so we're below the state level however we recognize there's still a gap that we're we're continuously closing our fourth grade students 50.6 percent in 2019 we're looking at that same cohort of kids and 22 came out at 52.8 they did see a positive increase 2.2 so great things are happening um fifth grade 44.3 percent and 19 we track them all the way to 22 and we've got 46.3 percent so again we're seeing some positive increase we're closing that Gap again speaks to what's happening in our classrooms every single day the impact of what we need to do to support our students our teachers are doing that this next slide is going to help us understand the next coming slides so a big part of that is understanding who is in our buildings like who represents our community and uh I'm gonna go off what these ladies were talking about earlier because they so diligently uh expressed we are a very diverse School District you can see the data here okay whether I'm not sure if they were using it because you were doing a great job because uh I gotta say it's 100 accurate on the fact if you just look at overall enrollment you get to the first category white 61 if you go across Geneva Saint Charles Batavia caneland as outlined above you can see 83 73 Etc going to the right which means we have a more diverse population because if six to one percent makes up is made up of white the rest of the other categories have to be larger so you can go down and see some of the more specific details I'm not going to read through every single subsection but it is important to recognize that another thing that is important that our district should be recognized is the fact of the 12 with our IEP we continually are able to provide those services to our students at a rate that is consistent with um practice and so that's something we're not deviating meaning like there's a there's a rise in the fall and a rise apart we are consistent about our academic practices that are happening inside our buildings and so on this slide this is going to be the district comparison so our for our iar meets indexes we're looking at third grade through eighth grade you'll see here on the far left are all those subcategories or sub um subgroups that we're focusing in on you'll see centers Central's data there in white and then we're doing a comparison to all the surrounding districts that we compare ourselves to so you'll see the four of them as well as state as on that far right and this uh just to help you read it a little bit easier we color coded it so anybody that is in green they are performing higher than Central anybody that's in that salmon color is performing lower if it's white then they're exactly the same performance scores where we are so right away just by briefly looking at that you can see the success that we are having right here for our third through eighth grade in that comparison data most of this is all salmon which is telling us that we are on par and doing what we're what we're needing to do some areas to really highlight there are SES 40.7 percent of our students are meeting and exceeding that fall in that category there's no one even close to us we're 20 greater in that area so an area um multiple economic so that's an area that we are really honing in on and focusing on that our Hispanic population 41.6 percent much higher than even the state and any of our surrounding communities so our districts so you can see that I won't read all those indicators but right off the bat you see that color coding coming alive even in the areas that are green where we're a little bit they're a little bit uh higher than we're performing they're just slightly above us so um overall overall our students 52.6 percent um the closest one there is Saint Charles at 53 so we're just neck and neck overall so again even in the areas where they are outperforming they're just slightly above where we're sitting so again it speaks to what's happening in our classrooms and the efforts of putting forward as you look at the IR meats and exceeds for mathematics it's a little different in the side of how much blue and red contrast is on the screen but if you really start to look at like that overall again 45.1 percent um you know yeah St Charles is ahead of us a little bit there but as you go across the entire uh four that we are kind of comparing ourselves to we're doing a fantastic job there are more green boxes on the screen in some different categories um and we want to continue to grow and Target to be able to achieve and have more of that you know make some progress towards maybe a couple more of those boxes turning red uh catch up uh to where St Charles is on that type of stuff but there is some really good highlights again our Hispanic students here are outperforming our social economic status students down there at the bottom again really taking care of what needs to happen in the mathematics side of it but when you really look at these numbers on the the left hand side you can even look at our IEPs and that type of stuff you can look at that 12.1 and look oh 12.2 you know 30 like we're we're really really close even on the areas where we're might be being outperformed but the outperformance might not be as drastic as the color is pulling your eyes too so this is another great style that we get to hone in on um before we were talking about meets the next seeds see there's your eight he's focusing on the growth metrics so how are we growing um and what is our growth percentile across the district again same age group so third through eighth grade here and Ela but overall that same color coding system is in place and we are neck and neck the only subgroup that uh that we were outperformed in was I peep up by one percentile point so again we are doing phenomenal in all of those areas and all of those categories really honing in on what layers of support and how do we continue to move forward now is there still work to do absolutely we're going to continue to push forward but this leads to the successes happening in our classrooms as we move to the air a i a i a r growth percentile for math you can see here again um no surprise some of the blue or green boxes showing up again but um even across the board as you look at it we are doing really well you can see uh again we go back even to that first one Hispanic that has a green box 57 to 59 for 59 very close you know you can do the same thing at the bottom IEPs SES all all these different categories where we're right on the border or we're actually making progress so as we get to the SAT meets and exceeds for the district comparison and e-l-a you can see a little bit different picture now this is uh us uh actually having students in those two categories of meets and exceeds and our percentages are going to change a little bit okay because we're not talking about per se growth at this point so it's important to recognize that the ELA may show that we have some changes going on there but the one positive thing that I can tell you is you know it will give us the idea of what we need to identify so for example you can see an outlier we always want to outperform the state right that's that's a great goal to have when you look on the right hand side I want to point out the green box that says 60.4 for our subgroup of Asian students in our district we need to find out what's happening there to make sure that we can support those students so they get the growth that they need to be on Pace with students within our state and then move forward so that type of thing is is really important but also you you start to see other categories you know again our SCS students you know not letting that social economic piece bring them down but actually outperforming other Regional Schools with the same type of category as you get to the SAT proficiency change now we're at for ELA you can see um the 2019 to 2022 percentage change going from top down you can see that information while it is important to recognize that Central 50.2 and 45.8 both times as we go all the way over to the right we are outperforming the state but of course we want to do better so the one thing I can tell you is uh some great leadership within the building one of our department chairs Stacy Reagan and her Department as a whole have already been working on this and that's without data knowing the facts of what they need to change they've already started working on some curricular you know adjustments to make sure that they're meeting our students where they're at and move forward so there's some really good work inside our buildings already going on to specifically Target some of the change that needs to happen on the last note you can look at that change at the bottom line we have a negative 4.4 and again I just asked to get a glance across that bottom row you know negative 3.6 negative 3.1 I I get our negative 4 is still better than the state but we're also closer to two more of those boxes and sometimes it might actually project right off the page as you get into the uh meets and exceeds for our SAT and math you can see that we have a variety of boxes that are again being displayed on here um and there there's some good stuff that's going on here as well you can see the 59.4 for our white students performing across the board uh for the mathematics area but it doesn't end there when you look at some of the other percentages there we're not far off I mean we are showing you the facts of by the the color codes and the only uh area that you know we compare this to the state you can see 54 or 52.3 I apologize for that number at the beginning 52.3 to the state at 28 if you start looking at some of those jumps going back and forth it's really important to know where we are with some of our numbers being uh much greater almost double compared to what the state is doing again we can highlight the uh 66.1 percent on the Asian students again we got to find out what's happening with that population or what do we need to do and especially since we see it in two different categories would go back into the math proficiency related to the um sat this is a a really nice picture to see change happening over time you can see the central in 2019 at 50.2 percent you've got four green boxes right there and then you've got your red one for Caitlin and then the the state if you just go to the next one down at 2022 you see two of those four have now turned red we're making progress moving forward and then you get to that bottom box and you see overall the change for us is positive you can see that the learning gap for some of the other schools that has happened clearly is widening while we're making gains you know bringing us all together to be able to show what kind of progress our district is doing inside the classroom and this last slide tonight is really just highlighting um what we're what we're putting out or what what the community um in regard to our spending for our students so here we can see what we really wanted to highlight is what do we spend here for student and multiple different categories as compared to what our community uh districts are spending and you can see across each one of those categories School spending for students instructional spending per student and operational spending per student we are the lowest in the area that we compare ourselves to but think back to the to the data that we just shared earlier we're outperforming many of them so this is really a an opportunity to celebrate and to say thank you as the board for prioritizing those instructional components and the needs that need to happen within our district but also being fiscally responsible so that we are attending to the community needs so it really just is a slide to highlight what's happening and to say thank you do you have any questions for Stephen or I thank you thank you thank you all right next we have a recognition of top students presentation from the curriculum Department um so we're just going to go over some information regarding how we're recognizing our top students within our district and and where we're going and headed just to make sure everybody is on the same page so we can think about our current practices that are happening within our district okay we have a valid Victorian we have a salutatorian uh last may we changed and went to a recognition of like kind of the Collegiate honor System so when you think about your Summa Magnum commodity uh pathway for recognizing students that that happened May for the first time recognition also includes honor societies and Senior Awards and you know we do that across the board it's not just academics there's Athletics there's other things that happen that's our current practices that are happening um a survey we wanted to collect some data to find out where we are compared to other districts also it's important to recognize you know who we are now but also what is happening not just in our region but across the state so we have the ability to send out some surveys and get some responses and just what is happening within large school district so we did not survey a whole this went to a smaller group of large districts you can see here as it gets down to responses for school districts out there that are still using battle Victoria's secretorian um there's only 14.7 percent of them that are still practicing meaning the recognition of having that those two roles out of a graduating class uh math wise 14 would be five if you were wondering what those percentage breakdowns are so just to give you that background what's large for school districts yeah well you reference it in there yeah large schools no I know what's a large yeah what's a large school is it like colluded District yeah minimum of three thousand students no it's not it's the Suburban it's a curriculum it's called catca it's a suburban school districts that belong to curriculum Association so okay could go all the way from North Shore now to to us so it's pretty much Suburban so it is not including Chicago then correct so it's all of our counties and then large is the base stuff of a population we're probably one of the smaller ones okay but we are in the large animals right yeah there were not a large school we are uh classified that way um uh if you if uh a question went out if they do not okay if they no longer have those two things did they replace it I mean did they just get rid of it or did they replace it with something else uh you can see a little breakdown there of some totally removed it others of them replaced it so it shows that it is important to be recognizing our top students how did they replace it there is some information provided on the screen on how the majority of them went to a Collegiate honor System similar to what we had made the adjustment in the spring to there are some other ones listed here top five percent of weighted and unweighted uh ranges of the 20 top 20 percent uh some one percent but a lot of school districts are moving to really focus on that bigger population of students that are being successful in high school today not minimizing those contributions that students are doing over a four year time and not making some type of exemption of like oh it's only a small you know uh kind of population another thing it was uh pointed out and you can see that the last bullet point here remove both class rank so there was some interesting information that then districts started sharing on the importance and what has to happen as they get into recognition the impact on student stressors as you know are highly motivated students that are trying to reach or attain those top two positions that exist sometimes can cause some Stress and Anxiety that is related to managing all the other extracurricular and all the academic level classes that uh they're tasked with so this is just a response to some of the districts did they have a feel on did it or did not relieve some of that stress but 67 percent saying it had an impact weighted grades always comes up in the conversation of like do the districts weight their rates so we wanted to know that based off we wait grades how are we comparing to the people that are serving this and 100 of them weight their grades breakdown of how it was determined gave us some feedback on the majority of the ones which you can see here all 34 honors and AP classes are weighted and then our dual credit you can see kind of jets out there and it's not quite 50 with the uh 47 percent some dual credit classes are opting in to get some class weight around our uh region so building off what we have here we have the Summa Magnum and laude system with with the full plan is yes we're going to continue that with an understanding that we are recognizing that larger population of students that are achieving these uh three different categories last spring there also was the creation of the central Legacy award which will continue notice this creates a a an award that really isn't limited to an individual but really individuals who perform uh not just one thing academically but maybe some of the pieces of participation whether that be a club like these these young ladies are talking about to Athletics or it could be you know other other areas within our school and it talks about attendance also there are some other academic Awards just to make sure there's not confusion based off testing results it is a fact that there are some awards given out and so just leaving this up here to let you look over that yes the state scholar presidential Awards those types of things that are coming out of some national tests those are still there and and not being removed proposed next steps would be actually remove the Battle of Victorian the salutatorian indicators in exchange for that broader uh Collegiate kind of Honor uh system that is out there um we would uh continue to review that the other awards that are happening to make sure they best meet our student population remove class rank in the records of students used by any other parties and the biggest change that that would be is currently we list class rank on the transcript when a student graduates it's a fact that's part of the process we use we found out during this uh kind of little research project that well we'll have to communicate this to our stakeholders out there if we provide that information colleges are going to use it it's not a requirement actually for most colleges to get into it they don't ask for it but if you provide it as a part of the paperwork that gets sent there of course they're going to consider every data point they get and what the problem is we are a performing District so a person in art district who maybe gets a 4.0 is going to be lower if you think about how many people we have above a 4.0 their class rank moves down dramatically because we have a performing high school now you take that consideration of class Rank and they get into who they're going to decide they're going to let to enter and they use that as an elimination Factor we do not want to be a part of that solution we want to eliminate that ranking concept so that all of our students have the ability to get into the place of their choice weighted grades our current practice of AP courses and honored courses is still planned to be there but we are opening up the concept that dual credit forces we'd have to come up with a selected criteria that have to be established but dual credit courses could propose to put in some type of proposal for a weighted grade and that would be based off the fact that are the students and the rigor and the academics in there comparable to one of the other options a college class dual credit may need to be recognized so that we're able to even that playing field on that but we do need to put a criteria in place that makes sure that we're able to do that correctly it's not just a kind of a swooping oh if you're dual credit it's the fine courses are different we recognize that I think that's going to open up the door to some problems with people talking about rigor I mean if I take an AP English course and I can get a freshman credit by scoring a four or five maybe two semesters of English for instance but I'm seeing I'm a senior and I take two college credit courses I'm going to get the same credits when I go to college why would we not wait that why should there be a criteria if you have the same potential to earn the college credit why would we not throw all dual Credit in there that makes no sense to me the only thing I can say is um we need to we want to dig into the criteria side of it because that it is not as common practice to go that route I'm not saying I disagree with the position that you're saying we want to dig a little bit more on the research side of like why when if you went back to that slide that had like results the AP and the honors were way over 34 but then dual credit dropped down to the 16 we want to find a little bit more about why before we just move forward with we're going to do all dual credits being weighted so this slide is what I'm kind of referencing is there there are different practices out there and so that's that's kind of where we're at right now we don't want to make a hasty decision on that side of it but I think your your view that you've shared is is out there and it's it's it's a big part of where we need to go from here and be able to meet those needs yes sir yeah and I think I think um it uh I think we it's great that we are thinking about going to in that direction because um these dual credit courses offer great opportunities especially when from the fiscal point of view for for families um but when you don't offer the weighted grade these classes are challenging and um you know students may have to then weigh you know am I going to risk getting uh uh like a reduce my GPA by getting a b still get the credit but you know what if I go to a school that you know doesn't accept it um by waiting that grade you know the same way like AP English at ECC versus AP English you're taking away that disincentive to to take that dual credit and and uh you know giving that family a better opportunity so I I like the idea of of giving that weighted grade and we don't want to pressure students to think like oh they're going to give all dual credit the other side of that is dual credit classes are going to be on transcripts so we do have to recognize and we need to do our due diligence on this side before we move forward with that practice of creating a situation that like hypothetically we switch it to all dual credit there's an influx students need to recognize and parents need to recognize as a student takes a dual credit class it is going to be on a transcript like our dual credit with ECC it's the real grade that's going there and so we just want to make sure that we take the appropriate steps moving forward and we don't just uh kind of Step the wrong direction and we believe that we can find more information out we can we can kind of come up with a solution that does meet that but yet balance those things and not put students in a compromising situation that they now are in a course based off a decision they made on a weighted that now it's not a transcript that's going to follow them down the future pathway and stuff like that that could be negative if that makes some sense so it is a complex decision even though it seems a pretty like oh let's go one direction we want to make sure we kind of have that in the order if it makes sense um let's see this is where we're at so uh changing forward just so that you understand a little bit of the rod uh obviously our senior class right now will obviously have your valedictorian salutatorian next year's junior class will have the valedictorian the salutatorian but the current sophomore class on down will no longer have those two things focusing more on that recognition being dispersed across the larger population of students who are having success we don't think it's fair to just cut this off at this point when we know we have seniors and juniors that have been um really striving to you know get to if we're talking about de-incentivizing why we arbitrarily continue it for two more years I think St Charles just got rid of theirs in the middle of these current seniors they had a class ranked last year they do not have a class rank this year there is no salutatorian valedictorian so I mean we're talking about how important it is to get away from driving this but then we're saying just kidding we're not worried about it for our current Juniors and seniors we still want them to be driven by being in the top that doesn't make any sense I think the thought was because they've taken the coursework with the belief that they're aiming for that is it you know they've been working their whole