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Vigo County Oversight BoardFeb 2, 2026

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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 · Feb 2, 2026
Length
1:19:41
Lines
225
Transcribed by
mlx-community/whisper-large-v3-turbo
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  1. 0:00:00 — open the recording at 0 secondsSpeaker 0 I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic of which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

  2. 0:00:23 — open the recording at 23 secondsSpeaker 5 (chair) Alright, happy Monday. Thank you for getting the kids back in school this week. Next up on the agenda, we have approval of the minutes.

  3. 0:00:34 — open the recording at 34 secondsSpeaker 7 I'll make a motion to approve the minute.

  4. 0:00:38 — open the recording at 38 secondsSpeaker 5 (chair) Thank you, Kerry. I'll second. Thank you, Mark. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Alright. Let's jump right in. We have the comparison of maintenance costs for the different facilities options.

  5. 0:00:54 — open the recording at 54 seconds Good morning.

  6. 0:00:58 — open the recording at 58 secondsSpeaker 11 Good morning. Thank you again for the opportunity to present. I think we're

  7. 0:01:03 — open the recording at 1 minute 3 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) going to be going back and forth between two PowerPoints here today. What we're going to do today is before we shared with you the different options that we vetted, the different things that we took a look at, what we're going to do today is to get to how did these compare with one another. So I'll wait forward to actually turn into the PowerPoint so I can change the slides here so our primary objectives is Jim's gonna walk you through how we went about pricing different things so we can do comparisons he's going to use one

  8. 0:01:40 — open the recording at 1 minute 40 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) building as an example we're not going to go through every one of them but we're going to choose one as the example and then that's what we did for all the different buildings and as I said the last time all those different questions that we kept bringing back to them. I'm then going to provide just a summary of how these compare to one another so that you can see how one's a little bit less expensive one's a little bit more expensive and so forth as well as the savings that are generated. We looked at this as a reminder we looked at this

  9. 0:02:10 — open the recording at 2 minutes 10 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) through the lens of taking a look at what's the current condition of the buildings what's the reality of what we have try to use our assets whenever possible trying to reduce the number of new buildings that we needed to build to to reap the savings that we could be honest about the reality of where we're at with enrollment the trend of enrollment where things are headed consider the learning needs of our kids it's things that are happening at the state in terms of state standards state requirements graduation requirements

  10. 0:02:45 — open the recording at 2 minutes 45 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) have continued to change the feedback that was offered by our employees as students and community members throughout the entire process and that really led to how do we expand opportunities for kids there was a real emphasis on which of the options actually help us expand what we do for kids so that our kids have access to things that other communities simply take for granted and then of course we have to live within our means so what is the limited funding that's available those different refunding requirements that you learned about the

  11. 0:03:18 — open the recording at 3 minutes 18 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) last time and and what the impact of those requirements are as well as to remembering it doesn't just stop now the General Assembly continues to make this a moving target and so how do we position ourselves to where we are better able to adapt to those changes in the future so with that being said I think we're going to switch over to Jim presenting how we went about the process of how did we come up with pricing these different things and I think he's going to use Devaney Elementary as an example to lead us through that process

  12. 0:04:02 — open the recording at 4 minutes 2 secondsSpeaker 20 good evening good morning everyone it is a Monday nice to be here nice to see

  13. 0:04:07 — open the recording at 4 minutes 7 secondsJim (consultant (Gibraltar Design)) everyone so as dr. Hemswell mentioned we'll use Devaney elementary school as an example and I'm also going to use the process we went through in the study which leads to the alignment of budgets and options and how is each solution vetted building by building to reach conclusions and summaries again thank you very much I think you remember from previous meetings and being here in the county it's been over a two-year journey with Vigo County and we're not done yet

  14. 0:04:42 — open the recording at 4 minutes 42 secondsSpeaker 23 but we're making a lot of progress in our information evaluations

  15. 0:05:03 — open the recording at 5 minutes 3 secondsJim (consultant (Gibraltar Design)) I think I'll talk over our IT director trying to get all of this to work. Just a couple of other introductory comments. You know, Gibraltar design works all over the state of Indiana. So one of the things that I love about the business of education, about the industry of education in Indiana, and being familiar with some other states, we are very collegial as an industry in education in Indiana. So when things are working well in other districts, unlike other industries who might protect their trade secrets, Indiana shares openly.

  16. 0:05:42 — open the recording at 5 minutes 42 secondsJim (consultant (Gibraltar Design)) So there is a moment where one district could contact another, an invitation is made to come gather up the resources, here's how we save money, here's how we solve this challenge. And so for over 30 years, that's what Gibraltar's been doing, is when we bring to you ideas and solutions for schools it's based on 30 years of practicing and what the I'll

  17. 0:06:07 — open the recording at 6 minutes 7 secondsJim (consultant (Gibraltar Design)) say the practitioners who do education tell us work for their school facilities regardless of the level of building whether it's elementary middle or high

  18. 0:06:17 — open the recording at 6 minutes 17 secondsJim (consultant (Gibraltar Design)) school and the other thing that I can say is without question by comparison so as we go from district to district it's very evident that Bego County School district has a great deal of pride in their facilities in that your maintenance staff your custodial staff buildings are clean they're well kept doing the best with the resources that they have so commentary of needs and life expectancy and equipment aged out is not a comment on lack of effort it's a lack of it's a reality of the world and you're not maybe for some of you

  19. 0:06:55 — open the recording at 6 minutes 55 secondsJim (consultant (Gibraltar Design)) that are involved in other industries that have buildings every buildings a living breathing entity I made that point once before and so therefore over time just like our bodies age buildings can age this basically summarizes the work that was done I don't know that we need to delve any deeper into it and as I mentioned the pride and the stewardship that goes into maintaining buildings within the financial resources that are currently available this is for your convenience district maps we've provided those before so Adelaide elementary you know first thing we do is we're

  20. 0:07:37 — open the recording at 7 minutes 37 secondsJim (consultant (Gibraltar Design)) gathering up this information and it is relevant as to the size student population currently in the building that is one thing as you can imagine that dr. Hems will pointed out that buildings have fewer students than they had originally when they were open some slightly grown that is relevant when we go through these steps in the process so as we continue on step one at some level we need to evaluate the conditions quantify and qualify those conditions so we know what to do in order to bring them up to a modernized school so this

  21. 0:08:15 — open the recording at 8 minutes 15 secondsJim (consultant (Gibraltar Design)) is just a very simple way for all stakeholders in the community and the school district facilities if it's a black box it means that the item or the

  22. 0:08:25 — open the recording at 8 minutes 25 secondsJim (consultant (Gibraltar Design)) system or the piece of equipment or component is aged and beyond its useful

  23. 0:08:31 — open the recording at 8 minutes 31 secondsJim (consultant (Gibraltar Design)) life and worn if it's an empty box it means that it's either new because the district is not standing still and what they are doing with facilities or it's I'll say like new many things like painted concrete block for example it never ages right they steal some of those things they don't know that they're 40 or 50 years old they just are what they are and then you have things in the middle that require some judgment so we create a table and here's the example with Devaney Elementary School you can see the column that has the condition

  24. 0:09:06 — open the recording at 9 minutes 6 secondsJim (consultant (Gibraltar Design)) which is the boxes I just referenced and then we have industry life expectancy there's a lot of resources out there that say these types of systems equipment materials last this long in a school Indiana by its nature although in recent years it may have changed back in the 20th century particularly late 20th century schools were built of high quality and typically would last you certainly more than 10 years sometimes up to 20 years but you qualify all those things and then you can start to see what you're dealing with what you have

  25. 0:09:48 — open the recording at 9 minutes 48 secondsJim (consultant (Gibraltar Design)) to work with and this is very extensive it goes through all different types of

  26. 0:09:54 — open the recording at 9 minutes 54 secondsJim (consultant (Gibraltar Design)) components that make the building go analogy to the human body would be like temperature controls manage the hot and coolness of a building for comfort we have a nervous system you have a envelope or skin if you will a building and all these different things all of that is carefully quantified and qualified

  27. 0:10:35 — open the recording at 10 minutes 35 seconds Thank you.

