already any questions thank you all in favor all right bye thank you item 9B um board resolution utility easement so we got a request from Arizona public service um they if you know I think it's on um One West and one North there's a substation there that all the electric equipment surrounded by a fence right on the corner there they are running an underground line my understanding underground line from there North and they would like to put in a box on the corner of two North and one West that's on District property so they'd like an easement there to put in a underground vault but there's going to be some above ground equipment there as well I spoke to Chris Sheriff to make sure that would interfere with our Paving project and it would not um you know ultimately down the road we may need the electricity that they're providing the the power the wiring to right so um if we do our project so um working with APS right away person they came up with and there's actually a revised there were some language issues that actually I want to thank Peter for catching so there's a revised easement agreement um I ran this past our attorney so what we're asking you to do now as a board is through the resolution authorize the sale of that easement to APS I would actually sign this so Penny would sign the resolution if it's approved that would basically authorize me to follow through on the easement agreement and execute it they've asked us to hold off on the execution until we hear back from them don't know why but that's been the the request from APS so all you're doing is approving the board resolution that would allow me down the road to execute this this agreement any questions nope um too bad we can't negotiate like a reduction in I can't tell you uh thanks to our attorney um it says in here that they want so it's 43.43 4 343 is what they'll pay us for this oh a lot of land um they had actually it was half that because they said that we don't use that land anyway and so it wasn't worth as much so our attorney negotiated an extra 20 21.50 give or take um and actually doubled the amount so we do get a little bit of and there's some actually there's some requirements on how we spend that Mr instant when that happens um we'll watch that yes it has to go into a special fund has to be spent within a certain amount of time on certain things so okay right out of the board resolution for the transfer of public into Arizona public service for use of as a utility easement and I think you have to refer to the corrected corrected copies yes all you're doing is the board resolution oh just the board resolution yeah which there's no change in the in the actual resolution that's what you're approving it's not a supplemental doctor go sign the correct yeah all right thank you second executive okay all in favor aye thank you okay this next one is interesting I've read some of the comments before and I was hoping someone was going to turn them off item 9C social media comment section s Larry versus the Board um I wrote a recommendation superintendent show based on its information we discovered with regards to our using of social media to communicate uh to the community uh one of the things that we've discovered which I think we knew but we just didn't know quite uh enough of the details was that anything we post on social media is a matter of public record so if we were to get a request to provide that information we would have to do so at a timely manner one of the hooks that we found was especially with Facebook or we are also responsible for the comedies in regards to our social media posts um unfortunately Facebook was not designed with community outreach necessarily in mind and if a member of our community or anybody who was following you know made a comment on the opposed to we posted on Facebook and then decided to remove that comment we as the school district are still responsible in that public record request to provide those comments even if they've been removed we have no control over that um so we were kind of given two choices either we pay a company on the outside to Archive everything we do with social media Facebook and whatever else we're doing now or could we do it in the future or we simply turn off comments from speaking with Matt Santos who is our information officer we don't use the comments we don't comment we don't reply to comments um it's just it's just done something we used but we also again with transparency as we've talked about earlier we don't want to just flip the switch in the dark of knowing that some members out there may view that uh comment removal completely different than what our actual intent is of doing this I think in a year ago when we had all the conversations of how school was going to be oh boy that would have been a very interesting Community problem so we figured this would be a great time to do it um and just from from anything we're doing now anything we could be doing down the line it's just to remove that that makes any sort of public records request that we have to do in the future obtainable without having to pay I want to say it was about 300 a month on the low end to have somebody archive all that information and I'm not I read our Facebook page every day but I'm not sure how it works terribly there's a line underneath the main topic that says comments is that what would disappear from it or how would this happen it's it's an interesting from speaking with Matt when it comes to Facebook there is there is no real way to remove the comment section but what we ended doing is blocking keywords which I can't remember how many he's I know he's done this for the town of cheetah Valley as well where you basically block words like the you know very common simple words so ultimately if anybody does comment odds are it's going to fall into that category it just will not allow a person to post it will basically filter them as if you were maybe using profanity and which is what that intent was for we just block very common basic English words so so the lion will still be there just that nobody will get it yeah it'll pretty much deny them so yeah it like I said it becomes a very tricky tricky tool but we all we know that Facebook is a great way to help you know reach our community which does not it does not prevent people from taking our post and sharing it and then commenting later but that's no longer our responsibility because it's on somebody else's uh yes yeah which I think social media can be so great in some ways but then like I I saw something that I thought we had done great as a board and then I saw the comments and I'm like okay that got taken the complete wrong way we're trying to be good people here and it got flipped upside down yeah to authorize the removal of the comment section of any and all social media platforms that the district currently uses or will use in the future thank you item 10A State Testing results Cindy good evening we have two agenda items on a row the first one is just me talking a bit about this is what state assessment results look like and then the second agenda item is the principles telling you that this is what they look like this is what it means to us and this is what we're doing inside our buildings you may remember in the headings on a couple columns are are off in the tables um over the last one year in covid we didn't take the test so if we go backwards this last year we had tests that counted the year prior were field tests of a new test the year prior we didn't take test because of covid the Year prior we had a different test because we've had three different state tests in a matter of basically a five-year testing cycle discounting the year that nobody tested because nobody was at school so to kind of put that in context it's really hard to talk about what do Trends look like over time because the tests are quite different from one another over time and the new tests were a significant departure in the way questions are worded and you know that type of thing from the test that the students had taken in the past so all that to say it's it is like this long jumbled up confusing thing to try to follow this trail of what is there isn't Arizona doing now um and so our current assessments are called aasa Arizona Science ACT Aspire and act grades three through eight take the aasa English language arts and math assessment cvhs grade nine takes ACT Aspire 11th groups AZT we've also included Arizona science tests which are taken in grades four and eight in high school or five and eight in high school but if we try to compare them to science from before it was grade four eight in school so now it's a different grade level too so it's gotten super duper Goofy and then one of the things that I know we were all really discouraged about was um four years ago Arizona quit providing county level results so you know one thing we used to really look at was how are our students doing compared to really their peers in the county since most of the districts in the county are rural districts how are kids doing in rural districts so they removed county level results there is no way to obtain them and so now when we look how are we doing it's compared to everybody else in the whole state and so that's also you know not always the best measure so another thing the high school started you approved the high school participating in Act as an alternate assessment four years ago for really five maybe not the year we didn't test um and because we were sort of anticipating that the state would choose act as the high school exit test if you will as it turned out that was the truth and one of the things that I thought was pretty interesting is that our students have done quite well and have really pinged at the state average which we would have paid significantly below maybe in times past so I think that was a it was a good call on your part um a good foresight on your part to say let's take this risk and let's become understanding of this testing model and I think you'll see that that has had the intended results when you guys made that decision a while back so all that to say let's flip the page all the pretty boxes the ACT spring 11th grade results one thing I want to talk about because Nancy Hudson who's a reporter for The Courier Alden asks a very very interesting question and her question was really more like a statement Cindy can you explain this to me and so I said okay what do you want me to explain to you and she said when we look at ACT scores for the State of Arizona they're significantly lower scores than what act reports as Nationwide score averages how come Arizona is doing so poorly and I said well they're not when act reports the National scores those are the scores reported from when a student goes to a testing center with the intent of taking and obtaining a high score on a college entrance exam right so it's like the top 15 right so act is reporting scores nationally only for students who want to use their at ACT score for college admission Arizona administers a test everybody except for one percent of our most severely and profoundly disabled students so in Arizona special education students language learner every single kid save a few are taking the test so it it is comparing it's not even comparing apples to oranges it's comparing like apples to automotives it's like not even the same thing ever the same thing so that's something I want to clarify um just to help us understand that looking at it from an Arizona standpoint is fine if we compare news stories about National Ace because act reported Nationwide the scores have slipped a bit as a result of covid and that the average score was something you know in the mid-20s well you have to remember that that's only kids who are intending to use it for college so I just wanted to mention that because it's um confusing and misleading I think um because even though it's the same test not the same people will take it in both scenarios so when we look at the testing years these are the the average scores and something that I think is pretty interesting as you go forward we are you know like in English we are pinging very closely to the state in math we are campaigning extremely close to the state in Reading as well the only place where we're you know pinging with a little bit more spread of course is in science so overall when you look at that our composite score 16.7 compared to an Arizona average of 17.7 I want to throw in one more thing as of this morning we're up to 130 language Learners from something like some different countries now so like every day like new right from all these all these places you never thought like my Gmail right it came from Russia to China um anyway so another interesting part of that is our special education population for high school we have like 147 of our students at the high school are out of our 800 our special education students you can do the math pretty quick on that district-wide we're sitting over right about 21 percent sped which is much higher than the state average so to say I am has been given our student Mobility rate and other things I would tell you that 16.7 compared to a 16.7 in a state is an exceptional achievement exceptional achievement for our high school so I wanted to point that out uh ACT Aspire was the first time our kids have ever taken it so you can see that um it's a very interesting thing when you look at like in English when you look at the averages for proficient and highly proficient one of the places that I noticed where we could use the most work is the number of Highly proficient kids is really working on with those students who are darn good students who need just a nudge to be just a bit better to perform just a bit better and so those are some of the places where I saw it was that nudge with the proficient and highly proficient it wasn't necessarily as much at the bottom end although in Reading we still we're appear to have a little bit of struggle there but keep in mind like this year I think it'll be very profound with over 57 we're probably up to 16 language Learners at the high school who will have to take the test so those are some challenges for the high school and we've been miss wolf will talk about some things we're doing to address it but those are some of the things where I thought we could do even better would be on um pushing some of those the kids that are on that bubble sufficient to highly proficient so that was something I noticed so before I rip on to even more rubidine results um did you have questions about act or ACT Aspire actually I had no idea of the difference in the people taking these tests to until you just said it now yeah right yeah it's a huge difference and so and one thing that we did we switched to the pre-act for all 10th graders we pay for it's not required but that way um we have ACT Aspire and ninth grade pre-act and 10th grade act in 11th grade and we also use ACT practice materials throughout the school year to help kids become comfortable with the way the questions are are asked because that's a lot of the testing game is how the questions are asked understanding that so any other questions about that one okay on to the next round so when we look at grades three through eight um we see some results like you know there were some places where we were disappointed uh strongly disappointed in our results there are other places where we've bumped around and dropped below the state average in the last couple of years and we're starting to see some rebounding which is what I found the most encouraging is that we're rebounding even in a new testing format and a testing format that's quite different so those were some of the things that I would tell you um but you'll definitely see when you look you definitely can see green is where we performed higher than the state red is where we've performed below the state and you can see that we have um in sixth grade and eighth grade some pretty significant items to address well don't don't you also feel that I mean I just was watching a thing that was talking about after covid you know we took our kids out of school for how long I mean I can't help but look at the results and we have a lot of the Reds directly the year after Kobe exactly and it's it's a rolling effect yeah so you figure like and I think especially about math right that you build on a skill every single year and you develop like a greater understanding of mathematical formulas you apply them in different ways and when you miss important instruction then how can you be like you fall further and further behind the expected level of achievement and you have to remember that those are the tests are written for expected levels of achievement to show where their kids grown a Year's growth or not and so when we see those numbers below that we know that a kid isn't growing and that's a compound effect um but the principals are going to talk to you about some of the things they're doing to help make up some of that difference so I think the good news is the numbers show that at least there you know it is improved I think that that says something but I definitely think it does something when we see the numbers so low directly a year after coping absolutely let's see those are the Red Bull is in comparison to Performance lower than the state average and a lot of the state was a lot of the States was the same that does a test same chance and we also had in Chino Valley we had large student turnover we had students who were kept home for longer than normal so it was more erratic even than some places in the state and then we've had a lot of student growth because people grew dissatisfied with the way maybe like our neighboring large state to our West was handling being back in school so they came here so the kids are all goofed up in progress right right and they're like super goofed up in forward progress so then on the last and this is the one that I would tell you was a little like I would say I did get a little head scratching involved involved in this one the um science results at the high school or Standalone science tests for Arizona Science are significantly lower than how our students performed on Act and I'm thinking you know they changed the test and which tells me when our students ping at the state level in science on act that tells me we're doing a good job and when I look at like what happened with the high school results on the Standalone science test like they don't match I mean two different groups of kids taking the test but doesn't make sense and so I think we need to give it another year to see how that one really percolates out because it doesn't it didn't really make sense and then the switch testing fourth grade to fifth grade Arizona did in general so those were just a few of my observations I want to talk to you a little bit about principles I've spent a lot of time talking about those times lots of time talking about it and you're going to hear from them in a couple of minutes they've come up with some pretty solid plans for the way that they're working um with teachers and students and that's the other thing I want to remind you of during the covered years we turned over almost 60 certified staff out of about 115.
