The New Bremen Local Board of Education met in regular session at 7:00 p.m. in the Elementary Library.
Roll Call:  Mr. Scott Bertke, Mrs. Shelly Busse, Mr. Tom Paul and Mr. Cory Suchland.  Also present were Superintendent Jason Schrader and Treasurer Jill Ahlers. Doug Hall was absent.
President Tom Paul led the pledge of allegiance.
Choir members Alberto Benitez, Ian Frey, Cole Hemmelgarn, and Sean LaFleur performed a song from their recent Fall Choir Review.
The Elementary Robotics team presented the projects they have been working on this fall.  They are scheduled to participate in their first competition on Saturday, November 11 in Versailles.

Elementary Principal, Diane Kramer, submitted the following report:

1.	Continuous Improvement
•	Teacher level Value-Added reports will be released on November 11th.  I will then meet with teachers to look at trends in data.
•	Our District Leadership Team will be meeting November 14th to look at our district goals, steps in the building process, and the role of the DLT.

2.	Instruction
•	The third grade Ohio Reading Achievement Assessment was administered online to all third grade students the mornings of October 23rd and 24th.  Results will be available in mid-December.
•	Students in grades two and four took the Terra Nova Achievement Test and the In View Cognitive Assessment the week of October 16th.  These results are used for gifted identification as well as determining student interventions.
•	Our 7th grade students visited Midwest Electric, Signature 4, and Totally Promotional as a part of the initiative to expose our students to various manufacturing businesses in our area.

3.	 School Operations, Resources and Learning Environment
•	Our 8th grade students toured Washington DC October 17th-20th.  We are in the process of planning next year’s trip for the week of October 16th-19th, 2018.  One major change is motor coach companies are no longer allowing night time driving which will cut down on our touring time.  We may consider lengthening the trip for the following year.
•	The annual Veteran’s Day Assembly will be held Friday, November 10th at 9:30 a.m. in the middle school gym.
•	Character award lunches were held for our middle school students on November 1st and for the elementary students on November 2nd.

4.	Collaboration
•	This year’s Right to Read Week theme is “Wild West Book Fair:  Saddle Up and Read!”  and is being held the week of November 6th-10th.
•	Grades 5-12 teachers received professional development on the English Language Arts Standards on Tuesday, November 7th.  This training is valuable as we look at our current and future ELA curriculum implementation.
•	Elementary students enjoyed having lunch with their “favorite fall athlete” on Thursday, October 19th.  The younger students enjoy every opportunity they get to interact with our HS students.

5.	Parent and Community Engagement
•	The end of the first nine weeks was October 23rd with report cards going home October 30th.
•	Parent/Teacher conferences were held the evenings of October 30th and November 6th and during the day on November 3rd.  We had over 90% parent attendance at conferences.  The 7th and 8th grade teachers are reevaluating their conference format and are considering making some changes for next year to allow more time to conference with parents of at-risk students.
•	Reading Improvement and Monitoring Plans (RIMPS) have been written in collaboration with parents for over 40 students in grades K-3.  This is a requirement for the Third Grade Reading Guarantee.
•	The annual Title I Parent meeting was held October 17th.  This year, Mrs. Niemeyer met with parents of each grade level (K-2) separately to allow for more specific dissemination of information and targeted discussions.
•	The Cardinal Pride organization has the following dates open for the bake sale raffle at the home boys basketball games:
December 5 - Anna (Tuesday evening)
December 22 - Arcanum
January 19 - Minster
February 2 - Coldwater
February 10 - Ft Jennings

6.	Special Education/Inclusion
•	Day two of UDL (Universal Design for Learning) training was held October 18th.  Our presenter will be visiting New Bremen on November 30th to observe our teachers putting UDL into practice.  Our teams would like to present to the BoE at an upcoming meeting an overview of UDL including the benefits and obstacles of implementation.

