obviously the world has changed quite a bit in the last 20 years so there's a need for that for new resource if we look at committee members here there's members from Oswego High School and Oswego East and all three of these different committees have members from both high schools including members from general education of course but also special education at El and I think that's important to note if you look on the left hand side of your screen here these are all the textbooks considered there's five different textbooks we're in consideration and the textbook that was selected by the committee uh was the one here contemporary Human Geography which of course does match the course title whether that was just by habits dance or not right but that was the committee found that was the most appropriate text you'll see for this one students will receive a physical copy and a digital copy of the text and we can talk more about that for the textbooks if need be later on contemporary Human Geography the reason for selection this aligns nicely with the what we currently use for AP Human Geography so there'll be a seamless transition if students want to go on to the AP level of this course it will be easy for them to it will the book will flow with that course as well and then of course inquiry activities in each chapter analysis of primary secondary resources and then really you'll see on here too excellent graphics and student friendly content of course we're not selecting textbooks because of graphics and things like that too right but it does help to engage students in the material Civics curriculum again members from Oswego High School and Oswego East High School and the considerations there on the left hand side of the screen and then the eventual nominee so to speak was on the right hand side of the screen there in Civics the reason for the selection the big part of the selection portion for this textbook is state government is embedded in each chapter whereas other other textbooks they have that periodically or a single chapter alone on state government where this is specifically every chapter has something with state government in it and then the group found that that was really important again inquiry journals or activities are incorporated into the curriculum really the analysis of primary secondary resources again with that and then of course the digital version is available and it can be adjusted on re-level if need be reading like Lexile levels and again of course student friendly content is something else in taking consideration the final book here is U.S history um and again members from Oswego High School on the left-hand side Oswego East on the right hand side and for each one of these slides I've mentioned that department chair Jennifer Quito and department chair Jim Vera from each respective High School who are involved in this process the entire time and of course we have on the left hand side of the screen here the textbooks in consideration and then the one ultimately selected and again this one is updated all the way through the 2020 election and Beyond so it incorporates all the last few presidents that the only one did not again inquiry is a part of this and really provides the last build is really pretty interesting too it's the analysis of current events and really how to engage that in historical events as well which is pretty pretty interesting for students the description of the process itself we began this last school year formation of committee uh really three different groups and and having kind of an idea of what we wanted to uh come out of this process uh last year there was group work about state standards and how to align those standards and how to renew the curriculum and of course looking at after we get through the standards and things looking at the textbook that best fits where we want to go and then of course bringing it here tonight and then hopefully for approval uh eventually here then in May if things get ordered properly teachers will actually have this in their hands to start looking for it before summer and here's just the next step here again it kind of outlines that that timeline tonight all the way through potentially in May questions I have one question before Jerry get started because this is like his area of expertise yes um so my question when you go back to the book is there a modified all right so clearly we modify most things for special ed ourselves however some texts nowadays are coming out with some supplementary materials sure uh it depends uh some of the resources for the most part what they offer is the digital version which are our teachers editions will all be digital versions so teachers will have the ability to modify anything in the digital format to present to students so if a student doesn't have the digital version the teacher can provide that for the student or provide that material or those accommodations or modifications right but we're talking about like taking four options and sending them down to three testing but worksheets as well I mean you could right so when you when you when I say digital yes I'm looking for a little clarification so there's two different there's many different options obviously there's a hard copy here yeah and there's the digital format um the some companies basically only allow us to do basically you're getting it all in one you're getting if you buy this you're getting the digital copy as well teachers editions are all digital and of course they can use the student Resource as well for hard copy but the digital resource which is available for students if they want for a Chromebook or if we need something for a student with an IEP specifically we can absolutely order that what we're looking to do though is provide a student taking this course with with a hard copy of the textbook and the reason we want that route is is twofold it's the most cost effective and you've seen up there the last time these courses were renewed were 2004 and they in the chance that we don't have the financial capacity in six years from now to renew licenses students still have a resource if we want the digital route only six years from now we'd be forced to find a new resource go ahead I mean like I'm looking yeah I don't know that's not what I was looking for um but I guess maybe what I'm looking for doesn't exist right like I'm looking for you know for kids with low reading isn't going to read it to them sure for kids who have a hard time seeing and and I forget the name of it but following along right and all of that stuff is available sure through a variety of options but for special ed teachers in particular who are teaching some code talk classes I just like I feel like maybe it's the Publishers that need to hear me say this but there has to be something that will help the teachers to help the kids sure and and we can look into that too obviously when we talk about massive orderings we're talking on the masses right if we need to reach out to Publishers to talk about specific um professional development opportunities for teachers or professional or specific resources for a student we can absolutely do that in an individual basis when we talk about ordering from the masses we're talking about you know basically hardcover or digital copies of the same resource yeah yeah can we can I make a plug just to buy hard copies of the teachers books too so we will do what we can some of them don't offer the teacher edition yeah but I listen some of us are old not me of course but I want it in paper I want it in print I wouldn't be able to flip through it yep I don't want to read my news online I don't want to read my textbooks online either sure yep I'll look into it go ahead Jared did you go last nobody else go on Jared all right a couple things first of all I'll be honest some of them are Quasi questions um are you a are you a history teacher it's possible um I'm excited about the inquiry base and I'll say this right we talk about diversity all the time and for some reason it gets a bad rap and I'd like to point something out here that by bringing in inquiry-based instruction you or you can correct me if I'm wrong the nice piece about this is you are bringing in student voice correct right and really if you are allowing that to drive your instruction which I'm excited about right um You have situations where for instance you have a teacher like in my case where students ask me they want to know oh who'd you vote for for a president and I would always tell them the same thing I'd say Hey listen if you really want to know that bad you can ask me after you graduate right and I did have a situation at a student's graduation party where they had a bet right because they couldn't figure it out sure right and the point of that is that's allowing students who I had who I knew had different political leanings sure right that's part of diversity also and sometimes we think it's one thing so I'm excited about the inquiry-based piece I think that gets lost sometimes in the conversation unfortunately we can we can talk about why um in addition I'm curious about I'm glad about the state piece do a great job on the national great job on the state and I know that some of this is not your fault actually probably most of it to be brutally honest with you is not your fault because I've talked to people in my own field and it's like deer and headlights but the local piece is still lost sure and it's so frustrating and you know me I'm gonna say it and I say it every time right and I will never forget my own student who left such an