career their educational career at high school do you just pull that we can I think that's the choice but of the the board or do you try to roll it back and say you know students that are just starting in their career at the high school they are aware that these changes are coming forward so they can make decisions as they're moving forward I like the thinking that you are articulated as the alternative um because I do think a lot of students in high school that aren't Juniors uh and seniors have worked and chosen classes and and and and set up a curriculum over the four years or three years uh with this aspiration uh this goal in mind so um I I think the the slowly pulling it back uh is a better approach I'm still confused on why it's not good to have valedictorian salutatorian like what's the detriment to those two kids two versus many yeah it's it's the fact of you're you're honoring two students for the hard work of what if we really start recognizing what we believe our District's doing which is if you look at the data producing high quality students across the board giving that recognition across all of them so Jeff another Rich didn't do a valedictorian salutatorian for the next two years in addition to come on that's what we did last year like last year the the the difference between the valedictorian salutatorian and then like the the next three people was like three decimal points over so to your point it's like you have a 4.512 you know it's it's like uh you know and then like there's like two decimal point difference between number three four and five uh it it doesn't seem like a distinction with a difference so um I I see the point of getting rid of them uh but I I'd also see the the the value and letting the kids know hey this is where we're going so they can plan their you know it's also different with 115 kids when I graduated high school versus 400 or 350 so as you go up I mean I would even be interested you have 5 and 10 there if we have four and 450 kids five years from now that makes more sense to say like what's two percent five percent you know something like that where you there I mean I think that I I think that there's I don't think there's anything wrong with that I think the salutary valedictorian kind of model is outdated in some ways as we're seeing from the fact that other schools are moving that direction and I think the the bigger issue would be what would compel us to keep it for some reason as opposed to kind of other larger schools kind of taking the lead and demonstrating that it's not ineffective you're not damaging your students by doing so and I would also argue that if those kids that are pushing to be even in contention for that would still do that even if there wasn't salutatorian invalidatory in there to reach at the end point because those kids are already driven at Baseline or have families that drive them and help support that drive if you will and then they're probably going to do virtually the same thing that would be my assumption try to find a balance like it's trying to find a balance for students I think the Electoral Institute sometimes puts under sure until we're taking five AP courses one they could take a couple AP courses in the area of interest for them and take other courses and still explore other opportunities because they're not so worried about being number one and number two they're really more worried about being in that top 10 percent or whatever that looks like so I do think it provides a better balance for our students it also provides looking at some of those social emotional issues that we deal with with our students today and trying to help them find that that balance in that approach as they're going off to their post-secondary experience so I think that's one of the reasons we feel it's important I also think that's one of the things we keep hearing from other districts as well is trying to look at the whole child and not just driving them down one course where they're getting to a number one or number two ranking but top ten still is something prestigious to work toward and you can you can include more students and then experience and give them the opportunity to have a better balance of their education or academics that they're choosing to take and still be participatory in other courses to not have it be detrimental to them whether it be activities or Athletics the um the slide that has academic excellence awards those are the current ones that we give those ones we came up with last year correct got it automatically the ones can you go back the laude those are the ones that came up with last year to add to the thing kind of to Jeff's point you could keep the electronic slow train and still have those which we did last year the question is you know what what are you giving up and are you weighing in some of the balance that we'd like to see our students take today uh that maybe some of them don't because they're pushing so hard in the academics yeah thank you so just just out of curiosity so my girls we all know you know one's six years out of school one's in her last year of college are we also making sure that we're preparing them for things that they're going to experience in college that maybe we're taking away from in high school um last month I heard we're not doing finals anymore So and I've talked to both my kids and yes some not all classes have finals but if a student never ever ever takes a final and goes to college and now all of a sudden has to take a final now they might not have six finals I get it and we might not need six finals in high school but if you you take all this competitiveness away and then they get into college I mean the number of kids that are going into social emotional stress needing help my daughter's roommate you know they're they're experiencing now at College when they're away so how do we provide that balance where they're exposed to that that competition and that level of stress and maybe it's not every class or whatever but so it's not the first time that they're feeling it when they're 100 miles from home halfway across the country and being able to provide that balance here where it is safer so it's it's just not a shock to them I would say these do provide for competition you're looking at a 4.0 GPA when you look at our Legacy award you're at a 4.0 plus that means that you have to take AP courses or honors courses you can't get Plus without that you have to have 90 or better attendance we know that if you watch our students as they the older they get them less they attend one of our challenges at the high school working on and then you look at the participation we're expecting for that students we're expecting a very well-rounded student to be found to be able to get the Legacy at work right it's not one student it's a multitude whoever can fit that criteria so these build in those kinds of opportunities for our students to still be competitive we're not saying that we don't want you to we don't want you to perform we want you to compete but these are the competition dishes that that you have to get there versus one or two people getting an award now it is about did you strive hard did you do things did you reach the best that you could reach did you get to the market that we wanted by having uh different criteria I'm not saying we have to stay with these criteria but these criteria do provide for what I would call a very good competition uh allowing students to really stretch and not only have two people given a word for trying harder or being able to do and we just I wasn't even talking about salutatorian and valedictorian in my comment though it was just more of the you know removing finals and doing some of those year-end kind of activities and and just making sure that they're ready for the magnitude of work I think I agree with you the competition here what you're doing is enabling them to compete for themselves right this allows them to compete against themselves not necessarily compete against each other and that's how they reward them in college too but it's the are they ready to write a 20-page paper you know they might not have to take a final exam but they do have to write a 20 page paper and we still do that right so I mean we may not call it a final but there are final projects that are due and so I do think that part of the academics and I can't speak to any one of them but I do know we have large papers that are due we have research papers that are due we you know we do have larger unit assessments that are due for different coursework it may not be where it takes two days or it takes a 90-minute period to take a final but they can still give a finals just that they have to give it within the confines of the hours that you're providing the same thing you do at college right it's not they they don't extend Finals over two days yeah they give you a project or they give you a one assessment that's over that period so it's it's not like they say well I need three days to give you this final it's usually a paid for a research project and something long-term it's great accordingly and I do believe we do that it's just that we don't we don't now separate our finals to say on this day periods one they still have a final schedule well most colleges that I've both of my kids do not have many finals it's a lot more people than every single day we're going down a rabbit hole we don't need to go down Steve has done a great job of putting this together for us and I think that's some conversations definitely for a later date and and I think your points you're making are valid and that's that's something we can take from here and look into it on the the assessment side and how it plays into our school making sure we're preparing the kids this is more on the that recognition of top students and how can we open that envelope to more students instead of a student getting in a mindset of life it is not possible for me to join that group and have membership in one of these categories at a larger population and I guess that's kind of the direction the other side of it is back to that class rank concept if we're going to have class Rank and we report that out is that the best practice we believe is for our students if we think about that that concept where I was talking about a 4.0 and where would that be for our district compared to another district and could if it came down to another institution choosing data and then there's a tie and they go well our next field is this did they have rank like these are things we need to be aware of and consider um now that we know so we can pull that off you can so that's that's an active immediately like you're 100 accurate um so that that part we can move forward with it is obviously used for finding out who the top two students are um but moving forward that can just be an internal it's internal right now um until they get their transcript it's not reported on on their report cards or anywhere else um it's just on the transcript they'd have to go right now currently and request it to get that data at this current practice so there's not a lot of change the big change would be like what you're pointing to is we would be pulling that off that the official transcript that gets sent to universities and or post uh situations that students use transcripts with okay um so if we if we go through this this class rank part on the on the bottom which I don't think we did um we would be removing that from the the transcript um but having an option um later I'll talk about but that would start with the incoming class this fall which is the class of 2027 making sure that they know that we are not going to continue to use class rank we would be able to have the ability to have them requested let's say there is some specific need out there there is a university there is I I mentioned on here a scholarship that there we know and recognize There Are Places it's used we would be able to do that for that specific reason but it wouldn't be for a rank of me saying compared to you in a Grade situation if that makes sense we'd have to come up with a form process for that to occur through yes sir so the other question would be would be would it be smart to move it through the Freshman Class the sophomore class the junior class the senior class and then the incoming freshman class get rid of the valedictorian Institute so that because there might be some freshmen and sophomores that are gunning for this as well I think we're just kicking the can at that point right start ripping off the Band-Aid we're kind of like the proposal is the happy medium between the fact of like not taking away from the seniors this year that we believe have worked hard you know our students have already selected courses for next year some of them may have considered that and not just you know tearing that away but coming up with a balance between do we push it all the way in the direction I mean yes the decision we can we can be flexible and do what you would like it's just we got to think about where do you see that fit um and then come back to the fact of do we immediately stop the rank on those transcripts meaning starting this year because we can calculate it without sharing no one would be getting that information on their transcript we can calculate and privately show even with our I agree with that yeah right away okay what my concern is is that the incoming well the freshmen going to be sophomores sophomore is going to be Juniors they're gunning for those two spots and do you wean it off with the newer class and this is the direction and you set that parameter right away well maybe this will help you I requested to find out how many people request to know their class rank it's less than 10.
per grade level at the Freshman and sophomore years so that's the number of people you are I just want to give you some some perspective of like how many freshmen how many sophomores are actually going down this path and requesting and presently landed that makes sense already aligning I want to make sure you have that information too it's not 50 of the the kids have already requested this um and we haven't hit that number yet this year but that's our historical number over the entire year halfway through um and there's they've got no data our current freshmen have no data on amount so so with the large schools 34 responded how many are there how many I mean 300 500 50. no it was okay it was all Suburban districts I'd have to see how many districts belong to the Katka service I don't know the exact number I was I would eventually say like 125 but because it's all Suburban it's nobody downstate or so it's just that eight or nine counties um I guess my only question is we keep saying this that they've been working towards it they're looking forward to but are they do we probably know that like right have we talked to the students I mean I know what the adults feel right but what about the students like is it really a big deal for them like if we cut it off after this year you know for the juniors that they wouldn't like you know what I mean like there's a lot of pressure um and I know it absolutely break her heart if she couldn't yeah and don't cut yourself out sabotage girl sabotage sweep the legs you know right I mean if I run track and I you know not that I ever did trust me but if I come in a hundredth of a second faster than Dr Stern wow we should both get that award we should go by tense you know one touchdown same thing as a field goal you know it's like where does this end yeah I mean like schools are even rated on total now it's growth I mean really late wasn't excellent this year so is it the teachers or is it the students didn't grow enough to be excellent because they already are performing accidentally how do you perform Super excellently to get that right right so I mean and now I heard you know like not heard but there's possible changes with grades you know let's get away from that and it's like how can we have more people everybody gets better yes it's just joking I don't know I think I guess you're cool I don't think it's old school I think it's conflating the idea that if you don't rank people you're somehow taking away something right like what are you really taking away if you don't have one and two out of 350 kids what is that taking away from those two kids 300 top two right right so I hear I hear you who's the top something in a store and nobody ever knows how they pick it but they pick the top employees right person apparently right so I guess I guess that's I guess I I know that it exists but I think she's seven there's somebody that's six and I'd be 2000.
but if I'm 2004 I know what the rank is if they want to know I think what Mr bucks is pointing out and I think it's uh it makes a lot of sense to me is you're not putting it on the transcript because it's not an Apples to Apples comparison when uh University a gets a you know a student from our school and then another school and you know they look at the rank if the other school isn't doesn't have as many high performing students like we looked at the state Scholars we had uh like it's a top ten percent but we have like 20 or 25 percent of our class achieve that goal so that means some schools they just have a lot more High performing students so that point really resonates with me with the class rank as a parent or student you can still find out where did you sit statistically in your class if you want to know know that so I think it's the best of both worlds to take it off the transcript but still be able to know it if you need it for the reason stated like in those examples above and I think that the point that drives that too is it the recognition like I want to be standing in front giving a speech or is number one enough without a speech right who are you doing it for that's a whole other ball game to somebody in my world so I mean like that's another whole part of this too if you know you're one but everybody doesn't get to clap for you and say you're number one did the street fall in the forest if nobody was there to clap I don't know I mean I think that there have to be looking at what what drives that is it public recognition is a pride in oneself is it pride in the family or from the family so I think there's a whole other host of questions that are involved for the Enterprise you know that's my point right but that doesn't require recognition but it depends on the student it's not inherently Enterprise if you're looking for other people to validate you the flip side I don't know if I can I don't know if I'd agree one way we are going down a rabbit hole on the flip side Jeff's analogy is exact same analogy if you have an athlete they can be measured because they're getting a score now you're talking about a student who is measured because of a grade and I get that it adds stress and all that but my nephew was a valedictorian and oh my God that drove him and he did have a lot of Pride and he did drive for that and and I think to have taken that away from him because he didn't Excel anywhere else and he did Excel there and by the way I don't know what website a good thing it was closed I I don't know that I'm in favor or not against but I've watched students in my kids classes and they all do drive it helps them drive it it was a positive for them and it can also be a negative and I get that but that's life everything's okay it is right yep and your analogy really is exactly the same you just said two funny examples and I don't see the writings did you no but that doesn't mean all this isn't good it's still on really good you want to wrap it up Steve so you can get out of here thank you back to you Steve I I guess uh you can have some pet further discussion some further discussion on this now that you've it's kind of been presented here the first time for you to think about it um we are looking to make some type of changes in movement within this school calendar year and then what would our future also look like around these topics uh maybe staying a little out of the the rabbit hole discussions that we've gone down but specific to these areas um especially as we focus on really all our students and and what we can do and I think last year's step was a huge step in the right direction yeah you know the fact that someone would ask me to turn to these three individuals and say oh you're number one you're number two and two we're done and we're not going to do something there moving forward I I recognize that maybe isn't the best you know anxiety and stressors that we really want to instill and have as a part of our culture and our building as we have other changes that you know were spoke earlier today about cultural change and how important it is and that type of stuff I I think the plan does have Merit on providing that that piece that competitive you know if I want to be in the top top top there's still going to be spots okay it's still going to be a challenge also opens up the door which some of you have shared with meeting the kids academically where they need to be in preparation for their true future after walking across that stage what decision made decision making specific choices are being made based off the fact of is it best for what their personal interest in career is versus is it for the Accolade as Dr Nolan has uh expressed what is behind that and finding that out so just trying to give you some of that information where we're at um and hopefully I'll be back sometime in the future discuss this more and what we we know and we can have a plan to move forward to support our kids in the best way possible thank you thank you thank you yeah because this is a board actual item at some point yeah it'll come back for Action yes all right work on the bus bus supply chain shoes and you can get a grant for that too um milligrams for this yeah every Grant we find we're definitely applying and trying to get money where we can um basically just due to the supply chain shortages the just buses in general the steel the chips the tires um we're recommending that we kind of extend our lease with our current vendor um Midwest Transit equipment is the current vendor that we've been using last year they were the only bidder because nobody could guarantee buses and then the nine buses that we did order we've still yet to get them um we have loner buses to keep our fleets moving um so in order to if we were to switch to a different vendor That Couldn't guarantee the buses then Midwest would take all of their buses and we'd be with no buses so um basically we're kind of stuck in this position that we have to basically keep the fleet because we could keep what we currently have until the new ones came so we kind of have that security it's not just a central thing kanel and Geneva have the same predicaments This Is Our Big Bus year lease so it's even more critical um and it was a year ago that December and the board approved that mostly is correct correct and we still don't have those nine buses that we ordered yes in the spring nine of them so this year we need um we were going to try some gas buses we didn't get those we're going to try 83 passenger because with our enrollment and the shortage of some drivers that we could get more kiddos on the bus or get them a little more space those aren't being built yet either so I think with a lot of this uncertainty we were moving forward we did get some 70 eight passenger so that's a little bit more than 72 doesn't sound like a lot but it does give more space so we're looking at almost about I think between 48 and 50 big buses and then 11 of the smaller buses went and two activity buses so it's over 63 total buses that we would need um so that would be our recommendation is to kind of just extend our current lease with our current person does that change so we is there premium ticks than the lease for that so we would be ordering new buses so it'd be whatever the probably the current cost is so I'm sure the price went up I know last year when we did it there was a ten thousand dollar price increase per bus and they ate five thousand we paid the extra five for those nine that we still have yet to receive so there probably is a little bit of a premium but I'm sorry in the existing lease we only have the smaller ones to extend okay one of my concerns that I brought up to Dana and she answered you know excellently you might want to talk about because my concern was about our maintenance and maintenance of those buses as we hold on to them longer do you want to talk a little bit about our experience so the if I'm understanding your question the maintenance we might have to do more tires and more oil changes but there's more I was on the buses like our current buses