so is this resource uh commendable resource is it a standard nowadays or um there's many different resources that are used in the county um I will tell you that the first year we used it was a very our very first year of implementation and then we went right into the pandemic and didn't touch it right so I don't know how we how I can make judgments yet um I want to believe that it's just because we've been inconsistent with our implementation and we're getting back on track now um obviously it's something we'll continue to watch um but the the practices have to be there too the instructional practices have to be in place no resource is going to make any difference if you're not using best practice I mean how how long do do we wait on these I guess is usually Trend date is three years of actually using the resource that's what other districts that's when they start to make judgments about whether changes are needed yeah because I mean even if teachers weren't using whatever we provided back in 19 our scores were still better than they were when they're still not providing using the resources that were provided were provided they were still better you see I guess yeah yes I completely understand and I like I said I think we need to continue to monitor it um we know research tells us small group instruction but what we're hearing in a lot of our classrooms is they're struggling to get to the small group and so that's something we're working on and actually that was part of the discussion today is really looking at their actual time period for each set each class and how can we break down that 68 minutes so that you're doing the mini lesson and you're moving in a small group and you're providing that reteaching and and what is actually being covered in iar is actually taught before the kids take the test would probably be that's critical correct if you had to make other adjustments to um you know some of the other subjects same type of thing like they were saying they didn't get to things or they ran out of time so then we started looking at that pacing for each unit and are they spending too much time in one unit and not enough in the other and how do we make those adjustments so something we're working on across the board frankly and then the the whole other issue is the um the students approach to the exam you know like uh just if we're gonna put all of our stock and this data then we've got to make sure that we are getting the best out of them when they take it and yeah it's hard it is but you I mean if you look back if they're like the eighth grade's previous scores at some point they were trying because they were excelling so yeah and I'm so I'm not putting it on this other than their characters have yeah had to have changed as well yeah I mean not that it's it's yeah yeah I'm not putting on the students either it's more like it's our entire uh I think definitely I can say in 21 when they came in to take the tests and during the pandemic we heard uh yeah 21 it was more like I remember it was kind of like this is ridiculous why are the kids yeah but even at that point they did it better than they did this right yeah and then last year so it was like we didn't really harp on it last year yeah and they performed good and then this year yeah that's abysmal I mean yeah no for sure 10 of kids in the high school with literal being able to and whatever literary analysis means we're saying 10 of kids in the high school for that right that's what I'm reading here because yeah I mean I know we spent the summer talking about how important those exams were going to be this year and so I know the teachers knew the emphasis going into it but it's still yeah the exact well this this is like from last year since last yeah this data was this test was taken in uh April March or March from last year okay yeah and so I we received this data this summer so and then it's now finally getting out there so our hope is that the test is taken this March yeah that we're going to see some some up upkeep from there what is the time State puts out but we'll be doing it I can pull it up we pushed it back yeah we did push it back we pushed it we were doing it before spring break and because we didn't want it to back up to map but Dr Patrick and I talked about let's just push it back as far as we can so we can make sure we can get as much covered as we were finding in the areas that we weren't getting to so we just pushed it back to the very end of the window we've got um April 3rd through April 18th it's toward the end flash or didn't we make them do I'm not familiar with how we're working on starting a schedule yet we're working on that and uh Josh I know is working on that yeah they want to do it there's things they want to do one issue is that when we it's it's complicated but if you start the tests seventh grade math tests that day you have to give every student that test that day you can't uh you can't give some of them the test one day and some of them test the next day so there's that puts a wrench in some of our scheduling plans but we're still working on that piece the teachers prefer to give the test to their kids in their class so we're going to try to work that out but it's going to be hard but we're trying to attack the environment issues Dr hetovitz is attacking the instructional and the curriculum alignment issues it was hard last year too because like third grade they only took or the year before I should say only 100 students 117 students took the test and then last year was 161 so fourth grade 108 took it and then last year 186 took it so it's hard because we're not necessarily comparing apples to oranges but either way the data is speaking to us so we have to respond I do have uh I didn't put it in the packet because I don't know how much the other schools want us to share it but I do have a date I can share it with you as board members anybody can get it online too if they want to do the research but I do have data from local schools I can share with you and um for the most part we trended about the same as the as when I say local there's a Circle right around us so anybody that's touching our boundaries pretty much is where this data is and and everybody trended about the same um it wasn't good I mean but uh the issue is going to be where we go from here and uh it's it's uh it's been the highest thing on my list since uh June since I saw the data because it's really disappointing where we're at sources I think we're set we are set yeah yeah I think we're set we really are we're in a good spot any other yeah any other resources that teachers ask for like we've had some requests for leveled text because like for example third grade teachers don't have some of the lower level techs that they're seeing students come in reading so we've purchased those using grant money it's been fabulous to have that um so if there was a silver bullet like do this everybody be doing it it's just not yeah the Roe it works with all sorts of different districts in Lake County and a lot of the same work they're having to rewrite you know some of the assessments to make sure they're more rigorous and match iar and then align our instruction backwards from the assessment so it's definitely a work in progress but I think again you know school-wide is a resource so if teachers ask me this all the time well our curriculum isn't at school-wide I said the curriculum is the standards we are teaching the standards you are responsible for teaching those in using a resource called school-wide is what the district has adopted um and school that doesn't align we pull other resources absolutely we've got newsella we've got common lit so we are strategically using things as we feel like school-wide doesn't line up well with something IR is assessing then they've pulled other resources to line up but balanced literacy is really the model that we're looking for um so shared reading small group reading you know small group writing lessons with students that's what we're looking for instructionally so that if we can make some tweaks there and make sure we're being consistent um that small group instruction is so powerful so same thing in math with workshop model it's a small group responding to student needs as the the data and formative assessments is telling us we need to so any other questions any questions very good questions thank you appreciate it all right I'm going to jump down to uh item G iasb resolutions committee report Vivian will be attending Resolute the uh I've lost that what's that called delegation delegate yeah so there are um there are free I only put in the packet some the resolutions I think are going to be up for vote again uh the first one is on exhibit 12 fun actually this one's kind of interesting I don't know if you had a chance to look at this or not but the fund balances Miller ratio adjustment the reason it's interesting is do you remember last year how because we had a fund balance that was more than double our in our o m is more than double our uh we had to pay uh we had some taxpayers come after us for that this is asking to increase that from two a factor of two to three so we'd have to have triple in order to get fined for that and uh so other districts must have had that issue looks like it was submitted by home or Community Consolidated District but my recommendation there would be to vote Yes get that thing increased but we're okay for anywhere in the near future but the next one was alternate fueled School Bus funding I don't know if anybody has any any uh actually they recommended not to adopt that which is what I didn't either I didn't get that either caused the Diesels who knows what that's going to be next year maybe they're worried that they'll take away from the current fund we receive or is that state money not federal state state I don't know I was confused when I read that because I didn't see that coming and in the end they said we recommend not to adopt it I don't have an opinion on that really yes they don't like me for real you know firearm dealer location any strong opinions on that one seems like they're trying to trying to yeah and that was Mundelein so only 1500 feet to 500.
um we don't have the staff to do those types of things so can I ask another question all right um so this isn't something that we put out to bid like we put out other contracted services um so I guess my question is why not um and I don't know that that's a question for you guys um and then also did you have this budgeted in I know we've heard presentations when we went with this one to one did was this a class that was budgeted in to our projections yeah we've been looking at Solutions like this for the last couple of years and uh because we haven't been able to act upon it immediately we have the proof of value back in April we put it in our budget and yes it is approved for this year's budget okay thanks the history just to answer the other like why did it not go out to bid it basically comes down to technology where we have a very specific environment and we have a very specific service level that we require in order to keep that up and running and to integrate and the qualifications of the company so the state of Illinois does not require us to bid or go with the lowest lowest bid into analogy but like you heard these guys say we did we did have them go out to multiple vendors so rather than just taking one that we liked we had them come up with a matrix they did only go with two but I know they have been dealing with me too I also in a previous District had done this with cyber security evaluation with three other companies So based on where the three other companies plus the two that we did I was very comfortable with what they were adopting I think the big thing too is um and I don't know if it's quite so clear but none of the other companies or Solutions are autonomous this will actually develop a traffic picture and a profile of what's normal and automatically make decisions if if it requires another level of service then it will upgrade to Fortis who will then watch that traffic and find out what's going on or why did the automated traffic monitoring key this or flag this and then Fortis will contact us so there's a there's a 24 7 365 automation which is absolutely phenomenal and the price difference between this and the others is not that big of a difference so okay but my you answered partially a question that made me think of this follow-up which is have you worked with one of these two or both of these in previous districts uh no I've worked with I've worked with two others that were not very good okay thanks so kind of sorry kind of answered my question and I don't know how to ask it without just asking it um the cost difference between this and what we're currently doing uh that's what's interesting is uh at this level we we don't have a system at this level and that's why when these gentlemen were talking to me about their budget and budget needs we ended up building this into the budget because we did not have a solution they actually told me about it the first year and we could not fit it into the budget the second year we were able to fit it into the budget we'll continue to do that as we move forward please do and the history of this company like we're confident that they are going to be around and we're not going to have situations like we got with some other stuff we got going on yes both companies have been around one of them was 30 plus years in existence so they're not going anywhere and the other company is very uh well uh yeah exactly can I ask a question about that no so how I realize this is more cyber security that maybe it touches on the grading part like so how if we pick it now and then we have to change our grading system how do we know that it will still interface with the new are you talking about you're talking about Tyler this is that's a different item Tyler's a hot mess right now yeah right I'm just asking if this like listen when I hear Ai and traffic like I'm starting to think you know honestly this is It's a good question but this is our environment in terms of switches and networking and servers not so much the cloud-based this is not how Facebook finds out what it does monitor the traffic units to those cloud-based Solutions but it doesn't matter if we have one system or another in terms of student information or Finance systems it's going to monitor the types of traffic that is going across our district to those Cloud bases don't we I'm assuming we do but um don't we require our SAS Solutions and cloud-based solutions to have this type of security and and where are we gonna maybe I shouldn't ask that so but so that's that's built in the contracts this is just additional yeah and that's for like hacking and uh and you know we're talking like ransomware and all the other cyber attacks that could happen um or the types of traffic okay service so there's like these guys set up so not just there's not just cloud-based a ton of right that's what they said across the district they're monitoring what's going from Murphy to uh trauber what's going from trauber to the wheatlands across our district as well but didn't we have an issue at the beginning of the year where is some of the some of the nut tech classes but some of them here couldn't get their computers to interface with what we had going on some of the Digital Arts and the there was some kind of that's totally different too correct hmm the one thing I know Dominic just your question about how many districts does this uh um does this company deal with um not a not a lot of school districts are using this automated system yet what really impressed me though is when Brent and Kevin showed me the number of uh the number of uh industries that were using this so in terms of Financial and HR and other companies and how they're protecting them their references were top-notch so so yeah so if it's Financial then that's if it's a financial interest very highly regulated and generally anybody doing business with them have to be uh pretty top-notch um okay what was the second second place or the other one what was the cost the cost of the one that um that you bypassed the difference what's different um it was about the main component of the other vendor that we were looking at it was a little bit cheaper probably about 80 percent to 90 percent of uh what the final cost of this was okay I'm sorry but it got time instantly it was missing the autonomous and honestly a lot of their the option for the um security or the sock the security operations center this was more of the software component not so much the services component and there was also some integrative uh components that were missing on the second vendor the first vendor integrated very well with our existing firewall and network infrastructure so it would be able to tie in directly with it and uh stop those threats in its track it'll automatically add rules to our firewall to block certain traffic if it senses that it's malicious and intent so that this solution that we're proposing ties in directly with a lot of our existing components so we wouldn't have to upgrade or purchase additional licenses for it to work so much gentlemen any other questions for 9.2 all right item 9.3 is an informational report on vendor and contracts that Dr petsky and his team have been working on so Dr pesky yeah this is uh an evolution or I guess an artifact of what we've been talking about but it sounds like we got some other questions on this so uh what I'm presenting to the Board of Education um is building on what we did last year uh last year we had about 23 contractual agreements and 60 vendor Partnerships that I brought to the board and this year you know after we had that list and presented to the board I also shared that with our district departments and administration and I said here's what the business office is aware of in terms of the the contracts and vendor relationships that you have is there anything you would like to add to this anything you want to tell me about and we ended up Gathering a lot of other information on there as well so we went from 23 contracts to now we're up to 74.