impression on me when I said hey explain to me when we went through the election numbers and I said hey here we go you got 75 percent you know my students were in will I said 75 percent of the adults are showing up for the presidential election 50 percent of the adults are showing up in the even years 15 percent are showing up in the odd years and that student their words not mine said that's because they don't understand how it works and what's interesting to me about that is I've already shown my students in my classroom their sample ballot and what's interesting is there's an art to voting not who you vote for I never get involved with who you should vote for in my classroom but there's an art to voting and we don't teach it and if we taught it we'd have more engagement the numbers prove that they prove it when you look at that piece the 75 the 50 and the 15 because the odds are that if you pulled the people in this room the odds are that the vast majority of the people in this room if they had come across a mock election in their education career it was probably a presidential election it was probably not a Governor's race and I'll be damned it was probably definitely not a local race and what those students saw when they looked at that local piece that that sample ballot they notice something they notice that in One race someone was running on a post in another race there were a couple write-ins and in another race there weren't enough people to fill a ballot and so I had to explain to them that means this person's running on a post nobody went in when there was a time period for you to put in a write-in for a petition or your uh put put in petitions to be to write it over here there's two write-ins there there's one and it started an entire lesson and these students one student asked me they said hey does this mean I could have literally this is this is a senior class I could have literally gone and put my name in and been elected and I said yes you could have we don't teach and it's frustrating and if the adults were actually honest and looked in a mirror I'd be curious how many of them knew some of this stuff themselves because we even have politicians who should probably look at some of these sample ballots because we and I think some of them have forgotten their small town roots because instead of looking to see that we can't find people to fill some of these local pieces they're introducing legislation to try and remove people that's what I see and what what frustrates me to no end is this stuff is not getting taught and we have situations where people don't show up at the polls for years on end and then when they do engage they engage with hostility and I'm going to honor my student who said that's because they don't understand they haven't been taught and hey as a social scientist I'm always here to engage but at some point we have to call out everybody includes the publisher everybody on down the line that we do not teach local governance we do not teach local elections we just don't do it we can sit here and we can make excuses but we don't and you remember what I said when I was off the board I said at some point it's gonna it's gonna harm us and so so real quick real quick and then I'll be done I'll get off my soapbox and I'll be quiet probably for the rest of the evening except to vote please whatever we can do because the more that these students are engaged and the more that they see these pieces statistics show that they will vote and they will be more engaged and that point of all of this is for them to be better than us and I understand what you're going up against when it comes to finding that piece because I've sat here and talked to people that do this stuff for a living and they're like it's so hard we get it and you know what you're right we should and I'll be quiet I'll yield but it's part of the um my personal issue with prescribed curriculum you know when we use a more resource-based um option to allow Educators to pull from different sources we need to as a board say this is important to teach local elections it's important to teach why local elections matter it's important also to see that when is b or any entity wants to take away the opportunity for local boards to make and have control over their communities and there are so many layers to it that people don't realize and it's really frustrating so I hope I've honestly hurt Jared's speech probably a dozen times over the years and annoyed and I'm sorry the last two years now I get it and um I am in shock about our low turnout and out and so to everybody that steps up the plate and runs man I say congratulations because you are doing so much more than you realize um but please if we don't if it's not in our prescribed curriculum it's okay to to support our curriculum with other resource based um options and to make our students the best they can possibly be the most engaged they can possibly be we can't ask them to be Global Citizens until they're local citizens so let's teach them how to be good local citizens and then worry about um it's why I struggle with our mission our vision it's like we're way up here but we're not aligning it with the resources and what you need to do to get there and so I love when people want to talk about you know uh well I went and voted for the president or I went and voted for Congress or whatever but did you vote for your local school board did you vote for your local mayor did you look because that's where it all starts so I finally get it cheers I finally got it and Mr arnson um you know we're Trailblazers in this District in a lot of different ways sure and so why not be in this way too sure okay and I made note of that too and I'll make sure to speak with our archimedia communities about that and the importance of that but I have a kid in physics right now who is learning this stuff so before we throw the baby out with the best water realize that we are teaching some of this in our district um and I'm going to bring it back just for a minute so we're talking about getting a new textbook and we're talking about inquiry-based which um we're converting all of our physics curriculum currently to and GSS which is all inquiry based correct learning and I will tell you with 110 certainty that you need time and and that's going to cost money yeah yeah because these unless you're gonna expect which happens all these guys to do all this work at home by themselves in a little pockets of islands yeah it's gonna take a lot of time to do it takes so much more time takes time with the kids it takes time prepping the lessons no book comes fully made inquiry based notebook I care about science or history so you guys have to know that you're gonna pay money to make this happen to even get to work well that's what I'm talking about and by the way I I'm not doubting inquiry based yes I'm aware yeah thank you the one thing I will say is that so these resources will be on uh available to the to the public at the district administrators administrative center for the next 30 days and there'll be a sign-in sheet if someone wants to review these and that way if you have questions or comments I can get back to you with those all right thank you have we just said I'm out of curiosity as part of this um news Ela and we talked about that as kind of a yeah for these particular courses we use that in our Junior highs so if well let me ask this then so if we use it in our Junior highs is there a district what's the word I'm looking for should we pay for that as a district so that our high school teachers maybe like our special ed teachers have access to the we do not pay for a full District amount it's based by a student and by school so we do not pay the full cost that all students in the district would have access well how much more would it cost to get that so I've reached out to new level actually to speak specifically about that cost because there was a request for some resources and and interested in what that would be different are we using are we using all of our I don't know how many you get when you buy just a Junior High version I guess what I'm asking is as these kids move into High School why can't that travel with them I think what we've been looking at with the social studies piece is as Dan just said looking into the cost and whether that would be these are new resources and three courses but that is something that we're looking into is because it does allow for a lot more differentiated of Lexile level to be able to make the reading portion of it and the inquiry of the resources available to students more at their level so we know it's a good thing we're going to do it right looking into it that is not a yes we are looking into it right now put that on the what am I out of here may yeah can we put that on the April agenda yeah inquiring minds want to know thank you thank you so 8.2 advertising costs associated with superintendent search so as we all know nothing's free and there are some additional costs associated with our superintendent search which was outlined in the presentations as well as in the proposals that we received so this is not anything new to us but the dollar amounts are new to us so um I wanted to bring your attention to the document that's in your board in board docs that was presented by our our superintendent search firm that we selected and the the highlighted areas are the ones in which were um recommended they total about a thousand dollars and they are as follows so the Illinois Association of school administrators website um has what they call Job Flash