that we have you only have I think like 16 000 miles for some the scum buses and then another bus um that's for the lease hand portals in in the director is in the audience and she does a great job rotating the buses to keep the miles down and as they get close they flip them out and maybe make that be a spare but I think the cost of the tires and oil change even if there is added maintenance costs to it it's well worth having just just having the buses I mean we can't get kids to school without them so and this current fleet has been reliable is there a premium cost though because we'll be extending beyond the mileage that we are allotted for the lease so is our premium that we have to pay for that so when they released when they extended the lease they upped our mileage like basically gave us the same amount again a year um yeah probably a year I don't I maybe even two I don't know I mean it doesn't seem like we're gonna get out of this anytime soon so really not an option um next month I'll probably bring it forward with the actual costs and stuff of what they come through with comparatives of what we paid last year versus this year and stuff like that I just wanted to kind of put that out there excellent thank you I want to commend both you and director Porto on working on this because if it wasn't for us being able to work out an extended lease and we had to return all these buses I'm not confident we would be able to replace them in fact I'm pretty confident we would not be able to replace them in the current supply chain issues and we had the same similar with our copy paper we had one bidder that guaranteed delivery and still didn't meet my deadline we were able to shop the paper around for the schools that needed it and it was over the summer so those we could Shuffle buses I wouldn't be able to do that with so did you know what the bus companies do with the bosses when under our normal yearly tournament they're already sold to another school district so St Charles and Gene Neva they buy used buses so the two-year in our buses they keep a great they keep them clean and um they fix all the stuff as we go we we maintain them that they're like high premium resale bags I got a first student and probably other like I mean that's probably it's used like origin even we're not going to get the buses that don't normally purchase yes so I guess so next year so we're kind of on the top of the line and there's a domino effect that if we don't get rid of them they're not going to get there someone is wondering like who's the least Midwest Midwest Transit so would they they're probably not going to say well now you're doing we're extending the lease but now you have an older bus normally you have brand new buses but now we're going to raise the price anyway because you have no choice in the matter so Midwest Transit knows that they're in this predicament so they've already ordered buses wow and the anticipation that we were probably going to replace them so we would get our new ones than our old ones would go to the next school and it's like a domino so we're at the top of the food chain anyway you look at it it's good except with the police because we're not going to get any questions you can adjust the residual on it we've been with them for a long time I mean they're a good company I mean they always come in at the lowest price thank you security reports CCC they're um being the month of December there was no CCC meeting this month and um for emergence preparedness committee uh update we've um held our second meeting of the year and we have um makeup of various administrators and then fire protection districts that include Elgin Pingree Grove Auburn Countryside in Burlington and then representatives from The Kane County Sheriff's Department Aldrin Police Department so right now we have work in progress to District level operations plan is being refined we're going to begin working updating our functional action plans which are for various emergencies and those would be the action plans that staff at the building levels would want to implement and then numerous people were involved in some training through the regional Regional Office of Education with Dr Mangan and we're looking at reunification So currently our reunification plans include sites that are in District other schools but we may be looking for the site whether in District or on the border of the district they would be external from our school buildings in case we would have to use it at some point so those are things that are all works in progress right now all right motion a second to adjourn the call session I mean sorry
everybody tonight to our governing board meeting Tuesday December 20th 2022 at 6 PM I'm calling this meeting to order we'd like to begin with a moment of silence led by and Then followed by the Pledge of Allegiance Pledge of Allegiance led by Bill Parker if you'll stand and join me for a moment of silence please I pledge allegiance to the fact of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you Mrs Wilson could you please call the roll Dr Charles Santa Cruz let's make sure the sound is on one second we're gonna make sure the sound is on is that better okay thank you Dr Charles Santa Cruz Mr Bill Parker here Michela eugetti here Miss Laurie wood here Miss Jill Humphries here Madam president all board members are present you have a quorum thank you and thank you for all being here we want to now move to 2.01 the approval of the agenda but I would like to ask that we actually rearrange it just a little bit we'll move the superintendent's report 4.01 for Dr McCord to the end after uh after nine the request for future agenda items that's acceptable if I may have a motion for that agenda as I just explained so moved with the changes explained thank you Mr Jetty as our second second thank you Mr pecker it's been moved and seconded of the agenda as I explained it all those in favor please vote by saying aye aye aye any opposed with me thank you past five zero with that we'll move to 3.01 to Dr McCord and the superintendent's recognition Awards thank you madam president governing board members um if you would join me in front of the dice we have one recognition for this evening foreign [Music] squeeze in somewhere around there oh maybe in front of them because they're big they're all taller than we are impressed thank you I'll stand over this way good evening everyone thank you for being here gentlemen thank you for coming tonight last day of uh the fall semester you're on winter break now you excited about that yes sir yes look at it yes they are um this is the Highland High football team they're a 6A football team and for the second year in a row they have brought back the state championship to Highland High in Gilbert Public Schools this is their actually their third year in the finals and they were runner-up three years ago and here they are again defending their title and I'd like to turn it over to their coach Mr Brock Farrell to say a few words about this phenomenal team uh really I just want to say thank you to the Gilbert public school district for allowing us to um you know play the the my in my biased opinion the greatest sport in the world um but it truly does teach uh the things that you need in order to become a but you know for the most part uh grown grown men in this country teaches them courage teaches them teamwork teaches them that not everybody has the same gifts and talents but we all can come together and achieve a common goal in this case it was a 6A state championship for the second year in a row um you know but moving on in their lives it could be anything so uh I just want to say again thank you for the opportunity to to be their coach and I will say that this year was different than last year and defending the title is as hard as everybody says it is um and these guys did a great job in defending their title we look forward to the opportunity to compete for the open state championship one of these days so there you go all right congratulations thank you foreign I'm going to hand the microphone over and if you'd pass it down the road if you'd introduce yourself tell us what grade you're in what year you're in and what position you play um Brigham Stewart I'm a senior and I play linebacker uh my name is Mason Sparks I'm a senior as well and I play a wide receiver my name is Jay Snead I'm also a senior and I play DB I play tackle uh my name is Bertrand Berry II I'm a junior and I played the end and for anybody who's confused this is not our entire football team there's about 90 of them and we pulled up over 130 for playoffs so these are mostly our seniors and guys that led the way and people that could fit in this room that would represent our team my name is Caleb lomu I'm a senior also and I play offensive line my name is AJ dutchover I'm also a senior and I play left guard my name is Joseph Walter I'm a senior and I play a wide receiver my name is Ezekiel no two I'm a senior and play DB my name is Cole Crandall I'm a senior and I play safety my name is Jay Martin I'm a junior and I play running back are any of you moving on to play football next year raise your hand tell everybody where you're going I'm going to play a Southern Utah University I'll be playing at University of Utah and for anybody who wants to join us tomorrow morning at 9 00 a.m at Highlands main gym these two will be signing their early National letter intent congratulations to our Highland talked about the the teamwork the collaboration everything that it takes to to put it into place and you guys demonstrated that all year long and we're very proud of you one more time for these guys please if we could get a picture are you ready yeah board members you want more members in there come on here one of you want to put that on yeah there you go propaganda oh yeah look at that oh yeah that's awesome that's awesome we went a little overboard thank you guys again thank you so much thank you thank you so much thank you so much appreciate it for being here [Music] while they're shaking hands I want to introduce a couple other people David Ryan from Canyon Valley he's one of our student superintendent Senate individuals thank you for being here and from Canyon Rim Aleister teeny or no you're not a Canyon Rim you're at Spectrum from Spectrum Elementary Alice tortini she's in our Aspire program to be a soon-to-be administrator so please give Alice a hand thank you for being here oh oh yeah one last thing they won the state championship but Mr Brock Farrell was the nfhs state and Regional football coach of the year congratulations appreciate it thank you you want to give another speech I just want to say thank you and it's an honor again to award for such a great School District thank you thank you here here's that ten dollars now we're done great that's great thank you with the rearrangement that I made that takes us to the request to speak to the governing board and we have one request tonight so if I could ask that the admonition will be read please yes if you'll read it let's see Judy request to speak to the governing board pursuant to ARS 38-4331-02.h the board may make may make an individual open call to the public during a public meeting subject to a reasonable time place and manner of restrictions to allow individuals to address the public body on any issue within the jurisdiction of the public body at the conclusion of an open call to the public individual board members May respond to a criticism made by those who have addressed the board may ask staff to review a matter or may ask that a matter be put on a future agenda however members of the board shall not discuss or take legal action on matters raised during an open call to the public unless the matters are properly noticed for discussion and legal action during an open call the board requests that speakers refrain from voicing complaints against School Personnel or any person connected with the district as it may impact due process rights policies Keb and Ked are provided by the board for disposition of legitimate complaints including those involving individuals forms required for use of these policies can be obtained from the Gilbert Public Schools website thank you Mr Jenny I will ask Shelley football I hope I pronounced that correctly to come and as you approach we'll set the timer for three minutes that you'll have to to share your thoughts thank you I'm a parent of two students at Gilbert High School a junior and a freshman and I came tonight to just try to seek some understanding of what district finals are um what the purpose of them are why they were created and instituted like the background and who writes the tests um I just came to understand that they were a thing the last few days our boys have come home mentioning a few things about them some of their comments have been my teacher doesn't know what to tell me to study because she hasn't seen the test um the test is written by one person um they also said they couldn't complete half of the test because they hadn't learned any of the curriculum yet they haven't gotten all their results back yet but on the few tests that they have they have flunked um like 35 percent 60 percent um 50 percent our boys are good students they're not perfect by any means they don't study for hours but they are A's and B students um luckily these tests have not affected their grades because they were high enough in the A or B category but it was just concerning to me that they have been in class taking the tests and doing the assignments for a whole semester and they have A's and B's and then the final assessment that was made by someone other than their teacher they failed significantly on so I just wanted that to be addressed foreign thank you Shelly right behind you is Dr Cox she's the director of secondary education for teaching and learning she can chat with you about some of your questions thank you very much for coming and sharing that with us and that will conclude our request to speak to the governing board for tonight we will now move to reports and begin with 6.01 FY 2023 monthly budget report for month ended November 30th 2022.
I'd like to call to order a regular meeting of the board of education on December 20th 2022 at seven o'clock P.M Cindy could you please call the roll certainly Dremel here kilburg here lock here no present Mathis Meadows present meitzler all right and this lock could you please leave us in the pledge of course one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all right Dr Hitchens are there any items removed from or added to the agenda or any changes um nothing added or subtracted but some shuffling around of the agenda so after BPS Partners we have a very important and exciting agenda item that we're going to move up which would be approval of the superintendent's contract and um we'll we'll Shuffle the board member committee updates to the closing when you give your statements at the end is perfect all right the first item on our agenda is public comments uh we ask that everyone who's going to make public comments tonight fill out a pink sheet uh when you come to speak to the board we don't engage at that time in a dialogue we want you to know that we value your comments and your opinions and if you would like a follow-up from anyone in the district There's an opportunity to request that on your pink sheet we ask that you fill out your full name and address because we do have to keep a complete set of Records I'll pass it over to Ali dietman who will explain our process thank you president Dremel speakers will be called up in order of form submission The Firm first form received was the first person invited to speak when your name is called please come to the podium so that you can be heard all individuals speaking will be limited to three minutes we'll have a timer up on the screen for you to see once you're settled at the podium is when the timer will start at any time during this meeting written comments may be submitted to our recording secretary City Rodriguez at my right speakers should conduct themselves with Civility and respect towards everyone in this room our first speaker is Stan Oak thank you thank you for making me feel welcome it's good to be here good to be among friends I don't come as somebody who knows something others don't I don't come era that others don't but I come as a person who has an opportunity to speak to a hundred batavians a day at my gas station so be that as it may um I promise to limit my speech to 30 minutes here because I violated that in the past um eight I encourage a referendum in April make it happen it'll not sell itself we're gonna have to sell it push it relative to mailers the opposition did a better job than the supporters Point black especially in the mailing you have a hard sell but it can be done with straight talk and one-on-one I've already converted 10 no votes two yes votes just by going over the details you know what are we trying to do what happens if we don't and I think Batavia will support you I think you should have signs at the two schools the problematic schools what are the deficiencies what happens if we don't pass a referendum and do it and certainly we need full support from those parents and citizens in that neighborhood and if we didn't get it the last time we got to figure out why and get it the next time I commit to bring 50 yes votes to The Ballot Box I can do that I ask every board member to do the same I think every District employee must be a salesperson hey this is our future this is our job we don't need people talking favorably about alternative school systems we love Public Schools let's let it be known in what we need to continue I think those signs must be very specific as to what the deficiencies are and there was a Feeling that we had to tear down and replace because we had not done good job of maintaining not true but the public needs to know that and they need to know the wise thing to do is to tear down and replace plus the other advantages to the other facilities in the district I think I rang the bell thank you thanks Dan [Applause] next we have Jerry Ruth okay good evening um I'm Jerry Ruth I have uh two young girls they're not in the school system yet but they will be very soon um I moved to Batavia five or six years ago with the anticipation of starting my family here and I have done so with the promise of the great education that my children will obtain by raising them here so I have a vested interest in this referendum I support this referendum I did in November I will do it again if and when it gets on the ballot in April I just wanted to go through a couple points uh some very good ones made by the previous speaker the previous campaign vote Yes for BPS was late to the game that will not happen again we know what is effective what is efficient what is felt by the community we know how to address the questions that came up and how to better approach responses to those questions and concerns when they do arise we're a much better feel for what's effective for marketing for our campaign we know how to get the word out and we will double our efforts and our impact will be exponentially better it's the best investment we can make in our community the investment I made in Batavia the investment that we all made as Citizens here is protected by our schools when people look to start families they do what I did you look at bedrooms kitchen floor plan if it suits your family's needs one of the most dire family needs is education we asked the board to return the referendum in April we feel strongly that it will succeed 24 votes out of over 14 000 is such a slim margin that we know we can overcome it that's all I have to say [Applause] next we have Stacy algazino I'm Stacy alcazino as she said I'm obviously Batavia Community member and I'm here to also speak in support of putting the referendum back on the ballot in April um so I moved to Batavia about four and a half years ago my husband and I were looking for a nice Community good schools um and we found it in Batavia I now have three kids under six so you know lots of free time um we love Batavia when we moved here I the community Vibe the support local I got my Batavia pillows Bulldog gear and like everybody else so when my daughter started at Louise White last year is when I first heard about building our future together I was kind of shocked about the state of the schools um three in poor condition five in Fair and uh so when the referendum came out I was like well great Batavia supports each other like this will go well obviously it lost um which was disappointing disappointing that our community didn't come out in support of our schools um giving our kids the safe secure schools they need um didn't come out to give our board the money that's needed for critical infrastructure updates but 24 out of 14 000 votes that's somebody who got stuck at work and couldn't make a devote that's there were votes left on the table people went there and didn't vote either way so there's education to be had and the vote Yes Community is ready to get out there we're ready to get aggressive get people to vote Yes we owe this to our kids to get it back on the referendum is that referendum back on the ballot and I think you guys owe it to the community to give the community one more chance to do it so let's do it in the spring thanks for your time peace [Applause] next we have Sylvia keppel what I would like to say is if you have another referendum be honest aim for an honest Victory telling people the real cost up front then let them make an informed decision there was a person on next door who thought it would only cost her 300 a year I looked up her house and found it would cost her three times that 900 a year she didn't know what she was voting for be honest no more of this it won't change the bond Levy because some people don't know what that means tell people what it will cost them also please tell all the businesses you have worked with to not fund for opponents of the referendum perhaps tell them that funding the yes effort would disqualify them from contracts on referendum generated projects it is a huge conflict of interest I will name them DLR group lamp Incorporated and Quest Food management all stood to gain from this referendum and funded the vote Yes Flyers and they do not represent the people of Batavia an April election doesn't give Fair assessment of the will of Voters Consolidated elections typically have a low turnout there was a 65 percent turnout in November that's really high for an election it gives you a better picture of the will of the people you are supposed to represent it was not 24 people who voted no but 7060 people who voted no even if the yes vote had won by a few votes the people are split pretty evenly on this it would not have been an overwhelming mandate I would think you would want the overwhelming mandate for projects like this if you're going to try again do it in the November 2024 presidential election where the turnout will be more representative of the will of the people listen to your constituents your focus groups are full of boosters you need a broader cross-section of the population when you do things like this you need to get out of the echo chamber you touted that you went to the community but I was there at those meetings and the numbers dwindled significantly by the end the vote was more representative the vote in November was more representative of the community a big problem are your taxes are too high and you never have pity on us taxpayers stop taxing to the max every year and maybe people will be more sympathetic you're increasing taxes five percent this coming year another five percent the following year and you have your referendum money use the massive amounts of tax dollars we give you wisely tear down a school and don't rebuild it and use the savings for your projects most of the cost of education is in is in salaries and benefits how much would tearing down a school save it wouldn't be popular with the parents and students of that school but hard decisions sometimes have to be made you might get people to support a much much smaller amount for specific unforeseen projects not planned for for example secure entrances for the schools and I saw two two other schools cost four million dollars between them this year for secure entrances and maybe better special ed facilities at RMS be specific millions of other dollars do not build confidence so to summarize smaller specific targeted amounts November 2024 and no special interests that work with the district and stand to profits should be involved thank you thank you next is Brendan Casey hello I'm Brendan Casey I've lived in Batavia since 2007.
