Transcript

Vigo County Oversight BoardMar 26, 2026

Meeting

Vigo County Oversight Board · Mar 26, 2026

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1. 0:00:00 — open the recording at 0 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): transparency and reporting, compliance with applicable rules or laws, and accountability. We could easily spend an entire evening discussing the many grants and special purpose funds the district receives. However, tonight we're going to focus on three funds that support the core operational programs of the school corporation. Those would be the education fund, the operations fund, and the operating referendum fund. These three funds along with debt service are commonly referred to as our tax supported funds. Let's begin with the

2. 0:00:31 — open the recording at 31 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): Education Fund. The Education Fund is the largest of the district's funds and supports student instruction and learning. In 2025, Education Fund revenue totaled just over $117.8 million, as shown on this slide. For comparison, in 2024 our revenue in the education fund was $124 million and in 2023 it was a hundred and sixteen point two million let's first look at why revenue was lower in 25 than in 24 at the end of calendar year 24 the district transferred three point four million dollars from the textbook rental fund to the education

3. 0:01:13 — open the recording at 1 minute 13 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): fund to permanently close the TBR fund prior to 2025 schools in Indiana had standalone textbook rental funds that were established to record all transactions related to curricular material purchases and the rentals of those purchases. Starting in the 23-24 school year, the state began allocating a per pupil amount to each school district to offset the cost of the curricular materials, eliminating the rental component of TBR, but kept the TBR fund in place to record all transactions related to the purchase of those curricular materials. This per student allocation was sent to each

4. 0:01:52 — open the recording at 1 minute 52 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): school district as a lump sum payment in December of each year. Then in 2025, the state eliminated the standalone fund along with the annual allocation and embedded the funding into the basic grant. We're going to talk a little bit about that later. Also beginning in 2025, residential placement reimbursements and preschool funding were moved out of the education fund and are now tracked through separate grant funds based on guidance and that was based on guidance from the Indiana Department of Education. If we exclude those three items from

5. 0:02:24 — open the recording at 2 minutes 24 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): 2024 revenue 2025 revenue would be about $368,000 less than 2024 revenue. Obviously you can see that the primary source of education fund revenues tuition support from the state which is totally dependent on student enrollment data. Tuition support in 2025 was 115.6 million dollars, up from just over 115 million in 2024, and represents approximately 98% of all education fund revenue. Tuition support is made up of two components. The basic grant, which is driven by student enrollment counts done in October and February each school

6. 0:03:04 — open the recording at 3 minutes 4 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): year, and categorical grants, which support programs like special education career and technical education, English language learners, and academic performance and each of those has a separate count date embedded in the school calendar. The basic grant is by far the largest component of tuition support totaling about ninety nine and a half million dollars for calendar year 2025. The basic grant is calculated by multiplying our enrollment by a per student foundation amount that is established by the state legislature. For For the 25-26 school year, that amount is $7,973 per student.

7. 0:03:43 — open the recording at 3 minutes 43 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): For comparison, it was $77.33 for the 24-25 school year and $7,630 in 23-24. One thing to keep in mind is that this foundation amount now includes textbook rental funding. Remember we talked about the closure of that fund. The state moved that program now into the basic grant formula. So if we were to look at our 2024 textbook rental payment from the state of about $2 million, and we were to assume that that funding is pretty consistent for our TBR allocation, and I compare the 25 tuition support of $115.6 million to my 2024 support, I can reasonably

8. 0:04:24 — open the recording at 4 minutes 24 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): assume our funding for tuition support is approximately $1.5 million less in 25 than it was in 2024 simply by taking the 115.6 million minus the 2 million which

9. 0:04:37 — open the recording at 4 minutes 37 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): gives you 113.6 million and comparing that to the 115 million and it's important to note that that money that amount that TBR funding piece is not

10. 0:04:47 — open the recording at 4 minutes 47 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): shown separately in the funding formula our enrollment declined also from 13 thousand one hundred and sixty students in the fall of 23 to twelve thousand six hundred nine students in the fall of 2025 a loss of 551 students you can see how per pupil funding amounts affect education fund revenue if the per pupil funding does not increase annually or doesn't increase enough our funding will go down as our enrollment trends downward and as we think about losing students in Vega County, if we lose a hundred students that loss isn't

11. 0:05:25 — open the recording at 5 minutes 25 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): attributable to only one building. That loss could be spread across 23 buildings which makes it extremely difficult to implement any cost-saving measures to offset that revenue loss. That's why districts across the state including ours continue working with legislators and professional organizations to emphasize how important these funding components are to schools. Another revenue source worth noting is interest income. In 2025 interest earnings were just under 1.8 million dollars for the education fund alone compared to 2.4 million dollars in 2024. And it's important to note, I think we

12. 0:06:04 — open the recording at 6 minutes 4 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): talked about that when we looked at the county's financial report, we do specific fund investments and also total monies on deposit. So the 1.8 million was receded into education was for total monies on deposit investments and and investments that were specifically made out of the education fund. Other funds also are credited for interest that's earned, if it's an investment straight from that fund. This decrease reflects both lower interest rates and the timing of one CD that matured in January of 26.

13. 0:06:37 — open the recording at 6 minutes 37 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): Had it matured in 25, that would have been another $426,000 in interest for 2025.

14. 0:06:43 — open the recording at 6 minutes 43 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): Now let's look more at education fund expenditures, specifically at salaries and benefits first. Since this fund supports our core instructional programs, you will assume that most expenses would be attributable to people, and that would be correct. Teacher salaries totaled $50.3 million out of the education fund. Total salaries and wages were about $66.5 million. Fringe benefits were just over $24 million. That brings total personnel costs to about $90.6 million, or about 89% of total education fund expenditures in 2025.

15. 0:07:24 — open the recording at 7 minutes 24 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): Please take just a few seconds to look down at the list of positions that you'd find paid out of our education fund. Notice that they're teachers, educational assistants, nurses.

16. 0:07:34 — open the recording at 7 minutes 34 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): These employees directly support instruction and student services throughout the district.

17. 0:07:41 — open the recording at 7 minutes 41 secondsSpeaker 7: And those will look different when we look at our other funds.

18. 0:07:49 — open the recording at 7 minutes 49 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): Other expenses in the education fund include contracted services, primarily substitute teachers. We contract through Kelly Services to provide those substitute teacher positions. totaled about 2.9 million dollars in calendar year 25. Covered Bridge special education cooperative which provides special education services like specialized services like school psychologists therapists and diagnosticians our cost for those services was about 1.5 million dollars it's important to also note that covered bridge assessments changed after 2023

19. 0:08:24 — open the recording at 8 minutes 24 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): moving salary accounts for our special education preschool funding and those types of services to the appropriate salary account so those costs are

20. 0:08:32 — open the recording at 8 minutes 32 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): embedded in those salary lines as the IDOE allowed that and we no longer show those costs as assessment costs and then residential placement costs which totaled about 574,000 that's the district share of those residential placements and not reflective of the state's share you'll also notice a

21. 0:08:54 — open the recording at 8 minutes 54 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): significant increase in supplies equipment and licenses that increases largely due to the shift in curricular material purchases that now are paid out of the education fund due to the elimination of that textbook rental fund. Those costs in 2025 for our reading adoption totaled $2.6 million. Overall education fund expenditures totaled $101.5 million in 2025 compared to $96 million in 2024. Another important item to note is below that line that total line you'll see the transfer from the education fund to the operations fund and I believe that Chad from Stiefel talked a little bit about

22. 0:09:33 — open the recording at 9 minutes 33 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): that that state law allows us to transfer from the education fund to the operations fund because when Indiana law restructured school funding in 2019 operational costs like transportation services utilities and maintenance were all moved out of the general fund or another specific funding silo like transportation capital projects and they were grouped under the operations umbrella but they didn't also transfer enough revenue to support those so to address that gap districts can transfer up to 15% of our education fund revenue

23. 0:10:09 — open the recording at 10 minutes 9 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): to the operations fund each year in 2025 you could see our transfer of just under 16 million dollars represented about 13.6% of education fund revenue you can

24. 0:10:21 — open the recording at 10 minutes 21 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): that same transfer in 24 and 15 and a quarter million in 2023.

25. 0:10:30 — open the recording at 10 minutes 30 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): This slide illustrates very clearly that we are an organization of people. In 2025, about 89 percent of education fund expenditures were personnel costs. If we also include substitute teachers and specialized staff costs provided through Covered Bridge, that percentage would be about 93 percent. So when we talk about changes to spending in the education fund it's important to remember that any of those decisions almost always impact people and if we make modifications to our staff we ultimately affect classroom instruction. If we break down salaries and wages

26. 0:11:08 — open the recording at 11 minutes 8 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): alone you could see that about 76 percent of education fund salaries and wages are paid to teachers, 8% to building level administrators, 7% to health and educational assistance, etc. This slide takes those same costs and breaks them down on a program basis. Indiana schools are required to report all expenditures by function and you can see the approved functions on the left side of the slide. Regular education programs, special education programs, etc. About 75% of Education Fund dollars support direct classroom instruction. That includes the teacher, fringe benefits for those teachers,

27. 0:11:50 — open the recording at 11 minutes 50 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): educational assistance, the classroom supplies, everything attributable to that function. About 23% supports classroom services such as counseling, instructional media, and professional development and about two percent supports athletics one item worth noting here is the decrease in the 21,000 line support services during 2025 at the beginning of the 24-25 school year we knew that one our tuition support was declining two elementary schools have been qualified for title one services and three we had available carryover from funds from title one due to

28. 0:12:29 — open the recording at 12 minutes 29 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): increased funding during COVID. So we chose to move our elementary counseling program over to the Title I grant fund. This move reflects merely a change in funding source, not a reduction in services to our students. Since carryover funds are nearly depleted now, we are already planning the movement of our counseling program back to the education fund for the 26-27 school year.

29. 0:12:55 — open the recording at 12 minutes 55 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): This move will impact 2026 totals that you will see next year and ultimately impact the education fund cash balance as we transition that cost. Please stop me too if you see something that you want to focus in on.

30. 0:13:12 — open the recording at 13 minutes 12 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): The final education fund slide compares revenue and expenditures. In both 23 and 24, revenue exceeded expenses, which allowed us to build our education fund cash balance to provide reserves for future use. Much of that growth was tied directly to ESSER funding during and after COVID. Keep in mind that ESSER federal funds supported things in Vigo County schools, like the district's one-to-one Chromebook program, digital learning tools software and licenses the Vigo virtual success Academy our virtual school all the device replacements and additional mental

31. 0:13:50 — open the recording at 13 minutes 50 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): health and mental health services and support now that ESSER funding has ended those costs if maintained had to shift back to the education opera and operations fund for funding support ultimately you can see here that 2025

32. 0:14:05 — open the recording at 14 minutes 5 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): revenue and expenses were nearly the same which illustrates that movement of

33. 0:14:10 — open the recording at 14 minutes 10 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): expenses. And you'll see those cash balances later. Next let's look at the operations fund. The operations fund supports district overhead costs in areas such as transportation, facilities, utilities, and maintenance. In 2025, operations fund revenue totaled forty point four million dollars, which was essentially the same as in 2024. The largest source of revenue is property and related taxes which generated just over 23 million dollars in 2025. When combined with the transfer from the Education Fund those two sources of

34. 0:14:50 — open the recording at 14 minutes 50 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): revenue make up about 96% of Operations Fund revenue. The Operations Fund is also where the district absorbs most of the property tax cap losses which totaled about 8.5 million dollars in 2025. You can see that this funds revenue is very

35. 0:15:08 — open the recording at 15 minutes 8 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): consistent from year to year. 39, 40, 40.

36. 0:15:11 — open the recording at 15 minutes 11 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): Here you can see the pie chart with the individual slices representing the types of receipts in the operations fund. Again 48% property tax alone and 40%

37. 0:15:26 — open the recording at 15 minutes 26 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): from the transfer from the education fund. You can see the other miscellaneous taxes.

38. 0:15:33 — open the recording at 15 minutes 33 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): If we move to the expense comparison, you can see that personnel costs in the operations fund totaled about $17.8 million in 2025, or roughly 49% of total operations fund spending. You can also see the employee classifications listed on this slide, custodial maintenance

39. 0:15:53 — open the recording at 15 minutes 53 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): employees, bus drivers, administrators over administrative offices. In the Education Fund you see more of the building leadership teams. This is more the overall central office administration. A different group of employees than those allocated to the Education Fund.

