Mt. Vernon Board of School Trustees

Mrs. Bond shared the following Good News:

1.  MVHS Athletic Director Brandon Ecker was selected as the District 4 Athletic Director of the Year through the Indiana Interscholastic Athletic Administrator's Association.

2.  MVMS Devin Kendrix became an Indiana Middle School State Wrestling Champion.

3.  MVHS Girls' Basketball became Sectional champions for the second year in a row and made it to the Elite 8, which was the furthest advancement in 4A.

4.  MVHS Boys' Swimming/Diving had an undefeated 10-0 season.  Coach Brad Grieshop was named HHC Coach of the Year.  Brady Gray broke the 50 Freestyle School record.  

5.  WRTV 6 featured MVHS Dual Credit Health Science 1 course where students can earn a Certified Nursing Assistant certification.

Mrs. Stacy Muffler, Principal at Fortville Elementary, gave a presentation spotlighting her school.  She began by stating she was in Year 2 wrapping up the Indiana Principal Leadership Institute, a really unique experience she has enjoyed.  Part of year two is to complete an action research project and she was happy to have been able to take two teachers, Jill Chastain and Lydgia Palmer, along with her on this journey. The purpose of the project was to support communication, build trust, build leadership capacity and focus on the process more than the product to produce long term change and implement new things at FES.  The action research project was Virtual Instructional Rounds where teachers went into other teachers' classrooms to help grow their virtual teaching skills set, give teachers the opportunity to learn from other colleagues outside of their team, provide staff positive feed back from their peers and build and foster relationships in the building.   The project was picked with the goal to target specific needs in the building.   The Plan was to do two instructional Rounds blending groups with 3-4 staff members put with teachers not on their teaching team.  Guiding questions were provided to the groups.  Reponses included 53.8% of teachers learned something new and are considering changing their practices.  97.5% of teachers appreciated getting to hear from teachers outside of their team.  97.5% of teachers felt ok/good about their approach to virtual learning.  Staff wrote notes to other staff members providing positive peer feedback.  

Dr. Parker presented second reading of Policy D175 Board-Staff Communications.  Mr. May made a motion to approve Policy D175 Board-Staff Communications as presented.  Mr. Edwards seconded.

Mrs. Freeman stated she was not a fan of this policy and asked Dr. Parker if there had always been a board policy regarding this matter.  Dr. Parker stated we had a NEOLA Policy similar to this policy and it still existed until replaced with this policy.  Mrs. Freeman stated she had spoken with board attorney Amy Matthews who stated the verbiage in this policy and the NEOLA Policy was about the same, Policy D175 just made it clearer and the intent was to give board members guidelines when approached on what is appropriate to discuss.  When reading the policy from a teacher's perspective, Mrs. Freeman interprets it as teachers should not talk to board members about anything.  She wondered if the policy could be made clearer and stress its purpose is to guide board members.  She feels that board members do a good job of, when approached, directing people through the proper chain of command first before approaching board members.  She feels it conveys don't talk to a board member or you will be in trouble and wondered how it could be changed so it doesn't convey that message.  Mr. Gray stated he reads this policy the opposite way, it's not talking about the staff member talking to a board member as being unethical, that he has a board member talking to a staff member about something he should not be discussing.  He feels as colleagues they can discuss alot of things, but once you get into the specifics of any individual,  or specific area, if he continues that conversation that is unethical on his part.  Mrs. Walls stated the word unethical is strong wording and would like to see softer language.   She cited instances where staff members brought items to board members' attention that board members needed to know and she did not consider that unethical.  Mrs. Freeman wants staff members to feel they can approach board members and it is up to them to tell them they cannot discuss a particular topic.  Mr. May added he agreed it was up to board members to make it clear what they can and cannot discuss.  Mrs. Freeman agrees there should be a policy addressing this issue, but feels it needs to be clearer and language less frightening and asked Dr. Parker if it could be reworded.  Dr. Parker stated yes and would be happy to support the language they wanted.  He stressed being unethical doesn't mean you will get in trouble.

Mrs. Walls made a motion to table the previous motion until further consideration from attorney Amy Matthews regarding rewording Policy D175.  Mr. Edwards seconded, and the motion carried 5-0,

Mr. Elkins presented Resolution 2021-10 Approval of the Amendment and Restatement of the Mt. Vernon Community School Corporation Retirement Plans.  He emphasized this is something that just needs to be done every so often to make retirement plans compliant.

Mr. Gray made a motion to accept Resolution 2021-10 as presented.  Mrs. Walls seconded, and the motion carried 5-0.

Dr. Parker presented Resolution 2021-11 HB 1005 Opposing the Establishment of Education Savings Accounts.  He presented it to oppose legislation currently running through the legislature, specifically House Bill 1005, Senate Bill 412, and Senate Bill 413, and any other bills that establish education savings accounts to expand vouchers. He opposes voucher money that continues  to flow to students for private schooling so that we can capture as much of that money as we possibly can.  The costs of Education Savings Accounts and school vouchers are covered exclusively by our state's school tuition support fund, further providing fewer public dollars to fund public schools and increase teacher  salaries.  If this bill is enacted, it will put the public school environment at risk by directing resources away from public schools to nonpublic schools that are not subject to the same scrutiny for their use of taxpayer resources.  Mr. Edwards made a motion to accept Resolution 2021-11 as presented.  Mr. May seconded.  Mrs. Walls stated it was important that the staff and community know that the board has been very vocal in their support of this by contacting legislators, etc.  and it is a very important issue to them. Mrs. Freeman added we needed more legislators who supported public education.  The motion carried 5-0.

Dr. Parker presented Resolution 2021-12 Providing One-Time Paid Emergency Leave so that employees not lose pay for February 16, 2021 because of weather-related circumstances making it dangerous for travel.  This resolution allows that staff members who were not able to work from home be compensated with the payment they would have received for working on that date (regular number of hours at regular hourly rate) had this emergency not occured.  It further provides that all employees who were contacted by the Director of Operations to travel to work, custodians and maintenance, be compensated at a rate of 1.5 times  the employees' regular hourly rate for the regular number of hours they would have worked that date had this emergency not occured.   Mrs. Walls made a motion to accept Resolution 2021-12 as presented.  Mr. Edwards seconded, and the motion carried 5-0.

Mr. Elkins and Mr. Rollo announced they received eleven proposals to our E-Rate Category 2 Equipment Proposal for  2021.  They recommend acceptance of Logicalis' bid of $85,329.41.  This amount will be used to replace twenty-two network switches at the high school.  Mt. Vernon's 2020-21 discount rate is 60% for Category 1 and Category 2.  Mr. May made a motion to approve the Network Infrastructure Equipment Upgrade as presented.  Mr Gray seconded, and the motion carried 5-0.