Hamilton Southeastern Schools will ask its school board this month to authorize an online auction of district-owned land at 136th Street and Prairie Baptist Road, and Chief Financial Officer Tim Brown says the proceeds will go toward an $8 million debt the district’s health insurance trust owes its operations fund.

Brown outlined the timeline for the school board’s Finance and Facilities Committee, telling members the district had not previously said publicly where the money would land.

“We will use that money to spin down the debt in our health insurance trust,” Brown said, adding that a sale would cover roughly a quarter of the balance.

How the auction works

Because the district is disposing of real estate, state law requires a public hearing. HSE advertised in two publications this week for a hearing at the board’s Sept. 23 meeting. No action is scheduled at next week’s meeting.

At the Sept. 23 meeting, the board will consider a resolution authorizing disposal of the property through auction. If it passes, Metzinger Auction Group — the firm that has handled HSE’s recent bus auctions — will begin advertising immediately and open live online bidding. The auction is scheduled to close Oct. 21. The board would then vote Oct. 28 on whether to approve closing the sale.

The district is using a two-step appraisal process, an appraisal and a review, and received the first appraisal this week. Brown said HSE will not sell below the appraised value and will make the figures public once both are complete.

Costs to the district are limited to the two appraisals and, if a buyer brings a broker, a 1 percent fee to the auctioneer. If the buyer has no broker, that fee is charged to the buyer instead. The auctioneer is also covering advertising, which Brown said is not typical.

“If we get to a number that we’re not comfortable with when it’s done, we abort, and there’s no harm, no foul,” he said.

The farmer currently renting the property has been notified the lease will end Dec. 31.

Brown said the money would be a one-time deposit into the operations fund, reducing the amount the self-funded benefit trust owes it. Committee members pressed on the mechanics — the trust borrows from operations when it runs short — and Brown said the practical effect is the same either way. It will not lower employee premiums for 2027, he said, because the district is planning to fund the trust for next year rather than pay down debt faster.

Ten buses to auction, nine to the scrap yard

The committee also previewed a consent-agenda resolution disposing of 19 school buses two different ways.

Ten will go to auction as HSE shrinks a fleet sized for a larger student body, according to HSE Transportation Director Zach McKinney. The group includes six Blue Bird conventional 54-passenger buses, two Thomas rear-engine 78-passenger transit buses and one 72-passenger Thomas C2, all diesel. Recent auctions brought $5,250 and then $4,500 per bus, against a trade-in value of about $3,500, though the district’s transportation director cautioned that the same buyer has won the last several rounds and the market may be saturating. As with the land, HSE sets a minimum — trade value — and keeps any bus that does not meet it. Mechanics are stripping reusable parts for inventory first.

The other nine buses will be destroyed. The district’s clean heavy-duty grant for electric buses requires the diesels they replace be taken off the road permanently: a hole drilled through the engine block, documentation filed with the Indiana Department of Environmental Management, then a scrap company hauls them away.

Nine electric buses are being built in High Point, North Carolina, with delivery expected in mid-to-late September. The chargers are installed, but the district is waiting on Duke Energy to bring power to them. HSE has operated one electric bus since 2022 and has had one repair, an air compressor covered under warranty.