so it's quite a few people sitting on the floor yeah I knew there's a lot of people down here so that's a very uh Hot Topic with the whole state a lot of people doing different things and so forth but I did talk I want to jump down here we talked a little bit about our tax credits that we received for the simpleplates Child Care Network um and if you notice in our news feed on our website it's soon to be at the two papers uh we kind of started our campaign with the 50 000 donation from Farmers Bank and Trust uh so that's out there our our goal is 250 to consume that 250 000 to consume the 175 000 of tax credits available and that's a 70 tax credit that program so uh and I we can take donations 250 and up I can still get the person will receive a 70 tax credits once we hit 250 000 if we hit that that would be all the tax credits and once we would apply again so uh just letting you know in that program with child care and it's important we have not have our one in Wilson started yet have to wait for licenger I hope we have everything turned in now uh but if you know anybody that wants to do the campaign that's out there we've been advertising that paper and so forth so that's available um on number three student leadership team building presentations you know we had a really good September 29th we went up we stood all the students in the district 712 to Wilson for leadership uh a lady that was there for the regional student council stayed after and an afternoon presented just at USD 112 and I contacted Joe Coles which is a an outstanding speaker uh you can look him up and he is uh his for over 10 years he's been helping teachers students and businesses to improve he talks about leadership team building and we're going to do that Friday in small groups these are skills that will help every student be more successful in school after they graduate no matter where they go to school it doesn't matter I mean it's for the kids to get better be successful I think that's important that we talk about what do we do for kids to make sure they're successful here that's plan for Friday what after their one hour sessions right in one of two grades per station just to be effective um also it is the American Education week and tomorrow uh on behalf of the school board we'll be putting some food into the workrooms of all the buildings that show our appreciation for the work they do all staff so we'll play around putting those into all the workers tomorrow for all staff so if you see anybody or talk to staff I'm sure you thank them for the word for American Education because okay board member reports so yes there were four of us that went to the kasb annual convention at this past weekend because anybody want to talk about anything that they saw or do you want to tell me like your thoughts and talk about it next month or it stores a lot there was a lot there I might just kind of explain the setup for the ksab conference number one you have opportunities to hear I think you have two outstanding keynote speakers along with commissioner Randy Watson was the third one and then you have breakout says Saturday and there were five four four break out until breakout rounds with and then age vendor area to go through and visit with vendors that support schools and education and so forth and see what's out there that also a chance to tour schools let's see what else is in school we're doing in the in this case around the Wichita Area so that's kind of the setup start on Friday it ends on Sunday at noon about a two two-day conference so I went to a tour Rose Hill School District on Friday and it was very cool to see what is out there on what other districts are doing and just it was the whole weekend was a very neat experience to be able to here from different districts you know positives and negatives and just other things going on around the state and Rose Hill um which is a bigger District than us so it was kind of like oh man and then from what I heard later on Hayesville that they when they toured um had a very nice Auditorium that you've been hearing some 3A schools talk about how oh yeah it's just pipe greens you even have a couple of sizes so it was like well at least we're not following events are like drooling over what we were but they had uh a daycare program that I was interested it all started off kind of with what they called that Latchkey program so they had before and after school programs that was daycare-ish except where it was for school age kids so they would use that time to work on homework and homework and re-emphasize what was going on in the classroom if needed and they also just had structured time that for the parents who couldn't um wait to drop off kids and that was probably and I didn't even think to ask you know what their transportation is like but they may not have transportation and so it would really be an issue for some parents to wait until school started they started theirs at 6 15 and had six o'clock for a lot to pick up an evening so that would I mean those would be pretty long hours for people but they charged for it it was a revenue producing program too but that was where it all stemmed off of and then kind of grew into their preschoolage kids and then eventually into infants and toddlers also that they added on a whole new Wing onto their Elementary so that way these kids who are in their daycare got exposed to the environment that they would be going to and it wasn't to expand on the academic progress or anything like that but it was more your kindergarten Readiness things you know your socialization and just recognizing numbers colors having some of that stuff introduced but by having the whole Wing they had their daycare on one side of the hallway and then the preschools on the other side of the hallway and so that way they could just walk them across the hallway and all of their preschools were licensed teachers but then they also had their daycare providers who could just he's easily communicate with it could kind of reinforce things which um being after hearing Mr Lowry talk too and some of the stuff he started at Otis bison definitely I mean on the right track just on a much taller scale but as you know accustomed to our district is where we're headed but they you know said that it was a very positive thing having daycare because not only did it help recruit and help retention but it also lessened their sub days or their days of teachers were out of the classroom because their daycare provider was sick or had vacation or things like that too so I mean that's all definitely things that you know other outside benefits that maybe people should have their attention drawn to and stuff too um and then the keynote speaker that I was phenomenal and very energetic and just really helped you see how as adults we may not always be modeling the most positive behavior for our children and he said how but second graders or kindergarteners last 250 times a day and as adults we laugh like seven to eight pm today it's like what what are you modeling to do your children you know oh grow up and kind of be serious but at that age they don't need to they don't need to internalize any any of that stress and stuff you should be able to enjoy the day and be in the moment and be a hundred percent in the moment and everything so that you're not dividing your attention because he also showed how you know kindergartners are there a hundred percent if you tell them to do something they they put their whole bodies into it they're not sitting there stressing about oh what am I gonna make for supper oh how much money is in my bank account oh any of any of that they're able to be there 100 and if we could just live our lives you know even partially close to that I don't know I was going to add to that yeah hit the nail on the head that we teach them over time to be more like us and sometimes that's not the best thing because we teach them to stress about things that they can't control she also pointed out that what if you say 100 things you worry about in a day and of the 100 things you can only control um there's like three of them you could control seven of them were possible that they would actually happen in three of them you could actually control the outcome and so to learn to teach them to set aside the things that they're worrying about that they can't affect change on so that they're not ruining their day worrying about those things um yeah then this Saturday was was a busy day and a lot to it I had I felt like very interesting um initial my first one I went to foreign yes and the bad thing is they only give you 45 minutes to look yeah which most of the topics needed a couple hours it was hard too because you wanted you wanted to be there 100 percent but that I was also trying to take a few notes but I may even it's as far as that goes kind of developed because I did want to talk a little bit more about some of the breakouts that I want to but I may actually sit down and spend some time and put those keys together because like you said it was until Sunday so between that and watching YouTube's name and get ready for work today I haven't had time to compile my thoughts on all of that but it was very worthwhile and I'd like to attend again next year because scheduling louds and I think it's very beneficial to see all of that I think this is the first year that I can remember that it was full and then they shut off registrations they had over 600 registered and that was the best they said the most they've had since 2008 or something yeah [Music] it was like they didn't have enough seating for everybody a popular speakers yeah they should have given him one of the bigger groups but it was I was I was impressed with figures too thoughtfulness information is presented a lot of good information in the time that you have a lot better okay any open Agenda items okay items for next month I got those are three uh to get more discussion attendance also talk about negotiations represented the other thing that may be on there is the new contract with graduation Alliance and the next events meeting will be in um Holly right for advice oh well my bad Wilson the next meeting was at Wilson the 12th I would entertain a motion further met if there's nothing else okay I thought I'd really want to say motion made Josh Thank You by Allison all those in favor say aye aye hoes did I misspelled Mr Speaker [Music]
send me a quick question huge that's a huge issue um on a normal curve and I'm looking at the highly professional proficient class what would you normally expect what percentage would you normally expect in that particular class and does it differ for English math and science so interestingly enough these are um these are Criterion reference tests however each item is normed which makes it's very confusing so when we think about like a typical ACT test with a national curve equivalent which would be like based how students perform they normally test every so many years they're assigned to stanines and the curve is readjusted so you would think a typical bell curve pattern in Criterion reference tests like the state has each question ends up being Norm individually and you don't know the norming process like the norming process is completely invisible so and they do it I think in order for a question that may have been like a bad question a poorly written you know or something like that confusing to students or two answers or two words to one another but because of that um we don't see that but I would tell you in this case you would want to really see and if you think in terms of normal distribution of student performance sure you'd want to see 15 percent of your students or more in that highly proficient you know you kind of think in terms of like an 85 or higher like that concept the top segment of the bell curve and I I'm just curious uh because we sort of are all over the place and so I would just sort of curious to see from your standpoint what would be the normal expectation 15 okay great that would be reasonable thank you any other questions thank you very much I could tell you that we're going to have stability and State Testing but it hasn't happened yet so we're gonna happen to 20 years Mrs reader and I were like trying to name all the different names of the state testis in our career we forgot and we're like don't you remember that one oh I forgot all about that one um so anyway we'd like to hear from the principals and yeah so we're on to item 10B um targeted student that you achievement goals yeah I want this roll in order okay thank you mites right because Lawrence got this is because they all sent the presentations to Karen whatever you give me any slides okay [Music] well uh good evening so Cindy went over a lot of State Testing but you didn't seek kindergarten through second grade in there that's super sad uh no it's not um so we were included in that however everything we do feeds right into that so we kind of backtrack and look at that looking at the third grade data the fourth grade data and see what we can do at our site to improve and what we need to work on so looking at ours we've set grade level goals we also do pre-assessments so we kind of know where our kids are at what they're coming in at and where we want them to be at the end looking at that exit and then kind of finding that happy ground where we need them to be and what we need to be working on so the goals are included in there we did them for ELA and math and those are our Focus areas um and then you can see the score the breakdown of scores where we have the ELA scores and the pie charts because that's really fun to look at and so that kind of gives us and the pie charts are off of for ELA are off of iced tea which is used to be called Dibbles it's moved down the line it is iced tea but it check it tests all their um Ela so it's composite scores first sound fluency letter naming fluency oral reading fluency puts it all together and then it gives us where they followed into that and what we're looking at moving forward who's um we still read yep red yellow and green that kind of identifies them that goes way back in dates us but the red art at risk the green our Benchmark and the yellow are approaching Benchmark so right now for kindergarten you can see we have 46 that are at risk 70s and that so the numbers on the top are how many kids in each one area um 46 are at risk 76 are approaching Benchmark and 33 are at Benchmark and those are our incoming Kinders and that's based off of our beginning of the year scores um first grade same it's color coding color coding is the same 36 at risk 85 at Benchmark and 17 I'm sorry 85 approaching Benchmark and 79 at Benchmark which is uh I'll just explain that here in a second what I think is happening and then in second grade we have 48 at risk 23 approaching and 59 at benchmark first grade is exciting to me because those are the ones that have had the consistent they had kindergarten the solid year of kindergarten a solitaire so it shows that direct teaching is impacting yes we still have but again we still have kids at risk this tests all of our kids even our special ed so we've already identified a lot of them and so um that scores everybody in there um flipping over to the math scores again we have our work cut out for us but we're going to get there and these are exit scores again based off of the goals that we wrote our we wrote goals based off of this so each one of them and that is kind of in correlation with what our the third grade math scores came out for the State Testing so that's kind of where we thought were diving in we're doing a pretty good job on our Ela we have lots of interventions in place everything seems to be moving forward but we need to dive into the math a little bit more and look at that um have that karaoke just a reminder our second grade those are the kids that were spent kindergarten during covet that's my covet cohort that has had the biggest impact bless their hearts and they are making grounds and they're coming back but they missed that foundational kindergarten there's so much foundational skills going on first grade we we solidify that in second grade we Master it so they've missed out a lot of that they're but they are the teachers are doing a bang-up job of getting them where they need to be we have a robust Title One program where we are doing push-in services and which we go into the classroom we have an extra person that goes into every classroom during reading time and then we also have our cup time intervention where we pull kids out and focus on targeted skills for those areas so we're doing a good job the teachers are working super hard the kids are working super hard and we have a lot of support from the parent the parents are following through and supporting us as well we have um and I do have in here I know I'm over my my time um [Laughter] yes I have a timer um the things that we do have supporting those supporting those teachers is the instructional coach is huge and our instructional coach this year is reading endorsed and so she's doing a lot of those interventions as well she's a part-time reading teacher and part-time instructional coach and so she's doing a lot of those interventions and trainings we have um our Ela curriculum now is aligned so we have our wonders and our wonders works if it's an intervention that is all aligned so the kids aren't getting a little bit of everything it's kind of a cohesive curriculum now that we're working on um and the big thing sorry oh my gosh um and a lot of these are the same for all of us so we have core instruction with active engagement which is our Kagan instruction and every classroom does Kagan uh we go through and we catch them doing cake and that's our big Focus that we want it active not just sitting there and passing out the worksheets get the kids engaged in this learning um the dyslexic intervention we have daily Eli El services that are provided by a paraprofessional but she is a top-notch paraprofessional um we do our Cub time intervention every afternoon we also have a mirror reading which is something new the state is providing free right now and then they're gonna throw that huge dollar sign with it but it's a an online tutoring program where the kids can actually read into the computer and then she corrects them right there on so it's an intervention uh it's in a one-on-one so the kids we can use different rotations and they get that feedback direct feedback right away um we do have our character education with our certified counselor who does push-in Services every day into the classrooms we have Friday school after school tutoring we also do our parent engagement nights we do at least two and we have ABC Bonanza and ABC Bonanza and Games Galore which is coming up and those are just Ela games that we trained parents how to make games instead of just paper pencil just to give them different activities to do with them at this age um so lots of things we have our database decision making yeah this is hard um our meetings that are databased and that has been our big Focus to kind of get the teachers to dive into the data I love looking at the data and seeing where our kids are at and if they're growing and if they're not growing and and see why they're not growing but now we're actually giving it to the teachers back and they're taking ownership in that so we meet and they have these great little charts here I know they think they're great too um where they they write their kids in there and then they take it apart and then they have to actually take it apart a little bit more and tell it so they're owning it and looking at why aren't they growing what is what do I want them to be where do I want them to be not just hey here's your goal great I want them to have the ownership in we do those data meetings once a month and we put the goals up there and see where we are how are we on track with meeting those so that is a little bit about Territorial and some of the things we're doing even though we're not State tested it is probably coming down the Pikes so into it questions assessment questions any questions yeah so mine will be around assessments so um how often um are they getting sort of the summative type assessment during the year so you started the year coming in and then we'll do middle of the year for the middle of the year Christmas time and then we'll do it again in um uh the formative we do regularly they do progress monitoring every week they're the data for this we do monthly meetings for the data meetings that they bring in and then um we have our quarterly assessments also on top of the ice deep assessments that the teachers do quarterly and Report that we look into that so I heard uh interventions going on you said afternoons Cubs something I said cup time intervention yeah that's after school or no that is during the school so for 45 minutes every grade level breaks down and that's when Title pulls Title One Services they do their Wonder Works they pull 36 kids out of each 36 kids out of each grade level into Title One and then the teachers work on focused interventions whatever it is at that point it could be an enrichment if truthfully it doesn't have to be just interventions in some grades they I give the teachers how they want to do it the freedom to do it some of them break down and do you know one teacher's teaching this and one teacher's teaching this and they swap kids but that's every that's every day that we do that [Music] [Applause] 8 41 that's the time to be they made me go first sorry that's okay uh we're gonna focus on math okay just kidding um so so again um I apologize for not having it up on the screen but this is in your board packet I've reiterated some of the information that Cindy gave us uh regarding third fourth and fifth specifically targeting Ela and math um because we do have because McGraw-Hill is our our primary curriculum provider um a lot of the um my wonders and my mat or wonders rather in my math are um integrated so a lot of the material that they're talking about in Reading is seen again in um uh math problems and word problems and so the two of them are are relatively conjoined with that said we're currently at um or very very near the state results for English and language arts and you can even see where we're falling short in fifth grade where we had a 38 pass rate and the state was 39 I would argue that that's actually 38.5 we're rounding but um I'm okay with it being 38.
