Hamilton Southeastern Schools students return to class Wednesday, Aug. 5, and Superintendent Dr. Matt Kegley heads into the day with a longer list of changes than most opening days bring — a new state phone law, redrawn attendance boundaries, fees that families haven’t paid in years, and a referendum question waiting on the November ballot.
Kegley sat down for the latest LarryInFishers.com podcast to walk through all of it.
A familiar building, a new chair
Kegley has spent two decades in HSE, most of it as a building principal and the last few years in the central office. He said the start-of-year rhythm is familiar, but the vantage point isn’t.
“A lot of the beginning of the year activities were things that I knew of or knew about,” he said. “I wasn’t maybe always directly involved with those things.” Now the messages going out to families and staff start with him.
Staffing, he said, is “in pretty good shape,” with a few outlier positions still being monitored.
Phones off, all day
The state’s new bell-to-bell device law covers phones, smartwatches and personal earbuds — not just during class, but through lunch and passing periods. HSE has its own rules layered on top for middle and high schools.
Kegley said the first phase is education, not enforcement. Devices are to be stored in lockers or backpacks and kept inaccessible, with individual buildings and even individual classrooms setting their own procedures. Violations fall under progressive discipline, with consequences escalating on repeat offenses.
“We acknowledge it’s going to be an adjustment for our students and our families,” he said. “The silver lining is we’re all in this together.”
Rethinking screen time
Asked about the growing body of research questioning how far schools went with one-to-one devices, Kegley said the technology “was never meant to be the vehicle for instruction” — it was meant to be a tool. He acknowledged that textbook publishers moving to digital-only resources has pushed student screen time up.
The district put written caps on screen time for its youngest grades this past spring and early summer. HSE is also in the final year of phasing out “bring your own device” at the upper grades; after this year, every student will be on a district-issued device, which Kegley said gives the district more control over what can appear on it.
New boundaries
New attendance boundaries take effect this year. The final lines were set in December, and Kegley said the spring was spent getting information to affected families and having buildings do intentional outreach — especially at the elementary level — so students changing schools could visit and meet staff before the first day.
Fees are back
Consumable material fees and athletic participation fees return this year. Kegley said the district stopped charging for essentially everything when the state took over textbook funding, and absorbing those costs became a financial burden. Consumables are items students use up and can’t be passed to the next student — a novel a student marks up, clay in an art class.
“We don’t want any of those fees to interfere with participation,” he said, directing families facing hardship to contact their athletic director or building for one-on-one help.
$7.7 million in cuts
The fees are part of a broader budget reduction package of roughly $7.7 million approved this spring. That included reduction-in-force notices to 18 teachers, all of whom were offered other positions in the district.
Outside the classroom, HSE consolidated services in its technology department, eliminated some bus routes — partly enabled by redistricting — and trimmed support staff and administrative positions. Kegley’s own former position of deputy superintendent was not backfilled when he became superintendent.
Class size targets moved up slightly. Kegley said the district is taking a conservative approach to staffing until it sees who actually shows up in August, since families who move away don’t always notify the district.
Why the referendum is back
HSE will ask voters in November to replace the referendum approved in 2023 — a distinction Kegley stressed repeatedly.
“It’s not in addition to,” he said. “We’re actually asking to replace what we have with another rate.”
The driver is the state’s new property tax law, which pushes assessed valuation down. At the current rate, that means less money flowing to the district — a decline that continues for roughly six to eight years before recovering. Kegley described the math this way: if the value you apply the rate against keeps shrinking, the rate has to change to produce the same revenue. Whether an individual taxpayer pays more or less depends on their situation.
If the measure fails, the 2023 referendum stays in place, but the district projects a shortfall of about $4 million in the first year and $6 million in the second — roughly $10 million over two years. Because state law now limits referendum questions to even-numbered years, HSE couldn’t go back to voters until 2028. Over eight years, the projected gap is about $45 million.
Rebuilding with the teachers association
Kegley said he has been meeting with association leadership since his interim appointment and through the summer, including early conversations about what bargaining will look like. Last year’s cycle produced no raise for teachers, and insurance increases left many with less take-home pay.
Echoing CFO Tim Brown’s comments on a recent podcast, Kegley said he is cautiously optimistic about this cycle — and noted that no employee group in the district received a raise last year, not just teachers.
Innovate 2028
Year two of the freshman seminar course begins at both high schools, with last year’s freshmen now starting the three-course sequence in their chosen career network.
The welding program has expanded, with more bays and the Level 2 certification now offered in-house rather than sending students to J. Everett Light Career Center. Students can earn the full slate of Ivy Tech dual credits alongside work-based learning. Kegley said a similar model is in the works for construction trades, and that building out guaranteed experiences in grades six through eight is a priority over the next few years.
Also mentioned
Kegley praised departing operations chief Brian Rausch, who has left to join local construction management firm Meyer Najem, calling him “an invaluable piece to our team.” The position has been reposted at the executive director level rather than assistant superintendent, with some of Rausch’s duties redistributed.
He also flagged a new transportation app, test-driven in the spring and launching this fall, that lets families track how far their student’s bus is from the stop.
Before the Bell — the district’s annual back-to-school celebration, with all schools represented — runs Thursday evening, July 30, from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.
The LarryInFishers Podcast is sponsored by Citizens State Bank.
Listen to the podcast at this link or the link below.