and it has some enhanced features over and above the the website itself that they that there are no costs for it's emailed to 5000 plus superintendents and um there's addition to the postings on their website and that's a fee of 599 dollars as well as um the National Association of black school Educators Alliance I'm sorry National Alliance of black school Educators for approximately 250 dollars for 30 days and then the association of Latin American superintendents for approximately 150 dollars for 30 days these are the ones that they recommended and have found great success with so this is just one aspect of their recruiting um this is just what we what Jim would you call passive recruiting versus active recruiting so can I ask a question about this because in the presentations I heard every group talk about Ed week um and I don't see that highlighted not on there right well it's on here but it's nice as a recommendation yeah it's only 3 9 right it is well listen we can do it yeah no I understand but I'm curious as to what the my question is why not did you ask a follow-up question yet of this this group why they'd recommended it in the presentation but they're not recommending it here Eugene are you there because I don't recall and I'm not sure if we asked that question or if they if they ask it I don't have any notes well I mean yeah this was this was the one constant between all three candidates was what I used um as an HR professional it is um sometimes people aren't necessarily looking for a job they are reading an article on edweek and then they're like oh look what's available so um it's a really great audience to capture and for 395 dollars I think we would be I would be remiss if we didn't do it and then I also have seen over the last I would say two to four years LinkedIn has become a great networking space for educators and um I think that should strongly be considered as well did Eugene Eugene did you are you there and did you remember if you guys had had a conversation about that switch from edweek but I I don't want to speak for them because I don't know exactly the reason why they said it so I think we would have the same problem with them you know I'm trying to find it right now but for some reason I'm thinking that like one episode one article or one version of that week um was included that's what I thought I'm trying to find it right now but maybe that's all it is is that they recommend you know doing that and that was included in the price or something well that one one of the organizations I don't know if it's the one I'm not sure if it was that or the one we selected I thought it was pretty much all but yeah I'm I can't remember I thought it was too but I mean I think yeah but now we're seeing maybe one I think it was calling us oh look he's got an answer oh yay wanted me to get him on the phone sure can we do that can we do that um um Maureen says yes Maureen says yes okay he's listening that's responsive service thank you here he is [Laughter] I don't know let's see I'm gonna say call back there he is hi Dr O'Mara hi Dr O'Meara hi you are you have a captive audience Ed week is a good source but aasa gets a much wider audience these days especially with the augmented search that we're recommending and uh hi can you hear me yes we can hear you loud and clear okay so all I was saying is end week is fine but um edweek would be a supplement not instead of so all I'm saying is that week is fine are you getting feedback because you're listening to us you want to turn that down or off or something yeah you have to turn it off so we can only you can only hear us [Music] but what about I want to know Dr Romero are you still talking oh he has to mute his YouTube about a 10 second delay that's it was Ed week a part or any part of your um cost that you propose okay it's okay he he answered the question that I was asking so it's okay just tell me my question is geography aasa which is the site to go to if you're a superintendent but or talk administrator yes yes we can we can still hear you and Jen Jen Johnson has a question does aasa speak into your mic does aasa have the same geographical reach as at week or vice versa I think they're very similar to both National audiences but but ASA um this is a much wider audience these days these days that's fair and you you you got your question answered did you get your question um answer regarding Ed week something about it was it included was one week included I don't know if it's relatively immaterial but ASA we belong to aasa edweek is a paid advertising option only okay and then what what are your thoughts about LinkedIn because I know that um you were not recommending that one yeah LinkedIn is really not heavy in the education Market these days it's more for private firms and um other agencies we've had some clients use LinkedIn but we've never had a good finalist or semi-finalist person that we recruited through Linkedin I just think it's a waste of taxpayer money okay I like the blindness yeah does everyone have their questions answered my last question is is there a way for us to post the position on the district but it get the application gets sent to school exec connect or can we put a link to wherever the application is so that people can just go directly to our website to submit I I I I can send Ursula or lasagna or anyone you'd like the link the link for the okay yes because that was one of the things we talked about in our meeting that that would that was going to happen yep that's that's pretty standard we would encourage you to post that on your website for listening okay I'm sorry to interrupt I just was watching your board meeting and wanted to fill in any questions that you might have no that was perfect thank you just just bye-bye the right one didn't we okay so are we are we in agreement then with the aasa the National Alliance of black school Educators and the association of Latin American superintendents because that's about a thousand dollars if we add 3.95 for Ed week I just don't know if if hearing that the reach is higher on aasa the only thing I could see then to be gained would be if you're not currently a member of aesa um so I I would like to add that 395 dollars to add Ed week but that's well I mean you're getting 5 000 superintendents with aasa I don't so you think about it in a different way than yeah that's okay yeah okay um guys you guys I mean I'm good with the recommendation that's why we hired them that's kind of where I go with the record s okay so we could probably add another we can do more if we need to do we need to do anything else Maureen okay all right item 8.3 is an informational item titled thinking Upstream so tonight we have Mrs dalquist Dr Kincaid and Mrs comitas who will be presenting as we start tonight oh now can you hear me yes yes as we start tonight we ask for your close attention I've been doing presentations and trainings for over 30 years and I feel this presentation is in the top three and its importance and potential impact for moving a group of people forward to improve schools before I begin I want to state that I truly believe that the vast majority of people are good hard-working employees and that there if there is a failure or inefficiency it is a systems issue when I tackle a large work problem I approach it from that angle and since I arrived in this District not yet four years ago I have been asking myself why are we constantly reacting instead of having the time systems and resources to be proactive this has been an observation shared by myself and others that have come from other school districts it's because of this mode of operation that we started to read Upstream as an executive leadership team I'm now going to ask Teresa to talk just a little bit about the premise of the book so as a member of the executive leadership team which faith will go into shortly and we did read this book and we discussed it as we went through chapters and really the basic metaphor of Upstream is kind of a definition of um you know how to tackle the problem appropriately how to be proactive so if you think about a river a stream let's say we're at the bottom you know rescuing people as you know children as they're floating down the river to save their lives right but we don't take the time and the moment to look back and figure out how are these kids getting in the river to begin with what who who or what is throwing these two these kids in the river so that we're wasting all of this time and energy instead of preventing the initial situation so that's kind of a simple metaphor for it but we did read the whole book and have had some very meaningful discussions around it the next slide here is really a summary of the climate and culture survey that we took district-wide last spring the slide that you're seeing up here is really talking about the work-life balance we presented these results on a high level basis with you previously but we really wanted to note that the District administration and our school administration our numbers are a little concerning up there especially that 35 percent agreeing that they have good work-life balance from our District administration team we talk a lot about strategy um but we all know that culture eats strategy for breakfast so as we've spent a lot of time and effort around development of The Envision 308 strategic plan and all of the directions that we all want to move forward the goals and things that we want to see it's difficult to move forward because of the impact that the culture is having on that so so while reading Upstream I