40. 0:16:17 — open the recording at 16 minutes 17 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): Other expenses paid from the Operations Fund include property and casualty insurance, utilities, we provide for bus purchases, building maintenance, energy savings, project repayments. notice the increase in insurance cost in 2025 that's a little deceiving that occurred because the district moved our insurance renewal date from December of 24 to February of 2025 which pushed expenses out of 24 and they were booked

41. 0:16:44 — open the recording at 16 minutes 44 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): in 25 those will be more consistent now moving forward as we continue with that February renewal date you can see our utility costs up a little in 2025 up from five and a half to six point three million you'll also see that about 1.4 million is shown here in bus purchases you'll note that we spend annually in excess of two and a half million on bus replacement but only 1.4 million dollars worth of buses came in and were paid for in calendar year 25 we've highlighted the

42. 0:17:18 — open the recording at 17 minutes 18 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): energy savings contract repayments here specifically to point out that one

43. 0:17:22 — open the recording at 17 minutes 22 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): contract was paid off in 25, one will be paid off in 26, and the final contract will be paid off in 2029 which will free up then over a million dollars to be

44. 0:17:32 — open the recording at 17 minutes 32 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): used for other operational costs. Total expenses in the operations fund were just under 36.3 million dollars in 2025 and you can see that those expenditures are relatively consistent from year to year. The operations fund expenditure pie chart looks quite a bit different than the education fund because only about half of the expenses out of this fund are for wages and fringe benefits as opposed to the education funds 90% the last one will review is the operating referendum fund this fund was approved by voters in 2019 and provides additional

45. Highlight · drawn from this moment: Vigo County Schools cuts its 2026 combined property tax rate to 90.53 cents, down from 97.61 cents

    0:18:13 — open the recording at 18 minutes 13 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): support for both the district's educational programs and operation operational needs in 2025 revenue and the operating referendum fund totaled about eight point five four million dollars which was about two hundred thousand dollars higher than in 2024 due primarily to increases in property tax collections as the county assessed value increased remember that in 2025 the tax rate associated with this fund was 16.22 cents the voter approved tax rate also remember that this fund was approved to exist through 2027.

46. 0:18:53 — open the recording at 18 minutes 53 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): In 2025, the referendum supported nine point seven point nine five million dollars in expenditures, including six point nine million in personnel costs and about one million dollars for transportation, primarily fuel for our bus fleet. Positions supported through this fund include teachers, counselors, school protection officers, nurses, and behavioral interventionists, as shown on this slide. This slide shows how the operating referendum fund supports both the education and operations fund. So in 2025, about 5.25 million dollars from the operating referendum fund expenditures

47. 0:19:34 — open the recording at 19 minutes 34 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): supported education fund type expenditures as noted in yellow by subsidizing teacher counselor behavior interventionist and nursing salaries and about 2.7 million dollars supported

48. 0:19:47 — open the recording at 19 minutes 47 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): operations fund type expenses as noted in orange specifically our entire spo program and transportation fuel costs if the operating referendum fund was not in place those costs shift back to the education and operations fund and significantly impact their budgets as well as cash balances.

49. 0:20:12 — open the recording at 20 minutes 12 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): When we combine the three funds we reviewed tonight, the education operations and operating referendum funds, we are focusing on about 166.8 million dollars of the district's overall 243.7 million dollars in total receipts in just these three funds. With that said, about 69% of the total combined revenue was state tuition support at 115.6 million. About 19% was property and related taxes. Nearly 10% was the education to operations fund transfer of just under 16 million dollars. Interest on investments represented about 1% of total receipts. And finally, miscellaneous revenue of about 1%.

50. 0:20:59 — open the recording at 20 minutes 59 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): And then, of course, we've provided a pie chart that shows that breakdown of revenue.

51. 0:21:09 — open the recording at 21 minutes 9 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): On the expense side, staff costs represented about 79% of overall spending across these three funds at $115.2 million. And other expenses totaled about $30.5 million as shown on this slide. purposes of this slide I've excluded the interfund transfer between education and

52. 0:21:33 — open the recording at 21 minutes 33 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): operations because it's not expended until it hits the operations fund and then those are included in the total.

53. 0:21:43 — open the recording at 21 minutes 43 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): This slide compares approved budgets to actual expenditures. As a matter of good accounting practice and to be conservative we routinely underestimate revenue and overestimate expenditures and you can see that when you look at our budget versus actual slide. We generally spend about 95% of our education fund budget as those expenditures are more routine in nature, predominantly salaries and fringe benefits in the operations fund. Those expenditures can fluctuate as we react to district needs and other funding such as bond availability, especially in operations.

54. 0:22:16 — open the recording at 22 minutes 16 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): You can see that in 2025, we expended only about 82% of our budget, but we did have some large open purchase commitments

55. 0:22:24 — open the recording at 22 minutes 24 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): that we'll show on a later slide out of operations fund. Overall, on average, we roughly spend about 90% of our approved budget across those three funds.

56. Highlight · drawn from this moment: Vigo County Schools cuts its 2026 combined property tax rate to 90.53 cents, down from 97.61 cents

    0:22:38 — open the recording at 22 minutes 38 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): There's a lot of information on this slide. So this slide provides a broader look at property tax information and some geo-bond information. The top portion of this slide shows our property tax levy, our tax collections each year, our tax cap loss as it's apportioned across the funds and our combined tax rates. The combined levy in 2025 was about $47 million. The tax cap credits were just under $8.5 million. We collected about $38 million in taxes and had a combined tax rate of 97.61 cents. Once you apply the allocation of the circuit breaker loss across, we have a very high collection

57. 0:23:22 — open the recording at 23 minutes 22 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): rate and we appreciate the taxpayers of Vigo County we do have a high collection rate you'll

58. 0:23:28 — open the recording at 23 minutes 28 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): note the consistency in tax rate from 97.46 cents in 23 to 97.93 cents in 24 and ultimately 97.61 in

59. 0:23:37 — open the recording at 23 minutes 37 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): 2025. you can also see the tax cap losses that were seven and a half million in 23 they grow to eight million in 24 and about eight and a half million in 2025 with most of that loss attributable to the operations fund. Over the past 11 years those losses circuit breaker losses have totaled nearly 76 million dollars as highlighted in the yellow column at the bottom of the screen. Because of that the district began using rolling general obligation bonds in 2017 to fund large maintenance projects and equipment purchases removing those expenditures from the

60. 0:24:16 — open the recording at 24 minutes 16 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): operations fund budget since then the district has issued about 65.3 million dollars in geo bonds

61. Highlight · drawn from this moment: Vigo County Schools cuts its 2026 combined property tax rate to 90.53 cents, down from 97.61 cents

    0:24:24 — open the recording at 24 minutes 24 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): to help offset circuit breaker losses as you can see in the peach column in the lower left portion of the screen you'll also note that early estimates from the dlgf indicate circuit breaker losses could exceed 10.5 million dollars in 2026. on the far right side of the screen we've also shown the county's assessed value growth from 3.6 billion dollars in 2016 to 5.3 billion in 2026. there was a large increase in last year you can also see that we've highlighted the current 2026 tax rate of 90.53 cents down from 97.61 cents in 2025.

62. 0:25:10 — open the recording at 25 minutes 10 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): Finally, this slide shows our cash balances by fund since 2019, which was the first year of the new school funding structure. In 2019, projections showed declining education fund balances, which led the district to seek community support for the operating referendum, which voters approved of in November of 2019. At the same time nearly, federal CARES and ESSER funding came into the district starting in 2020 and totaled approximately $47 million, providing temporary support during the COVID period. ESSER funding supported the rollout in Vigo County of our one-to-one Chromebook initiative,

63. 0:25:54 — open the recording at 25 minutes 54 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): expansion of our virtual school program, expansion of preschool experiences at Deming Early Learning center enhancements to learning opportunities additional mental health supports to students and staff and hvac system improvements to improve student learning environments the strategic use of esser funds led to increased fund balances at the end of 2023 and 2024 but now that those funds have expired the programs they supported had shifted back to our regular operating funds if they continued. So as you can see the education fund cash balance appears to

64. 0:26:31 — open the recording at 26 minutes 31 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): have plateaued at 12-31-25 at just over 31 million dollars because of both the reduction in overall funding and the increased expenses due to the expiration of ESSER funds. Looking at the operations fund we see some growth between the end of 22 and 23 and as you can see 12-31-25's net year-end cash balance of of $15.2 million. You'll remember that embedded within the education fund expenditures was a transfer to the operations fund. The past two years that transfer has been just under 16 million. Based on the increased cash balance at

65. 0:27:07 — open the recording at 27 minutes 7 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): 1231-25 and additional pressure on the education fund due to declining revenue,

66. 0:27:12 — open the recording at 27 minutes 12 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): the 2026 budget was developed with a transfer of only $14 million. With that

67. 0:27:19 — open the recording at 27 minutes 19 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): reduction we don't anticipate an increase in the operations fund year-end balance at 12-31-26 but rather we anticipate that will go down. It's important to note

68. 0:27:29 — open the recording at 27 minutes 29 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): that we have used general obligation bond dollars issued for large maintenance projects to relieve pressure on the operations fund over the past several years with intent to establish a reserve in that operations fund. If we do not continue issuance of these short-term bonds that would also cause a decline in the operations fund cash balance in the future. And finally the cash balance in the operating referendum fund landed at 2.6 million dollars at 12-31-25. We chose to allow some growth to this fund balance knowing that our

69. Highlight · drawn from this moment: Vigo County Schools cuts its 2026 combined property tax rate to 90.53 cents, down from 97.61 cents

    0:28:00 — open the recording at 28 minutesDonna Wilson (staff): election to reduce our referendum fund tax rate in 2026 to just over 12 cents would require residual cash to fund 26 activities. Remember that funding for the operating referendum sunsets in 2027 if a renewal is not approved during an election in 26 because you can only hold those elections in even numbered years

70. 0:28:24 — open the recording at 28 minutes 24 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): another thing I'd like to say about the net cash balance is the net cash balance is portrayed on these slides counts encumbrances as open purchase orders it does not reflect accruals for payroll or anything else so for instance if our payroll lands on the first operating day of January and it's four million

71. 0:28:47 — open the recording at 28 minutes 47 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): dollars it's not reflected in those net cash balances since we don't accrue payroll

72. 0:28:55 — open the recording at 28 minutes 55 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): here's a copy of our 2026 budget order showing our current tax rate of 90.53 cents with total levies of 177.5 million dollars when including the debt service tax levy. Remember that these levies are before the application of circuit breaker tax cap credits so we anticipate reduced levies of close to 10 million dollars when the cap loss is portioned across our funds. In summary, the district continues to exercise opportunities for savings whether it be through the strategic use of grant funds or use of bond fund proceeds to reduce

73. 0:29:32 — open the recording at 29 minutes 32 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): operational costs and we acknowledge the need to continue efforts to right-size our operations. We are focused on ensuring the financial stability of the school corporation as best we can for as long as we can despite the challenges we face today or we will face tomorrow. We told taxpayers that the district's tax rate would go down based on increased assessed values and our planned reduction in the operating referendum tax levy and our tax rate did in fact go down. We are working with and through our professional organizations and with local

74. 0:30:03 — open the recording at 30 minutes 3 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): legislatures legislators to increase awareness of the successes of a robust preschool program during a time when state funding has been limited we continue to seek out grant opportunities and strategically align corporation expenses in a manner that benefits the district's overall financial health we keep cash balances invested to provide additional revenue for the district and we continue providing financial information to our taxpayers to promote transparency and fiscal responsibility our school staffs continue to do great

75. 0:30:35 — open the recording at 30 minutes 35 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): things with and for the students in Vigo County we appreciate your commitment to

76. 0:30:39 — open the recording at 30 minutes 39 secondsSpeaker 25: this project and for sitting on this committee and we would be glad to answer any questions you may have

77. 0:30:51 — open the recording at 30 minutes 51 secondsSpeaker 36: Donna could you just share like rough estimate I've we've talked about it before at school board meetings, the monthly expenses. Our balances look very healthy, but what's our salary and benefits?

78. 0:31:04 — open the recording at 31 minutes 4 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): Monthly expenses run in the education fund about $9.5 million. Operations fluctuate between $3 and $4 million a month. We also have to look at the education fund and operations that we have to maintain a sizable cash balance just to take the federal grants that we receive, like Title I, which is a multi-million dollar grant, we float those grants. We pay that money. We don't receive that money in advance. We have to reimburse that money.

