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PTSD is a second home for me um what you just said quite frankly really pissed me off and I'm trying hard not to use inappropriate language but you are coming from um a data perspective thank you PV for pointing out that data perspective we cannot blame our children for failing um our systems have failed these students they have been taught and expected to learn and related and excuse me in a language that is not native to them I know I only have four minutes but I would like to address something else the safety and mental health of our students what the heck are you doing with that teacher who has been quote under investigation who was taught here for 30 years she is threatening the safety of our students and causing significant mental health harm if my son were under her right now you can bet I'd be calling the police what are you doing where is the investigation I know it's a Personnel issue but we have had how long now there was a I'm sorry The Interpreter needs to clarify child well-being is holistic the abuse that is being levied by these teachers needs to be investigated fully parents and the community need to have more information it looks like you're lying it looks like someone is lying what are you doing with and to our students my son is a product of PTSD because I was a very involved student and I was looking at who his teachers were who was teaching him and most of the time they would say you know you we can't give you the teacher that you want for him in the fall because um he that teacher's not available et cetera Etc but because they didn't think it was a good fit but I know what's right for my child and he graduated and and went on to wonderful things he was valedictorian um and he didn't feel like he even deserve to be valedictorian because well he's humble but his mental health like TV said I was a product of signing exact English I was a public school failure I have good English I can write English well um but my self-esteem my self-worth my self-confidence didn't come until I got to college I grew up with depression and high anxiety just because I had to struggle my entire life to fit into this mainstream system it was an it was an extraordinary burden think twice before you say things about how the campus schools are failing our kids you're failing our kids period thank you for your time and the second one is Winona Homes okay this has been an interesting conversation oh excuse me hello everyone I know I only have a few minutes but this has been an interesting conversation about school achievement and having to show the legislature that we deserve this money Etc I think the answer could be really simple when we find these deaf babies we immediately expose them to ASL we've signed to them foreign why are you I mean this this oddest conversation about listening in spoken language programs and oral programs and voting to support these programs desert voices and Carla Zimmerman that are oppressive that you know they fire parents if parents decide to sign with their children who are deaf why all deaf babies deserve access to sign language and spoken language if that's appropriate for them if they want to be implemented or have hearing aids that's fine but they still need sign language it cannot be dismissed thank you when they go into the preschool program they're not supporting sign language unless um unless a parent wants them and then they're put into this one little room all by themselves where just a few kids signed they should all be learning signs all deaf children need to interact with other children who sign on the playground who are able to they're able to interact with similar peers if some of these kids here at the school for the deaf are running around speaking and not signing this is a deaf School you need to be leaders your deaf Educators your professionals sign language and spoken language should be available to all children my son is in second grade he has a deaf teacher um we you were talking about BGC earlier and BGC is great my son is using that curriculum his teachers using that curriculum and it's fantastic however his teacher is deaf one of very very few deaf teachers in the elementary department at PTSD and that points to a larger problem within the elementary problem or excuse me and the elementary school you have teachers who are artists who are teaching deaf children they're oddest and oppressive toward deaf students toward other deaf staff and our students are suffering because of it if I go up and sign hi good morning hearing teachers won't even look at me they just look away and walk away are you kidding that's not okay this is a deaf campus you have your language policy why is that even necessary it should be understood this is a deaf campus it's a deaf school we sign here that's the only reason that my son is there because he needs access to his environment in American Sign Language that's why I sent him to PDC but if that teacher you know who I'm referring to is still there he will not be continuing at PTSD I'm not going to put up with that oppressive oddest behavior from hearing teachers I have friends a friend who used to teach at PTSD and chose to resign because of that teacher because of that teacher she's toxic to the elementary Department these deaf kids need deaf teachers they need fluent ASL instruction the bilingual grammar is wonderful but bilingual instruction doesn't work if you're not already fluent in your first language they need deaf teachers to have a strong ASL Foundation that teacher who has pushed out many other teachers needs to be pushed out this needs to stop and my time is up I have a lot more to say but my time is up okay I was just going to say the rest of the comments will be posted online if they were emailed thank you 802 discussion possible action item again items for the next work at the board meeting anyone has any potential agenda items no okay uh oh remember dance sure I would like to add to the agenda for the next board meeting that we have a discussion related to feedback for superintendent reichmann and if necessary we go into executive session okay for the board to to give feedback to Supernanny Reitman um yes and potentially an executive session if that's if that's permissible okay uh superintendent Franklin can you make a note of that for when we meet will do thank you uh anyone else and we're going to go to 9.01 action item in German I moved the major in this meeting all in favor hi hi all right uh thank you everyone I know it was a long meeting today have a have a good evening
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what time is it I won't even hate 26. um Mr Mayor has a question or anything thank you very much first I'd like that the active really state that state is being done does an excellent job I'll see what happens to this unless there we go I just wanted to uh congratulate Diana the average city forward through our high school we all know that that's a larger school in the state population wise we all know that we're working on resolving that popular population or crowding order over a proud of the situation but I really wanted to thank each and every one of you here tonight of course the staff is doing such a great job and they put forward the best they can year after year Kevin I just want to congratulate you for your success as the uh the superintendent of this city we took over from the second spot and I appreciate all your efforts so I think what I'd like to emphasize is that I've always done this from day one is we need to work together I see what you're offering here tonight you've done your job your diligence on the numbers we bring all the information together we know where we're lacking we know what we need for the future and I thought I think I've made it clear that education is a priority of my Administration and we're going to work together with the council to bring forth the best possible solutions we can working together and just want to thank you all very much for your effort thank you man thank you guys so any uh council members on the education committee no any invited council members yeah good evening everyone we're going to keep into three minutes well then I've got many questions I know that I can ask them during our budget process on the city council side um but I said to just one Court base here at this presentation I've been part of this on on both sides I'm city council over here and this is one of the best that I've seen that really broke out um the differences in the need in the district um I'm we've got a lot of concerns and I know that you do too what I don't see here is any kind of projected budget or beginning of a budget for the cost that you're going to incur with the Career Academy there wasn't any of last year's budget either um and we can go back to those discussions that we've had done too um is that a safe argument to say that there's there's nothing in here that's really preparing for the growth that you're going to have to have when the Career Academy does it yes yes I I will say however through our task force committee meetings have kind of outlined costs associated with that growth at those meetings we have not had it as part of this packet but we could put it as an appendix to our country clubs yeah I mean I understand where you're coming from these this cost here is just basically the Martinez so turn on the lights and pay the bills right with no frills to this we're not doing anything condition s finally our last question if you don't get this asked what are you looking at as as a potential downside oh no because I don't know what our final number will be you know we're watching it or it's going to say we're fortunate you know the the relief monies have an amazing time and a relief monies came until you know the easiest one to talk about is we had a three-year dedicated plan when we were accepted for the grains were not an automatic I'm talking about the SUV coins and so the the one that everyone in the community knows about is Brookfield and so that that was a three-year plan and because it ended up only being one year there was savings associated with that so with that savings and so let's just say hypothetically that was five hundred thousand dollars between Staffing and rentals and buses Etc we could probably slide three or four people in there for one year because it the last thing we want to do is lose Services right now now as it is the folks who are in SO2 because that was not part of our access to two folks the staff who's in S2 is not in our asset is weird just recognize it shouldn't be in the ass but but the day is coming for us and we're trying to get as close to the acceleration when we finally get that bump and and we're hoping that bump in Alliance um that I'm sorry that Revenue stream from Alliance when we get that increase closer we get that we're hoping to offset some of those staff that are in these other grants right now this is my long way of saying um I don't want this District to be in a position where we are cutting a whole bunch of programming for our kids and our families if we we were never in a position to be able to do it we really can't have them and so I'm hoping we don't have to have that day we I was pushed pressed last year to answer this question um this is how we answered it last year in and out we we ended talking about some of the things that we are not required Services we are not required to provide course we would have to look at every level from district office to buildings to classrooms we don't want to touch the classroom this way but services and interventions and compliance we can move so but full day kindergarten we can right and so we're not required to provide full day candy bar we're not required to provide Athletics for kids it will not be required too right and so we're not required to provide every elective possible for kids at Danbury High School we could say you just these are the classes you get there's no such thing as electives again um and we get offered 25 credits and then that's it right and then I just want to turn my phone off okay well there's a broader conversation right and so so yes there would be impact um I I don't want to send you or any of our other council members of the mayor um thinking oh my God if we don't because I I don't want my staff to think they're going to lose their job tomorrow right um and I don't want my parents think they're not going to get Services because of it but it's faced with that question we will be ready any other invited council member okay well um you know I figured I would have to come up and ask some questions uh considering uh you know far away asking something so let's do a platform review on Poe members uh that's a question and hopefully my colleagues are safe in theirs for about the adopts so first of all it's really nice to see all of you on this side of the table it's a little weird but um it's cool nonetheless but um thank you again for that presentation for the invitation this evening your chairman and the superintendent Wall Street I just wanted to kind of follow up on a question that barley had asked about that task force and the projections kind of for the future was there a number that came out of that task force specifically and I believe that Middle School number was four to five million Dr cashmere does that sound about right ironically enough the while she's looking for and so there really no cost savings for starting the new middle school because we need we need everything from a new secretary principal teachers custodian Advocates everything for about 365 students by this year but high school we do have an opportunity to you obviously found it we do have an opportunity to and Dan and Cara have done some of this work so I'll let you just jump in or so um you know if we were to open the high school um you know like today we projected that it would be about 55 total staff members uh either the 912 level um just just shy of five million dollars and then the Middle School component of the project is a six eight piece so those are all new staff and that was about 59 new staff there and that was almost like almost five and a half and then I was like 5.4 million Transportation ball parked around a little over two million dollars so around twelve and a half million dollars just to really open the doors a lot yeah and it doesn't necessarily account for the growing enrollment over time as well so that would be factored in okay all right well thank you for that and um I guess my my last question I'll keep it short um in regards to the cost efficiencies slide um I think it was like four or four points I think it's just my big picture question like how what what's the huge implication to those costs and efficiencies that's something that is sustainable long term is it sort of one of a king can down the road that we have those savings now we're going to use them now but they may not be there in the future how what is the how is that number kind of this is not going to sound right the way I opened but I hope not because the majority of our efficiencies are found in unfilled positions this year and so that's really how we're able to pay down on the technology replenishment are we able to pay down on the fuels and energy costs for this year to your question uh Mr President this is not a sustainable strategy yeah because again we're participating we'll be able to fill our position the the SO2 question is well that's just a bigger animal because we have so many staff tied up in that in that in that Grant um it's really next year we'll have to come back and talk about what this means for us okay uh uh thank you for that and um you know I'll just leave uh just one one last you know kind of you know great response to Mr Donovan's principal Donald's presentation um you know I just have anecdote for the room those of you that didn't know us after I passed the bar exam and I was applying to Law Firm jobs I was actually a substitute teaching this fall at the high school every day so I was kind of the inside man so I got to see everything and trust me when I say I saw everything and you know and Mr Donovan's presentation tonight I there was a lot that I think sounded like you know I was frame rate positively because the Fantastic principle but I I can tell you personally having witnessed and having experienced that high school like it is Breaking Point I mean it is serious and I know there are board members here that get that I know there are order members that don't know the cabinet that's everywhere people hear that getting there are people that do not so my for all of you as a colleague official here is to take this year seriously now we are at a point of the return of this District take this budget seriously my colleagues here in the council take this budget see these are our kids this is the future of our savior so take it seriously so thank you again for the time I putting invitation this evening and thank you all for yourself we have time for one more question if any other council member wants to come up foreign too much of what anybody said but there's a couple things one we do look at the Historical side of things and you presented some of those as well as the next couple of years which I like to see kind of where we were a few years ago where we're going and how this fits in we kind of use some of that data one of the realities of budgeting is surpluses for black thereof and it's not uncommon to see surpluses with budgets because you're doing the best you can in figuring out what what you're going to need I know the last few years that have been server pluses those things are returned to the city but we could put them aside to get it back in some of their budgets and whatnot so maybe maybe the presentation or a presentation of some of the historical side of the surpluses that have been part of the budget and what the projected perhaps surpluses are just to have an idea of what those moving parts are because we move those monies around once a year so we have an idea of what they are we can we can play accordingly and the other items a great job and I'm doing very well respected I don't know you do well personally but the decided about the staff and it was 37 or so at the top of my head I think they were part of this um I think realistically you're not always able to hire those even if you wanted to hire those teachers there's a market and what can you bring looking at intake and on board so sometimes maybe perhaps there's that are fully budget for a course but the realistic expectation is that everybody's not going to be there from day one use all of that money for that so it'd be nice to see maybe projections or milestones at the beginning of the year the middle of the Year where Staffing will be and that probably would be a proponent of that surplusing and the forecasting so maybe that's a little more integrated than talking through it but some of some of those kind of things may be a little helpful for some of us to look at historically and projection wise management there should be no service projected but at least there's an idea of what's happening I'm going forward on a normal basis but again thank you thank you for your condolences thank you just so final words I just want to say thank you for everyone um I know and today it's we're about working together and I think over the years the we've had a good relationship with uh you know City Hall and the council and we want to continue on with that so I want to thank everybody in this weather tonight like the fact that everyone's coming out um you guys need a great presentation some really good questions and we really appreciate it thank you foreign
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these lands so with that that you would please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance so I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God individuals okay thank you so much so we moved the second two superintendent and board business so item 2.1 Dale Scott will facilitate a board's study session regarding Workforce housing this study session will present to the board the initial steps to set up the workforce housing in our district this IM is for information only a superintendent vowel you please introduce thank you uh for president um and you and I had this conversation earlier this morning this is a historic moment and I want to acknowledge that because I know there's going to be a number of people who since this meeting will be also air in YouTube people are going to be uh downloading and listening to this so I want to um really thank the community for making this moment happen by the passing of measure s um and because of that we will be able to to learn this morning about the process that the district needs to follow in order to bring Workforce housing in the midst of our community of Alum Rock which is pretty significant for our community and for our staff I know that the staff is very grateful that the board took this on uh uh trustee Quintero and trustee the committee that looked into the feasibility of this back in the spring and so because of that work that included members of the community and members of the staff now we're here ready to get this ball rolling and I want to thank um Dale Scott and Joe and I forget you but uh to be here helping us to frame the work and to learn and to help us set up the right steps to make this project happen um and I also want to thank Mr colvera Chang who has been very diligent about helping us um move forward from the financial side making sure that our district is ready for this project because if our district had any residue of financial turmoil this would not be happening so thank you so much Mr Chang for your leadership in our district regarding bringing our district to a stability Financial stability that allows to do this so without any further Ado I don't I believe that we need to take some public comments okay and then I will turn it over to Mr Dale Scott so um you know uh so at this time I you know on this uh and you know unprecedented the moment in our District's history I'll I will open item 2.01 to comments uh from members of the public uh are there any comments for members of the public Mr President there are no requests for public comment that oh Mr hold on a second yes there is one request from Gustavo Gonzalez okay uh I mean here I did hear this could you speak a little louder there Louise yes uh there is a request from Gustavo Gonzalez for public comment okay all righty Mr Gonzalez you have uh uh you know you have the four you have two minutes to which to speak thank you so much Mr Gustavo please don't mute yourself and the time it will start when you start talking perfect thank you so much uh fellow board members um and uh staff for doing this I think this is crucial for the success of our students here in this area without teacher housing we will have no teachers as everything is so darn expensive and so I just can't thank all of you enough for this effort that you're taking keep up the good work and I'm here to support you in any way that I can thanks thank you so much uh is there Amy for Republic comment Louise there are no requests for public comment at this time okay seeing no further public comment uh Mr Scott uh you have the floor thank you thank you and good morning um today even though I know we are here to talk well first of all let me congratulate uh the district on the bond measure passage in November uh clearly a huge day in the district's history and now we now the real work begins I guess is the way to put it this session today which is on the process for moving forward with the teacher staff housing relies on the district's ability to issue bonds to funded so we're going to start at a very high level looking at The District's entire debt structure and then we'll work down work down work down until we get to the issue of teacher staff housing because without that basis at the beginning I think we're going to get a little lost starting out too quickly so I'm going to share my screen and we're going to going to begin digestion energy but the wrong one sorry thank you sorry for the technical glitch everybody hear me yes let's start looking about the district's overall debt history in terms of Passage this has all of the Geo bond election details this slightest all the Geo Bond details uh since 1991 obviously there's been strong support you've seen you can see that all of the bond measures have been put before the voters in this District have passed we still have two measures that have significant amounts of authorized but unissued bonds that's the measure that passed in 2016 measure I 100 million dollars of which is available and then the measure that just passed measure s 71.5 million dollars and all of those bonds are available at this time for use not only for Teacher staff housing but for other projects as well drilling down a little bit farther there are many outstanding bonds that are still being paid off by The District's taxpayers this is a list of every one of the measures every one of the bond issues that is outstanding it has various uh information about the original principle how much is being paid when the maturity is I'll come back to the issue of when they can be refinanced but you can see you know we're working through all of these as the district is paying off its debt foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign okay we're good these are the projected tax rates for the outstanding bonds not the future bonds that haven't been issued but for the outstanding bonds and you can see that the a number of these bonds are going to be paid off shortly of the 1991 election is going to be paid off in four years uh the 19 the 2008 election is going to be paid off in about 10 years so this is what the voters the taxpayers are currently working on foreign what does that mean in terms of what the taxpayer is the individual taxpayer is actually paying this slide shows the average assessed valuation of single-family houses in the district by one hundred thousand dollar increments so what this means is as you can see up at the top you have actually almost 2 000 Parcels in this District where the assessed valuation of the home is under one hundred thousand dollars hard to imagine but true the average assessed valuation is four hundred thousand dollars but it's a wide berth so when we start talking about a tax rate of thirty dollars per hundred thousand dollars that's going to depend on what the person's not the market value of the house but the actual assessed valuation which is typically lower um some people are going to pay for a hundred dollars because their assessed valuation is a million dollars I'm sorry uh 300 300 000 dollars three hundred dollars and some people are going to pay 30 don't so there's a wide variety of what that payment is and that's why as we talk about it today we're going to talk about per hundred thousand dollars of assessed valuation meaning it's going to change from person to person company to company owner to owner as we go through it the good news is the districts over all assessed valuation has been growing uh at a very healthy clip really for the past 10 or 15 years since the downturn in 2008 over the past five years you've had assessed valuation climate an average of six percent per year last year was over six percent six point seven percent still as we go forward and we look at these numbers and we start thinking about them we're not going to assign that it's going to continue to grow at that rate it does that's great but we've assumed a fairly modest rate I believe it's three and a half percent as we go forward in terms of annual growth so what we're trying to figure out is what's the best way to put the financing together for both this project and all your other projects in a way that's going to be the most efficient and least costly for the taxpayers if you're just who have been incredibly supportive of these products projects so I'm going to turn it over to Joe Crump for just a minute to go through one again was not quite to the housing part here but I want to talk about the ability to lower the cost of the taxpayers today of the existing debt before the Geo they're called refunding bonds think of them as a refinancing I want to turn it over to Joe to take you through the next couple of slides and then we'll come back and start digging into the housing budget yeah thank you Dale to us okay all right uh so let's take another look back at The District's outstanding General obligation bonds um so as you can see from this table uh the district currently has eight bonds outstanding um total outstanding principle you see in the middle column is about 100 and almost 127 million dollars um the key column we want to focus on here is on the far right um the second row the 2012 election series a um you can see the call date for that bond is August 1st 2023.
