raise those taxes to do that. If that is the case and our community says no, then we're not going to be consolidating the elementary schools and the middle schools into that situation. We're not going to have the funds to go and create those opportunities. But at least we would have the high schools addressed at that particular point in time, which does address every single one of our kids. We just think that based on what the county commissioners have informed us, they believe

  206. 1:21:18 — open the recording at 1 hour 21 minutes 18 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) they have the ability to do one without increasing current rates. We know that we have the ability of doing one without increasing current rates, and if we can do both, we can take care of the high school aspect of the issue, which is a big chunk of the whole cost that we're talking about. A tremendous amount of cost.

  207. 1:21:37 — open the recording at 1 hour 21 minutes 37 secondsSpeaker 117 I was just curious, how much space do you need to build a new high school?

  208. 1:21:44 — open the recording at 1 hour 21 minutes 44 secondsSpeaker 118 How much land would that take?

  209. 1:21:46 — open the recording at 1 hour 21 minutes 46 secondsSpeaker 119 It depends on a number of factors.

  210. 1:21:49 — open the recording at 1 hour 21 minutes 49 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) If everything were perfect in terms of water mitigation, soil borings in terms of weight capacity, in terms of what it can hold with the footers and things like that, and traffic flow and so forth, and depending on where it is, is it off of two roads where you have access from two different roads, or is it just from one road? It is possible to find a site that can get into the 80 to 100 range, 80 to 100 acres to be able to accommodate that. If we have to, we only have one road that can access instead of two different roads.

  211. 1:22:18 — open the recording at 1 hour 22 minutes 18 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) If we have water mitigation issues that we have to worry about creating a retention area when there's heavy rains or those kinds of things, it can go upwards of 100 acres. Some of it depends on some things that we can't answer right now because we don't know where the site is. We haven't talked about where the site is because we haven't gotten to the point where we've got a go to do something.

  212. 1:22:40 — open the recording at 1 hour 22 minutes 40 secondsSpeaker 121 How much acreage is that north and south?

  213. 1:22:43 — open the recording at 1 hour 22 minutes 43 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) Currently, there's about 75, 76. And, you know, one of the things that we fight there is the fact that it was designed during a time when kids rode buses, and we didn't have to worry about traffic flow, and it was designed during a time when Title IX didn't exist, and we didn't have to worry about girls athletics. And those are some of the big things that hold us back, not to mention the fact that the electrical and those other things that Jim talked about in creating, when you build the building, building it so it has future-ready aspects of things.

  214. 1:23:16 — open the recording at 1 hour 23 minutes 16 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) That wasn't necessarily true when North and South were constructed. If you think about the electrical needs of North and South at the time that North and South were constructed, it was an overhead projector, a film strip projector, and a clock. Those were your electrical needs in a classroom. Now there's all kinds of electronics that are used, whether you're talking about a monitor like what we have here showing the the videos, whether we're talking about charging of 20 to 30 Chromebooks at a time,

  215. 1:23:53 — open the recording at 1 hour 23 minutes 53 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) whether we're talking about the different electronic equipment that you would have in a science classroom that didn't exist back then, then or if it did exist it was all done on a manual basis and not from an electronic basis those are all changes that North and South weren't designed for and nor did it have the future ready of thinking about how would we add electrical resources to this if we were to have this I think over the last 30 years we've learned we have to accommodate how fast things are changing and that you have to somewhat future proof whatever it is that you do

  216. 1:24:28 — open the recording at 1 hour 24 minutes 28 secondsSpeaker 51 (board member) This may be a question for Mr. Thompson, but the eight schools under option six that would be proposed to be repurposed or closed, the presentation last week talked about all the different needs that those eight schools have currently that need things that need fixed, renovated. if they're eventually going to be closed, what kind of dollar amount are we talking? I'm not holding you to anything, but I'm just kind of curious if there's work that needs to be done on those and then they're eventually going to be closed. Can you kind of speak to that?

  217. 1:25:05 — open the recording at 1 hour 25 minutes 5 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) Are you talking about the renovation costs that go along with those buildings? Or are you talking about the maintenance

  218. 1:25:11 — open the recording at 1 hour 25 minutes 11 secondsSpeaker 126 that is needing to be done on those?

  219. 1:25:15 — open the recording at 1 hour 25 minutes 15 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) If you're talking about the renovation costs to modernize them, that's something that we'll have in the next year we'll have.

  220. 1:25:20 — open the recording at 1 hour 25 minutes 20 secondsSpeaker 128 but how much money do we save on it mark am i am i saying that we were talking about that earlier

  221. 1:25:26 — open the recording at 1 hour 25 minutes 26 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) am i am i worrying that right yeah are you talking about the annuals amounts we would pay for maintaining the building that we would then recoup and not have to do

  222. 1:25:36 — open the recording at 1 hour 25 minutes 36 secondsMark (staff (business/finance office)) what am i trying to say that's your question are you asking so So how much construction dollar would be saved by not renovating, updating those eight schools?