  28. 0:11:05 — open the recording at 11 minutes 5 secondsMark (board member) Hey, Jim. They're working on that. You alluded to something there. You talked about the buildings and kind of the time period that they were built. And it's consistent with something I heard, I think it was last week maybe, that in the 70s you know schools across the state that were built in that time period they just haven't withstood the test of time and that's just maybe that's uh just an opinion but i don't know in your line of work if that's something factual that you experience different time periods when schools are

  29. 0:11:49 — open the recording at 11 minutes 49 secondsJim (consultant (Gibraltar Design)) built tend to last longer than others that is true okay um and in the 1970s and even in the early 1980s the building manufactured products that we had available were not as time resistant as high a quality now that isn't to say like concrete block has it's changed a little bit but it's essentially the same but steel has been of higher quality probably the greatest example would be in the 70s how many of you remember the oil embargo some of you history Carter maybe maybe Jim okay my whole point with that is heating and cooling particularly heating because of

  30. 0:12:39 — open the recording at 12 minutes 39 secondsJim (consultant (Gibraltar Design)) our dependency on oil at that time literally school buildings in the 70s and early 80s were heated many of them by oil fueling boilers and furnaces and so forth but what we became aware of was that the heat gain from glass and sunlight caused cooling issues but the glass manufacturers they did not have different types of glass so any of you ever seen an older building and it looked like it had mere glass on it and then sometimes it was even a film because back in the 70s early 80s manufacturers quickly started making film that were

  31. 0:13:20 — open the recording at 13 minutes 20 secondsJim (consultant (Gibraltar Design)) reflective to drive the heat out and then eventually by the 90s late 80s we had a whole assortment of glass with E ratings to reflect the heat out to not spend as much energy cooling buildings or the reverse it would let the winter Sun in but not the summer Sun so that's just examples of the evolution of buildings so I see we're back did that answer your question yep and it's it's relevant here in New York County because you know you have 50 year old high schools which for some who like history like oh that's quaint it looks exactly

  32. 0:13:57 — open the recording at 13 minutes 57 secondsSpeaker 42 like it did when I graduated in the 70s but that's not a reality of a modern

  33. 0:14:01 — open the recording at 14 minutes 1 secondMark (board member) school yeah well I think it's relevant when you see like a Woodrow Wilson yeah yeah and then you look at the condition of the high schools and it's they just

  34. 0:14:10 — open the recording at 14 minutes 10 secondsJim (consultant (Gibraltar Design)) don't seem to connect and one last point you have two or three instances in this county where you built three at the same time so when you saw the examples of image like this yellow indicating there's work that's being discussed and if the funds are available those will be priorities but you also see how you can look across the district and sometimes it's not a coincidence it's just a reality that three buildings built at the same time mostly age at the same

  35. 0:14:48 — open the recording at 14 minutes 48 secondsJim (consultant (Gibraltar Design)) rate so the needs and if they haven't been touched for 20 years then all those needs become a tidal wave on the beach to get them all system updated again and that's that's the term of preventative maintenance and how you strategize to to keep buildings up to date no different than things we do as we age that we have to do different than we did when we were young

  36. 0:15:18 — open the recording at 15 minutes 18 secondsJim (consultant (Gibraltar Design)) so after we've collected all this information and then the assessments we start to do even more than what I just commented on right now we start to find

  37. 0:15:28 — open the recording at 15 minutes 28 secondsJim (consultant (Gibraltar Design)) commonalities we make observations we also take this information to your facilities team not just because we want to do a good pat on the back and say good job it's now we need to start prioritizing so this created a

  38. 0:15:41 — open the recording at 15 minutes 41 secondsJim (consultant (Gibraltar Design)) checklist of what are we going to do about the issues of assessment is you know the one says this is what I have this chart begins to map out what am I going to do about it so check marks mean highest level of priorities things that

  39. 0:15:57 — open the recording at 15 minutes 57 secondsJim (consultant (Gibraltar Design)) if funding is available we need to address these items and think of it as bricks and mortar the things and I hope you get a chance or you have already gone to the existing buildings and walked around and if you said I think I even made a comment in this space we can say well that tile looks worn or the ceilings need to be replaced or you know some things are more subjective because some people would say the tile is fine others might say our students need new I'm big on best solution at the right price within a budget I'm not about I

  40. 0:16:31 — open the recording at 16 minutes 31 secondsJim (consultant (Gibraltar Design)) I don't think students are, and we didn't budget in a way that said, oh, we need glamorized buildings. That's not what we're saying. We're saying the opposite. We need a good, well-functioning, opportunistic building for learning. We can still make the colors look nice and make the building look attractive, but we don't have to spend a lot of money to do that. And that's what we're known for across the state is bringing in right value and long-lasting quality buildings for a budget that works for people in schools.

  41. 0:17:01 — open the recording at 17 minutes 1 secondJim (consultant (Gibraltar Design)) So that's what this does. And this was shared with your facility staff because despite architects and engineers visiting a building three or four times,

  42. 0:17:11 — open the recording at 17 minutes 11 secondsJim (consultant (Gibraltar Design)) despite looking over printed data and emblems on machines to tell us age and those types of things, boots on the ground, your people on the front lines, they know the trending of I have been trying to service this boiler and it's barely staying open. I think school board members nod their heads because they hear it sometimes. more than they would care but just for everybody to know these things are a reality

  43. 0:17:42 — open the recording at 17 minutes 42 secondsJim (consultant (Gibraltar Design)) so let's shift over to step two in our process most importantly regardless of

  44. 0:17:47 — open the recording at 17 minutes 47 secondsJim (consultant (Gibraltar Design)) the condition of the buildings is how are these buildings serving the students for learning opportunities end goal no matter the student address in this county in vigo county no matter their address every child receives the same opportunity it doesn't mean all the buildings have to be equal identical i mean but they do need to be equal not necessarily identical but they need to be equal in terms of its opportunity so how do we do that it's through these steps we did surveys to collect information we had a high level of respondent that told us at any rate as i again as we travel the

  45. 0:18:24 — open the recording at 18 minutes 24 secondsJim (consultant (Gibraltar Design)) estate some districts staff not so interested this county district very interested in providing some feedback we collect that information there's a place for narratives to collect notes we do walkthroughs with the building principal just like we would meet with facility staff to find out what their priorities are with bricks and mortar and boilers and chillers and roofs we We meet with building principals to know how is the learning hindered or where the areas of need that are fraying the sweater or pulling away from focus on best opportunities for kids.

  46. 0:19:05 — open the recording at 19 minutes 5 secondsJim (consultant (Gibraltar Design)) And that can be measured and quantified and qualified. Same result of priorities. These are things that would need to be addressed. We worked hard to separate wants. can still be an honest part of the discussion but the needs relative to as dr. himsel said in his opening comment there's the state standards have changed when buildings were originally built versus now something as simple as classroom size has changed generally 750 in the 70s kids were littler some people say I don't I can't know that I've seen data but just anecdotally I'm

  47. 0:19:50 — open the recording at 19 minutes 50 secondsJim (consultant (Gibraltar Design)) thinking yeah people are a little smaller and now students are bigger so roughly 900 square feet 950 square feet is deemed a more adequate size there are ways to be clever and work around it a little bit but eventually it causes

  48. 0:20:07 — open the recording at 20 minutes 7 secondsJim (consultant (Gibraltar Design)) challenges so you can qualify all these needs And then what you do, much like if, you know, when you have equipment, boilers and chillers, you know what new is. With learning environment, we use the term benchmark.

  49. 0:20:30 — open the recording at 20 minutes 30 secondsJim (consultant (Gibraltar Design)) So if you see that second to last bullet point.

  50. 0:20:36 — open the recording at 20 minutes 36 secondsJim (consultant (Gibraltar Design)) So the benchmarks are this is the standard of care that we want to provide an elementary student who is in a teacher's classroom who a student who is taking art a student who is engaged in a gymnasium a student who is doing stem or steam programs and that can apply through elementary middle and high school

  51. 0:21:00 — open the recording at 21 minutesJim (consultant (Gibraltar Design)) spaces nowadays are also more flexible so we get asked the question a lot well how do you know that today is going to be the same as 10 years from now and the answer is oh we know it'll be different not the same that's what we know so furniture is more flexible it's not permanent there's not as many things fixed like screw to the floor or screw to the wall things can be moved around you still need to have a right size and so you have some of that but you can then quantify and qualify this so at the elementary level because we're using

  52. 0:21:30 — open the recording at 21 minutes 30 secondsJim (consultant (Gibraltar Design)) to Vanny as the elementary school example we benchmark the differences between learners and the leaders the teacher in the room is doing this the learners are doing this now and so how does a room or then a school accommodate capacity becomes a benchmark we want our buildings so great question that I'm gonna answer in part right now and then again later best question I heard one of my favorite questions last Thursday is hey this is a lot about how money is taken away from our district at the state level how do we put money back into our district well