79. 0:31:33 — open the recording at 31 minutes 33 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): So those cash balances are also floated throughout the year. So if you look at our monthly financial statement, we have cash and then we have negatives. And it's because we have to float those federal grants. But roughly, we spend about 12 and a half, 13 million a month just out of those two funds.

80. 0:31:52 — open the recording at 31 minutes 52 secondsSpeaker 42: Donna, thank you. I know PowerPoints and microphones are an accountant's favorite, but you did a great job with it. I assume we use a true calendar year end as the fiscal year end?

81. 0:32:07 — open the recording at 32 minutes 7 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): Yeah, now it's really kind of tricky because our funding from the state, from the legislature, is based on a July to June.

82. 0:32:15 — open the recording at 32 minutes 15 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): But we adopt a calendar year budget to align with the county's budget. So our taxes are on a calendar year, and this is a 1231 cutoff. But we report primarily on a school year.

83. 0:32:30 — open the recording at 32 minutes 30 secondsSpeaker 48: Sure. What's the timing of that 15% transfer from education fund to operations fund? It's a monthly transfer. It's a monthly?

84. 0:32:38 — open the recording at 32 minutes 38 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): Yeah. We portion it out over 12 months. Gotcha.

85. 0:32:42 — open the recording at 32 minutes 42 secondsSpeaker 51 (chair): So the balances that you presented for the operations fund, those are as of 1231?

86. 0:32:47 — open the recording at 32 minutes 47 secondsSpeaker 52: 1231. All the balances are 1231.

87. 0:32:49 — open the recording at 32 minutes 49 secondsSpeaker 51 (chair): which you probably, it's roughly half funded by property taxes. So cash at the end at 1231 looks pretty good because you probably just got a disbursement in early December probably. Yeah, mid-December. Mid-December.

88. 0:33:03 — open the recording at 33 minutes 3 secondsSpeaker 55: The county does a great job. We get those monies.

89. 0:33:05 — open the recording at 33 minutes 5 secondsSpeaker 48: What's the balance get down to before the next June or July disbursement?

90. 0:33:13 — open the recording at 33 minutes 13 secondsSpeaker 56: I don't want to state it because I don't have that cutoff. Yeah. It gets low.

91. 0:33:17 — open the recording at 33 minutes 17 secondsSpeaker 57: Does it get tight?

92. 0:33:19 — open the recording at 33 minutes 19 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): like it's low in operations yeah it can be depending on what's outstanding yeah I mean right now we have five million dollars outstanding on bus purchases it would have looked a little bit different had we paid that yeah

93. 0:33:43 — open the recording at 33 minutes 43 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): I know it's a little bit different accounting than you're used to but I

94. 0:33:46 — open the recording at 33 minutes 46 secondsSpeaker 66: I like the cash basis. It's cash basis.

95. 0:33:49 — open the recording at 33 minutes 49 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): You can't.

96. 0:33:50 — open the recording at 33 minutes 50 secondsSpeaker 68: It is what it is.

97. 0:33:52 — open the recording at 33 minutes 52 secondsMark: Yeah, Donna, one of the questions I know that we've been hearing, and I want to make sure you have a chance to address is just kind of how our administrators' kind of salaries, the percentage of total budget kind of compares to, I guess, peers.

98. 0:34:04 — open the recording at 34 minutes 4 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): I think you could see on that last slide where we combine the three operating funds, administrators are roughly 7%.

99. 0:34:12 — open the recording at 34 minutes 12 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): And that's all building all central office and all our technical managerial group, which does all our computer techs and those people.

100. 0:34:22 — open the recording at 34 minutes 22 secondsSpeaker 73: Do we know how that compares? It's on the lower side.

101. 0:34:26 — open the recording at 34 minutes 26 secondsSpeaker 77: Charter schools would be up over 20%. Basically, smaller school corporations have a larger percentage of the impact of the salary of the smaller by the greater opportunity.

102. 0:34:37 — open the recording at 34 minutes 37 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): And keep in mind too that our grant funds, you know, just our Title I alone is a substantial grant. We have dozens of teachers paid out of Title I that those salaries aren't even included in this. So our teacher costs are much higher than this. If they're charged directly to a grant, that's a direct charge for that program to those grant funds. So this is really, you know, this doesn't show school lunch.

103. 0:35:05 — open the recording at 35 minutes 5 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): That's a separate fund. There's a lot of other operational components of the district that are not included in this.

104. 0:35:11 — open the recording at 35 minutes 11 secondsSpeaker 82: So do you have any grant-funded activities outside of the Title I that if the funding was to go away or that you anticipate potentially could go away that those activities would have to come back to the education or operating?

105. 0:35:24 — open the recording at 35 minutes 24 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): Title II is largely professional development.

106. 0:35:27 — open the recording at 35 minutes 27 secondsSpeaker 88: There's a little one too, but not much. A few of these federal grants in Title I.

107. 0:35:32 — open the recording at 35 minutes 32 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): Right. Those are large. Title I alone this year was over $6 million.

108. 0:35:43 — open the recording at 35 minutes 43 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): Did get upwards of over seven, way over seven during COVID, but it's coming back down.

109. 0:35:53 — open the recording at 35 minutes 53 secondsSpeaker 90: And, I mean, you mentioned briefly trying to stress the importance of pre-K at the state level for funding,

110. 0:36:00 — open the recording at 36 minutesSpeaker 36: but and this may be more of a question for Dr. Hemsall but sharing the information about the drop-in funding for summer school and and what the state is doing with that so that might be more for Dr. Hemsall

111. 0:36:13 — open the recording at 36 minutes 13 secondsSpeaker 92: you can do it you can do that one I'll let you talk about summer school

112. 0:36:16 — open the recording at 36 minutes 16 secondsDonna Wilson (staff): programming but yeah there used to be different we used to have a remediation budget we used to have a summer school a larger summer school budget but that's If there's any other information you'd like that we can gather, I'd be happy to do that. As I said, this was really a presentation for our school board, so if there's anything that you would like different, we'd be glad to get you that.

113. 0:36:42 — open the recording at 36 minutes 42 secondsSpeaker 93: Thanks, Donna. You've been a great partner for us. You're welcome. Thank you.

114. 0:36:47 — open the recording at 36 minutes 47 seconds Thank you.

115. 0:36:48 — open the recording at 36 minutes 48 secondsSpeaker 100: I think they're bringing it up.

116. 0:37:07 — open the recording at 37 minutes 7 secondsDr. Hemsall (superintendent): There's a point in the slide in here that I think will get us to answer those questions that you just asked. Again, I appreciate the opportunity to present throughout this entire process, dating back to January through February. What we thought we would do tonight is just to put some closure on our part, kind of summarize what we've done. The one missing piece was Donna giving you an up-to-date aspect of where we were on a financial part. Hopefully, the details were appreciated. we just decided to go with the same thing that we had done with our school board as we had talked about before so

117. 0:37:48 — open the recording at 37 minutes 48 secondsDr. Hemsall (superintendent): as we talked about at the very beginning our school board has been looking at this entire process in terms of what is the condition of our buildings what is the feasibility of the uses of our different buildings as from the Gibraltar report. What's the reality of where we are with our enrollment history? Where we've been? Where we're going? What are the trends? We took into the needs. What are the learning needs? What are the shifting things in terms of graduation requirement changes? Other types of things that we need to take into account? What makes a difference in terms of student

118. 0:38:27 — open the recording at 38 minutes 27 secondsDr. Hemsall (superintendent): achievement? This year's group of third graders will be the first group of third graders that went through the dedicated pre-k program that was at Deming Early Learning Center so we're hopeful that we see some positive results from our IREAD scores so those required scores for kids to be able to move into fourth grade that are in there the feedback from our students our employees our community throughout this entire process the limited amounts of funding and the changes that are happening at the Statehouse in terms of

119. 0:39:00 — open the recording at 39 minutesDr. Hemsall (superintendent): those funding situations and providing flexibility for how we deal with it in the future given some of the trends that we'll be talking about tonight as we summarize and then of course all the new things that come up we talked about Senator enrolled Act one that's a that's a hot topic that I'm sure that you're going to be talking with Crow about as you get more information about county finance and then of course trying to put ourselves in a position to deal with anything that comes forth in the future Donna had mentioned our operational

120. 0:39:31 — open the recording at 39 minutes 31 secondsDr. Hemsall (superintendent): referendum because of law changes there are some difficult decisions that our board has to make in terms of do you renew it a year early or do you wait and renew it a year later or do we not renew it at all and a big part of us building up our cash reserves the decision that Donna made and others made and I concurred with and it continued is how do we build up our cash reserves using ESSER knowing that a renewal of the referendum was not a given knowing the changes that were coming from the state so we explicitly took and put as little as possible on recurring expenses in ESSER so that when

121. 0:40:12 — open the recording at 40 minutes 12 secondsDr. Hemsall (superintendent): it was time to transition those things over to the Education Fund or the Operations Fund we had as little as possible to to transfer you will notice that there are cuts being made throughout the state in public schools Those are in regard to Senate Enrolled Act 1. Those are in regard to decisions made about ESSER that had recurring expenses that now they have to address. We took an opposite attack here in Vigo County, which was to use ESSER or that COVID money to ramp up our cash balances,

122. 0:40:45 — open the recording at 40 minutes 45 secondsDr. Hemsall (superintendent): knowing that we were going to have to make tough decisions in the future and put ourselves in a position that if the state continues to reduce funding, if we choose not to renew the referendum either by our community saying so or our school board making that decision that we do not have to make immediate drastic draconian cuts so that we can do so over a period of time using attrition and those kinds of things and so those were conscientious decisions we did so that's the reason why you saw those cash balances as high

123. 0:41:15 — open the recording at 41 minutes 15 secondsDr. Hemsall (superintendent): as they were if the coven money didn't happen those balances wouldn't be that high if we made the decision to use those ESSER monies to on recurring expenses those cash balances wouldn't be there but we did so because we were looking to the future and trying to figure out how we were going to navigate the future the best way we could our priorities that direct our work how do we enhance opportunities for students how do we make sure that our students have the best possible learning experiences so that they are prepared to become productive and

124. 0:41:48 — open the recording at 41 minutes 48 secondsDr. Hemsall (superintendent): contributing adults we're continually trying to improve teaching and learning constantly trying to make sure that we get better a little bit each day that brings us to the high reliability schools it is our newly adopted school improvement model it is based on what effective schools research married with the Deming Six Sigma type of mentality of how do we make sure there is continuous improvement on a daily basis so we are using it from a business perspective of how do we get better every day and marrying it with effective educational research that says what is best for kids and what schools

125. 0:42:25 — open the recording at 42 minutes 25 secondsDr. Hemsall (superintendent): have the best success what are they doing and what can we do to emulate those things that's what the high reliability schools is about obviously we're spending a lot of time trying to figure out how to modernize our facilities we know that our kids do not have the same advantages that other communities have we know that our teachers are making due in facilities where they are overcoming obstacles instead of having the building enhance what they do and then we're always trying to figure out how do we live within

126. 0:42:51 — open the recording at 42 minutes 51 secondsDr. Hemsall (superintendent): our means we understand it's not a blank checkbook we're trying to figure out how to do this in a practical way we're not asking for over the top types of things we're not asking for taj mahal's we're asking for practical educational experiences that enhance the learning of our kids and that's what we're focused on we also understand that our community has additional needs from a daycare perspective there's birth to two and then there's preschool we're in the preschool business we there are line items in in our state board of

127. 0:43:24 — open the recording at 43 minutes 24 secondsDr. Hemsall (superintendent): accounts for us to take on pre-k we try to do that as well as we can and we understand that we play a role in that unfortunately with CCDF cuts and with on my way pre-k cuts and that was what Miss Labella was referring to earlier it has put a strain on that those are the same strains that Casey is feeling those are the same strains that other daycare providers throughout the Vigo County are dealing with in our particular thing we don't deal with daycare and just trying to help kids get through the day we are trying to educate

128. 0:43:56 — open the recording at 43 minutes 56 secondsDr. Hemsall (superintendent): them and get prepared for kindergarten get lay those foundational skills so that they are more likely to take off and hit the ground running when they get into kindergarten and first grade and that's what our focus is is on we need to expand our alternative school opportunities especially coming out of COVID we're learning that there is a greater number of students that need those alternative learning opportunities and experiences that's where our Vigo Virtual Success Academy or VVSA the the virtual school comes into play that is

129. 0:44:30 — open the recording at 44 minutes 30 secondsDr. Hemsall (superintendent): also where our Brooker T Washington comes into play and we understand that we don't have enough seats and enough capacity. We're at our full capacity based on the building that we're in. So we understand that that's something that we need to look at in the future. We also know that we need to consolidate in order to prevent cuts. As funding goes down, it puts more pressure on us on whether or not we can provide certain opportunities. We, in essence, run three career centers. We offer career classes at North, we prepare classes at South, and we offer classes at West.