  223. 1:25:54 — open the recording at 1 hour 25 minutes 54 secondsSpeaker 94 I think that's probably the, based on all of the items that were needed to be addressed, I think that's probably, yeah, that's probably the question.

  224. Highlight drawn from this moment: Plan would raze West Vigo Middle School as Terre Haute North and South become middle schools

    1:26:01 — open the recording at 1 hour 26 minutes 1 secondMark (staff (business/finance office)) So we'll bring all that budget numbering for you, but it's in excess of $10 million,

  225. 1:26:08 — open the recording at 1 hour 26 minutes 8 secondsJim (consultant (Gibraltar Design)) a building across all eight.

  226. 1:26:11 — open the recording at 1 hour 26 minutes 11 secondsSpeaker 137 (board member) And it can vary because of the configuration and type of buildings. Okay. Thank you.

  227. 1:26:16 — open the recording at 1 hour 26 minutes 16 secondsSpeaker 140 Some of them get up into the $30 million range, if I remember my numbers correctly.

  228. 1:26:21 — open the recording at 1 hour 26 minutes 21 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) So they do add up. But from a construction perspective, that's one aspect of things that we would not be modernizing them. But I think the bigger aspect from the school corporation is the ongoing utility cost, the ongoing property casualty cost, and the ongoing preventive maintenance cost that would be going into those buildings if we were to keep them. And that's the reason why we're hoping to be able to vacate the buildings and not have to, whether it's raising, whether it's doing a partnership. We know that there are needs in the community,

  229. 1:26:55 — open the recording at 1 hour 26 minutes 55 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) and we know that there are people who are looking for buildings to accommodate those needs.

  230. 1:27:04 — open the recording at 1 hour 27 minutes 4 secondsSpeaker 4 (chair) We have a few more minutes here. obviously north and south they would be quite the campus for middle schools and you've talked multiple times here you mentioned kind of trying to keep things equal and equitable amongst the middle schools or all the schools so I compared like the campus of a north and south to a landlocked campus of Woodrow Wilson we've talked about consolidated you already need to buy more property just to expand it So what does a reimagined Terre Haute North middle school look like compared to the existing Terre Haute North high school?

  231. 1:27:44 — open the recording at 1 hour 27 minutes 44 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) In terms of the land aspect of things, there is more land than you're going to have. You're going to have more options than you're going to have at Woodrow Wilson. There's absolutely no question about that. In terms of gym space, there's an auxiliary gym at North and South that we don't typically have at all of our middle schools. but it's an essential aspect of things when you think about PE and you think about girls PE and boys PE and then you think about the sports teams and we've tried to add in those those areas as

  232. 1:28:17 — open the recording at 1 hour 28 minutes 17 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) much as possible those are considerations we'll have to think about as a school board in terms of what are what is that minimum benchmark that we would have so that Woodrow Wilson consolidated north and south would all have at least this minimum aspect of things the thing that would be probably the bigger the more difficult thing to accommodate is do you do an auditorium at consolidated there's already an auditorium at Woodrow Wilson there's already an auditorium at North and South that's a question that we would would have to wrestle with in terms of what we do at consolidated you

  233. 1:28:50 — open the recording at 1 hour 28 minutes 50 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) know it is in a typical middle school that is built from the ground up for middle school purposes and it's not accommodating the resources that had already existed, you typically would combine the aspects of a gym, a cafeteria, and a stage or some type of an auditorium setting. Cafetoriums are one of the things where at one end of the cafeteria there's a stage. That already exists at Consolidated or Fayette. That is a question that we would have to have a conversation with, and that is something that I'm sure that there are people on the west side that have strong opinions on.

  234. 1:29:23 — open the recording at 1 hour 29 minutes 23 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) We also still have access to an auditorium on the west side and we're hopeful that when we're done with this that that auditorium is one that is nice enough that everybody would want to have an aspect of it for. So the question is how much do you need a dedicated auditorium at a middle school versus you need it for two or three dates and we can utilize the one at the high school. Those are legitimate questions. At the same time you're correct we wouldn't recommend tearing down the music and auditorium space at North and South.

  235. 1:29:55 — open the recording at 1 hour 29 minutes 55 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) Instead, we would utilize the music and auditorium space that we already have at North and South, which does make it a luxury compared to a typical middle school. Sure.

  236. 1:30:07 — open the recording at 1 hour 30 minutes 7 secondsSpeaker 4 (chair) And I guess just one last real quick one. When we've talked about kind of increasing the enrollment size in each of these buildings

  237. 1:30:14 — open the recording at 1 hour 30 minutes 14 secondsSpeaker 99 in order to find that kind of optimal efficiency, what's the effect on classroom size?