  53. 0:22:13 — open the recording at 22 minutes 13 secondsJim (consultant (Gibraltar Design)) one way is right sizing schools and getting them to optimum operational costs lowering costs i know we have a utility member representative but i think what i would say is you know as utility rates increase that's non-controllable even for the utility companies but what you can control is your own consumption what what you need to use to heat and cool so that's where building efficiency so when you saw our list of black boxes and things many of those things could lead to a 25 reduction in utilities so 25 of your utility cost is money back into the district

  54. 0:22:54 — open the recording at 22 minutes 54 secondsJim (consultant (Gibraltar Design)) is that making sense for everybody and that's also relevant in learning environments although people don't think about that necessarily we do as school planners and your school leadership does example if I can use a room for three different purposes instead of building three rooms I have now created a room that costs one-third of the three rooms right so I need thousand square feet and I'm going to use it for three different purposes instead of three rooms why does that happen because if you start to understand how the room is used with scheduling oh that room is used during

  55. 0:23:26 — open the recording at 23 minutes 26 secondsJim (consultant (Gibraltar Design)) the day and then after school so those are two different times so you just let room happen to be used for both purposes so that's how you can one way you can put money back into your pocket so then we diagram the buildings need to know how the building's going to be used based on the benchmark and student capacity and then this is just some visuals of for those of you that haven't had an opportunity to see how children are learning now it just it actually even looks different with it's not rows of desks

  56. 0:24:04 — open the recording at 24 minutes 4 secondsJim (consultant (Gibraltar Design)) necessarily the teacher drives how the rooms are being utilized and then you have spaces like this your vigo school district does a great job of this other districts across the state are trying hard to create more individualized instruction or rooms like this that are smaller in nature that allow a group of children to go outside of the classroom with an aide or another instructor to get some specialized instruction to help them either keep up or make up for something. So that's very important in today's elementary environment in particular, but it also happens across all grade levels.

  57. 0:24:50 — open the recording at 24 minutes 50 secondsJim (consultant (Gibraltar Design)) Like in the high schools, for example, study groups, peer-to-peer instruction is very effective, in the high school level. So you want to have spaces in the media center for children to be in those groups and learn from one another. There's more robotics. There's more hands-on experiential type opportunities at the elementary level. Many people would describe, for example, an elementary room that's rocking and rolling like a high school science room that we did chemistry labs in because there's so many things the students are touching and using in an elementary classroom

  58. 0:25:22 — open the recording at 25 minutes 22 secondsJim (consultant (Gibraltar Design)) versus filling out worksheets every day.

  59. 0:25:25 — open the recording at 25 minutes 25 secondsJim (consultant (Gibraltar Design)) So a couple other things I want to drive home as we conclude.

  60. 0:25:32 — open the recording at 25 minutes 32 secondsJim (consultant (Gibraltar Design)) Remember, I used this example. It's one square foot. That's what it represents. And it can be expensive. It can be expensive to build new. It can be expensive to renovate. It has a cost affix to it to heat it and cool it with energy consumption. consumption it has other operational factors and then as it's tied to learning environments there is an appropriate amount of square footage in a room for its purpose whether it's a classroom a stem room an art room so you take everything that you just saw and we take unit of measure when I say

  61. 0:26:11 — open the recording at 26 minutes 11 secondsJim (consultant (Gibraltar Design)) quantify and qualify a majority of it is based on square footage if it's new it's going to cost once one cost per square foot if it's renovation fixing existing buildings it's going to have either a high cost a low cost or something in the middle and then if it's a building addition it's going to be viewed as new but you're going to pay a premium for the new square footage because you're having to engage contracting and work on an existing site which will have varying degrees of existing challenges and parameters to mobilize equipment, set

  62. 0:26:50 — open the recording at 26 minutes 50 secondsJim (consultant (Gibraltar Design)) up and do the addition, manage existing utilities that are underground, and all that goes into quantifying and qualifying costs in addition to the unit of four boilers, two chillers, a new roof, and you have those qualifications as well that feed into a building by building budget estimate. And then the other aspect of is you heard about funding last week again doing a good job with this in capital expenditure which was explained last week as one funding source can help put money back into your pocket with the operating fund and then from the

  63. Highlight drawn from this moment: School board adopts "Option Six," closing eight Vigo County buildings to avoid an estimated $191 million in costs

    0:27:30 — open the recording at 27 minutes 30 secondsJim (consultant (Gibraltar Design)) operating fund savings you can put it into the educational fund for teachers and the programs that you're doing with opportunities so it's just organizing all the quantifying qualifying at building by building summations and I know this time dr. himself will come back and talk to you about the summary of

  64. 0:27:47 — open the recording at 27 minutes 47 secondsSpeaker 9 (board member) that hey Jim real quick one of the slides that we had up there and we'll

  65. 0:27:52 — open the recording at 27 minutes 52 secondsMark (board member) thank you bring it back up but it said on average there's like 15 years since I think it's had significant upgrade or significant improvement is that standard for what you see in your work across the state or is that higher lower

  66. 0:28:09 — open the recording at 28 minutes 9 secondsSpeaker 55 It completely varies.

  67. 0:28:14 — open the recording at 28 minutes 14 secondsJim (consultant (Gibraltar Design)) Many districts who are growing, I'll say, leaps and bounds, they can't wait 15 years to delve into facilities' capital expenditures because they need to do building additions or they need to do things to manage more student population in a building. districts when they have an opportunity just like it's being presented to your school district my observation is many districts subscribe to the idea of right-sizing the school building and taking an honest look at the number of buildings they have to right-size I'm thinking of for example in Peru Indiana

  68. 0:29:04 — open the recording at 29 minutes 4 secondsJim (consultant (Gibraltar Design)) maybe 15 years ago they needed to close two elementaries and think of it this way too when you're not doing work like in Peru's case when they're not spending money on this elementary that money when they have funds goes to the other two buildings and increases what you can spend on those two and all they're doing is responding to Peru's change in student population locations as well and thereby reducing transportation costs and then by increasing the student population and right-sizing the buildings whether it's high school middle school

  69. 0:29:40 — open the recording at 29 minutes 40 secondsJim (consultant (Gibraltar Design)) or elementary imagine like one art teacher can service three 650 students instead of two art teachers servicing two schools at 300 and that was what was happening in Peru yes okay we so there's sort of a whole and I'm not privy to the inside of all those machinations but yeah in 15 years so some districts rural very rural districts you know some of them if you think about a bond issue is roughly 20 years they you can go to those districts and go to their schools and it looks like it did 18 years ago but when the bond is paid off they'll do a

  70. 0:30:20 — open the recording at 30 minutes 20 secondsJim (consultant (Gibraltar Design)) renovation and the building will look different again so they literally try to to make the buildings look they try and keep them for 20 years that's that's very unusual and they're those those districts that do that have some struggles because they're paying more for example by for utilities because they're trying to live with a 17 year old chiller and a 20 year old boiler that's burning energy wasting that journey does that answer your question yes i

  71. 0:30:52 — open the recording at 30 minutes 52 secondsSpeaker 9 (board member) i think you're saying 15 is on the higher end of the spectrum yeah i think no attention for 15 or

  72. 0:30:58 — open the recording at 30 minutes 58 secondsJim (consultant (Gibraltar Design)) 20 years and beyond that is that's very uncommon and not desirable yeah and dr himslett if you

  73. 0:31:08 — open the recording at 31 minutes 8 secondsMark (board member) have any thoughts on that when you get up here i'd love to hear them but i wonder if that's a is it a matter of economics or is it a matter of priorities i know we've been through three different superintendents and over that time period so maybe it's just it takes that much time to get a plan together and get things moving so great

  74. 0:31:28 — open the recording at 31 minutes 28 secondsSpeaker 64 thank you all thanks Jim thank you

  75. 0:31:35 — open the recording at 31 minutes 35 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) so that was the process that we did and we needed to know like how do we go out and price the buildings and that gave you a little bit of an insight as to how we went about doing it so we had a look at what were the needs in each of the buildings and then what would we do to address the enrollment aspect and then what did we do to try to expand opportunities especially opportunities that other communities just take for granted and that got into the feedback from the staff to let you know before I get into some of these other things to

  76. 0:32:05 — open the recording at 32 minutes 5 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) direct question we're trying to catch up at the moment and that dates way back I I mean, this is not new. This probably goes back when North and South were constructed about what was the ongoing plan to continue to maintain those things. And it's hard for me to address that because I wasn't here and I wasn't part of those plans. But what we're trying to do is as we try to deal with the emergencies of what needs to be done and prioritize the most critical aspects first, our goal is to get to the point where we have a roofing plan