High School Principal, Brian Pohl, submitted the following report:
1.	I attended the OASSA conference and shared in our staff meeting how we will hear more about “Social Emotional Learning” in the future.
2.	Rubic’s Cube Club has almost 50 initial members signed up as of their inaugural event.
3.	A group of about 25 student leaders attended the speaker, Kevin Hines, at St Marys Memorial HS to hear his amazing story of survival after attempting suicide by jumping from the Golden Gate Bridge. He shared how he lives mentally well now on a daily basis despite having bipolar and schizophrenic mental health disorders.
4.	About a dozen juniors completed the PSAT Test.
5.	The Cardinal Student Network showcased their first video of the year at their red carpet event in the auditorium. Please follow them on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, or Youtube to see their latest videos.
6.	Plans are in place to pilot a new program which includes purchasing a classroom set of Chromebooks to be used in Ms. Ross’s Spanish classes. This will aide us in our research of going 1:1 in the future.
7.	Staff PD day was held with a focus on Universal Design for Learning introduction, Virtual Classroom training as a learning management system, and collaboration time.
8.	We completed a round of random drug testing.
9.	Our UDL Team completed the second day of training to set us up to attempt a lesson and receive coaching.
10.	R5 Make a Difference (Team/Relationship) was delivered to students during CPT.
11.	Andrea Huber from Crown and Shelly Busse from AMBE spoke to all students about local job opportunities available.
12.	Roger Grein spoke to our Magnified Giving students during CPT.
13.	I attended a Principal’s Meeting at the AESC to learn how our graduation rate will be adjusted this year for the first time due to SPED calculations related to testing.
14.	Teacher Based Team’s met to discuss first quarter benchmark assessments, the Math Department also looked at Amazon Tenmarks via a webinar we participated in.
15.	Choir held their fall performances and the students involved did an excellent job.
16.	We concluded Red Ribbon Week activities as students pledged to be Drug Free.
17.	Sierra Drewes, 2016 NBHS graduate, was a National Winner at the FFA National Convention, she won the National Ag Sales Proficiency!
18.	I am meeting with all students who received an F first quarter to discuss what needs to be done in order to pass for the semester.
19.	ASVAB results were interpreted for the students who recently took the military aptitude test.
20.	The student body watched the band and clapped them out for their state performance.
21.	Parent Teacher Conferences were held in conjunction with College Night and Financial Aid Night.
Technology Director, Brian Puthoff, submitted the following report:
Online ADA Compliance – In an effort to better accommodate our community members, especially those with disabilities, we are making an increased, concerted effort to ensure our district’s online presence is more accommodating for users with disabilities. Right now, our efforts are centered around making our district’s website more usable by electronic screen readers. This will, in turn, allow individuals will low vision, or no vision, to better utilize our site. So far, the steps we have taken include ensuring that our site’s color schemes make our content disguisable and easy to read, we have begun providing links for our downloadable forms that include versions that are compliant with all computerized screen readers, we’ve provided training to our video production students to ensure that they now begin to include videos that are subtitled and captioned and we have begun the process of training our staff on including “alternate text” with pictures when they upload them to our site.
Chromebooks – New Bremen Schools are starting to look at utilizing the increasingly popular Chromebook technology in our district. With Chromebooks, which are an internet-only based version of a laptop, we can provide our students will less-expensive devices for accessing the internet and all that it has to offer. Because each Chromebook is cheaper, we can put this technology in the hands of more students. These less-expensive devices will pave the way for a one-to-one initiative in the high grades within our district. In the past, New Bremen has utilized a hybrid-model of providing devices to students for class time. This model has been very effective at ensuring that all of our students have access to technology at the times when they need it, without the district needing to incur the costs of the true one to one program. For right now, we are providing a classroom set of Chromebooks at the high school to be used as a “pilot” project to learn more about how we can implement these devices into our curriculum.

Treasurer Recommendations
1.	Approve the Regular School Board Meeting minutes from October 11, 2017.
2.	Approve the General Fund Paid Bills . . . . . .	   $  	85,696.42	 
3.	Approve the Lunchroom Fund Paid Bills . . .    $  	  9,681.08	 
4.	Approve the increase to estimated revenue and appropriations to the OHSAA Tournament Fund by $300.00 due to New Bremen High School hosting a sectional tournament game in volleyball.
5.	Increase anticipated revenues & appropriations for Title I by $299.95 for a new total of $63,238.39, decrease Title II by $78.02 for a new total of $15,603.06, and increase Title III by $260.60 for a new totalof $1258.02.
6.	The New Bremen Backpack Plus committee has made a donation New Bremen Schools to assist with unpaid school fees, lunches, and nursing supplies.  In addition, over the summer months, this committee organizes an opportunity for community members to donate towards purchasing supplies for the upcoming school year for students in need.   We thank you for your generosity and support of our students!

17-97		Motion by Bertke, second by Suchland that the board approve the motions contained in the Treasurer’s recommendations as presented. Upon the call of the roll, the vote was as follows: Bertke, yes;  Busse, yes; Paul, yes; Suchland, yes. Motion Carried.