I'm Melanie cost and I am the November student of the month so here at West Chicago I am part of numerous activities I was the Speaker of the House of the 57 legislative session I am an interact Club student council I'm a student ambassador I am part of NHS I'm also part of the national Spanish Honor Society for three consecutive years and I hope that this upcoming year I'm also part of it I'm part of the executive board for women's leadership and I am a director for Aurora this year I really think that being part of government and essentially being the speaker of the house during those full sessions were extremely interesting and it really helped me as a student not only as a student but also for my future career because I do know that I want to go into the government areas just be open-minded you you're in a very diverse Community you will interact with different people not everybody is going to agree with you so just be open-minded and be open to new ideas [Music] I plan on going to a four-year University and then from there transferring to law school during my four years in University I'm planning on majoring in history or political science the government area [Music] foreign [Music]
okay well that's the way to kick off a meeting so I hereby uh call this meeting to order uh roll call please Brown is here Mrs Galbraith Dr Hall here Mr swallis here Mrs Walters here vice president here president Aubrey here please rise and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible in liberty and justice for okay in this group would you please recite the permissions sir our mission is to empower each student to positively impact the world for a bright new future thank you okay we already had the choral presentation which was great so next up is public comment and first tonight is Mary Bragg and topic is holidays good evening Administration ladies and gentlemen of the board we appreciate all of your hard work and dedication for all of the time energy and effort that you put forth on the behalf of us and our students and families we want to take this time to wish you all a safe happy healthy holiday season in we're not going to think about Thursday until after two thank you and next up is Melissa huff and the girls on the run all right good evening my name is Melissa Huff I have been a school social worker in this District district since 2009 currently at Monee Elementary but previously I worked at Talala and CSK as well in addition to my social work rule like most Educators I've also worn many other hats PBIS coach School leadership and one that has always been dear to my heart Girls on the Run coordinator and Coach tonight I am speaking up as an advocate for this program because we need this program back in our elementary schools post-pandemic we need it more now than ever before this is the time of the year we start getting emails about the spring season sign up but yet here we are again another year we seemingly will not have this program at the elementary levels so tonight I wanted to take a moment to give you some history about how we got to this point so you can better understand my passion back in June 2012 when I was the social worker at Talala I reached out to my principal at the time Mr Neal to ask if we could bring Girls on the Run to our school and we successfully did we started the girls on the run program in this District the following year most of the other elementary schools jumped on board and we all successfully ran the program for many years as program coordinators and coaches we poured our hearts and souls into the program devoting so many after school and weekend hours all of which were voluntary practices were two nights a week for 10 to 12 weeks with a lot of planning and prep in between we didn't just run during practices we taught an entire social emotional curriculum we coordinated volunteer projects as a team we planned our own practice 5Ks in the community and even took the girls and their families to a Chicago Sky game one season as some of you know firsthand having daughters that participated in the program the impact this program has had on our kids is almost Indescribable we saw the social skills gained the self-confidence boosted the physical and mental health benefits we even had some students find their passion and go on to middle school with cross-country Awards we experienced this for seven years for seven years the volunteer program coordinators were able to recruit staff members and volunteers as coaches to keep the program going but sadly over time year after year our volunteer coaches became drained it became difficult to keep volunteers coming back year after year trying to balance volunteering time in trade of child care costs after school and balancing other obligations the elementary girls on the run program finally hit a wall in 2020.
we'll get let's get started this morning on call the meeting to order December 20th 2022 special board meeting Dr Arkin oh Pledge of Allegiance is first sorry I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all without the agenda yep next I need a motion to adopt the agenda thank you Mr Daniels thank you Mrs Scouts we have a motion and a second all those in favor of adopting the agenda signify by saying aye all those opposed motion passes 5-0 Tracy are there any public comments I guess I should look okay uh next up is action items Dr arkanov Mr Alexander uh this morning I'm recommending that the board approved the 2022-2023 teacher contract and Mr Taylor is available if you have any questions he this is the information he shared on Friday yes this has been posted since Monday evening on our website the web address was available all week last week and the minutes from last week have been posted are are available if more information is needed I think the big thing is uh this was approved it's to be paid by the end of the school by the end of the calendar year um a little over eight percent total to the collective bargaining unit and there's a lot of breakout as to as to where that money is going and why um the final thing I'll say is the appropriation the board approved earlier this month will allow for this to happen in 22 which is also a great thing for us so we can get this money out the door and into our teachers accounts I think that's it if there's any other questions on the details I'd be happy to answer any Mr Kayla this will be a special paycheck to the teachers yeah we're looking at December 30th so next Friday because it's outside of the normal yeah yep any other questions for Mr Taylor all right do I have a motion Mr President I move that we approve the 2022-2023 teacher contract as presented thank you Mr Daniels do I have a second the second Miss counts uh all those in favor signify by saying aye all those opposed motion passes five zero thank you next up is looks like announcements uh January 5th 2023 executive session starting at 6 p.m and then our normal board reorganization meeting at 7 pm and then immediately following our required annual Board of Finance meeting any other announcements or board member comments this morning then we are
good morning and welcome to this year's poetry out loud competition organized by Mr will Higgins the Lead Teacher in the English Department and we have 12 contestants today they'll both uh they'll all be reciting two poems and they will be scored on accuracy as well as performance overall so our first contestant today is Mackenzie Boucher [Applause] hi guys I'm Mackenzie Boucher and I'm going to recite to acquainted with the Knight by Robert Frost I have been one acquainted with the Knight I've walked out in the rain and back in the rain I've out walked the furthest City Light I've looked down the saddest City Lane I have passed by the Watchmen on his feet and dropped my eyes unwilling to explain I've Stood Still and stopped the sound of feet one far away and interrupted Cry came over houses from another Street but not to call me back or say goodbye and further still at an Earthly height one luminary clock against the sky proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right I have been one acquainted with the night foreign [Applause] our next recitation this morning will be by Mohammed hajazi [Applause] foreign in the lull the afternoon sun warms the linseed field the flowers are quiet they're bright subdued in the green while the mind wanders to the emerald mosque upon the hill built around a flowing spring the easy app Solutions and ablutions in that mosque where the spring water has been let loose to meander over marble Courtyards and inner Chambers across the geometric green tiled floor that cools the heels of the faithful thank you [Applause] next up with her first poem is Holly raposo foreign [Applause] by Michael McClure it's the mystery of the hunt that intrigues me that drives us like Lemmings but cautiously the search for a bright Square Cloud the scent of Lemon Verbena and to learn rules for the game the sea otters play in the surf it is the small things and the secrets behind them that filled the heart the pattern the spirit the fire redeem and that linked them together and pull their freedom into our senses the smell of a shrub a cloud the action of animals the rising the exuberance when the mystery is unveiled it is these small things that when brought into Vision become an Inferno [Applause] and with her first recitation Charlotte French [Applause] the current isolationism by Camille rankine in the half-light I am most at home my shadow is company when I feel hot I push a button to make it stop I mean this stain on my mind that I can't get out how human I seem like modern man I traffic in extinction I have a gift like an animal I sustain a flock of birds when touched I scatter I won't approach until the back is turned my heart betrays and I confess I am afraid how selfish of me when there's no one here I have the distance between our bodies infinitesimally in this long passageway I pose against the wallpaper dig my heels in catch the Light in my vision the back door opens on a garden that is Always In Bloom the dogs are chained so they can't attack like I know they want to and in the next yard over honey bee swarm and their sound is huge [Applause] and with her his first poem this morning we have Saeed achalov thank you [Applause] I married by Laureen nydecker I married in the world's Dark Black Knight for someone if not Repose at the close someone I hid with him from the long range guns I hid with him with from the long-range guns We Lay leg in the cupboard head and closet a slit of light at no bird Dawn untaught I thought he drank too much I say I married and lived unburied I thought foreign up next we have Brady Kai all right 300 goats by Naomi Nye in icy Fields is water flowing in the tank will they huddle together Warm Bodies pressing is the year the goat or the Sheep Scholars debating Chinese zodiac follower leader oh lead them to a warm corner little ones toward bulkier bodies lead them to the brush which cuts the icy wind another frigid night swooping down aren't you worried about them I asked my friend who lives by herself on the ranch of goats far from here near the town of Ozuna she shrugs not really they know what to do they're goats [Applause] foreign Swami [Applause] to Helen by Edgar Allan Poe Helen thy beauty is to me like those nice see in barks of yore that gently or a perfume see the weary way worn Wanderer bore to his own native Shore on Desperate Seas long won't to roam thy Hyacinth hair thy classic face thine heirs have brought me home to the glory that was Greece and the Grandeur that was Rome Lo and yawn brilliant window Niche how statue-like I see these stand the Agate lamp within thy hand ah psyche from the regions which are Holy Land [Applause] and with her first poem we have Alexandra Gonzalez Lopez [Applause] it is a dangerous thing to forget the climate of your birthplace to choke out the voices of dead relatives when in dreams they call you by your secret name it is dangerous to spurn the clothes you were born to wear for the sake of fashion dangerous to use weapons and sharp instruments you're not familiar with dangerous to disdain the plaster Saints before which your mother kneels praying with embarrassing fervor that you will survive in the place you have chosen to live a bear called room with no pictures on the walls a forgetting place where she fears she will die of loneliness and exposure Jesus she says is a dangerous thing [Applause] with his first poem this morning Jacob Benoit [Applause] words by Polly Murray we are spendthrifts with words we squander them toss them like pennies in the air arrogant words Angry Words cruel words cowardly words shy words tiptoeing from mouth to ear but the slowly rot words of love and the thunderous words of heartbreak those we hoard [Applause] foreign Sydney Campanelli [Applause] April midnight by Arthur Simons side by side roaming through the streets at midnight roaming to oh man hold on this is bad anyways side by side through the streets at midnight roaming together through the tumultuous night of London in the miraculous April weather yeah roaming together Under The Gaslight days work over how the city how the spring calls to us here in the city calls to the heart from the heart of a lover cool the wind blows fresh in our faces cleansing entrancing you the dancer and I watch you dancing bro uh good to be roaming good to be here together good to be roaming oh even in London even at midnight love or like in a Lover's gloaming yes I can okay you the dancer and I the dreamer children together um wandering lost in the night of London in the miraculous April weather [Applause] foreign with her first recitation Alexandra kojakaru [Applause] November con Flower by Gene tumor Boll weevil's coming and the winter is cold made Khan stocks look Rusty Seasons old and cotton scarces any Southern snow was Vanishing the branch so pinched and slow felt in its function as the Autumn rake drought-fighting soil had caused the soil to take all water from the streams can I start over foreign people start again reciting her first poem Alexandra kochikaru [Applause] November conflower by Gene tumor Boll weevil's coming and the winter is cold made cotton socks look Rusty Seasons old and cotton scarces any Southern snow was Vanishing the branch so pinched and slow Ed in its function as the Autumn rake drought fighting soil had caused the soil to take all the water from the streams dead birds were found in Wells 100 feet below the ground such was the season when the flower bloomed old folks were startled and it soon assumed significance superstitions saw something it had never seen before brown eyes that loved without a trace of fear Beauty so sudden for that time of year [Applause] and our last contestant for round one is Steven we [Applause] semi-splendid by Tracy K Smith you Flinch something flickers not fleeing your face my heart hammers at the ceiling telling my tongue to turn it down thank you do you mind if I restart now okay too late yeah I I found out where I had um left off but uh too late that something climbs leaps is falling now across us like the prank of an icy brainy Lord I chose the wrong word I am wrong for not choosing merely to smile to pull you toward me and away from what you think of as that other me who wanders lost among among whom the many the rare I wish you didn't care I watch you watching her her very Shadow is a rage that trashes the rooms of your eyes do you claim surprise at what she wants the poor girl pelted with despair who flits from grief to grief isn't it you she seeks and if you blame her know that she blames you for not choosing her but me love is never fair but do we should we care [Applause] foreign s wait for round two to begin I did want to introduce or mention all of the judges behind the scenes this morning we have our prompter English Department's Kimberly Rivard we have our accuracy judge again the English departments and Fife field her lovely assistant teleporting all the information over is Miss Tara Kearney also English Department then we have our four judges this morning we have former English teacher and Associate principal Rachel chavier [Applause] we have The Dashing John Karen the amazing special education teacher Anna Soares the amazing Wesley Lima and finally the English Department's Jessie grieve [Applause] and we'll take just a minute and then we will roll into round two foreign register then you can't leave here doing that [Music] foreign [Applause] the Paradox by Paul Lawrence Dunbar I'm the Mother of Sorrows I'm the Ender of grief I am the bud in the blossom I'm late Falling Leaf I'm thy priest and my poet I am thy serf and thy King I cure the tears of the heart sick when I come near they shall sing why are my hands as a Snowdrop sore at my fingers is clay dark is my frown as the midnight fair is my brow as the day battle and War my Minions doing my will is divine I am the calmer of passions peace is an ursuling of mine Speak to Me Gently or curse me seek me or fly from my sight I am thy fool in the morning Thou Art my slave in the night down to the Grave will I take thee out from the noise of the strife then shalt thou see me and know me death then no longer but life then shalt thou sing at my coming kiss me with passionate breath clasp me and smile to have thought me ought save the filament of death come to me brother when weary come one thy Lonely Heart swells I'll guide thy footsteps and Lead thee down where the dream alone dwells [Applause] foreign with his second poem sophomore Muhammad hijazi [Applause] foreign I too by Langston Hughes I Too Sing America I am the darker brother they sent me to eat in the kitchen when company comes but I laugh and eat well and grow strong tomorrow I'll be at the table when company comes nobody there say to me eat in the kitchen then besides they'll see how beautiful I am and be ashamed I Too Am America thank you [Applause] with her last poem this morning senior Holly raposo [Applause] The Last Word by Nikki Grimes I am a door metaphor waiting to be open you'll find no lock no key all are free to enter up will simply step over the threshold remember to dress for travel though visitors have been known to get carried away foreign with her second recitation sophomore Charlotte French [Applause] burning the old year by Naomi shihab Nye letters swallow themselves in seconds notes friends tied to the doorknob transparent Scarlet paper Sizzle like mothwings marry the air so much of any year is flammable lists of vegetables partial poems orange swirling flame of days so little is a stone where there was something and suddenly isn't and absence shouts celebrates leaves a space and I begin again with the smallest numbers quick Dance Shuffle of losses and leaves only the things I didn't do crackle after the Blazing dies [Applause] all right foreign with his second poem Junior Syed achalov [Applause] a keeping things whole by Mark strand in a field I am the field of absence this is always the case wherever I am I am what is missing when I walk I part the air and always the air moves in to fill the spaces where my body's been we all have reasons for moving I move to keep things whole thank you [Applause] with his last poem this morning Junior Brady Kai [Applause] Pinocchio by Ray armentrout strand string in this dream the paths cross and cross again they are spelling a real boy out of repetition each one is the one real boy each knows he must be wrong about this but he can't feel how the fish and the fishermen the pilot the princess the firemen and the ones on fire [Applause] and now with his second reading Junior shubham Swami catch a little rhyme by Eve Miriam once upon a time I caught a little rhyme I set it on the floor but it ran right out the door I chased it on my bicycle but it melted to an icicle I scooped it up in my hat but it turned into a cat I caught it by the tail but it stretched into a whale I followed it in a boat but it changed into a goat when I fed it tin and paper it became a tall skyscraper then it grew into a kite and flew far out of sight [Applause] foreign with her second poem this morning sophomore Alexandra Gonzalez Lopez [Applause] the arrow and the song by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow I shot an arrow into the air it fell to Earth I knew not where four so swiftly it flew its sight cannot follow it in its flight I breathed a song into the air it fell to Earth I knew not where for who has sight so keen and strong that it can follow the fight of song long long afterward in an oak I found the arrows still unbroke and the song from beginning to end I found in the heart of a friend [Applause] thank you with his second poem Junior Jacob Benoit [Applause] Buffalo Bills by E.E Cummings Buffalo Bills defunct who used to ride a water smooth Silver Stallion and break one two three four five pigeons just like that Jesus he was a handsome man and what I want to know is how do you like your blue-eyed boy Mr death thank you [Applause] foreign next up with her second poem we have Junior Sydney Campanelli [Applause] acquainted with the Night by Robert Frost I have been one acquainted with the Knight I have walked out in rain and back in rain I have out walked the furthest City Light I have looked down the status City Lane and pass by I pass by The Watchmen on his beat and dropped my eyes unwilling to explain I have Stood Still and stopped the sound of feet when far away an interrupted Cry came over houses from another Street but not to call me back or to say goodbye further still at an Earthly height one luminary clock against the sky proclaiming the time neither wrong nor right I have been one acquainted with the night [Applause] with her second recitation senior Alexandra kochikaru and I wonder where you are by Tanaya Winder sacred Stars blanket a nighttime sky each light reminds us of the preciousness of life your memory lives along the Milky Way each twinkle saying don't forget my name it's an epidemic a sickness of the Earth a war we enter as soon as we are birthed indigenous women girls our two spirit two when did this world start disappearing you [Applause] foreign this morning will be recited by sophomore Stephen we [Applause] the road not taken by Robert Frost two roads diverged in the yellow wood and sorry I could not travel both and be one Traveler long I stood and looked down one as far as I could to where it bent in the undergrowth and then took the other as just as Fair and having perhaps the better claim because it was grassy and wanted where though as for that the passing there had worn them really about the same and both that morning equally lay in leaves no step had trodden black oh I kept the first for another day yet knowing how way leads on to way I doubted if I should ever come back I shall be telling this with a sigh somewhere ages and ages hence two roads diverged in a wood and I I took the One Less Traveled by and that has made all the difference [Applause] as we take some time to tally the results of both rounds let's get a big round of applause for all the contestants this morning [Applause] we'd like to also do a couple of thank yous first we'd like to thank superintendent Dr Gifford for joining us this morning as well as DCTV headed by Peter Chase for all our filming and sound needs this morning and we'll be back in just a few minutes after we get the scores I am in front of the uh all right let's hear it again for all the contestants in this year's poetry out loud competition when you guys all try to get in the frame come on this side a little bit you know it seems like when you memorize poetry that the chief skill might be just memorization but really I think it's an act of Bravery to come up here and do this if you had asked me to do this when I was in high school I probably would have left um it's difficult to do to do this alone you know inside a classroom when we we do this but to come up on stage and do it into a microphone as it's being streamed it's very very difficult to do so congratulations to to everybody uh for participating today thank you Miss Lassie for emceeing this year's event [Applause] and also working out all of the tabulation issues that we had as we began so thank you I appreciate it all right uh the winner of this year's poetry out loud competition will get this beautiful edition of 100 Years of the best American short stories this is the first place prize the other thing that will happen too is that the first place winner will be invited to go on to the New England Regional Championship which is probably the beginning of February at some point where students from the south coast in Cape Cod will gather together I think it's about 12 to 15 students and there's a third round of poetry so students have to memorize a third poem does that feel does that feel scary you have to do a third poem and then the winner of that one will go on to the state championship which is probably in March and then there's a national competition in April and I think the winner of that one wins a pretty hefty scholarship prize uh at the end all right so why don't we start with our third place uh finalists today so and if you can come up and just kind of stand next to us uh when we announce your name so in third place is shubin come on up nice job in second place is Holly and the 2022 poetry out loud winner is Charlotte French [Applause] and that's it for poetry out loud thank you again judges thank you if you're still listening to this in your classroom and you know when this comes around again next year this starts really sometime in November if you're interested in doing this I'll send out a notice to everybody again around the school and if you're interested in participating you can come see me some classes will do it at the classroom level but that's it for this year thank you everybody [Applause]