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and so the district will have the option to refinance those bonds um basically starting from May onward so um that is obviously um just a few months away so we've put together an analysis looking at how that refunding could be structured and to see what the results to the district will be so the first alternative is what we would call a proportional savings structure so in the graph here you could see um The Debt Service on the refunding bonds and then in the green bars we have projected savings so this structure basically takes savings over the life of the bond structure and you could see in the table on the right in that highlighted box um based on current market rates the projected savings for this structure are about eight million dollars over the life of the bond going out to 2043. and that amounts to about 16.2 percent um savings as a percentage of the total debt service so those very good savings um and and this I'm sorry if for president yes are you okay if we have questions as you of course yeah or I just wanna um alert I don't know if uh if you have questions and the rest of the board I wanted to ask that I do have a question very basic question because I I'm not an you know a financial person per se but I just wanna so this allows correct some of this savings to come back to our bonds so that we can uh do stuff in in terms of projects well yeah these savings will be tax rate savings that will accrue to taxpayer so okay the tax rate will be lower um and so that that does have an effect on the district in terms of you would be able to in the future issue more bonds but you're starting at a lower tax rate so there is an effect in that it's like a win-win for your taxpayer and for the district that's correct okay thank you I see uh Chris vice president Herrera loera thank you yeah also very basic questions just to make sure I'm following here um so this is a chart if if we decide to refinance then this will be our savings that's correct and you know this is based on current market rates um you know you never know which direction Market interest rates are going to go but but based on current rates um savings are expected to be about eight million dollars that's correct thank you and so we've also put together a second alternative you know because there are different ways you can structure this uh refinancing and so this is looking at the same refinancing of the 2012 series A bonds but now we're structuring um the new refunding Bonds in order to put all of the savings um on the back end and there are pros and cons to this approach so you see now in the highlighted box total savings are almost 9.8 million dollars and um so the savings are higher but of course you don't see the effect in the tax rates until 10 years down the line so there are trade-offs um so these are just two Alternatives where showing the district to show you know there are different ways that this refinancing can be accomplished and lastly for this section of the presentation we have a timetable So currently the District board is scheduled to take action on this and also um some of the other bonds that Dale will discuss on March 9th of this year and um March 13th uh tended to be scheduling a rating presentation for the new bonds April 4th the County Board will take action on their own resolution pertaining to the bonds and we expect to that the bonds will price in early May and close by the end of May so at the end of May this refinancing should be able to be accomplished superintendent Bowery had a question so um just so that I can follow because this the this information is leading us to a proposed recommendation to the board that we would bring on March 9 if we see that refinancing this year right because I totally see you know the the next opportunities 10 years down the line and so that it's totally within you know kind of out of our timeline in terms of some of the projects that we have in mind right so um what I'm seeing is a potential for a recommendation to be brought to the board March 9th so that we can move forward with this concept of reclinences yeah that's correct yeah so yeah are there any protections um that we can take uh because Jerome Powell wound up getting covered or something like that and they're supposed to meet and that's probably going to end up being a a hike in interest that's going to wind up feeding the markets to go nuts what what um what protection do we have to from like taking action and then wind up being in a situation where the interest rates yeah that's a great question um it's even after the board adopts the resolution resolution it's totally up to the district whether they want to proceed um basically it's not until May 9th um pricing that the interest rates are locked in so all the way up into that point you know the district can make the decision well you know maybe the savings are not um at the level we would want to see them at and so you basically have all the way up until the time the interest rates are set so that 8 million and nine million dollar figure is pretty steady up until May you never know I mean that you know if interest rates are stable um we should we expect to see about that amount but it's hard to predict um but certainly the district will have the opportunity you know we will monitor interest rates and be able to tell you all the way up until pricing you know this is what the current savings look like and based on that the district can decide if they want to proceed with um pricing than personality and bonds so yeah that's a great question comment superintendent Bauer so what I hear is that there will be there are the safeguards that are here is that the we have the gift of time all the way to May 9 so even if we even if the board uh takes action in March you still have all the way till May to kind of you know say we're moving forward or not yeah that's correct thank you and now I'll turn it over to Dale yeah yeah let me just add one piece of the puzzle there which is you actually have Beyond May if interest rates have deteriorated at that point then we put it on the Shelf we watch them we'll come back to you when it seems to work the point however is there are no costs accrued to the district to this until you take the action and then all of the costs are then built into this they're net out of the number you find and the savings all go to the taxpayer so this is really at the essence I think of just fiscal Prudence to bring these carefully to Market and not jump at the first time you say hey this will be going to save a couple hundred thousand dollars you've waited patiently on this and I think it's been the right decision to make wait until you can actually refinance it using tax exempt bonds to get the maximum savings to the taxpayer thank you now there's one other piece of the puzzle that has to be dealt with and it's a slightly esoteric but it's important that we talk about we talk a lot about the tax rate limit that we may recall when we were doing the bond measure we said there's a 30 tax rate there's a 30 tax rate limit per Trend per uh Bond measure there's another piece of the puzzle which is called the debt limit and the debt limit it's unfortunate term it has nothing to do with the tax rate limit it is completely separate within the Education Code there is a requirement that the district's outstanding debt that is the principal amount of bonds outstanding be no greater for an Elementary District than one and a quarter percent of the district's assessed valuation so it's somewhat obscure but it is something that we have to pay attention to so if you look at this uh chart the red line is one and a quarter percent of the district's assessed valuation assuming assessed valuation and growth at uh except not counting the next year at five percent but they're on 3.75 per year so that debt limit is growing over time the blue is the outstanding principle of the bonds you currently have outstanding not the bonds that you're thinking about not the bonds that have been passed by the voters just the bonds that have been issued the total sum and those are falling that amount is falling because bonds are being paid off every year but you can see right now that the gap between the one and a quarter percent of bonds outstanding and one and a quarter percent I'm sorry the amount of bonds outstanding and one and a quarter percent of assessed valuation is only 19 million dollars that's the limit right now however there is a process by which the district can request a waiver of this regulation from the Department of Education these wave there's a process you have to go through will guide you through that process it takes a few months um it is a fairly standard I've never seen a waiver that's not been granted as long as it's put together in the right way and been presented to the to the state and we will then be looking for a waiver that will I mean we will still be able to issue the first series of bonds so we can get for get going on the housing project but for future bonds we want to ask for that waiver to be able to issue all of the bonds that have been passed by the and approved by the voters so that is a process that we're going to start going through over the next couple months it'll take forward action we'll have to discuss it with the oversight committee we'll have to have you discuss it with your bargaining units it's a fairly formulaistic process I'm not anticipating any problems but it does have to be put in place in order to go forward with these projects down the line superintendent Bauer so Dale would you please help me understand what happens if for example um this is not something that is approved well first of all I've never I don't believe there has been ever been one that has not been approved but I'm thinking like from the the local level oh no no they don't there's not a request that would be approved you nearly you merely have to consult okay so if that is something that people have doubts let's say you know let's say we're not interested whatever the the result of that is that we only have the ability to issue 19 million dollars is that what it is no no we only the only thing that has to happen is the state has to provide you with the waiver in order to provide to obtain the waiver the board has to request it by a simple majority and you have to consult consult not get approval with your bargaining units and with the community group such as your oversight committee now I've been involved in situations where or a variety of reasons the one one of the bargaining units decided to vote against the waiver okay it was noted that information was provided to the state but it doesn't affect the state's ability to provide that waiver thank you uh you know I guess oh I have a question for Dale here so uh the the consultation process here uh so the I am you know the district would you know consult with bargaining units the oversight committee but it kind of sounds like does each bargaining unit and I guess in in this consultation process they they may Express more or less a vote of support or opposition to it and so it sounds like each bargaining unit and the oversight committee would in in the consultation process you know we open this and then you know they would you know they could say yay or nay here and I guess the hope is that you know we we all bring them together and we have goes unanimously but you know we just um a name from a bargaining unit or the oversight committee would would not have basically we would just report that in the waiver request and it would have no it would not have any bearing on the state granting correct the waiver okay thank you so much is the the consultation prescribed in love like does it say you have to do this and do that or is it pretty wide open in terms of the consultation I'm just wondering like does it say each part of the Union has to take a vote or is it just yeah conversation yeah um as far as the application process um there does have to be some consultation um and the waiver office at the State Board of Education would need to see some sort of evidence that that's taking place so there's I think the easiest thing is to get like a signature on some kind of letter that states you know um the bargaining units position for example but there's not a exactly a set format but there are certain things that they'd want to see you know some documentation um and Isaiah was saying the waiver application itself simply asks you to note what is the bargaining unit's position support neutral or oppose um and then for like the oversight committee I think the waiver application says um were there any objections from committee members and then make a note if there are any objections so that I think that's the extent of the engineering okay okay I I see trust uh vice president Herrera will error thank you um and it's more of a comment uh you know obviously this is Brian this is new so um you've all done this several times and it's great to hear that for the most part it gets um passed and obviously you know there's I'm sure um like the formula and the reason for all of those different groups to be consulted um and I I mean this is all positive I see for our district right um at the end so I don't see anybody that has a vested interest in Alum Rock um you know going against something like this uh but then that could just be me right but I look forward to this process and I know um as you mentioned you will be coming back um or the staff will with recommendations um so I'm excited thank you okay and superintendent Valerie had a question yeah I just want to let the board know that I know that there are bargaining units have their process their own internal process and they I'm pretty sure they'll bring it to the membership for consideration and then we will get that that's something that they do on their own we will just go and ask them do you know to consider and each bargaining unit will decide the process that they will have to follow you know to bring to the membership I know that they have regular meetings some of them have regular meetings weekly others have it monthly so we just need to have a timeline so that we we are timely in this process yeah this is a process that takes months not weeks yeah just to be clear anything else all right I'm gonna skip over the time tip for this let's talk about teacher staff housing there are in my experience four critical questions uh that have to do with teacher stock housing how do you finance it how do you Market it how do you build it and how do you manage it those are the four critical pieces of the puzzle so we're going to walk through those one by one and I've drawn a lot on the experience of Jefferson Union High School District as we've gone through this and watching how they've put this together and on their own and with our assistance so I am going to hopefully play this hopefully it will work uh school districts across the country are grappling with the teacher shortage and communities where housing is unaffordable are being hit the hardest in tonight's eye in America one district is fighting the problem by getting into the real estate market here's cbs's Jonathan Vigliotti care museum is a type of bacteria among the things that can't be taught in a classroom how to keep teachers in the classroom there's been times where you know we didn't have a math teacher or we didn't have a language teacher just south of San Francisco the Jefferson Union High School District found a common denominator what do you attribute to that turnover High Cost of Living 100 consider that a decade ago teacher pay used to be affordable but while salaries have gone up slightly rents have skyrocketed this District found a solution very spacious extremely roomy a 122 unit apartment complex approved by local voters built for teachers and staff on school property for the average two-bedroom unit in this neighborhood you're getting easily pay over three thousand a month biology teacher Michaela ottsrent is nearly half that sixteen hundred dollars a month if I hadn't gotten housing it would have been really challenging for me to make ends meet I was absolutely Blown Away Jonathan Krupp has taught social science for 13 years how important is an effort like this to the teaching Community there are no words to describe it I I think that this gives teachers hope while other school districts still have vacancies at Terra Nova High School this year I started fully stuffed which was huge principal Megan Carey says there have always been pocketbook concerns we had a teacher who was delivering pizzas meet Eric willemsey gather around who says until he got a teacher's apartment he couldn't coach cross-country delivering pizzas actually pays more than coaching in this District but having this subsidized you know teacher housing oh man it's a godsend yeah with their message to other school districts across the country just do it everyone will benefit from it money well spent yep oh absolutely money well spent being able to live in a place where I feel like I can recharge I feel a weight lifted off my shoulders make sense for ION America I'm Jonathan Vigliotti in Daly City California all right the first question is how do you finance it well you have something that most districts in this state do not have is a bond authorization that allows you to finance it but let's look at how that might work and I'll give you a couple different ideas on top of it what you have here is just an example this is based on 50 units I believe I'm sorry yes 50 units at below Market rents 65 percent of the current market and what you see here the with these bars is the projected gross income from those units the gray is what we estimate to be the operation and maintenance expense which is going to be paid from that rent the green is the additional Revenue that is available from them now that can go back to the district for any any permitted use it can go to build additional housing and support additional housing this assumes that you are financing the teacher staff housing with 100 percent General obligation bonds that's what this chart assumes in addition you can see that it stops in the year 2052 but that's only because we run out of room it doesn't stop in the year 2052 this continues uh this continues as a as a available housing and also Revenue source for the district added tonight this isn't necessarily how most districts however that are currently working on teacher staff housing are thinking about financing they often start out this way but then they say wait a minute we can use this net revenue to help offset the cost of the financing by using a combination of General obligation bonds and certificates of participation which are at least financing that are repaid through a portion of the net revenues so they put the two together in Jefferson's case Jefferson High School case that allowed them to build far more units than the go Bond would have allowed them to so they were able to leverage that in other districts they've used that to reduce the cost of the bonds and therefore the cost of the taxpayers and free up those additional bonds for other projects now this isn't a decision you have to make now it's not a decision that's really on the table anytime soon but you need to think about that that there's other there's other ways to finance this than just using only General obligation ones you have to use a portion of them just because the cost of the housing you're going to want to use that but you can supplement that with cops to either expand the amount of housing or reduce the amount of Geo bonds that are necessary clear that's as far as I'm going to go into financing I think that's the easiest piece of the puzzle the second is how do you Market it and I know that's an odd phrase when you say well what do you mean Market if we're we're not we're not going to be going out and and marketing this to the community but in a way you are this is something that the staff and the community really needs to know what you're doing and these are lessons drawn drawn and provided by Jefferson High they say that from their perspective the four most important things were clear messaging of what you're trying to do make sure that there is Staff buy-in and you can see here that they list site meetings so the staff knows what is being planned visuals which will be coming shortly as you begin this process to show what the quality is of the units and then make sure that they bring the unions into the decision-making process so it's not in a black box in other words so everybody knows what's happening and knows what the quality of these are going to be for Unity it's not one person's project it's the board's project in the districts project that there is a clear spokesperson for the project but not everybody's out talking about it and that we stick to the talking points once we get those and then finally there's going to have to be presentations that are put together for the community and they have to deal with the talking points and training on those presentations so everybody understands what's happening there's going to I'm sure you've already heard it there's going to be all sorts of rumors all sorts of discussion maybe I've heard this is happening I've heard that's happening you need to have a clear message and get ready to go out and present that as many people as possible where then how do you build it this happens to be uh the former superintendent now retired on the right at Jefferson High and two board members who were instrumental in uh and this was the groundbreaking um or the uh for the Jefferson High project this is a pretty rough outline in terms of the timing but these are the big pieces of the puzzle the first is and I highlighted it in yellow because I think it's one of the most important parts and one of the things I think should be discussed today is Project oversight there's a thousand decisions that come with this process who's going to be making those decisions now obviously the board has the finals say but these are micro decisions you know how are you are you going to go this way are you going to go that way is it going to be this is it going to be that that's going to come back to the board obviously for final approval but there needs to be some type of organization there's not a great blueprint for this it's up to you how you want to put it together of who is going to be the kind of committee that oversees this as you begin to go forward now in Jefferson's case they had a committee that was established that included board members Union Representatives community members and staff members and and their uh and their Consultants other districts Mr President yes yes the committee that had been meeting was authorized to continue on as the committee that you're talking about okay so you've been to some of our previous meetings which included a lot of stakeholders um and so we're we're ahead of the game by having given the committee the charge to continue on okay okay good what president can I just firm and uh clear Quintero just to confirm that's the committee that um we had started right that we have been meeting with you and I and okay seriously yes perfect thank you okay that's what I was thinking but I was gonna wait for my question thank you great um and of course as you go forward you might find that you want to tweak that committee that happens um I'm working with one District now it started out with a committee that was much smaller uh didn't actually involve any board members it was mainly staff and consultants and now they're opening that up as they're past the feasibility study and they're into the actual construction so I think you need to be flexible as you go forward on this um you're already uh asking uh I don't know when they're to be received but I know an RFP has gone out before the feasibility study um RFP RFQ in terms of the design build team select that team City County approval sounds like it should be easy should be easy but often it's not it's going to be a little bit easier with some legislation that's going to be in place a year from now uh that might dovetail to where you are at that point but still we have to deal with either the city handle or the county and you can see it's hard to imagine but it takes at least a year or two before you actually get to the groundbreaking it just takes a long time then about a good year for construction now Jefferson got slowed down because of coven but it took them well over a year superintendent Valerie you have a question yeah I wanted to ask Mr Chang how we are with the feasibility study just a reminder to the audience and to the boards foreign er um so the deadline for submittal of The Proposal um ended this week and we received I believe about five or six proposal that was submitted um we'll be bringing that to the board uh for consideration um in terms of the process of interviews and selection thank you can I ask when that's going to board one second going to support um well need to consult with the superintendent important president in terms of the timeline yeah and because you know this is this is part of this is such an important piece of the also oh I'm sorry is that okay of course I just wanted to um alert um the committee that was set up last spring that and the Border approved that you know to continue that perhaps it would be um we can have a conversation about this as a committee and and I'm looking at a trustee Quintero because he was leading the committee in trustee Herrera lawera um so that we can bring that recommendation to the board with the committee um support yeah exactly it sounds good maybe we could set it right after this uh exactly important meaning perfect and I know that there are some of our stakeholders that are part of the committee uh in this call so just to kind of alert people a lot of reading yes yes but that helps the community to know you know that this is a very transparent process and that um people this the stakeholders are uh part of that anything else on the timeline I'm going to go to the how do you manage it this next uh slide has been developed uh in conjunction with Jefferson High [Music] and there's a lot on here I really want to dig into this as we look at who's doing what that's not to say that there aren't other ways of putting this together there aren't ways we can change this but this I think is a good framework to think of obviously the number one leader in the entire process is the board they set the policy they make the decisions but you want to have something that's going to be in between you and the management of that facility obviously so in this case let's just sort of walk through it in different directions the school board worked with staff to deal with issues such as financing what land was going to be used if new land had to be acquired how the construction management was going to be handled those were staff issues at the same time they created an employee housing corporation which is a non-profit Corporation that in that case the employee I'm sorry the employee housing Corporation included a variety of members um that had board members uh members of the community members of the bargaining unit maybe there's a large organism a large group and they oversaw the they their purpose is to be the buffer in between the management of that of that project and the board so decisions and complaints and problems aren't coming to the board they're coming to the corporation that employee housing Corporation going to the right has numerous responsibilities some of those responsibilities get pushed to staff some of those responsibilities get pushed to an outside property management company that's responsible for the day-to-day management of the of the project but those include the rules and regulations who can live there What About Pets what about roommates how do you handle uh the terms uh Financial oversight rental let's disputes appeals eligibility priority security these are all issues that have to be handled by that Corporation by the appropriation many of those however then have the implementation through that through the day-to-day management by the property management company you can see to the left who the members of this are there are two board members on this again this is just the Jefferson model two board members two staff members three community members and in addition there is a non-voting director of Staff housing the director of Staff housing is a district employee that's whose salary is paid out of rent in rental income that's the person who really as I've understood it and heard from them that's the person who really stands between the management company and the employee housing Corporation that's the person that everybody goes to and says what about this what about that in Jefferson's case that person has also been responsible for dealing with all the media and there has been a lot of media requests how are we going to do this how are we going to talk about these people so they put that all into one place which I think is a Smart View the only thing I want to emphasize with this slide is the ultimate responsibility and the ultimate policy is going to come to the board but you don't necessarily want to be involved in those day-to-day decisions you want to figure out a way that that is going to be pushed down to another organization and that complaints are going to that Corporation and organization the question is about this to worry concerns or compliance or very yes that's a pretty clear I I know that uh big West Valley mission the Community College District has a land corporation that they use to manage their assets that generate revenue for for the district and so I was assuming it's simply similar to this okay we have covered the four major issues these are the big pieces I think as we now look back now look forward to what are the steps I'm not sure how important it is that we concentrate on forming the corporation at this point we really need to get your feasibility consultant on the feasibility consultant I think as you're trying to work through those proposals you want somebody that can really identify that land what pieces of property are we going to be focusing on what works what doesn't work get the committee to making some decisions get the financing in place so you'd have the funds to pay for that original those that original work or that beginning work and then the process begins uh superintendent Bowers so they'll these employee housing Corporation does not follow in order to set it up right uh does that follow kind of the process for the 501s the non-profits that's great process right and you'd want to work with Council obviously or maybe a County Council right and it is something that can be parallel to kind of the work that needs to be done right before the groundbreaking Oh and before and before I mean in talking with the Innovation who I believe you've met um who's the assistant superintendent for business at Jefferson I asked her what is the one thing that you wish you would have done differently and she said she wishes she would have said they would have set this up earlier so they had that infrastructure in place to help with all the decisions so this is something that the committee can get started right away yeah I'm just trying to get us into that timeline for all of us right to say this is time it's time to start talking about that um you know trying to learn from the other districts you know how they set it up and begin that process now and I think that you can draw on those other districts greatly um and that's a huge benefit to have somebody that's until that Row first to help you what worked and what doesn't work for you okay thank you okay and I see vice president Ferrero loera thank you um and I think Dr Bauer just mentioned a question that I was going to bring Dell is um for example I mean I I appreciate your expertise right and all the experience that you bring um in the learning from the different projects and the pros and the cons um which I with the committee that we currently have formed that we all agreed to continue this work in the now right it could change in the future um I must I know you will walk us through this but I'm assuming part of the next steps in the near future will be part of the identifying which land and things like that is that something that this committee will look at and maybe bring forward recommendations or is that something that falls in the facilities plan because we also have the other projects going how does that work well to a certain extent that's up to you how you move forward on that but um big picture you would have a selection of your facility your feasibility consultant a feasibility consultant would bring recommendations to the committee uh the committee would bring those recommendations to the board now how you integrate that with your overall development plan is up to the board I think not to the committee but that would be an obvious burst step you may find that takes a couple of months you may find that takes more than a couple months you have a lot of pieces of property to figure out what you're what's going to work and what's not going to superintendent about right but that's an excellent um comment from and thank you for bringing that up that's why um we went ahead and started looking you know for the feasibility so that we can integrate those kinds of recommendations to the plan so that is part of the the facilities master plan so that's you know it's sort of um it's a chapter right into into the facilities master plan that we're putting kind of on hold until we have that visibility study to be able to say these are the recommendations from from the people that know how to identify the best area right yeah that makes sense and um in regards to bringing it that visibility and then bringing it to the committee and it's kind of like turning things over and over right into like the perfect uh combination ends up at the board level right and then moving forward so it just sounds like there's just gonna continue to be a lot of work like you said it could be weeks probably not it most likely will be a couple months if not more um because obviously we want the best teacher housing that has ever been created because of the things we've learned um and moving forward so thank you this is very helpful in the process especially where I was at and understanding so um I thank you for this information so I just want to make sure that we support this away because this is a unique thing it takes a massive amount of work and I what I don't want to see is this thing getting killed by committee because we wound up missing a deadline because I had to go through 12 committees the reason that we have the the teacher Workforce housing committee is because it it's a place where we go take things to be uh aired out and then it goes directly to the to the board so that the board can have uh critique action having things haven't been um uh already fleshed out in in a community that's already been established yeah and so while it is part of the of the overall facilities master plan um I when when the committee was created as we were moving forward the idea was to be able to move on a on a parallel path to the committee to just get things to report it's superintendent power yes and the I guess just to further clarify what I meant is that the master plan is going to be waiting for the facility for the for this committee the workforce committee to say this is what we decided so that they can integrate it into that plan to facilitate the time timeliness of this uh that completes my report any further questions or comments by members of the board thank you very much for the presentation uh I've been inundated by questions uh members of the public media and all I could say is I'll take a look at the Jefferson model it's a good model it's it's already out there it's happened and so I'm glad that we're out now able to give them a place where they can turn to look at actual possible uh Alum Rock type of uh something more something that aligned with Island Rock rather than having to trim somewhere else what the possibilities might be here for our local project and so very very excited to see that um the timelines all the things that they've kind of just been looking at it um been getting really positive uh feedback from uh employees who who similar traveling from very far distances both said is exactly what we need um been very appreciative the fact that it was introduced so very proud to have been able to introduce this item um something that meets the needs of a uh that are that that are being based here at our district so thank you for the presentation okay I just put this other slide up just to highlight where you as a board are trying to figure out how do you communicate with the community I think you're absolutely right you're going to get thousands of questions and you probably need to spend some time thinking about who's going to answer those questions what the messaging is on those questions that's going to come organically as it begins to be put together as opposed to everybody having their view of how it is that is consistent with board uh with words policy vice president Herrero thank you and just to reiterate you know I'm really excited of all the work we've done already thank you Dell with your leadership um and guidance in that like as I see this uh slide that you have up you know I feel like we've kind of checked off you know a lot of these boxes um without having that you know like hey you got to do this even the staff Buy in peace right like having that committee where uh we um have brought in unions into the decision-making process and then moving towards the right in regards to bringing in the community um and then obviously you know checking our egos at the door I'm glad that at least you know and and please correct me if I'm wrong uh not in this meeting but I'm always open to Growing you know I think this board you know that that there's no issue with that and um you know grateful for clerk Andres Quintero um for having been that a point kind of clear spokesperson without even having picked him you know um because he did bring this forward um initially so I know there's a few things on here that we still haven't right and we get to continue to build on as we move on in this process like the talking points and where we're at and moving forward I think we got a lot of good ones now um and you know bringing us back so that we're all on clear messaging um that's used by all of us um and yeah you know we're not going to agree on everything 100 which is a beauty we should not because we all bring in our different experiences um so I'm just really excited I feel like we've we're kind of ahead you know of where we're at like without even knowing um about this process and I look forward to scheduling that committee meeting soon so that um we can continue on this uh so yeah thank you so much Adele for your leadership and guidance and I look forward to continuing to move on this process it's really exciting on behalf of our community all right so I'll just conclude thank you so much Mr Scott for spending their Saturday morning and you know being with us in this process and thank you to my calling and trustee Montero for kind of you know starting the chain of uh docimals that that got us to this point you know it feels like that was it majoresque was kind of like the the passage of measure as it's like getting the college acceptance letter right now we're about to start the freshman year of college full of new uh New Opportunities and exciting opportunities so uh with that uh you know we'll let the work begin thank you so much well there is no further business I will uh move to adjourn the board study session at 10 12 a.m thank you so
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Mike Davenport here Christopher Espinoza here Jenny hagstrom here Gary pavasich here join a Vasquez Drexler here Nancy kupka here Luca palauskas here and Caitlin Vincent here okay thank you let's have aquarium stand for the Pledge of 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 okay I'm not the last one is that a student perspectives um all right uh who's first this month I can go first all right okay okay so starting off second semester we've made um some changes to access in different parts of our schedule from the survey that we did last semester so some of those changes are only really giving seniors autonomy days to kind of make that just because you know we're adults and we kind of have those time management skills um done well as like the underclassmen need a little bit more support and structure so we've changed that to kind of just giving seniors those opportunities and then we also have made sure that teachers and students have the same schedule when it comes to student support with a past day so that help is more easily accessible and that they can get it when they need it a different change is that we shut down the West events in New Wing like seating um arrangements for the school day just so just so that like individual classes can take more advantage of that space and it kind of like limits student stitching class to hang out in those areas so we've made those areas more accessible for classes to use rather than English students good um and some fun things that are coming up is we we've had a lot of senior nights in our Sports we just had our girls basketball senior night I'm pretty sure there's been a girls bowling senior night so a lot of celebrations going on the sports level we also just had our g99 Hoops packed the place which was super fun and really gathers the community around our d99 athletes and then the girls basketball program just had our way back Pat night which is a fundraiser for an Alzheimer's awareness and I'm pretty sure we raised around seven thousand dollars wow so with the community support and donations we were able to donate to that awesome Foundation and then we also are having our freshman orientation night which is super exciting for the incoming freshmen just to give them a taste of what they'll be expecting at South High next year and then we next month is Black History Month and because of that we're having a lot more activities and games going on our resources to just get the students involved and we're kicking off the month of February with our school spirit assembly which is always super fun with different competitions that students can engage in in fighting for the spirit jug that as a senior I'll finally be able to win because it's always biased but I'm super excited to finally win school job and just have that school spirit um so like Caitlyn said we're all starting to get back in after the long break which we all much needed just to refresh and um get back in the groove of things and by starting off I know last time I talked about how we were thinking about doing some like cleanup stations um in our cafeteria areas and our areas where people are able to sit during their free periods and so we've started doing that and I I personally have seen a lot more um help from the students cleaning up their areas anything they leave behind obviously there's stuff that we can still work on but I know I see that at the beginning of the day there's towels and different paper napkins and now if you go at the end of the day most of them are used up and people are actually engaging in helping their school Community stay cleaner throughout many sports have started off and we're off to a great start for the new season I know track and field has also started and everyone is just getting into being a part of a team and working together and getting their sched schedules back to normal I know that there are a few big accomplishments that we've gone through such as the jazz band has a performance on January 31st featuring The Northern Illinois University Jazz and Jazz groups from Downers Grove South our girls basketball game we have one on January 27th which is featuring coaches versus cancer which is a fundraiser we do and most of the proceeds are going to go to an American Cancer Society also our Varsity Boys Basketball team is off to an amazing start we are going to have a matchup against the 16th ranked Lions Township and Chicago Sun Time says it's one of the needed watch up matches to see in Illinois also we have JV and varsity cheer teams that placed first and second at wsx conference comp and varsity Athena dance team finished sixth at sectionals and overall with engaging in the school Community we have had a whole week for World languages we had 22 different countries being represented and 22 different staff members a part of our school that shared any places that they visited throughout this the year and then also we had a great amount of people we had 12 North students who got the ilmea All-State honors and which we find that to be a great accomplishment thank you any questions of our students all right okay hearing none we'll move on to the approval of minutes I need a motion for the Board of Education to approve the minutes of the December 12 2022 business meeting so moved go ahead think it was Joanna and Terry thank you very much Joanna Vasquez Drexler yes I Terry favorsage aye Mike Davenport aye Mr Espinoza hi I'm sorry I didn't hear it it's real Fuller hi I'm Nancy cupka hi the minutes are adopted okay we'll move to our first reception of visitors do we have anybody for the first group yes okay the meeting agenda includes two opportunities for comments from the audience the first reception of visitors is intended for audience members to address the board about any agenda item on which the board will vote the second reception of visitors is intended for audience members to address the board on any topic pertaining to Community High School District 99.