  77. 0:32:42 — open the recording at 32 minutes 42 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) where we're doing a little bit of roofing every year we're doing a little bit of hvac work every year instead of having falling behind and always trying to play catch up but to be in a situation where we shift from replacement and catch up to failing equipment to get to the point where we are doing proactive maintenance and preventive stuff so that we can prolong the equipment and have it built into our budgets about how we're going to stagger that and that is something that i'm accustomed to in previous districts so we had like a 20-year roofing plan and

  78. 0:33:16 — open the recording at 33 minutes 16 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) every year we would just go through and do pieces of roof well by the time we got to the end of 20 years we had done every piece of roof across the entire district and now it was time to restart and go back through it again we did the same thing with our HVAC equipment we did the same thing with our plumbing windows lighting any of those kinds of things so that there was a specific plan so instead of needing to go with the most expensive route because it's an emergency and we just have to take whatever the cost is by thinking ahead

  79. 0:33:45 — open the recording at 33 minutes 45 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) we could sit there you know we got a really good deal on this maybe we should get a little bit more than we do and cut it off here so that we can adjust those things as go just like you do in your own personal budget you know you know your kids are gonna eat a certain cereal and so when it's on sale you buy a couple of extra boxes because you know you need it and you put something else off until it goes on sale and you same kind of thing on the building maintenance time which you can do when you're being proactive you can't do when

  80. 0:34:11 — open the recording at 34 minutes 11 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) you're just trying to play catch-up and deal with emergencies the other thing I wanted to let you know is to drive home the point of getting class or teacher feedback we're actually in the process of creating prototype classrooms at the high school to where our teachers all teachers throughout the high schools can go down and experiment with different types of furniture and different types have set up so that they can give us feedback as to when we do these renovations when we modernize where do they want the board where do they want the monitors what kind of seating do they want do

  81. 0:34:47 — open the recording at 34 minutes 47 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) they want what we've always had or do they want a different kind of seating and if they do want different kind of seating which of the options do they want so we're creating these prototype classrooms to where we can get direct feedback from students and teachers about what of these options work best for them and what are those electrical needs in terms of outlets what are those furniture needs what are those learning classroom needs that they need to do the things that they're wanting to get done that they know are effective and make sure that when we modernize

  82. 0:35:16 — open the recording at 35 minutes 16 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) we modernize not just keep doing what we've always been doing but to meet the demands that they have on how they want to change their teaching to meet the needs of kids today so that's also going on What I'm going to do then is we're going to go through how did these things compare and I'm going to jump to option three to explain how we went about doing this. Option three if you recall was we kept all 23 schools there were no changes and it was status quo so there's no savings from that. So what we did for the capital construction is what would it take for us to modernize all 23

  83. 0:35:51 — open the recording at 35 minutes 51 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) schools to these benchmarks that you heard Jim talk about and then how do do those each of those options compare to that because our goal is we want to modernize whatever spaces we have left and if it's all 23 schools then all 23 of those schools need to be brought up to that benchmark so that our kids have those equal learning opportunities in terms of the way facilities play out across the district as of right now we do have inequities we've got some that have I think we've got one library that's like three times bigger than

  84. 0:36:21 — open the recording at 36 minutes 21 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) other elementary libraries we've got some schools at the elementary level with two gyms some with one gym once I'm have a cafetorium where they have an auditorium cafeteria mix and so what is the benchmark that's the standard across so that doesn't matter about which building you happen to be assigned to but they all have certain traits or certain aspects the food service fund savings how much are we spending now in those 23 schools and what does it look like with those remaining options because we're not going to end up with

  85. 0:36:52 — open the recording at 36 minutes 52 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) 23 schools moving forward there was an option where we had 15 buildings another

  86. 0:36:56 — open the recording at 36 minutes 56 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) one with 16 buildings another one with 19 buildings what is the impact of that now the operational fund savings the same thing property casualty insurance and typically is closely tied to square footage because it comes down to

  87. 0:37:10 — open the recording at 37 minutes 10 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) replacement value and replacement value insurance companies place a certain number per square foot there's some other factors too in terms of sprinklers and things like that we actually think we will get more savings because as we

  88. 0:37:22 — open the recording at 37 minutes 22 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) update the buildings will be bringing it up to some of those codes that will actually help our insurance reduce but we did we needed something that was comparable across all the options so what we did is we came up with a price per square foot on option three and then applied that to the other option so that we could see how that compared we actually think there will be greater savings in that because we didn't go through any statistical machinations about if we replace the HVAC equipment how much utility savings is there going

  89. 0:37:54 — open the recording at 37 minutes 54 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) to be by reduction of usage because we used higher efficiency equipment we didn't go there we try to come up with something that was comparable across all the things back to option three that we can compare today instead of trying to predict the future we tried to stay away from predicting the future so I want to let you know we did the same thing with the education fund savings in those

  90. 0:38:14 — open the recording at 38 minutes 14 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) different options what are the staffing needs that we have obviously if we go from 23 schools to 15 schools we're gonna have fewer principals we're gonna have fewer registrars we're gonna have fewer head custodians fewer treasurers at the building level and so that had significant savings along with some other efficiencies that we got how do those play out those were the things

  91. 0:38:35 — open the recording at 38 minutes 35 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) that we did here in option three it was all compared back to itself therefore the savings generated are zero across the board the greatest savings are

  92. 0:38:46 — open the recording at 38 minutes 46 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) generated when we take a look at option one and two where we just went to one

  93. 0:38:50 — open the recording at 38 minutes 50 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) high school for the entire district we generate approximately 12 million dollars in savings year over year in the education fund just by staffing

  94. 0:39:01 — open the recording at 39 minutes 1 secondDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) efficiencies of option one the operational fund savings again we gain some operational savings because we're closing buildings if we're closing buildings we're not paying preventive maintenance costs we're not paying utility costs we're not paying property casualty insurance for those buildings so that generates some savings about 4.7 million in the food service fund we're running fewer kitchens as we run fewer kitchens we'll need fewer food service workers that doesn't mean that we won't have to have an additional employee at a building or two if we expanded their enrollment so that we

  95. 0:39:39 — open the recording at 39 minutes 39 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) can get them through but overall there's a savings because of the we're just reducing the number of kitchens that we're operating and there's almost a million dollars of savings there capital construction costs we're not renovating 23 buildings we're building in this option one just to recall we're building one brand new high school and we're renovating the other 14 buildings

  96. 0:40:04 — open the recording at 40 minutes 4 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) because of that there's about 110 million dollars less in construction costs compared to what it would be in option three if we were to keep all of our buildings

  97. 0:40:14 — open the recording at 40 minutes 14 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) so after this example does it make more sense about how i went about the different finding these how to come up let's try and figure out how to do apples to apples and so that's why we stayed out of future cost of what do we think utility

  98. 0:40:28 — open the recording at 40 minutes 28 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) usage will be like 10 years from now and what would the rates be 10 years from now we just stayed away from that and use current numbers and applied to us a price per square foot the main reason for the

  99. 0:40:38 — open the recording at 40 minutes 38 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) operational fund savings is there's fewer square feet in this option than there is in option three that's predominantly where your operational fund savings are going to come from an option to adopt him so can you go back

  100. 0:40:52 — open the recording at 40 minutes 52 secondsHeather (board member) inside real quick so are you saying the 110 million is what it would cost to

  101. 0:40:56 — open the recording at 40 minutes 56 secondsJim (consultant (Gibraltar Design)) renovate all 20 no that's how much we save in comparison to option three

  102. 0:41:01 — open the recording at 41 minutes 1 secondDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) option this option cost 110 million dollars less than doing option three oh

  103. 0:41:07 — open the recording at 41 minutes 7 secondsSpeaker 77 Oh, less. Okay, gotcha.

  104. 0:41:08 — open the recording at 41 minutes 8 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) It's $110 million less than if we were to do option three.

  105. 0:41:16 — open the recording at 41 minutes 16 secondsSpeaker 78 Is that in terms of today's dollars?

  106. 0:41:19 — open the recording at 41 minutes 19 secondsJim (consultant (Gibraltar Design)) Correct. These are used on 2026 dollars.

  107. 0:41:22 — open the recording at 41 minutes 22 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) This is not based on inflationary rates in the future. Again, we did not do predict the future. If anyone could predict if reflation is going to be 2%, 3%, 4% in the future, a lot of people would benefit from that. but we didn't try to guess so we've compared everything back to today's dollars we do not by the way have any intention that we would do all this work in one year it would be spread out over

  108. 0:41:46 — open the recording at 41 minutes 46 secondsMark (board member) several years so trying to boil it down so it's 110 million in savings by not doing the nine schools

  109. 0:41:54 — open the recording at 41 minutes 54 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) that are closed raised to repurpose actually it's the nine buildings that are closed we're We're estimating it would be about $204 million to do those. The cost of the high school offsets a little bit of that to do the new high school. So the overall savings compared to option three is $110 million. That's a net one.