  238. 1:30:20 — open the recording at 1 hour 30 minutes 20 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) The classroom sizes actually will become more consistent across the district. A really good example is when you get to some of these smaller elementary schools, the really difficult decision is if you only have enough students for one, two, or three sections at a grade level. So here's an example. If you've got 57 kids at a grade level at an elementary school, in kindergarten and first grade, you're probably going to divide it by three, which is going to be 19 in a class. typically you're around 18 19 20 21 in a kindergarten class that's reasonable

  239. 1:30:54 — open the recording at 1 hour 30 minutes 54 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) but if they go to fourth and fifth grade you're probably not going to put 19 in a class you're probably going to divide it by two and you're going to have 28 or 29 in a class and typically we're in the 23 24 25 range so what we believe will happen is what you will find is if you take look at a Dixie B or a Terrytown or a Lost Creek which are currently our largest elementary schools you will find that all their class sizes are much closer to the class average than what you have in a smaller school which either has them much lower than the class size average across the district or much

  240. 1:31:28 — open the recording at 1 hour 31 minutes 28 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) higher than the class size average because there's this going back and forth that when you're dividing it by two or dividing it by three there's a big disparity versus when you're dividing it by five or dividing it by six and you have a much smaller range when you do that and so that's the reason why it's easier to make efficiency decisions in larger elementary schools without disrupting those class size issues when you make those decisions at the in a smaller school it's really difficult if you have 64 kids and you don't have enough of a budget to add a third teacher you're talking 32 kids

  241. 1:32:09 — open the recording at 1 hour 32 minutes 9 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) in a class versus the class size average across the district is 24 25 at the same time if you add that teacher that's going to be a cost of depending on where they're at on the salary schedule and whether they take family insurance or single insurance but you're talking about a 75 to 100 thousand dollar investment for that one teacher to be able to get to a situation where now our numbers are below the class size average that we're at those are really difficult decisions to make and that's where the larger elementary schools you actually find that the the

  242. 1:32:41 — open the recording at 1 hour 32 minutes 41 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) class sizes are more consistently at the class size average across the district instead of fluctuating depending on if it's a class of 57 or a class of 63. 63 kids in the in the class when they get to the upper level classes they're probably gonna have over 30 in a class when you have 57 they're gonna probably get up in the 28 29 whereas if you've got a hundred and get 100 kids in a class you divide it by four you're at 25 in a class you divide it by six you're at 18 in a class you divide it by four you're at 20 you know divide by five or

  243. 1:33:16 — open the recording at 1 hour 33 minutes 16 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) 20 because you don't have these huge as big of a variation and you're better better able to do that the other thing is five movements disrupt the class sizes far less when there's five sections at the grade level and you just add one kid per class than if there's only two and you just added two to one and three to the other that we're already at 26 and 27 or 28 to begin with not at the average so school size has absolutely nothing to do with individual class size other than it makes it much more consistent from year to year from grade

  244. 1:33:50 — open the recording at 1 hour 33 minutes 50 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) level to grade level without the various fluctuations in a small school it is normal that you're going to teach multiple grades because you're there's three sections of this group and you're going to move up with them but the class behind only has two sections and and then you're so when that group comes up and you're going to drop back down and that's very common in a small school in a bigger school you become more of an expert because you're more likely to stay consistent with your grade level yeah thank you hopefully you didn't have

  245. 1:34:19 — open the recording at 1 hour 34 minutes 19 secondsSpeaker 96 too many flashbacks to your math teacher days there no i was

  246. 1:34:24 — open the recording at 1 hour 34 minutes 24 secondsSpeaker 156 We appreciate it. Anything else from the board?

  247. 1:34:28 — open the recording at 1 hour 34 minutes 28 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) When you're teaching sixth grade math, you've got to be able to come up with those numbers off the top of your head, because if they don't, they will definitely point it out to you and embarrass you in front of everybody.

  248. 1:34:36 — open the recording at 1 hour 34 minutes 36 secondsSpeaker 158 I don't doubt that.

  249. 1:34:37 — open the recording at 1 hour 34 minutes 37 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) You get really good at that arithmetic when you teach sixth grade math.

  250. 1:34:42 — open the recording at 1 hour 34 minutes 42 secondsSpeaker 157 Any other questions?

  251. 1:34:43 — open the recording at 1 hour 34 minutes 43 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) Jim, you had a question earlier. Did your question get answered?

  252. 1:34:46 — open the recording at 1 hour 34 minutes 46 seconds Yeah.