130. 0:45:03 — open the recording at 45 minutes 3 secondsDr. Hemsall (superintendent): The reality of it is the number of students only really justify one career center, not three separate ones. That's an example of some efficiencies that we can gain by consolidating resources so that we don't have to say no to kids who have a specific interest. And then we try to increase alignment with our college and university partners, and that's becoming more and more critical. Obviously we had a big announcement here recently in a partnership with Rose Holman to help us with STEM education so that we can accelerate our kids and

131. 0:45:31 — open the recording at 45 minutes 31 secondsDr. Hemsall (superintendent): take them further than they thought was possible especially those kids who are hitting the marks in middle school and high school and trying to create those opportunities so that we can extend their learning our focus number one is on how do we improve learning for our kids and expand opportunities so they can go as far as they as it's possible for them to go that's what our focus is on it's really not on the buildings the buildings just play a role in that and you're hearing me talk about it a lot but our focus behind the scenes is always

132. 0:45:59 — open the recording at 45 minutes 59 secondsDr. Hemsall (superintendent): on how do we make teaching and learning as good as we can make it you'll recall that Gibraltar came in and gave you some updates on our study they went through and showed the detail that they went through and identifying the needs that we had it went through the situation of identifying feedback from our employees the people who live in these conditions every single day and talked about the obstacles that they have as well as what it takes to keep our buildings up and going you'll also notice that what was different from previous facility studies

133. 0:46:30 — open the recording at 46 minutes 30 secondsDr. Hemsall (superintendent): is not only the detail that went into it but also the fact that it included every building in the district and wasn't focused on high school only we recognize that we have other buildings that are approaching the same age as north and south and West Vigo high school and that we are starting to see some of those same trends in the structure of those buildings that we saw in north and south so failure to address them are going to end up putting those buildings in the same condition that we currently have at north and south stifle came chad blocklock came and talked to you a little bit about the

134. 0:47:04 — open the recording at 47 minutes 4 secondsDr. Hemsall (superintendent): different funding buckets you heard donna go through this earlier today you notice that we have 98 of our education fund comes from the state of indiana it is not a property tax fund there's a misnomer out there it has not been a property tax fund since night or 2008 since 2008 the only way property taxes go to support teachers is if we do an optional operational referendum our community has done so and since 2019 i think you saw there was about three and a half to four million dollars that are supporting some of those education fund

135. 0:47:38 — open the recording at 47 minutes 38 secondsDr. Hemsall (superintendent): supports that is to help make up for shortfalls from the state that's the only property taxes that go to pay teachers All the rest of it, 98% comes from the state. A little over 1% came from interest earnings. There was a few years ago where interest learnings were so low that about close to 99.5% of our revenue was coming from the state in the tuition part. The operations fund is a split. About 40% of it comes from the state funding. The rest of it comes from the property taxes. 47% with the property taxes.

136. 0:48:12 — open the recording at 48 minutes 12 secondsDr. Hemsall (superintendent): The other amount comes from local option income tax, financial institution tax, and excise tax. The concern there is that beginning in 2029, that no longer goes to schools. The excise tax is for license plates, car license plates. That is a proportion based on property tax revenue, and it's proportionately divvied up based on that. SCA-1 changes that beginning in 2029 as it pertains to schools. debt service and the operational referendum comes from the property taxes we've talked about that the debt service is where we pay for the bigger projects

137. 0:48:48 — open the recording at 48 minutes 48 secondsDr. Hemsall (superintendent): that's where that comes from we do not have a building referendum fund that does not exist in Vigo County that is an option for that we may need to pursue if we cannot if the county's not able to help us out and and so forth that was something that was done a couple years ago this community said no we're trying to find solutions that do that avoid the use of that or if it requires it makes it as small as possible to make it as small as we can make it talked about the educational fund and the referendum that supports it Donna went into this it provides a little bit first classroom

138. 0:49:24 — open the recording at 49 minutes 24 secondsDr. Hemsall (superintendent): teaching mental health supports physical health supports a big part of our school protection officer program and then of course our fuel for our buses the fuel for the buses and the SPOs is actually an operations fund expense those others are education fund expenses so about four to five million of the referendum goes towards education fund expenses about two to three million of it goes towards operations fund expenses and with the price of fuel skyrocketing here recently this is a concern that we we obviously have the state provides 98% of

139. 0:49:59 — open the recording at 49 minutes 59 secondsDr. Hemsall (superintendent): what we do to pay for teachers what we've done here in this slide is to go back to 2010 take today's number of students and put it in based on the 2010 school per student funding number obviously the two numbers start at the same point the blue line represents where we would be if the state funding kept up with the rate of inflation the orange line represents where we are in reality. We're about 11.7 million dollars behind. We understand the state's doing the best we can. This is our reality. We have to figure out how to reduce expenses when the expenses or the revenue doesn't keep up with the

140. 0:50:42 — open the recording at 50 minutes 42 secondsDr. Hemsall (superintendent): growing cost of those expenses in terms of rates of inflation. If you go back to the previous slide, we said about four to five million dollars of the referendum was supporting the education fund we have almost a 12 million dollar shortfall that means we've cut about seven to eight million from our budget since 2010 over time because there's the reality that we have to live within our means this is a shows our property tax the black line is the total property tax rate you will notice that there's a big spike at the beginning which is up near

141. 0:51:20 — open the recording at 51 minutes 20 secondsDr. Hemsall (superintendent): five dollars over five dollars per a thousand dollars of assessed value in our tax rate and then you saw this sharp decline that's because the state took over the funding of the teacher portion and that is where you see the black line with those sharp decreases and that flat line from about 2008 all the way to the right is because the state took over a big chunk of that before that it did come out of property taxes and that's the reason why the line on the left hand side goes so far up to the top you'll notice a little bit of an

142. 0:51:57 — open the recording at 51 minutes 57 secondsDr. Hemsall (superintendent): uptick there in a 2020 that is the operational referendum coming on to the tax rate which was about 16 cents that's what that little bump was otherwise you'll notice that it's a pretty stable property tax rate for Vigo County School corporation and we as Donna noted before it is now 90 cents 90.53 cents we had been consistently around 97 cents we made a commitment when the assessed value grow to live within the means that we had we actually made an offset in our referendum so that we can maximize what we could do with our debt service

143. 0:52:30 — open the recording at 52 minutes 30 secondsDr. Hemsall (superintendent): because of this work that needs to be done with modernization and we did so in a way that reduced our rate from 97 cents down to 90 cents that's a commitment that we made to our community again to show good faith that we're trying to solve as much of this as we can within what we already have access to and to be good stewards of this money when Chad Blackhawk was here he gave you some information and just to remind you that state average on the state property tax rate is a dollar two we're actually

144. 0:53:03 — open the recording at 53 minutes 3 secondsDr. Hemsall (superintendent): 90.53 cents of the 26 school districts that are between 9 000 and 15 000 and we also add in there mooresville lafayette and plainfield i actually think this came from baker tilly when they did their things not steeple and the reason we included mooresville and plainfield on there is because they are direct competitors for us and students in terms of the way community members talk to us about whether they're choosing to live here or to live in the plainfield mooresville area and drive down here. That's why we included them. We included Lafayette because they're just outside

145. 0:53:34 — open the recording at 53 minutes 34 secondsDr. Hemsall (superintendent): the 9,000 and they're now part of our conference and we have many, many similarities in terms of our demographics. Within that, we're the ninth lowest property tax rate of those 29 school districts. Our like peers. Of the 288 school districts in the state, the average debt service rate is about 45 cents ours is at 0.2424 about 24 cents of the 29 school districts that are in our peer group we have the sixth lowest of those debt service rates and then of the 64 school corporations that have passed an operational referendum to supplement what the state provides

146. 0:54:15 — open the recording at 54 minutes 15 secondsDr. Hemsall (superintendent): we have the seventh lowest rate at 12 cents currently since we backed off from the 16 cents we have permission to collect and also the fifth lowest levy per student we only get an additional 539 dollars per student to supplement that seven thousand nine hundred dollars per student that diana talked about from the state of indiana bottom line we talked about our operations fund doesn't fully take care of preventive maintenance we needed about a million dollars per building about 23 million dollars total we have about nine million dollars available

147. 0:54:53 — open the recording at 54 minutes 53 secondsDr. Hemsall (superintendent): during our facility forums we asked questions for our community to give us feedback there was a lot of different feedback that we've incorporated in here I am concerned about the state of our condition of our facilities 87% agree with us that something needs to be done we asked our community if it was good we thought it was going to make a difference for young families to choose to stay here and 78% believe that it will make a difference on young families choosing to remain in Vigo County instead of seeking residents somewhere else and lastly do we think that modernizing our schools

148. 0:55:30 — open the recording at 55 minutes 30 secondsDr. Hemsall (superintendent): will make a difference in economic development or to draw in more people and 77% of our community said yes they believe that we also talked about the reality of our enrollment at the time that north and south were constructed we were over 21,000 students the reason we don't have an exact number is because the state wasn't interested in what the number was so there's no record of it the state began keeping those records at a later date and requiring us to to keep track that that's our best guess based on the anecdotal from the Education

149. 0:56:05 — open the recording at 56 minutes 5 secondsDr. Hemsall (superintendent): Heritage Museum that we have over at McLean as well as looking through yearbooks and things like that we didn't get into the specifics we know are confident that it was more than 21,000 but it may even be more than 22,000 we are currently less than 12,500 based on our most recent count of the February we know that we have the capacity at north south and west to serve more than 6,000 high school students and the reality of it is is that in the 2930 school year we are anticipating fewer than 3200 students in those three

150. 0:56:40 — open the recording at 56 minutes 40 secondsDr. Hemsall (superintendent): schools combined and finally we talked about where did we stand when North and South opened when North and South opened there were 725 graduates at North High School in the first year that it was open that is per several North graduates who say with pride that there were 725 students in their graduating class in In 2930, we are anticipating fewer than 600 seniors in North and South added together. Based on all of this, our school board synthesized all this information and tried to figure out where do we go. We obviously can't continue to maintain 23 schools.

151. 0:57:24 — open the recording at 57 minutes 24 secondsDr. Hemsall (superintendent): It is unrealistic for us to go through and try to modernize 23 schools, especially given all these different things. We also know that the state trend is that they're not keeping up with the rate of inflation, and we see no signs that that's going to reverse. So what are we going to do to put ourselves in a better position in 2030, in 2035, in 2040 if these trends continue? And based on that, we need to consolidate our resources so that we are reducing those education fund expenses. With that being said, we focused on creating elementary schools

152. 0:57:58 — open the recording at 57 minutes 58 secondsDr. Hemsall (superintendent): about six to seven hundred students middle schools of 900 to a thousand and given the community feedback and the reality of our geography to maintain two high schools we are suggesting that one of those take place west of the river and one of those east of the river we focused on these ten elementary schools that we talked about before most of those are because they already have the capacity of six to seven hundred or can be get to six or seven hundred given the geography of their property lines and and the lay of their land we talked

153. 0:58:32 — open the recording at 58 minutes 32 secondsDr. Hemsall (superintendent): about these being our middle school campuses in part because we can reduce the footprint of north and south and have the amenities available to our middle school students that communities and other our students and other communities simply take for granted middle school amenities have changed dramatically since the 1970s especially given the influx of changes with girls athletics influx of music programs and other kinds of things that not only impact the high school but also filter down to impact our middle schools and

154. 0:59:05 — open the recording at 59 minutes 5 secondsDr. Hemsall (superintendent): then to construct a new high school east of the river and that was our ask of our county commissioners based on the information that they gave to us that indicated that they might be able to help us they believe they can I know that the next phase of your study is to take a look at with in partnership with Crow is it true that the county has those resources or not as we've said throughout the entire process we understand that we have nothing to do or control over any county budgets we are simply asking that the county consider