I mean it's a block yeah they just want one place they're trying to get rid of I guess right I don't know I mean I say no I don't really care yeah no one's moving in without a block not really until Joe buys the house across the street and these are just how do we want iasb to Advocate right if I'm going too fast tell me I I'm just sensing if there's any strong opinions let me know the next page is capital Grant fund for school buildings basically asking for the state to come up with capital Grant funds we would not qualify for this because of our buildings being so new that's going to go to buildings that are in our schools that have buildings that are 100 years old we would qualify because we're in the lowest tier of funding but the building's being so new so that one won't impact us as much the next one is school safety fund that would be great in my opinion but the next one is involvement with candidates for public office I didn't get this one I couldn't understand because it says they don't they're not recommending it I'd say no yeah I would we're a school we're not supposed to be political right yeah thank you man uh the next one's mandates Review Committee basically uh trying to get rid of some of the unfunded mandates which I think yes and then Financial contribution for School Board elections for people really taking political action funds for their school foreign I wouldn't say that one's a yeah says to adopt yeah that's all I've got Kevin I think I got everything all right thanks Vivian we're doing that again uh anybody have any questions on the employment recommendations nope can I please have a motion to approve uh the October appointment recommendations yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes all right I know I'm going to spend a little time on this one it's been a lot tonight so I'm gonna I'll do my best but uh just tell me if I need to move faster uh tax levy we have to do tonight's just a tentative Levy then December I bring it back to you for a formal approval um I've added this is a presentation that a similar format I've done in Prior years but I've added some stuff first Pages I've added some definitions for you in case there's anything there that because I know we only talk about this once a year so there's the levy that we're going to ask the county for the extension is what they decide in April what we are gonna or the March April they'll decide what we're going to receive from the county uh the eav is our equalized assessed valuation which is what they they decide our our entire School inside our district boundaries what are what our properties worth Consumer Price indexes impacts our Levy this year it's up over five percent uh we are in a p-tel county so um it's uh property tax extension limitation um basically the the five percent is the cap so even if inflation is eight percent we can only get five uh usually inflation's at like two percent and we're usually getting be somewhere between when you count new properties that we're getting between two and three percent max is where we're getting so this year's different it's an anomaly but if you go to the second page of the document I just listed all of our fund balances over the years this is a document you've seen probably before even this year when we did the budget uh all these numbers are are post audits so they're accurate I use these numbers to determine if we need to move some Levy Dollars around from One Fund to the other the one that if you look at the tort fund it's it's the end of the year balance was 38 792 that's pretty low that's the fund that we have we pay our property insurance out of and our workman's comp insurance there's no reason to carry a large fund balance there just kind of have enough to pay the bills every year and it's two checks we write so I'll Levy a little more money there just so we don't get too close to zero there uh the next table is a table of tax rates across the county I'll be honest with you I wouldn't I won't spend a lot of time talking tax rates because there's so many factors that go into this but we are right in the middle at 3.959075 that's what was our tax rate was last year where it puts us about right in the middle of this chart uh I put at the bottom of that table you see in bold 1.2151 of that rate is our bond payment so if you take the 395 and you take a dollar 21 off you're down to 274 and then that would Place us at the very bottom of this we replace our uh if we once a Bond's paid off it'll get us get us in the bottom four the next page is one I want to point you to that I think is important one for everybody to understand I will tell you I did a I've done it I've presented some of this information to the CAC I presented this information Saturday to a group at a coffee and chat at Starbucks uh so the parents find this pretty interesting but I think it's it's important that people understand this so you've seen some of this before this is a list of all the elementary elementary districts in Lake County it's not any of the unit districts and high school districts they're they're funded differently so I don't put comparisons out there the percent adequacy is if you remember this is where the state gives us a calculation 100 adequacy means that we're receiving 100 of the dollars they think we need to run the school district and to to run it to their standards so those that are at 100 that's what that's they're they're they're receiving the funds they need to run their school district and provide the services they need for kids according to the state you can see we're at 66 we've been near the bottom of this list for several years since they've developed this formula it hasn't changed we have been receiving more funds from the state which has been uh much um well it's been well received and well used uh but if you go to the column to the right of that where it says adequacy Gap that's a it's a new figure I'm giving you this year that I haven't done the past but that tells you how far away from 100 we are so the eight million dollars is how far away we are and the reason I think that's significant is that um all those districts that are 100 they're getting that Gap closed so they so when I talk to parents so parents ask me so what does that mean and I said that that's that means reading interventionists math interventionists uh that's that's those kind of positions that a lot of districts are able to fund that we don't have necessarily it's not I mean it's definitely on our list of priorities but the gifted programs the you know those are things that um these districts that are at 100 or more they have they should have the funding for that um not saying I mean it's still a priority for us but we have to prioritize more than other districts may have to prioritize if you go to the far right column resources per student what I did is I took the resource this is all off of State data that's where I get this information I took the resources that they are receiving divided by the number of students that they have and that tells you how much how many dollars they're getting per student um and you can see on that list the difference between some of the schools at the top to the schools of the bottom we actually I didn't know this was going to happen we actually ended up being the lowest on that list let's look at it at 9095 uh that's the lowest on the list for resources per student just important for us to know as we go into the tax levy and um I think it's something we can stand you know when I get when community members talk about taxes we can I think we're you know I hate to say that I don't I can't say that I'm confident in telling a Community member we're not over taxing you when compared to people around us obviously I want to make sure we are good stewards of the money that we're getting but um we just spent half an hour talking about test scores and all of this impacts that too um the next page tax levy history um I give you on the far right column what the what we're recommending right now uh for this coming year I met with the finance committee and this is where we landed this is a four this accounts for a 4.9 4.92 increase anything over five percent we have to have uh tax uh Levy hearings public hearings and we have to defend our reason to go over five percent uh we decided to keep that under five percent in the past we've always been around this 4.9 4.8 but this is an important thing to to clarify in the past that 4.9 that we would ask for in a levy would only be applied to property because everybody else is capped and that cap like I mentioned earlier is usually anywhere between one and a half two and a half percent so even if we ask for 4.9 people like all of us who have houses here ours is going to be at the under the cap which is about two and a half but if I built just built a house that just now is the first year on the tax rolls it's it's subject to that whole 4.9 and that's going to be the starting point so but this year because the CPI is so high when we do 4.9 everybody's getting 4.9 including new property owners I'll come back to that in a minute next page is the bond payment information um you can see we're getting close I know we're going to have a big Bond burning party at some point and uh if you look there's a payment schedule there and it says tax levy year 21 22 23 there's three years left the 21 11 year that was last year the payment date so we have that money already that's the taxes we all just paid so that money is in our bank accounts the payment's going to be paid in February of 23 this coming February 5 million and seventy thousand that's that's already done as far as we've got the money this Levy is going to be uh levying for 5 million five hundred thirty five thousand that's that Bond payment that goes up half a million we talked about that last few years then next year at this time we're going to do a levy and it's only going to be for 1 million on the bond and then after that we're done I'm gonna so the next page I have a couple of things that I I want to show you or talk about um let's see here I'm going to read number one less the bond extension and the CLR math the proposed Levy is 517 000 higher than last year's extension this is a 4.9 this is what I shared with you a little bit ago therefore a truth and Taxation here is not required what I do want to make sure you're all aware is that this Levy proposal is 174 thousand and fifty eight dollars under the maximum amount allowed so this is the first time since I've been here that we've had this situation we're levying money we're loving 4.9 percent we're leaving 174 000 on the table roughly roughly this is with our estimates on our eav we're leaving that on the table um to we're basically we're leaving it there and it's on it's uh if we go if we go after that money we've got to have tax anticipation hearings so um we're gonna have the tax levy hearing so we've chosen the committee chose not to do that now I did reach out to I did reach out to I was in a meeting with Lake County superintendents there's probably 30 40 in the room and it's everybody else except for one other district and us is going for the whole thing I'm just letting you know that um comfortable what we're doing but I want you to be aware that it's not the norm everybody else is going because once you do lose that 174 if we leave it out there next year it's not it's not accessible they have changed there's there's a law in place and I put Public Act I described it down here I can and I probably will uh if we if we stick with this Levy and leave that money out there I can petition to the clerk to make sure that that is there's a three-year look back where we can like three years from now we could go ahead and Levy for that 174 that we left on the table this this year yeah just to just to just to secure it in case we want to later but um something I didn't point out to the finance committee that I should tell the whole board because I didn't think about it until later if we go over five percent and try to grab this extra 174 000 that's out there the only properties that are impacted are the new properties so that's not because because all of us who have current homes in the districts that were capped at five percent it's the max uh anything over that that's because there's new property in the district so so that's why districts are going for uh all the dollars but how much new property about seven million between six and seven million right now it was it's new property is what they're estimating is up some of it's got to be but uh and like more yeah um yeah so that's the let's just go to the next page that we can talk a little bit about this the next page has I try to Hive all these numbers because I don't want uh I don't want to lowball them so uh this is on the the first table at the top is if we were doing three four five six seven percent we are at five percent we're like 4.92 so that tells you uh if you have if you find your value of Home in there it tells you the extension it with this Levy what your extension is towards Big Hollow not your whole tax bill just towards Big Hollow and then underneath that the table is how much that extension is higher than your last year extension so if and that what this gets a little bit I try to be as accurate as I could here so if my home was worth 250 000 this year last year according to our County it was probably 10 percent less than that 10 to 12 less than that so I've included a 10 to 12 increase in home value pushed them up and estimated last year you paid this this year you're going to pay this so for that homeowner would be 108 more this year with our what I did not include in here were like Homestead exemptions things like that so I hide these numbers are higher than probably typical the other thing I did include this is the most important thing we got to figure out to to one of the most important things tonight we've talked about in Prior years uh using 500 000 of our funds to Abate the increase in that Bond payment you remember that we talked about like kind of absorbing that so if if we decide to do that these numbers all go way down I I could I try to get numb accurate I couldn't I even ran it by a couple other business managers and they didn't feel comfortable with the numbers either so I just didn't want to put any numbers on paper to see what that would be but um those numbers do go down and uh we have to decide if we're going to Abate that or not um I'm gonna I'm gonna give you a recommendation and we did not talk about this at the finance committee meeting but um I I would I've always been in favor of abating that but I'm I don't think I am anymore at this point I feel like if we're going to leave the tax rate lower than than what we could I feel like we maybe should consider not abating the 500 000.
contractual agreements and instead of 60 vendors we added a hundred and we now have 140 vendors reflected in here for a total cost of about 75 million dollars worth of contracts and vendor spending keep in mind uh one note I said on this is we could have a contract that's like five years long so while 75 that's not 75 million dollars a year that could be one contract that we have for five years that's like um that's uh 25 000 a year or uh for five years 125 000 so it's cumulative um and uh what I did then as well is I've got the vendor contracts how much are vendors and contracts listed how much we cumulatively spent what those and so if there's a c in the contract column that means there's a contract with that company and what the amount is and in the initial Department kind of categories what that is so the first one on your list you can see locked in companies they work with us on our benefits and they've got a cost of a hundred and twenty five thousand dollars on that contract um so in addition to that I've got companies who are listed as vendors so we have a vendor uh deer and Company we don't have a contract with them but they also work towards our or service our benefits and they're kind of a vendor as we pay as we go they have reached a limit that the board is asked to see in this case they're at forty one thousand dollars and uh so they made the list because they're over that twenty thousand dollar Mark that we've purchased or that we spent with them so far so a lot of the costs that you see in the contracts and vendors those are built into the budgets for the Departments so these aren't like new these are not new uh new relationships and new vendors that we're using uh these are ones that different departments expect to be using and I think the last thing I want to say about this oh for example uh one question that came up was about the different schools we had five schools buying paper from three different vendors and when we looked at that those three different vendors were Amazon quill and vertiv and what we do is we look at the prices it's not so much the vendors it's how much are people paying what we did notice is with Amazon we could get a box of paper for thirty five dollars where when we go with quill or vertif it's 41.