Superintendent Recommendations

1.	Board Policy Revisions:
a.	EBBA- The District provides employee automated external defibrillator (AED) training in accordance with the State law. 
b.	JFG- Adds the term administrators/ "designees"  for interrogations and searches. 
c.	JFG-R - Adds the term administrators/ "designees" for interrogations and searches.

2.	Resolution in Support of House Bill 216

A Resolution of the New Bremen Board of Education
in Support of Ohio Senate Bill 216

WHEREAS, the increasing burden of state mandated regulations on Ohio’s public schools has reached a critical point.

WHEREAS, many of these regulations waste valuable time and money that should spent on teaching and learning. 

WHEREAS, we desire to work in collaboration with our appointed and elected officials to address the accumulation of problems being generated by these regulations.

WHEREAS, Senate Bill 216 (Ohio Public School Deregulation Act) has been introduced to addresses some of these problems by:
•	eliminating barriers to employing high quality teachers,
•	eliminating the unnecessary duplication of tests used to assess student learning,
•	providing a more accurate method (paper test) of assessing a third-grade student’s ability to read and write versus their technical ability on the high stakes third grade reading test,
•	requiring the national testing service to provide meaningful information for teachers to use to help children learn and grow,
•	restoring the rights of parents to have some control over their children’s attendance,
•	restoring the ability of school boards to enforce education policy that meets local community needs,
•	consolidating and streamlining state reporting requirements to reduce time expended on unproductive paperwork, and  
•	providing relief from other mandates that have accumulated over time.

BE IT RESOLVED, that the New Bremen Board of Education, being duly elected and acting as representatives of a legal and statutorily independent local board, supports Senate Bill 216 as a start to increasing efficiency and effectiveness in the state system of education. 

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that a copy of this resolution be sent to all members of the Ohio Senate Education Committee. 

17-98		Motion by Busse, second by Bertke that the board approve the items contained in the Superintendent Recommendations as presented.  Upon the call of the roll, the vote was as follows: Busse, yes; Paul, yes; Suchland, yes;  Bertke, yes.  Motion carried.  
	
Informational Items
A.	Cafeteria Data
The following number of students were approved for Free or Reduced Lunches:
  		   Year        	Free	     Reduced	            Total        
2007-08	 46		23		  69
2008-09	 64		29		  93
2009-10	 79		43		122
2010-11	 92		17		109
2011-12	 84		14		  98
2012-13	 60		24		  84
2013-14	 68		24		  92
2014-15	 60		  8		  68
2015-16	 46		10		  56
2016-17	 43		13		  56
2017-18	 45		 0		  45

B.  Health Insurance Costs
The Mercer/Auglaize Benefit Trust Trustees reported the following premium costs for the 2018 plan year:

Plan	Single	Family	% Change	
Alt PPO Plan	$720.12	$1,767.33	+8.0%	
HSA Plan	569.91	1,506.04	  0.0%	
Dental Plan	36.98	99.42	+5.0%	

C. Transportation Data
Each year, the Ohio Department of Education requests various transportation information pertaining to the opening of school.  The following information is shared with the board to compare transportation data with past school years.  
	                         	2011-12	2012-13	2013-14	2014-15	2015-16	2016-17	
Daily Miles Driven    	193	182	183	207	191	168	
Daily Students Trans.	202	201	261	256	240	232	
Yrly Cost For Trans.	$169,761	$176,541	$167,078	$191,298	$192,595	$208,056	
Maint. And Repair       	  $36,760	$38,007	$31,987	$33,933	$38,633	$45,044	
Fuel Costs                   	  $28,484	$30,781	$31,264	$25,323	$18,000	$20,947	
Actual Annual Miles -  from odom.   	  51,041	49,786	46,170	52,227	  48,998	50,293	

D.	There will be a public hearing at the December school board meeting to discuss school calendar options.

E.	Christmas gathering – location to be determined.  The December Board meeting will begin at 6:30 p.m.

F.	The board election race is very close and will be determined on November 21 when the results are official.

17-99              	Motion by Bertke, second by Paul to adjourn to executive session for the purposes of Property Purchase or Sale and Investigation of Charges or Complaints Against an Employee, Official, or Student at 7:56 p.m.  Upon the call of the roll, the vote was as follows: Suchland, yes; Bertke, yes; Busse, yes; Paul, yes. Motional Carried.

17-100               Motion by Bertke, second by Suchland to return to regular session at 8:54 p.m. Motion carried unanimously.
		
17-101             Motion by Suchland, second by Paul to adjourn the meeting at 8:55 p.m. Motion carried unanimously.

				
			President							Treasurer