155. 0:59:38 — open the recording at 59 minutes 38 secondsDr. Hemsall (superintendent): it we completely understand that if the monies are not there we're not going to be able to get that we understand it is also their choice to make that decision it is not a given and we are in no position to make that decision we respectfully hope that they consider it and we think that we would be a good investment of those of those funds if they are if they are available we summarize where we could get the different savings if you remember we went through six different options I since added a seventh option given the fact of a patron who gave us some information and made a suggestion you'll

156. 1:00:13 — open the recording at 1 hour 13 secondsDr. Hemsall (superintendent): notice that in that seventh option it actually has the highest cost of the high school renovations that would be needed it also has the least amount of savings to the education fund and the operations fund moving forward which puts us in the least amount of flexible position moving forward these changes with SEA 1 and with the trends that we have with state funding the one that puts us in the best position of those of course option one where we just go to one high school for the entire county we believe that that's a wrong option we

157. 1:00:45 — open the recording at 1 hour 45 secondsDr. Hemsall (superintendent): believe that that does not account for the geographic size of Vigo County and the geographic realities of the Wabash River as well as the obvious belief that there is a group of people who want the smaller school experience as evidenced by the number of transfers from the east side over to the west side as well as some transfers into some smaller schools that surround our particular district with that being in mind trying to balance all these different things we focused on option six which was to have two high schools with West Vigo and a

158. 1:01:17 — open the recording at 1 hour 1 minute 17 secondsDr. Hemsall (superintendent): new high school east of the river which allowed us to equalize some of our middle school experiences by transitioning north and south into middle schools that's the reason why we focused on that you'll also notice that option one and option six afford us by building new increases in amenities with auditoriums with gym space and with things like that that we know we have a shortage of based on the requests that we get on a regular basis I noticed with asterisk option two four and five that those savings for the operations fund

159. 1:01:56 — open the recording at 1 hour 1 minute 56 secondsDr. Hemsall (superintendent): and for the construction modernization costs would go down if we choose to build gym space and auditorium space to match what is available in option one in option six and that is something that has been pervasive in community requests so I put those asterisks on there our focus from a board is we put a higher priority on the education fund savings because we are not in control of what the state does and we have the least amount of control of that and that's the reason why we put a greater emphasis on it we understand we can't do all this at

160. 1:02:30 — open the recording at 1 hour 2 minutes 30 secondsDr. Hemsall (superintendent): once we have to spread this out over time we do not want to create a situation where every school in the building moving forward needs a chiller on the same at the same time we need to spread those things out so that roofing preventive maintenance on roofs preventive maintenance on paving on plumbing domestic plumbing as well as HVAC are spread out over time and build a preventive maintenance plan that has regular scheduled aspects to it so that we don't find ourselves in the position that we're in today we put these things

161. 1:03:03 — open the recording at 1 hour 3 minutes 3 secondsDr. Hemsall (superintendent): in grouping simply because the group seems make sense in terms of those kinds of work that needs to be done as well as the cost of those things so that we can live within some of the means that we're talking about living within. We want to make sure that we also stress on group five we eventually group four and group five is we want to make sure all of our buildings eventually get modernized we're not focusing only on the ones that we're continuing on. This is our reality. There was some talk the other day about a ceiling tile that went down which caused

162. 1:03:35 — open the recording at 1 hour 3 minutes 35 secondsDr. Hemsall (superintendent): us to go through. You'll notice in the circle up in the top right hand corner the source of a leak that caused because it was inside insulation because this is hydronic piping for HVAC kept that insulation wet which deteriorated that pipe. You'll also notice in the picture down below there is good pipe just six to eight inches away from that pipe. That pipe on the right hand side that's circled is right above the gentleman's hat on the other side of that light from where the deteriorating pipe is. That deteriorating pipe is what caused the leak in the ceiling tile to get

163. 1:04:18 — open the recording at 1 hour 4 minutes 18 secondsDr. Hemsall (superintendent): wet to cause it to fall and you see on the right the good pipe that is just down for it also has the corrosion from that bad pipe. This is the reality of what's behind the walls. It is much cheaper for us to put paint on the walls, fix the ceiling tiles, and make it look nice. We could change out bathroom fixtures, but it won't solve the plumbing problems because the plumbing problems are actually behind the walls and under the floors, especially the main hallway in each north and south under that terrazzo those fixes are not cheap they're

164. 1:04:58 — open the recording at 1 hour 4 minutes 58 secondsDr. Hemsall (superintendent): very expensive they get into millions of dollars and that's why we're here in the situation that we're in I can't change what occurred for 50 years if we had put together a different kind of preventive maintenance plan and for 50 years from the time that north and south were first built we probably wouldn't be having this conversation unfortunately that didn't happen It's not any one person's fault. It's not any one group of people's fault. It's the accumulation of 50 years of neglect on that preventive maintenance aspect of things. Many people play a role in that decision.

165. 1:05:34 — open the recording at 1 hour 5 minutes 34 secondsDr. Hemsall (superintendent): And I'm not going to second guess those decisions. I was, and some of those decisions were made when I was a child. I certainly didn't have the knowledge to be able to give any information about what would be appropriate or not appropriate. I trust that the people who were in charge at that time were doing the best that they could with the monies they had available and the decisions that they had to make. The reality of it is is that we have reached a point where our buildings can no longer be neglected and we can no longer kick the can down the

166. 1:06:02 — open the recording at 1 hour 6 minutes 2 secondsDr. Hemsall (superintendent): road. So when North and South opened 1971-72 a group of kindergarten students came through and the first generation of students migrated through our schools and graduated in 1984. And in 1984, at this point, if you talk to people who went to our schools in the 70s and the early 80s, they'll talk about roofs that were leaking. They remember trash cans in the middle of the hallways to catch leaking roofs. And that was in the 70s and the 80s, the first 10 years that the buildings were open. So we knew at that time that there were issues that this group of kids endured in those buildings

167. 1:06:43 — open the recording at 1 hour 6 minutes 43 secondsDr. Hemsall (superintendent): and fixes that needed to occur. I jumped to 1987-88 to show it from a generational perspective. The second generation of students came through our school district, graduating in 2000. We've demonstrated in 1987, we knew there were things that needed to be fixed. We knew there were things to address. In 2000, they graduated. In the mid-90s, they got to take on and enjoy some new classrooms that were installed at north and south it's what it it's what it increased its capacity to be able to get up in the 26 2700 range when the freshmen moved into the high schools and

168. 1:07:26 — open the recording at 1 hour 7 minutes 26 secondsDr. Hemsall (superintendent): during that time we did not address the roof leaks and we did not address the HVAC those HVAC conditions were already starting to show themselves at 17 years of age and a normal preventive maintenance plan we would begin the process of starting to address those HVAC issues so that they don't reach a lifespan that goes beyond their usable life. Almost every piece of the that we had at North and South had that before the ESSER monies came on. In 2000 when that group of graduates graduated we brought in a new group of of kindergarten kids. That represented our class of 2013.

169. 1:08:12 — open the recording at 1 hour 8 minutes 12 secondsDr. Hemsall (superintendent): During their time, they started hearing more and more about something needs to be done with our buildings. Something needs to be done at North and South and West Vigo. Yet throughout their educational career, they did not, they saw very minimal changes during that time. And the class of 2013 graduated, and adults knew that there were things that needed to be addressed. But we've now changed the rules. In 2008, the world of property tax caps, changes in the way we do referendums and remonstrances started. The rules started to change, which started to make things more difficult.

170. 1:08:47 — open the recording at 1 hour 8 minutes 47 secondsDr. Hemsall (superintendent): Again, it's not any one person's fault. It's not any one group's of people's fault. The decisions that were probably made a decade earlier and plans got changed in 2008 when the state changed the rules on them. We welcomed a new group of kindergartners in that 2013 school year. This is that fourth generation of students that's going through our buildings and they are today's seniors. Today's seniors, you heard from them. Many of you have watched it that some of the county council members may have heard our students talk to them.

171. 1:09:22 — open the recording at 1 hour 9 minutes 22 secondsDr. Hemsall (superintendent): Some of our students came and talked to you and gave them their things. They honestly thought that based on the conversations happening when they first started and the stories that their parents told, that by the time they graduated, they were going to be in different kinds of facilities than what they are currently taking classes in so the question that we have as a community is that when today's kindergarten students graduate in 2038 will they attend and graduate from schools that have been modernized and we have solved this issue or in 2038 when they're seniors will they be up

172. 1:10:04 — open the recording at 1 hour 10 minutes 4 secondsDr. Hemsall (superintendent): here addressing future leaders of our community asking when our building is

173. 1:10:09 — open the recording at 1 hour 10 minutes 9 secondsSpeaker 120: going to be fixed there any questions I can answer for you that I haven't

174. 1:10:15 — open the recording at 1 hour 10 minutes 15 secondsMark: already answered I don't have a question I just I just want to say over the course the last three months or so, we've peppered you with a lot of questions, text, emails, calls. And I just want to just say thank you for the significant amount of time and effort you've put into this. Incredibly well thought out when we think of turning over every stone and looking at all the different options. I just want to say I appreciate that very much. We appreciate you.

175. 1:10:51 — open the recording at 1 hour 10 minutes 51 secondsDr. Hemsall (superintendent): as I've stated before nearly everything we've talked about we presented our school board meetings over an 18-month period of time between January of 24 through June of 25 yet we still have community members who are unaware of the fact that we're talking about this so we appreciate the opportunity to have another Avenue to talk about this to get the information out so that our community can get educated about the realities that we are facing I've been

176. 1:11:25 — open the recording at 1 hour 11 minutes 25 secondsSpeaker 42: struggling to come up with a question I haven't already asked you because to

177. 1:11:29 — open the recording at 1 hour 11 minutes 29 secondsSpeaker 51 (chair): Mark's point there has been so many of them take me through the timeline here when was the facilities plan and option six adopted by the school board and how does that compare to the state bill for the house bill that created this oversight board and the

178. 1:11:50 — open the recording at 1 hour 11 minutes 50 secondsDr. Hemsall (superintendent): opportunity to partner with the county yeah I believe that the bill we started the facility study we started that shortly after I got here I think we officially began in January of 24 which is after I'd been here for about a semester and during the first semester I was just trying to get a feel for what was the best way to tackle the issue and based on feedback from the board and us working together we made the decision that the best way to tackle that was to do it differently than we've done before and take a look at our buildings holistically instead of just at the high school level we

179. 1:12:26 — open the recording at 1 hour 12 minutes 26 secondsDr. Hemsall (superintendent): honestly did not know where that was going to land we had no idea we knew that we were going to land that we needed to do something with our high schools but we had no idea about where the other parts were going to land we went through the entire facility study in terms of the bricks and mortar part from that January up through about September October that included talking to our teachers in that May June July to inform what they were seeing in bricks and mortar talked to our HVAC technicians and basically asked them how

180. 1:12:57 — open the recording at 1 hour 12 minutes 57 secondsDr. Hemsall (superintendent): do you keep a piece of equipment that was designed to have a lifespan of 40 years and keep it running at year 56 and of course it was well we take a lot of time to do it and time away from other things that we could be doing it was it was a common thing but we've got some very talented employees you'll notice in the operational fund and you looked at the staffing about half of the operations fund was staffing cost a lot of those staffing costs are these technicians who help do this so that we don't have to hire other people in to

181. 1:13:29 — open the recording at 1 hour 13 minutes 29 secondsDr. Hemsall (superintendent): come in we do hire plumbers and HVAC technicians when it's beyond and above what they can handle or the amount of work coming in off the same time is that they can't get to all at the same time they need to supplement with that otherwise they take care of it in-house and we're lucky to have that those talented individuals when we got done with the holidays our shift was to what's possible what makes sense and we started throwing out ideas and throwing things out to questions to Gibraltar for them to challenge us on well what if we were

182. 1:14:02 — open the recording at 1 hour 14 minutes 2 secondsDr. Hemsall (superintendent): to do this and what if we were to do that and during that process is where we landed and started coalescing around this in March of that year we got feedback from our community and the feedback that we got from our community was something needs to be done please don't drag any further let's get going I believe that during that same winter from January through that March is when the state was considering some alternatives on how we might be able to address the situation at that point we didn't know what we were doing we were

183. 1:14:33 — open the recording at 1 hour 14 minutes 33 secondsDr. Hemsall (superintendent): still trying to figure out what we were trying to do we didn't know if that bill would help us hurt us it would be useful wouldn't be useful we didn't know at that point in time because we didn't know where we were going to land at that time we were hopeful that it was going to be helpful especially given the fact that the author's intent was to be helpful and to help us out with that and We're very appreciative of Senator Good and all who went and lobbied for it. We had county commissioners, the chamber, members of the chamber, Mr. Gentry from the Republican Party was there,

184. 1:15:05 — open the recording at 1 hour 15 minutes 5 secondsDr. Hemsall (superintendent): members of the council were all in the statehouse advocating for that bill. And we're very appreciative of that. We got into May, and when May came, we started to find some themes of what we were seeing in terms of these plans. and we started putting more paper to pencil on what that might look like long term. We did another facility forum in June to make sure that we were truly considering where the feedback was from our community. That's where a lot of the stuff about the gym space came up and things like that through those types of things. And on June 20th, another piece of feedback

185. 1:15:43 — open the recording at 1 hour 15 minutes 43 secondsDr. Hemsall (superintendent): that came on June 2nd is put a plan out there so that I feel like I can comment on the plan instead of comment on something that's hypothetical. So on June 20th, the board decided let's put it out there and let's the stuff we've been talking about in May and start of June and starting to narrow that down. Let's put it out there for the community to consider. And that came out on June 20th of 2025. And since June 20th of 2025, we've been working on this particular situation. With that point, we knew the bill did pass it did get signed into law the county commissioners we had some

186. 1:16:18 — open the recording at 1 hour 16 minutes 18 secondsDr. Hemsall (superintendent): conversations about whether it was possible to be able to do this and they believe it is possible we and then we quite frankly we shifted towards getting started for school I mean the number one thing is teaching and learning we want to make sure we got off to a good start of school when we came back from Labor Day we had a presentation to the County Council and then ever since then this has been pretty much what I've been doing is talking about this plan and making sure people are educated about it, and talking about the different options. Obviously, we're doing some different tweaks.