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Unit School District Board of Education meeting for January 23 2023 can I have a roll call please Mr Cerrone here Mr Doyle here Mr Gatewood president Miss Johnson president Mr cloaker Ms simultan president miss Swanson Francis will stand for the pledge of God and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty foreign 4.1 is an opportunity for the board to acknowledge and congratulate our pride while Award winners I'd ask the board to please join me out front to congratulate this evening's recipients and then 4.2 is follow athletic recognition so we'll stay out as this is an opportunity for the board to recognize our fall student athletes as well Dominic is yeah I actually don't know I told her I'm sure you could evening everyone we are going to start with our January Pride recognition program winners tonight the Board of Education acknowledges Pride winners for the month of January 2023 Pride stands for proudly recognizing individuals demonstrating Excellence the Board of Education implemented this program in the fall of 2015 to recognize promote and celebrate the many contributions made by teachers and employees across our district teachers of the month is sponsored by Allied First Bank we recognize what our teachers do day in and day out for the continued growth and success for our students awardees as your name is called please come forward to be congratulated by the board and Dr sparlin and then stay here and we'll do a quick photo congratulations to the following teachers for having been recognized as the January teachers of the month Katie blue grade four Boulder Hill Elementary thank you Mike Linden science teacher Bernard Junior High [Applause] Megan Mann grade two wheatlands Elementary [Applause] and Dana Miles grade one Old Post Elementary [Applause] at this time we'd like to invite up our building administrators to come join our awardees in the board of education for a photo yeah get on up there you go probably gonna have to switch up a big group all right what's up [Music] come on you guys ready come on guys scoot over [Applause] congratulations teachers our next awardees this evening are our employees of the month co-sponsored by Chick-fil-A and Huntington Learning Center this award is given in honor of our employees who go above and beyond and are always willing to lend a hand awardees as her name is called please come forward to be congratulated and then stay there for the photo Rob Manna building engineer South Berry Elementary [Applause] and Trisha Tunney teaching assistant lrc computer Grant Park [Applause] bring it over here [Laughter] and we'll invite any Grand Park administrators to come forward and we'll do another photo [Applause] yeah thank you congratulations Trisha [Applause] we'd like to thank our generous District partners for this program Allied First Bank Chick-fil-A Huntington Learning Center and Culver's of Oswego for helping to make this program a success and we'd like to thank all of those who take time to nominate individuals for this award okay moving on to our students the board of education is proud tonight to acknowledge the award-winning efforts of our students who participated in Fall Sports this school year and have received State recognition at the Illinois High School Association state championship competitions students at Freddy's called please come forward to be congratulated by our board and superintendent Dr sparlin Chloe Diner swimming and Diving third place 200 yards thank you next is Katie graceik from swimming and Diving second place 500 yard freestyle and fifth place 200 yards next is Katie mom swimming and Diving fifth place diving [Applause] and Parker Knoll 8th Place cross country Allstate thank you okay we're gonna if there's any coaches here this evening assistant coaches or building administrators that would like to join the athletes for this photo we invite you up come on up don't be shy [Applause] we'll take our photo and then if you could hold I think we have some parents eager for a photo too all right hang on one sec let's give our parents an opportunity and one fine rental of Applause here congratulations guys understand [Music] ouch did you hear that no I didn't no I heard the response yeah foreign public comment on behalf of the Board of Education I'd like to thank the public for attending tonight's meeting we value the feedback we receive from our residents and encourage everyone to take an active interest in their public school system residents interested in speaking to the board this evening are asked to have completed a comment card and presented it to the secretary to the board when the secretary calls your name I ask that you come to the microphone state your name for the public record and provide your feedback please note that comments are limited to five minutes per person and that no discussion of personnel matters or responses to questions are permitted the board does not participate in discussion during public session and follow and please um follow up to your questions or concerns will be addressed by Administration through the contact information provided on the comment card thank you Michelle Traeger hi Michelle Trager four kids in the district I just wanted to speak because you're going to be reviewing your SEL plan tonight and I know it's like a Five-Year Plan it's a work in progress so there was a couple things on there that I kind of wanted to make sure you're considering when you're going through it one of those things was that the safety plan that is practiced and implemented and I noticed one of the things on there was post-incident recovery and I really want you to make sure that you are considering that when following through on that phase of the plan I can tell you I have two students who are currently in seventh grade they're at plank last year at the end of their sixth grade year there was the message everybody had to go into lockdown um this was not a drill I heard afterwards my daughters were very scared as were other students fearing that there was an intruder teachers did what they were supposed to do students did what they were supposed to do based on what they had practiced so that is the good news um the reason that this happened was that two girls were in a fight I think one of them had a knife and in an effort to keep more students from joining in The Fray and to keep them from live streaming it apparently the lockdown was issued um if you look at basic biology you'll know that cortisol levels when you believe your life is in danger possibly Skyrocket and they don't come down for several hours but in this instance there was no kind of post-incident recovery no processing no anything afterwards just like okay it's all clear continue on about your day as normal and it was interesting one of my daughters asked me oh if we meaning the students had killed an intruder if it was an intruder um what would happen and I said are you meaning would you guys get in trouble she said no will we just go on with our day as normal and then then I totally got where her question was coming from um I would also say you know one of the things on on the SEL plan is um regarding Aaron's law and regarding the presentations that Mutual ground comes in to do which are necessary but I would also advise to consider even in that a little bit of of processing afterwards again um one of my daughters had that for seventh grade health first semester and it's uh a lot of kind of intense information and it's like okay there's 41 minutes you got to cram it in as much as you can and here's the ways you could be assaulted and here's how you can protect yourself and the bell rings and then you go to class go to your next class and again there's no sort of processing after that and we purport to be a trauma-informed district so I would like to see that actually implemented throughout this SEL plan um as it's being developed through the I think it's 2026 on the plan um and I would just also share my son is older now but when he was in third grade so sometimes your behavioral emotional management is overlapping with these other things they had a drill in third grade and the students were to you know gather closely up against the wall underneath codes well when you have a student with sensory and neurodiversity issues he was making some noises well then he's got to have a consequence because he wasn't safe well did you know it was a drill yes did anyone practice with him ahead of time no okay so you want to take away his recess thinking that's going to make it better next time let's role play let's practice and so I just want to make sure as we're as we're going through that plan um that we're taking all of our students into account with that and I think the way it's laid out certainly there's flexibility there for our students who do have those needs and then you know of course I'm always going to remind you when we talk about SEL to consider that we have over 800 students in our districts with a fetal alcohol Spectrum Disorder most of whom are undiagnosed and 90 of whom have a coexisting mental health issue so we want to make sure that we're able to serve those students because they're part of our general Ed population and we often don't even know it so um thank you for listening to that and thank you for considering those ideas when you're reviewing that plan tonight Mrs Hamilton I I know we don't respond but I think it's very important to say that when it comes to being a trauma-informed district we're at the very earlier stages of that we aren't fully trauma informed so I just want to make sure that we understand that with that comes a very heavy label and um I our Administration can speak to it more but I don't I want to make sure we don't portray Something That We're Not So Margaret hardigan good morning or good afternoon I'm sorry I'm Margaret hartigan I'm a TA in the district I'm also a taxpayer and a parent of several students in the district um four million four hundred forty one thousand ninety six dollars and sixty one cents are you going to listen now good evening president simelton and the District board members you may recall that I was here in early December pleading that you raised the TA rates due to the hemorrhaging of funds in the district to cover empty positions at that time superintendent Starlin stated that he would give a report at the meeting this meeting regarding the amounts being spent on ta's teacher subbing his Tas and for contracted Tas I'm hopeful that will occur despite not being a specific agenda item in the meantime I've gone through the agendas available online and searched every Bill listing from the fiscal year line by line I've also done a comparison of what the district has spent on teachers subbing stas at just the school I'm assigned to and can tell you that the figures will shock you since the start of the fiscal year the district has paid 4 million four hundred forty one dollars I'm sorry 4 million four hundred forty one thousand ninety six dollars and sixty one cents in Contract Services across the district let that sink in 4 million four hundred forty one thousand ninety six dollars sixty one cents that includes 257 42803 specifically on contract teacher assistance the figure is likely higher as over 379 thousand dollars includes Contract Services with no details as to what the expense is for and an additional 113 72404 lists the expenses from a company where the district contracts both Tas and teachers but the invoices don't designate which amount is for which also it's my understanding that the bulk of our dhh Professional Services contract expenses of a hundred and forty thousand eight sixty one sixty two is for TAS who know and are skilled in sign language in reality we've likely spent more than five hundred thousand for contract DA's Additionally the district has spent over 686 thousand dollars on contract nurses and CNAs the CNAs are typically in ta positions but it's being billed to Health Services that's another position in the same support Personnel Union as the Tas well over a million dollars because of salaries of the supporting positions of Tas and nurses are not competitive and we are unable to retrain retain or attract Personnel in these positions I mentioned that I researched the amount of funds spent on teachers subbing as Tas at the school I'm assigned to well during the first semester alone oea teachers have subbed in a TA position at my school for 1020.58 hours that does not include the I believe it's six permanent Subs that we have in the building that are assigned as Tas regularly 1020.58 hours costs our district in excess of fifty four thousand dollars just last week two more sped Tas at my school gave their notice one is leaving to make 27 an hour with insurance as a TA elsewhere the district will continue to lose valuable staff members which will result in even more money being spent second semester on contract Tas if you don't act soon and raise the rates of these vital staff members when I spoke last time I reported that a contract ta at our school had refused to assist a student in the restroom she had ultimately quit because the job was too much for her to handle we now have a CNA assigned as a TA with a medically fragile student this contract employee spends her day on her phone and only interacts with the student when and if medically necessary this is not what Tas do this is not what our job description says there's another CNA working as a TA in another building who only interacts with her student when that student needs restroom assistance otherwise she too sits on her phone all day the rest of the rest of the district Tas have to work extra to cover for the slack why is the district allowing this why are you allowing the overpaid contract Tas to do little work while dumping more responsibility on those of us who are severely underpaid it continues to lead to a hostile work environment if you think this is hearsay and it's not really happening you would be wrong I've seen it firsthand I've seen firsthand what's happening to my school not only that but this morning alone I was asked to sub as a one-on-one with a student in our building the contract ta that was assigned to cover her for the day informed RPA that she didn't want to work with her she claimed she couldn't handle all the walking with no medical recognition no no nothing on fire so they pulled me why are we at a point where these overpaid contract Tas can now pick and choose the duties they want or don't want the students and teachers I normally work with had to suffer for the day because a contract person didn't want to work her assigned duties and the district gave into that I'm shocked and disappointed on a side note in reviewing the bill listing since the start of the fiscal year I found that 88 companies we have contracted services for like for things like Transportation tutoring psych Services Tas nurses OTS speech bats and more there are 24 of those that have exceeded the twenty thousand dollar limit in which an RFP or a bit is required not one of those 24 companies were on the Patrick list provided by the finance department at the meeting on January 9th not one the district spent 547 thousand dollars alone on one contract company and they didn't appear on the list it's not like that's even close to the twenty thousand dollar limit it's 27 times the contract limit thank you for your time I appreciate it very much in closing I hope you realize that we're all fighting to keep our jobs and all you guys are doing is fighting to push us all away I think all right item 6.1 is a presentation on social emotional learning uh by Dr Kristen Paul who is our director of social emotional learning so Dr Paul we welcome you to the the board the floor is yours good evening everyone my name is social emotional learning for the district I'm joined by Dr Heather Kincaid the associate superintendent assistant superintendent of student services and staff sir uh tonight I'm going to give you an overview of our work since last year up until this calendar year with social emotional learning I'll explain the indicators and the current success as well as make connections to our student learning and finance as well as talk about the future as well you can see here on this document here we have identified SEL curriculum for Early Childhood through eighth grade we are in process of working with our high school teacher developing an SEL implementation plan for the future in addition you'll see here that we are in the process with a K-12 SEL design committee comprised of administration and staff from all of our buildings working on interventions and strategies tier one through three with a rollout for next year in addition we'll be continuing to work on our educational programming with science of suicide we this year for the first time I rolled that up into our ninth grade class and we partner with a organization called a lesson's mission and they support us in that work in addition we are working on continuing to implement social emotional learning in our freshman seminar classes at both high schools focusing on the first SEL standard which has a lot to do with self-management time management organization in addition also we are continuing to review our Illinois youth survey data and identify correlation to our curriculum and identify areas of need that will continue we do that every other year and the Illinois survey will happen again in 2024.
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here okay welcome everybody we'll go ahead and kick off our our board meeting um I think we can start with the Pledge of Allegiance so for those who are able if you want mind standing congratulations one nation under God okay thank you we have all seven board members in attendance so we do have a quorum and meeting will be called to order I think our first item on the agenda today Dr Roberts is a human resources recommendation it is Miss Wilden so just real quick on the slides here or the screens we do have our vision mission and core beliefs and I mentioned those because as we then hire this next person we we try to make sure we're aligning these kinds of recommendations with our efforts from a school corporation to our strategic plan so we do have on the agenda a recommendation for the director of title services and that recommendation is Megan schaff and so Megan is uh received her Bachelor of Science degree in PE sports management from Valparaiso University in 2000 where she also played basketball she received her masters of education in 2009 and principal licensure in 2013 from Indiana Wesleyan prior to beginning her career in education Megan did also serve as a graduate assistant basketball coach at Valparaiso and then began her teaching career at Westfield Middle School she joined our school corporation in 2005 as a teacher at Columbus North High School she was in that role for seven years Department coordinator and volleyball coach varsity volleyball coach at North she then went to CSA new tech and then on to McDowell where she has been the director there for the last last several years she I mentioned the that vision mission and that strategic plan piece and one of the things that's really important about Megan is she's been very active in the community she currently serves as the president of the board of directors for sukasa she's on the board for our school Foundation she's a guiding team member for our Council Faith development here in the community and she is currently a member of the 40th anniversary class of leadership Bartholomew County here in Columbus last year Megan entertainment mcnow were recognized for their Herculean work that was the word in the Republic the newspaper as they worked with Afghan refugees at Camp Atterbury to help help them learn English so we have we're recommending uh Megan for this position due to her ability to develop strong relationships with all stakeholders her experience with budgets and Grant applications with this director of Title Services position certainly has as a part of it and her commitment to the corporation's strategic plan so it is our recommendation that Megan Chef be named our director of title services and again from a vacancy standpoint the reason this position is open for us is because as of July 1st Charles Edwards who is currently in the position will be moving into director of secondary education for our school corporation so Megan schaff is our recommendation for director of Title Services thank you Dr Roberts do I have a motion to uh Point Megan Chef is director of Title Services second thank you Mr Allen thank you Mr Bryant um we'll take it to a vote all those in favor say aye aye aye well there's a post congratulations all right thank you and Megan is here okay thank you very much um I appreciate the uh the vote of confidence and kind words um certainly it's always been a team effort and I don't want to take much time tonight because I'd much rather hear from CSA new tech and the kids that are here to share about the great work that they do but I do want to thank Dr Roberts and the board for this opportunity to serve and if I were to list all of the people I really need to thank through bcsc over the last many many years it would take way too long so it's a blanket thank you and and to the culture of bcsc to really support um growth and development of their teachers and their staff and and the belief in me the mentors that I've had along the way many of whom sitting in this room tonight to really help me get to the point where where I've had the opportunities to to be ready to serve in this way and keep the mission going of really serving um the students and families of bcsc and Columbus I do want to mention quickly some people that mean a lot to me that came tonight my husband Chris and my two sons Riley and Kellen are here and certainly their sacrifice and support you know for anyone and Mom out of the out of the building at times uh meaning home it's a team effort at home and nothing happens without them and I'm so proud and for the 70-ish plus years of education experience sitting between my mother and Aunt who came to surprise me to to congratulate here teaching and educations in my family it's in our blood and so you know that's just that's part of what it is and I appreciate their efforts to be here so thank you for that um and and with that appreciate it and get look forward to getting to know more of you as we move forward measures [Laughter] okay before we move to the next item Miss World I would just call our attention to the photo that's up there so it is Megan there and uh that was when Governor Holcomb uh brought our group up from McDowell to recognize their efforts with uh our Afghan refugees at Camp Atterbury so a Statewide recognition for them okay next on the agenda we have I think a special presentation Dr Roberts is that right yeah we do so uh we have some represent representatives from United Way here uh this evening so uh United Way runs a large annual campaign throughout this community every year bcsc is happy to participate in that we have students involved we have staff involved throughout the organization and so you can see a number up there and we we do contribute a decent amount of money each year to the United Way so we'll I'll step up and we'll do the check presentation thank you again [Laughter] well first of all as a father of four I want to thank bcsc and the amazing work that you do to former students at bcsc two current students and just really want to thank you for the amazing work that you do the amazing teachers that you have and preparing children for school so thank you for that uh from the United Way's perspective just we could not do what we do without bcsc we have such a deep partnership with all of the work that you do supporting children outside of the school so that they have what they need whether it's backpacks whether it's food security assistance whether it's help with clothing whether it's any number of different things helping students get what they need outside of the classroom so that they have so that they can then succeed as students so thank you so much for all that you do and we will use the money very wisely to make the biggest possible impact that we can for the students at bcsc so thank you we'll reciprocate that thanks Mark thanks so much for your leadership United Way the United Way is a great partner and does so much for this community thank you okay uh next item is our best practice sharing for tonight so can I invite up this CSA new tech team please foreign [Music] good evening thank you for giving us the chance to spend some time with you and introduce some of the great things that are happening at CSA new tech if you haven't already been in our building this is an open invitation to any of you who have not been there come on over give us a call and one of our students will give you a a tour and you can see for yourself the the Fantastic things that are happening there so my name is Mike Reed and I am the principal at CSA new tech and I have been since 2008 when we opened our doors which is a little bit amazing to me that we uh have been a bcsc high school for now for 15 years joining me this evening is CSA English facilitator Veronica Buckler and seniors Tommy Morrell and Abby shoot Columbus signature Academy's part of the new tech network of schools which is a national network we offer a rigorous College Prep curriculum with an emphasis on 21st century skills that are necessary for students when they go into the world of work whether they're going into post-secondary education uh we actually are the uh first in the nation to be a K-12 pathway our schools include CSA Lincoln CSA fodrea and CSA Central Middle School so CSA new tech is actually a magnet school all of our students have a home school of either Columbus North or Columbus East the magnet school status allows our students to participate in extracurricular activities through one of the larger high schools uh CSA new Tech students participate in athletics band choir theater C4 all of those things in the large school our enrollment is achieved through a stratified Lottery that's um that's aimed at matching the demographics of our district once in the pathway students have automatics bids to the next grade level should they choose to CSA 8th graders are automatically enrolled in our ninth grade class unless they choose to opt out which they may do we currently serve 365 students grades 9 through 12.
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Pledge of Allegiance Pledge Allegiance of the United States of America to the Republic for which the Saints one nation under God indivisible with liberty Justice thank you Mr Smith um item two on tonight's agenda is patrons comments being that some people are just walking in any individuals from the public that were wishing to speak on an educational item tonight no okay with that being said we'll move on to item three our consent agenda Dr Terrell your consideration this evening we have 3.01 which is the minutes of our meetings 3.02 any issues questions or questions with us to work what I was asking are we short anywhere in the corporation and personnel Mr Vassar I think at this time we we might still be short some Personnel um in one particular area that we've really been working on and I'm almost going to comment on that later but I'll kind of touch on it now is transportation you know we're still looking to uh bolster our uh drivers and not just drivers but subs and there's a couple of other unique areas we want to get bring in some more substitute nurses as well and also make sure that we have enough paraprofessionals predominantly in the exceptional Learners Department did I hear correctly this morning though that some retired drivers are coming back to sub yeah stealing my thunder for later but yes sir you did hear that correctly Mr Vassar thank you yeah any other questions at this time all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye those opposed motion carries 4-0 uh tonight's fourth action item bank reconciliation adjustment for 4.01 Mr Reese thank you Mr President members of the board um our bank reconciliations have been off by a smaller dollar amount here for most of 2022 State Board of accounts requires the board of approval to essentially write off that dollar amount so with that but the change in the CFO position in December and starting the new year we're requesting a bank reconciliary adjustment for 61.26 to become balanced again at the end of January of 2023.