  110. 0:42:16 — open the recording at 42 minutes 16 seconds Okay.

  111. 0:42:17 — open the recording at 42 minutes 17 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) Does that help? And so again, on option three there were zero savings because that's what our comparison point was.

  112. 0:42:29 — open the recording at 42 minutes 29 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) option two it was basically the same as option one except we were going to repurpose north because we were going to repurpose north we only closed eight buildings instead of nine buildings so that means the cost of the buildings closed we are estimating in that

  113. 0:42:47 — open the recording at 42 minutes 47 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) situation to be about 188 million dollars of building renovations that we would not be doing for those eight buildings that would be recommended for closing being raised or being repurposed we understand if we're going to repurpose them there is some cost to them but at

  114. 0:43:00 — open the recording at 43 minutesDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) this point the option is you don't have to repurpose them they could be closed and so we wanted to again do an apples to apples comparison why was there such a

  115. 0:43:07 — open the recording at 43 minutes 7 secondsSpeaker 91 (board member) big difference option one and two just between essentially closing north and

  116. 0:43:11 — open the recording at 43 minutes 11 secondsJim (consultant (Gibraltar Design)) south the the issue is in the operational savings is gym space when you take

  117. 0:43:18 — open the recording at 43 minutes 18 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) advantage of north becoming a middle school Otter Creek becomes an elementary school that extra gym space becomes something that is kind of a premium compared to normal elementary schools because it's a middle school level gym not an elementary level gym that added to the square footage which is why you see the difference on the on that we're going to get to a little bit of that in the end because one of the things we have to weigh is what are the opportunities for kids we have a shortage of gym space now it is at a

  118. 0:43:47 — open the recording at 43 minutes 47 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) premium and we have people all over the community wanting to access those these different options in terms of option one and option six in particular increase access to those things in terms of the basic school because you're converting a middle school into an elementary school which provides a different level of gym space that would be available to our community compared to what we would normally see in an elementary school and that's where that square footage comes in play but you'll also notice there's less education fund savings because we

  119. 0:44:22 — open the recording at 44 minutes 22 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) don't gain the efficiencies at the middle schools because we're not converting north into a middle school we're keeping Otter Creek as a middle school and that reduces the number of efficiencies you get on the staffing side so your education fund goes down at that particular point there's also means there's less savings on the food service part with the efficiencies so even though gain a little bit more with the operational side because there's just less square footage and it is predominantly the gyms that create that and then in the capital construction this option cost 162 million dollars

  120. 0:44:57 — open the recording at 44 minutes 57 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) less the reason it costs less is because you're utilizing some aspects at North High School that we don't have to recreate in a new site here in this one as well as the fact that you're doing a lower cost renovation of some of the other buildings

  121. 0:45:16 — open the recording at 45 minutes 16 secondsJim (consultant (Gibraltar Design)) because they're continuing to being used because we're not closing them all.

  122. 0:45:21 — open the recording at 45 minutes 21 secondsMark (board member) Going back to last week's presentation from Stiefel, is the desire to kind of maximize the education fund savings because that has the most pressures on it?

  123. 0:45:30 — open the recording at 45 minutes 30 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) If you go back to what Chad had talked about, Chad had talked about, obviously things are just more complex today, especially since 2008. In 2008 was the era of the property tax caps. That's when the state took over the general fund or the education fund's funding. We no longer have property tax involved in paying for the people unless the community chooses to do an operational or supplemental referendum. Without that, none of the property tax pays for the people part. From that standpoint, we do prioritize the education fund savings because we have the least control over that fund.

  124. 0:46:05 — open the recording at 46 minutes 5 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) If you take a look from 2010 to today and you compare it from an inflationary perspective, and this is not intended to be detrimental to the people making decisions. I understand at the Statehouse there's many competing things that they have to deal with, but from 2010 to 2025 we're not keeping up with inflation. If you take the 2010 per student number, per student funding number, and compare it to today and multiply it by both numbers, today's number and yesterday's number, by the number of students today, you'll find out we're about $10 to $12 million behind where we were back

  125. 0:46:40 — open the recording at 46 minutes 40 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) in 2010 when you account for inflation. Per year, right? That's the accumulated. $10 to $12 million is accumulated. But it's a $600,000 one year. It's a million one year. It's $500,000 another year. Accumulated, it's up in the $10 to $12 million in terms of keeping up with inflation. There's a lot of things that go into those things. I respect the work that they do, but that is a fact. is that it hasn't been keeping up with inflationary rates of inflation. We don't have control over that. We're at the mercy of the state, and we're at the mercy of 150 legislators,

  126. 0:47:16 — open the recording at 47 minutes 16 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) 50 in the Senate and 100 in the House, and there's got to be 51 in the House that agree on whatever the budget bill is, and there has to be at least 26 in the Senate that agree, which means that Vigo County has a limited say in that process, just like any other community has a limited set. We don't have control over that process. We don't get to control the revenue that we use to support teachers unless as a community we choose to do an operational referendum to supplement what the state gives us. So it has the least options for us. So that's why we prioritize that one.

  127. 0:47:52 — open the recording at 47 minutes 52 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) That's also the core of our business. That's the core of what we're about is educating kids. And we're a very people-intensive business. And so, again, that's the reason why savings that we can come up in the education fund for reinvestment back into things or to address the state's trends is why we would prioritize that. And the operations fund, we do have options such as a general obligation bond to fill in. We have different things that we can do on fuel. We are more in control of that fund than we are in control of the education fund.

  128. 0:48:27 — open the recording at 48 minutes 27 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) We also have changes at the state in terms of we had to add on a whole bunch of training by state law. Well, we have to fund it no matter what. Even if there's a reduction in funding, we still have to provide the training that's required. There's a number of those that have happened since 2014 that slowly add up over time. You heard Chad talk a little bit about the impact of the curricular fund. There used to be a completely separate textbook rental fund. It's now blended into this particular fund, and now they're competing dollars for that aspect of things.

  129. 0:49:02 — open the recording at 49 minutes 2 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) So those are some examples that we're not in control of those decisions, but we have to deal with them.

  130. 0:49:07 — open the recording at 49 minutes 7 secondsSpeaker 101 (board member) Dr. Hemsall, just to put it in perspective, and this might be a Donna question, but our monthly salary and benefits, can you ballpark? We've talked about that before at board meetings. Isn't it like $12 million salary and benefits all encompassing?

  131. 0:49:21 — open the recording at 49 minutes 21 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) So basically she averages out that the education fund expenditures on a monthly basis average out to about $10 million per month. This month was a little bit higher because it was a three payroll month, but on average it's around $10 million per month is what the education fund expenditures are.

  132. 0:49:38 — open the recording at 49 minutes 38 secondsSpeaker 109 Thank you.

  133. 0:49:39 — open the recording at 49 minutes 39 secondsHeather (board member) Question. On the 162, does that include the estimated cost of renovating while students are there?

  134. 0:49:46 — open the recording at 49 minutes 46 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) Yes. Yeah, there's an assumption that we would be renovating around children in some of those spaces so therefore the north if we need to continue to use north that put a premium on that aspect of things so that could have even been greater if it wasn't for that aspect option four as a reminder this is where we go to two high schools so the remaining three options are two high schools one west of the river one east of the river this one prioritizes north being repurposed you will notice that the education fund savings drops again that's because we have two high schools

  135. 0:50:29 — open the recording at 50 minutes 29 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) instead of one so we lose some of those efficiencies that occur like option two that's the middle school option is less efficient because we're not moving the middle school to north high school we're keeping Otter Creek so the middle school aspect is less efficient than it is in option one and six and then we're closing and repurposing fewer schools so you see that number drop dramatically in terms of that that different cost but there is some savings compared to a new high school and that it is true we already have infrastructure at that location so we don't have to redo that

  136. 0:51:07 — open the recording at 51 minutes 7 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) infrastructure that is true in terms of the cost or the savings of the seven closed schools those seven closed schools were estimated to be about 175 million for those seven closed schools or recommended closed schools this one has a little bit again less on the operations fund compared to option two but it does have a slightly higher savings than option one and it goes back to those gym spaces ideas that i was talking about in terms of the comparison that in option one we converted Sarah Scott Honey Creek and Otter Creek to elementary schools