187. 1:16:49 — open the recording at 1 hour 16 minutes 49 secondsDr. Hemsall (superintendent): When we heard the situation of a patron who talked about that option seven, we went back and ran some numbers to it to find out if that was something that we did miss, and our intuition was correct in terms of it not creating the savings that we thought it was. The savings are there's the point of diminishing returns, and there's the point where you're big enough that you reap the concerns and small enough, and then there's a point in the middle where you don't reap all those different benefits. And that's where we were by having the larger school and the smaller school

188. 1:17:16 — open the recording at 1 hour 17 minutes 16 secondsDr. Hemsall (superintendent): is we actually maximize those savings with the north-south consolidation. But the smaller one, bringing them in doesn't really create that much more, which allows us to provide that opportunity for those who want the smaller school opportunity. So that's kind of where we landed. That's kind of that timeline.

189. 1:17:33 — open the recording at 1 hour 17 minutes 33 secondsSpeaker 51 (chair): Yeah, I'm still not clear on like an approximate. was it like fall of 2025 that the school board adopted this plan june of 20 june 20th 2025 okay

190. 1:17:43 — open the recording at 1 hour 17 minutes 43 secondsSpeaker 134: june 20th 2025 and was this plan that was adopted by the school board was that 23rd sorry june 23rd

191. 1:17:51 — open the recording at 1 hour 17 minutes 51 secondsSpeaker 48: because it was june second close enough yeah thank you was that the adoption of option six was it

192. 1:18:00 — open the recording at 1 hour 18 minutesSpeaker 51 (chair): dependent on any level of participation financially from the county or was this the plan no matter the county was going to help the casino foundation was going to help this was the plan we're sticking

193. 1:18:12 — open the recording at 1 hour 18 minutes 12 secondsDr. Hemsall (superintendent): to this is the plan that we believe maximizes future flexibility with immediate cost savings and opportunities for kids and puts us in the best position to move forward so our intent is regardless of whether the county can or cannot help us is to move forward with this plan and

194. 1:18:30 — open the recording at 1 hour 18 minutes 30 secondsSpeaker 48: I think you know my follow-up question. What are we doing to commit to this plan?

195. 1:18:34 — open the recording at 1 hour 18 minutes 34 secondsSpeaker 139: Are we waiting for county involvement? Are we waiting for Casino Foundation? If this was adopted without relying on those two groups, when are we taking our first step?

196. 1:18:47 — open the recording at 1 hour 18 minutes 47 secondsDr. Hemsall (superintendent): At this particular point in time, we wanted this process to play out because we knew that part of the process was for us to present this in a public forum. overwhelmingly the more people who actually learn about it the more in favor they seem to be and now we're in the process of trying to figure out what is the actual date that we do and do we wait for the oversight board to be to finish its work or do we go ahead and get started with it and that is where we're wrestling with at that particular moment in time we know that if the county cannot

197. Highlight · drawn from this moment: District says it can't set a construction start date for its school building plan until the county decides whether to help pay for it

     1:19:16 — open the recording at 1 hour 19 minutes 16 secondsDr. Hemsall (superintendent): assist us then we may have to take a step back and decide as a school board do we start with group one or do we start with group two which was our original intent? We know that we can cover group two cost inside the .2424 tax rate that we have which means that we do not need to increase that tax rate. But if you take that tax rate and what it can generate and add it to the commitment that the Casino Foundation has made it puts us in the ballpark of being able to do group one. If the county can come forth we can get both of those things done

198. 1:19:50 — open the recording at 1 hour 19 minutes 50 secondsDr. Hemsall (superintendent): And we can make sure that all of our high school kids, regardless of where they reside, have access to modernized facilities and then also do some work at our elementary schools that give us a position to be able to begin closing some elementary schools and reaping those benefits with the efficiencies that come with six or seven hundred in an elementary school. Then we would move into the middle school phase and start addressing that, especially since we really can't address north and south until we vacate the building.

199. 1:20:18 — open the recording at 1 hour 20 minutes 18 secondsDr. Hemsall (superintendent): Otherwise, we would have to have classes with the main hallway torn up because that's the location of the sewer pipe that needs to be replaced and so forth.

200. 1:20:28 — open the recording at 1 hour 20 minutes 28 secondsSpeaker 149: If best case scenario and everything fell into place, when would you be able to start on group one?

201. Highlight · drawn from this moment: District says it can't set a construction start date for its school building plan until the county decides whether to help pay for it

     1:20:40 — open the recording at 1 hour 20 minutes 40 secondsDr. Hemsall (superintendent): Well, when we first mentioned all this and we were hopeful that the process was going to go a little bit faster, we were hopeful that we could have a shovel in the ground in 2027. may possibly late 2026 and by doing so that's why you saw that I use 2029 2030 as my projections on enrollment because based on the amount of time that it would take to construct we're anticipating that's at least two and a half years if not three years so when we first thought if we could get a shovel in the ground in the fall of 2026 possible that we could be open in 2029

202. Highlight · drawn from this moment: District says it can't set a construction start date for its school building plan until the county decides whether to help pay for it

     1:21:12 — open the recording at 1 hour 21 minutes 12 secondsDr. Hemsall (superintendent): even if we can do 2027 if the weather cooperates there's still a chance we could be in 2029, although that becomes less and less realistic because we lose some of that flexibility. And then weather becomes a little bit bigger of an issue, which of course no one can predict the weather. But that's why we use the 2029-2030 enrollment projections is because that's when we were hopeful that we could be open with a new school if the process were to move quick enough. Did you have a follow-up? Okay. The thing that we have to wrestle with now is do we wait for you to complete your work

203. 1:21:57 — open the recording at 1 hour 21 minutes 57 secondsDr. Hemsall (superintendent): or do we go ahead and start the process? And that is not an easy one, but that is one that we are currently debating amongst ourselves and trying to decide what our next step is in that regard. We respectfully understand that the county is who will make the decision on what the county funds will do. We are hopeful that, one, there is funding available, and two, they believe in what we do with our kids and the kids of this community and what they can provide for future generations, that they would see that as an investment and not an expense.

204. 1:22:32 — open the recording at 1 hour 22 minutes 32 secondsSpeaker 51 (chair): sense. It's like the age old chicken or the egg, whichever one came first, right? Yes. We're waiting on you. You're waiting on us. At the same time, I'm looking at what the state's

205. 1:22:43 — open the recording at 1 hour 22 minutes 43 secondsDr. Hemsall (superintendent): doing, thinking that we need to get the ball rolling so that we can start generating some of those savings because we cannot, we're not going to be able to slow down the train of what's

206. 1:22:52 — open the recording at 1 hour 22 minutes 52 secondsSpeaker 51 (chair): happening at the state house. Yeah. And I think you understand that the county financial, they have a lot coming down the pipeline with them. We all do. And how lit's going to be handled. and it's a it's a pretty large conversation that needs to be had and SEA will navigate that carefully yeah it affects all of us even if we don't have

207. 1:23:10 — open the recording at 1 hour 23 minutes 10 secondsMark: clarity on the county involvement would it be helpful for the oversight board to have to at least an endorsement of which plan we think it makes the most sense even if we don't have all the clarity on I county given the fact that

208. 1:23:25 — open the recording at 1 hour 23 minutes 25 secondsDr. Hemsall (superintendent): we know that this was part of the process was for you to review our plan I I can't speak for the board members, but I do believe that if you endorsed what were the ideas that we're moving forward with, it would give them a greater confidence in how to move forward. I mean, it's the school board's plan and their elected officials, and this is what we've decided. We think it's in the best interest because we've taken into account not just numbers on a spreadsheet, but the realities of geography, the realities of what we do with kids.

209. 1:23:53 — open the recording at 1 hour 23 minutes 53 secondsDr. Hemsall (superintendent): I mean we could save even greater amounts of money to put 12 or 1300 students in a middle school and close an additional middle school as a former middle school principal of a building that had 1300 students I would say that's a really bad idea 900 to a thousand there are several middle school examples throughout the state that indicate that that is a doable thing somewhere between 1000 and 1300 is when it shifts based on my personal experience of being assistant principal at Southport Middle School

210. 1:24:24 — open the recording at 1 hour 24 minutes 24 secondsSpeaker 155: back in the day.

211. 1:24:32 — open the recording at 1 hour 24 minutes 32 secondsSpeaker 157: Anything else? Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Hemsall.

212. 1:24:41 — open the recording at 1 hour 24 minutes 41 secondsSpeaker 44: I think with that, we're ready for public comment, if there are any.

213. 1:24:51 — open the recording at 1 hour 24 minutes 51 secondsSpeaker 160: take your time

214. 1:25:15 — open the recording at 1 hour 25 minutes 15 secondsSpeaker 51 (chair): when you do make your way here we do request that you state your name so we get it accurately accurately reflected in the minutes

215. 1:25:26 — open the recording at 1 hour 25 minutes 26 secondsSpeaker 164: okay my name is silvester edwards i'm the president of the greater

216. 1:25:31 — open the recording at 1 hour 25 minutes 31 secondsSilvester Edwards (resident): terra haute nacp we service five counties with cindigo vermilion clay park and uh sullivan county uh we are there to speak for those who are not able to speak for themselves i was asked to come here because of the fact that there's other issues that should be looked upon i know there's bottom lines there's winners and losers we can take that at this time about who's going to win who's going to lose i'm looking at chauncey rose when they closed chauncey rose down a whole community lost future leaders because half the kids were sent out to otter creek and the other to wilson that decimated

217. 1:26:17 — open the recording at 1 hour 26 minutes 17 secondsSilvester Edwards (resident): that community as far as being able to have young people wind up being leaders in the near future I'm looking at this as the same way now we have this thing called DEA DEI and it seemed that on a national level and also on the state level d e i is d i e this is what's going to happen to some of those kids too diversity equity and inclusion a lot of those kids going to be excluded from a lot of different things especially when it comes to after school services or events or program including sports Again, Chauncey Rose, those kids' parents didn't have cars.