so we've decided to focus our attention on math specifically um to that end uh we know that because of covet a lot of our kids especially those incoming third graders um didn't have the scaffolding and capacity and opportunity to get a lot of the math and so with that said um uh we want to get the most bang for our buck and therefore we started to look at what the student need is our goal is to increase our performance on the state assessment next year by five percent but where can we focus our attention to have the most opportunity for students to grow and that was across all three of our grade levels if you break down the state test that was on operations at the third grade level its operations and fractions specifically but at the fourth and fifth grade level it's operations in measurement and that's the Bedrock of all mathematical computation and therefore the Hope therefore is that if they perform at a higher rate and a more competent rate with operational functions and with measurements they'll be better overall in their in their math scores and be able to perform higher level math and that's borne out statistically across the board across the country to that end how are we measuring that before the state assessment if that's our goal well obviously we do a variety of summative and formative assessments I require our Math teachers and we meet once a month much like um uh territorial does we meet once a month in grade level teams and we look at the data from the district and site assessments that teachers have both in myMath and that they've created to measure specifically operational development obviously also we're seeing a variety of opportunities for kids in their their writing and reading curriculum as well that is to say a greater degree of comprehension when they're reading mathematical computations and when they're reading word problems which is largely where they're faltering here and obviously we're going to be able to measure this with our state assessment if we ever get those back in a timely manner we'll just kind of let that one go for just one second okay so that's how we're measuring it in in a variety of formative and summative assessments we're meeting once a month we're we're using the same assessments across the grade levels that is to say all the third grade teachers are using the same assessments all the fourth grade teachers all the fifth grade teachers so we can compare apples to apples and those assessments are broken down with operations and measurements as well to that end then what what are we doing to better student performance and and opportunity a variety of things like you're probably going to hear for the rest of the evening uh we have tutoring after school most of our teachers are involved in that we have Friday school that has specific math instruction for a third grade fourth grade and fifth grade most Fridays for 10 sessions during this first semester eight sessions for the second semester we also have pull out for our resource students who are in need of special ed services as well as our title students who are those that are identified as performing at the lowest level and if they start to perform at a higher level but moved out of that we're pulling kids that that need that we also have the blessing and Heritage has this as well it's the same person actually of having a dedicated ell teacher who is assisting those students obviously and all of our title resource and yell teachers are all certified instructors we're also looking at given statistics and research that's been done over the last year one of the things that's come about is that every state across the board is now testing their kids using technology and computers and according to the World Bank according to the Brookings Institute according to the United Nations according to any number of various sources they've all said and I'll just read this from The Brookings Institute study they said student test declines are directly linked to two factors one coveted related lack of opportunity and two the inability to use the technology on which they are testing um that is to say they know how to do the math but they can't express it on the on the technological side um to that end uh we're having kids take tests that are similar to the state test already on computers in fact on the very computers that they're going to be using for the state test uh we're having kids uh take a weekly computer class so that they can do that we're having kids focused directly in the math um uh programs focused directly on computational operations so that they can better themselves where they were faltering uh last year and to ensure that they're doing this obviously we're celebrating them in the classroom obviously there's higher grades that are already being seen and we're also celebrating this on a quarterly basis with our math Wizards and uh and some public recognition of student performance so I don't know how long that was but six minutes and six seconds it's less than eight minutes um any questions semi-technical question as long as I can remember the most difficult part in teaching math students is word problems yes and I've heard it forever and ever and ever has there been no change in the way we have learned to train kids how to translate word problems into the numbers I mean you said the same thing that's the most difficult thing right but we've been hearing it forever and ever and ever uh well I would say I would say two things our Math teachers are focusing heavily especially at the fourth and fifth grade level but third as well but fourth and fifth because they become more complex um they are focusing on underlining annotation and how to subsequently break down those those questions so we are specifically attacking not just into the into the numbers right so we're not attacking just read this and go we're talking read this what does it say and then go um and different acronyms and stages um for that that's number one number two um we're focusing on specific fine and pointed reading in our reading and writing and um programs so that they can then take those skills cross cross-curricularly and apply them to the word problems and so we're we're teaching them close reading is the summative way of saying that I'm just curious because I'll be interested to hear how well it's working yeah because I know it's been forever the main issue and I think Thomas Jefferson complained about word problems thank you any other questions yeah I've got two with regards to uh right and then Friday something happens on Friday Friday school as well right is that intentional and targeted or is that simply yes um kids on Friday school um they receive two hours of ela instruction and two hours of mathematics instruction and those are our um Bubble kids those kids that are in need of just a little bit more assistance to better their their either State performance or their in-class performance and they're based on teacher observations and and data from the individual student and those students are invited to Friday school we bust them in we give them breakfast and lunch we obviously provide instruction until noon for them and so those students are are specifically invited and then as far as tutoring goes those are those students who are in need of a little bit more one-on-one um pointed and directed assistance and also that's by invitation from the teachers themselves okay great thanks second question um in terms of technology I don't know I used to work in the district but I have no idea right now the level of uh Hardware that's in each classroom or just one classroom or what what's that looking like right now uh we have a one-to-one um Chromebook association with Chromebook and students in the classroom and teachers have um I don't know if I'm just the only one that calls it this but every teacher has a cow that is to say computers on Wheels they have a you know rechargeable station for computers in their classroom that are the same ones that they're going to be using for the State Testing and then obviously for ELA instruction and for some mazzella's testing and especially what we used to call Dibbles at the third grade level we also have headphones and microphones for them to use Essa really allowed us to pump up our technology in addition to the Chromebooks and the Chrome carts or the cows we have you know the internet robots we've been installing upgraded interactive they're no longer Smart Boards per se it's a giant TV touch screen that does that works and and we're pretty close to having one of those in every classroom but a lot of a lot of that was paid for using a survey how large are the um the Friday School classes that's a good question um oh that's a great question uh right now third through fifth I had uh 58 students last Friday it's about 20 per 15 to 20 per grade level and that's so we can provide some smaller group instruction I have a couple teachers at everybody foreign okay so you have um our PowerPoint in your the packet so I'm going to go ahead um the we added Galileo to Heritage this year we had Galileo several years back and we weren't really happy um with the service they were giving and teachers weren't really utilizing it the way it needed to be utilized and the service the program just wasn't working so we let it go and we were focusing on mcgraw-hills program for testing and then teacher made testing for English well we looked at Galileo again this last spring and they were bought out by Imagine Learning and it's a much better program and so we have brought it back to Heritage Middle School and I am really excited because with our PLC meetings weekly meetings we are able to look at our data and print it and compare it and discuss it with teams the math teams the Le teams and science teams so um I'm excited to see what Galileo brings to the table this year for our students so when I did this packet for you we had only had our first Benchmark we have since taken our second Benchmark and um to be honest with you I see the growth in our scores um and I'm going to be transparent to you my my math 6th grade math and my eighth grade math I'm not seeing the growth with the second Benchmark that um I was hoping to see so there will be some hard conversations in the next coming couple weeks tomorrow Wednesday um I'm gonna figure out why why are we seeing that growth that we need what's happening so um but we're doing it for ELA Math and Science we are doing um formatives on Galileo which um I believe is really making a difference okay and they have to do a formative I'm going to inform this at least minimum once a week a week now let's I want to go over some things so you saw my goals okay so as many of you know we have been at PLC school and we have we we found our essential standards um broke those down into targets and we have put the um essential standards with Galileo now Galileo as many of you know is a comprehensive assessment so when they took that first Galileo assessment back in August it was testing the entire Year's standards okay so and so right now our second Benchmark we haven't even come close to teaching even half of them in November so then what will they learn I want to look on the lookup um our weekly formative assessments will place our students in our reteach extension classes so we built in our master's schedule 30 minutes a day for cat is cougar academic times and it's either interventions or it's extension some differences we made this year with our cat is for the extension we are extending the standard so we asked teachers our electives our social studies what are you comfortable teaching math Ela and so students are looking we pull students to do interventions and then those that don't need the intervention they go into extension but instead of doing a fun class on class they're extending the standard which I'm excited to see the difference that's going to make this year we take four writing assessments a year and then we have our benchmarks one new thing this year is we have a student data tracker every student has this and in here we have a data tracker for each content in when they take a formative they have to write their score now if they take a summative they will put an S and circle it and put their score so the students have this out they should have this at a minimum of twice a week in their class looking at their data their own data taking responsibility for their own learning and on the back they are doing their score history their Galileo hey I don't think you have this I'll pass this around so you can see it and then um it gets sent home for parent signatures that's great okay so when we walk into a pastor when we walk into a classroom we go up to a student and ask them to see their data tracker and then you have to have it on them and then we they pull it out and we ask them just look at it and see what their score is if their score is a two or below we asked what's your goal what's your plan and they have to have a plan in there to tell us what are you going to do to increase your score and the goal of all of that is to have our students take ownership of their own learning and that is that's a struggle for Middle School it's really a struggle all right so while you're looking at yes go ahead because as fast as first I've heard of this is it more difficult for the low Achievers to actually function with the system that you're talking about they take more time one-on-one student teachers are taking more time with our um lower alert yeah but they they are aggregated but they're able to do it they're doing it but it does take more class time and that's what I'm hearing from teachers it takes more class time to do it they like I said if they score a two or below on their formative um or summative they have to have a plan on how they're going to improve that and so as administrators when we walk in we ask to see that we ask them what's your plan is you gotta you've received a two or a one um what are you going to do okay so where am I at interventions so I mentioned cat so Cat every two weeks we rotate our interventions so every two weeks the teachers go in and they're pulling Ela math and one thing we added this year to interventions is science we've never had science as an intervention and we did that this year to improve our science scores of course so that is really exciting and another thing and Ed talked about this we're testing kids on the computer and do they really know how to use the computer so we have some extension cat classes where there were teaching students how to type and learning the um keyboard and able things to do that and I'm hoping that will make a difference as well we do do individual tutoring teachers do invite students into their classroom during lunch for that extra tutoring we do Friday school like Ed we invite personally invite our bubble students to Friday school and we'll do that again in the spring progress monitoring teachers there's a they have to use Galileo minimum two for two formatives so they can create formatives to go along with their lessons but they have to use the minimum um twice for Galileo Galileo will give you your formulas yes and they'll give you your class clip they'll give you the list of who needs to reach each it's really very nice and um then we are our professional development and we have a speaker come in from solution tree twice a year um we just had Jared hunt join us for a day's PD and he's helping teachers write Common um formative assessments which is really important for them to discuss that data and then um response to intervention or I added more advisory classes this year our advisory classes typically we're up to 31 33 students an advisory is the first 30 minutes of the day well I I've given teachers that typically didn't have an advisory I gave them advisories this year and now I've got advisory classes down to 21 and that's manageable so advisory teacher they're um the expectation for them is that they will pull these out and call students up individually and review their trackers with them and so that's and that also helps build that relationship how long is your advisory 30 minutes and then they go right from advisory to 30 minutes of cat of intervention so back back and our cat you the very end of the day and we moved it to the today and they're saying that they're seeing a better response from students in the morning instead of the last 30 minutes of the day where they're done and one thing that went away with covid and we are excited to bring it back our celebrations we just haven't been celebrating any successes and so I just spent a thousand dollars on candy bars so holy cow they're expensive and so we're celebrating you know like right now if they beat their um score from the first Benchmark they get a candy bar they do a retake and then they still beat it we're gonna do a big celebration in January um when officer pizzy's back to school so he can celebrate with us he requested that and um he's here but he's gonna do some stuff so he's not going to be around um but the celebrations are huge we were celebrating and um before coven and it just went to the side so bringing that back I think is going to make a big difference um and then our counselor going in weekly And discussing um self-love self you know respect self-worth with the kids and that's Heritage Middle School how many minutes you were at 11 right now probably the longest time we got questions keep that timer going so I'm curious how all of this work is going to relate to the Statewide test well Galileo is um you remember when John Bryans did that study is that 85 percent I'm sorry my granddaughter is FaceTiming me and my oh my God it goes in my hearing aids and it's ringing so I've got ringing in my ears that you can't hear you so you just don't understand it's hard to hear the ringing listen to ring even hear you so what was your question is it 85 percent done right yeah so it could Galileo's compares to State Testing well it did before it was aasa who knows what it's going to be now but they really aligns with State Testing so if if a student is proficient in Galileo they should be proficient on State Testing yeah okay so I'm I'm wondering um how all of this is to be measured so I I'm not okay so I I'm not sure what the foreign how your goals they don't seem to be related at all to the Statewide test so okay so what percentage of your students do you want to be at the 85 percent by the end of the school year 80 of the student if 80 of the students are proficient Galileo they should be proficient in the state test because that's how Galileo and the state tests are like okay these charts here kind of explain that right here oh I'm A-Okay now is that what you're looking for yep yeah Perfect all right [Music] anything else thank you all right thank you thank you thank you have a few minutes we're all looking at our watches count down so um moved on to what's called what's called CT and pre-act and a CTS fire Benchmark testing last year we we tried to do it ourselves but um and our staff realized that we need the experts to have the time to get the data together and um and have the test ready for us to use so we did our first Benchmark at the end of August we're right now gearing up for our second Benchmark so the end of November beginning of December and then we'll have a final one in February um of the pre-ac pre-act um ninth grade Benchmark our students um um I gave you the comparison on the left just how our students did to The Benchmark the average for all of our students because we had about 214 ninth graders and one of the things that Horizon does is they give us areas of strength and then they give us Aries for improvement and areas of strength for ninth graders are relationships um we're correcting reading to their own experience those kind of stuff locating facts and grammar and then the areas of improvement were punctuation in English and algebra geometry and with math um one of the things that we have to remember is that students have not learned all the math benchmarks has the goal here with all of the standards and then and then they haven't been taught them all so um so you'll see on the left you'll see how our students average did and then our um where the Benchmark is on the 10th grade again the same thing um our English and for 10th graders beat The Benchmark so I know that Mrs Roundtree is really excited about that because our English teacher there is a string through English and structure style and grammar and then air is it for improvement punctuation algebra geometry number and quantity and then experimental design which is about controlled experiments and testable hypothesis and all that this good stuff um so that gives us our 10th grade and then on our 11th grade um act 11th grade again you'll see how our students did compare to the Benchmark and again math on all areas were lower because the students haven't learned all of the math you know during the year during the year they're not there yet and they're great and they're the benchmarks should improve for math as we do our second line and then our third and areas of strength are conventions of Standard English like basic elements of sentences structure use and punctuation purpose and point of a view for reading that's where what the author was writing about and who's sharing that information to the student and interpretation of data which is really great for our science department I was glad to see that and then areas of improvement again are math so um what are interventions and I'll talk about my goals our intervention is that we have Monday and Thursday before and after school tutoring for English and math every day and every afternoon we have an English and a math teacher available science and social studies two days a week on opposite days Friday tutoring we always have a math and an English teacher there and then we have sped that we have a sped teacher that comes in when needed in a social studies most of us can help with science a lot of it's reading on that kind of information I've been known to tutor also because I love science um grade level meetings are something that we're focusing on this year where we get everyone to come together with the electives and the CT Department to help improve overall how can we help math how can we help um reading comprehension or our grammar when we're doing when they're writing support for science or for CTE are they using the right punctuation are they capitalizing focusing on that and then we have our monthly department meetings this year we have an ell English teacher which has really made a difference we have three ell classes one is grammar and the two others are focused on English she went and got her English shirt for us which we are so grateful for and that is going to make a big difference with our El kids also