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School Board Meeting - Monroe Elementary Vote

Added Jan 06, 2026 •

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Lori Dudley yes yes Tammy St Peter yes Brian yes Steve near me hey we need a motion for the agenda I'd like to move to amend the agenda to include a public comment section before the consent agenda for individuals wishing to address the board and approve the agenda as amended a second while they say I post into the boot move down to consent agenda sorry um our first 1 is jail Karen okay I have a statement here first the board recognized the importance of citizen participation in school district matters in order to ensure citizens are heard and board meetings are conducted efficiently and in organized matters speakers will be limited to 3 minutes with a public comment signed a lot in 30 minutes however the board president May modify this time if deemed appropriate or necessary public comment is a time set aside for Community input but the board will not discuss or take any action on any matter during public comment public comment shall be limited to regular board meetings will not be routinely held tonight special warnings but tonight we have so we will be getting in 3 minutes so I got to do this today right here you can come over here go over there yep well I just uh wanted to say that I think that this idea of in this building Downs low premature um I went over and looked at the uh Prairie cities of school building and compared to this school building and they've they're both pretty pretty good buildings okay this 1's much better honestly it is just they put it in 2 million dollars in 2018 or whatever it was and the update a lot of stuff and you know I quickly closed the building you know it's never going to open back up you say it will be it just won't we know better than that okay and and the other thing is that there's there's problems over there at the uh Prairie City Elementary they really need to be addressed uh mortar work I mean the building's 30 years old up above on the gymnasium there's a lot of bricks there that are about ready to fall out literally fall out I wouldn't even have the kids walk by it was me you guys do what you want to do um and then the boiler is 30 years old over there and life expectancy of boilers is 20 years so that's going to have to be addressed and then also um appreciate Aaron and Rusty taking me on tours with the buildings both of them but I really do appreciate that I honestly didn't expect it everybody else would have just dragged their feet you know I just put it on and I really appreciate that and uh but 1 of the um things that you talked about in the first meeting that there's 4 different buckets of money and the state 1 was you know the um wages and the benefits and Fuel and stuff like that and that is the 1 that you're concerned about because we're going to have less students who are going to be less State money coming in and closing this building it just doesn't even make sense to me how that would help because you're talking about closing this building that would help those 3 buckets that are only for infrastructure and so forth It's not talking anything about uh the money coming from the state and and Aaron even said that that's not the whole answer there's still other things that are going to have to be done and I just think it's just too soon um unless try some other things there's I got some ideas about things that would help possibly create more students wanting to come here because there was a time not too long ago when uh people did come here because it was a good school district and uh things were booming you know I think and it's going to probably make a lot of people mad but if we get away from the liberal ideology and the conservative ideology just get this crap out of the schools completely and just teach and they get the word out there that that's what we're doing I think people are going to like that because they don't want their kids to come to school and get indoctrinated all the homeschool kids that's why they are homeschooled now is because of that it's a long homeschool population here and um uh I don't know how many of them would probably come back if if it was a guarantee that that kind of topic would be dropped to the schools so there's other things I think that you should try and do before minutes right there times up oh maybe a couple more seconds that's all right we're good thanks not near long enough what we want to talk about but it is what it is I understand the the name of efficiency what we need to do okay um I'm not really here to talk about as much so closing the building because frankly when I look at the data that Mr Becker provided the picture couldn't be clearer to me like I understand um what why we need to do this I don't want to see this building close anymore then Gail does I grew up Golden Hardy Boys books off that shelf in the back corner when I was in fourth and fifth grade and uh you know a lot of fun memory is growing up in this building um but you know I think at the end of the day I kind of understand why we are putting this situation birth rates are down that's a fact um you know that's that's affecting everybody basically living north of Kansas City um but the other thing I want to talk about briefly although I don't know if I have enough time to even cover it I did put together a package for anybody that wants to hear any of my thoughts because it's all here um the government at the state level has been uh sufficiently funding education for many years but I feel like that practice stopped in about 2011 and I think that constituents will be well reserved or well the time well spent will be put kind of looking at these numbers a little bit and I said I got them right here anybody can reach out to me this is all nonpartisan stuff this is just fact of what of the money that's been allocated to schools we had a farm crisis in uh 84 through 86 and over those courses years there's a 6.1% increase to per people expenditure going towards um schools a 2.54 increase in a 5.33 increase so hard times are falling on the state we still found a way to fund education appropriately and making sure that we did have proper number of staff uh cat class size is small and made sure that we were efficient with our with our building space since 2011 we've only been over 3% 1 time and actually we weren't over 1 1 over 3% we're at 3% and uh we've actually been under 2 and a half percent every year since 2011 that is a systemic restriction of funds to our school buildings and the only way that changes is if we start talking to our Representatives notifying them hey you know there's a problem we need to address it I actually just got the phone with Senator Rosen boom uh this afternoon um it was uh probably a better conversation than we had 3 years ago when they were talking talking about passing the essays um and he had some good points but basically there's only 2 ways this can go this gets better it's either reducing or completely eliminating the structure that as public schools we are focused on dealing whether it's property taxes whether it's coming from the per pupil expenditure to the General General um budget all those buckets make it difficult for Mr Becker to do his job and for you guys to do your job so either that structure needs to be changed or we need to start putting more money into the general general fund and maybe putting restrictions on what you you can do with the other 3 buckets either way the Solutions in that in that area I believe I can't imagine like that was it okay thank you too okay now move to consent agenda anybody have any discussion there or I'll entertain a motion I'll make money we have a motion second to approve the consent agenda all those in favor say I anybody folks identification we're exploration program Brian um do you want to address a little bit uh so Mr Adams this year at I tag which is the Iowa Town didn't get it um Distortion then be once a year um they got together and he was approached by folks from the vaillant blame uh Center at the University of Iowa which is kind of the home where