218. 1:27:09 — open the recording at 1 hour 27 minutes 9 secondsSilvester Edwards (resident): And when the school bus moved, they had to be on that school bus to get back home in their area. That took a lot of our future leaders out of our community as far as learning what to do, how to do it. Yes, numbers. We're looking at numbers. numbers. Let's look at our kids' future. We want kids to stay here in Terre Haute. Well, when opportunities are not here, people are going to lose. I did look up a few things. In 1959, Terre Haute and Indianapolis is the same size. Due to our manufacturing leave our manufacturing leave in Terre Haute we went from 100,000 to what 60 65,000 it's going down

219. 1:28:00 — open the recording at 1 hour 28 minutesSilvester Edwards (resident): well as i said that this is the oversight board and we want to make sure that you don't overlook certain things that is not just the price that we have to pay for our kids to stay here but for those who want to move to Terre Haute that's another thing i've been here for almost 50 years next january i'm from indy i like terreau i stayed in terreau plus the factor i tell everybody that innanapolis is these what's the word i'm looking for where you travel from one town to another well anyway i get back to that what i'm looking at is the advantage that having more than one school

220. 1:28:42 — open the recording at 1 hour 28 minutes 42 secondsSilvester Edwards (resident): and how I did look before I came here I googled about the history of the consolidations from 1960 61 as far as West Vigo's concern concern and also the 1970 71 with losing six public schools and one private school that consolidated to North and South. We lost a lot of brain power when you do that. I had an opportunity to substitute at Honey Creek when it came down to LD kids. They are at a small school and when the teacher went on to a maternity leave, she asked me to help get those kids ready for high school they are terrified because already they had a label ld label disabled

221. 1:29:44 — open the recording at 1 hour 29 minutes 44 secondsSilvester Edwards (resident): on them before they even left to go to high school that terrifies them when they you in a super school you get lost and time when you get lost you run into the wrong people and you do the wrong things, that become a burden on our community. We found money for a jail that no one wanted. Now it's too small. Just think about what's going to happen next. They're going to have to expand that jail because some of the kids that we're going to overlook, I'd say this is the oversight, please don't overlook our kids and what can happen in the future.

222. 1:30:28 — open the recording at 1 hour 30 minutes 28 secondsSilvester Edwards (resident): I don't know about all the different facets or programs, but three schools is still a good thing even if you make north and south smaller. With the ability to increase as time goes on if the population of Terre Haute increase, there are other options. please don't overlook our children. And I'm going to tell you a little story real quick. There was a gentleman here who wore out his welcome at North and also South. He wound up going to West Vigo. He was a person of color. He looked like me. he caught unholy heck at West Viggo. Luckily enough, he was an athlete.

223. 1:31:26 — open the recording at 1 hour 31 minutes 26 secondsSilvester Edwards (resident): And that's when the coaches and the athletic director loved this young man and kept him safe over there. But when you eliminate the possibility of a person going from one place to another, you taking their freedom away from you. I'm going to go back to when I was in high school. The story was the father told this young man that if he made the basketball team he would buy him a car. He didn't say star of the team. He did not say start. He didn't say play. He said, make the team. Young man made the team. Right before the first game, the coach came up to him and told him, well, our boosters

224. 1:32:24 — open the recording at 1 hour 32 minutes 24 secondsSilvester Edwards (resident): gave, bought new uniform and their son have to be in one of them. That young man who made the team did not get his car because he was not on the team. Well I had that same opportunity when I became a coach. I would not allow the Booster Club to make decisions on our kids and who should run that team. As a coach at Terre Haute South, I used my coaches pay to make sure that the kids had what they needed without them having to go out and do fundraising. I made enough of my regular job but this was just something I want to make sure that no other kid would

225. 1:33:12 — open the recording at 1 hour 33 minutes 12 secondsSilvester Edwards (resident): have someone who is wealthy who is well endowed as far as Jews and they had connections whether There was a school corporation, teachers, coaches, everybody need an opportunity. So I made sure that the funds that I got from the state, I mean from the school corporation, that I fed 50 boys and seven coaches when we went out of town just to make sure that no one took opportunity from one of those kids. that track or their athletics you only go you're gonna go from three high schools you're gonna eliminate opportunities for this kids some kids

226. 1:33:58 — open the recording at 1 hour 33 minutes 58 secondsSilvester Edwards (resident): only come to school because of athletics or whatever that special thing in that school is they come because of such close down that one going from three to Two is eliminating. Again, we're talking about winners and losers. We're talking about bottom line. Sound like the whole thing is about the bottom line. But remember, when those kids wind up in jail and being a bigger burden in that jail down there have to be expanded. I've been to a meeting about it. They're gonna have to expand it. So let's expand our opportunity for our student instead of expanding opportunity for prisoners.

227. 1:34:43 — open the recording at 1 hour 34 minutes 43 secondsSpeaker 174: Thank you, sir.

228. 1:34:49 — open the recording at 1 hour 34 minutes 49 secondsSpeaker 175: Oh, by the way, it pains me to be up here. Physically, it pains me, but even more so mentally that we have to go through this.

229. 1:35:06 — open the recording at 1 hour 35 minutes 6 secondsSpeaker 178: Anyone else?

230. 1:35:10 — open the recording at 1 hour 35 minutes 10 secondsSpeaker 181: sorry that's a hard one to follow try not to tear up um my name is Jody Akimbo I um

231. 1:35:26 — open the recording at 1 hour 35 minutes 26 secondsJody Akimbo (resident): I wrote notes so I wouldn't get off track but I have been a resident of Vigo County for over 40 years I'm a taxpayer I'm a concerned citizen I'm a mother of four and I'm an educator for over 18 years. I began my teaching career at Terre Haute North where I was also a student. I have three of my four children have already been at Terre Haute North or currently attending Terre Haute North. I also have an elementary student who will also attend high school in this county someday. I am currently running for Vigo County Commissioner on the Republican ballot. I want to be very

232. 1:36:03 — open the recording at 1 hour 36 minutes 3 secondsJody Akimbo (resident): clear I fully support students, our teachers, and improving education in Vigo county that is not in question um what is in question is whether the current reorganization plan is financially responsible transparent and truly reflects the will of the people and i can tell you as i've traveled across this county it does not reflect the will of the people they do the listening sessions and things like that the majority of the people don't come to those and when i speak to strangers out on the street half the people don't even know that this is going

233. 1:36:36 — open the recording at 1 hour 36 minutes 36 secondsJody Akimbo (resident): on or how it impacts them so they're not reaching the people um one of the reasons that i did choose to run for commissioner is my concern with how strongly the current elected officials are pushing for the operation or the option six which is the plan that the vego county school corporation did select in june of 2025. no matter how many times they get up and present all these options they have made up their mind and it was very clear when i first started attending meetings that they had already made up their mind at that point after reviewing the gibraltar presentation i have

234. 1:37:13 — open the recording at 1 hour 37 minutes 13 secondsJody Akimbo (resident): serious concerns the more i learn the more concerns keep coming we are discussing a project with a preliminary cost of over 222 million dollars and that is only covering the building of one new high school it does not include land acquisition infrastructure fees legal costs and other known expenses additional features like athletic facilities turf fields expanding seat expanded seating could add tens and even hundreds of millions of dollars to that plan and that is just for the one school and the plan also does not reflect the voice of the community in 2022

235. 1:37:49 — open the recording at 1 hour 37 minutes 49 secondsJody Akimbo (resident): a referendum failed over 90 i think they said 90 community forums were held and it showed strong opposition from the public families across the county value their children in school identity but the school corporation failed to really reach the taxpayers and show why we must invest in our schools lack of transparency and a huge lack of trust did not help when we must consider also the real impact on students larger school communities transportation challenges and the effect on special needs students and those from diverse

236. 1:38:22 — open the recording at 1 hour 38 minutes 22 secondsJody Akimbo (resident): socioeconomic backgrounds bigger is not always better these are just some of the reasons this plan is not the best path forward i appreciate the efforts of the oversight board but i remain concerned about the lack of direct voter input decisions of that magnitude must include transparency and public involvement at the end of the day this is about trust taxpayers deserve to know the numbers add up before commitments are made they deserve a voice we are all wanting strong schools but we must get there responsibly transparency transparently and with the

237. 1:38:57 — open the recording at 1 hour 38 minutes 57 secondsJody Akimbo (resident): support of the people and the more I hear the school officials a talk and even elected county officials talk the more I have concerns just today someone was speaking of wanting to use possible food and beverage taxes for maybe even a hundred million dollar project for the athletic facilities for the one new school so lots and lots of concerns and even speak hearing dr. himsell speak tonight they've already made up their minds so i i guess the only thing you're doing at this point

238. 1:39:26 — open the recording at 1 hour 39 minutes 26 secondsSpeaker 184: is trying to find out if there are other ways to fund it because the school corporation can't do

239. 1:39:30 — open the recording at 1 hour 39 minutes 30 secondsSpeaker 51 (chair): it by themselves thank you mr kimbo is it you don't have any you do not have to answer this is there an option that you do prefer that has been presented i'm not sure that my single opinion

240. 1:39:45 — open the recording at 1 hour 39 minutes 45 secondsJody Akimbo (resident): would matter i think overwhelmingly it should be a consensus from the taxpayers but i do believe that there are better options out there I like I said my single opinion I don't think that that is matters or is appropriate I'm not in favor of option

241. 1:39:59 — open the recording at 1 hour 39 minutes 59 secondsSpeaker 184: six being a school teacher for many years but I do believe that there are better options out there and maybe even some things that they haven't even

242. 1:40:06 — open the recording at 1 hour 40 minutes 6 secondsSpeaker 44: explored yet gotcha I was just trying to get my own voter input there thank you

243. 1:40:21 — open the recording at 1 hour 40 minutes 21 secondsSpeaker 191: my name is connie speer and i am a vego county resident have been for 30 some odd years both of

244. 1:40:28 — open the recording at 1 hour 40 minutes 28 secondsConnie Speer (resident): my daughters went through terro south now i have granddaughters going through terro south one of my grand one of my daughters was in the 2000 class that he was speaking of earlier dr hemsell and there were problems then absolutely leaky roofs and everything but you know Now, my deal is, when he said 60 some odd years ago, which is basically what I was going to talk about tonight, they were probably right here where you are 60 some odd years ago talking about the same thing, closing down the other high schools and going to North and South.

245. 1:41:02 — open the recording at 1 hour 41 minutes 2 secondsConnie Speer (resident): They probably were buzzwords, innovative, oh, we're going to be the talk of the state, we can compete with Indy. that was the biggest mess up ever consolidating from the smaller schools because he even said it some of these parents are taking their kids and they're going to outline schools that are smaller not bigger smaller why you're gonna lose kids education wise with retention and graduation graduation rates there will plummet the violence now we don't talk about that either in north and south. Where I'm from in southern Indiana, I'm from a town with now about 3,300

246. 1:41:44 — open the recording at 1 hour 41 minutes 44 secondsConnie Speer (resident): people. That's about how big these schools want to be. You can't contain a small town, especially with a lot of hormones running around and all that, but you want to make it that way. One school. It's dangerous now at north and south. There's probably cops there every day. And then the alternative schools. Has that been figured into any of this cost the alternative schools like Washington what is it Booker Booker T Washington school is that figured into the 22 million plus do we know dr. Hensel Washington alternative any alternative schools is that in the

247. 1:42:25 — open the recording at 1 hour 42 minutes 25 secondsConnie Speer (resident): budget for here why are they even unnecessary do we know are we losing kids that we need to put in alternative schools is that probably the reason well those were probably in effect before COVID so why are we even having alternative schools that's what gets me I don't understand that I guess they're needed so it's a good thing but I don't understand we've got the high schools who have a lot of problems and you've probably lost a lot of kids we know that and then that have the alternative schools I don't I don't get that but I guess there's a reason for it but I really think that some of these

248. 1:43:11 — open the recording at 1 hour 43 minutes 11 secondsConnie Speer (resident): elementary schools that seem to be in good repair I know Hoosier Prairie is in pretty good repair Rio Grande probably is in pretty good repair but I wasn't aware of that facilities study you guys did is there a way to get a copy of that and look at that has it been okay well that's something I need to do then that's a good that's a really good thing to do because my deal was these middle I'm sorry elementary schools that they're going to close you could probably have three or four satellite high schools take some of that

249. 1:43:44 — open the recording at 1 hour 43 minutes 44 secondsConnie Speer (resident): money revamp it remodel you know that you're probably going to have to do and until we get the money save that you know start saving your money but utilize the buildings that we have if you're going to close those down anyway but I know there's a process with that because you're going to have to do something with them to do the north and south school right to make those middle schools so you're going to have to have somewhere to put the high school kids but I do think he said that you could probably close off the hallways because the

250. 1:44:16 — open the recording at 1 hour 44 minutes 16 secondsConnie Speer (resident): water lines or sewer lines are underneath the floors and maybe do it that way but I think we should really work with within our budget within our means just like everyone here you have a home you try and maintain it you may not be able to do exactly what you want to do at any exactly given time until you get the money but you make do until you can i really do believe we need to work within our own means because eventually i'm afraid that we're not going to be able to pay the bills i really and i want our kids to

251. 1:44:50 — open the recording at 1 hour 44 minutes 50 secondsConnie Speer (resident): have good buildings i do but i just don't see how spending by the time the one lady's talked about the facilities, the athletic facilities, outside turf, you're probably talking a half a billion dollars, not, you know, half a billion dollars if that, if not more. That to me is, I can't even, I can't even imagine that. So thank you very much.