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to the agenda Mr Gibney yep I don't have any adjustments uh to the agenda for this month okay uh next item public comments regarding agenda items do we have anyone that wants to make a comment because it's regarding our agenda items tonight okay Harry none noted it uh next item Monday is recognitions Mr Gibney yep so uh Mr Roberts I want to start off with uh red path hello I have with me Miss Dia Tomlinson she is a second grader at redpath and she was selected as our student of the month by her second grade teacher Mrs Dibble so I'll read a few words that Mrs Dibble wrote Dia helps bring a kind helpful attitude each day to our classroom she encourages her peers and looks for the positives in each person I'm so proud of her work ethic that has grown tremendously and how intentional she is during each lesson especially during math so the Red Pass student of the month Dia Tomlinson and we just so everyone's aware we have a photo backdrop set up just down the hall so you can take photos with your student and then certainly welcome to come back in and attend the rest of the meeting or get your student take your student home because realize we have school tomorrow uh Mr McHugh my pleasure to introduce Liza tusher Liza is here with her family and her teacher Mrs brettlinger and Mr butlinger and her kindergarten teacher Mrs Ames of Welcome to supporter this is Brenda writes for Liza Liza has been such a sweet and bright spot in my classroom this year her heart is so kind and she always does exactly what is as ever she has shown loving caring and selfless behaviors consistently Eliza has also worked has also worked very hard to improve her Reading Writing and math skills and she is a true gift to my class Liza tisher [Applause] thank you foreign so tz's student of the month I am proud to represent Caleb Toby here Caleb is a fifth grader in Mrs Fowler's class and she is also here this evening so she has written Caleb has made so much progress since the beginning of the school year his attitude has greatly improved as has his relationships with peers Caleb has been working hard to control his emotions and to be respectful to adults and doing a really good job I might add not only has Caleb made strides in his behavior goals but also his academics Caleb raised his grades in all subjects during the second nine weeks and earned the TZ soar award I am incredibly proud of all the hard work Caleb has been putting in ask are we always easy congratulations Caleb foreign this is Karen wisely he is our GMS student of the month his eighth grade teachers nominated him because he is such a great student and young person he works hard as polite and courteous to everyone helps his peers and always has a smile on his face he is a student who is always learning and sharing his knowledge he's not afraid to ask questions when he's unsure and they appreciate that so much they appreciate that so much as teachers he includes all of his classroom classmates and is very helpful Mrs stop Reagan even said that when her watch was going crazy and she did not know how to turn off the Siri option he walked her through how to turn off that setting for her watch he is a perfect example for student of the month at Greencastle Middle School [Applause] [Music] so the student in the month for the high school is Dawson Lions our character trait was trustworthiness several teachers added to this Dawson is a student who we know will do what is expected when no one is looking he has a sense of humor and makes you think wow what a nice caring smart student when you're lucky to have a conversation you should with him he's very talented in theater and culinary arts he has a big heart who cares for others he's a great role model for others and represents the character trust trustworthiness we are proud to have Dawson [Applause] and we have one more recognition this month and uh obviously um in order to make a school district operate it takes many different many different people and the talents of many different people and one of those people was sitting in this room tonight and that's Debbie carrico and uh Debbie's been our food service director for nine years at Greencastle but she has 32 years of service overall in food service and so Debbie's uh initially Debbie's last day was February 2nd um she's gonna prolong and she's gonna stay about an extra week with us to help get us through uh to the transition to Chartwells but Debbie has been a great employee for us and a great support for me and uh she's really helped us uh through the transition and she's she's just done a fabulous job and making sure our students have healthy and nutritious meals and we are going to miss you Debbie but we will certainly wish you well with your retirement and I have just a small Target our appreciation and then we have um some tape to enjoy after the meeting oh well thank you very much [Applause] okay next item on the agenda is the approval of the consent agenda which consists of meeting minutes from a board work session of December of December 2nd or excuse me 7th 2022 regular meeting minutes from December 12 2022 and special meeting minutes from January 4th 2023 the allowance of claims financial report and Personnel reports Parts one and two put your post on the door and the website this is Romer yes hello everyone to begin our finance packet we're just going to go over some payrolls from December our first payroll from December was dated December 9th 2022 for a total payroll of 554 870.42 and per usual we've got some payroll taxes and we have retirement to go along with that so if we go through a couple Pages here to the very last page you're going to see that the total for for retirement and payroll taxes is 167 199.75 for the December 9th payroll the second regular payroll in December was dated December 23rd for a total payroll of 509 810.82 and once again we've got some payroll taxes and some retirement if we go to the very last page the total for both of those items would be 148 572.38 for the December 23rd payroll and then next in our packet we've got some prepays that we did for the for the month of December 2022.
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foreign thank you madam president annually the Indiana code requires that we have a board of Finance meeting in January and we're going to do that here first thing tonight and at that time one of the uh informational pieces or or points of action would be election of officers uh by the current Board of Education typically we we would see that being a mirror of what the Board of Education officers are so miss Mustin you as president and Miss Puckett as secretary another point of action would be to an appoint a investment officer for the organization and that would be typically recommended as our current CFO or Treasurer myself Matt miles so at this time as the first item of action I would recommend that the board proceed with those officers and the investment officer questions we'll have an action item there are some secretary and Crystal Puckett and investment officer Matt miles all in favor aye any opposed and that being the only item on our Board of Finance meeting correct I do have some reports I'd like to share please um the second part of this requirement of code is that we present on our investments uh from the past year and those should be included and on the screens at this time you'll see uh annual interest from 2000 or 2022 was 279 000 uh a little uh we've seen an increase over the last year which is great and our interest has moved over onto the general fund as opposed to the bonds and other uh funds which has been a trend over the last several years so we're continuing that Trend in all very favorable next we would go to our financial indicators from duab and these are all public information that we share with the board at this time as part of our requirements so we can go ahead and go to the next slide the first slide is our ADM and as we've reviewed this in the past our ADM is trending positively with an upward Trend over the last last couple of years foreign of fund balances which includes all funds and it is very complicated as you can see so we're going to break this down a little bit more on the next slide but that's kind of a snapshot of our funds these being our big funds the education fund which replaced the general fund which is why you see the change in colors from green to Orange they're from 2018 to 2019 as well as our operational funds again with a increasing balance which would mirror the increase of expense expenses that we've had as well so a good trend this is a quick look at our annual expenses versus revenue and you can see in 2021 which is the most recent year we have data from to share our Revenue exceeded expenses which is what we want to see again another positive trend here our fund balance versus a percentage of operational expenses so as our expenses are going up our balances are following and also a positive trend foreign next chart you see is our revenue and where our revenues come from so a breakdown of that again you can also see the variance year to year as we've changed going back to you know 2014 to start the graph and trending upward over the last few years and this exciting graph here at the end is um is a good thing because it just reflects that we have no operational referendum we do don't spend any Opera we don't have an operating referendum fund so very positive data point and that's what we have to share tonight well thank I don't have any particular questions do any of you have any questions I just have one um thank you Mr miles on the slide Revenue by type just to make sure I'm understanding it correctly the blue shows that the biggest chunk of our Revenue comes from the state is that correct that is correct okay thank you yes well if there are no further questions or comments I we can close our Board of Finance meeting as the evolution to adjourn it okay we're closed all right it's my first Board of Finance committing down yeah that's right so we'll call our regularly scheduled school board meeting to order would you all stand with me and we'll repeat the Pledge of Allegiance for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay we're about to get back up now this is my favorite part of every meeting we have our superintendents award and we have a lot of Performing artists to recognize tonight so the board will meet in front and we will recognize our artists foreign president Dr Smith and members of the board we present our superintendent's award by the assistant superintendent of secondary education Mr kuznick thank you Miss Johnson Madam president Dr Smith members of the board pleased to bring you tonight several students with outstanding performance no no pun intended by our Performing Arts students at the secondary level we're going to start off first with Falkreath Valley recognizing several students for All Region Orchestra All Region honor band and Indiana middle school Honor Choir here on behalf of Valkyrie Valley this evening is Miss Shannon Jones thank you first we have Alisa ample for all uh for Middle School Honor Choir in Soprano Elisa ample also got all region honor Orchestra for viola next we have Ava Berkey Middle School Honor Choir for alto Haley Dean All Region honor Orchestra on violin Andrea Delgado I'll reach an honorary honor Orchestra on viola Noah Gaither Middle School Honor Choir on base Brooklyn Henderson Middle School Honor Choir Alto Maxwell Johnson Middle School Honor Choir Alto foreign Lawrence All Region honor band trumpet Lucy Phelps Kelleher All Region honor band flute Sage Phelps Kelleher All Region honor band oboe Abram sheets I'll read an honor band trombone and Madeline Williams All Region honor Orchestra cello you know Dr Smith when they're not much taller than me all right all right there you go come on down here you go um congratulations again Wildcats [Applause] dude up next we have three students from Lawrence Central that received Junior Allstate called the microphone deshmr Marshall okay all three students are actually freshmen um so Bailey Workman um on bassoon was I believe third chair uh junior Allstate [Applause] Oliver Hyman also a uh well I already said they're all freshmen but on French horn as well [Applause] and Mr Abe Greenfield on trumpet [Applause] all three of you tomorrow congratulations [Applause] thank you congratulations and last but not least we want to recognize our joint venture between Lawrence Central and Lawrence North our Lawrence Township marching pride and to present present the names of our directors instructors and our three drum Majors I'd like to introduce Stephen Devon jobson from Lawrence North all right thank you so I'll start actually with uh drum Majors to start so we have our three drum Majors uh drum major Christopher Chong [Applause] drum major yimely Cruz [Applause] and drum major Abby DeSanto [Applause] and next I'll introduce our directors uh we have assistant director at Lawrence Central Emily Batley assistant director at Lawrence North Quarry burrow I'm the director banza uh Lawrence North High School Devin jobson [Applause] and the director bands at Lawrence Central diazmar Marshall [Applause] and lastly we also have some names of our staff that are not present with us and could not be here but I thought I'd read them uh our Drumline instructor and Lawrence northper Hutson director Tim Henderson our Front Ensemble Ranger and Belzer uh progression instructor Jesse Mack our sound engineer and instructor and Belzer Middle School director of bands Eric Park our Color Guard director Julie Reed and lastly our Drumline arranger and instructor and Lawrence Central percussion director Steve Yoder [Applause] upon the record s congratulations [Applause] and I see I don't have to announce it but I've taken the helm from Miss Mustin any parents or community members who've come for the awards you're welcome to stay for our wonderful board meeting but if not now is a great time for you if you'd like to leave thank you mm-hmm that was wonderful so proud of our kiddos the next item on the agenda is our Blue Ribbon update Mr Smith Madam president members of War Dr Smith as soon as we get that up there construction has been progressing we've had some good weather with some rain but uh warmth of the weather has helped us on the outside work site work continues on the west side of LC new entry and also that's a new entrance going in from the outside and also the New Media Center and the family and consumer science labs as well as Art Labs Elsie pool continues on with foundation work and hopefully uh end of February the north walls will start to be set there at LC Ln continues we're pushing hard uh for February 13th the week up for the move and we continue to make progress new three-story again this is first floor so a lot of progress there as we continue on a new family consumer science areas actually there's two rooms there will also be turned over at the same time Paul continues on the floor of the pool is in and they'll continue to do the deck work and hopefully here in the next month or so before spring breaks we'll button up the outside wall I believe that's it and we do uh this week we have interviews for the lecc building for the architect and in first of February we'll be moving forward with the CMC for that project as well questions I I do have a question um I know that our teachers um some of whom have been teaching with us for 35 years and if I'm um thinking correctly may have a few things in their rooms um what are we how are we managing that how are we helping our teachers with a move we don't have a two-week time period to move it's not it's not over a long holiday it's three day weekend so how are we helping our teachers with them we started uh last fall and we have provided all the boxes tape markers stick them notes whatever for the teachers to pack their belongings of their room we are bringing in commercial movers that will transport all of that to the new facility and one good thing we don't have to transport a lot of the furniture because they have all new furniture fabulous thank you so much I'm glad we're not putting that on the backs of our custodials we take care of them thank you so much I appreciate that good well um Vaughn to 4.2 which is the resolution preliminarily approving the lease or a public hearing and approving the issuance of bonds and related matters and that would be you Mr miles thank you madam president Dr Smith members of the board um as stated tonight we've got a resolution for preliminary approval of a lease for public hearing and approving the issuance of bonds and with us tonight to explain that a little more and how that relates to our upcoming projects is Hannah clendinning who's at the podium now from Barnes and Thornburg so Hannah good evening um but tonight this is pretty straightforward resolution regarding um of the existing Builder Middle School Valley Middle School and then to approve this is gone by the way these renovations lecc transformation new education so I'm sure if many of these in First Mortgage Finance this is very very similar um most recently I believe now this is just the next Cathedral step proving just the if that goes through tonight the next step would that need to advertise ment late February which would put us on track yes and then just as far as the bonds themselves go the resolution here and these aggregate principles thank you Miss Clendening that at this time it's informational item and then later this evening we will be coming bring this back to you for a vote thank you very much and I do believe we have a Community member my friend JD mazur who would like to speak to this we have a three-minute period [Laughter] Mr mazur to make sure we do this correctly Miss uh Blankenship can you guide him because we know you personally but we want to make sure we do it for the record correctly Sheila will you give him Direction state your name and your address and then as soon as that's completed I'll start the time thank you very much and uh I guess my concern isn't exactly what uh the council from Barnes and tornberg was talking about but over the weekend I read in uh Geist magazine that for some reason the um the the board was considering a joint construction project for some administration building with the city that was to be financed through the referendum that was passed a few years ago and I was surprised by that I don't know if the mayor was speaking out of school so to speak or quoted uh improperly but there's a lot of bicker festing that goes on and Lawrence City politics between the Republicans and Democrats that you can probably read about on occasion from time to time in the city which has some negative attributes to it and I'm uh just wanting to express a degree of concern that the board would enmesh itself in City politics in a way that might not benefit the schools as a whole so that's all I had to say I appreciate that very much discussion okay so yes that brings us to information item 4.3 the transfer funds update Mr miles thank you madam president Dr Smith members of the board um our next informational item tonight is a transfer of funds at this time between it's a report back from what you um approved for our December transfers for our year end at that time we did not know what those amounts would be and we said we would report back and so at this time this is basically a reporting back of what those year-end transfers look like and the amounts that they came out to be statutorily we have to follow per state board of accounts having certain funds pay for certain expenses and then we reimburse at the end of the year so that we can get those those funds back to whole it also allows us to compare to historical funds that have changed over the years so the report back is in front of you and again those took place year end and I just want to present them as an informational item tonight okay questions no questions we'll move on to permission to transfer funds to the rainy day fund thank you madam president Dr Smith members of the board the next item for us to to review as an informational item I will bring this back to you again later this evening for a vote but this is a transfer of funds to our rainy day fund which is a very positive thing for us to be able to do we upon calculating our finances at the end of the year are recommending a 1.5 million transfer into the rainy day fund which will just uh they're great even greater uh improve our financial standing um and our financial portfolio at the end of the year so at this time it's an informational item I welcome any questions or comments so ever our stipends to our teachers yes thank you for bringing that up it will not um in short we are set for that stipend to be paid out in February thank you Matt is board members they don't they usually ask this so I'll ask it for them what is our balance and our rainy day fund and why is it prudent for us to have a rainy day fund sir the importance I'll speak to that first the importance of the rainy day fund is to um when when we go out to borrow money for bonds and other things it it improves our abilities to borrow money at a better rate it gives us also that that piggy bank fund that if something does happen that we're able to to turn to it um and currently we are around uh 15 million dollars in that fund uh yes I'm sorry about 11.
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thank you [Music] foreign [Music] good evening I would like to call the school committee meeting for Monday January 23rd 2023 to order we would stand for the Pledge of Allegiance of liberty and justice for all right foreign at this time if you have any cell phones Pages electronic devices and such uh if you would kindly either shut them off put them on silent or vibrate would appreciate it uh roll call please miss Gunther John Nunes yep Mary Waite here Kathleen Amaral here Shannon Jenkins here Chris Oliver here all right thank you at this point in time we have allotted uh 10 minutes for public comment so anyone has any comments here we go okay yep right ahead hello my name is Deborah August and I am a Community member parent of a graduate um eight-year math teacher at DHS and a 28-year teacher in August my 92 year old father was maybe I won't be able to get through this okay I was diagnosed with a terminal medical diagnosis Steph yeah I'm sorry with the terminal medical diagnosis my family decided to support his wishes of spending his last time being cared for in my home while in hospice care I immediately became his primary caregiver and made the incredibly difficult decision to take time off from my position this was not taken lightly as I am an AP Calculus teacher honors pre-calculus and Grade 9 algebra teacher I sincerely appreciate the importance of establishing routines in the beginning of the year but as all of us would agree family comes first since I have never been faced with this type of situation I assume that I would be able to take my earned time off to care for my father and utilize a small portion of my 80 plus earned sick days under pfml leave when I went to apply for pmf pfml I was surprised to learn that since I am a part of a municipality I did not qualify for paid time off I was able to take the five weeks off needed to stabilize my father and ensure that he has adequate care while I'm at work but this time was unpaid I could not use the days that I have earned through my years of great attendance at DHS although I was disappointed I again decided family comes first I returned to work as soon as I felt I could and I continue to have late nights caring for my father but I still come to work with a heavy heart ready to teach I calculated my missed pay recently and those weeks off have cost me more than seven thousand five hundred dollars yet I still have 86 days that I have accumulated our membership is asking simply to be entitled to access our earned time to help support our family similar to what private companies now provide to employees the difference is we just want to use our earned time please consider making a change for these stressful times I would like to say that I was treated with the utmost respect and kindness by human resources when discussing this concern I really appreciated this because it was not easy to make this decision even though it was the right one this has been difficult time a difficult time for me and my family and I appreciate the support I have received from my school Community I just hope that my experience can help make a change to support families in difficult situations I am sorry but I will be excusing myself from the rest of this meeting because I need to get home and take care of my father thank you thank you [Applause] good evening and thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight for those of you who don't know me my name is Stephanie Mello and I am one of the district's substantially separate program teachers I am here tonight to paint a picture of our special education teaching assistants now I understand there isn't a delineation between special ed and regular edtas on paper however their jobs are vastly different a day in the life of a program teacher consists of providing direct instruction under the guidance of a program teacher supporting students in inclusion settings following IEP accommodations implementing Behavior plans taking data on IEP goals and behaviors intervening in social situations fostering friendships navigating communication devices providing sensory breaks and helping with self-care toileting changing diapers potty training washing hands brushing teeth feeding all for a 500 stipend five hundred dollars I pause here for a little math for you 180 days of school six diaper changes toileting opportunities per day per child equals 1080 per year again one child now take that five hundred dollars and divide it by the 1080 diapers that equals 46 cents a toileting opportunity that 46 cents is cut in half to 23 cents when you factor in potty training at 30 minute intervals throughout the course of the day this math does not account for any of the other self-care tasks that our special education teaching assistants assist with our special education teaching assistants who work in programs must be CPI trained Crisis Prevention intervention trained they provide for the care welfare Safety and Security of our children those are the four tenants under CPI training that training helps us de-escalate our children and instructs us how to keep our children and self safe when physical intervention is required to be clear physical intervention is sometimes required in our district the special education teaching assistants who work within our programs that intervene when students are dysregulated may be slapped punched scratched bitten kicked spit at headbutted head-butted hair pulled and tripped by students the students are not removed from our classrooms as they would be from a general education classroom instead we help them regulate themselves record the data occasionally fill out a staff incident report for any injury we sustain and continue working with those same students we work with the district's most vulnerable population I want to emphasize that the staff who work within our programs do so because they genuinely love the children and have dedicated years of their lives both into strict and out to educate and support students with significant needs the salary that is paid to these men and women is not commensurate with the responsibilities and duties for which they are assigned the trainings in which they must participate in nor the physical demands of their job I am not saying that general education teaching assistants have it easy either what I am saying is that they have two totally indifferent distinct jobs our building could not run and would not function without the dedicated men and women who work for nineteen thousand thirty three dollars 56 cents to twenty six thousand one hundred ninety three dollars and forty four cents a year I urge you to consider the following not all teaching assistants have to do yearly training to keep up their certification sped Tas do not all teaching assistants have to go outside to recess daily and participate in support children's in special areas gym Health art music library spedias do not all teaching assistants get the opportunity to sub on a regular daily basis which which puts additional money in their pockets regular edtas do not all teaching assistants get substitutes when they're absent special edtas do teaching assistants who have been here for 20 years are making the same pay as someone who came in on their first year on step six we are losing good people to other districts because of poor pay something needs to change and it's time to properly compensate our teaching assistants and recognize that regular red and special ed Tas both exist and do different jobs thank you for your time and at the chair's discretion I'd love to answer any questions you may have we don't have questions Steph during this time okay thank you thank you before you start I just want to let you know you're going to be the last one because you'll have taken up your 10 minutes thank you and good evening my name is Vicki Cloutier I am a first Year ta at Dartmouth High School my family decided to relocate here to Southeastern Massachusetts to be closer to our family I hold a bachelor's degree in Business Administration I also followed my passion to work with children for the last 10 years I have worked in the special ed as a ta I recognize on a daily basis that a TA in special education is asked to perform many tasks that the majority of people would say you couldn't pay me to do that putting those feelings aside I come to school every day determined to give the students that I work with a safe supportive environment so that they can Thrive as a student simply put a TA does the job because we love these kids so much and they deserve the best that our community can provide for them I want to share with you some perspective prior to working here in Dartmouth I worked in another District outside of State I was fortunate to have a PPO that District had an 80 20 split when I looked at the PPO option here in Dartmouth I quickly realized from the HR administrator that I would not be able to afford at that PPO option with the salary being offered foreign in fact I was told that there was a chance that I'd actually have to pay the town and work for free so I opted for that high deductible HMO and if I can just on the side note here explain that I have two children that are in college outside of New England that HMO does not cover them so I now have to pay for Health and Care for those two other children my gross pay is 623.65 per week when you might add my high deductible HMO the cheapest option and my family dental I pay 287.94 per week that's 46 of my gross salary going toward Health Care remember that side note I have two other children that I have to pay for I have to care for I'm left with a net pay of a whopping 252.59 per week in fact that salary that I was offered here at Dartmouth puts me below the poverty level we are asking for Affordable Health Care and a livable wage thank you Dr Jenkins so at the last meeting we asked for the chance for the school committee members to make a few comments so I'm wondering if we can do that now yeah we can um is it all right if I start all right so I just want to say I grew up in Chicago and in Chicago the school district set their own taxes they don't have to go to the towns they set their own tax rate and they set their own budget I wish we had that power here in Dartmouth because I don't think there's any person that is sitting at this table that doesn't recognize the hard work that all of our School Employees do but here in Dartmouth the schools have to ask the town for money and the town is limited to a budget increase of two and a half percent per year right we don't control we ask we don't control what we get from the town right now if you're at the budget subcommittee hearing we're asking for a 4.4 percent increase we're not asking for anything additional for any of our schools that's a level funded budget so we're close to two percent over the increase in the town's increase in revenues we're trying we're asking every single one of us wants to do more but we don't have more and so all I would say is that I would hope that people would recognize that we are doing our best to balance the interests of the kids in our school who need Services who need teachers who don't need teachers or teaching assistants that have more children on their caseload right we're trying to balance those needs and we're trying to do the best that we can and I hope that we can move forward in a productive way where we're Partners in improving Dartmouth schools and doing the best that we can to recognize our employees that's all I have to say Mr Oliver thank you Mr chair so yeah Healthcare is the single most important uh and problematic issue that this town is facing I have had the opportunity to serve in the budget subcommittee with Dr Jenkins I've had the opportunity to have conversations with our some of our select board members um unfortunately the way dartmouth's tax rate is and I know everyone's tired of hearing that but it's the simple truth is that we cannot offer a split that's you know feasible to what I think everyone here is looking for without significant Cuts in this town um we've said it before we'll say it again or I'll say it again the only way around this is an override there needs to be an override in order for the town to compensate for a 40-60 split or any other type of split um that you know our staff is looking for I agree health insurance is out of control it's completely out of control and I wish that there was more power it was more things that this committee could do however the facts of the facts there's one bucket of money in the town and unless the town and I mean the entire town is willing to do something about this I don't see it changing I wish it would I we're willing to continue you know going to the plate for our employees because you deserve it we're here to advocate for you and to advocate for fair health care and I think the high deductible plan is certainly that's one thing that I did not know thank you um for bringing that to my attention that it did not it does not cover out of state costs for for students that's certain I'm sorry outside of New England okay that that is certainly something that I will certainly look and take back to the uh the Town Administrator um because I think that is certainly problematic especially when the school Department's budget is definitely by far the largest portion of the town's budget however we have some of the lowest paid employees in town so the town does need to recognize that I think some people do in town however there's still more work to be done so I thank you I hear you and we're trying anybody else you're good all right yeah well not not necessary well I I was just gonna have something yeah yeah I just um I'm not really going to get into it because I don't want to get emotional but um I just want to thank the folks for speaking um respectfully um and with dignity uh about the incredible care needs of our most vulnerable students um and I just appreciate you and I thank you for for sharing it with such respect and dignity thank you Ms White no I just you know would Echo everything that my colleagues have said and just say you know I mean our our teachers our staff our students they deserve so much more than what our town is giving them and again we're we're pushing as much as we can and we will continue to do that you know again it's unfortunate I think you know we really have to convince to Echo my colleagues the town as a whole you know we need to get the message out I mean we're here we're seeing you but we need people to understand that you know at our tax rate we are limiting ourselves and we're limiting you know all the folks that are sitting here and it's a real shame and it's a it's a scar on our you know on us as a town so I really hope that you know we continue to to you know do better get the word out and have people understand you know the predicament that this tax rate is putting us in thank you all right and thank everyone for their comments they are appreciated all right next on the agenda is approval of the regular and executive session minutes of January 9th I'll take a regular session minutes for us so moved move by Miss White second second by Mr Oliver on the motion any discussion chair hearing that all in favor aye aye opposed motion carries unanimously and the executive session minutes of the same night January 9 2023.