  253. 1:34:49 — open the recording at 1 hour 34 minutes 49 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) Thank you for your time. We appreciate it. Yeah, thank you. we will um after we make sure we look at all the edits and we've got all the grammatical stuff caught give you a copy of pdf of what you just saw there so you don't have to try to remember

  254. 1:35:01 — open the recording at 1 hour 35 minutes 1 secondSpeaker 4 (chair) everything great thank you anything else from the board if not entertain a motion to adjourn oh sorry uh we are a little over time here i guess we finished early last week any comments from the public sure come on up to the podium

  255. 1:35:30 — open the recording at 1 hour 35 minutes 30 secondsSpeaker 164 my name is debbie constantine i do have one question concerning like your rules on

  256. 1:35:36 — open the recording at 1 hour 35 minutes 36 secondsDebbie Constantine (resident) commenting policy am i allowed to bring up something that was brought up last week if i could correlate it to something that was brought up today i believe you're allowed to bring up

  257. 1:35:45 — open the recording at 1 hour 35 minutes 45 secondsSpeaker 4 (chair) anything uh as far as i'm concerned i don't know that there's an obligation to answer but we'll

  258. 1:35:50 — open the recording at 1 hour 35 minutes 50 secondsSpeaker 169 do the best we can okay it's more about the pre-k and last session you it was stated that

  259. 1:36:00 — open the recording at 1 hour 36 minutesDebbie Constantine (resident) the board hasn't decided on that yet my concern would be if you would build that an additional facility out at sugar grove would you then expect kids at some place like fayette which there was a picture like 16 kids in a pre-k class go to Deming then for their pre-k if there would be no pre-k in the school and then if you decide to keep pre-k in the school would you not build the sugar growth facility or have sugar grow become a pre-k facility let's see then then there's another my final question on this remembering from the presentation last year that special

  260. 1:36:59 — open the recording at 1 hour 36 minutes 59 secondsDebbie Constantine (resident) students in students with special needs would be included in the new school arrangement now if you had if you kept pre-k in there how would that affect special ed kids being included in an elementary school and that that would be my question there and I know I'm asking specifically because if Farrington Grove is going to be converted into like a alternative learning center and I in Sugar Grove would be an early learning center and Davis Park would be closed. Those three schools have dedicated special ed classes so that would be a

  261. 1:37:43 — open the recording at 1 hour 37 minutes 43 secondsDebbie Constantine (resident) question I have and then my final question has to do with the middle proposed middle schools and the comment I saw on Facebook. The commenter said that you actually need more music space in the middle school because music is required whereas in a high school it's not so would there be additional space put in the new as north and south to accommodate that and a specific thing that came out during the county council sessions was they don't have a dedicated orchestra space at north and I don't think they do itself because my daughter

  262. 1:38:21 — open the recording at 1 hour 38 minutes 21 secondsDebbie Constantine (resident) said when she's at school there that wasn't necessarily a problem because the the choir teacher and the orchestra teacher were one in the same, so they used the same classroom. That's all I have. Thank you.

  263. 1:38:34 — open the recording at 1 hour 38 minutes 34 secondsSpeaker 172 Thank you.

  264. 1:38:35 — open the recording at 1 hour 38 minutes 35 secondsSpeaker 63 (board member) Thank you. I'll just add that I believe, Deb, that we're still considering pre-K in the building or at Sugar Grove as well as our special education classrooms are still in consideration for those newer. For example, you used Farrington Grove as the example. Those students, I believe, are being looked at as possible. or Scott Building students, that space would still be there for them. We're not necessarily removing special education. In fact, we've talked to Gibraltar several times about making sure that special education is something that we are including in those plans. Does that make sense?

  265. 1:39:12 — open the recording at 1 hour 39 minutes 12 secondsSpeaker 177 (board member or staff) I will say your music question is the first that I've considered.

  266. 1:39:16 — open the recording at 1 hour 39 minutes 16 secondsSpeaker 179 (board member) I was just saying, if you put the pre-K back, would there be enough space? That's my question. For the special ed kids.

  267. 1:39:29 — open the recording at 1 hour 39 minutes 29 secondsSpeaker 177 (board member or staff) I mean, the space for the special ed students would be there regardless if we choose to put pre-K there or Sugar Grove.

  268. 1:39:37 — open the recording at 1 hour 39 minutes 37 secondsSpeaker 73 (unclear — possibly a Gibraltar-team fragment, possibly a board/staff) If this is getting into the week, we would actually start controlling the grades. We are definitely not enough.

  269. 1:39:43 — open the recording at 1 hour 39 minutes 43 seconds Okay, thank you.

  270. 1:39:45 — open the recording at 1 hour 39 minutes 45 secondsSpeaker 162 Yeah, thank you for that. Any other comments, questions?

  271. 1:39:51 — open the recording at 1 hour 39 minutes 51 seconds Great.

  272. 1:39:53 — open the recording at 1 hour 39 minutes 53 secondsSpeaker 188 (board member) I'd like a motion to adjourn. Second. Thank you.

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