saw this group of very committed 16 District administers strengthen their ability to work together and come up with two priorities and while I was really proud of their work and I felt that we were on the right track my heart sank when we identified our one main wish here was a committed group of people set up to fail and they myself included hadn't realized it I had been too close to it to even realize what the main issue was here's what we now firmly believe needs to be done in order to make our district function like the organization we know it can be I want to thank everyone in executive leadership team that helped solidify the ideas and the information in this presentation so we had all come together and we decided to build capacity of Administrators was our top Mission and we were ready to do it and then we thought about how often we are changing administrators the district leaders are exhausted and can't get anywhere because the team is always changing we thought about at a school level if a principal had 70 percent fresh out of college teachers every year how much would we expect them to make progress so in the case of school leadership it really looks at how often frequent turnover has a negative impact on school climate we talk a lot about at our meetings and at the board level the importance of trust trust takes time when there are administrators that are turning over frequently relationships are hard to develop and to maintain we also know that at a school level student scores are impacted and then if you look at how long it takes which is about five years for that to make progress at a school level think about that as a district level there is a reason why District strategic plans are not on one-year intervals so as part of our Upstream discussion we really looked into how does this impact our overall budget what does our employee turnover rate look like and what impact could that possibly have in our findings of our research we found that the impact was actually one half to two times the annual salary and based on our turnover just over the last three years that would equate to roughly 1.75 to 7 million in looking at our building our building admin turnover rate in the last two years we've had 50 percent of our principals and assistant principals turnover and in the last four years it's up to 67 percent while those numbers are high our district admin are even higher so if we look at our district directors executive directors and cabinet in the last two years 63 percent of them are new to their position 84 percent are new in the last four years so as we talk about Building Systems as we talk about building culture it's important to make sure that we have longevity within those positions so as part of our team we talked about what are those priorities ensuring decreasing admin turnover we looked at reducing spending and re-allocating those funds how are we spending our money most effectively we talked about improving the overall climate not only of our team but also of the district and if our priority is increasing student achievement we have to make sure that we decrease our admin turnover to help lead this charge so Faith's going to talk a little bit more about decreasing and so we then looked to various sources on how do we reduce turnover and it boils down to in several different ways four different things and we will go through each of these I will start off with valuing and developing staff so how is that done a lot of it is very simple saying thank you also being clear with expectations providing support and coaching and holding people accountable and this has to be done at all levels of the organization all people in the organization but especially those within close circle of influence this next slide shows the circles of influence and how that would work at exec leadership team we need to be appreciative especially of the people in the adjacent circles all while all while focusing on students so for principals and assistant principals and even back up to the superintendent how do we say thank you how do we be clear with what we need then provide coaching and whether that's coaching down or coaching up and then how do we hold people accountable we also need to hire the right people and how do we do that we have to create a maintain a positive energy that can be very contagious as we bring people in we've worked to create interview questions that are lied to climate for learning on how we want to do that and then we need to maintain salaries within a range so that we can attract high quality candidates but also with that we need to maintain salaries so that our first choice and our second choice candidates would be interested we have all experienced many times that we have gone through the selection process only to have our first and second choice reject the position because of salaries which leads me to the third point we need to stay competitive in our salaries and benefits this next slide is what our candidates see or anyone in the public sees when they go to our Illinois report card site and look at the left hand side is our administrator average salaries with that Top Line the darker green what it is across the state and that's the whole state Southern Illinois as well as here and then the lighter Green Piece of the district the right hand side is what our teacher average teacher salaries are we also then did a lot of uh work just a few years ago looking at some of our local District salaries that we often compare ourselves to so let me explain what you're looking at here that first gray column is the current average salary in SD 308 so Elementary principles that's the current average salary then we have the current low salary in the yellow column and then the lavender or purple we looked at seven local districts that we often compare ourselves to back in 2021 and then took the lowest Elementary principal pay from all of those seven districts and averaged that together and that's what you have in the lavender column the final column is what percent of our people in that category uh have been here less than four years so for elementary principles where there is a 46 turnover the difference in the low from two years ago in our comparison districts to our current low is fifteen thousand dollars our elementary assistant principals well there are 77 percent turnover the difference in the low from two years ago at other districts to our current low is twelve thousand dollars the Junior High Principal level where there's 40 percent turnover the difference in the low from two years ago to our current low twenty one thousand dollars the Junior High Assistant Principal where there's 88 percent turnover the difference in the lows is to eleven thousand high school principals difference is twenty thousand High School assistant principals the difference is sixteen thousand so what would it take to not be competitive but to move closer to competitive for the 48 principal and assistant principal salaries we're looking at 378 thousand dollars or less than one tenth percent of our District budget we also looked at 46 other administrators those include Deans athletic directors program coordinators and many district administrators we looked at District comparisons again they're not as easily drawn but we did look through that and we are looking at two hundred and thirteen thousand dollars again much less than one tenth percent of the District budget I'm now going to turn it over to Heather okay so Faith just talked a little bit about the recruiting and retention of our admin financially as we saw from the data shared by Teresa at the beginning our survey data shows an area statistical significance in work-life balance so that is another area that we know that we need to significantly make progress towards different ways that we can try to achieve this is hiring some sufficient staff so in a little while we will talk about some additional staff in addition to that Clear Vision and purpose so how are we communicating not only our expectations but then also job responsibilities so with that Teresa will talk a little bit more about a dynamic work chart and last we want to make sure that we're decreasing to staff turnover so in closed session later this evening we would like to discuss two possible new positions some budget considerations and the impact on the proposal and then changes that we're recommending to our current org chart so now Teresa will talk a little bit more about the chart okay so first is a quick screenshot then we'll take you through a short video so this is a live web document it is not published with a link on our website but this is a live link here what we've done is gone through and taken a look with the community at the very top and coming down through that organizational chart and as we have people's faces titles you expand those out you'll be able to see a profile of those individuals you can expand below them and see those people that kind of come underneath them either as a department lead or support staff as that flows out so we've we've put quite a bit of work into this and and the next slide here you'll be able to see a really fast demonstration here so you can see the profile pop up and the ability to kind of click up and down throughout the chart to find information out about someone as well as there's a search bar up there in the right hand corner you could type in someone's name their position portion of their name you'll be able to see the search results that come up for that I know I know I'm just like this agreement inside I don't even want