Dr McCord thank you madam president governing board members this is our monthly budget report uh for month and November 30th and I'll turn it over to miss betz it was on so I don't just turn it off okay yeah you're good am I good okay great thank you good evening Governor board members Dr McCord um Mrs wood I'm here to present the monthly Financial presentation and then with a short stopping point we'll move right into the aquifer I thought it would be important to go ahead and address you from the podium this evening just to make sure that we have an easy changeover if you have any questions that Michelle's could answer when we get into the aquifer or any questions that Jackie would be able to answer if I cannot so but we'll start with the finance the monthly Financial presentation just give me a second to connect okay so this activity represents all the transactions for the current fiscal year through November 30th 2022 so this this report's fairly short uh we're just sharing the operating funds our federal grants Enterprise funds and a couple of other District funds so to begin we always share the main operating funds grid and note the two highlighted rows maintenance and operations and unrestricted Capital just wanted to share that the available balance so the 29.4 million dollars represents a 2.4 million dollar decrease from what we presented in October we had talked when we left the October meeting uh Ms Madden and I spoke about encumbering that final Recruitment and Retention stipend that's planned for may we have had a conversation with our Federal grant director Miss Angela marlar Connor and we are going to revise the sr3 grant proposal to include the final payment of the risk and the Recruitment and Retention stipend so it's possible that that 2.4 million dollar encumbrance will be released so I just wanted to share that in addition under unrestricted Capital the available balance has decreased by about a million that's just reflective of all the work our our schools are doing to get their requests in for approval for Library furniture for classroom Furniture those items and then there's a that's about half a million dollars worth in instruction that has been ordered and then in addition the remaining about 450 000 has to do with technology or operations uh and remember that when there's a project out at our Fields that's an ADA issue of course something that has to do with any of our athletic facilities um Albert takes care of those those needs out of unrestricted Capital so before I can go any further is there any questions on that foreign okay great and this is just basically what I said the Federal grant funds Mrs Mrs betz I'm sorry that's okay could you go back to that for just a minute sure um the Medicaid reimbursement seems to be lower than it has been available balance so the year-to-date expended encumbered the 184 000 is that lower than what you've seen no it probably isn't but it wasn't there a couple of years ago where we used a significant amount of that or was that before you were here I don't remember I think it might have been before you were here and I think that in the past when I've gone through and looked at Old reports there there was definitely the use of Medicaid as part of mitigation strategies uh to save mno dollars so it's possible that's what you're remembering and that is totally unrestricted we it's ill-advised though to use it for a special education costs because it impacts our maintenance of effort because it is considered a federal fund well it it's basically comes from special education students it does yeah thank you so uh this particular grid is all of our Federal grant funds and I wanted to point out the roads where it's fund 346 but there's two rows there so as part of Esther 3 there's a 20 set aside as we were talking after we presented a month ago we thought it would be important to separate those out so we can definitely see how much of this two categories we have spent to date and you can see that in the sr3 the required 20 set aside there's only about three hundred thousand dollars spent to date in the current year that's reflective of the 24 7 on-demand tutoring that we that we purchased for fiscal 23 in addition the remaining amounts were for the first ever fall break um intercession that was done that was very successful we plan on using these monies in April and then possibly in the summer as well we intended to use the set aside for summer school primarily if you recall Last Summer the governor offered the Arizona on track funding so that allowed us to save the sr3 set aside and we used the Arizona Arizona on track funding instead so I just wanted to explain that expiration date on the sr3 I knew there were on the other ones and we've passed those I believe yeah there there is the expiration date on Esser 3 is September 30th of 2024 so we have another year and a half okay thank you [Music] okay there are Enterprise funds we've been sharing the Enterprise funds regularly but note that we also split out the DES Child Care Grant from the Des Workforce Grant so these two parts of the same Grant have different rules and the child care Grant we have way more flexibility in how that's spent in comparison to the workforce Grant wanted to share that later on under consent you will be approving a request by the community school fund our community school department to be able to use that Workforce grant for reimbursement of employees portion of their their benefits as well as some college reimbursement and other opportunities to get that money spent down so other District funds unemployment insurance just thought it was interesting that we continue of course to take money out of our payroll processing and put into our Unemployment Insurance Fund over the last two years it's been higher than normal due to the pandemic to date we are at a year-to-date expense expended encumbered of ninety five thousand dollars which is lower than it has been reflective of two things fewer claims against unemployment and then secondarily the department is catching up on all those fraudulent claims that occurred back in the fiscal 2021 so we're getting a lot of those credited back now the other notable fund is the advanced placement summer Institute note that there is a negative thirty four thousand dollars due to an encumbrance this is part of our operation of that fund it's required that we engage with the Consultants I.E instructors of our teachers prior to them actually coming to Arizona to to teach or consult over the summer and we are just now beginning to take tuition payments to soon make that negative go away but that's this is a standard operating procedure you might be worried you know is there a cash issue here there is not a cash issue remember that we have uh all of our cash is pooled and so we're able to make sure that we are um paying our bills even though One Fund might look like it's negative is there any questions on that okay that's all I have for that board members any questions thank you okay great thank you so the next presentation is uh fiscal year 2022 audit update and draft audited financial statements again I shared this on the agenda item as well their draft only in the verbiage and checking for typographical errors the financial statements are done and have been audited and I'll let our auditor Miss Jennifer Shield share the audit results with you but this is what we're going to share this evening and remember this is activity that was a year ago it ended June 30 of 2022 we've been talking about the current year a lot we're also getting geared up to talk about next year but we're finalizing fiscal year 2022 and much of this information is based upon the annual financial report that you all approved back in October the other point I wanted to make is note that under the action items there is an action for you to accept the con the annual comprehension financial report and so it has been posted to both locations just wanted to make sure that you're prepared for that so to begin we want to start with the audit process and the results we'll get into the fiscal year 2022 government-wide financials then the governmental and then some of the details of funds so here in Gilbert and in other school districts in Arizona we have over 35 separate funds but they're categorized differently depending upon how we are treating them in this annual comprehensive financial report and then finally at the end we're sharing some items to note that are part of the the act for that we wanted to share with you so to begin I'd like to hand over the microphone to Miss Jennifer Shields from heinfeld meech and Company good evening Madam president members of the board Dr McCord thanks again it's nice to see everybody um thanks for letting me um speak with you tonight so um did you make flights for me Bonnie I apologize okay so I I don't have any slides for you um but I have talking points so that's good it'll keep me um my talking points will keep me on track um so in terms of the audit process and the timeline very similar to Prior years the audit process actually starts back in the April time frame with the issuance of the engagement letter so that happened in April of 2022.
I have two kids who went through BPS from first grade to 12th grade and are now in college and I have two kids who are in RMS right now uh so first I'd like to thank the board and the administration for all the work you've done over the years for Batavia schools especially since my kids directly benefited from all your hard work so a year ago in December was when um superintendent Hitchens asked some of us to join the BPS 101 facilitating team so this team was charged with helping roll out the district's master plan to the community and helping collect feedback from the community when I first looked at the proposed master plan I was extremely skeptical I asked a lot of the same questions many people in our community have asked do we really need to tear down schools and rebuild from scratch does this mean that the school district somehow dropped the ball on maintenance is this really possible to do this without increasing taxes I started out as a pretty firm no but I spent a lot of time going through all the information online listening to the presentations to the community asking a lot of tough questions I definitely was people who confirm I was not a booster in any of those meetings um and I listened to the answers and I learned three main things uh First Independent audits have determined that these buildings are cheaper to rebuild than to maintain so it's actually fiscally prudent to rebuild and wasteful to maintain what is there and I support fiscal Prudence of my taxpayer dollars second we're in a position to do this now without raising taxes because the district has done an excellent job managing our available funds so it's the opposite of the district dropping the ball the district has done an outstanding job and that's why we're in the position to do this now third I learned to trust the administration and I saw how open they are to anyone who asked and takes the time to talk to them my experience took me from a hard no to an enthusiastic yes as I mentioned it took a while to get to where I am now and there's no way I can convince people in three minutes that what I say is true but I invite any skeptic to go through the information provided by the district there is enough there for anyone to make an informed decision I asked the board tonight to put the construction ballot initiative on the April ballot I think it's the only fiscally prudent option for the district and I will continue to work to share with the community what I've learned and helped get this initiative passed [Applause] and last we have Melanie impostato good evening thank you for your opportunity to speak tonight I'd also like to thank Dr Hitchens for her years of service to the district and we're going to miss you um good luck in your retirement I'm here also to speak on behalf of the referendum and support and ask the board to again put the referendum in April I believe that um it sometimes takes more than once to pass a referendum to in a community such as the size of Batavia I believe that replacing the schools can't be cost effect they can't be cost effectively renovated it is financially prudent to replace them I believe that the information does show that I also think that new schools are good for the students education in the long run they are much more efficient to operate the new ones with today's technology we need the new schools because to upgrade the schools with what they need it's just not going to be cost effective and maintaining the high quality of Batavia schools is the best thing that we can do to protect our property values upgrading the facilities also ensures that we're providing the best stem education that our the students need I have seen all three of my kids go through kindergarten all the way through 12th grade and I have um one get all the way through college and I can tell you when she was in second grade I didn't think that was going to happen so um she now is off the payroll and on her own and I would have to say that Batavia prepared her for that so um we have to continue to we just all children deserve that so as a tax paying member of Batavia I want to provide that to all the students that are up and coming we can't we can't downgrade it we have to continue to prepare that and today's environment we have to do that with technology and the schools each see storm and Louise White don't have that so we have to the people who are at Grace McQueen people at HC Storm are not in the same building like so we need to put that referendum back on there and the yes for BPS committee we need to grow the committee but the ones that the core people that are there are going to bring this to the finish line and we need to do that in April thanks bye [Applause] next I'd like to invite Todd Swanson uh president of the Bea good evening everyone uh thank you again for the opportunity to speak to you but honestly tonight I'm going to direct more of my comments to Mr Kim um I mean I have a captive audience right now so I have to take advantage of that one Mr Kim so um so I'll go ahead and start uh tonight I have the distinct honor in representing 425 members of the Batavia Education Association and saying congratulations to you Mr Kim on your appointment to become batavia's new superintendent on July 1st we also want to extend our warmest welcome to your family as you also become an integral part of our BPS family I look forward to begin meeting with you as we start to build a relationship centered around trust communication and collaboration and please let's not wait till July 1st to do that so again on behalf of the Bea we are thrilled to have you here and begin our new partnership with you the showing of red that you see before you or behind you or beside you tonight paint's a symbolic picture we have a motto through iea that Rings truer and truer each year through every course of action in every story that our members share from the far reaches of our state to every building and classroom within our own District we are stronger when we are united this message certainly applies to our membership and that we accomplish so much more when we are a cohesive unified entity but that correlation doesn't need to stop there even though Mr Kim you are joining our district to fill the top administrative role we can be stronger when we are united both admin and Union working together working on our common end goal making sure we create an environment where all who enter the doors of any of our buildings in our district feel welcome and safe that feeling must begin with our District staff whether it be a classroom teacher a paraprofessional custodian lunch Supervisor office secretary all District employees must feel like that they belong here and that this is a safe and welcoming place for them when you're safe when your staff has that basic need met they will then be more able to make move on to accomplish the most important end goal that we must continually strive to achieve achieve in BPS that every student feels welcome and safe and that they are learning and growing in all of our training that we have had through Aces and being trauma-informed we've learned that if our needs are not being met if we as the adults in the classroom ourselves are dysregulated dysregulated overwhelmed and struggling it's so much harder to meet the needs of our students this is an extremely tall order for you to come into Batavia with but nothing could be more important to the well-being of our district organizational climate sets the stage for organizational culture we are hopeful that your educational experiences and background will help in reaffirming our district climate and ultimately the culture of our district we look forward to being equal partner with you as we embark on this journey together to conclude my message tonight I would like to quote a line from a very famous Christmas movie a movie that ranks as one of my family's top movies for the holiday season the character giving this line has been through a great deal as of late in this film she was being told that there was nothing that could be done to help the Dilemma that she was facing person after person she encountered said they could do nothing to change her situation she reached out to everyone and anyone that she knew still to no avail now at the point of exhaustively championing her cause and yet again being told that nothing was going to change our main character who by the way her name was Kate if that's going in your brain a little bit here and maybe uttered this famously profound statement this is Christmas the season of Perpetual hope now if you don't know what movie I'm referring to and you're asking why did I choose to share this particular line from home alone when Kevin's mother Kate has yet again been told that there was nothing that anyone could do to get her home to her son there's actually two reasons first I truly believe that Christmas is the season of Perpetual hope when we first heard the timeline of the board to have a new superintendent hired by the December board meeting we as a union had some reservations was the process being rushed would we find the absolutely best candidate in the search process and having gone through this process myself personally I can't help but think but the appointment of Mr Kim at the board meeting right before Christmas holds a little deeper message for all of us his appointment does give us hope hope for a new set of eyes to look and see the inner workings of our district hope for a diverse perspective to analyze where we are and where we are headed and hope that together we will collaborate and communicate to build a trusting relationship to guide our district into the future Christmas is truly the season for Perpetual hope now the second reason that I mentioned for this analogy relates right back into the movie when Kate is so desperate to get back to her son a completely unknown person approaches her to offer her to hear her story and ultimately a solution that had not even presented itself even after hours and hours of Kate struggling with the same situation over and over expecting to get a different outcome Mr Kim you are our John Candy now I don't know if if you're part of a widely known Polka Band that is big in Sheboygan Wisconsin or not but we are anxious and ready to see how you will transport us from where we are to where we want to go just like John Candy did for Kate McAllister and transporting her back home to her son Kevin so once again welcome Mr Kim to Batavia are we worried that something might happen to our district now that you are here allow me one last Home Alone reference please no for three reasons a change might be just what the doctor ordered two we know that we will be advocating for what is best for our staff and students and doing so in a collaborative Manner and D we work with the most incredible people in the whole United States of America where all things are possible period and with that I hope you all have a wonderful break and once again welcome to the BPS Community Kim family thank you [Applause] so the board wanted me to share with the community uh just a brief overview of what our process was uh for hiring Mr Kim and so our Consultants had brought us eight qualified and well-vetted candidates and uh in collaboration with the Bea who brought us this request we added a stakeholder interview group to our process and so we had those eight candidates in a Marathon interview day um amazing board members uh sitting in the room with us and another group uh sitting in a different room so each candidate came to speak to the board and spoke to a stakeholder group um after everyone did their interviews the board had a chance to talk about their impressions of the candidates and then we waited for information from the stakeholder group to find out who their top candidates were they shared feedback on strengths weaknesses and then vetted each person uh ranked their top three that information was conveyed to the board and the value of that was we had um narrowed it down somewhat but we were sort of vacillating on who exactly we wanted to bring back and based on that feedback we actually ended up bringing back a candidate for a second interview that was not initially going to be somebody that we talked to and so that was a very very important part of that process and uh we narrowed it down to three candidates that we brought back for a second interview so again we um instead of doing an all day we went late into the night I had a chance to talk to each candidate further in depth I will say all of the candidates that we talked to we had a great deal of respect for and really valued but when we finally narrowed it down to choosing Mr Kim it was for many of the reasons that Todd had just shared he has a history of fighting for educational Equity he is all about student learning he is a relationship Builder and he engages the community and those are all things that are values of this board values of this community and we had a lot of confidence that Mr Kim could be the person that could lead us to that next stage of like what Todd said where we've been strong and we want to be stronger and so we're very excited so I would entertain a motion to approve the terms of Mr Kim's new contract so moved second all right we'll go I'll move by kelleberg second by low all in favor any opposed congratulations Mr Kim I did want to give you a chance just to say a few words uh welcome we're really excited to have you guys thank you um you can go to the podium sure all right so uh first I'd like to start by saying thank you to the board um after as you all heard a rigorous process and one that happened in a window of time that definitely challenged anyone who was going through the process to be prepared and on their feet uh ready to go um I do want to say thank you to the board for selecting me in replacing Dr Hitchens uh who I wish you nothing but the best in your next steps and I want to thank you as well for being so kind and gracious and already extending your support to me so thank you so much for that um you know and to the board it is not lost on me just how much you are extending your faith in me and your support and I want to thank you for that as well already I feel it I felt it walking in and um it's definitely not lost on me on on this decision and the weight and moving us forward and continuing the great work that's happening here and Todd to you and all our colleagues in the room I I just want to say this this is exactly what I knew this was I want to thank you all for being here you are filling my bucket right now knowing that this level of support is here I do agree with you standing United together together as an administrative team thanks to everybody who's gotten us through what is undoubtedly the most difficult period in our lifetimes and hopefully the only one um it is without a doubt that what I'm seeing here tonight is exactly why I knew and my family knew that this would be the right decision and the right position to pursue at this time in my career and hopefully the only decision I have to make at this point moving forward it's really humbling I have to tell you I have an unexpected guest A co-worker who I consider a very dear friend to me who showed up out of nowhere and uh you know and I think that sends uh that reinforces the message that you're saying about being united education and schools I believe are the pillar and the foundation to every Community it's a part of what makes the communities this District serves that we serve great and it is so clear from every speaker up here that BPS 101 is why people choose to live here in these communities choose to stand these communities stay choose to come back and raise their children have them go through these schools and why all of you do what you do and make that magic happen in the buildings every single day and and to the administrators as well all of the I I know what the hard lifting was like uh I was there just in a different place with you and so I want to thank everybody for giving me an opportunity to come on board with a wonderful district with amazing people some of you may not know this but I did spend some time kind of sleuthing through the community having a bite to eat here and there talking to some folks my daughter ran in a cross-country meet at the middle school it got a chance to talk to some just community members who had no idea who I was before I decided to apply and so that helped my decision and uh in the end I'm so excited um I agree there I'm sure we'll have time to get to know each other and as we do that I hope you'll see that whatever we do moving forward is going to be for students it's going to be for an environment that is here to meet everyone's needs to make sure that we have the best schools if not in the state of Illinois in the country and before this evening were to end I'd be remiss if I did not say this I want to thank my family my children are an absolute inspiration relation to Everything I Do having been raised by a single mother who was an immigrant and raising three boys on her own driving from Skokie Illinois to West Chicago every single day to make sure that we could stay in the schools that we were at I get it I absolutely get it and we're going to fight for that and and then to my wife who has been you've been behind me in front of me and to the side of me and every step of our our journey together in life thank you and so I want to thank all of you my family's here because this is me I wear my heart on my sleeve may not always be the most polished person in the room that's okay I also know I'm not going to be the smartest person in the room which I think puts me ahead in the game a little bit but I promise you this that this is a commitment that's not just me but it's our family we're going to see this through all the way and we're we're here so thank you everybody thank you all for coming out with the weather and and being on the eve of your break so thank you thank you everybody I'm looking forward to it very excited thank you thank you I [Applause] I wanted to call just a short five minute recess we will reconvene at 7 38.