we've gotten science and social studies textbooks in Spanish and then the math Excel is the program that goes with our math books and that allows students at home to work on math so that if they want to go ahead and practice they can do so and um and also it's something that a couple of our Math teachers using in the class and we always like I said um things that can help students Horizon education training we went through a training on October 21st PD and we had Horizon explained to our staff everybody from every Department was there about how to interpret the data how do we look at this data and how do we look at it to make Improvement for our students and then we have three instructional assistants to work with our with small groups so we have Yale and sped Perez and then we have a student support position where that person helps monitor students with D's and F's so we can get those kids to come to our tutoring and then also anytime an administrator works with the student positive or negatively I bring up their attendance and I bring up their grades um just so that the students know that we care about them and that we want them to do well um our goal um is that I have three major goals number one is for um because we have a lot of students that are on that that area where they're just right there by the Benchmark they've got like two or three points to get there and so just focusing on those students on moving them up one of the things that Horizon has I can give every student they can either look on because they can log anytime and look at their data or they can go ahead and we can print out a copy and it shows them how they did and where they need to improve upon and the teachers can look at all of the questions that the a student has taken or their whole classes and determine what areas they need to focus on and what question may be um something that had that hasn't been taught before so they know that's going to be coming up and then one of the things that I um is looking at student data sharing having our students actually look at their data so one of the things I've told our English Math and Science teachers I want them to look at their data because they can see where there's what their strengths are and where they're weak at and how close they are so I think them having that ownership like some of the other principals I've talked about is really important and then also that just continue that collaboration we're all in it together um high school you know everybody's got their areas of expertise and their focus but we not all need to focus on student Improvement how'd I do four and a half the winner questions no we don't dare ask a question yeah I was like any questions or questions I have a couple comments if if that's okay um a couple things um Heidi is probably one of the the most the person most responsible for the graduation rate that we have um she works her tail off to make sure that those kids that are struggling that are are may not be passing that they pass that means coming in on Fridays working with those kids and everything else I don't want to give her kudos for that but she is is a large part responsible for that graduation rate that we have um second comment that I have is that as part of the principal evaluation one-third of their evaluation score is based on data and it's the the data that we've talked about I I've met with with everybody so far and and the points that they've shared with you that's what they have to mean on their evaluation that they're scored on their evaluation and so they're being held accountable for this in their the evaluation instrument I wanted to share that with you absolutely absolutely yeah so one-third of their score on their evaluation is data results yep all right thank you item 11a um second reading of a revised policies Mr Schultz um since it says information on there I'm going to share two pieces of information that I've neglected to tell you earlier one is that this is giving a tax credit giving month so if you want to give we have some formed right in front of you that you are welcome to give and then in addition to that we have adopt a hurdle we are trying to raise hurdles or why by trying to buy hurdles for the track team for our brand new track and that is done through the foundation so that's the information I want to share that everything else is you've um you've studied this or this is the second reading so it's just a matter of any any questions or anything else in addition to it being tax credit giving month and the doctor hurdleman I neglected to discuss that earlier so I thought I promised somebody I would it's like I wanted to follow through does anybody have any comments or questions on the revised you know a couple quick things about immunizations again this is all just aligning our are um policies with state law so that's really where that's coming from right you know it's second reading it needs it needs a vote oh it does and he's a vote please of the above policies for a second second we're all second all in favor um thank you so much everyone a lot of good information
um there's things that could come up we you know we've got that I don't know it's just looking at we are how where we're at on some of these charts and for us to take money out of our reserves I'm nervous to do that so if you ask me if I to give you a recommendation I would say um I would not Abate the 500 I do have um I do have that ready to go in December if we want to Abate though so uh I have to have you pass a resolution in December so that's one of the decisions tonight that we have to make and the other one is are you comfortable with the 4.9 Levy yeah after that money what would that potentially do for our test scores for our students I mean yeah that's a hard one to answer that's uh it's hard to wait but like I yeah yeah and maybe tax pairs with have that question especially for being graded on our test scores right or judged on our test scores I mean I can't I wouldn't I wouldn't feel comfortable saying that we can yeah I can just tell you that we are trying to prioritize our resources towards that issue and uh it's resources whether it's training whether you know we're trying to or whether it's more support you know we've added math interventionists and reading interventions I wish we had one for every grade level you know there's things that I'd love to do um but 174 000 you know is not going to go that far for that the issue is that that uh Italian underfunded it accumulates used to grow what was that Kevin 8 million that were underfunded and what happens what is the 174 thousand that's a little over because uh um so then how the reason I know it's confusing because it's over because the the new property factors in so that's why it goes over so it caps all of us at five percent the new property goes higher so they could go like eight percent so this it just doesn't it's that you're setting the bar for the new property is what we're doing so and your recommendation at this point would be as far as that I I'm I'm comfortable keeping it 4.9 okay I just don't want to do I don't want to keep it at 4.9 and Abate the 500 000 because then we're going to take 500 000 out of our out of our Reserves while we're also leaving money on the table on the tax levy that's that makes me nervous I'm okay with a 4.9 I know we're one of the only districts doing it but I'm okay with that is because there is a three-year look back um but even if we were to go petition for that three years from now it's still going to take a percent of up to five percent that we can ask for to begin with yeah yep whatever so that could be then we at that point we go over and have to do a tax hearing you know too but uh the state's goal is to eventually make up that eight the state's goal that'd be a nice goal for us be honest with you although I'm sure it would come out of somewhere else to be honest with you we are we are benefiting by keeping our tax rate low because that puts us in the low tier for the state and it gives us more State funding rather than relying on our local taxpayers as much we're benefiting from that the more we ask for from our taxpayers the higher our adequacy goes the less we get from the state so there's some benefit but yeah yeah I mean I I'm good with leaving it at four nine and not going after the abatement right I mean we're talking for all of them I mean my for my house it's 108 dollars what is that if we have made the tax 500 000 what's that going to end up being a hundred I mean I don't know how much 500 000 goes into all of the homes of the big Howell School District but yeah they can't be yeah more than a couple bucks I tried I tried I couldn't I the numbers didn't look right to me I mean it took it down quite a bit uh that didn't look right to me in it and I ran it by a couple business that didn't look right to them either so we just couldn't come up with the right number I would if I what was our number last year you know no I don't I mean I could look it up but I would guess that that 108 would go down like 20 bucks if we baited the 500 that's my guess 20 bucks yeah how does 500 because you're talking about 484 million is the total eav well our Levy is or no that was our Levy is uh 17 million 17 million yeah so 500 000 of that is is it three percent no something like that yeah we got a trouble levels yeah it's how many houses are in our district it's like uh if we were having this conversation at a different meeting and everybody wasn't thinking about the test and the performance it's like you're asking people for more when they keep seem like they're receiving less yeah how are we ever going to make up the million dollars we've never strived to it's been like that for you the goal is to be there so that we get I mean well it's not really a goal I mean the real question will be once that Levy comes off and we end up a lot lower on that scale where we're yeah yeah the lowest here 24.
so our recommendation is going to be to communicate out to the schools and say hey if you need paper please buy from Amazon they're a little bit cheaper than the others so that we were getting the best cost course the other thing the board was asking is if we buy in Greater volumes if we if we can get a better pricing the problem with that is if we store that much paper in a non-environmentally controlled environment then it jams our copiers so we'll look at that what you'll notice is quill or Amazon I don't believe are on this list or at least quill is not on this list they're just a vendor we have not reached spending twenty thousand dollars with them so they're not on this list they will if we end up buying cumulatively throughout the year more than twenty thousand dollars and that's what I told the board agenda I would say like new new vendors who've reached the twenty thousand dollar Mark and in consent you'll just see if there's any vendors that we we now are spending you know maybe right now with quill we're only spending eight thousand dollars but by the end of Four Corners it'll be thirty two thousand as soon as they hit that twenty thousand dollar Mark I will alert the board that here's another vendor to add to our list so this is a is this a snapshot in time like so for the first one the dollars I'm looking at this is what we spent to to date yeah these are what we've spent uh this year so far with these contracts and with these vendors or I'm sorry with the vendors with the contracts um that's the contract that and I'm looking at this I couldn't tell you right now if that's uh uh one year two year three or four-year contract at that cost so the other thing I can add to this is if it is a contract what's the term of the contract yes so yeah my first question vendors uh all reflect a cumulate total from the beginning of the year July 1st until so and so we're only going to see this document when another vendor or con or vendor reaches a threshold yeah unless unless the board has some other direction for us well first of all I think we need to review this some kind of regularly um and I'm just gonna I'm gonna dance around a topic but I'm also going to be kind of direct at the same point and at the same time um I'm gonna try and be cognizant of people but um I I have a lot of discomfort right now with with um not leadership in here but leadership in in the community um there is um a lot going on that makes me uncomfortable when it comes to how business is done um both um with one of our taxing a few of our taxing bodies and [Music] um this is public knowledge anybody can look it up if you look at the Illinois State Board of Elections you can see that um we have become you know when when I was growing up um one of the things I was taught very I was taught they can't stand Mike Madigan right pay to play and that's what we've become around here we've become pay to play um you have people hiding behind llc's who if you follow the money it's very uncomfortable I think this stuff needs to be reviewed quite often um I'm I'm very uncomfortable with even a situation that we're in where there is definitely um campaign contributions that quite frankly um one could say are indirectly being funneled indirectly to one of us um and so I think this needs to be reviewed regularly um I'll leave it at that but um and and what's going on in here needs to be pure um because what's going on with some of our taxing bodies is not the good news is you don't have anything to fear it's not going to get covered I'm keeping track of what's not getting covered in the media they're not gonna they didn't cover Plainfield giving us the the um SRO for free they didn't cover the roundabout money being about equivalent to what we got for um um what was it the um the well I don't know why it's escaping me the the uh whatever the the check that was in the it was in the uh press um well the impact fees impact fees thank you they didn't cover that so um there's a bunch of stuff that so you don't have anything to worry about it's not like they're going to cover that either um they're sure as heck not going to cover the LLC piece either and people hiding behind that um but we need to maintain Purity here even if people around us can't um and um I'm very concerned with that uh that's one piece um I'm also curious when it comes to uh you know I'll I'll yield here in a second to somebody else but I did have some specifics maximum health are we paying paraprofessionals for that and do we know what the rate pay is if we are what we pay outsourced for paraprofessionals for some of the paraprofessionals it's just a handful and the hourly rate is somewhere around the between 35 and 40.
yeah interestingly the two parent groups and I know their parents CAC and then I did it coffee this weekend with parents I got a response I was not expecting because I told them we're going to let that Bond drop off and we've been celebrating that like this is going to be a good day and your taxes go down and neighbor's response was why would you let that Bond drop off we're paying our taxes now we'd rather see that money go into providing more services I know their parents they're not Community you know they're not community members not kids here yeah so I was really surprised to hear that um but they saw that eight million dollar difference I think that yeah so if we can use five million dollars to yeah that cuts that eight million were short down by down the three if you look at it that way because he even though 500 000 million no if we if we leave the tax rate at 3.9 and takes that extra five million dollars or five points yeah even though we're 8 million with our yeah and that includes the bonds but we're not using that money now anyway yeah at least you're shot doesn't sound as bad as bad that would have to take a referendum to do that something like that and that's that's a big deal it's a big ask yeah yeah so I it's my recommendation for next month's uh I'm looking for your guidance would my recommendation would you go with 4.9 but not not do the abatement but if I can do whatever you I believe put together whatever proposal you want me to put out there Vivian you have a puzzled book well I know well yeah some tax relief was that in the mailer you sent out to I don't think we 've said I don't think I put the abatement in there but we have verbally said it yeah and I I thought the same thing Vivian I one thing I I think that has happened since then that we didn't anticipate was the cost of the CPI going up so high inflations you know it has driven up a lot of things but that is true but yeah like you I see what you're saying now I mean you talk to people for years you're going to do something and then I mean and then if that's the case then I do think we should probably pursue the five percent plus five percent at least then we're getting I mean it's whatever it's like yeah 328 that we're abating instead of 500.
wait where's what's this maximum health where is it it's listed as it's listed as nurse uh specializes in uh nursing but I'm curious now that like are there others on here that are labeled otherwise that we're using for paraprofessionals that are labeled something else so I guess I should have put numbers on these are you looking to see use so under it says initial Department categories and if you look that particular one up it says uh student services registered school nurse but I'm curious if there's others that are labeled either that or something else where we're Outsourcing paraprofessionals so that one's 35 to 40. the concern I have is I think that rate so we're Outsourcing 35 to 40 dollars an hour for teacher assistance that's higher than what we're paying some of our School nurses is am I correct in that so how long have we been doing this it's been uh Staffing shortages since covid and I think you know the answer that I was the first year I believe that this is the first year we've gone through the teaching assistant piece for through Maxim um different different years but I think this is the first for teaching assistants isn't it I believe correct so is that I'm sorry quick question I've just been working with uh how much do we have budgeted for open positions um compared to what the salary is but also we have uh benefits cost in that as well so what did we budget and then when we look at these countries are we staying within that budget or how much how much more is it because of the Staffing shortage that we're having to pay to use these Services versus how much are we using and we're still staying within that budget so Denise and I are looking at that as well this point of clarification for the maximum so our I think I heard Tas are being hired or being contracted through them as well I'm just asking because under the category it says registered School nurses and not Tas so is it is it a separate line item for the Tas or is it just there are Tas and School nurses under this one budget item you know for both but we just have it listed as a Services registered nurses but I can take a look all right that leads into my one I'm sorry that leads into my question in regards to the I think that when I look at the the form and I'm thank you for this because this is helpful this is a good start I should say um because the question I I the questions that I have is when I had to do a get this into Excel so that I can manipulate the data a little bit better and so I think it's the categories because I think the opportunity that we can see if we can make the the categories a common um I don't know a common category it will help us to understand not just vendors because when you think about a new vendor being added to the list when we go over a set dollar amount but if the category I'm giving you an example um for example just you know special education we know that the needs that we have and that it's you know expansive across the district but when you because there's a separate category attached to sped you know I had to do some manipulating to get to the point of realizing that that's over 10 percent of this budget and so of course it's needed but I just but I think that we just have to be able to see the total picture so if a category even though a single vendor may not reach the threshold of twenty thousand dollars there may be 20 other vendors for a particular category that's not even on this list and that we don't even know and we won't see it but we're spending quite a bit under a particular category so I'm just trying to make sure that efficiencies and and not not even talking about sped but just and when we're talking about spending whether it's maintenance or landscaping or whatever it is that we're able to say hey let's go back to your example for paper Amazon you know the dollar amount Associated hey we're spending five hundred thousand dollars across the district in paper let's talk about it and and figure out is there a way that we can do it that's more efficient but if the categories are individualized it would be very hard for us to do those subtotals um to see where we could realize any savings that's first statement I'll pause if anybody else has anything else to get back on that on Jared's statement if you look down too there's Birch agency Fox hire nurse finders pedia staff Stepping Stones LLC there's a bunch of all these other different groups that are listed as especially that I assume some of those are Tas right but they're all kind of listed under all these different spots they could be providing different special education services but we don't we don't like psychologists social workers things of that nature that are are kind of uh that we what's that it's like a direct contract so we probably not all of them so we have we have several different Outsourcing agencies that we pay to place different differently students like Tas are we using more than one Outsourcing service to place Tas are we using more than one Outsourcing service to place but they're we've all jumbled up in here so okay well we need can we get that like kind of 10 10 different contracts for for otpt and then we've got uh I saw some social work in there and and the nurses but like you said I'm not sure if that one covers nurses only or nurses and Tas so I can I can clarify that or I've got that one to clarify already yeah I mean and as we're cleaning I guess if there's a description maybe a description for the category line I mean I'm not trying to make make extra work but I think that that's when we will be able to have the conversation about you know what how we can become a little bit more efficient and then one other question and this is probably just please excuse my own my own ignorance I saw a line on here for Oswego East High School in Oswego High School I just I just didn't understand it yeah I mean it's yeah there's it's like a hit control F 150 000 or something like that but that's because page 291 977.