to look at you so it's it's still going it's a lot of work but it's there and we've been working really hard it's been a nice visual for everyone to see sort of who makes up the teams and what's above and below those individuals go back okay so then we get obviously our one solution is to decrease administrator turnover but with that comes for asks our very first ask is to help us value people we at executive leadership team have committed to this we now start every meeting with thank yous and celebrations of one another and the people that report to us we create an annual list of learning expectations for our principals and this is a coordinated list from all of our departments we've created a huge amount of professional development for admin and it is our number one priority moving forward at the same time we want to hold people accountable within our team and adjacent Circles of influence we ask that you join us in our efforts in this area ask number two is to help us hire the right people we will be rigorous in in our Recruitment and our selection of Administrators we ask that you allocate funds to bring starting pay up to closer to competitive while raising existing pay so that our current staff isn't devalued the money spent here saves money later and less turnover and more highly trained experienced staff the cost is less than two tenths percent of our overall budget we have to invest a little to save a lot ask number three is to help us continue to be more competitive we need to continually invest in our leadership to make SD 308 more competitive again this is only moving us forward in the future we will need to consider additional funds ask number four is help us achieve work-life balance we will maintain a dynamic org chart and stay true to the purpose and vision what we ask of you is to provide Clear Vision and allocate funds for two additional positions with these clear expectations and vision there is less work and more purpose which allows for our work to be passion not stress we will stay true to this purpose and vision we ask that you provide Clear Vision and help us out as we continue to work to have better work-life balance and model that from the district on down in closing if the priority is reducing spending if it's improving overall climate if it's increasing student achievement then it is necessary to decrease the amount of turnover on our Administration we are aware that asking for additional money while we are trying to build a fund balance may seem counter-intuitive however we strongly believe that not only is this investment imperative to improving District climate it also will save money in the long run in closed session we will show budget reductions and efficiencies that have been found so this does not negatively impact our five-year budget projections and continue toward our goal of increasing our fund balance taking these four steps to proactively work to reduce admin turnover will increase student achievement improve District climate and reduce spending in the long run executive leadership team is committed to focusing our efforts in this very important area we ask for you to help and join with us yes I'm going to look at thank you for the presentation this is a very impassioned plea and I know that there's a lot of emotion and there's a lot of stress that goes behind this that you're asking for help with and I hear that and and I want you to know that I I hear that my questions are related to truly solving the problem so I have some questions for you regarding the climate and culture survey we are looking in here at um one first about that first thing and I'm looking for the slide number I apologize um the climate and culture survey you talk about the work life balance can can each of you at NLS Dr sparlin as well your arguably our four senior leaders what are you doing to model work-life balance so one of the things that um and people that means different things to different people I believe it's having a clear purpose and deciding what it is that we need to do so at executive leadership team instead of the list of 22 things we've narrowed it to two that we are taking celebrations on and then working towards I do believe that work-life balance is different for different people sometimes that is being able to be successful for you I'm just asking for for our four senior leaders in the room what are you doing to model work-life balance I think laughter is good okay uh I think that you know talking and getting to know one another and having relationships at work helps with that thank you um I am working with not only our team but my own specific team about family first that the focus the work while it's important needs to be prioritized based on our family goals and objectives um so there will be times that I know we have collectively talked where you might get a late night email from me because I've had time with family first um so that's one way that in discussions as our team prioritizes when things will be due and we talk about those timings we prioritize around family thank you I would say for me um and kind of having a little bit of more of a longevity perspective on kind of what things were like seven or eight years ago compared to now the the work load continues to be higher but what I feel is different over the last several months since we really delve into this is really the the ability to be honest to say I can't right like there's only so many hours in the day and if family is first we sometimes have to be able to say we just can't take one more thing on and by meeting as a team and really being able to be honest and open and ask for help and in the ways that we were able to ask each other for help we're able to come here to the board this evening and ask for help and be honest with that I think it's a really big culture shift and it feels um it comes across as a lot of support and ability for us to be able to take back some of that work-life balance that we lost Brown you know I'm going to Echo a couple of things and add a couple of add additional you know family first is something that we've talked about you know at the elt we've uh We've we've really stressed the idea and working together as a team we've put together different outings you know just outside of work to come together to socialize as a as uh as peers and and working together at the cabinet level we've created a list of norms and expectations of you know when we talk about work-life balance uh you know what does that look like when emails can be sent when phone calls are eat text we have uh we have you know we've outlined all that and uh you know at the beginning of the year we began the beginning of the year I mean this was the first thing I talked about with the entire District administration was the importance of work-life balance and things that we can do to put into place and uh you know social emotional learning Dr Paul has done a lot with a a weekly newsletters and things like that to the staff in our administrative team so it's not any one thing I think it's a combination of everything that we're that we're talking about tonight and stressing the importance of what we're talking about that I agree with you I think the work-life balance is a really lacking area here and I'm just glad to see that we're able to even at this level be honest about what that means in in everyday life are no our meetings here go late that affects work-life balance things like that so how we're making up for it my only other question is on Slide 19.
meanwhile Lake Street is at 82 percent math and reading is at 74 and also I just like to Echo because I'm not going to have enough time at the growth from Crown Point with 61 students last year with an average growth of 141 students in the next 10 years how is redistricting a viable option with those kind of numbers and to build and spend all this money on ancillary positions for all this Redevelopment within the village it should be done in my personal opinion and allowing kids to go to school where they need to go to school thank you [Applause] a lot of that will be addressed when we get to the action I'm on 503 so at this point move on to item four the consent agenda Dr Terrell thank you for your consideration this evening we have 4.01 which is the meeting minutes of the board of school trustees 4.02 the disposition of the stale dated checks 4.03 Grant from the Crown Point Community Foundation for AP exam scholarships 4.04 the bread milk and grocery award via school to food purchasing Cooperative 4.05 a donation from Bethel Church for free students with negative meal balance 4.06 the Personnel agenda and then 4.07 voucher registered checks as listed you've heard the recommendation from the superintendent and administration for approval of the consent agenda I have motion motion by Mr babjek second by Ms Basin questions or discussion just just want to thank Bethel Church I think this is a few years in a row where they have done something similar to that so where they give money to to help out those needs so thank you for your continued support yeah you beat me to that exactly what I was going to say but Heather had a question for you on on I noticed we've hired a few new parapros which I think is great are any of those working toward their certification as a teacher that you're aware of okay thank you any other questions comments all those in favor please signify saying aye aye those opposed motion carries five zero thank you action item 5.01 2023 Crown Point High School summer school programming Mr Hartman yes school program uh this will be