other coaches and after school programs throughout the district were being compensated for their time but not for this program until 2020 that is in 2020 the Middle School brought the girls on the run program to the upper grades for the first time and in their season their program coordinators and coaches were in fact paid for the many hours required to successfully run this program they received a stipend for their dedicated time but at the elementary level we still do not have Equitable funding we desperately want and need this program back in our elementary schools we are ready and eager and we miss it our kids deserve it and we hope that you will help ensure equity is in fact a priority in our district and find a way to help us fund this program in the way that it deserves across the entire District thank you [Applause] thank you very much okay uh next up is board updates um does anybody have one I have a brief one um just wanted to let you know that um and again this is on the great work that our social workers do but um in Crete Angels On Assignment and Crete Township Youth Services have had a toy drive in Crete and they've received hundreds of toys they've partnered now with through our social workers in the district to find deserving families for these toys and children who may not otherwise have a Christmas gift this year and at this point they're up to helping over 100 Kids and Counting so I want to shout out for Angels On Assignment in the Creek Township for doing that and then on just as a side I was talking with Miss van kaiken on my way in tonight she was telling me all the other great work the social workers have been engaged in raising money and helping the community and so I just want to have a shout out to all of our social workers so thank you foreign updates yeah I would like to do a quick one because it's time sensitive particular update thank you Ken for allowing me to use CSK CSK this past Saturday that my wife and I and our non-profit organization we partnership with Pete's food in Matson and Sam Club in Tinley Park to provide some meals for several home owners and people that live within the neighborhood throughout Creek Monee Park Forest I think we hit University Park so that was a very very good gesture not so much from my wife and I more so from Pete food and Sam Club than to see those smiles on the people that we was able to get full baskets to did my hard wealth so thank you for allowing that okay and Dr Cara thank you any other board updates I don't have an update I just want to say that that's my favorite part of this job is seeing the kids perform and those type of events it was wonderful and I don't know if everyone knows we do I know you guys know but we do host an event called Spectacular in February it's February 4th it's a show choir competition where they won't compete because we're the host but choirs from all over the state and other places come and that'll be a day I'm sure bill will let us all know that they're going to need a lot of volunteers on February 4th so I plan to be there and uh and I just I'm so proud of those kids and I just love that and thank you Mary for the holiday wishes and the same to all of you thanks for coming out I've already been volunteered for a spectacular okay any other board updates okay if not administrative updates anything Dr Cara um you know we just want to make sure that we wish everybody a happy and healthy holiday season like I said we've had a great school year so far a lot of hard work that's gone in a lot of great events that have been going on for helping our community the list goes on um about everybody pitching in together to help support each other in a variety of ways so just want to do wish everybody a happy holiday and looking forward to seeing everybody back here next year okay great do you know what time what time does everybody get out of here on Thursday well we are watching the weather I was going to say we do have early dismissal that was planned it's 11 o'clock and one o'clock respectively but we are watching the weather and we'll be making any sort of announcements if necessary you know by tomorrow yeah I was going to say just make sure the staff kids will leave early to make sure they leave on time we have school schedule for Friday I know no no there is no school it's going to be it it's going to be interesting so and they're moving it up a little bit so just make sure everybody's aware make sure they're out there on time everybody's watching it trust me yes yes is there a period of rain turning over to ice there yeah yeah Thursday I think it's starting they said it even as early as noon we're going to watch that and then it goes all the way until Friday so yeah they don't live five minutes away so they're gonna they're gonna drive to Indiana and Illinois just make sure they get home yeah okay uh next up is consent agenda before I get a motion do any board members have an item they'd like taken off the consent agenda to vote on separately okay hearing none can I get a motion to approve the consent agenda moved second and Dr Kara could you please read the items on the consent agenda I sure can under superintendent's report item one approved regular meeting minutes of November 15 2022 item two approve regular meeting closed session minutes of November 15 2022.
and then shortly thereafter we begin our actual audit procedures we work very closely with Miss Jackie matinin and her staff um in terms of scheduling out work to be done that makes the most sense for her team as well as school sites I know that in the past we've talked about the fact that throughout the audit we don't just bombard the finance department with our questions and requests but we also work with individuals out at site levels you know when we do things like test attendance we deal with school registrars and and other personnel um so that usually occurs before the completion of the um the school year because we find that that works um best for the staff at the school sites while you know we're essentially auditing current activity for the students that are on on site at that individual campus um during that time frame and then um and unfortunately for Miss Jackie um the audit never stops until um even now and it'll continue on for a little bit longer um but the um throughout the summer months and up through September October time frame we continue to work on various parts of the audit with the culmination of what we call our final field work that occurs in the October time frame so that happened as planned and then the draft of the audit report was submitted to management recently within the last week or so and as Miss bet said the information has all been audited the um the financial statements have been compiled and we're just down to some of the you know some of the verbiage in terms of um you know explanations for some of the reasons for changes and things like that so we are expecting to issue the audit report here within the next few days there's a filing deadline for um submission to a couple of organizations for awards for excellence in financial reporting that the district has participated in those programs for quite a number of years so the deadline for that is December 31st and it's expected that the financial statements will have an unmodified opinion so we're not not forecasting anything different in that respect so again just in terms of some of the other required Communications between our firm and you as the governing board the scope of our audit Services was to perform the audit of the financial statements in accordance with all of the audit standards generally accepted auditing standards government auditing standards and then also the standards that are under uniform guidance which that's the federal piece of the audit we also are contracted to perform the procedures necessary to issue the uniform system of financial records compliance questionnaire that will that and the single audit will be forthcoming at a later date in terms of other Communications um and and fraud inquiries those occur throughout the audit process you know starting back as early as April up and through will continue through the time that we issue the final reports um just a reminder that fraud responsibility ultimately rests with management of the district and it starts with you at the board level and our responsibilities are to design procedures that we will provide reasonable but not absolute Assurance as to the transactions and whether or not fraud occurs um and and all of that so during this fiscal year Ms betz might have this in her presentation but there was a new accounting standard that was implemented and that was what's called gazbe 87 it has to do with leases so there were some changes in financial reporting related to leases and in terms of both on the payable side so when you act as you when you are a lessee but there are also changes in the financial statements that relate to situations in which the district acts as a Love or and so those types of things have occurred there are some significant estimates in the financial statements that'll just draw your attention to those are predominantly related to Capital assets and the depreciation of the assets over their useful lives and then some elements related to pensions and things like that that ultimately the district relies on the state retirement system for there were no significant audit adjustments that we need to bring to your attention there were no disagreements with management that we need to bring to your attention and excuse me um last but not least um there are certain services that our firm provides that are considered non-audit services and that's the assistance with providing the actual or preparing the actual annual comprehensive financial report so through that process we work with management and provide all of the information information related to the um how the financial statements were prepared starting from Source records here at the district and then all of the adjustments that get made there and um both um Jackie and Bonnie have been going through all of those adjustments to make sure that there are no errors in that and aside from that um the only other thing to let you know is that as your independent Auditors were required to maintain our own ethical responsibilities meet our ethical standards and we have done that on our end and so just reporting to you that we've met all of our standards there and with that I'd be happy to take any questions or turn it back over to miss Pitts thank you Miss Shields is there are there any questions I I haven't I'm good I have a comment if that's okay please I I a few years ago I'm not sure how many the legislature I believe it was passed a law that we couldn't use the same accounting firm or auditing firm and then that was changed and and I would just like to say that in I in my past experience especially in a past life that I had um that I believe that heinfield and meech is probably one of the finest firms that we could deal with in very many ways I I've been impressed and you use the word ethical I believe that that's probably the the key word and I think probably what the concern was at that time was you know getting to know people too well but I think that Pinefield and meech has done a really nice job about of that and not like in using different people you might be the ultimate one but then there's different people that come in and do the audit auditing so I would like to you know to thank you because I think that we are getting the best of services with our heinfeld and meech Association well thank you for those kind words I appreciate that I don't think we have anything further for you right now thank you again Michelle thank you appreciate it so I just wanted to make sure that when when Jennifer shared that this was an unmodified opinion it means it's a clean audit so I just wanted to clarify that is that correct okay good great um in addition I asked her to stay because I want to make sure she holds me accountable to making sure I don't see anything wrong so thank you for that I also wanted to share miss you jetty about your comments regarding the audit firm so this is the first year of the next five-year contract with heinfeld Mage and we did go through an RFP process about a year ago and uh heinfeld came out on top without question the level of professionalism the level of care in their proposal was remarkable knowing that they have been our Auditors for numerous years so there was never any presumption that they would continue to be our auditor so that led to a very high caliber proposal that they presented to us when we made that recommendation to you so I wanted to thank them as well so so how I'd like to approach this this evening is I really wanted to tell the story about what happened in fiscal year 2022 and I'm just hopeful that as I go through some of the details that you'll all remember that which I'm sure you will but please know that even in doing this both Jackie and I had to go back to all the presentations we made a year and a half ago to make sure that we could keep all the numbers and what happened straight so to begin recall that the act for the annual comprehensive financial report is is segmented into three main categories of financial presentation so the first is the government-wide where every single activity that happens in the school district is brought forward into a couple of financial statements and then next is the governmental which actually divvies up individual funds into higher into higher level categories than the individual funds you know we got the general fund we've got The Debt Service fund there's non-major special Revenue funds and then a bond building fund that government a governmental level and then after that you have all the individual funds which you see monthly enumerated on those rows that whether it's the Unemployment Insurance Fund or the litigation Recovery Fund or classroom site fund or any of our federal funds so that's how the act for is organized to begin we want to talk about the government wide so everything that's associated with Gilbert Public Schools except for our internal service funds they're actually removed because they could represent a duplication of expense so as an example all of our funds pay benefits but we have transactions within the employee benefit trust fund that spends those monies on claims and administrative expenses associated with that program so I wanted to make sure that that was clear as well so so those are not reflected in this because that's an internal service fund that would not be included here it's absolutely included in the act for and we'll go through some of those details later but in the government-wide net position they are excluded and they are reported separately okay okay so to begin the government-wide net position so this is the highest level and so if there's anything that you'd want to take away from tonight regarding that government-wide you take away then that position results for Gilbert Public Schools so note that the change in that position is a positive 54.6 million dollars that is a very significant Improvement but as it relates to that net position Improvement remember what happened so what is in there so most of it is in the general fund so the general fund is about 32 million dollars of that 54 million in the general fund remember it's not just m o we're including other funds in there such as the indirect fund is in there the the school plant unrestricted capital is now in that 54 million dollars as well so but most of it is that 32 million in addition remember that last February we sold 50 million dollars worth of bonds so we've spent a lot of those but we still had as of June 30 money money's available that's also in that change in that position and then also in this particular statement we it also includes oh what's the third main category um the third main category do you remember Jennifer can you help me on the 54 million dollars classroom site fund I'm sorry the fund balancing classroom site fund so all those added together resulted in that 54 million some of the details though remember that when we were in 2021 we we our average daily membership our student count dropped precipitate precipitously from 2020.
um give Mr Kim and his three children we did not want to make you feel like that you need to stay and now I'm going to call you out but I know you've got to drive and you've got school-age kids and we were super excited that you were here so thank you so much gotta pay the bills item on our agenda is the consent agenda which is an opportunity for us to approve a number of routine business items all in one vote all the items in the consent agenda are detailed in in the board book and if Mr Pierce could take us through the consent yes we have 4.1 and 4.2 is the approval of the November 15th minutes 4.3 and 4.4 the approval of the December 3rd 2022 special meeting in closed session minutes 4.5 and 4.6 is the approval of the December 13 2022 special meeting in closed session minutes 4.7 is our Personnel report 4.8 is the payroll and bills 4.9 is the accepting the kefir for the fiscal year 2022 4.10 is the board member expenses and 4.11 is the approval of the consent agenda thank you Mr Pierce are there any items on the agenda for removal or clarification I would like to point out something I read on 4.9 the annual comprehensive financial report I just want to point out two things of the community that There's a summary in the beginning of that report that talks about the finances of the district and the district should the people of the district should know that our finances have improved greatly over the last 10 12 years so the district should know our s p Global rating assigned our district a double a capital double A Plus rating in November 21 2021 which is a notch above where we were rated before so our financial standing has approved by that body and also the Illinois state board of education has risen the district's Financial profile from early warning status in 2015 we were coming out of uh the recession to a a recognition of recognition that's the actual rating so I want to applaud the people on the team that have worked to manage our finances because we're definitely in a much better position today than we were even five to seven years ago so I just wanted to note that thanks Aaron I actually appreciate that because I think sometimes we are aware of that and we forget to sort of tout that or remind people do you want to speak to why that is why that's happened or um the fact that we um are very grateful to Tony and glacy's Leadership I always joke that he is the person that comes regularly to the board and tells us what we don't want to hear um but has led us from a very precarious Financial circumstance even more like wire rating is increased oh did you want Tony I'm sorry Antonio how many could you talk about it I mean there's a reason why it's increased and primarily the reasons why the rating has increased is the one that we've paid down debt and is community is well aware now what the referendum will help nearly pay off all our debt in 2025 and 2026.
item three approved Committee of the whole meeting minutes of November 7 2022 item four approved Committee of the whole closed session minutes of November 7 2022 under business approved Board of Education financial report item two approve a payment for RL Soho for 606 606 151 1096 for the work at ELC and Talala Elementary School approve a payment of RL Soho for 43 284 and 73 cents for work at CSK item four approve of payment for RL Soho for 151 and 96 cents for Balmoral Elementary and item five approve a payment of RL Soho for 154 883 and 76 cents at Crete Elementary item six approved payment of CC Holdings Inc for uh 729 960 and 25 cents for work at creekmont high school item three on a personnel and culture would be approved the Personnel report and then you need me to review the listings there yeah please okay approved certified staff employment leave of absence return from leave of absence reassignment resignation educational support staff employment leave of absence return from leave of absence reassignment and resignation and dismissals any questions or comments on the consent agenda okay hearing none roll call Mr sawales bye Mrs Walters aye Brown is an eye vice president rube aye president Albert aye consent agenda carries and we have one action item action one action report tonight kind of get a motion to approve the 2022 tax levy moved any questions or comments on this item great presentation last week Ken thank you okay roll call Ellen is an i Mrs Walters aye Mr sawalesh aye Dr Hall aye vice president rupe aye president Albrecht aye motion carries uh do we have any old business any new business and we have no need for closed session can I get a motion to adjourn so moved okay all in favor say aye aye all opposed we are adjourned Merry Christmas
we were down about 2600 ADM in 2021 again as has been our practice when we went into 2022 we assumed another 400 student loss but that didn't happen we actually gained back about weighted student counts that reflected an increase in our budget capacity of over eight million dollars so all those things contributed to that positive net position growth any questions on any of that before I move on I think I just wanted to make a comment on the classroom site fund there was a significant increase there was thank you for that as well right here in classroom site fund when we went from the 21 school year into the 22 school year if you remember the joint legislative budget committee indicated that our funding level was going from about 425 dollars per student up to 733 dollars per student and remember at the time they said but be careful because some of that is one-time money so much of that we've been very conservative in that spend as well because we knew that a significant amount of that was considered one time which led to that falling to the to the bottom of the um and contributed to that net position increase any other questions okay the other item and this is one of my favorite items and Jennifer did mention this so note that since 2012 I think school districts throughout the nation not just in Arizona were required to account for a proportionate share of their multi-employer retirement system trust fund on their financial statements so that's why it's shared at the government-wide because it's we would not be required to divvy up that dollar amount across your nutrition services fund or your custom site fund or your federal funds versus your m o fund so it's always shared at the government-wide level so you can see that Gilbert's net that Gilbert share of the Arizona State Retirement net pension liability is 225 million dollars so that negative goes against our net position interesting we gained 54 million dollars but we're hit with a 225 million dollar negative that's recorded as a it's over a hundred million dollars of unrestricted so it's a funny treatment what's also important about that is that it's not really ours we're not responsible for that we don't have to say save money if we were if we were to say that well we want to go ahead and give Arizona State Retirement 225 million dollars so we can get rid of our proportionate share all that would do is give them another 225 million dollars and we'd be paying off a portion of everybody's net net pension liability so um it's definitely Arizona State retirements it's just that the it's a gasby statement again that required us to include that on the government-wide statement okay so our proportion is 1.715 of the state and it increased by 0.046 reflective probably of the pay increases that we did were able to to give as well as the stipends between 21 and 22.