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comments will be limited to three minutes to provide all visitors an equal opportunity to address the board individuals needing more time should submit their thoughts in writing to the board's secretary Mrs neidek visitors addressing the board need to submit a comment slip to the board secretary and will be invited to the microphone prior to addressing the board audience members should State their full name the proceedings are being tape recorded for the purpose of producing accurate meeting minutes and it is being live streamed I the board I the boards provide presiding officer reserve the right to modify these protocols if circumstances warrant audience observation of these protocols is appreciated uh we have one for the first reception of visitors uh Julia Kennedy Beckman evening I'm sorry I have to stand on my toes good evening it's so good to see all of you I'm here representing that thank you very much here representing the District 99 Foundation I had come I was going to come simply to observe the board because I haven't been here for a while but I noticed on your agenda you are accepting a wonderful donation that we just made to Downers Grove South for the new Esports program and they're very excited there we're always so glad to support these wonderful creative programs that our teachers apply for and we noted that the ihsa is already recognizing this as a sport which is I got to get with the program myself anyway thank you very much for accepting it and we uh as I said or I started to say I believe that Downers Grove North is going to try to do the same thing A little competition going there but thank you again and again the foundation is always so happy that the the district supports our efforts thank you thank you all right okay we'll move on to the public hearing the next agenda item for the board of education is the public hearing to receive public comments on the proposal to sell Bonds in the amount of three million dollars for the purpose of conforming conforming its existing facilities that house students to the building code promulgated by the State Board of Education of the state of Illinois by altering reconstructing and repairing sub-facilities and having equipment purchased and installed therein the life safety bonds all persons Desiring to be heard will have to will have an opportunity to Present written or World testimony with respect there too jury Etheridge our chief School business official will explain the reasons for the proposed issuance of the life safety bath to read well the original galvanized water piping through the oldest parts of North High School is causing water discoloration rust buildup in the pipes and low water pressure the galvanized piping needs to be removed and replaced with copper piping this project is being moved up by two years to meet the emerging needs it is expected to cost just under three million dollars the district does not have sufficient available resources on hand to fund this project and therefore will need to issue bonds this project does qualify to be funded by fire prevention and life safety bonds could be the opportunity for anybody to address the board or for the board we've talked about this uh already in previous meetings so November yes the other comments from the hearing none from the audience oh okay I said nothing for me okay and there was no written testimony and none received to this point if any come in after this we of course will forward it onto the board and no one from the audience okay are we permitted to ask questions your you can provide testimony to the board but this isn't an opportunity for dialogue I just like to make a it's like a reception of visitors around specifically the bonds that I would pose to the board is whether there are any funds that were originally intended for covid that could be applied to this expense there are no funds from Esser covet release relief funds that would qualify for for this type of work so interesting that came up from from the public hearing um that that's not what those funds are intended for we wouldn't be allowed to use them that's not what what the Esser funds were intended for all persons Desiring to be heard have been an opportunity to present oral Unwritten testimony with respect to the proposed issuance of the life safety bonds I need a motion for the hearing to be adjourned I move that we adjourn the hearing second Mike and Terry thank you very much any additional discussion uh Mrs Knight please take the role for the vote on the motion Mike Davenport aye Terry pavisich aye to one of us coach Drexler aye Christopher Spinoza aye Cheryl Fuller aye Jenny hagstrom aye and Nancy cupka aye the motion is carried in the hearing is adjourned we will move on then to the recommendations and reports of the superintendent all right uh the first one is a quarterly financial report injury we'll be presenting this and fund balances um so the operating fund balances as of December 31st as you can see we're right around 55 million dollars and they're right on target it's been our revenues so we are Midway through the year and we've received about 90 percent of our revenues through December we have received state aid payments on a timely basis which in the past few years it's been on delayed schedule so that has helped out there's nothing really other to remark on that other than maybe we are seeing a little higher collection rate on registration fees any questions on any of the revenues it looks like food service is also going up a little bit we've got 100 at the beginning of the year for last year and then we have some new vending machines okay that are that we were not expecting to have this much in revenues on the vending machine all right is that more drinks or is that no it's that snacks it's actually do you want to share what you think about the vending machines um so personally I did it when first going getting into the school and seeing the new vending machines um I thought it was only like you know the basic granola bars fruit snacks different chips and drinks and I know often to the corner there's um there's I think too many machines that actually have like you can get a yogurt parfait their sandwiches that you can get and it's when you have a free period and you you want something like healthier or say something heavier than just a few chips and you can get a different option um I know personally I have first period off and I don't get to eat lunch because I have a zero period too and um so I get something like a sandwich or a yogurt parfait for breakfast and it's nice because sometimes it's not open during those periods in the middle and it's nice and fresh yes oh yes it is it's good by Chartwell oh okay so so our people and the vending machines except credit card oh okay even better so so that yeah yeah [Laughter] and under expenditures well our total expenditures are in line with expectations except we do have some areas that are slightly higher than what we expected but then we have some areas that are slightly lower so they balanced it out we monitor these areas that are showing some variances in case we need any future adjustments uh to help offset any budget overages but at this point we believe that our expenditures should stay in line with what our expectations are so you're not expecting too much more in the capital outlay yeah because that's at 105.
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in addition on this document you will also see that we have several items that relate to restorative practices and the work that we have done in developing starting the plan to develop an implementation plan for restorative practices for next fiscal year in addition all the buildings taught expected behaviors using the behavioral Matrix as their guide and that was reviewed again after the winter break to reinforce expected behaviors in addition the behavioral design committee is reviewing behavioral data and identifying Trends and practices that they can be helping support our leaders and teachers in the classroom and providing additional training in regards to Safety and Security to support our our staff in regards to anything that might occur during the day you can also see there's a reference to the district threat assessment team and some training that we're doing extensively to make sure that we can best support our staff and our uh next year for the annual report you will see a couple things highlighted from the SEL tiered interventions that I mentioned earlier again the work of the K-12 SEL design committee we'll roll that out next year with targeted professional development support our leaders and staff in addition we'll continue to review our mental health programming needs and identify areas for continual support in addition we'll continue with our restorative practice implementation plan and provide continual training for both our leaders and staff and we'll also continue to provide safety training with post-crisis and unification support for all of our buildings leaders and students highlights as far as the connection to finance and some other areas you can see social emotional learning does help students have an increase in staff a sense of well-being and belonging we know that social emotional learning creates protective factors for students and staff which strengthens overall mental health which yields greater result overall with satisfaction and belonging um in regards to student learning um just a couple things to share here that I provide a weekly social emotional learning strategies for administration to use in their buildings and also I helped to model at one of our high schools teaching social emotional learning specifically on time management and study skills prior to students taking vital exams at Oswego High School this past fall as far as support for student learning I am so excited to I continue the work and student focus groups that is a drive and a focus for our SEL design committee to gain the voices of our students and I've been meeting with all different student groups throughout the district and really Gathering their feedback to be able to identify some Trends to best support they're learning in the classroom in addition I continue to provide professional development for all of our levels leaders and staff we have several Community Partnerships from Alyssa's Mission which I mentioned before that's a long-standing partner for us as well as partnering with an organization called referral GPS which has helped provide us with training with a risk to harm assessment screener called Columbia screener as well as access to local mental health providers in addition we've also continued our partnership with family counseling services they provide one-on-one counseling for students across the district as well as small group counseling for students at both high schools and that concludes my presentation thank you so much Dr Paul do you have any questions on regards to the presentation I I just have one um I I like that you're working with our student team and I think that that's great and I'm happy to hear about all of these things I was wondering about at the high school level where we're at in terms of beyond the I know that there's a pretty robust suicide for uh prevention and identification portion of our health programs but how do we address eating disorders in the nutrition curriculum in there is that part of the social emotional um umbrella for this as well when we're looking at those aspects of Mental Health well that's definitely a topic I can ask them more about and see how we can best support preventive strategies it's a great idea thank you for sharing that thank you I have four questions so sorry but I'll try and go through them quick where is our um and I hate bringing this topic up but but it's where we're at where is our rate of suicide compared to national state Norms I'll start with that question I'll start with the heavy one Mr question I can tell you that according to the CDC students ages 10 through 24 there are 10.5 per 100 000 student deaths in regards to Suicide which is actually lower than any other age group comparatively we are doing some things as you heard me mention earlier with signs of suicide 6th and 8th grade as well as ninth grade to provide exposure to our students to you know prevention things that they can be doing and following up immediately given how they respond to a risk assessment using the Columbia screener that I mentioned before we also have as a district something called Illinois safe to help a way for students or Community to self-report or report if they're concerned about a peer that's making some concerning statements as well as securely which is something that monitors students kind of like access on our Chrome system for Google and sends reports immediately to the administration as well as us at the district level to respond immediately to and what about our risk of harms compared to national state norms we did um we know that a third of these responses are in the high risk category which means the students are recommended for immediate treatment or evaluation but we have also looked at the trend data and that is comparable from year to year so the last three years we've kind of helped study about a third of the students having a high risk some of those students are needing additional support year after year which might flag them into that one-third category a third of the 250.
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and what you see for you is is a breakdown of the demographics of our our current uh enrollment so we are about 50 lunch assistance uh textbook assistance 16 students qualifying for special education services and about seven percent of students who are English language learners uh you can also see a a breakdown of the ethnic uh diversity in our in our school so at the heart of uh CSA and the new tech model is an instructional practice referred to as project-based learning Veronica Buckler bcsc Teacher of the Year by the way uh is a new tech certified pbl trainer she is a certified magnifying learner or learning pbl trainer and I am going to ask Veronica to capture for you what project-based learning is based learning is a revolutionary Pathway to education that brings real world experiences to the classroom this educational approach focuses specifically on authenticity of learning active exploration of topics application of learning academic rigor and making adult Connections in the community our students are centered in PBO as the drivers of the learning teachers become facilitators changing the stage on the stage to the guide on the side by empowering students to take charge of their own learning pbl encourages students to explore their passions Curiosities and possibilities with that students are also understanding the purpose of their learning finding real world connections and applications of the content while also exploring future career possibilities project centers around a driving question and a problem statement that outlines the direction students need to take in their creative problem solving we begin with an entry event that interested introduces students to the main idea problem or opportunity and generating excitement for the project then we direct students to consider what they already know about the project and what they need to know in order to be successful bees knows and need to knows establish the direction of the classroom work we will we will go in using the need to knows the students and the facilitator create a workshop list which incidentally the facile already anticipated in the design of the project but the major difference is that students are requesting these workshops to accomplish their task this is where the academic rigor steps in and pushes students to not just learn the material for the test but to learn its application through the doing setting a deeper understanding of the content and therefore the state standards from there students begin to research experiment and develop solutions to the challenge presented by the project students at CSA have explored the challenge of City Planning through designing new downtown spaces and buildings in Columbus confronted food deserts and sustainability issues with our CSA Garden created a space for our new beehive colony and criticized societal issues through the writing directing and Performing of dystopian plays at local theaters we have consulted with the parks department on the need for teen spaces in the Nexus Park and tested water quality at the lagoons we have interviewed Hometown Heroes on their commitment to our country at times of war and hosted our very first CSA Veterans Day event this past year our students have presented ideas and solutions to the Chamber of Commerce the Parks Department Council for Youth Development bcsc Administration turning point and numerous local businesses pbl does not just connect students to Community Partners needs and challenges locally it also allows for students to participate in Regional State and national projects a student from CSA was able to have her screenplay turned into a short film after submitting to Project Pegasus which then allowed more CSA students to have the chance to work on a full production set as they filmed this in Columbus through the use of pbl CSA has prepared our grads to enter colleges and careers prepared to collaborate to present their ideas to peers and partners and to advocate for themselves and their work through a strong sense of community and agency Veronica so new tech as I mentioned before is part of a national network of schools that actually originated in Napa California the model was created in response to business and industry leaders expressing their concerns to the local school board the graduates lack the 21st century skills that they wanted in the workplace so they defined those skills as 21st century skills for example the ability to collaborate with others the ability to solve complex problems in a technology-rich environment uh good communication skills and work ethic so in order to achieve those outcomes then we must first teach those kids our kids how to do those things and we have to give them opportunities to practice those things and we have to give them feedback so new Tech student grades are actually based on five school-wide learning outcomes the first of which is content uh and you can see the breakdown of our school web learning outcomes sixty percent of uh their student grade is uh content and then 10 each in four other school-wide learning outcomes and when I say that those four school I learned learning outcomes are not separate from the content they are part of content but we're assessing students in every single class in writing they write in math they write in science they write in the English class obviously um and they do a lot of presentations and I will tell you that those kids that started in kindergarten at Lincoln and Padre who have been presenting and collaborating challenges every day because they just do amazing things so that's a look at our assessment processes additionally our students earn core 40 diplomas they can earn a core 40 with academic honors core 40 with Technical Honors some students will earn both academic and Technical Honors and we encourage our students to go a little bit above and beyond and earn what is called the new tech seal on their diploma if any of you have read the newspaper today you might have seen a feature story on breed Winger he's one of our seniors who's actually pursuing the new tech seal in order to earn that they must earn 12 college credits they do 100 hours of community service starting in their freshman year they take four years of math and science and of course they do an internship foreign so this evening we'd like to highlight a unique pathway that's available at CSA for our students that was created out of our partnership with Ivy Tech information technology is one of the fastest growing career paths with a variety of high paying jobs and opportunities and students that are interested in it can start the CSA new tech Ivy Tech I.T pathway which is a mouthful in their sophomore year and you'll see a breakdown of classes here the courses are taught actually by an Ivy Tech Professor on our campus the course sequence allows students to explore a variety of aspects of the I.T field including Hardware software coding networking and cyber security students who complete the program will graduate with 29 college credits tuition free and Industry valued certification and I'm pleased uh to have two of our seniors here who have actually participated in all three years of the I.T pathway they're going to tell you about their experience we're going to start with uh Abby shoot hello my name is Abby shoot and I'm a senior here at Columbia signature Academy and I'm also a senior at Columbus North High School North I've been an active member of the Columbus North Wind Ensemble for three consecutive years and a member of the 25th Street jazz band both are which the top bands that are offered here at North alongside that I was the 2022 mellophone section leader in the sound and spirit of Columbus last year and a two-year consecutive member of the Indiana All-State band outside of band you can either find me tap dancing or Irish step dancing this fall I'll be attending Purdue as a cyber security major the I.T pathway mentioned has definitely prepared me for this next step not only did this pathway build my fundamental skills in I.T but it gave me real world experiences such as a cyber Patriot cyber Patriot is a nationwide competition that are by cohort which is six members just competed in and did semi-finals last week this competition not only tested our cyber security skills which we haven't taken yet we're starting this course this semester so we're actually we learned cyber security skills before we even done and we made it to the semifinals so we just competed in that as I mentioned last week on Friday at Ivy Tech and we don't know if we made it nationwide but we were also competing alongside other teams Nationwide so not only are we competing against people in Indiana or like in our community we're competing against people in Colorado we're communicating as people in California and this is great because we were not only defending different virtual like different virtual machines within it but we were also testing these skills that we had not yet learned and so being able to take this I.T pathway has given me 45 college credits from not only it but also the other dual credit classes that I've taken at Ivy Tech and this is with the real the Dual credits certified teachers and the real world real world experiences that I've had through PBO and this pathway has also given me the chance to have more freedom in my schedule in college and this allows me to not only space out my classes more in college but also be able to take a minor in forensic science to further my studies in cyber security thank you so Abby correct me if I'm um if I'm wrong you didn't originally see yourself going into cyber security before this pathway you were going to be an architect okay um Tommy Morrell is going to tell us about his experience also in the program Tommy thank you um my name is Tommy Morrell I'm a senior at CSA new tech I've been in the CSA CSA program for four years I came out of Northside Middle School not part of CSA and then I joined in high school because I have a lot of family and I'm also a senior at Columbus East I wrestle for Columbus East Olympians I'm uh this is my six year wrestling on the team I am also a team captain and going into my or at the end of my freshman year I heard about the I.T pathway and I was definitely interested as I've always had kind of like a little knack for it and like I'd always like to fix anything I.T that I could and I would always be on a computer um so I heard about it and then my sophomore year I signed up for it uh this I.T pathway not only has opened the doors to for me to see like all the possible options in it but it has also given me a step ahead of other students who may be going who I may be going into college with they may not know they may not know or have the knowledge that I do from this I.T pathway um I'll be graduating with 53 college credit uh from CSA new tech 23 of those are from the it pathway and the rest is from other Ivy Tech courses I have taken or from teachers who are certified to teach with dual credit one moment and whether in the I.T pathway we be tested with making a robot making an ATM program or even taking certified real world certification exams such as the CompTIA a plus certification which I am on my way as well as Abby we both have passed one of two exams and one student in our cohort is actually passed both exams and is certified as a comp Tia plus uh passer I guess but they will have that CompTIA plus certification and the CompTIA a plus certification is like a nation known uh certification which basically covers all the basics of it and it is often a prerequisite for many careers in I.T I'm going to be moving on to Purdue next year to study game development design and the IT Pathways definitely open the doors for me and made sure that I am going to be participating in a career choice that I definitely want to do as these options have provided that for me thank you Evan and Tommy thank you both um very much so CSA new Tech students benefit from a small school culture where our three pillars of our trust respect and responsibility uh they benefit from a small school they benefit from pbl while also being able to reach out and do the large school of things at the heart of our school as our advisory and close relationships between students and staff we are the CSA new tech dragons if you haven't visited us come over and see us and thank you for giving us time this evening we are happy to answer any questions that you have all right helping up to the team for questions Mr Stenner I know I've asked this question Mr Reed before but if you could remind me how we make sure that we blend all the state standards into the curriculum as the students are going through the the projects and then uh I'll make it a two-parter I'm curious too about our library projects I'm assuming that year after year after year we continue to add project ideas that the students might undertake um and make sure that they fit with the state standards absolutely and Veronica quite frankly um you plan projects and you start with the Indiana State Standards do you want to address that question sure thank you that's a really great question about pbl because I think that sometime is a is a misunderstanding or just something that's Unknown about pbl but when I am going to design a project for my class I start with the state standards I look at what the state is asking me to teach in my course and and we actually kind of treat the state standards as the bare minimum this is this is the bare minimum that we need to teach because then that allows us to open the door to everything else that we could be teaching in that class as well so really I come at it just like any other teacher would in their classroom we look at the state standards we create a year-long curriculum map based off of the flow of the standards and the skills that need to develop first second and third and then from there we use those to develop projects that will then allow students to explore not just those State Standards but anything else that we think fit into those ideas uh so we are currently so I one of the classes that I teach is uh World Civ world history and civilization so we have looked at all of the standards that Indiana requests that teachers teach that have to do with revolutions and social movement so right now we're talking about uh the Scientific Revolution we're talking we're going to talk about the Enlightenment and the French Revolution we're going to talk about the Latin movement for Independence the Industrial Revolution the movement to decolonization after World War II so we're going to use all of those to to really understand the move for freedom and democracy and independent thought and secular ideas throughout world history and from there we're asking students to understand how to get a movement how to get an idea out into the world so when we designed that project we look at what we have to teach and then we see what else we can pile on from there and I'm sorry what was the second question your library of projects yes so um pbl asks for uh for a facilitator to really consider what the immediate need is in the community and that could that could mean School community that could mean you know City community that could mean State Community and that allows for that project to be authentically real real in the moment so a lot of times projects kind of just pop up um a Community member can reach out to somebody at CSA and say hey I really need this I need feedback on this I I want to know what your students think about this so the um the new idea for Nexus Park and and the parks department requesting some feedback on just how do we get teams to use this space so that naturally created a project for some of our classes to really consider what um what city planning requires of a city department but also how does a Community Serve its residents so our students had to consider those ideas and they had to present uh their argument so argumentative writing to the panel that we convened so we have projects that are in the moment right we're probably never going to have another project quite like that because Nexus Park is almost done but uh what we also do is we find those projects they're kind of the linchpins of the classroom so in the past I've had a class where we do the dystopian Masterpiece Theater project where we studied dystopian novels every year and we come back to that project and it's something that I think you guys heard about before you made it to the class and then you've talked to younger students about oh man this is this is a really great project that I really enjoyed so it's those library of projects that we can repeat that kids get super excited about and then there are these other projects that are just kind of in the moment when they pop up for whatever need uh exists in the community I've got a couple simple questions at the release I think they are so Mr Reed the enrollment this year of 365 has that been pretty steady since 2008 that has been pretty steady yes um the program was designed around 100 per class I think our largest enrollment at any one year was about 382 but 365 is typical yeah it's part of that also there are some some variants in you know my my ninth grade class is going to come from largely CSA Central so you know as their numbers fluctuate so combined and one more um obviously you know Tommy's very involved at East and Abby's very involved at North about what percent of your kids are involved in extracurriculars at their home school I'm going to phone a friend here um just real quick because our counselors immoral can throw a number just about how many students do we have traveling at any given time she said about 175.
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you've heard the recommendation of the administration to approve an adjustment of 61.26 to balance our bank reconciliations I may have a motion motion by Mr Vassar second by Mr Smith questions or discussion apologize in favor please I'm sorry yeah I'm sorry just one so I understand over the course of the whole year with all the money coming in and out we're off by 61 and some change that's correct our expenses and revenues were around 109 to 107 million in 2022.
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um the only thing that would be kind of unusual I suppose in this list would be you'll see a bond payment for Bond uh 2021 for 521 000. if anyone has any questions about that otherwise I think everything else is probably pretty standard here with our prepays we did have an adjustment we needed to make for a perf eligible employee perf was not taking his um upload we and apparently he was attached to another school so we had to wait for all that to play out so for that custodian we had to pay um you know all in lump sum 761.41 so that's why you're seeing that on there so total prepays for the month of December was 851 941.40.