very similar to what we've done in the past the high school will be offering for credit courses for students uh in a number of areas to accelerate their credits and open up spots on their schedule for next year there's also a part of that that's credit recovery so this is to engage students and that needed to make up credits and then also there's a restart program which allows students to actually improve their grades by taking summer school classes we'll also have uh elementary and middle school as well as our esy programming for our applied skills students and those will be taking place over a 12-day three-week session and those will be highlighted within our school district at two elementaries uh Colonel wheeler and that will take that will take care of their uh summer school we do take a look at and consider the the programming and I did give some info information on our reimbursement and how that has transpired we're expecting something similar this year as we look at the funding for our summer school program seeking your approval this evening of the 2023 summer school program you've heard the recommendation of the administration may have a motion motion by Mr Smith second by Mr Vassar question of discussion for Mr Hartman all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye those opposed motion carries five zero thank you Mr Hartman thank you 5.02 Taft middle school and Crown Point High School Furniture award Mr Reese thank you Mr President members of the board we've come to that point uh in the construction project as we prepare to open buildings for next year next school year we need to place some orders due to the large quantity orders at the new Taft Middle School we need to place that order now in hopes that we receive that and arrives on time and put together and in its spot ready to go August one so tonight is the night to do that for Colonel wheeler the other set is at the high school as we move the administration and counseling offices into their new space over spring break we want to get their new furniture on site and be able to move it in once into those spaces instead of moving their current moving their current back out and then moving the new in in the summer when the rest of the order comes in for the high school so trying to do it just in time change of furniture for those folks and have it ready to go over spring break so we can move it just once instead of moving it three times if we do it later so with that we're using a company by the name of Ki Inc to provide this service for us do the large quantity and volume as you can imagine for for filling up a new Middle School it is quite a large order and so with that we're recommending many approval the furniture for Taft middle school and Crown Point High School from Ki in the amount of 158 495 and 15 cents for Crown Point High School and for one million 365.74 cents for Taft Middle School you've heard the recommendation of the administration for the approval of the furniture for Taft Middle School in Crown Point High School from K1 Inc in the amount of 158 495.15 for Crown Point High School and one million 896 365.
as Dean assistant athletic director assistant principal principal director and assistant superintendent according to superintendent Dr Sean Smith with 35 years of experience in education Dr giglin has a keen understanding of the importance of servant leadership he is an ideal person to lead this fast-growing and ever evolving division gag line shares I'm honored to be given this opportunity to lead the technology Division and will do my best to ensure the division is able to meet the needs of our students and staff both now and in the future an Indiana native gag line holds a bachelor's degree in secondary education from Butler University he continued his education at Butler earning his Ms in school administration he holds a doctorate in educational leadership from Ball State University welcome and congratulations welcome back president must and members of the board Dr Smith I'm very very grateful for this opportunity to lead the technology division I'm ready to get started you're ready for me to get started I know that so as I said I'll do everything I can to make sure that we meet the needs of our students and staff and uh let's get going thank you Stephen returned to the Deus you know the procedure you may have been away from here this way Dr gaglon you may have been away for a while but we we know you know the routine so our family has been very daughters big school with principal gag line and I continued to work with him when I was elected to the board and at 2012.
because this is always the slide that I tend to like to just remind people that while this comes from the Illinois state report card the word administrator means something very very different in a lot of districts for example we count our special education coordinators as administrators here and in in many districts they counter special education coordinators as teaching staff um which can kind of while there are lower paid administrative salaries those can kind of skew some of these numbers not saying we're not really far apart because we really are um but one of the things I like to make sure we've considered is that this is also how we Define these rules we've asked for a lot of our assistant principals to take on a lot of these double administrative positions and when we're looking at adding two positions I'm going to ask and this is just forewarned um what are we doing about the fact that on our most numerous administrative position artists assistant principles where we've doubled the amount of responsibility what are we doing about that in addition to the two other roles whatever doesn't sure so one of the things that we have admired about the problem at elt when we're talking about whether it's special education Improvement whether it's talking about mtss whether it's SEL whether it's even about budget management we we've got a lot of expertise to go train our administrators it's not administrative like well you've now had one month of training you're good to go it takes quite a while and you need to have not only people at the district level but peers at that level to rely on to be able to have those pieces and I know from experience in other districts and from the wealth of information that we have at exec leadership team that we can train people but we need to not have them leave all of the time so when you look at an assistant principal who is learning all the complexities that are involved with special education leadership we need people that have surrounded them that have been here for a while to get it in good shape so they're coming into a system that's working we also need our special education administrators to have been here for a while and built processes and systems that are working I've worked and led other districts that require their assistant principals to also do this special education piece and it it works if you have systems in place and you can provide professional development over a length of period of time and it isn't 88 turnover at the district level office so if they're they're leaving all the time because we have these extra job expect and the only way to get them comfortable with the extra job expectations is for them not to leave all the time that feels like a little circular and sure and I don't think that it's only because of the expectations that we have I think it's also coming into a system that isn't fully developed it's also looking at salaries at what are the quality of people it's and I love having some green people that come into work it brings a great new energy but hiring I don't know of anyone that we've hired in the last four years into their position that has coming to us with experience in that position so we are always training from brand new and that doesn't mean they are great great people but we're starting from scratch thank you I yeah I know it's um a little late here this is important so you know I look at it as there's just a lot of lost opportunities a lot of lost productivity um ability to implement you know you've got we've got great ideas it's just hard to implement when you're having 77 percent turnover Over a four-year period in your assistant principles and then your administrators that number was um 63 in two years and 84 in four years that's just not sustainable and um so it's a you know it's an investment in leadership like you said it's less than 0.2 percent of the budget if we look at that in perspective and how much you can get of it you expect um once somebody's been there a while and you're able to retain people and and get people with experience which is kind of um hard to hear that most of the people that we're hiring don't have experience in that job and that's because we're not offering them enough money so they're coming in they're training for a year or two and obviously leaving um and that's just it's almost like you yeah you don't really get anything out of that position then um because then if you're bringing somebody else in with the same cycle it doesn't make sense so over time and faith and I've talked about this over and over again um over time it's just costing us a lot more money we're not able to implement um the programs and the the systems that we need in order to implement changes and get achievement gains and stuff like that so I appreciate the the boldness and bringing this forward to us because there is definitely um if you look at it from from the context that you provided and it sounds like you're even going to try paying for