uh we are not spending more money in a given year than we're taking in factor or even crew increased our fund balances where we're not borrowing money on an annual basis to make payroll we were before we were issuing what are called tax anticipation warrants or kind of like a a payday loan so to speak so that we can get through the fiscal year to the next tax payment and finally um the key reason why we're able to keep our balance budget is that we are able to rein in the cost of Health Care and uh we were seeing that increase uh 15 to 20 percent clip each year and quite frankly whether we go bankrupt or we have to lay off a significant portion of our staff so that alone is dramatically changed our trajectory no thank you I think it's important that people hear that and understand yeah no I think why the why behind that yeah I agree with you I think that's a good point thanks guys we didn't actually approve the agenda no questions no I meant thanks for bringing those okay you're right Chris good point and I would entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented move by lock second by kilburg all in favor hi hi any opposed all right next item on our agenda is our report it's a rather lengthy report night tonight I'm going to hand it over to doctor yeah the first two reports you see every month the foia request and the treasury's reports any questions on either of those there's no action those are just for information required all right the referendum next steps we heard some public comment tonight about that because last month we said that it looked like we were um that we had some tough decisions to make because our facility needs are real and we need to figure out as a board together what we're going to do next to support schools in the community and make sure that we're maintaining them and we said we would bring you back some data here's the data and then we're going to turn it over to you for a discussion um the things that we gathered first was I'll talk about the survey that we gave um just the um qualitative pieces of it the survey was given um we used some Consultants to send the survey and we have feedback about the survey itself which Tony will share in the qualitative part of this discussion but you can see it's posted for everyone I put the they close the survey and it ended with 1718 people taking the survey and um there was questions about why do you think others voted we wanted to hear what people were saying in the community and then if you look at page eight that nope sorry if you look at page seven of the yes of the survey feedback it does show the one question that says there is discussions about putting the proposal back on the April 2023 ballot back on a ballot in April 2023 what do you think and as close as the margins were in November it's it's still pretty close it is 56 of the people that took the survey and it is a statistically significant number of people and they are representative of different um voices in the community um that's part of what the the Consultants did they looked through that to make sure that they didn't need to wait any answers differently and they didn't they felt like they had a representative sample so it shows that 56 percent of the people think it would be a good idea to put something on the April ballot and then we also um in the board packet were a couple other pieces that you asked for but probably the most um impactful conversations that we've had have been either Tony's phone calls that he's made um he and I have done several focus groups he's done more of those one-on-one contacts I know someone in public comment mentioned like we'll talk to anyone and I feel like that's what we owe every single person in this community as a conversation we had many people fill out a form that Holly created to provide feedback but also we gave them the opportunity to be in a focus group I think about 45 people said they would be in a focus group we offered three different options and we did have six people take us up on it so we had um not as much participation as we would like but we felt glad we were glad that people felt comfortable giving us feedback and writing people asked for phone calls we did that and also on the survey that went out to the community that 1718 people took we had quite a few I think about 700 people or 700 comments that were left on that survey so Tony had a really exciting weekend he was here um trying to make some sense out of that because we what we don't want is to focus in on a couple comments or some that really catch the eye that and you also can have bias where I the comments that I want to see I'm reading and others I kind of gloss over but we read every single comment and he Quantified those comments for you so I'll turn it over to Tony to talk about what people were saying in the comments in the focus groups yeah thank you the we did our best to capture what the comments said and not what we wanted them to hear and I hope that this report does indeed do that report was just made available on board docs before the me maybe five o'clock this evening it was you know it took a while to process all these comments and so it's newly available if you check the board agenda on Friday while the Agenda Report wasn't so it was just brand spanking new uh there were over 800 comments that we analyzed in in total that came from all the various forms that Lisa mentioned earlier so the phone interviews the focus groups the survey comments and just written comments that people submitted to us in any way shape or form so we did our best to to categorize them and you'll see the prevalence of those categories here on the screen that Holly is showing you the first of those cat themes I would call them is communication taxes followed by trust and then neglect and then the rest get much smaller after that in terms of communication the most prevalent theme it appears that a lot of people didn't fully understand the plan or didn't have access to information related to the plan one didn't know how to find it despite our best efforts to provide it to them and talking about this for a very long time um so that's something if the board does decide to to put the question about moving forward we'll have to work on of course and can I just jump in when we're talking about that thing team is that people talked about the yes group wasn't out there or the no group had a different message but I I like we take it personally like we are in charge of the information campaign not a yes campaign or a no campaign but the fact that this many people are saying that they didn't feel like they had their hands on the right information I think we need to do better and um Tony mentioned this I think at the last board meeting Holly and Tony spend a lot of time editing that web page and um I think 200 and something visits clicks that webpage got and they're responsible for 100 of those things yeah so people don't necessarily want to come to us for information or it might not be the way they like it so we need to figure out how to come to them with those messages everybody deserves a conversation with us so that was one of our big takeaways that we could do better yeah I think to piggyback on that um also indicative of the level of Engagement and awareness this survey as Lisa mentioned over 1700 responses the original survey that we sent out prior to the referendum collecting Community feedback as to whether or not we should put the original question on the ballot and what that plan looked like there was only 700 responses and so we really struggled to get people aware of the issues to dialogue the issues and as we heard in public comment earlier the people participating in those Community engagement sessions did dwindle off and we were kind of facing a certain inertia we're trying to get past and it does appear that the community is aware of this issue now and is talking about it so I believe that should we put this question on the ballot again it'll be a little easier because people know what we're talking about now we have their attention now we have their attention a lot of folks are concerned about taxes when it comes to negative aspects of taxes and certainly the tax burden but also as we heard earlier in public comment some people felt as though we weren't honest in terms of the impact of the taxes on taxpayers themselves and so I think we can certainly provide more information more context about what those taxes are because it's not simple you know the way property taxes work in Illinois it's not a simple conversation it's very complex and having everybody understand all the underlying mechanics involved takes time and often you're dealing with sound bites or a few seconds or a few minutes of interaction and it takes a deeper conversation to have everybody truly understand it but that's something that we can commit to as well and the final aspect that I'll touch on is trust and so you know a lot of times we hear about issues that happen in the past there's a lot of comments that revolve around previous referenda or other issues that are afoot in the community and people's perceived ability to trust leadership and I would tell you that it's an opportunity for us to have these conversations with the community because this is about what we as batavians want our schools to be for our students and what our schools can do and of course a lot of learning um ends and starts starts and ends with our teachers which are fantastic but we owe it to them our teachers and to our students that they work in facilities that are designed to to sustain and fulfill that purpose and so it's really a function of what this community wants to do to make that happen and we have an opportunity to keep talking to people even if they disagree with us we can provide them more information so that they're making an informed choice and one of the things I've enjoyed is as we heard earlier in public comment the more we talk to folks the more they understand the issues and they are complex they're not something nuanced that or they are something nuanced they're not something that you can just hear and make an emotional decision on or a snap decision on that requires a deep understanding of the underlying issues to make sure that we're the plan is is clear so I think in summary here I think I touched on all the instances of findings but lastly in terms of considerations it's important to note that the April election is the last opportunity for the board to ask this question before the bonded interest tax levy is paid off and goes away there isn't another the next election that would be in November of 24 will be too late for the board to issue Bonds in such a fashion where taxes wouldn't go up so and and then phrase this another way taxes will go down if the question isn't asked in April or is rejected in April before they would otherwise go up and it's really clear it is abundantly clear that our facilities have needs far beyond our capacity to address with the current budget that we have and at some point there will be there's some Reckoning to address those needs whether it's now in the future and it's really clear with what's happening in the economy today that waiting is going to cost more than acting so if we act sooner rather than later it'll actually be cheaper and of course IT addresses student need sooner and is better off generally speaking so um I don't want people to misunderstand if this question is asked again this is the last opportunity before there are tax implications and so people often ask that question on the conversations that we've had with them we can we don't have to necessarily move forward with the plan that we have been proposing we could modify the plan we could ask for we could ask for more we could ask for Less we could modify the planet in any way shape or form and those are complex conversations but there are conversations that ought to be had and they're prudent and we're and we're ready to have those before and we're willing to provide any information that you might need so that you can make an informed decision and then the last is that you know we certainly need to continue to work on ways to engage the community and communicate with them whether they are for their referendum or against it yeah I think the best thing that we can do is engage absolutely everybody that we can to have this conversation is what our students deserve that's kind of I have a comment um I just want to thank well I want to thank Tony to bring this together and it was a lot of work to put together in a relatively short period of time I know I spent my Sunday reading all 769 comments and I want to thank everybody who participated in the survey because this is very instructive to us the more engagement we get the more people that attend meetings the more people that email us the more it helps us understand the wants and needs of the community so that we can make the best decisions for you so I do agree it's complex and it's very important work though that we're discussing so um for a long time there it felt like we were talking talking talking and not making action now it's sort of timeline sped up so I just want to tell the community that we're all taking this very serious we are listening to you and we're spending a lot of time you know deciding on what we think best course of action is for now in the future thank you Tony for doing this um I you know I'm a data person so I look at these numbers and and I just kind of latched on the last two in this survey we're keeping school facilities in good condition is a Sound Community investment and like 40 percent of the respondents think it's a responsibility I I how does that work the so the survey if you can see in Tony's data there's like 27 or no can you explain that to me because I want to make sure I'm understanding this right 31 people that said this survey was confusing in their comments okay so the what you're looking at this page right here we were asking that the consulting firm was asking people to say so which page are you on oh so it's so 40 think it so if we asked the people who took the survey almost 50 percent of the people said yes why do you think they said yes okay and so I'm guessing why my neighbor voted yes or I could just answer for myself so it was you've had a lot of conversations with people why do you think people who voted yes voted yes so 40 of the people said well like that was the message it's a good investment right it's a good investment that's why they voted yes okay so 14 trying to wrap my mind around the survey um yeah people gave us that feedback that they didn't understand okay there were all also people who indicated that they were having technical issues with the survey and they had to either reply to all the questions where they had to provide comments on all the questions which so in that retrospect 20 of the people think that this plan did not come from engaging the community it wasn't a reason why people voted yes so okay like so the question was from zero to ten that's not what like if Sue voted yes do you think the reason was because the plan came from engaging the community and people would say no okay people didn't really vote yes because of that voted yeah so you had a you did have to answer each of these and you had to rate it from zero to ten I took the survey but I don't remember yeah so I'm just trying to thank you I just want to know so what are your thoughts about next steps because I think people need to stay off social media okay we can't we can't enforce that did I say that so what other ideas do you have Sarah I think this is a really important decision that the community needs to make and if people were not informed at the last election this is a do-over and this is an opportunity to get informed and if the community decides to say no the second time we've had a second chance to tell you why the need is there and if that's the way that we want to go I'm comfortable with that but I think we need to have the discussion as a community as to whether or not that's the way we want to go and if you are for or against it come out and talk to us get your questions answered and then once you decide make sure you tell your friends because this is a decision that is going to impact the community for the next generation and so we really need to make sure whether or not we want to say yes or no and so I think that we should have that discussion as a community um and I think everybody in the everybody in the community needs to remember all of us are community members who pay those taxes so Chris are you saying you saying that we like I think we should we should go out and ask the question again okay um we're gonna need if you do put the question back on which it sounds like some of you that have spoken up are leaning that way um I try we need to have an information campaign I think last time we were nervous because we're not allowed to take a position but that doesn't mean we can't share information so we don't need to say everybody you know we don't need to knock on people's doors and go to tell your friends to vote Yes but you should be having conversations me too all of us should be having conversations and not worry about the question I want to make sure you have the right answers I want to make sure that you know that this is on the ballot so it's and then we send them to get gas in style yeah right and people did want to hear from the staff and we went around and talked to every staff and we're like this referendum is coming and um you know you can't be you can't do any campaigning during the school day um but we want to make sure you're informed and I think maybe we scared them into not talking because people said like I was waiting for my teacher to talk about it and they didn't because people love getting information it's not from information not necessarily from me or from Tony but they want to get information from someone they know and that's either their neighbor or their teacher and so that's where I think the most important conversations can happen moving forward and I've talked about this I still don't know the exact number but Todd you the percentage of teachers that live in our district that's huge it's huge forty percent yeah yeah and so they should be able to so here is my question to the board we're missing two of our members tonight um uh we got this data over the weekend we probably want to dig into it I don't think there is a leaning tour uh from what I'm hearing um let's ask the question again and make sure that everyone has the full information but um I'm going to recommend and request that maybe we have a special meeting that second week in January so that we can all be here um to vote on whether or not we put it back on the agenda it's not an action item tonight any way we can't but rather than saying tonight absolutely we're going to we want to make sure those other two members voices get heard that we have one more chance to talk about it and maybe that that um at that meeting that would be the only action item on the agenda and we can dig into that a little bit to clarify um we couldn't wait until the next Board of Education right right I'm sorry yeah thank you Tony that's a good yes that's for the date uh we need to have it on by the hour Friday the 13th the clerk the the resolution from the board must be filed with the clerk by the 17th of January okay we were looking at having a meeting on uh Thursday the 12th so if you guys can check your calendars uh you don't have to commit to it tonight but we want to get in that week right because you would need to vote on the actual question you still need to tell us whether or not that's still the question I think it deserves its own meeting so we can talk about it dig into everybody gives their opinion topic are you that was what I was gonna say is I mean there's a lot of information to be presented a lot of people came to speak today and there are others that probably have their opinions that want to be felt as well and I think I I don't want to be kind of at least from an appearance perspective because we've not been capricious about making the decision so I wholeheartedly say that the only other thing I was going to add is I just want to like let the appreciation know for those people that did try to go out and share information positive and or negative whatever that is and that the effort that they did is not um unseen but I appreciate the fact that people came out and said hey we can do better this time to make sure people are informed and I appreciate that personally very very much and I think we also as a group and I myself as an individual kind of commit to helping inform people of that process within the boundaries because I was having some discussions where I was sitting here thinking you know what I can't go out and tell people to vote Yes but we can't tell them why you know and that's a that's a loss that you kind of that's a gray line that you feel like you're nudging up against but I think we need to do a better job of understanding I agree um all right so we will uh I'll have Lisa pull the board as to whether or not that date of the 12th works for everyone he said to people who aren't here um so public know that we are going to meet again on this this uh early in January to decide officially whether or not we'll put it back on the ballot okay sounds good uh question for you yes would you consider or would you like to consider changing the plan at all I feel like that's something that you know you gave us a lot of information over the weekend I don't I think it's a discussion point I think that one of the things that that also allows us to do is if we're toying with that in our own heads we can sit down and talk to you and or Lisa in the meantime approach in the interim I don't like the idea yeah it seems yeah pinky I don't know well change it yeah yeah right but again that's where I feel I see there's Chanel for it yeah and I feel like that's why we need an opportunity we tried to choose the best plans right and so um so then the question is what would be what what and why would we be changing it and that's something if if you're leaning toward that that you'd want to dig into and then come prepared to that meeting for us to really talk about it as a team what we you read the comments if if you read them and you see that some people are saying like don't put the same question back on because that's just saying you didn't listen to us the first time I think that knowing the communication challenges that we had the first time it's pretty unanimous not unanimous but that was a the major theme that came out that people weren't aware and you hear those stories over and over again and so that would be the reason to try it again with the same question but know that if you put the same question on there people are not going to like that the 50.09 of the people people aren't going to be happy anyway because they feel like I voted no so why are we talking about it still but I think I just wanted to prepare you yes yeah that's a good point I think that some of those no votes are are going to be willing to at least hear that 10 right there all right so we will set that meeting date look for it so more information right check your calendars for like Thursday [Music] and like I said uh Lisa will organize that it's not going to work Thursday the 12th is not going to work we'll talk about it okay we'll we'll give you a several dates on that week of the ninth because yeah yeah you would have to have the vote by Friday the 13th yep it's not like there's a rule that we can only meet during the week so for some reason we can work we do have the weekend Saturday the 14th better so just uh it does sound better than Friday the 13th I don't know all right so uh so we'll come back to that uh most of you can be at it sounds like we might not be we may not get everybody there or a full team all right next item on our agenda is policy I'm going to hand that over to Lisa for this very long policy policy the policy reference um education subscription service otherwise known as press um gives us updates to our policy four times a year based on changing legislation usually and some of the some of the procedures and policies are being changed for continuous Improvement like they like we're changing um from calling teachers certified to licensed and so over time they're making all these adjustments most of the ones here are um a little more substantial these changes but for the most part um it it we like to go with their recommendations because of the sheer volume of changes so quarterly this one was eight 485 Pages worth of changes and so we try to align ourselves with press because we are not attorneys and there is a team of attorneys that most districts in Illinois do follow press because when something changes in the law like it goes it takes effect January 1st and now we have to approve some policy changes based on the law and it's really just hard to keep up with 485 Pages worth of changes so um we take we don't take every recommendation that they give us but what you see in front of you tonight is for first reading um give you the opportunity to ask questions and then we would bring it back for an adoption in January the procedures are different we don't you don't vote on procedures because they're administrative that's the way that we Implement your policy and we bring those to you for your consideration and if we don't hear from you or if you don't have any suggestions we will take these documents and put them Cindy we'll be busy updating them on the website once you give her the thumbs up and then we still have more procedures we weren't able to bring you all the procedures in this one chunk so we have about 15 more procedures to bring to you in January along with all the policies for a second reading questions or changes or concerns or I've got a couple comments but nothing too major I will say that I did look through all 200 yes you did 20 some odd Pages um and the second file that we received looked like it was scanned so there were links on there that we were not able to follow correct and so if we can see that before the second one just I mean so the procedures um they do give them so the policies they give all in one PDF and Cindy is able to go and delete the pages we don't want but the procedures they give us in two different PDFs and then we have to integrate them because there will be procedure 200 here and then procedure 200 over here and we have to figure out it's a little more complicated so there is a reason why we scan them so the links um what we could do is when you update them any of them that have a link maybe we'll