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uh in that fund then that would uh again this this is the same transfer that we made last year at this time as well so we have been able to grow that um over the last few years especially the last five years and that percentage of our of our operating funds is roughly we're um total total spending as a district annually through all funds is about 250 million 258 million so all right can I please add also since we have mentioned the um teacher stipend I would wonder well where does that one come from so for the record could you please let us know where the teacher stipend comes from sure that's coming out of our age education fund thank you and that fund is is one that we try to keep at about one month's worth of payroll so that if we do come into any issues with a payment from the state there's any delay for any reason we're able to make payroll thank you so much you're welcome Mr miles can you also remind us all what our bond rating is here in Lawrence Township thank you for that question it's a double A Plus rating I just want to comment that I know how very difficult in these times when the complexity index is really not working towards our Urban schools that a district like Lawrence Township is able to make such a move and just want to applaud the superintendent as well as his cabinet for the amazing work that you're doing to ensure that we're able to be so financially sound thank you thank you all right um Mr miles again our one day loan retirement fund Bond thank you madam president once again Dr Smith members of the board of our next point of a point of order is an inner uh enter fund loan uh that that must take place at the end of the school or into the calendar year excuse me to make sure we don't have any negative balances um this is a 16 1600 I'm sorry 1800 transfer that we make to cover the pension pension bond fund so that that doesn't run into the negative and that's required by state code and we do that as a one-day transfer uh of a loan December 31st and then pay it back right the next day on January 1st so this is an informational item and again we'll be brought back for for approval later I have to be honest that doesn't make any sense to me but I I know I know we do it uh we have to do it by Statute so absolutely good for us thank you for keeping us I would never catch that one let's move it here and move it back again okay thank you very much um uh the resolution to approve transfer of funds to Sick Bay sick day buyout fund Madam president thank you Dr Smith once again members of the board this is another year-end transfer that that we will make or uh asking for approval later this evening this is to fund our sick day increase on the buyout when an employee retires um at the end of their career this was approved as part of the collective bargaining agreement earlier uh last fall and again approved by the board this step would actually fund it so those dollars are there and ready to go when needed and again this is an informational item at this time and and we'll ask for approval later tonight great and on to Mr miles with the financial update I'm gonna need a cane and a hat thank you thank you madam president Dr Smith members of the board we've had we've had a lot of financial reporting and we're we're seeing the end here but uh the next two reports are our end of November and end of December 2022 reports um both of our general fund and our transportation fund um you may recall in in December we met early in the month and therefore did not have the November reports prepared at that time just due to the timing of the calendar when the board report fell so you're seeing both both month and at this time and as we like to do the green check marks are always something that we see is very positive and the red is just something we're always going to look at and just make sure everything's okay and everything is very favorable um on both on both month end but I would welcome any any comments or questions Mr Mouse for the board uh there was a part of the collective bargaining agreement that we approved that would give our staff additional money if our cash balance was at a certain level so Ms Blankenship if you go back to December for the board to remind them that if our cash balance was at 15 million dollars and as it reads now it's at 17 million dollars that the staff would receive additional dollars is that correct Mr miles that is correct both classified and certified staff okay so we just want to put that on the record so that our staff which we're going to sit in communication don't worry about that but we want the public to know that that we meet we met those standards and that it's from that fund we transfer into the rainy day but we don't transfer into the rainy day any funds that could possibly be used for our stipends absolutely thank you we are now at our board committee chair report sorry I had a quick uh oh I'm sorry go ahead thank you for presenting this you've had a very busy night at the day off Mr miles um when we're out talking to our communities for the non-financial people myself somewhat included um all right I'm proud of our district because all of this shows what a good Financial Outlook and situation our district is in what what would you say to the public when you're just out talking I mean what are the best indicators to really relate to people obviously we have a cash balance we're not in an operational referendum are there any other numbers or anything you feel like we should highlight when we are talking to our neighbors absolutely thank you for the question Miss Norman um you touched on a couple of them that I would that would come to mind top of mind the last chart that we saw earlier with the do-ab indicators that there's zero operating referendum that's huge um it shows that you know we're not going out to our taxpayers to ask for additional funds to pay operating expenses the fact that you know you can say we have a growing cash balance in our rainy day fund and our education fund we've been able to do extra Financial incentives to all staff such as the stipends that Dr Smith just just mentioned um and and really our bond rating they may not know what that is but um you might relate it to someone's mortgage if they get a they've got a a great strong bank account they may get a better interest rate on their mortgage and less expenses for them we're very very much the same way Lord I think there's another one major that we've got to remember and that is our revenue streams and that we don't get to dictate the amount of money that comes into our call First our number one Revenue stream as Matt pointed out early is state revenue so for our patrons that are out there it's very important to understand that we operate based on our enrollment and based on what our legislators are able to give us so we must pay close attention that what happens downtown on Capitol street okay it's imperative that they understand that we receive money based on a per-pupil expenditure and that if that is lowered or drop it will impact our overall budget we also are impacted because the Money Follows the kids so we lose students we lose Revenue if we gain students we gain revenue it's really that simple so it's really an important imperative for our local taxpayers to understand the importance of their local Revenue you what Matt is reporting for the Board of Education to the community is our monthly financial statement and so it's important for the public to know that we are financially stable we're not in deficit spending nor are we financially broke and that's important to understand because if for some reason the state of Indiana is unable to grant us money for the month we get money every month from the state then the cash balance you see here is what we're going to use to pay our staff members and keep our operations going that's simple does that make sense folks and we want to make sure that we're in a position where we're able to pay our people we wouldn't have to go out and borrow money initially but we could make it and the rainy day fund is also on there also okay great any more questions for Mr miles there's a lot of information okay we will move on to our board committee chair reports now we have just switched committees so I'm not sure miss Norman are you ready to give the report for the foundation I am Madam president and if any of you ladies would also like to add anything I I miss seeing as a rookie um but yeah so the foundation the biggest event was the robotics um they were the foundation was at the elementary robotics championships um they're present thankful for their support the next two big events is night with the Stars next Friday night you can go on msdltf.org to register and for details and then also the gala that is coming up March 10th thank you very much Miss Norman if I could add as someone who's been a member of the foundation board for many years this is our 40th anniversary year supporting our students here in Lawrence Township and the gala is a really great time so I highly encourage everyone to register and help celebrate the great work we do here in Lawrence Township um Lawrence Parks and Recreation Miss Puckett be me and I know you all were waiting um to follow up as Amy used to always tell us about the pickle boards yes they are almost completed got to start off with that they are almost completed and they are waiting on warmer weather for the top court go pickle boards um I still need to figure out how to even play that you guys so if anybody's down to teach me okay uh butterfly and pollinator Gardens are um moving along Amy correct me if I'm wrong and make sure that I'm saying this right first year you sleep that means that the plants grow Deep Roots second year they peep meaning they start to flourish third year they leap meaning they are coming along and blooming and so we are in the creeps uh the creep stage and so there is a ribbon cutting in April so that is the parks I mean am I missing something no um did she do well Miss Missouri did I do well I tried all right well that's it we remind that's not our lane that's the parks where is that going to be located yes um I don't have the exact address Liz where is that going to be located which Park okay all right it will be located in one of the Lawrence Parks we're gonna put that on the record you can look up City of Lawrence and go on to their parks and look that up and because that might just be a lovely day in April and a fun fun way to spend that yeah because there are four Parks yeah I'm very animated can you tell I'm animated I'm animated all right that's all I have fabulous Miss Dunn do we have any policy committee information I am going to defer to my co-chair I don't know if it's going to be as exciting as well if you could make it real animated for us I'd really appreciate it I was elementary so I I definitely could if it could include bees and butterflies um I'm sure there's policy for that somewhere yes yeah I can dig that up you do um no I did I would say that we're excited that we've moved through one of the biggest packages and policy packages in December um did publish that just a couple weeks ago and so we're just working back through the administrative guidelines sometimes those change a bit with the revisions so we'll clean those up over the next month or so and I think we're going to do some training Miss Dunn very excited I'll tell you what Dr harshbarger so that the public will know there's something magical happening downtown on Capitol Street that's our Indiana General Assembly so as they do their work we just sit back patiently and of course that will impact our policy so we could expect for plenty of policies to take place during the month of May after the Indiana Journal assembly does their dance in April is that correct that's correct and with the long session we won't see probably the revisions until May right so so coming soon Dr Smith I I don't like to disagree with with you very often or almost ever but I don't think we'll be sitting back patiently while they do their work maybe on oh I the policy committee will vice president you can speak your mind related to the general system you know I I'm very nice to them but you as an elected official you could say what you want to ma'am all right we do meet with our legislators and we do advocate for our children okay anything else just thank you I appreciate your willingness building I'm excited about tomorrow and we also talked about that you know obviously all of these policies at least we hope there will be there we hope so fabulous board um committees being reported we'll move on to our action items action item 5.1 the approval of resolution of preliminarily approving the lease Etc Mr miles thank you madam president Dr Smith members of the board uh once again we bring back to you the um at this time for an action item uh the approval of the resolution of preliminary approval of the lease for public hearing and approving the issuance of bonds and related matters again uh Miss Clendening is here if you have any uh items that she needs to address otherwise I would recommend that the board passed this as as presented oh I do have a question I do have a question um Dr Smith we have discussed um wanting to maintain our independence as a School Corporation so how is that lease working with the city can you go into that for us a little bit well that's a good question um one of our patient patrons Mr mazur asked the question as of now we do not have a partnership with the City of Lawrence and the information concerning this project being Finance out of our school referendum Mr mazur we've already spent that money a guy over here by the name of Roger Smith has already got the high schools about three-fourths done so that is misinformation uh if we're going to enter into any agreement with the city uh on the future project that would have to come back before the Board of Education so as of today that is not the case it would have to come here for approval uh what this today will do is allow for us to get the proceeds so that we can move forward with a future design and a future bill but if we're going to partner with any other entity we'd have to go through some other legal step uh Jeff is not here his assistant would tell you that would require some hoops that we would have to go through if we were to arrive at that thank you so much um is there a motion to approve second it's been properly moved and seconded any further discussion no further discussion all in favor aye aye aye those opposed uh the eyes have it the approval of permission to transfer the funds to the rainy day fund thank you madam president Dr Smith members of the board uh in front of you and presented earlier tonight you have a recommendation to transfer 1.5 million dollars of funds from our operations fund to our rainy day fund so I just want to make that point of clarification it is from our operations it does not affect um those those funds for stipends that we were talking about earlier and at this time I would ask the board to approve as submitted is there a motion to approve so moved second properly moved and seconded any questions all those in favor aye any opposed it's a unanimous approval um now Mr miles on to the approval of the one day loan of retirement fund Bond thank you madam president Dr Smith members of the board once again this is our uh recommendation uh to transfer that money for a one-day loan of from to to get our debt service fund out of the negative balance and back into a positive per code and at this time I would ask that the board approve as submitted so moved second properly moved and seconded any discussion all those in favor aye aye any opposed that motion passes that that's approved um I think it's we're to the approval of the resolution to transfer the funds to a sick day buyout fund that's correct Madam president Dr Smith members of the board we've had several things so thank you for your patience tonight um the last one here on our agenda is for transfer of funds once again to fund that sick day buyout fund which increased our payout for retirees from fifty dollars to a hundred dollars and at this time I ask that you approve it as submitted so moved second oh gotcha oh yeah properly moved and seconded all those in favor aye aye any opposed the the motion passes Madam president I move that we treat action items 5.5 through 5.10 as consent agenda do we have a second my second it's been properly moved and seconded to treat those items as a consent agenda all those in favor aye I move approval of the consent of any opposed none opposed we can move forward all right I move approval of the consent agenda second properly moved and seconded all those in favor of of approving the consent agenda hi hi any opposed not but not opposed that is that is approved we're on to um that having those all having been taken care of in the consent agenda and I will just you know for for the sake of the public the items in our consent agenda our regular business items they include board minutes which are online and you can read um the approval of personnel reports the approval of our claims approval of service agreements um and the approval of pay apps and building projects payments and the approval of field trips I believe that's it so those are online you can see those online if you wish but those are just our standard business items that we deal with every meeting that having been accomplished I want to thank this board thank you so much for a great meeting for the work you're doing on committees the work you're doing on the foundation um seeing you in various places this week whether it be Harrison Hill for a little walk through Vex robotics tournament a basketball game we're out there ladies and I want to thank you so much um so let's start with Miss Dunn do you have any comments you'd like to make this evening I want to apologize for not being able to make the robotics competition as I was actually very fortunate enough that the district sent me to the Indiana State Board of associations onboarding conference and just want to express my gratitude to Sheila and superintendent Smith for allowing me to attend and learn and network with my colleagues it was a wonderful experience and really appreciated that opportunity and so just want to share my gratitude for that learning experience and apologies for not being able to make the event but yes I would say no apologies necessary we all have actually regular 40-hour week jobs as well so no apologies necessary but no thank you and thanks again for the warm welcome excited to have the first official meeting under my belts there you go Miss Lawrence well I don't know if and I don't know how we normally onboard board members here Madam president Dr Smith but it is pretty special to be able to recognize your own son in your very first official board meeting for uh for his musicianship playing a trumpet which many of you may or may not know you do is my instrument and I will tell you that you know I've been reflecting a lot this week on the extracurricular activities that our students get to get to be a part of here in Lawrence Township just this week um we were Ms Norman and I were in Sandusky Ohio for a robotics tournament where we had a you know a bunch of parents and and staff spending a ton of time with our Middle School Fall Creek Valley robotics team we spent time this week with uh with our elementary robotics team my daughter was also on the robotics team I should shout her out too because you know um but I I just want to say that it is a it is it is in these sort of extracurricular activities that kids find their voice and find their passion and we are exceptionally lucky to have a district that supports all students in a way that is um that is not just singularly academic focused but it allows them to develop and engage in their passions and so I just want to thank the board and and the the teachers that spend time out of their own lives to be there for our students in these extracurricular activities thank you you well said Miss Norman yes that was very well said and be it on the record Miss Lawrence and I were in compliance because there were only two of us exactly exactly right you're like we can't have vote anymore we were officially doing our duty yes yes but no that was fun that was a great time to spend together and spend with the kids and I think everyone in the district who made that happen that was the first time I've ever seen middle schoolers fall asleep it's like at 11 30 on a bus so yes that was great but um we had talked a little bit about our legislative session that's going on right now and I've received mail I'm sure a lot of people out in the district have from our local representatives and Senators Now's the Time to reach out to them it's very important that they hear from us you can go to iga.in.gov backslash legislative backslash find Dash legislators to verify who your state representative and senators are and that way we can rally behind our support for the public education because right now through I believe is an April Dr Smith they will be working on the long budget writing session thank you um email again or the website again I would like to actually say thank you well thank you to everybody like especially to Mr miles that was a lot of info so thank you for that but I want to thank Mr uh Missouri as um as well I'm just speaking tonight and bringing your questions to us I thank you for just the engagement um we need that lens and so I thank you for that and I also want to thank those that probably aren't even able to listen now or used to do what I did back in the day because I worked evenings time is a form of equity so for the parents that work in the evening or or have jobs who have questions we need Community we need each other to bring those questions that we may not always have that lens from so I thank you for asking for being here and asking but also for those parents that aren't able to be here for them wanting to be present or yeah so I that's all that's it for me that's it well thank you so much for I have very little to add very little at all except to say that um we're very lucky in Lawrence Township that we are celebrating the 40th anniversary of our foundation it was one of the first Public School foundations in the state and as with Vex Robotics and opportunities for college visits and field trips and up and running and so many more things Bridge fund the foundation picks up where our taxes leave off um we do have issues with the complexity funding in our schools and in order to have an equitable experience to have a foundation that will pick up those costs for our students is an immeasurable gift so I would support that Foundation wherever and whenever you can even if it's just a quick day of volunteering thank you to the foundation and with that I can turn this meeting over to Dr Smith I'm going to be sure but Madam president I bring to you Dr Altmeyer we have something called our stakeholder Academy and we have a couple of our Representatives on a stakeholder Academy Dana would you have them stand up and introduce themselves to the board and I uh they've listened to your lesson at their first meeting very well they decided to come to a board meeting tonight is that correct Dana and one one Board of Education meeting and we met we met design last Wednesday so um these two Interactive Academy to learn more advocates at Starbucks I appreciate you Madam president I'm gonna keep my uh word short because we we're back in school so we're going to be busy yesterday always coming on Wednesday patrons just listen to the news Dr almire and I will communicate uh Roger Smith right over there will call me early in the morning we have you covered in communication we'll go out as we always do as we watch the weather forecast is that correct Roger Smith we got it okay thank you folks um do we have a motion to adjourn saw moved second we're adjourned
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I'll move with the usual stipulation that they be held until the matter for which they are intended is resolved all right everybody miss wait second by Miss Amaral on the motion any discussion chair hearing then all in favor aye aye opposed motion carries unanimously thank you all right next on the agenda for the first time this year and we welcome our new student rep for our meeting tonight Dallas Phoenix the Phoenix City Phoenix Telecaster hello my name is Phoenix Stella Costa I'm a member of the student advisory Council I'm a enrolled in Dartmouth High School class of 2023 senior this year a member of the Dartmouth High School robotics team and the sailing team for today's report I don't know very much to say I'm hoping to cheat today as more of an observation session it's my first meeting I'm trying not to be too nervous so just oh you're fine figuring out the ropes so term three is just kicking off students are expecting to see their report cards next Monday grades closed last Friday so looking to be a good term three for Dartmouth High School thank you thank you questions for food thank you and welcome thank you what are your plans next year so next year currently made I'm hoping to go to college reach school at the moment is MIT I'm expecting denial as one should applying to a school of such difficulty to get admitted into my um Top Choice is the U.S Coast Guard Academy New London also a bit of a reach scope but I think I have a much better shot at and then from there around solier Polytech University and UMass samhurst already have been accepted so that's an option very good good luck to you thank you very much great that's great all right nice to meet you okay uh if the Dr Jenkins has asked I have no problem with it uh the rest of the committee do we have an issue if we move the reopen discussion on the student advisory if we just move that up while uh Phoenix is here in case he has homework and things he wants to do he can at least listen in on our discussion and by the way you're more you are always welcome to stay but we also understand that you have other commitments uh mainly homework so once you gave your report if you needed to leave you're always you're more than welcome to leave you're more than welcome to stay but you're always you know it's not an issue if you have to leave to finish up things that you need to get finished thank you so Dr Jenkins so I'll just you know reopen I I'm a political scientist right I believe you know um youth engagement and politics at any level is super important um and so I would like to see a student rep Beyond this committee and be here for our whole meeting right there are items on our agenda that we could use a student perspective about um for instance we're going to be talking about the calendar what do students think about the calendar what's their perspective how do they see things and so for me you know people say well there's homework there's other activities this is an activity political activities are just as important as we talk about having something to engage all students whether it be band whether it be Sports whether it be the math club it can be politics so what I really want to see is sustained engagement from our students who come in here and who participate fully as members on this committee that's just my two cents I I would like to have some someone here regularly engaging with us it can rotate on the committee that's fine but I just really think it's important to have student voice as is consists and I will point out with Mass General law Chris so yeah I I will certainly agree with Dr Jenkins I think student voice at the table here especially in you know municipal government such as the Dartmouth school committee is very important I have no doubt that you have a uh your own perspective to share and a lot of the topics that this committee discusses so I would agree that you know I would certainly like to see a student rep Student Government however you know we've talked about it in the past I'm here for our meetings we we get it things come up obviously please I don't I hope we're not scaring scaring you Rick you feel like you have to stay tonight exactly this is your first meeting but I think that your voice or your um your friends voices other students in school how would have a lot to offer not only to this committee but to the community at large so from my point of view I agree that I would love to see someone a student rep here throughout throughout the media foreign within the school you know before you came to this meeting were you having discussions or how is that like you know how did you come to this position and how is it you know being organized I know we've you know we've been talking about like you know taking a second look at this you know from years past where it was just reporting on you know just current events so I'm kind of curious about the the background of what's been happening with in the school you know before you came into you know tonight so so far the student advisory council is still somewhat in development it's still unknown 100 exactly how things are going to shake out we've had two meetings so far with the five members and our advisor Miss O'Neill um so so far we haven't had any if you mean meetings with the student body as a whole no I just think like among yourselves even I'm just kind of curious about the development you know within the school because I know it's something that's that's novel that's new yeah we've had two meetings so far and uh so far they've just been about getting acquainted with the style of these meetings as a whole so in the last one we discussed Robert's Rules of Order just to get the hang of those and I'm getting the hang of those it's still not 100 but hey we still got 100 okay that's great so in the future I'm hoping we can discuss a system of actually as I was saying surveying the student body in a way that that's a little more than just passive conversation or assumptions so we'll see how that goes in the future oh great that's thanks that's really helpful thanks Phoenix for that insight one and again as I said you're more than welcome to stay if you've got to leave because and I understand what my colleagues are saying but that's my two cents on iPod and the other thing I always say to uh the student Representatives that we have is your our eyes and ears in the school so you know never be afraid you know of bringing something to us type type of deal there are some things that maybe we can look at and there are some things for a number of different reasons that are not an opera view type of deal so you know that for the most part that door is always open so thank you for being here and good luck thank you all right thank you thank you that's good and that one's good all right uh the consent agenda for uh cultural to Portugal and Spain we're going to hold that till February because the teacher is unavailable tonight so we're going to hold that until February 13th meeting so it looks amazing all right uh connect you want to introduce okay okay next on our agenda we have director of Music Ian Flint he's going to present some information mostly about the music program at the elementary itself and how it feeds into all the great things that we see happening at the high school level excellent thanks so much for having me here tonight um so we're going to talk a little bit about the elementary program and specifically how it does incorporate and that's that's a big thing that goes into the entire music department because it is a holistic department and sometimes we lose track we see a lot with the instrumental program the choral program here there's obviously a lot of focus on that because of the successes there but I kind of want to talk tonight about what we're looking at the elementary level we've made some adjustments in the last two years so uh first up I'll start out with our Elementary staff so this is a change this year um right now at the metal school we have uh Miss Monique salemi um she's three days a week um and she's no longer sharing uh the middle schools no longer sharing with a second teacher before the the teacher at Pottery used to come over to the Mellow and teach some of the students which created issues because you might have one teacher one year and then two another teacher for two years and then back to that original teacher um so she's now full time at Demello running that entire program she's primarily vocalist by trade over at Quinn school we have Mrs Shirley Byers she is off full-time at Quinn now she used to teach at Quinn and a little bit at Cushman maybe one or two classes but now she's just full-time at Quinn she also serves the High School Musical director she accompanies the high school course in the orchard programs she's a Pianist and vocalist so she's integrated across the system all the way to our high school level and then our final teacher is new this year it's Mr Cameron Siegel over at Potter School in Cushman school he's a music educator he as a music educator worked in Oregon for a number of years um he's actually completing his Doctorate music education at the University of Oregon currently so he's on his final semester of that towards his dissertation um he's a 2007 Dartmouth graduate which my my first year as a teacher here in the school he was a senior and he's a percussionist by trade so he went through our Band program as a percussionist and has degrees in jazz drum set and music education and all kinds of stuff so he studied in Florida and here at UMass so super excited to have him and it's been a kind of a you know something fresh in our Elementary music program with having Cameron around him talk a little bit about Pre-K uh Pre-K to five musicals so creating a lifelong love of music for all students no matter their background or access to music outside of the classroom we want our elementary students to enter into the middle school program where they couldn't imagine their school day without music second point is providing foundational musical skills for future success success in the music classroom the three main places we focus on are Rhythm pitch and Melody we also want to provide a wide variety of musical experiences for all students some students enjoy singing some enjoy playing musical instruments some enjoy physical movement through music fourth point is performance opportunities are very important for students at the elementary level these performances could be in a small environment like their daily music classroom through in-school performances for their peers or at nighttime concerts for parents in the community and the final goal would be preparation the middle school and high school music program in the fifth grade students are asked to select music classes for sixth grade it's important that they are informed and prepared for whatever their choices or classes no matter whether that's banned Orchestra course or the general music program the elementary level we offer two different kinds of curriculum some music some schools it's uh focused on just one of these two aspects there are a couple other um curriculums that you'll see in music education but these are really the two key foundational ones so here at Dartmouth uh the teachers come with different Specialties so we allow them to kind of go with what their specialty is there's a lot of crossover in these two curriculums too um so in the ORF curriculum you'll see a lot of singing in the classroom movement placing movement with music that is being played or performed so you see them moving around the classroom and singing at the same time you'll see a lot of instruments in the north classroom so you see what we call like Boomwhackers you can see the students on this slide you know they they're pitched percussion instruments that they they hit and they they do the sequence it it's a Melody keyboard instruments like the ORF instruments are um kind of like percussion instruments shakers rhythm sticks recorders so all kinds of different stuff with instruments and then the final part of or of his literacy understanding of musical elements as it relates to notation so that's a real big focus in ORF is being able to relate those two things back to notation which is key in middle school and in the code eye method it's very singing based and it's very folk music based so we see these hand signs as they relate to pitches rhythmic proficiency is a key part to the Kodi method a lot of collaboration in the classroom too so we'll see students that are working together in different songs where they pass that song along around the classroom and in code eye it's based on cultural connections so a wide variety of cultural connections and we do try to incorporate both these because I think all these things are important but one of the teachers might focus on one program more than the other there's definitely some crossover um so in our curriculum right now we offer Essential Elements now this has been a change since the pandemic um in the pandemic it was really really difficult obviously singing was not permitted in the schools um so we have students that lost about two years of vocalization you can see in both those methods that singing is the primary thing and we lost that um so we did have a a curriculum that we had that was computer-based and it provided the widest range of access for our students but we moved over to a new one this year which is our essential elements music class most people growing up in Elementary music you got like a book and there's like all these folk songs believe it or not most of those folk songs are not maybe the best thing for a music curriculum because of uh things we found out throughout history that maybe they are based on racial or some sort of thing that's maybe not appropriate for music classroom so what's great about the Essential Elements is that they keep everything up to date so everything is current with curriculum and they're all resources that teachers can use and we know that they're vetted and they're current to the nafme standards for music education second part is the ORF keyboards you can see the xylophones this has been a big push for us so we have one full set of ORF keyboards that are currently being shared between Demello Potter and Quinn schools we're in the process of purchasing another full set in the next few weeks so we actually got a donation and we have some music some money we've set aside the school year in order to complete out a second set and then we're hoping that next year we can get to have a third set so all schools have a full set of orif instruments it's actually very expensive instruments um we we uh we've been you know to work towards that Investments uh you know really quite a process we can see in our inventory that we've had full sets three or four full sets but most of them are 50 60 years old even so quite old um so we're working towards that um and uh the second one is the Boomwhackers which is the pitch ones so for Boomwhackers we have those across all the buildings they have all the same thing access to those instruments the recorder curriculum takes place between the fourth and fifth grade levels these instruments simulate the experience of playing a win instrument they might be seen in the Band program of the middle school and the high school level and then recently we uh purchased our first set of ukuleles for elementary schools to be able to introduce string instruments at the elementary level this is in preparation for our string program at the middle school and high school level so lots of stuff with instruments you know we found that what we're trying to do and what I talked to the staff about is what haven't we done in the last two years that we can get in the kids hands and part of that's just kind of investing back in the program you know it's a lot of instruments they'll last 20 30 years but you know making that Financial investment is important from the music department standpoint and then the final part is technology you know we're trying to integrate technology in our classrooms so the essential elements does a great job at that a lot of this stuff is interactive with the students there'll be a song There's a video along with it that has the beat bouncing along the students can see how that works but it's all interactive inside the classroom now instead of one-to-one with a computer Ian quick question for you the keyboards that you're getting how much do those run um a full set of Orphans from the skin costs from eight to fifteen thousand dollars depending on the model that is being purchased so yeah so a full set of Orphans from is quite the investment actually so we've been saving up you know we have concert funds we have different things that you know throughout the years that we are able to piece some money together to make that happen um supported DS may all kinds of stuff right so so that's that's working towards that first set getting that purchase one of the issues with purchasing right now is they're not available so we're kind of trying to Source them you can get half of them you can get all the wooden ones but the metal ones aren't available right now it's just has to do with supply chain thank you so performance opportunities um in the second week of January uh the fourth grade students performed in a Winter concert this is new in the past it was just fifth grade level we did do fourth grade concerts during the pandemic and that was kind of out of necessity and we found it was just a great success for the fourth graders to get introduced that three music teachers were able to present three unique concerts featuring what they've been doing in their music class for the first half of the school year and I kind of said to them like do what you do and then present it to the parents like it's almost like an exhibition of what we're learning right in the classroom so that was kind of the focus of these concerts so you'll see the three different versions The Demello concert features songs that were accompanied with rhythm games that were performed during their class time there was also selections uh that were calling response with song leaders and they Incorporated the audience into those performances the students performed a wide variety of modern music and students presented the narrations between each piece at the Quinn school they presented a music for musical theater throughout history there's a wide variety of material from throughout the history of musical theater along with this there was a script that the students performed that they told the history of musical theater and at the potter concert they Incorporated the use of orif instruments into their performance they prevented presented a wide variety of cultural music part of their preparation for the concert involved they were our high school course director Mr sambianco came to Potter School to work with the students on vocal and performance skills so there's collaboration with the high school level two which is great and then moving ahead to later this school year we'll see a spring concert from all three of our Elementary School fifth grade classes these performances will be a culmination of the musical skills that the students have learned throughout Elementary School we see the performances on percussion instruments as well as on recorders along with singing and themed concerts unique to each School talk a little bit about how this incorporates into our middle school program I know there's been a good amount of questions on this um and so with the pandemic we were forced into some different versions of what this looks like key thing was being able to get lessons for the fifth graders two years ago was a challenge and so we had a year where we started the students of sixth grade it was highly successful and that's what we didn't really know how it would turn out but right now our seventh grade instrumental program is one of the largest programs we've ever seen here at Dartmouth and you know part of that is um when you're in music education the students they get to a certain age and there's a maturity as a player and when they're in sixth grade it's totally different than fifth grade just the the consistency of player and their physical ability to handle these adult size instruments we say um and you're going to see that in if you go to any large State like California or Texas they've moved to the sixth grade model we do a lot of things in music education specifically it's a regional based thing I know when I worked in Vermont when I moved when I got rid of my fourth grade beginning band I had every teacher in the region saying what are you doing we all started in fourth grade I said it doesn't work at this school it's maybe not the right thing because we had fourth grade Elementary fifth grade was middle school so it was better to just do fifth sixth seventh eighth grade middle school um and it worked because the retention rates were higher and the continuity from elementary middle school we didn't have to make that leap so the other main factor to be completely honest is in the fifth grade when they were having lessons they had 400 minutes maximum lesson time when we're in sixth grade they get 4 000 minutes of lesson time so when we take the teachers and we take them to all these elementaries we have to have huge classes in the sixth seventh eighth grade because they can only be in the middle school for a little part of the day and then now they don't have to leave to go to the elementary for an hour and a half and then drive their car and get set up and all these kind of things now they have two sections of each grade level so if you're Mr Souza and you have a clarinet class now you have a flute and a clarinet class instead of 30 kids in the classroom at one time you have 15 or 15.