252. 1:45:14 — open the recording at 1 hour 45 minutes 14 secondsSpeaker 51 (chair): I appreciate it. Thank you. I think I speak for all of us who want to see a financially stable school corporation at the end of this and that's why we're exhausting all existing tax revenues to see what we can do so thank you so it's

253. 1:45:30 — open the recording at 1 hour 45 minutes 30 secondsSpeaker 36: said into a microphone because it was replied to but all of the facility studies all the presentations from Gibraltar that we've had presented at school board meetings since January of 2024 and on are on this school corporations website they're all available you can even go back on the YouTube page and watch them being presented you can watch the questions being asked that is available to you at any time anyone watching this now

254. 1:45:56 — open the recording at 1 hour 45 minutes 56 secondsOrville Earl Elliott (resident): Good evening. My name is Orville Earl Elliott, resident of Igo County since 1959. I was a junior at Schulte High School in 1971. I was on one of the last basketball teams to play against Garfield, Tech, Wiley, and Honey Creek. One of those memorable games was against Garfield. We scored 92 points against them, and we only lost by eight. 1972, I was on one of the first basketball teams to play against Terre Haute North and Terre Haute South. I think South beat us by 12 and North by 20. But for a school of 450 students, that wasn't too bad.

255. 1:47:07 — open the recording at 1 hour 47 minutes 7 secondsOrville Earl Elliott (resident): Now before you move too far along here, I want you to understand you're going to need to know in my opinion the sources and uses of funds for the entire project here not just group one but I'd encourage you to try to get that and summarized for all four groups so that you know and the community could know where this money is supposed to come from and we already know pretty much what it's going use for it but I'm very concerned about what this all these different sources of funds are going to be thank you

256. 1:48:01 — open the recording at 1 hour 48 minutes 1 secondRex Gamble (resident): good evening my name is Rex Gamble that won't mean anything to anybody here but But I don't have kids in school. I don't have grandkids, so I'm not worried about grandkids. But I am worried about the schools and I am worried about the community. I've sat here and I've listened to talk about millions and millions and millions of dollars being spent on facilities. I want someone to assure me that after we spend these millions and millions of dollars that we are going to be turning kids out at the end of 13 years of school that are reading it better than a fifth grade level.

257. 1:48:46 — open the recording at 1 hour 48 minutes 46 secondsRex Gamble (resident): I hear talk about, we don't have rooms. We don't come up to par with the big schools that are around us with the schools that are around us. Folks, we're failing our kids. We're not educating our kids. We're putting them through the schools and we're dumping them out, ill prepared to live in this world today. I want somebody to assure me that when we spend all of this money, that we have a better product at the end of it. And I haven't heard anybody here tonight say that that's what's going to happen. I've heard them say we're going to have schools that

258. 1:49:21 — open the recording at 1 hour 49 minutes 21 secondsRex Gamble (resident): we can be proud of aesthetically. I went through the same thing in a smaller school system when my daughter was in school. And I foolishly made the statement one time that, well, I don't understand why we need a new school. My daughter's doing quite well. And somebody pulled me aside and they said, Rex, good students with parents that are concerned like you are going to learn anywhere under any set of circumstances. It's the students at the bottom and the middle that we have to do this for. The students at the bottom and the middle are not the ones that are on the basketball teams.

259. 1:50:05 — open the recording at 1 hour 50 minutes 5 secondsRex Gamble (resident): They're the ones, just like Sylvester said, that can't even be on the teams anymore because they don't have a way to get home after practice. We need to be concerned about those kids. Thank you.

260. 1:50:18 — open the recording at 1 hour 50 minutes 18 secondsSpeaker 150: Thank you, sir, and thank you for your service.

261. 1:50:20 — open the recording at 1 hour 50 minutes 20 secondsSpeaker 218: Good evening. My name is Rosemary Scott.

262. 1:50:37 — open the recording at 1 hour 50 minutes 37 secondsRosemary Scott (resident): I've been paying attention to this for a long, long time. Started going to school board meetings in the late 90s. were already ringing the bell, sounding the alarm, red flags were going off. Everybody talks about the buckets and the leaks in the schools. It was ironic because sometimes you'd have this in the exact same part of the hallway at north and south, the same leak. So, you know, many people said, well, these are design flaws. And part of me is like, I don't know why we are wasting your time telling you how awful these buildings are i don't know who around here

263. 1:51:23 — open the recording at 1 hour 51 minutes 23 secondsRosemary Scott (resident): doesn't believe that hasn't for a couple decades now we know these buildings are crumbling that's over here we know this okay so we're looking at pictures and we're talking about this and we're talking about that what i thought your charge was supposed to be was to see if there were any funds that weren't encumbered that could be used. So I really think that focus needs to stick.

264. 1:52:00 — open the recording at 1 hour 52 minutesRosemary Scott (resident): You're already hearing all these grumblings from people in the county saying, you know, wouldn't we love to have extra money? But it's not there because we need it for the jail. We need it for roads. We need it for other commitments that we've already made. Knowing the state is getting ready to rip the rug out from underneath us. And how awful is that, what the state has done to these schools? Having the same party in place for 25 years certainly hasn't helped education in Indiana. I'm not sure that we've been out of the 40s on probably almost any ranking.

265. 1:52:42 — open the recording at 1 hour 52 minutes 42 secondsRosemary Scott (resident): I know we rank last in voting, we rank last in environment, and we are very low in education. It is unbelievable what we ask these people to do. And you have somebody with the expertise of Donna Wilson. We are so lucky. But it doesn't change the ideas. It doesn't change how our people feel.

266. 1:53:08 — open the recording at 1 hour 53 minutes 8 secondsRosemary Scott (resident): These people are letting you know how they feel. And they're the brave individuals that will come here and say this to you, because they're out there. We know all about the keyboard warriors, don't we? I've been hearing from them day in, day out. But you know who else I hear from? I hear from teachers who tell me 750 kids in an elementary school is ridiculous. Statistics can back that up, that the outcomes are never the same. 500 600 some of them even say they start noticing it at six there's a manageable amount can you be

267. 1:53:48 — open the recording at 1 hour 53 minutes 48 secondsRosemary Scott (resident): too small I'm sure you would agree you can be too small we don't know that perfect number is it 3 000 was it 3 000 last year is it 2 800 this year if we brought back the kids from our outlining schools would it be 2900 I don't know but that's all still too big for one building you want to talk about discipline problems like some people have but discipline problems are huge when I was a board member that was my

268. 1:54:20 — open the recording at 1 hour 54 minutes 20 secondsRosemary Scott (resident): number one complaint day in day out bullying bullying bullying we can't

269. 1:54:27 — open the recording at 1 hour 54 minutes 27 secondsRosemary Scott (resident): manage the numbers we have but yet we want to talk about combining these schools. I think I spoke to you before that there's like a top ten list.

270. 1:54:42 — open the recording at 1 hour 54 minutes 42 secondsRosemary Scott (resident): Transportation is usually one of the very top ones. People are concerned how long their kids are going to be on the bus. Athletics always there. The shy kid, the kid that doesn't have the support at home, the kid that goes hungry, the kid that falls through the cracks. Those are the people that are at the top of most of the educators list. Right, we need updated computer labs. Right, our science rooms all need updated. But we can't throw the baby out with the bathwater here. I don't think this is the plan. I think you all need to think really hard

271. 1:55:27 — open the recording at 1 hour 55 minutes 27 secondsRosemary Scott (resident): before you put your stamp of approval on this because most of the community does not think you're here to give your approval on a plan they think you're here to see if there are unencumbered funds that can be used by the corporation and I will leave you with this whenever you're going to put a community in a large amount of debt it should be on the ballot whether you agree or disagree because i couldn't tell you how much i agree with something being done but when you present something this big uh this overwhelming to the ordinary person they're just going straight

272. 1:56:10 — open the recording at 1 hour 56 minutes 10 secondsRosemary Scott (resident): to apathy mode because they cannot understand how you are going to close down all these elementary schools rep and repurpose this many buildings which you could have a whole discussion about the dollar rule because I'm sure most of the community is not familiar with that crazy thing that we're stuck with thank you thank you

273. 1:56:37 — open the recording at 1 hour 56 minutes 37 secondsSpeaker 225 (county commissioner): Appreciate you guys letting me speak and be hearing my baseball dad clothes. I'm going back to that afterwards. The state of Indiana doesn't allow you to just throw a question on the ballot. Like local government just can't say, do you support something, yes or no. It's state law. You can't do that. if a question's on the ballot we're increasing property taxes it's as simple as that what we are doing and it's it's more than just unencumbered funds we're looking at the future of what a project could be we've met with crow now we've

274. 1:57:21 — open the recording at 1 hour 57 minutes 21 secondsSpeaker 225 (county commissioner): met with Baker tilly now we're having conversations and I believe crow is going to be coming to you in a couple weeks to tell you how financially stable the county is. We, as elected officials, do what we can to tell the community to come to things and participate. But we all can't be in all the townships, all the time, trying to get people here. These meetings are on YouTube. Dr. Hemswell and his staff has had the meeting minutes, the presentations, everything available on YouTube for everyone to see.

275. 1:57:58 — open the recording at 1 hour 57 minutes 58 secondsSpeaker 225 (county commissioner): The referendum in the past addressed three high school projects but did not address declining enrollment and that's where we are today. So we could have spent hundreds of millions of dollars, invested in those buildings, been in debt for another 20 years and we still wouldn't be addressing the issue of population declining. Another thing is a lot of feedback I have gotten online or skepticism is when Rick Berger who's also at Duke Energy, or we get up here and say things like, when corporations come here and want to invest here, they immediately go see our schools, and they keep asking us,

276. 1:58:38 — open the recording at 1 hour 58 minutes 38 secondsSpeaker 225 (county commissioner): well, who are those corporations? For the most part, we don't know who those corporations are because they have site selectors, and they come here and initially meet with power, water, sewer, landowners, and we have conversations. And when we get to that point of showing them our schools, and we also talk about how great our universities are, the conversation usually goes south. So when we say that we don't know who they are, we don't know who they are until they're ready to make a deal and we can throw that NDA to the side and make a

277. 1:59:08 — open the recording at 1 hour 59 minutes 8 secondsSpeaker 225 (county commissioner): big or large announcement. So that's 100% true. We're just looking at ideas. I'm the one who said use food and beverage tax revenue maybe. It's just an idea. We're trying to find things in addition to the current tax structure that the state of Indiana has given us to do something different. Food and beverage tax revenue is a head in beverage or head in bed resource. We want to attract people here, spend the night here, increase our innkeeper's tax revenue to do more things with the CVB. I mean, it all directly correlates. We're just trying to think outside the box.

278. 1:59:42 — open the recording at 1 hour 59 minutes 42 secondsSpeaker 225 (county commissioner): But if you guys have any questions for me, I'd be happy to answer.

279. 1:59:47 — open the recording at 1 hour 59 minutes 47 secondsSpeaker 51 (chair): Commissioner, what's your understanding of the role and the challenge to this oversight board? are we simply to find the money no heck no you know what the great thing is we're all elected

280. 2:00:01 — open the recording at 2 hours 1 secondSpeaker 225 (county commissioner): you guys aren't but the community has the option to elect a school board and that school board represents the community community has the opportunity to elect a county commissioner a county council and we all represent the community and those elections have consequences or they don't i mean we can either continue what we've done in the past and we obviously see it's probably not working or we can think outside the box work with our state legislators and come up with new ideas and I think that's what we try to do with why you are

281. 2:00:32 — open the recording at 2 hours 32 secondsSpeaker 225 (county commissioner): here and we just want to move forward and exhaust all resources if we can't we can't it's a it's at the end of the day it's a referendum thank you

282. 2:00:49 — open the recording at 2 hours 49 secondsSpeaker 44: anyone else any closing remarks from the board

283. 2:00:59 — open the recording at 2 hours 59 secondsSpeaker 51 (chair): i i would just say that um maybe dr hemsell will be the the one to agree with this this board has been anything but a rubber stamp there's been plenty of healthy challenging conversations probably a lot of friction right now between me and the school board I don't know

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