put them in the board docs for next month and then you can see I'm actually posted with the link on them and we could always change them because they don't require a vote and I think there's only a handful that I'm interested in it's just most of what I just want to make sure they work so that we're not actually directing someplace so what we'll do is we'll go ahead and make the updates to the procedures for next month and then the ones that have links in that and we'll just point out these changes were made it's probably good practice anyway so we can go in and use that table again and she could maybe we can link the updates if you're able to get to them all by the January meeting and then most of my questions were procedure questions which I forwarded to you so you can kind of answer those and how we are going to implement some of these procedures but one that stood out to me that was at the beginning is boards have the opportunity to wait 40 days after the other election to organize and I would just say that if we have the opportunity I would suggest before we actually vote for officers for the new board that we meet each other that the board actually sits down to meet each other for the first meeting and then vote in the second meeting so the way that the policy is written now this board here in March will pick the date where the new board is seated but the way the policy is written is they're seated and they um elect their officers at that same meeting so we'd have to figure out a different way for the board to connect before that vote if that's what if we didn't elect the president would if and we didn't elect officers at the first time how do we conduct a meeting right it's the the policy itself says when you see the new people you elect them for that reason somebody has to preside over them so maybe there has to be something we have a temporary one I I'm the temporary the superintendent is the temporary one just to lead the elections and then gives it back to the president yeah so anyways just something to think about it's not something we have to decide right here it's just something that is out there and we have another opportunity because before I think we had like 14 days or something like that 28 or 20 okay yeah 28 it was shorter um and then another one um just on weekend have fines for people who damage books and whatnot and I just thought it might be beneficial to Define what that means because the way it's said that we could actually charge somebody to find that was more than the book um the way that it's written um so and then also they have removed that um before students were Exempted if they were part of the fee waiver program that they would still have to pay it if they damaged the book and now that's no longer the case and so the question is is you know are there any consequences for damaging property that's a great question and you know I don't know what that is but we don't either it's a brand new so yeah I'm just asking the question as to whether or not we need to be concerned about that and I think that is most of my questions that I had but the rest of them were just kind of how are we going to implement this and how does this impact us but always fun to read through those procedures all right so we will we hold us back next month for a vote if you have any questions or thoughts on that in the meantime um we have an opportunity to check in with Dr Hitchens and we can discuss them further at our next meeting next item on our agenda is our collaborative groups update I'm sorry doctors is that you that is Dr Newkirk oh I didn't know that Sorry Brad yep our district is uh one of our foundational tenants is collaboration and sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn't but we're always trying to get better at collaboration and this report you'll see another one next month with some other collaborative groups but this is just an attempt to give both the Board of Education and our community a little bit of insight into many of the collaborative groups that are working within our district so this month you will see a little updates from our Equity team on their work from our professional learning advisory Council and then from our student services committee so our Equity team is relatively new it's not contractual but they're doing some work around really that group's learning is one of their main objectives our professional learning advisory council is looking at systems for professional learning I think one of the things that we've really seen coming out of the pandemic is the real need and desire for professional learning to make sure that we know how to meet the needs of our students which are and it's an ever-changing thing so they're looking at systems for making sure that we're assessing that professional learning and doing it with our staff in mind and our students in mind and student outcomes in mind and then our student services committee really looks at issues around special education over identification of students for special education SEL issues and they've done some good work in the past and they are really focusing their efforts on SEL if the community and the board recalls we were cited for a significant disproportionalities around students black students for emotional disorders and part of that work is really looking at our whole system to see SEL wise what systems are in place both Tier 1 tier two and tier three to support students their behaviors and their social emotional learning so that committee is in the past couple of weeks gone out and done walkthroughs to look at how those tiers are functioning in real life so that the committee members can take a look at them and really look at them they're using a castle framework in order to really kind of dive deep into that work and they'll be continuing throughout this year I'll take any questions that you might have about those groups I just want to say I appreciate this being a part of the board packet the board presentation and I look forward to the next batch but even seeing kind of like a bit of like the celebrations and the challenges and understanding what Roblox they may have it's very helpful so thank you yeah it became clear in our work that we weren't good at like talking about our work yeah to the community like we do the work people are engaged we have lots of great people working in these areas but we're not good about talking about the work so this is an attempt and we'll probably try and do this on a more regular basis so really highlighting some of the work so that the both the community and board can see that work and be more transparent with it um one of the things Brad that I I feel unclear on and something we've talked about that we need to do better as a district is how are we going to measure these things like um like like if we just start with the equity team because they're on the top um they're going to take they're going to enhance the knowledge of the team how are we going to measure that that did improve and then when can we from this team expect goals that are focused on student outcomes because all of their data is based on student concerns and then right now they're focused on is on learning but then when can we expect that their focus will be on student outcomes and I think that's a systematic maybe flaw is that we're not good at linking what we're doing as adults to the learning that we want students to do and obviously there's a link right we know that when we have the best teachers in front of our kids they're going to get the most learning out of them so there's benefits to that learning but being really specific about those student outcomes is something that we can definitely get much better at in terms of the the equity committee to be specific about your question their work is focused from what I'm reading and understanding about the committee's work on staff knowledge they felt that was a prerequisite before they moved into more student outcomes and that makes sense but then how will we measure whether or not that we that our staff is at a point where they're ready to then move forward I think that's a great question to to bring back to that team okay Lisa do you want to talk a little bit about that yeah I will definitely bring that back I think that some of these survey data points are annual so um they do have the two different buckets they have a bucket which is immediate action steps which are that focused on the adults and then their long-term action things that they're going to research and get back to us they will be making recommendations in May and so those might include a little bit more of what you're looking for as far as tying their work back to the students and I would ask the same sort of question uh From Plaque and the student services theirs are a little bit more that the actions are more measurable but like again how will we measure that we're Meeting those goals like I feel like that is something that we need to start baking into our are work more I agree and I think like that's a because that when you are looking at those metrics you're keeping focused on students and that really drives that work I think we oftentimes get stuck in process goals like this is the process we're going to undertake and that's great as a checklist but it doesn't translate directly to students so that is definitely feedback that we can provide the groups and work in which we can get better and and I'm not I mean like I don't know if the board is that's something that we're interested in is board because I don't want to just take back oh get the Dremel side but um I feel like we've talked about that we'd like more measurable so that we can actually see the work that's being done in the successes or non-successes and back to the drawing board I agree it's hard to understand how we're doing if we don't have a yardstick to measure it but I think so demonstrate progress forward motion yeah I think the only thing is like we're not I don't think anybody's can correct me if I'm wrong is talking about like scores or this or that it's more qualitative and quantitative kind of data we're looking for so is it a survey of the teachers is it right you know the actions to students for what they're seeing you know that sort of stuff to help provide that info and Chris you've talked about Europe well I actually think I think we need to do a little bit of both like we know we are over identifying students for special services I think those numbers should be included in this type of thing so that we can look year over year and go hey this is where we were this is where we're at our product our progress is working or it's not working based on the target numbers that we're trying to hit um so I I 100 agree that we should put more of the data in there and we should be able to tie that data so that we know whether or not we're being successful that's what we'd be looking for when you bring you know I know we're going to be hearing from all of these collaborative teams and we're excited about that but like that is something and we want the teams to be integral in deciding how we're going to measure that and what's meaningful because um because you guys are the ones on the ground doing the work yeah it makes sense that's what we're here for for kids and making sure that we improve their experience and their learning so that makes sense I would like to make another observation um regarding the equity team specifically and I totally understand how we ended up here but from reading the report there is nothing that indicates that it's going to directly impact students and while I realize that we need to get staff members there we also need to realize that if you're a student that's going through a difficult time and you read this and them you may not think that you're the focus and so I think we need to look for opportunities to let them know that we see them we hear them and we're trying to make life better now while we are also in the process of giving our staff up to speed I'd agree with that that's a really good point Chris so if you would take all of that feedback back to the various teams that would be great thank you it's appreciate it all right anything else on that okay next item is our enrollment projection I'm assuming yep that's Tony enrollment projection is one of the cornerstones of our five-year Financial forecast which we conduct each each year the enrollment projection report looks at um student enrollment as of October 1st which is what we consider our fall housing report and Compares that enrollment year over year as I know the board is well aware enrollment has been declining for since 2009.
any questions on that okay great so governmental financials as I shared earlier the governmental balance sheet funds include the general fund remember that the general fund is really close to our operating funds we include classroom site fund as our operating funds when we present to you monthly the general fund though does not classroom site fund has different rules so is considered a special Revenue fund but our general fund is mno it's Medicaid it's indirect all of those other funds that are very flexible that we have a lot of discretion over Federal projects is in its own column on the governmental balance sheet then we have Debt Service separated out Bond building and then that's the non-major governmental which includes all those special Revenue funds that I described so one of the items that's treated in the mdna the management discussion analysis is how Gilbert public schools has spent these governmental funds across that all that categorization so you can see that comparable to the otter General's report they show the spend by functional area so note that in 2021 a year ago we had 60 percent in instruction and in 2022 we had 58 percent in instruction so the growth occurred in the operation of non-instructional services so we increased that by one percent and then also operation of Plant Services was nine percent so two reasons for that first I wanted to make it clear that we did not decrease instructional spend we actually increased instructional spend but we grew in spend overall so on a percentage basis the non-in instructional the operation of non-instructional services contributed more greatly so that the percentage increased by a percent and then therefore the instruction decreased by a percent I wanted to make sure that was clear and remember that because of the universal free breakfast and lunch during all of 2022 and we were full in person in 2022 the amount of Revenue received in the in the nutrition service Services fund was over 14 million dollars which contributed greatly to that and of course we spent you know like 10 million so because we were we were providing breakfast and lunch for all the students whether they were free and reduced or not shins on that let me let me say that again so it wasn't that we decreased our instructional spend it was that when in comparison to the increase of the operation of non-instructional services for example the nutritional Services is in that operation of non-instructional services that spend increased significantly because of the universal free lunch so that increased their percentage and which then dis disproportionately well proportionately then decreased the percentage on a percentage basis of the instruction but dollars increased right so to just a simple example let's say we had 100 million dollars worth of spend in 21 and we spent 110 million dollars in 22 more of that 10 million dollars were spent in non-instructional Services okay to allow it to increase by one percent thanks so one of the things that we've been doing the last couple of years is we've been sharing how that how we can use that that pie chart to give us an indicator of how we're going to do with the otter Generals Report the classroom spending uh the classroom spending report so we wanted to share that in 2021 that same analysis it's on the right hand side that expense analysis that's included in the MDA mdna the management discussion and Analysis note that it reflects instruction of 60 percent when you look to the left that's the auditor's the auditor General's District spending report it shows instruction at 62 percent and when I say instruction it's purely in the classroom teachers teacher desks teacher computers student computers student desks paper pencils curriculum all that material is considered instruction it does not include support services for students it does not include speech language professionals or social workers or nurses any of that is not categorized in that so the reason I'm sharing is that that it's a nice predictor of how we would do in the otter Generals Report so we won't have that probably until the March or April time frame but know that the auditor general creates that report on the AFR and the treatments are very different they use different funds than the presentation in the mdna so I just want to make sure that was clear as well it's just a decent predictor Dr Santa Cruz Ms betz and just to clarify then using your example if we talk about actual dollars and if one were to compare the actual dollar spent in one year versus the following year we would see that the 22 dollars although the percentage was lower would either equal or exceed the twenty one dollars yeah it absolutely exceeded the 21 we definitely spent more on instruction but because those two areas also increased then we play a little game with the percentages correct okay but it's not really a game though I mean that's just my attention I just sarcasm anything else okay great so this is where we go through this exhaustive let's divvy up the governmental fund uh balance sheet and we'll give you assets liabilities deferred inflows outflows I can't remember which one it is and then final fund balances so you can see immediately that our cash is our greater contribute contributor to our balance sheet 215 million dollars compared to 148 million dollars a year ago so that's a 65 million dollar increase in cash property tax receivable a little bit less so we received more of our property tax within the time frame than we did in Prior years and then do from governmental entities 63.7 million dollars please know that that does include the delayed payment from the state of Arizona due to that cash rollover and then just other um other assets giving us a total asset of 290 from 218 so significant growth most of it most of which is in cash this bit sorry so can you just give some examples of the cash how why that's so much so so remember that when we that we're all based on a budget a budgetary basis we present everything on a budgetary basis and um and that's not really true with nutrition services so keep in mind that and and I will show you this later on but keep in mind that in 21 there was a total revenue of maybe eight or nine million in nutrition services and it went up to over 14 million in 2022 so that cash was still available that difference it we we didn't spend as much as that we spent more than we did in the prior year but we still grew in fund balance by about four and a half million dollars so that's where that cash is coming from things like that yeah and then even in our own m o fund balance remember that we reported just under 30 million dollars is fund balance in mno that's supported by that cash okay thank you does that help yep okay so these are the governmental fund liabilities not a significant change year over year just a little bit more than a million a million dollars 1.4 million dollars in liabilities you would expect that to happen just because of the growth in spend pay increases Etc so obviously the story is more on our revenues and and how much more monies we had available to us finally unavailable revenues property taxes so that amount declined so we had a really good property tax receipt year so remember that when we set the tax rate in August we're actually setting it for the um the future calendar year so we said it in August but it actually covers through December 31st of the subsequent year so we are receiving so the encumbrance period is through August 31st but we're still receiving property tax revenues from August 31st through December 31st and that's what that unavailable Revenue amount is so very limited and then unavailable revenues governmental that's primarily associated with our federal funds remember that all of our federal funds are on a reimbursement base basis we have to spend the money first and then we apply to be reimbursed for those monies from the state of Arizona and then finally um Jennifer mentioned this the leases the gasby 87 requirement so in our case we we have completely paid off all of our energy performance leases so that's not reflected here and we do have uh six months or eight months worth of Konica copier lease payments to make so that's reflected in that gasby 87 requirement but note that it's positive it's a 3.5 billion dollar positive that's due to our cell towers so we have roughly about 12 or 13 cell towers and operations throughout Gilbert Public Schools they all have contracts that go out 20 years so the requirement is to amortize all those revenues out 20 years because it's contractual they're obligated to pay it and so kind of trying to treat a school district in the same manner that you would a private company where they have a contract over numerous years that they're expecting to receive a revenue stream so that's the intent of that Gatsby 87.
and we project that it will continue to decline at the same rate as it has been in Prior years which is roughly two percent give or take slightly a year last year in 2022 we graduated the senior class which included something like 580 students biggest class best I can tell in history of Batavia High School this year the incoming kindergartners um numbered about 350. yep wow did you say 350 350. I don't I'm speaking off of the top of my head here um it's you know um but yeah it's roughly 350.
so that's a total deferred inflows of resources you can see that that's a little bit higher higher due to that 3.5 million dollar Plus so the conclusion then is you've got total assets of just under 290 million total liabilities of just under 60 million total deferred inflows and so you have a total fund balance of 214 million dollars which has contributed from 145 which represents that 54 million dollar growth so it's a real positive Year from a financial standpoint our bondholders would use this information to give them an idea of the fiscal sustainability of Gilbert Public Schools questions on that okay great so fund balances if you recall this is part of the story about what happened in 2022 we brought to you a request to change policy DB which is our budget policy we wanted to add a different category of fund balance because we wanted to allow for our schools our PK 12 schools to carry over unspent mno discretionary dollars so um in order to do that required a policy change that would allow us to assign that so they saved over the years you can see the total assigned is 20 million a hundred and fifty thousand dollars so 150 000 is the amount that was carried over from all of our schools from 2020 uh 2022 into 2023 so we've awarded that 150 000 and if you recall the governing board policy requires us to do that by September 30th so we have completed that that work the other 20 million dollars so we are in this tenuous time frame in which we don't know what the legislature is going to do regarding the aggregate expenditure limit so in order to ensure that we have had some resources available we are making the recommendation and um and heinfeld meech went ahead and put it on those assignments to hold back 20 million dollars in the aggregate expenditure limit as a precaution to ensure that we have monies available so remember that so there's a there's a big part of me that doesn't believe it will happen but you never know are according to our report our aggregate expenditure limit report our responsibility would be 48 and a half million dollars that we'd have to pay back so we would be a little bit less than half that we're holding in reserve and fund balance any questions on that so fun level the fun level definition so keep in mind this is where we're going to talk about each individual fund but we're not talking about every single one of those 35 or 40 funds however we have but these are some notable notable funds that we wanted to share with you so first mno and unrestricted Capital so recall that our mno and unrestricted Capital are considered our Levy funds so they are absolutely included in our apportionment calculation and the amount the amount that's the total amount received in both of those funds based upon this the statutory formula are then compared to the qualifying tax rate that determines how much needs to come from the local taxpayer versus how much is coming from the state of Arizona general fund coffers so if you look at 2021 our Revenue in both Eminem Capital was 247.1 million and note the revenue in 2022 was 265.1 Million remember that 2022 was the first year in which the district additional assistance which is the label of the funding that goes into unrestricted Capital it was fully funded and in addition as I said earlier we did realize that over 1700 increase in student counts which also contributed to our additional revenue on the mno side any questions on that and you can see how the sources are so note that in 2021 the state had 133.5 million dollar share and in 2022 had 148 million dollar share remember that between 21 and 22 the uh legislature or the jlbc I think the joint legislative joint legislative budget committee reduced the qualifying Levy putting more of a more pressure on the state general fund to fund education Statewide okay any questions on that okay so Food Services Fund performance we did spend a fair amount of time with you but I've talked about food service a great deal as they're a huge contributor to that non-instructional services that we talked about earlier also remember that in that non-instructional service it includes Community School in 2021 we were shut down for the first month and a half and very limited activity occurred during the summer in our vik programs and rentals Etc but in 2022 the community school ramped up and became almost normal operations so that that contributed greatly also to that on that instructional service increase but this is the Food Services fund again I just wanted to share whoops I wanted to share how that has changed over time and how this tells the story of what has happened over the last few years so note in 2019 we actually gained about 292 thousand dollars but we actually lost in 2020.