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right and a a good portion of that is due to the real estate purchase for t99. we didn't actually put that in the budget and then we made that decision to make the purchase okay and the majority of our other capital projects are done they're done over the summer so that's where I see just you know the previous year we were at 60 percent so yeah we got 40 more to go right now we yeah okay property purchase makes up the great majority of that but there's not another 40 of things sitting out there no okay we made those adjustments knowing okay okay so at this point in the year we do believe that our total revenues and total expenditures will align with our budgeted figures very good yeah any more questions thanks Terry all right tax compliance uh this one comes back to the board every year about uh what's called Arbitrage I'll turn this over to jury as well so I thought it might be helpful just to give you a little bit of background on what this is uh so state and local government issuers of tax exempt bonds must comply with federal tax rules both at the time the bonds are issued and then during the entire period the bonds are outstanding in order for the bonds to maintain their tax exempt status the post-issuance compliance which is what we're talking about tonight it consists of providing bondholders with the district's financial data on an annual basis we use our bond Underwriters to report all the required information to our bondholders through Emma which is an electronic system our bond Underwriters completed this annual post-compliance requirement in December for the year 2022.
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where is our support staff in terms of numbers and needs for the social emotional needs of our students where are we at with Staffing and support staff to identify who they were and also to indicate if they would like a building administrator to follow up with them on their social emotional learning needs that was really powerful and having the leaders come back and say oh my gosh I didn't know that that person actually had some areas that they needed some support with our leaders were just thanks to the HR department and formed this past month about First Step Health which allows for that one-on-one virtual counseling for free of charge for staff and that has been recommended to staff as needed as well as the EAP program which also provides additional assistance to staff my last question then I'll yield the floor here uh and this our student ambassador certainly if they want to weigh in I'm not putting them on the spot but if you want to weigh in you can but you don't have to but um are the students calling for more social emotional support do we have student voice indicating they're calling for this also okay yeah um so just so I'm a painter leader which is like in the Freshman seminar so I see freshmen every day during fourth period and um I see a lot of social emotional learning with the freshmen um and although I don't have a guided study and I've never had a guided study which is like the study hall on the other side of your lunch um I haven't seen social emotional learning in grades other than freshmen which I know like freshman year you said you focused on but um I think that if we can reach more than just a freshman although freshman year can be overwhelming it can be overwhelming for everyone so um if the education of social emotional learning gets to everyone that would be how yes um I guess like the first question this might seem silly because you might have mentioned it but just to clarify you said you were working with some certain student group to get some insight uh do you have any like specific examples of what kinds of student groups you're working with two colors tomorrow um I'm meeting with the student athletes called salt I believe at OE on Wednesday um specifically at the high school also the ISA MSA um also meeting with students and I got these recommendations of High School principles as well as contractor care about FPL I guess I just kind of asked that because I knew about um Isa and hate Freight OE because I'm an especially student so that was exciting so feels that we're really struggling in that area not us in general like us we go alone I think it's across the country right and so what I would really love to see and I wouldn't even know where to begin but what I do believe is there is a direct tie to student outcome right so how do we take all of the Endeavors that we are undertaking and somehow I don't I don't know if it's been done yet Faith Dr McCain you'd have to weigh in but um how are we moving the needle how are we showing that the things that we are choosing to put our time which is money and then our actual financials against is actually moving the needle um we had a teaching and learning committee meeting recently and while there are some definite bright spots in some of our assessments you know we're still we're lagging behind and struggling and I think post pandemic if there is such a thing um how are the things that we are doing hitting our targets we want to do and I'd really like to see that this is like all the Tactical stuff right this is what we did now how do we juxtapose that to assessments to social emotional health which which our student ambassadors have really taught me a lot over the last couple years which is I you know some students don't feel good if they're not doing well in certain classes and other students are like if I get a c like I'm doing great and then social emotional health is am I getting along with my friends today and or are my friends fighting or are you know there's so many do I have a safe adult at our at my school and and so forth so there I would love to I mean like I would love to see this like Oswego formula equals this plus this plus this plus this what are those components that we in Oswego put into our social emotional health quotient if you will um and I see a lot of the Tactical stuff but how do we start to tie those to things um so I strongly believe in it um I don't you know there's lots of conspiracy theories out there I believe so strongly in teaching our our students how how to deal with a bad grade or how to deal with it when they get in a fight with a friend or because when that happens they're not learning and then we see that in the assessments right so so that's all important but there's so many other components of that social emotional health and then how do we build that formula so we can start seeing those outcomes I would love if we could put a little bit of focus on that so I had a question around restorative practices so I'm looking here and it says District leadership team is trained in restorative practices for educators and begins to develop a multi-year implementation plan so I I get it that you know um as the head goes so goes the body so you have to train leadership first and now you're moving to having discussions regarding a multi-year restorative practice implementation plan for leaders and staff has started in training the schedule for second semester so the question is um I know we have restorative practice practitioners in some of our buildings um how does that tie into what you're doing and um how do we you know make this systemic um in nature right because that's where we want to be having restorative practice practitioners in every building if that's the goal um help me understand is that the goal what are we doing well thank you for the question that's something that we've wrestled with as an apartment as well and we've actually pulled together a secondary restorative Practice Group so they were sort of practice practitioners that are actually identified already at two of our Junior highs and both of our high schools myself and Mr bowel facilitate that conversation along with several administrators actually administrators from every building and we are identifying what we believe to be restorative practices and what that might look like we're in the process of of drafting that for 308 to present to Executive Council coming up I am recommending to Dr Kincaid that all of our building leaders complete a restorative practice module through the IPA the Illinois principles Association this your weekend or over the summer with cohort conversations after they complete each one to be able to be able to help out the things that they're learning how that relates to their building and then in the committee work that I'm working on with Mr Bell and I in this day of restorative practice Educators which Sudan's a part of Shannon Dan some of our other level directors to talk about what the implementation plan will look like for next year but empowering our leaders to help facilitate that work at each of their buildings because we know we can't do the work alone it's a collective effort to really Empower our leaders our teachers and our students to really understand what that looks like so that we can have really restorative and supportive conversations and relationships throughout thank you great excuse me I have a it's a well it's a question um it's actually a piggyback on post-incident recovery um there are several instances that I know of recently you know and over the course of time where not when there's a school-wide incident where something happens and the students have to be supported through that season but more of an more of an individualized a a student or a subset of students experience some type of trauma and now they didn't have to have be re integrated back into the school system I was reading through it and I didn't see anything specifically but what type of supports do we provide for those students to ensure that they can successfully assimilate uh because before you know social emotional health for them may have not been an issue and now after this trigger they may not even understand what they're experiencing and so there could be something that's well proactively or if there's anything to support them a great point and it's something that we're continuing to discuss and what that support looks like I can tell you right now that the student services team identifies with each student what that support looks like it'll be different for every student some of them will need that check-in checkout with their counselor or trusted adult some students will need some additional support outside of school some recommendations might need to be made but it's a really valid point that there sometimes are greater needs that come out of a situation and it's one that we talk about as a department and how we can best support at the building level to have protocol process procedures so that everyone is kind of following that same level of support for all kids got it uh we've had some instances over this past semester where we've had to um bring in both students teachers of other adults feel comfortable with that reaction either as uh check out for a check-in foreign so SEL it'll be like instructional right so certain people can educate students on like what kinds of like coping mechanisms or like mental health issues that are prominent like within the age group things like that we're ready to start those conversations actually come okay so with that knowledge um I'm actually kind of nervous to say this because I know SEO is a really big thing and I think it was like like you said it's going to be different for the high school level and I know that certain practices help for like slightly younger kids um and I'm I'm simply saying this from like the perspective of other students I know who have more experience with SEO than I do it's kind of more of what I've heard um I see how like instructional instructionally isn't effective for a lot of students and I would say that most students either don't want to receive it or can't receive it just with the capacity's attention span or just general interest things like that um because of the fact that it's provided in kind of like a learning fashion um and of course like learning is great learning is so important but when we're talking about things that aren't you know necessarily like math or English and it's more about your personhood and how you kind of deal with that as you grow older having it taught to you doesn't feel as realistic so I'll just bring in an example in my film class every morning we do like a journal and she mixes in really personal questions about yourself and she doesn't read them but she makes us in really personal questions with like really funny questions every morning so one would be like a would you rather and the next one will be like make a goal for yourself about something you don't feel very confident about and it's like in the beginning I kind of like had been raised on this ideology that SEL is like very like instructional so I didn't really see that as a type of SEO and now it's like it's crucial to my day you know like I love it I feel like I've become like actually a better person out of that and I've realized now that it's a kind of SEO you know I'm learning about myself by myself but with the guidance of someone else rather than it being taught to me so maybe especially for students that aren't able to be as receptive to just you know straight like learning from it allowing them to grow on their own might be a bit more helpful but I know you're working on that I just wanted to give that insight as those conversations are coming up [Music] [Applause] um I just wanted to add on a little bit to what Anya said so I think that SEO is so specific to each person which I know we've all kind of touched on um and that each person's needs are different and so when you have a like one set curriculum for students to learn that doesn't really go through their heads because you may say that this is what you need to do if you need to cope with something like cope with a problem but that's not going to work for every student and when you're not displaying that I think and as Anya mentioned like if you're not displaying that through the environments you can create then people like students aren't going to receive that in the way that you want them to um in our freshman seminars we've kind of strayed away from the Powerpoints that we're given and we either create our own with um maybe coping skills that we have experienced and used in our high school careers as well as we've done a lot of like discussion based things and we've really like created an environment where students feel safe to like talk about maybe the things that they're going through and then in response people who have experienced that in maybe a more recent time than some of the adults that it provides a space where like we can connect and create new solutions for the problems that we're going through thank you and Caitlyn you deliver also that social emotional health component in so many ways I just learned of a new one tonight with the freshmen but also you do it through bionic and talk and so forth and it's such a crucial part of um everybody knows I'm a huge Ambassador for that program and but it happens so organically there because it's peer-to-peer and it's something that it's easier to learn in that way than it is to have a teacher instructing on it or so forth so and one thing I'm real quick which both of you have said has really struck me because I know um and I don't think we have this class here in our district but I teach American studies and so it's actually English and U.S history combined into one and it's interesting to me because um what you're saying really speaks to me because I try and hide a lot of these components if you will inside the instruction because I think and you can correct me if I'm wrong because I actually enjoy when people correct me but I think it's almost gets to the point where it's gimmicky for students if they know you're coming at them right and it's almost like you hide things and I've had students come up to me and say oh it's kind of it's kind of different Mr cloger like I don't know like uh I feel like I can talk about these things and I'm kind of just like I just kind of smile and Nod right and then I think it's almost like but if I if I really told you what I was doing it would almost be like oh no I don't do that right it's almost like gimmicky right yeah because you can't like learn about how to take care of yourself right like it makes sense like conceptually like if you teach someone how to cope like they're gonna cope but it's like for some reason it doesn't work right if you kind of just let it like like organically happen like you mentioned right it just kind of it feels really natural like I feel really proud of like the progress I've made in the journal when in reality my film teacher probably knew that I was going to improve on those things anyway because of the fact that like we're people we get better but she really like kick-started that with a little Journal thing you know and it was hidden and I was like this isn't gonna go well and it went great I've never had something ingrained into a class like that before and it was like super awesome although I will say I do answer and although I'm discouraged sometimes when I do answer and then my students are surprised when I answer and I'm like well you wrote the least I can do is respond right but I also one other thing that you I that I really love that you've said here which is that don't just include the freshmen having uh the teacher being a teacher of seniors it is amazing how many seniors I have who have quite a bit of anxiety listen I get it they're excited to get out of here right like let's be honest right but there is that component of anxiety because you're you're changing like this is a huge change and it's a massive change and you're not coming back right and um so there is there are those components in there and again I think again don't be gimmicky right because if you go up and say oh please how can I help then that's not gonna work right but there I think there is that piece where if you can make those connections I think those connections still matter right sorry I'm not trying to just have a conversation with them but if those connections those connections I think still matter right um and if they can be had I think those students still need that anxiety level lowered as well so I appreciate that because I really connected to a lot of what you said have we have we included any of this like student piece as we create new curriculum so you yeah so see what they both uh said already the student ambassadors um is actually actually the same as what the high school students are reporting um overall and you're right on target uh environment is key um it needs to be organic like we're mentioning it needs to happen naturally but we need to provide that Literacy for our staff to understand how like understand what it is and how to do that and that precaution development will come because we're very cognizant of the student voice that's being shared right now right and I 100 agree but I think what's missing in professional development across the board is student voice I agree okay man so I you know I think it's worth a student Institute day when you're signing up for things that you didn't maybe want to go to just sit down with a bunch of kids and have the conversation and work something out of it some kind of curriculum which but and then my my only other question was Miss trigger comes all the time and I I have to ask as we and she's right as we start looking at stuff like this what else are we addressing or not addressing in regards to scl or well I mean scl is is I mean I think fasd fits in there somewhere collaborate with other departments at the district level and also at the building level from our special education department to teaching and learning to student services and find ways we can integrate the things that we're talking about on a larger scale and being really targeted and intentional I took some good notes on what I heard even tonight about you know even proactively how can we prepare students for what might be you know coming down the down the way as far as far as like safety drills and whatnot so it's good feedback for me this is my first board meeting being here in person yeah thank you so much and I just want to say 10 year olds know it's gimmicky too because my son always comes home when they ugh we talked about emotions today they see through it thank you thank you so much thank you both all right item 7.1 is my superintendent report so good evening board uh Thursday January 19th we held our third meeting of the community advisory committee uh each of the items we discussed at our meeting were submitted by the committee members we had three items on the agenda the first one was in regards to Communications uh specifically how we communicate with Community family staff and students I asked the group to be thinking about how while we communicate the different modalities that we communicate across the community as well as what ideas people may have had to improve our Communications to our stakeholders and Mrs commutas presented in the answer to many questions during that presentation our second agenda item was in regards to Community Partnerships Mrs comedus and Mr Miller talked about the many Partnerships we have with the school with the school district and within the community and how both are mutually beneficial and then our third item was in regards to talking about curriculum time line and renewals in the process that we go through with this and Mrs dog Quest presented and answered questions from the agenda on that day our second my second item is at our last board meeting I talked about the transportation updates that we made over winter break to address some of the issues that we were seeing for a semester I had I had stated that we are currently monitoring ridership and route times uh Mr dearman provided us some information from the first week and the second week from after after break in regards to those ridership numbers principals are also sharing information with us as we as they are seeing different issues and transportation is making those appropriate valuations and those changes as as we as we're moving forward well they're doing the best we can or their circumstances that we find ourselves in still with the driver shortage and finally I just wanted to highlight one athletic achievement that was brought to my attention and then I also read about in the paper last week which was very exciting uh with the OHS girls bowling team when he Breedlove from OHS Bowl the perfect game in the final game of a conference a dual meet against Romeoville and what's awesome what's very impressive is to go with that perfect game her overall series was in 806 which included a games of 269 237 and 300 which is the fifth highest individual three-game series ever thrown in the state of Illinois so uh that was quite a that was quite a record that she uh that she broke and she put herself into that into those uh the kind of Hall of Fame there so big congratulations Delaney and those are my three items that I wanted to report out on this evening so thank you thank you Dr sparlin we were thinking we would move our 7.5 student ambassador report up here okay okay sorry to Spring that on you like that okay so last week we had the pleasure of introducing the new people in the ssac into our meetings and it was really great to hear all the voices and their opinions any and I were just talking after that meeting and we're really excited to um see how far we go this year because it was the discussions you had during that meeting were already so wonderful we engaged a lot in discussions and emphasized the purpose of our committee which is to amplify student voice provide avenues for students to use their voice and to strengthen that two-way communication between the Board of Education faculty and other students um the student advisory committee also had the wonderful opportunity to work with Miss dollquist Mr Gatewood and Dr sparlin for the mission statement that's currently a work in progress with mystalk was guidance we engage in group discussions on certain verbiage within that mission statement that reflect not only the goals of our district but what our students seek in the district invariably we decided on the word motivate after a lot of discussion um because we thought that it emblazoned that desire of our district to help students not only better themselves but encourage them to pursue their goals as best as they can in the capacities that they can it's a positive way to show that uh this our students want preparation for our futures with the assistance of this District so that one day they could go out into the real world on their own and succeed in the ways they desire to so I think we learned a lot about not only our committee members but also what this new committee will be capable of with this discussion so that was very exciting and we thank you so much for the opportunity to let us engage in that discussion I'm gonna pass this down so you can see this you all were your pictures are in the ISP Journal so our students were a part of a presentation that took place at the triple I conference um our our dish our district is one that other districts want to model their student voice um initiatives after and so we've been asked to participate at another event in in May if you you all don't know about that yeah but I'm telling you now so we're going to start to get more and more invitations to go more and more places to talk about our our initiatives in student voice so the way they spoke I know it was amazing you all were amazing and thank you for that opportunity That's so exciting and I think Dr Waller would be you know communicating with the group and she'll probably bring it to your next meeting yeah and I know that we're going to be talking with possibly some other districts about promoting student ambassadors and student voice inset districts and inside schools so that's been really exciting I guess like on that note thank you all again for kind of putting this into like a spotlight I guess the idea that student voice is so important in our district because when Dr sparlin told me like you know maybe other districts would want to try this this and get some insight from you guys on that like I don't know it feels like it's really coming to life you know because if students are like one of the biggest parts of a district you know it's really nice to see that other districts are starting to see that as well in the way that our district is working to achieve that so thank you thank you so much I appreciate you saying that because when we talked at our first meeting last year we talked about Vision right and that was one of the things in part in the vision was to be a model across the state and not only have you presented you know to the school boards in November but now we also have other school districts calling us wanting to have conversation other students of other school districts having conversations with our students on what we're doing so really is very exciting so congratulations truly was the buzz at the conference I have a question one of the things the other things you talked about with what you wanted to accomplish a student ambassador and I know Caitlin um this my question might be a little bit more for Anya but was building the a bridge between Administration and students how do you feel that obviously with Dr sparlin and with Dr Waller obviously Mr Gatewood but even beyond the people that you work with day-to-day are you seeing that needle move I think I'm hoping to see it move I know we had that with the um the surveys last year and this year because of the fact that it's the second year in a row that it's happening I've already had more people even people I don't know come up to me and talk to me about that with the fact that we've been focusing on it like advancing the types of voices in our committee and how we're working on current like mental health issues I do know that that's not been one of the biggest things that we've tackled this year but it's one of the biggest aspects of why we made the committee so I think actually I think we're actually moving towards that by having a bigger committee now I think we can broaden our Outreach a lot more I think we can start setting up different ways to have students come to us to speak out on the things that they care about because when we administer the surveys it's the people who wanted to take the surveys that were able to take it and a big part of this committee is going out to the people that maybe don't know that they have every right to come forward and speak about their experience as well so I think indirectly yes I think I have seen that needle move whether it be people coming up to me or just the opportunities that we have now to help that needle move with a bigger committee I encourage you because I truly believe relationships will help our students positively affect our student outcomes and I think those relationships between our Educators and our students the more we bridge that Gap and show that there's not it's not such a big expense so I look forward to hearing more about that thank you yes because it's not that you we're what people are looking at and looking for is not just anecdotal information but they are looking for evidence-based information which why power in the foundation that you guys are are using is is helping immensely because when you call us to action you're calling us to action because you have evidence that something um is is is has there's an issue and that there's a solution to it and it's up to us it's our responsibility to take the action it's your responsibility just to bring us the information and we'll definitely be doing better coming meetings now that we've all gotten comfortable with the new committee and we definitely have some goal outline goals outlined for mental health and subtopics for that so hopefully we'll be seeing that quite soon yes and don't forget the red velvet cake in the I will not trust me I will not all right we're going to move on to 7.2 board committee reports so so so we're going to have a conversation board even though you know like we we say that this is a we we meet in the public but it's a meeting how do you say Dr sprawling it's a public it's not a problem right but it's a meeting done in the public right right and so let's talk about our committee reports because one of the things that we have been saying for many months is that we wanted to shorten as much as we can um our meeting so that our community can get on with their evening and um we wanted to make sure that we whatever uh suggestions that were on the table and available to us that we would consider them and so in December I sent you all there was an uh an email sent out from Ursula and it outlined a suggestion which was in order to um avoid redundancy in our conversations and then also to document for our community and for our board the committee reports we were asking that when you go to your meeting that you um would let's see what when you go to your meeting that you would ask a couple of questions I don't remember exactly what the questions were they're in your there's there's an email that was just recently sent to you I'll just pull one out right now it was what was discussed yes