it with some inefficiencies um you know that's that's this I'm looking forward to hearing more um are you going to be discussing the inefficiency the inefficiencies in closed session yes okay um so yeah we need to we need to do better um I've been actually saying it over and over again our assistant principal is not even on the same planet um as as other districts and it seems like we ask even more because we can't get other help you know for those positions so uh even if we were above average in those positions we probably would be it would probably make a lot of sense so I wanted to first of all just thank you for the presentation and for the content because like I'm screaming inside and I I know Jen was over there too and it has for me it's like this is why we this is what I'm going to speak for me this is why I came to the board like to see these types of changes to see these types of ask because we have a responsibility as a board to give you all what you need to succeed and and so I'm I'm just excited about it I'm I'm I always say that you know I appreciate what you said um Faith about this being an issue of systems right because strong systems require strong people to run them and I see in so many areas where we are not being efficient in our dollars because our our the the I don't want to say quality but um the the skill set of of staff may not be what it needs to be and so we're compensating or over compensated compensating for in another area um and and I see the dollars that we could be using somewhere else being spent because we're over compensating and so I'm excited about what what you'll present to us um you know in closed session regarding these types of efficiencies because I say it all the time as the head goes so goes the body so whatever I'm thinking makes all this happen my brain is saying one thing and my body's doing what my brain is thinking so for leadership if we don't have strong leaders we're not providing our leaders with um the professional development that they have the skill sets when we hire them to do the job but we can't hire them to do the job because we can't afford them all all of this stuff I'm so excited to hear that we are addressing it and so I just want to say thank you for that and I feel like this is some of the reason why I came to the board yeah you know I'm is huge for me too and Latonya I just want to thank you for supporting that and stating that you know we we knew that there's uh we know that there's a lot to be done and we ask a lot of everybody and so um I'm proud of us for acknowledging that yeah because I mean we four or five years for bringing that again so yeah six years ago we were cutting and slashing everything and it's cost us so so and that has been let's let's bring that up because I think that needs to be brought up and listen well let me preface before we bring that up appreciate I also appreciate you bringing this up and I I Echo everything that's been said however there needs to be a warning here right and that is that you have to invest in your schools like all of this is a common theme we have the TA situation we have this situation and I understand what the teacher's salaries say but that's because our teachers stay here if you look at where they're starting out it is the lowest starting out salary around this is we have to acknowledge what we have done collectively as a community and what we are digging ourselves out of and we can we can't seem to face that collectively the community right next door did not do what we did which was they they said hey we have to we have to raise the levy we have to do it and guess what that Community politically isn't any different than we are maybe they are but I don't think so right and I'm sorry but at some point we have to face reality that that hurt us yes and when districts say oh I can't believe you did that it's not oh I can't believe you did that it's I can't believe you did that I talked to many of my friends on boards who by the way lean right if it matters who vote to increase their Levy all the time in fact I work for one and he's like do do your do the people in your community understand where you're funded and I say I I try I do my best I carry it around with me and I say here let me pull it up I literally have it I'll show it to you but we can't I don't know whether it's guilt trauma whatever I feel like some of it is because I feel like some of it's passed on to you and all I can do is apologize it has hurt the community it has hurt our kids seem to to so so when we have to raise we have to do what we have to do the levy the first reaction is to attack oh let's make it political and attack that hurts kids when you do that it hurts them hurts the Tas hurts our kids it's done it has hurt our kids and now people want to move backwards and do this all over again we're supposed to learn we're supposed to be the model we're supposed to be an example Yorkville does the same darn thing and I don't see the Press attack in Yorkville but boy they come out and attack us go to Yorkville they're no different than us politically they don't have any problems raising Levy you know why because they're looking at where they're funded and they're like yeah we're not going to do that and it's hurting people it is why I vehemently said please show us projections with and without ebf and with and without the levy and without ebf should scare everybody in this community everybody and thank you to those out there who who witnessed slips saying please PBF funding disastrous for our schools without it disastrous thank you to those people that did that and thank you to our reps and our Senators who paid attention most of them did unfortunately we had one whose response was to pass Bill to get rid of school board members I guess because they were mad because we brought that to the attention I don't know why this has to be political I don't understand any part of it we should have learned a lesson by now and I apologize cannot apologize enough brought trauma to so many people and for those of us that had to sit through those cuts the reason why some of this happened is because we simply try to cut as far away from kids as possible and what people understand is that they need the teacher in the classroom cannot go down that road again we just cannot and we're trying to dig ourselves out as much as we can and if we don't invest in the schools that's what we will continue to have to do is dig ourselves out and we have to understand that when I started on this board and LaTonya I'm speaking to the statement of when I came in I came here because I wanted strong leadership the head turns the neck you know that's been going on for a long time everybody's wanted that the reason that we I think also ended here obviously it's all about money right we don't have it we didn't have it we made a lot of cuts because of different decisions that were made as a board that continues Beyond individuals we took on special education without a plan probably five years too late when we were already big we took on 450 million dollars worth of capital debt that we have to pay mortgage on and by the way there were no property taxes levied and by the way there was no state budget for two and a half years so those are crippling these are all crippling things that are ending up in this years later so when I look at these things it's it's not without a sense of yeah and I don't want to set anyone up to go back to that by another decision when I started on this board I remember having a very impactful conversation with someone who strongly supports our schools in a very strong strong strong way and that individual and I sat for two hours in a parking lot at a school building talking about administrators and that person who strongly supports our schools firmly firmly felt that they didn't see a reason why we needed more than 14.
74 cents for Taft Middle School I have a motion so moved sorry motion by Mr Vassar second by Mr babjac Question and discussion for Mr Reese Mr Reeser are there any uh Furniture being what are we doing with the older furniture oh sorry go ahead the older Furniture would be repurposed as necessary those that are not um usable will be either donated or auctioned off all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye motion or post motion carries 5-0 thank you Mr Reeves before we get to item 5.03 we're going to take a little break here with the presentation regarding item 5.03 Dr Terrell thank you so this evening we put together a presentation that is really divided into two different parts first part we'll deal with the numbers redistricting what that looks like the second part will work through what the transition process is going to look like for our students so I'd ask you to do this as we go through this hold your questions if you would until we get to the end of the redistricting part and then we'll answer all questions at that time and then from there we'll go into the second part and then we'll open up and if there are questions regarding anything towards the end I'll be more than happy to to answer those if you would do one other thing for me when you get when you have your questions if you'll direct those to me and then I'll direct them to the cabinet member who will be responding to those this evening so with that I'm going to turn it over and ask Mr Reese if he would start our our presentation this evening regarding redistricting we had some technology issues when we were doing the presentations because it's touch panels so it kind of sent the whole thing into uh a different mode but