I was uh talented and gifted um and they let him know that they would like him and PCM participate in this program called the Ty program which is a career exploration and so um so it's a really neat program for us to be able to participate in Mr Adams is going to take some of our sixth graders at the end of the day and he's going to work through 4 modules that have to do with tour exploration um they are a homeowner remarkable first module is building your future community so having kids think about what is uh what your community is going to look like in the future and what jobs are going to be available for you in the future um know yourself what do you like to do as a second module and the third module is boarding maybe that what gets in the way and then module 4 putting it all together um so the University of Iowa will come out and uh they'll come through and they'll talk to some of the kids and say hey you know what are you enjoying about this curriculum what do you uh what do you wish that was a little bit different about this curriculum what are you getting out of it um and they'll use some of that and some of their research studies so it's kind of a the way Brian put it to me it's kind of a big deal to be able to be a a school that's able to take part in this in this research so um yeah and any questions are not as well positioned trying to answer them um but I I love the building that we've gotten in I can't answer and I'll get the answers for you so that's the point we founded by that Grant yeah in fact it's it's overfunded by the grant um they give us about 4,800 dollars they they make some recommendations in there on on how to use that stipend but I think it's about 48 I think it's 4,823 maybe so um and it really doesn't cost us anything to put on maybe this the curriculum and Brian uh teaches the kids and bringing the school day they've got a study hall at the end of the day so there's been a pull some kids at that time I make a motion to approve the motion and second to approve did I say that right huh yeah it's Talent identification and Care expiration all in favor say I post there it is thank you okay now down in great realignment um Aaron has provided us all with the information does anyone have any questions consideration of prepaid to realignment to Great City with to eighth grade I have a question for okay this time we'll entertain a motion comments yeah yeah that's yeah I'd like to urge everyone to reach out to the representatives like that just talk about this is more than just PCM issue it's it's a normal part of this year if we've been uh given 3% increases for the past 5 years this wouldn't be a conversation now it might be because we decided that but uh will be forced to nobody wants to do this the members are on the wall um you've got less people coming in less kids coming into the system larger classes are graduating so it creates a happening where um no don't be expecting to see there and then walk in there and take these are just shut shut the school down this year um this is really a surprise how quickly this happened um so I mean it's it's big money when you're talking you just 50 students it's just well done this year if we were 5 to 3% for The Last 5 Years yeah I don't think this would be a conversation right now so reach out to Mr reach out to our state workers find out why they don't want how these tools have more money they gave the 3 hundreds of million dollars to private schools 1 billion years yeah um I don't even get private schools but they put this against 5 by 1000 not happy PCM directly effective other schools are too but if you're in a bigger Community where you have lots of businesses you have a lot more funding and I in that regard we don't have that it's almost like you're checking these this size field to give the money places I'm gonna reach out to him I'm gonna reach out to the rest of them we wait we run the risk of having just take them in here and I just hope for us I was supposed to do there are some positives in this group relying on this positive I heard from every administrator that um having all the kids want buildings positive you can hear that for 3 years so it's not all negative expression back on the tag on the rods I mean nobody wants to make this decision but looking at the facts and everything I think this is a way to have the least impact on students I mean keep the class size down that that I mean I I forgot to increase class size and just be didn't do this and we was just a PCM problem because then we could look at what we needed to fix but it's not I forget what the statistics are how many districts actually experiencing in for the students not very many um when I saw that PA voted to realign their conference because in 5 to 10 years they're realizing that they don't have the enrollment to stay in a conference they've been in for decades all that town has all that money they've poured into their schools and they are leaving conference because they know they will not have the kids to compete in that conference in 5 to 10 years then I know I know we're up against we need to do its best for the student and their future we can focus on the buildings we have and make them the best they can be for students now and in the future um the the monastery we need to come in it's such a short time is not possible can we trickle everybody back in in 1020 you know yeah maybe you know but the students we need in such a short amount of time it's not be the what we have well I'm going to prolong it and take time and try to make it over several years I mean that's not going to be a good environment for the teachers I do and thinking is this my year to be done or and regarding the numbers are invaded the expenses that found for this building they do provide the general fund um but just so everyone's clear on that it is a state funding issue for the general fund and we are going to say almost 400,000 I close this door okay we're counting 400,000 dollars of expenses out of the general fund another discussion was entertain a motion public devotion to prayer line for next year will be calling with your grades to pity I'll second that motion and second for the grade realignment for next school year is there any further discussion before we call for open hearing none all those in favor or grade realignment next year say hi I post motion carries anything else I want to add I'll also quickly say something so I guess I just appreciate Aaron's all the hard work that you put into this I uh you know a lot it's a lot of people well everybody in the same person but uh I mean I think any time and you don't have a question you answered it um it gave us the information we're looking for um I have plenty of public opportunity to come and speak and talk so I guess for me I thought that was a commendable and being here 6 months less than that problem I guess I appreciate that effort I mean a lot of work too yeah but yeah um yeah so lots of people lots of opportunities and and I think the community for being here also present or interested they want to know and um you know our next step is to continue the communication piece of what we're um what we're going to do or how we're going to operate with the great alignment great alignment but also what's the next step for uh this building obviously tonight we're not going to make that decision uh with the building um but um it's going to take it's going to take a team that we have the hard conversations along the way and that were willing and able to have the conversations with people so and that's what have been a lot harder decision to make we didn't have all the info all the hard work with anybody behind the scenes yeah I'd like to thank the administrators too to put it on my work you guys knowing I mean how it affects you your staff you know kind of going in and giving it your all with kind of a unknown future you know or what what this all means in the long run thank you Maybe thank you everybody how to talk to your Senator or representative

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School Board Meeting - Monroe Elementary Vote

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