what actions did you take yep what are the next steps right and that before you left every meeting that you would ask those three questions and then you would forward that information on to Ursula so that in when board docs comes out you would be able to read that and when we come to the meeting the only question I'll be asking of you is are there any questions so that's the kind of way that's how we want to go forward which will help in many ways to shorten that that portion of our meaning so what are your thoughts on that well obviously I brought up the uh the issue today um one of the concerns that I have is that especially regarding policy um is that our role as a board is to set policy and if we are not actively discussing it then I'm not sure we're doing our due diligence now with that being said we have a very heavy lift coming up because we just got the draft of our new policy manual which is massive and we are chunking it as a committee and taking on different parts of it we will have action items we will have information items and then action items but this committee has put a ton of work into it and so it's incredibly important to highlight for our community for our constituents when we're changing or making or addressing policy we need to really that needs to have the floor here because it's one of the main things of what we do so that was what I really wanted to have this discussion to let the community know that we are changing how we do it but I also am a big believer in pre-work and putting all of those documents online for everybody to read and see but I do believe that with regards to policy specifically we're going to have to have some especially soon some meetings coming up where we're going to have some pretty robust conversations um uh Dr Kincaid will tell you Ali will tell you that um having iasb do this workshop with us there's a lot of things we missed there's a lot of things we needed to address and it's going to be really important for everybody to see what those things are so that was where I you know I really wanted to address this from a board issue and regarding teaching and learning can I dress that before you get a teacher so I think that in so what was happening in the past is that the the board committee report we would talk about all of those changes and then the same thing that we had will come up in the information sometimes in the same meeting and then we would have the discussion again so I agree with you we absolutely have to have the conversation but we don't have to have the conversation in both places we can have the conversation when in information as opposed to going over it especially if it's within the same meeting and we're of course not saying don't bring it up because there's there's I think the committee report can give context to it to the decisions that was that were being made but we may not have to walk through every single one if we're especially in when we're going to do it in information as well what I my concern is that while I enjoy the the change that we're doing with the Committees I want to make sure that we remain sensitive to the fact that we made changes and not everyone in the community agreed with those changes and I don't want their voices to get lost and so if we're now saying we're only going to talk about the I just want to make sure we're sensitive and cognizant of the changes that we've made this year are a lot and so we don't throw anything or push anything under the rug and that we have this discussion in open versus behind the scenes yeah can I interject that real quick to back that up so I mean I I obviously did I voted against the change right so I mean just being transparent um and so I'm fine with the change except for one small problem I have with it and that is that we have actually had quite a bit of community members show up to these meetings and and make comments and one of the things I don't want lost in all of this is their voice so I want our community voice to still be a part of that and so one of the things that I've brought in uh when when we report out from our committee is hey this is these are these are the issues that our community members brought into that meeting and I don't want that voice lost so and and I'm not saying I'm not I'm not I'm not saying anyone's suggesting that that's that's not accusatory I'm just making sure and reiterating that that that piece doesn't get lost and I want to make sure that that our community knows that they're going to show up they're going to voice that and that that that piece will continue that that's all that's all I'm saying absolutely and I feel like we haven't heard a lot as much about what goes on in the community advisory committee so I'd love to hear a little bit more of that and then with with regards to teaching and learning like especially our last meeting when we reviewed data that those outcomes those student outcomes are why we're all sitting here and so I struggle with how much to I think it's really important to talk about that stuff as a committee so everybody knows what is happening with um with our student outcomes so and that can that be put data be put in oh yeah we can't go over that data in a meeting yeah and we can pre-work it but we have to let the community know where that stuff is going to be so they know as much as I would love the entire Community to be watching the board meetings and be fully engaged we know that nobody can really put that much time into a board meeting so I just want to make sure everybody knows where that stuff is Shifting to yeah and I think I think for the sake of transparency you know one of the reasons that we were discussing is that this actually documents it versus before it would be a comment which someone would have to go back and listen to whatever we were saying because it's by far by no means is it trying to remove the voice it's actually trying to document the voice so that you can even see it no I agree that was that was you stole my my point oh that's actually yeah I mean it does increase transparency and it does not limit discussion um Jen and I had a little bit of back and forth which was maybe something to consider you know the administrators are leading these meetings and they have they might they might be the best Suited to prepare to deliver a summary that is actually documented on you know yeah well the documentation part yes the documentation part what we what I'm hoping to avoid is a lot of us just don't have bandwidth today to scramble for updates and everything and so it's not fair to Ursula to be like chasing board members and stuff so I talked to Mrs dalquist today and and Dominic and we really need to build into the agendas moving forward the last 15 minutes of committee meetings to write those so that Ursula doesn't have to chase people and um honestly we were so we were both in meetings today texting back and forth trying to get something done we just we don't have capacity for more of of that work yeah I mean basically what happened is yeah two there was a Tuesday night meeting I was I had another Tuesday night meeting yeah um for both for the district and then Wednesday I had uh work you know another and not a school district meeting and Thursday I had a district meeting you know at work so I mean so yeah it was yeah it was just uh that was that was very yeah and the whole time I was thinking about trying to get this stuff sure I know you were and I think even so at the end of every meeting with the administrator present these three questions are going to be answered and asked ask asked and answered and then just push it on out to Ursula and then she'll get it in board Docs I think we're good and then obviously we're going to have the conversations and information a lot of times or um and then how can we how do we communicate this out like too so Teresa is there something that we could put somewhere to let our community know that you know we're doing uh where they can find the information yeah so we already have the meeting summaries that get prepared after each meeting so I can just include a link there to the full stop full write-ups of each of those by repeating dates yep and then Ursula you are already on that document right so as we update it weekly and then we'll just add Teresa to it and then everybody has access to it perfect do you guys like to do give your teaching and learning report sure it's going to be short and sweet um so we did an in-depth review of The Fast Bridge the winter fast bridge data we are cautiously optimistic about the shrinking gender gap between boys and girls possibly due to the literacy framework and that is a very general overview in some grade levels we don't see that Gap closing as fast so that's a very general overview um Faithful is the community going to have access to the data we can make that as part of the minutes that we always put out we use our events and put those out in the minute perfect Administration will continue to work with the schools where that Gap exists and is growing or is um still larger than we'd like it to be as well they are also exploring successes that other schools are experiencing to see how we can apply it across the district we are seeing less gains at the upper in the upper grades where there are fewer interventionists and left less differentiation for high achieving students and we will continue to seek ways to improve tier one especially for those higher students and as a board I ask you as I'm sure the administration will um agree and I I don't know if Mrs Jones left but I know she would agree as well to support interventionists with our budget this was the first year that fast Bridge was given to all ninth graders is that correct and Mrs dalquist highlighted why it's critical to address any Trends or apps we see and close them before we get to the higher grades because it is much more challenging to close those grades in the upper school I inquired about the use of phonics as a teaching method at the elementary level as there are some false narratives that sometimes that I have heard that and frankly I was wondering that we don't utilize phonics instruction Dr Harmon was at our meeting this week which was great to hear her and she shared that phonics is actually embedded in all of our instruction and that it is not meant to replace any read aloud or comprehensive strategies but that is actually a a uh complementary to all of that but that in fact we do have it embedded in all of our instruction the only other thing I would add is uh we went over the math and that was uh particularly for junior high we had a new curriculum the expectation was you would see a decrease in performance with a new curriculum you know initially to spoke to Trend um we're seeing an increase um in math and kind of right away so I just that was interesting well and we also know that after the curriculum review last year I know I struggled with it um it's a lot of money to invest but it is a different way of math instruction lots of word problems and um yeah we talked about that it's going to take some time for that to click I don't know what the word is but there needs to be a lot of you know professional development for the teachers to understand how to teach it and so forth but from where what I gather Faith please jump in here we do see that there's kind of some short-term frustration but long-term gains and benefits that will come from that and so it is it is tough at the beginning to deal with you know we don't ever want to see those results but that we do believe that there is a you know something better on the horizon frustrations from the teachers or from the student perspective well maybe I think yes um to both of those as you try something new and then we also knew as we piloted those materials because you haven't increased the challenge incrementally through those to then switch as eighth grade when the curriculum that we purchased was assuming that sixth grade and seventh grade was also on those pieces so you make a jump higher skills when you haven't had the scaffolding of the grade levels before that and then any time that you try a brand new tool there is some some learning in some pieces from both staff Administration students before you get into the rhythm of these are the parts that I really like now I understand how to use the technology pieces with that so some of growth and adjustment to a new tool and I'm glad we you bring this up about fast bridge and so forth I was uh fortunate I was gonna wait till board member comments on this piece but I'll bring it up now since this came up I was uh uh fortunate to be invited to Boulder Hill one of Boulder Hill's staff meetings since our last um uh board meeting and it was interesting because fast Bridge came up and I listened to a very um uh professional and a very um um in I don't want to say intense in a negative way but I mean the teachers were very invested that's what I wanted invested uh conversation about their data and what was interesting to me is they definitely feel outside pressures uh when it comes to their data and I think it's it's important for everybody to understand um up here and all stakeholders to understand that yes I mean obviously we want high standards and we obviously but we need to understand that some of these programs look differently and some of our schools look differently and students are entering different uh at different levels and so some of our programs will see that aggressive growth actually in those later um Elementary grade levels based off of the program and some of them we will see are aggressive growth earlier and we need to understand that we have different programs in this District we have diverse schools in this District um and so we can't just always sit here and look and say what about this school as opposed to this school without having that holistic conversation and that's important I think when we're we're coming to the table and we set we set the tone um and and I hope all stakeholders realize that as well I I'm always um happy when people are educating themselves on on everything that's going on and I hope that continues but that means having the whole picture um and and you know you know this if anyone who's gone to any of these schools whether it be Long Beach or Boulder Hill and myself having experience at Long Beach and also at Hunt Club um loved both of those experiences but they are different schools and that's what's that's what makes our district great is having that diversity um but but they do feel those pressures and they see it and and I saw that um saw that come out question you said outside pressures can you define that for me us uh yeah I mean I don't I I literally asked I mean I literally asked I said you do know that we do understand that um we we know that certain programs we will see aggressive growth in fourth and fifth grade right and and the answer was they don't they don't know that everybody understands that but it's not just us the community also the community as well they hear they hear things right they feel it um and and I think everybody in education hears and and feels things right now um but and and I'll just say it also like for there's the administration also and and I said uh and I will say I said well I I don't think that's everybody I think that we understand we have diverse schools we have yes we expect growth we expect results I mean I'm not saying that that's not the case right and we expect on our side to to give you the tools that you need um I myself am disappointed sometimes in the fact that we cannot give all the tools um that they need and I am somebody who will absolutely put myself out there I don't care and point out that those tools aren't being provided um because it's a two-way street it's it's an open conversation and it needs to be a holistic conversation and it needs to be an honest conversation and um but thank you for asking that because yeah it's those are the pressures they feel thank you one of the things that's very hard about presenting teaching and learning in an update is that the results are so nuanced it is not just about decreasing the gap between genders it is not just about decreasing the gap between black and white students it is not about just decreasing um the gaps the the academic gaps between grade levels it is schools and teachers and administrations and what's going on in the world we had two schools that had interruptions I mean there's so much about it and so what is very hard and I think Dominic and I probably questioned faith and Dr Harmon and um and also um Mrs looters and Dan arts and were there as well was okay but what are you doing about uh elementary math in grade four because this is happening and then wait a second but what you know our black students have declined since fall grade three in this school in this school and it's really hard to change at an organizational level without the finances behind it so when we talk about very real decisions that we make and what we choose to spend our money on and not choose to spend our money on this is what we're really here for you know so we're not here for a parking lot as much as we all would love to put one in this is what we're here for and when you look at these results it's hard not to say we better be throwing a lot of money at this right because we need to meet our students needs um so while the update is there are some positives there's also some worries too you know some things that we didn't expect to see so I encourage everybody to go look at those and um understand that at the end of the day when we make financial decisions it's it's to change these results the can you disaggregate the data to the school to each School level and is there a school Improvement plan that is this information included in their school and Proven Plan okay yes and by grade level and by school and then I may have been referencing me when you're talking about because I did email all of our elementary principles detailed things of here's grade level that looks really great can you identify why it's the outlier or ooh I looked at this and I had questions you know do you know what you're wanting to do to improve because one of the things that you want to do is identify celebrations and have it spread as well as get in and dig into the data and it could be that there is a teacher out for a long time on the leave it could have been you know in getting into all of those pieces and what we're really excited about with the data this year is we're beginning to have Trend data and trending is really when you can identify here are the systemic things that are working and how do we push that out there but it comes through not by the aggregate by looking into all the different grade levels even different demographic groups and then how does that tie into school Improvement plans they're watching their fast bridge data they have data Dives the elementary schools after the fall benchmarking and again about halfway through and then after the winter benchmarking and halfway so processes and place to have grade levels as well as the school Improvement team dive into that data and ask those questions probably like what you just saw but I do I do want to stress and reiterate very invested to say the least I was very impressed with how invested our teachers are over there in their Style okay moving on 7.3 board member comments does anyone have any I I actually do and I'm sorry yeah and I and I know you know the answers to these doctors Barling but hopefully again it's just an opportunity so that I can because I've been Fielding this so you can help me put this to rest right which is do we need and I'll just give them to you all at once because I know you know they're coming uh do we need to adjust anything due to the primary election here in Oswego is Oswego East and other locations prepared to deal with the added traffic and where to direct people is there any added expense to us any disruption to our students and I actually did some work on the last one which is is there any place outside Chicago in Oswego dealing with this I think there are actually uh although I did read that Kankakee is not having a primary election for the first time in 29 years but I'll let you take that over just because I've had that question come in and so I said I would ask it and get a definitive answer for anyone who was wandering the answer is no yes no no thank you at the end you're most welcome no we did we did speak with the regional superintendent who in turn spoke with the Illinois State Board of Education in regards to having students in session or you know in attendance when we're with the doing going with the primaries there's no additional expenses we did inquire what the county clerk to ask could we you know is there alternate sites that could be that could be used uh the answer was no they will provide a police officer at each one of the locations parking's been identified uh internal external uh you know entrance and exit to one area one room of the school is it'd be coordinated but provide a signage and things like that for parking so and there won't be any additional costs all right I have one so as we talk about girls doing cool things so OHS and well clearly we had conference for wrestling we had 11 placers at OHS and we had eight at OE which is a lot froe they've come a long way and then we also had our first girl what placers uh top eight we had a lot more top three top four but I don't want to single anybody out um but we did have three girls place like for the first time ever so one at oh and two at OE so it was kind of a big deal it's impressive do they have to wear those uniforms as well they're called a singlet special ones to keep their good yeah that's awesome are things together yeah yeah all right 7.4 um Miss comedus is going to give us a update on our Communications and our promise to get back to you about opportunities to provide feedback and input regarding uh the search process yes so on the district's homepage now there is a link to a superintendent page superintendent search 2023 page this page is intended to serve as kind of a Gathering site for Milestones as the search continues there is an area for frequently asked questions there's a few places there already there's kind of our Milestone timelines different pieces that'll happen from the announcement of Dr sparlin's retirement you know The rfps Proposal review the different steps that go along with this search there's also a catalog there of any news or Publications that have gone out that were related to the superintendent search we'll continue to add to that and then there's also a link there to questions so if there's any specific questions regarding the process of searching hiring the superintendent there's a form there that can be completed and we'll route those questions appropriately through president simelton to get those answers back to the community this is just kind of the initial outline sketch of what this page looks like we did some comparison with what other districts have included and as we continue to survey stakeholders and with the help of the partner that the board chooses for the search additional materials will be added here it is one key component on here to make sure that the public doesn't understand that the board recognizes the importance of the stakeholder input in the selection of this committee so there will be opportunities Avenues tools etc for students staff families and the community to provide input so it's not asking for you to use that question box right now to you know give that specific input there will be very formal opportunities to provide that input but if you have questions about how that process will roll out or anything that that question box is available there so there any questions I can answer regards to that first of all great job fantastic do I know that we have a lot of work to do obviously but when depending on what firm we go with they will be conducting um interviews and wow but will we be able to Pivot this to also just like even like an informal survey or yeah okay yeah whatever Avenues you want to utilize to Garner feedback we certainly can house those here I know a number of those places use different tools and stuff so whatever that looks like or wherever you land absolutely we can expand on this it's just kind of like kind of like the page we had when we've um you know had the referendums in the past yeah sort of a landing page where we can kind of catalog everything related to this topic so this is excellent I just know that for a lot of families that are working and so forth they may not be or they may not get invited to a an interview or something that I just want to make sure as many people can give us feedback as possible yeah and in comparison with a lot of the other school districts that um have done searches and have sites like this that they do seem to have those types of survey tools available on there for feedback but again most of those seem to be originating from the partner chosen to you know conduct the search so as soon as we have that opportunity to meet with that partner then we will definitely expand that thank you yeah yes excellent job thank you so much you're welcome um where it says questions do you have a question it's live now so you can click right on the questions um thing there and then it'll open up a little Google form um they'll come to me initially and then I'll wrap them up in a nice package and pass them on to you can we turn it blue or something so that's exactly yeah something yeah [Music] and the same with the superintendent search on the front page at the bottom can we have like a button or something on the home page of the website so there's a superintendent search button it's right next to the covid resources right under the slider that we talk about sorry oh under the Board of Education yeah I was on that that page sorry yeah yeah absolutely we just kind of got this live today it's a work in progress so absolutely we'll link some more stuff there for you and then you're gonna put this in anything that you blast out on your Facebook page so they know where to do it yep absolutely and we'll continue to add to it as more things come up and go out great great love you you're welcome excellent all right 8.1 sent agenda are there any questions on the consent agenda can I have a motion to approve the consent agenda please I make a motion to approve all items under consent including 8.1 minutes from the January 9th 2023 Board of Education meeting open and closed session second Miss Doyle I miss Swanson aye Mr Cerrone aye Ms simultan aye Mr Gatewood aye Miss Johnson aye Mr pluger aye motion passes 7-0 9.1 action items of resolution authorizing the issuance of tax anticipation warrants can I have a motion please I make a motion to approve the resolution authorizing the issuance of tax anticipation warrants in anticipation of the collection of taxes levied for the year 2022 by the Board of Education of community Unit School District 308 Kendall Kane and will counties Illinois for educational purposes second and I have two questions on this um how much do we need in our reserves in order to not need these so we need about that 20 which is about 52 million dollars and how um if you don't know that's okay because I didn't but much do we have now yeah yep we have about 25 million in reserves which is where this 20 million dollar figure comes from and will we get an update on who buys these yes do you know if you don't have it that's okay you know timeline approximately or not yeah we just reviewed that again with our financial advisor and we're looking at uh selling these by the end of February beginning of March thank you I do have one question as well and I apologize um I'm neurodiverse so I have to answer a lot of questions a lot of times um remember when we over levied okay so we over levied and then can you remind me what is happening with that money yeah and uh so what we reported to uh what we reported to the county was that we only needed 33 million but somehow they charged 36 million dollars so what we did is we levied the full amount but then they are abating that um so we're instead of getting 36 million this year we'll get we'll get the 36 million minus the among the money that so the taxpayers will be made whole and then secondly what checks and balances do we have in place for that not to happen again yeah um just I'm in the process right now it's just a matter of every County sends me like I turn in a levy sheet and then they send me a confirmation Levy sheet and I sign off on that and make sure that the numbers I give them they've entered them properly into their systems and they give me back that confirmation and then I sign off on those and give them back to them and then yeah following through with the okay thank you and then I and then I measure each County I make sure that the numbers I'm giving because it's a levy for the school district not for each County I'm sure the numbers for every account and working with the counties to make sure that they don't give us the wrong Bill thank you really important because I know that there was a lot of us were frustrated with that and I just want to make sure taxpayers know they'll be made whole but clearly like somehow we got the right amount to Will and Kane so yeah do I need to read it again no we made a motion no Mr Cerrone aye Mr Gatewood aye Ms Johnson aye Mr cloger aye Miss Swanson no no Ms Doyle aye Ms simultan I motion passes 6-1 9.2 action item approval of bus trust lease agreement for activity buses can have a motion please I make a motion to approve the five-year activity bus trust lease agreement with Midwest Transit equipment Inc and Santander leasing LLC subject to the school district attorney's review as presented second excuse me Miss Doyle aye Ms Swanson Gatewood aye Ms Johnson aye Mr ploger aye motion passes seven zero nine point three action item approval of bus trust lease agreement can I have a motion please I make a motion to approve the five-year bus trust lease agreement for 29 special education vehicles with Midwest Transit equipment Inc and Santander leasing LLC as presented second Miss simulton aye Miss Swanson aye Mr ploger aye Ms Doyle aye Miss Johnson aye Mr Cerrone aye Mr Gatewood aye motion passes seven zero 9.4 action item full of 20 20 calendar can I have a motion please I make a motion to approve the 2023-2024 school year calendar as presented second Mr cloaker aye Miss Johnson no Mr Cerrone aye Mr Gatewood aye Miss Swanson aye Mr Doyle aye Ms simultan aye motion passes 6-1 9.5 action item approval of personnel report can I have a motion please I make a motion to approve the Personnel report as discussed in closed session second Miss Hamilton aye Mr cloger aye Mr Gatewood aye Ms Johnson aye Mr Cerrone aye Ms Doyle aye Ms Swanson aye motion passes 7-0 10.1 kind of have a motion to go into closed session I make a motion to enter a closed session under statute 5 ilcs 120-2c1 the appointment employment compensation discipline performance or dismissal of certain employees and individuals five ilcs 120 C2 Collective negotiating matters between the public body and its employees or their representatives or deliberations concerning salary schedule
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