  137. 0:51:47 — open the recording at 51 minutes 47 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) whereas in option two and four and five some of those middle schools remain and continue as middle schools and not as elementary schools that's the differences on the square footage option five is where we keep 12 elementary schools five middle schools and two high schools and that's because of the domino effect of keeping South High School which we talked about the the last time I spoke so this again two high schools one west of the river one east of the river but the one east of the river is at south because we don't convert south to a middle school Honey Creek and Sarah Scott need to remain

  138. 0:52:24 — open the recording at 52 minutes 24 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) middle schools because they remain middle schools we're not able to close as many elementary schools so this one actually the cost of the four schools being recommended for closure is about a hundred and twenty million dollars worth and those include soft costs by the way those are not hard cost constructions those are soft costs I forgot to mention that at the beginning all those different numbers are not hard cost construction costs they do include soft costs for those of you who are unfamiliar with soft costs or at home

  139. 0:52:51 — open the recording at 52 minutes 51 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) wondering that gets into architectural fees that gets into bonding fees that gets into legal fees that gets into zoning and repurp those kinds of things that we they have to work with option six we again gain those efficiencies at the middle school level we still have two high schools so we don't have as great of efficiencies at the high school level as compared to that option one but we do have efficiencies at that middle school level that we recoup we have less operational fund savings that is again because you keep the three middle schools being converted to elementary

  140. Highlight drawn from this moment: School board adopts "Option Six," closing eight Vigo County buildings to avoid an estimated $191 million in costs

    0:53:29 — open the recording at 53 minutes 29 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) schools which means that those gym spaces at those three elementary schools will be greater than what they typically are for an elementary school because you don't have to worry about as much seating at an elementary school as you do it at a middle school we increase some of the food service savings closer to what we were in the options one and two there's a little bit less capital aspect again again be like option one because of the fact that we're building a new high school there are some infrastructure aspects there north and south being

  141. Highlight drawn from this moment: School board adopts "Option Six," closing eight Vigo County buildings to avoid an estimated $191 million in costs

    0:54:04 — open the recording at 54 minutes 4 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) converted now we got both of them being converted to a middle school so that increases that a little bit that's where some of those say or that difference in the savings is so an option five is the least amount of savings across the board option four and six it depends on which fund you look at as to where it is but But the eight buildings that are being closed there add up to about $191 million of avoided construction or modernization cost because we're not doing those eight buildings or have to do those eight buildings. So basically what it came down to then is, yes, we adopted option six.

  142. 0:54:47 — open the recording at 54 minutes 47 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) Option six generates more of our education fund savings. the most in the two high school aspect we prioritize that because that gets into reinvesting back in our kids into programming providing opportunities for kids or creating savings that we can adapt to the thing challenges that we get from the state of Indiana more adeptly what makes it close with option four is the fact that there's a greater operational savings in option four because there's just less square footage. That's the difference. It's in the square footage and it's directly tied to gym space. But when we think

  143. 0:55:28 — open the recording at 55 minutes 28 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) about what our community has been asking for, they've actually been asking for more gym space. They've been asking for more of those things because we don't have enough gym space to accommodate all the needs that we have and there are lots of people who are put on waiting lists or unable to get their request fulfilled when we think about the changes through the years we did not have when the buildings were when many of the buildings were first constructed north southwest in particular Otter Creek is another one the west side is one

  144. 0:56:07 — open the recording at 56 minutes 7 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) we didn't have girls sports and so girls sports now play a role in competing for gym space the aspect of marching band has put a strain on outdoor facilities the idea of color guard and percussion ensembles have put a premium on further competing with the gym space aspect of things that's the reason why we keep getting all these different requests and that's on top of the outside request for travel ball so you have travel basketball teams you have travel volleyball teams you have all those different things and then we're in this

  145. 0:56:43 — open the recording at 56 minutes 43 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) time period we're basically from January February and March we have a lot of spring sports wanting to use gym spaces because it's not warm enough or the weather's not good enough to go outdoors yet and so like right now we're not the baseball team can't go outside and practice right now but that season is starting and they're starting with their conditioning they're starting with those different aspects of things and believe it or not spring sports is just around the corner and getting ready to start and they have a place to practice with

  146. 0:57:13 — open the recording at 57 minutes 13 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) also puts a premium on this so that's where we're at I do want to clarify all of these were basic high schools at the same level we did not put turf on any of the buildings we did not add seating to get to where we could host an ISMA event or a section or whatever we kept the standard the same across the board so we can compare across all of these Heather you had a question yes so looking at

  147. 0:57:41 — open the recording at 57 minutes 41 secondsSpeaker 111 this chart between option six and option one am i understanding correctly that the real difference

  148. 0:57:49 — open the recording at 57 minutes 49 secondsHeather (board member) here like option one would get you most of those things other than it would close west and the

  149. Highlight drawn from this moment: School board adopts "Option Six," closing eight Vigo County buildings to avoid an estimated $191 million in costs

    0:57:54 — open the recording at 57 minutes 54 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) community has spoken out the bottom line is the option one and two are one high school we just didn't think that was the best option we were trying to balance the realities of the spreadsheet numbers with also the reality of meeting the needs of kids geography plays a role in this there is a geographical thing that we need to consider we have it was also obvious in the feedback that we got that there is a desire to keep a smaller school option the other aspect of things is that if we're good if the trend of declining enrollment continues do we want to be

  150. 0:58:36 — open the recording at 58 minutes 36 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) stuck in a building that was designed for 3400 students as we shrink to 2200 or 2,100 or do we want a building that was designed for 2,700 when we have to come to the reality that maybe we need to go to one high school at that particular point in time. And so when we weighed all those different factors, we're not saying it right or wrong. We understand that different people have different opinions. We understand there are some people who think we should go to one high school for the entire county and go strictly by the spreadsheet. We try to balance those with the needs of kids as well.

  151. 0:59:06 — open the recording at 59 minutes 6 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) We understand that there's an argument for option four versus option six. Option four has inequities among the elementary schools and that some of the elementary schools are in former middle schools. There's one that middle school we don't do that to. We keep it as a middle school and that middle school is going to be less than what we can provide at north or south when we convert that one so option six has more equity where there's more equalization of the buildings it's not perfect but there is more of an equalization of the buildings

  152. 0:59:41 — open the recording at 59 minutes 41 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) and opportunities in option six than there is an option for we have greater savings in option six for education fund versus option four and as I told you we prioritize that because we have the least control of state funding that's the one we have the least control of and that's the one we wanted to create the most flexibility in because we don't know what's going to happen in three years and five years and ten years and we want to maintain some flexibility to be able to deal with it

  153. 1:00:15 — open the recording at 1 hour 15 secondsSpeaker 128 formulate this before I ask it go ahead

  154. 1:00:20 — open the recording at 1 hour 20 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) we know it's a lot here's the aspect of it though the top three are year-over- savings so when we multiply that out by 10 it adds up and that's where you see again option two six and four are close but 146 million versus 103 million that gap just keeps getting wider and that's on top of the fact that there's actually greater savings when we do the construction aspect things that capital one should have stayed the same I apologize person who helped me with that slide multiplied it by 10 should not multiply that last line by 10. We'll

  155. 1:00:59 — open the recording at 1 hour 59 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) correct that when we send it out to you in version but the top ones but the top ones are your year-over-year savings and those that's where it does add up so we do end up recouping some of the aspects of the construction costs because of

  156. 1:01:15 — open the recording at 1 hour 1 minute 15 secondsSpeaker 91 (board member) those year-over-year kinds of savings. So with option for renovating Terre Haute north as the primary high school and maintaining west. Where do you your the cost is kind of estimated to your you're renovating while the students are still there. You're not trying to relocate them to south.