what do you think we're talking twenty dollars a home I I shouldn't even guess I mean but yeah it's not really the cost but it's the fact that you told me you've told ever just like our test scores covid I mean come on we're one of them it's easier to do it when everyone else is having a hearing is there a cost to it no no it's not going to cost us 175 legal fees no we just do it before before an exports the only one having it right potentially two years I just think it's terrible I I don't think I could go to a truth and Taxation hearing I would not believe that if we're not spending the money that we get from the taxpayers now I don't understand how we would ask forever more than I'm up to pushing it to five percent whatever yeah but if we leave money on the table I foreign those the other districts the grants or whoever's asking for the for the sixty dollars okay that's great but I know that my week of groceries cost me way more than sixty dollars so we're gonna keep tacking that on I I could not support that I could I'm okay with going up to the five percent and leaving least amount of money on the tables we have to but I don't know I just think that we've done a great job as a board and Bob and everybody else the Edmonds in running a financially sound District compared to where we work being five million dollars following that every year for years to now being self-sufficient and having money in the bank to be able to cover some of these expenses and I do agree that yes we we did say that to families but I think that if we told families look we're going to do this instead or use this money for this I think they would understand it what are we going to use it for gas for the buses it's been up is up what compared yeah yeah I mean who knows what diesel is going to cost to put in these buses in March yeah the 174 that we're leaving out there turns into 500 pretty quickly in a few years because you lose that that's that accumulates so next so if we don't Abate we can say well we left money out there and that's actually accumulates over time more than 500.
reimbursements 480. well but that kind of speaks to another thing I'd seen where I'd seen some reimbursements to parents yeah um on this and they're listed as vendors they're not truly vendors um it's it's different circumstances that we do have to reimburse people but that doesn't necessarily qualify them as a vendor yeah you know I'll take a closer look at that one but my initial thought on that is we collect we collect a lot of student fees activity fees through our our finance system and then what we do is we pay so schools their activity fees because that's part of our budget now so my initial thought and I'll follow up on that my initial thought is that's us paying the schools what we collected in terms of their activity fees or student fees yeah I don't I don't know if we um articulated kind of the point yeah so um maybe if that's what if that's what Eugene uh yeah for them are you able to work out a little bit more detail what it is you had in mind because I I like where you're going with this and I see the point of it and and I'd like to give you an opportunity to make sure that you're getting what you need because I think it could benefit everyone you mean as far as the report what it would look like yeah yeah I mean the report as a whole for me when we were looking at we're asked to approve a budget and when we're approving the budget that per case in point the initial report that we received was 30 million this report is 75 million and so when we're when we're asked to approve an overall budget but we don't know what we're approving this helps us to say or had to have confidence that when we are approving a budget that we're confident with what we're saying yes or no to but when we don't know and we're not sure then it causes us to pause to say wait a minute are there areas where we can be more efficient are there and and on it when we're having conversations I mean the you know all the administrators are able to say here's what we're doing while we're doing it and how we're doing it but I just want to make sure that we have uh better systems and controls in place because when we have I don't know how many people are you know have control to spend this money but before it was 30 million now 75 so I just think we have to have make sure we have proper controls in place and then if and when those controls are in place to ensure that we have efficiency so that we can maximize the dollars we have because we don't have any dollars that we cannot yeah because what when you do the presentation last week or the last time that there was a column it said other and it said 50 million dollars and I was like well what is that it's this but but that's at 50 but now we're already up to 75.
well that's my question what's that if we go after that 174 what's the 108 for Kevin's house turn into that 128 118. um it would be go down to like the six percent it'd be 128 or up to seven percent 147 but see Kevin's house wouldn't be impacted because it's not new property so his is capped at five it's only the new property gets hit yeah all right then the people that are impacted are the people we didn't make promises to this too they might not buy either because uh their taxes that's a good point tough decisions what do you guys what do you guys feel like I'm I mean I'm comfortable leaving it at 4.9 as long as a year from now or you could go back and reclaim it let's say and what about uh I mean paid the 500 000. abatement we said that for years and years and years I feel we should honor that for now are you Gary or at least what would like 4.99 how much would that cut into the 174.
yeah so and notice some of that is like I said you're kind of mixing the budget and the contracts and vendors like a lot of the contracts and vendors are reflected in the budget and so what you're asking is well you wanna you wanna where I rely on the budget managers you know the who's in charge of how much of a Budget Transportation buildings and grounds each of the individual buildings special ed regular and uh the elementary things like that I think what maybe the board would be interested is like how big of a budget is each budget manager in control of um that that may that may also like not one person's in charge of the 75 million yeah we get that I get that but I'm not even I'm not necessarily asking that I'm saying and I I want us to be able to empower the budget managers however there has to be controls in place to ensure that when we're spending um what percentage of our budget is this you know when we're spending you know 20 of the budget going toward whatever it is that we're just um that we're just empowering them to do it in an efficient way I mean there are no one's necessarily questioning we needed to see it before because I don't even know what questions to ask yeah well you know the other thing I offered the board last time I presented was another way to look at this is not just break it down by another another organization tool it's our objects so for instance out of all of this how much is 100 how much is playing salaries how much is 200 paying benefits how much is paying 300 which is Professional Services and then 400 what is supplies and materials 500 what's capital outlay like I If you look at a lot of the maintenance stuff there a lot of that is a lot of that is well some of its supplies and filters and toilet paper and there's bulk salt you know we spend twenty thousand dollars for bulk salt for our winter time so I can break it down by some of those object codes to see if there's uh is there an area of spending like office supplies would be in 300.
ah I had to pull my computer out and I just I can get as high as I can possibly go yeah get it all the way up there I think I'd be okay 4.99 yeah I mean I think that as long as we get hoop as much as we can we don't need to be at 4.92 or whatever but before it yeah let's get it as high as we can yeah the uh and I want to clarify that um the money that's left on the table whatever that ends up being and that my 174 is a guess right now because it really depends on what the eav comes in which isn't isn't official until like uh February so um but where we where a recapture would work well as if three years from now if somehow the everything recovers and the inflation goes way down again and our cap is like two percent like it always has been we could easily slide in we're also going to recapture that that wouldn't be that much it would be if the inflation stays over five percent it's going to be harder to recapture it because it's just when it gets when it gets back below five would be easy to recapture and wouldn't be a big deal and you said these other schools are going like for seven percent or they're just going high enough to make sure they capture it all which I I haven't actually even ran the number see how high we have to go but it wouldn't be that much higher than five we're I mean 174 000 on a third 17 million dollar levies not that much not much higher than five percent so but they have to kind of balloon it because you're guessing on the eav you're guessing a lot of things we're getting uh you know estimates from the county but nothing's insure writing so I would say it's probably closer to seven yeah on the recapture side of it though do you then get to use that as your base go es yeah yeah well even in these prior years extensions you've always been around 4.9 yeah and look at like even last year it's 4.9 we end up we're a better chance of getting the recapture then it's lower okay they have to give it to us how does that work well this is a brand new law so this is the first year for it so they don't even have all the rules written for it so I'm gonna all I know is I have right after the levee's done I have to appeal or I have to do something with the clerk to make sure that they know that we may recapture it someday so we can ask for seven go through a herring and then not get it yes that sounds like fun yes because theoretically that could happen right um well the only way we wouldn't get it is if this board voted to not go for that the hearing is to let the public come in and tell you why they don't want you to go that high right so we submit the tax level request that stuff percent which is what we've done not there but we've submitted it at four point s yeah in year in last year yeah I remember what it was but we ended up with a rate at 3.9 9 that rate was not the increase though I see what you're saying but I would say our our Levy last year I asked for 4.9 we probably got like two and a half because you go for something higher we have to here have the hearing and we may not we may get something on yeah it's possible Right we got no it is that is possible but last year like I was because inflation was not as high last year so I we did it at 4.9 the only people that got 4.9 were the new homes everybody else got the tax cap which was about two and a half and then uh but this year because of inflation so high we've got 4.9 everybody's getting 4.9 it sounds like everybody's pretty close on the 4.9 and you need a decision on the abatement tonight as well um I don't I just need to know whether I need it well what I'll do is I'll have it ready if you said no tonight then I won't get it ready if you said go ahead and get it ready December we're going to vote on it well let's put it can we just put it on the agenda be prepared to vote whether or not you want to obeyed it or not yeah because I have it ready to go so I'll just put on the agenda because I think we all need some need something I mean honestly I didn't promise anything I just got here but I know I would feel like I don't if I say something I darned as hell try to you know abide by it right yeah and I hate when like a politician comes and says well sorry situation changed so God said it I'm not a politician no I'm just saying in other aspects I understand why we all need to think that was my gut too yeah because it could always something like it's always something is always going to change right so if we start I don't know if we start using that excuse on this yeah no I but yeah everyone recently we have time to think about it if we don't have to decide on that tonight so I didn't make I and I I knew you'd want a recommendation that's why I gave it to you but I that recommendation wasn't in my mind until I found out we're one of the few that are not going after all the other dollars that's what I thought yeah I don't know we can do both but I get what it was my gut too was like we've been telling people I mean it really does sound like in three years we're going to have to take to the community you know the the bond is dropping off what do you want to do with that money do you really want it back or not and I mean if we need more funds at that point that's another opportunity so we're just voting down I mean I think we just keep it on the agenda right now and just holds it we all need some time to think vote on it next month okay all right and I'm going to take that up to like 4.99 right yes okay so then do I have to amend this motion or just um I would say we would just need an approval of the estimated tax levy and State uh at 4.9 yeah can I please have a motion to approve the estimated tax will be for 2022 or 4.99 Warren and Gary I didn't say anything yeah yes yes how many nines do we vote on there um are we accepted a resignation from Dallas took the resume for Mary Rowe lunch monitor accepted a resignation from Sean cray seventh grade social studies teacher uh no foil request anybody any questions on the monthly reports nope anybody have any questions on the meeting agendas nope thanks for regularly scheduled board meeting will take place on Monday December 12th 2022 with closed session beginning at 6 p.m uh can I please have a motion to adjourn motion second Joel and Ash all in favor all right
or in a 400 rather so it our what percent of our budget did why through these contracts are in the 400s so that the answer to that would be yes but I don't think that that's all you know where we would stop let me give you a perfect example it doesn't go to the vendor level is that we have board policy that states that we're aware of anything any contract that's was it twenty thousand that that policy has been in place for a very long time and there was a reason why that policy was put in place um and it's for awareness for controls Etc however when you look at this as you stated you've had 10 15 number I don't know how many contracts but after additional research there were scores additional contracts and hundreds of or 100 over a hundred additional vendors that were identified and just by us asking questions we're just identifying how money is being spent and so I'm just I'm just saying that if if we weren't aware of it previously then this is causing us to say hey well there's obviously we didn't have um I don't know proper whatever in place in order to identify it so the same reasons and rationales why we're at why we bring contracts to the board for that dollar amount what we talked about at a previous board meeting was that we would also bring vendors who reach that dollar amount and make that a part of the consent agenda so that we have transparency for the community that it's a part of every single board and we're able to just see it and and perhaps if it's a new one we highlight that one so that we don't have to go through you know 200 line items each board meeting just to say hey here's a new one that you know that we've identified that has hit that threshold but it gives the visibility because if we don't have the visibility then there's no way that we can have a conversation about how we should govern accordingly and another thing too while you're talking just another idea that's popping out too like some of what you see on this list the reason they are a contractor a vendor is because we went to bid and we had to select them as the lowest bid so some of these are not negotiable so say well where did you do your due diligence and get asked pricing well we could take all those things that were bid out right off the list because they're all we had to select lowest bidder and uh some of those costs so what was what was bid who's the budget manager what types of expenses are these foreign [Music] more to get these costs under control right because I think that's what we're looking for because I don't know what you know who determines whether or not we get a contract for XYZ company or whether they're vendor like who determines that is that is that our is that our role to determine you know like when you go out to bid on a certain one of these vendor contracts or not or because I I don't I'm not I'm not getting it yeah well if we go out to bid then we would have a contract with them so they'd be a contract but a vendor is like like Amazon we don't have a contract with Amazon it's just we have we have some good pricing like here looking at others depending on the day right tomorrow it might not be the lowest one so telling everyone are there vendor contracts or these just these entities on here there are I'm sure there's some that we should maybe have a contract with that we don't and to look at it in terms of efficiencies you know keeping everybody honest and making sure we're getting the best pricing we should look at all of these things to determine whether or not they should be a contract or not shouldn't we if it's our job to the ISB says it's our job to determine who gets what benefits for how much that's our main that's our main job and so you know it's like yeah some of them and I think so we'd like to know that however however you want to structure it Dr petsky I think just what I'm hearing is maybe work with Eugene a little bit because it seems like he has a good handle on what I think we're all trying to express I know that we try to maintain the 10 minute limit on the conversations if it's possible to but is there you know and and that's both in questions and responses uh combined so you know is there more that we could offer that that would give you Dr patsky Direction and what it is we're trying to do which is figure out how you're spending our money you don't need more clarification through our finance facilities work with Eugene that's that's what I'm hearing as a a good idea yeah that's a great idea about that well yeah because that's our whole different topic yeah so let's try to keep the topic separate um are we done with this piece yeah I I'd actually like to make a motion to move the Personnel report and vote on it now you want to vote I can explain after a few if you can I agree or disagree you want to vote on the Personnel contract now which one this is the Personnel report Personnel oh 10.5 you're saying a second at that motion vote on the motion and if it passes then do the vote now so Jared made a motion right a second oh go ahead hold on a second alley second curious simultane I miss Swanson hi um yeah I'll go ahead and comment on why I want to vote on the Personnel report because if we look at the Personnel report you'll look specifically and see what we're paying Tas and after going over the vendor report discussing what we're Outsourcing um like we have to address this somehow at some point I've talked about this ad nauseum that the things that we think we're doing to save money are actually costing us money and this that we think we're saving money and it's costing us money I'm all for listening to all perspectives on this but um we continue to have these discussions in this District about yes we we are stressing out households with activity fees we are stressing out households over parking situations we are um you know all these situations that are coming to us and this should be alarming to all of us right I am not blaming anyone because I have a feeling that it's a situation where we're just trying to survive with the labor market being the way it is however it has to be addressed something has to be done because this is costing us money and that's why I wanted to draw attention to it because I don't want it to be lost on anyone what is going on uh well I yeah I think that's fine that's fine if you don't think it is I I'm but the earlier I asked for kind of to prove that out let's you know to kind of take a look at that and to you know categorize and sign um just to be just just to have the proof you know okay so I'm ready to vote I'm gonna call for the vote and then we discussion after we want that I'm done yeah you're done I don't have anything to discuss okay are you guys done all right call for the vote all right um can I have a motion um to approve the Personnel report I make a motion to approve the person to report as presented second Miss simulton aye Mr pluger aye Mr Gatewood aye Mr Cerrone aye Mr Doyle aye Miss Swanson no I'm gonna go back to um all right item 9.4 is information attacks appeal interventions Dr Patsy yeah this is really a blanket resolution that was brought to my attention uh recently the property tax appeals board um has changed a procedure where typically the procedure used to be as long as a school district and a taxing body were in conversation and talking about coming to a settlement they could they could postpone going to trial or taking action but recently now the uh the property tax appeal board is required to intervene within 60 days and what all that means is if somebody can test their property taxes or if a commercial business does and I can't even attend the trial to gather information without the potential of calling a special Board of Education meeting to give me authority to even be a part of those hearings so this would this would do that and the way the resolution is written as you can see is that I will not be taking action without bringing it to the board but at least I can do my information packaged together that me and our attorney feel is in the best interest of the district and the taxing bodies and uh and then decide to decide to move on that so we recently did that last year with the Home Depot when they contested their property taxes and we went to the attorney on that one blanket resolution just to say that the Board of Education will allow me the authority to you want towards attention to in here what what we were also talking about with this though was wasn't this where it was directed with law to file the request to intervene so this isn't just a blanket Authority it's also in from what I'm reading I'm Contracting an attorney well uh we I review all uh I of you all uh all of that with whitlaw anyway so what this is saying is they would help me if we you know we've got 60 days to prepare for trial I wouldn't be doing that myself I would be I would be engaging the attorneys but but um to actually intervene so and that doesn't mean that we would be taking action but we would be listening to the arguments and we would be there to represent the districts in their best interest and thank you I just in the interest of time just to kind of cut short some of the lengthy lengthier responses what I'm reading in here is that the that this is directing us to use a specific attorney and and I'm not comfortable doing that without without discussing if this is something the board would want to do is engage this particular Law Firm to act on our behalf um if we're also skating the law firm to ask act on our behalf and at the asking you to act on our behalf and even making the decision for whether or not to participate um that maybe it's just something I'm not comfortable with but I I really want to caution against using language that's oh it's just a blanket thing it's not just in anything this is an actual thing well when I say when I say blanket what I mean is yeah it's okay it's okay thank you thank you I appreciate it but but I'm speaking to my fellow board members on this um I'm just giving you more information so it's not just Dr petsky thank you but I don't need more information I'll ask you maybe just a little bit Dr sparlin can you can you please note this conversation yeah it's not okay so what I hear so I just so I understand what I hear is correct me if I'm wrong the part that you're you're uncomfortable with is that we are specifically stating the law firm is that correct what I'm uncomfortable with is yeah okay bye I don't disagree is there a way to um would we typically not um is this typically done without naming a specific law firm so that we have time to have this discussion I don't know that that we've come across a situation where this was typically necessary at all regardless of of the time we've we've had the one instance that I'm aware of uh with the Home Depot but generally speaking this isn't something that would be so urgent that within 60 days we wouldn't already have a board meeting to discuss it that we would need to necessarily have the ability for for that I I guess maybe I should ask the question a different way information right now so does this does this need to be remaining or no it's uh information item today right so that board meeting we can take action on it so and and I guess that's my question like do we have to take action by the next board meeting on this no um but if something were to happen and here's the I I agree 60 days uh the reason we're bringing this to the board is because before the property tax uh appeal board could delay but now they cannot so the problem is maybe somebody makes a notice to the property tax appeal board and they file it and then it goes 30 days before even coming to my attention well they have they have 60 days from a time it came to their attention not my attention so in order in order to not have to call a special Board of Education meeting to allow me the authority to intervene then that's what this is allowing us to do if not then we could go to trial and while I'm waiting to have a board meeting to tell you what the what the property tax contestant is I don't have any information because I'm not authorized to go to trial to gather any more information and yet before the next board meeting I have to go I you know it could go through trial without us should we do we have one or two board meetings in December just one just one so we either have cash this out now or we have to have a special board meeting in December right those are our two options yeah so we can't just well I mean you got a third if you got third though I'm listening well I this is this is in the event that something were to happen wow nothing is happening so I mean it doesn't necessarily mean we'd have to it's not well if you look at it says by the last Tuesday of December so he's saying we could technically be I mean there's it's minimal but there's a chance to play yeah okay so I guess there's a third option which is you're willing to roll the dice and take the chance we're asking doctors barlin what does he recommend I like that idea Dr petsky uh Mrs Doyle asked a question in regards to whitwaw LLC what's the reason why it is wet wild and here why I just want to understand it because they're the one who uh they're they're the ones that we use for our our property and our financial counsel right now so I direct through whitlaw if our if our if our Council or our financial and property attorneys change then we could we could use you change the resolution to use them so I guess I mean I guess what we can do is I can ask what law can we take your name out of this and direct a property attorney to request to intervene and that would blanket would blanket any property they're the one who wrote this resolution I was going to say was it whitlaw that wrote it yeah probably yeah surely well they're the ones that brought it to my attention I was even unaware that there was a 60-day intervention and this the reason it's coming up now this is when people can test their property taxes for the next assessment which will take place in January February March so this is this is going into action for the next school year and this is when people are going to start bringing uh contesting property taxes so it it could happen Jan uary does taking their name off of here exclude them from uh exclude us from using them no it does not so I was gonna say and and I've I've absolutely no concerns with whitlaw doing this work um but what you could do is um author in the first sentence there of section two uh delegate to the assistant superintendent The Authority et cetera Etc put a period after Illinois property tax appeal board period and then below you'll see the last sentences further the board delegates to its assistant superintendent the authority to take such actions as are necessary including but not limited to you could add their directing a law firm or Council to file requests to intervene in such appeals blah blah blah you know move that down there adding the rest before hiring an appraiser Etc is without naming the law firm yeah so I don't have a problem with that but my question fundamentally they are the ones that have done all of our stuff do we is there a reason why we wouldn't want to just go with the same people who have been doing it we have the real if there's a reason why we couldn't then um I want to know so that we can use some weight losses about in various capacities for various purposes so what this does is directly ties this resolution to one specific law firm and what if we decide next year to go with a different one you know then we're starting all over again one that's not necessary if you just take the name out so yeah so so for this particular reason but next year it will be a different resolution or you're saying this this is for perpetuity or just if we were to switch law firms it would be a new resolution so I think um if we did a resolution there's no reason to have it then that would go into perpetuity right I guess you wouldn't have to come back with a new description then it could still be Whitlock for now I like it I like that I would also feel more comfortable with superintendent or designee but just for what it's worth so Maureen's given us and get we can Maureen you'll work this up so we can uh whoop this over and then bring this back for approval in December absolutely okay this is where I feel comfortable with that yeah okay great very good thank you all right item 9.5 is an annual information regarding the 2022 tax Lobby uh good um see now it's behind me here for a where's the presentation to go perfect can you full screen that one or your bedtime was at nine not anymore [Music] you can go to print and go to print preview and then do it foreign don't print but go to print and it'll give you a preview full screen mode there you go thank you all right no it's not a problem thanks Karen all right um it is that time uh to just kind of present to the board and the community about our uh this is just information again for our 2022 tax level a couple terms that uh you'll hear me talk about when we talk about the levy is our equalized assessed value which is equal to one-third of the market value of all the properties in our district or for a homeowner the difference is if you have a three hundred thousand dollar home that's what you could sell it for a fair market value the equalized assessed value is one third of that or one hundred thousand dollars uh CPI is the Consumer Price Index and that measures the price of consumer goods and how they're trending typically CPI has been anywhere from like point eight percent to 2.1 percent uh for a long time uh this year uh CPI is up at five percent or actually CPI is at seven percent but uh as you'll see we're limited to uh because of p-tel our next term we're limited to uh our Levy of being within uh either CPI or five percent whichever is less the levy is how much we as a school district are going to ask for um so I think the important thing there is the the levy is what we ask the counties for the extension is what we actually get um so it's an estimate how much of our budget how much of an estimate well here you can see uh the pie chart that I've shown you in the past on where we get our revenues we get them from federal state and local funds so local funds is about 60.8 percent of our budget and the levy is directly related to the property taxes which come from the local revenues so the reason I say the 2022 Levy is an estimate is because uh there are some things that we don't know and we will not know until March or April of next year however we need to file the levy December the last Tuesday in December this year so we need to file or ask for what we want levied from the counties without knowing all the information so in this case you can see the unknowns are we don't know currently what the true equalized assessed values are we don't know what the total uh cost of new property and new construction is for the district and because we don't know those two elements we don't know what the limiting tax rate is for the school district so we're going to be asking you to adopt and ask for um for Levy without knowing all the information what we do know is and part of the formula is our last year's extension last year we received 110 million dollars from property taxes and last year these uh this year the CPI for a December of 2021 was five percent and again we're limited uh actually the CPI was higher but we're limited to either 5 or CPI so five percent is the number that we're looking at this year a number that we've not seen in probably 28 years since 1994.
is that five percent on new construction also uh yeah the five percent will be on new construction as well so I do have a slide in here that shows what our what the CPI has been since 2012 and you can see in 2012 it was three percent it's been anywhere from 0.8 to now uh to 2.3 over the last 10 years and this year now it'll be five percent you can see what the total wealth of the district is so the eav equal or billion dollars and I just show you uh you know what Kendall County's eav is for us and our what will counties estimated eav is and what Kane County's estimated eav the reason those numbers are orange up here is because we won't know those until February or April so I like this slide this is what if what if our assumptions are exactly right so on here what I do know is that the CPI is five percent I do know the actual eav last year the other blue number of 2.4 billion dollars and I'm guessing that the eav is going to go up about 2.19 percent so uh it'll go from 2.422 to 2.495 billion dollars in addition I'm estimating new property of about 20 million dollars that we don't know and we won't know but that's my estimate right now and I do know that we have 10 out ending bonds and I do know that we received 110 000 last year so if all of my assumptions are right I get a limiting rate of 4.7 percent or our tax rate of 4.7 percent and what that means is I can take what we got last year if you take a look here we got a hundred and ten thousand dollars from the counties and uh if you look up in all of our nine funds that's the dollar amount that we levied in each of those funds so I take my limiting tax rate and I can increase those to come up with a new Levy so if I'm exactly right we should get about 117 million dollars from our Levy this year up from 110.
but that's the question isn't it our am I are my estimates and my guess is exactly right so what if they're not quite right so that's what this slide is telling us so as you see here I've got my what I think the levy should be but if I'm wrong what we do in these green columns is I balloon the levy I ask for more in case my assumptions are not right so I've increased that Levy and uh so I'm actually going to ask for 121 million dollars but in the end I may just only get 117 million matter of fact that's what I'm expecting to get closer to that so we're not actually saying I need 121 million but if there's property or new party this actually would cover me right now my guess was we had 20 million in new property the the balloon Levy will would allow that to go up to I could be wrong by about 80 million so there could be I went up to 100 million dollars in new property there is a hundred million in new property we would get 121 million dollars but the thing with the levy is if you don't ask for it you don't so if I do ask for 117 and surprise surprise there's not 20 million a new property but there's actually a hundred million dollars in new property I wouldn't get that extra extra money because I never asked for it I only get what I ask for based on a bunch of estimates and guesses so um the one other thing because CPI was five percent this year there's also a law that says if our Levy is more than five percent of the previous year's extension last year we were had 110 million well 121 million is actually 9.58 percent more five percent of that is because of the CPI so I am asking for five percent more because that's what CPI was but I'm also ballooning it a little bit to make sure I'm covering all of my revenue or potential estimate so we've bloomed it up to 9.58 again will I get that much probably not unless unless my estimates come back wrong so we do have to when I adopt this next uh this is also an April or I'm sorry in the December 5th board meeting we'll take action to approve our estimated Levy we will have a truth in taxation hearing like we do with the budget we'll let the community know we're asking for more than five percent see if there's uh we'll also a part of the new legislation also is that we disclose what our fund balances are so that way if we had like 200 percent of a fund balance we would have uh we we we wouldn't have to Levy or ask for that much because we would have the funds to fund the school year so we'll share our fund balance let the community know that we're asking for more than five percent vote on the levy to the tune of uh nine point five eight percent more and in the end we'll probably only get the 117 million which is only 4.7 percent more than what we got last year so again that's what this is showing these funds I'm going to ask for 121 but I'm probably only going to get 117.