  157. 1:01:34 — open the recording at 1 hour 1 minute 34 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) No, we actually one of the things that we've talked about, we struggle to have enough working bathrooms to handle 1300 students to be able to relocate all the schools students in one building north or south. neither one have the plumbing domestic plumbing that would be able to to accommodate that so we would have to work around which is puts a premium on that renovation and you you had

  158. 1:02:00 — open the recording at 1 hour 2 minutesSpeaker 91 (board member) indicated a couple meetings ago that it would you know you're talking uh you're extending it out if if they're working around students you're extending that renovation out over what potentially i think

  159. 1:02:10 — open the recording at 1 hour 2 minutes 10 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) it's an easy doubling of time i think we're looking at if the building if north and south were empty and we were renovating it for a middle school I think we've been talking about 20 to 26 months is that what I remember correctly maybe even less than that but if we're doing it for the high school and we're working around that we easily will double that if not extend it even more I think we've talked about four or five years in that regard which adds to the premium of what you pay for because

  160. 1:02:39 — open the recording at 1 hour 2 minutes 39 secondsSpeaker 80 contractors have to build that into their bids that they're going to be on

  161. 1:02:43 — open the recording at 1 hour 2 minutes 43 secondsSpeaker 141 on site for a longer period of time have you explored putting the students somewhere ivy tech isu any of those options to help the project the renovation get done quicker obviously

  162. 1:02:55 — open the recording at 1 hour 2 minutes 55 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) we're not in control of those buildings we don't own those buildings and they and those other places you just mentioned they have uses for their buildings as well yeah and so if there were any partnerships the partnerships that i'm aware of i don't know of any of them that have basically the equivalent of an empty high school. That's fair.

  163. 1:03:13 — open the recording at 1 hour 3 minutes 13 secondsSpeaker 147 What would the construction time be on a new high school?

  164. 1:03:20 — open the recording at 1 hour 3 minutes 20 secondsSpeaker 106 On a new high school from a new site, we estimated three years, two and a half, three years.

  165. 1:03:25 — open the recording at 1 hour 3 minutes 25 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) And part of that depends on weather and things like that, which could push us into the three. But if we got in a good, like the weather we're having right now would slow it down. But there's possibility of if we get one of those better years, it could even be in the two and a half range. correct and that's consistent with my experience and in other districts as well but you're not working around kids in that situation you just keep going full board well what we've what we're requesting is is and we'll talk about this more in our

  166. 1:04:10 — open the recording at 1 hour 4 minutes 10 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) future presentation where we'll go more into depth of that is to try to get the two high schools done at the same time because that benefits every single kid and if we we believe that we have enough capacity to do one if the county is able to help us do one and that allows every kid in the district to be able to have the high school the flagship of the district be able to have that aspect of things done when we finish that then we come up with a plan for how we're going to continue with the rest of the renovations we have no intent of putting kids in

  167. 1:04:40 — open the recording at 1 hour 4 minutes 40 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) north and south until after it's renovated if possible if we end up implementing option six our goal is to not have kids in the building at north and south when we do the renovation so that we do not have to worry about trying to work around and have kids when we tear up the main floor and start working on relocating the sewer pipe to a more advantageous part of having them walk around that

  168. 1:05:08 — open the recording at 1 hour 5 minutes 8 secondsHeather (board member) okay so if i'm understanding group one if it went the way the board school board has endorsed would take two and a half three years then you have another two years one and a half years to renovate

  169. 1:05:19 — open the recording at 1 hour 5 minutes 19 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) when we when we after we vacate north and south Yes, we would have another renovation period, which would be approximately another 18 months to two years, 20 to 26 months.

  170. 1:05:31 — open the recording at 1 hour 5 minutes 31 secondsHeather (board member) So then that would finalize, finish group two, the group two projects?

  171. 1:05:35 — open the recording at 1 hour 5 minutes 35 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) No. We'll talk more about that at our next meeting. But we're actually talking about group two being the part that the school district could do, which would be the West Vigo High School aspect of things. We'll explain that more in our next time that we present as to how we go about doing that, which gets us to the ask that we have of the county and be a little bit more explicit on that what we want to compare to you today as we talked about six different options how do they compare and why is it that we landed on option six we landed on option six because

  172. 1:06:06 — open the recording at 1 hour 6 minutes 6 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) it adds savings in the education fund and the operations fund it frees up money in food service and i know that that's a little number there or it feels like a little number compared to the other other numbers on that page. We get a request every year for why don't we provide free lunch to all of our kids across the district like they do at Indianapolis Public Schools or a Muncie or different places like that. The answer is because we don't have as high a free and reduced lunch number. So therefore, we could do it, but we would not get reimbursement to cover the full cost of it.

  173. 1:06:42 — open the recording at 1 hour 6 minutes 42 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) We would have to supplement and pay out of our own funds from that. As of right now, the last time we checked on this, which was last fall, it's about a million dollars that we would need to commit to make that happen. We get 822,000 of it just in the savings of reducing the kitchens, which puts us in the ballpark of doing that. And so that's the reason why that number is significant of reducing the kitchens. Food service does not impact teaching and learning or the operation side. It's a completely separate fund.

  174. 1:07:17 — open the recording at 1 hour 7 minutes 17 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) It is self-sufficient in that it lives within what we get from the federal government, the National School Lunch Program, as well as paid lunches and what people pay into it. It's self-sufficient. It does not come from the other funds. If we were to do what people have asked us to do, which is to commit to that free lunch across the board, we would have to take it from the education fund to fund it. this actually generates enough savings inside the food service fund that they could almost do it themselves. And then we don't know what our free introduced lunch rate will be at that

  175. 1:07:53 — open the recording at 1 hour 7 minutes 53 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) particular time but we're at least in the ballpark of having the conversation with the board whereas now we can't take a million dollars from the education fund and redirect it to the food service fund we're already trying to make ends meet in terms of serving opportunities for kids and maximizing compensation for employees that we can recruit talent and retain it.

  176. 1:08:20 — open the recording at 1 hour 8 minutes 20 secondsSpeaker 9 (board member) What was the elimination process here? Obviously, option three is off the table.

  177. 1:08:26 — open the recording at 1 hour 8 minutes 26 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) Option three was never considered because there weren't any savings, and we knew that that was not sustainable. not generating savings not taking a look at what we're doing was not sustainable and I think you got that from Chad Blacklock that we can't continue to do things the way we've always done them yeah option one and two were taken off the table pretty quickly because the feedback across

  178. 1:08:47 — open the recording at 1 hour 8 minutes 47 secondsJim (consultant (Gibraltar Design)) the the county is that the idea of the realities of geography and the reality of the desire of

  179. 1:08:54 — open the recording at 1 hour 8 minutes 54 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) maintaining that smaller school option is pretty deeply rooted with a lot of our residents Then you think down the line, what if 15 years down the line we continue this trend? We get to year 20. Let's say we're talking about 2045, 2050 and the trend continues. And we do need to go down to one high school just because out of survival at that point. Do you want to be in a building that was designed for 3400 with 2200 kids or do you want to be in a building that was designed for 26 or 2700 with 2200 kids? that comes into that operational aspect of things.

  180. 1:09:32 — open the recording at 1 hour 9 minutes 32 secondsMark (board member) Is the smaller high school option, I mean, is that, is it legitimate? Like, is that people really want that or is it, are they just saying that? Well, we have, because it's a luxury when you look at the, we have a lot of people who

  181. 1:09:47 — open the recording at 1 hour 9 minutes 47 secondsSpeaker 106 choose to go to Sullivan and Farmersburg and to Northview already, South Vermillion,

  182. 1:09:52 — open the recording at 1 hour 9 minutes 52 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) Riverton Park. So it's, it's real. It is a real thing that we deal with.

  183. 1:09:57 — open the recording at 1 hour 9 minutes 57 secondsSpeaker 162 And you estimate a number.

  184. 1:09:58 — open the recording at 1 hour 9 minutes 58 secondsSpeaker 91 (board member) You estimate a number of students that are, I know you said one time there was like 800 that go, live in Vigo County, go elsewhere, but do we know how many are just going because of a smaller school option?

  185. 1:10:11 — open the recording at 1 hour 10 minutes 11 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) Well, I can't, because I don't know what the reasoning is for homeschooling and there's no way of accessing that. And about half of that 800 are people who go to St. Patrick's. And what they're choosing in high school is a little bit harder for us to track because they were never one of our students. at that point.

  186. 1:10:30 — open the recording at 1 hour 10 minutes 30 secondsSpeaker 167 But it does make a difference.

  187. 1:10:31 — open the recording at 1 hour 10 minutes 31 secondsSpeaker 91 (board member) I think Mark's point, I mean, the extra $52 million of savings between option one and option six, and is that more anecdotally, we just like the feel of having, or you mentioned logistically, there were legitimate logistical reasons why we needed to keep one on the west side

  188. 1:10:50 — open the recording at 1 hour 10 minutes 50 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) of the river. Having option one is definitely something to consider. We did not go there because we were the feedback we're getting from people is that they really just don't want that would be a mega school that would put us in that range the 26-2700 is basically about the size of what North and South were at their peak when we were talking about the 80s and 90s and they added on the additional classroom space there for the 90s the option one is bigger

  189. 1:11:18 — open the recording at 1 hour 11 minutes 18 secondsMark (board member) well if you were to believe the social media commentary which I'm not sure I would recommend And they're saying, you know, the mega school is even in option six, and they would just accelerate the exodus out of the county, not necessarily to West Vigo. But I don't know how much of that I can trust.

  190. 1:11:38 — open the recording at 1 hour 11 minutes 38 secondsSpeaker 171 I would also just add that some of the administration and the board also lived the failed referendum,

  191. 1:11:43 — open the recording at 1 hour 11 minutes 43 secondsSpeaker 101 (board member) which talked heavily the one high school mega school as an option. And so I think that they remember the community's vote on that,

  192. 1:11:52 — open the recording at 1 hour 11 minutes 52 secondsSpeaker 173 And so that heavily weighed on the smaller school options staying in that discussion.

  193. 1:11:58 — open the recording at 1 hour 11 minutes 58 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) I think the actual thing was to maintain the three high schools. But there was a lot of discussion about the one high school at that time. And it was, again, I wasn't here at that time. But the feedback was that it was pretty adamant that they did not want a one high school option.

  194. 1:12:15 — open the recording at 1 hour 12 minutes 15 secondsSpeaker 181 (board member) Yes, sir? You talked about if the trend continues 10 or 15 years and you might have to go to one school. Shouldn't you then consider a more central location or a location that mitigates the geographic problems west of the river?

  195. 1:12:37 — open the recording at 1 hour 12 minutes 37 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) I want to let you know we've not have a location. So any rumors to the contrary are false. We have not been out seeking that aspect of things. Obviously, if the board shifted to option one, that would probably change where we would take a look at. And what you just said as a consideration is on the back of my mind. I think it's on the back of our board members' mind. There is no location that has been identified. Any rumors to the contrary would be false. That is not a discussion that's happened amongst the board or I.

  196. 1:13:20 — open the recording at 1 hour 13 minutes 20 secondsSpeaker 184 Thank you.

  197. 1:13:23 — open the recording at 1 hour 13 minutes 23 secondsDr. Hensel (staff (Vigo County School Corp. superintendent)) So that concludes what we're talking about. What we're going to be doing in the future is to kind of walk you through the group one, the group two, those kind of things, get into the specific cost and the ask that we have for the county to consider, and that's what we will be doing at the next time, trying to be very respectful of your time. We hit it.

  198. 1:13:42 — open the recording at 1 hour 13 minutes 42 secondsJim (consultant (Gibraltar Design)) We almost nailed that time. Thank you so much for the opportunity to answer questions and to present the information.

  199. 1:13:49 — open the recording at 1 hour 13 minutes 49 secondsSpeaker 186 Thank you, Dr. Hemsall, Chair. Thank you.

  200. 1:13:57 — open the recording at 1 hour 13 minutes 57 secondsSpeaker 187 Any discussion before we move to public comment?

  201. 1:14:01 — open the recording at 1 hour 14 minutes 1 secondSpeaker 189 (chair) Any public comments, public questions? Mr. Marques, come on up. Got to use the mic. Got to play by the rules.

  202. 1:14:12 — open the recording at 1 hour 14 minutes 12 secondsSpeaker 190 Thank you.

  203. 1:14:14 — open the recording at 1 hour 14 minutes 14 secondsMarques (resident) One is acknowledging the amount of data that was analyzed presented is Kruger and Mark.

  204. 1:14:24 — open the recording at 1 hour 14 minutes 24 secondsSpeaker 200 Yeah. Like that? Oh, yeah. Thanks. I used to be taller.

  205. 1:14:32 — open the recording at 1 hour 14 minutes 32 secondsMarques (resident) I think it's incredible the amount of data that was, you know, and it's data drives decisions, and we all know that. But I think what I look at in this is I'm trying to figure out, Is there a number or a percentage that the maintenance is reflective in the budget?

  206. 1:14:54 — open the recording at 1 hour 14 minutes 54 secondsSpeaker 206 That was in that operations fund. But in the operation fund is all maintenance there?

  207. 1:15:00 — open the recording at 1 hour 15 minutesSpeaker 207 No, it's got transportation or utilities or property value.

  208. 1:15:03 — open the recording at 1 hour 15 minutes 3 secondsMarques (resident) Yeah, but when we talk about updated boiler systems or lighting, does that become a percentage? Like, is it 20% of that number? I'm trying to understand because moving forward, does that number stay relative or constant?

  209. 1:15:23 — open the recording at 1 hour 15 minutes 23 secondsSpeaker 213 (staff (district finance)) We don't run it from a percentage basis. We run it from a number basis. So we start with what we get approved.

  210. 1:15:31 — open the recording at 1 hour 15 minutes 31 secondsSpeaker 216 (staff (district finance)) Then we take off the property tax cap losses that we don't get access to that Chad Blacklock talked about. Then we run our transportation and we pay our utilities, our property capital. And then we see how much we'll have to do preventive maintenance. What we're hoping to do then is to increase that number going forward by not having as many buildings to take care of.

  211. 1:15:51 — open the recording at 1 hour 15 minutes 51 secondsSpeaker 219 Yeah, and I remember the number, I felt like 23 million.

  212. 1:15:55 — open the recording at 1 hour 15 minutes 55 secondsSpeaker 216 (staff (district finance)) We estimate about 23 million to preventively maintain today, and we only have nine available.

  213. 1:16:00 — open the recording at 1 hour 16 minutesSpeaker 200 Okay. Well, I was just trying to grasp if, considering all the other costs, if within that, what percentage, just to try to get an idea of what that was.

  214. 1:16:16 — open the recording at 1 hour 16 minutes 16 secondsSpeaker 225 Do it off the top of my head. Would it be 20 percent? You want it before or after or probably times in that.

  215. 1:16:24 — open the recording at 1 hour 16 minutes 24 secondsSpeaker 208 (staff (district finance)) That's... We can figure it out. No, it wasn't. Those are some things I would do.

  216. 1:16:28 — open the recording at 1 hour 16 minutes 28 secondsMarques (resident) Yeah, so that's going to be expected to increase with the age of the building, then, is where I was going.

  217. 1:16:36 — open the recording at 1 hour 16 minutes 36 secondsSpeaker 216 (staff (district finance)) Well, what we're hoping to do is to put in a regular plan for regular maintenance that we don't get in the situation where we're doing now, which is trying to do preventive maintenance alongside catching up. But the idea of doing the modernization projects in Stana can slowly be about preventively maintaining so that we're actually doing lower-cost things to probably make the last one.

  218. 1:16:58 — open the recording at 1 hour 16 minutes 58 secondsSpeaker 232 sure okay that was that was my question cool thank you thank you anyone else

  219. 1:17:09 — open the recording at 1 hour 17 minutes 9 secondsSpeaker 35 mr burger

  220. 1:17:13 — open the recording at 1 hour 17 minutes 13 secondsRick Burger (resident) rick burger a taxpayer and school board member i'll stand in front of you today for those two okay two words thank you wow for the time you spend here on this assignment it's real important and I appreciate the five of you and the community are working on this together thank you for your open mind but for the last three years the school board dr. Hempsell and team we've worked on a good plan we feel like we appreciate you diving into it looking at it so with your open mind I'm excited where the future is we do have a future here for education and making a difference and

  221. 1:17:56 — open the recording at 1 hour 17 minutes 56 secondsRick Burger (resident) the last thing you know I don't think I'd ever say this you know I served on the county council but I'm proud to be on this school board Wow it's not an easy job for $2,000 a year but you know what I'm proud of it because I think we can we will make a difference when we're all done collectively working together in community and that's what it's going to take is this community collectively working together so thank you yeah thank you

  222. 1:18:33 — open the recording at 1 hour 18 minutes 33 secondsSpeaker 241 all right anyone else

  223. 1:18:36 — open the recording at 1 hour 18 minutes 36 secondsMark (board member) all right uh so the plan here the next few meetings uh thursday february 5th uh the board will be conducting conducting an executive session to finalize our negotiations on the consultant agreements and then plan for our february 10th presentation to the county council which will be exciting next monday school visits dr himsell we'd like to coordinate visiting a couple schools before we get into further detail on the construction costs which hopefully you would then have teed up for next Thursday does that sound good for you Gibraltar yes

  224. 1:19:23 — open the recording at 1 hour 19 minutes 23 secondsMark (board member) yeah since that's yeah it seems more important to the the board's work all right thank you everybody

  225. 1:19:35 — open the recording at 1 hour 19 minutes 35 secondsSpeaker 90 yeah I'll make a motion to adjourn

Marked moments above are where the archive's reviewed highlights were drawn from. Everything else on this page is unreviewed.