that's why we have our director technology here with us this evening restart it foreign well while we're working on those technical difficulties Mr Vassar do you want to at this time give our other business report on the legislative update okay I was going to tell a joke but I didn't think it was profit so fellow board members you have a quite a stack in front of you there of legislative bills that were proposed in January of this year in the Indiana assembly and then I also gave you a another handout put together a summary of all that the session there now in Indianapolis is that it's a long session ending on the 29th of April this is the most amount of Education bills that have been presented in the last six years so it's been a really active in Indianapolis out of the 218 bills prediction is about 160 of those will die in the time but death of a bill isn't necessarily death of a bill is what I'll get to in this thing the deadline for bills to get out of committee and to get past their second reading is already passed and to get past their third reading is already passed as well so a couple of things on that on that summary handout I gave you to to look at is the first bullet house bill uh 1001 that's an increase in K-12 education spending which is a the biggest increase since since I've been in education a long time but you look at that and that's seems like a great thing and it is But realize that that funding increase comes with more money going to voucher credits and Charter Schools as well and as there's talk of doing away with parents responsibility for textbook fees that's tucked inside the money that's going to be given to schools as well so none of these are passed yet but that's something important to understand where things get tucked in two bills have gone through so far without any opposition one is the secured safety schools Grant it's been unopposed as it moves from the house to the Senate and then the 21st century Scholars Program that students parents May realize their child signs up about when they're in in middle school and the parents used to have to sign them up if this passes now that would be automatically done for them so they don't have to worry about that whatsoever um there's lots of bills that I put on here I'm not going to go through every every single one of those a couple of things to to look for on the second page of my summary is Senate bill 380.
um it was a Cabinet member then and so good to have him back in a hot seat there okay all right well now I guess some do you we have some celebrations do we have some do you have some board comments and celebrations who who raises their hand who wants to comment first um I will say um in celebration we're coming up on our last day of Black History Month which is tomorrow I want to celebrate family I have a young um engineer in our family who wrote a book and I want to donate books to our library it's from lovely briche Donaldson Blake and it's com and it's called stem can be me a through z and so I wanted to donate some books to our library but black history in the making so just wanted to share that fabulous thank you thank you next well yeah so black end of Black History Month beginning of women's History Month begins in March um so just wanted to acknowledge the fact that we are sitting up here with an all-female board full of intelligent capable and Incredibly kind and generous human beings who do what they can to serve this district with distinction so incredibly grateful to serve with all of you celebrations I will say um you know it was a it was a real honor to be able to um to congratulate the starbots tonight um and you know I think um you know Madam president you and I have served on the Lawrence Township School foundation for many years together and the ltsf has been one of the primary sponsors of Robotics and it's been really wonderful to see that come to fruition throughout the years and personally my own two children my daughter is a starbot who is currently ranked somewhere around 50th first state standings in skills so she's likely to go to State and earlier this weekend my son who is a gear cat won their competition in robotics as well so you know we have a very strong uh reputation for our are Robotics and it's it's really wonderful not just to see it um to see it through my own kids but to see all the opportunity that we have for all the rest of the kids in this District absolutely absolutely Miss Dunn again I feel like my colleague stole my funder I was going to talk about the end of Black History Month and just really appreciate Dana showcasing on our media all the Excellence um excellent black leadership that we have in this District we are certainly a district of Distinction because of the fact that we have so many school leaders that represent our Scholars and that does not go unnoticed in reading about each of those just gave me goosebumps I was reading about Kevin's daughter being born young and Tiny and it's just the motivation that everybody has to do the work was inspiring so thank you for doing that and hopefully you see some wonderful uh women female leaders in this uh women's history month so um kudos to the work that you do for always showcasing the great things that are happening great Norman all right um yeah everything you said I totally agree with but I wanted to add for Black History Month as we close up my favorite quote by Michelle Obama was those of us in public service our role is to take the spotlight that shined on us and shine it on those we serve and that's been a powerful quote a great example for leadership and we did that tonight when we celebrated our our students Our Community Partners we can't do it alone it takes a village to raise a child and the future is bright I would like to just thank our our athletic coaches for giving us so many Thrills over the last few weeks and thrills yet to come from from our our youngest kiddos in their basketball league in elementary school all the way through high school wrestling swimming diving basketball it's been really fun to watch the progress of our kiddos and I I'd also like to say at the end of Black History Month that the highest achievement I think that this board has had in the last several years is passing our equity and anti-racism policy and it took a long time and now we see our high ability and high achievement studies will come to us for and all and all of that work was done with for our high ability kiddos with equity in mind Equity was the focus there and Remains the focus we're now involved in strategic planning and the focus of our strategic planning is equity anti-racism and making sure all of our children in our Township have an equal opportunity to succeed that every child has high rigor and has Support Services to back them up and I'm just so proud to serve this District so proud so Administration Dr Smith staff um coaches teachers parents students thank you thank you thank you and if there are no do you have what you have a few things you want to say just very quickly um you talk about African-American history black history Roger Smith you have a company that right now is doing major construction work for us they're a minority-owned company African-American and I just saw one of the owners walk in mayman Powers will you stand up I want you to stand up because you have partnered with us on several projects and so when we talk about history we're not only make it with students but we're partnering with companies that are in this city in the state who are helping us through this through this process helping us educate kids and there's an example right there so many generations are you third generation he's third generation of powers and Sons out of Gary Indiana and of course here in Indianapolis and so we're really proud to have you as a partner and I see your good friend Dustin there Dustin is old enough to be Mr McGregor president asked that question he's a heck of a supervisor raise your hand Dustin glad to have Dustin will be the guy on site when we do these projects so glad to to see Dustin again and Madam president and board it is that time of the year our girls did well and made it all the way to semi-state but Dr nesma tomorrow kicks off sectionals tell us what we got going on .
oh yeah no no this actually happened this is and it's not because that person is not smart they are smart they they were looking at it from a different perspective and their meaning of what an administrator meant is different but but even our most supportive families that wasn't an unheard of thing for someone to say and that wasn't that many years ago and it could go back there any day of the week so when we talk about building our Administration and a couple positions that I'm guessing aren't going to be classroom positions that we're going to be asked about just a guess um I want to look at the entire picture of this is why we need to do this this is what we need to as a community understand about why it's worth spending money on more than 14 administrators and it's not about ideology or nice to haves it's about actual systems you have to have somebody put them in place you have to have somebody maintain them but it's also about the fact that I don't want to make financial decisions on things that will put us back to where we're making a really crippling Choice yeah and I think when you talk about like this number I don't know if this 14 is some arbitrary number but but what what you look at is you look at your surrounding um sub uh districts you look at your large unit districts you see what it is that what is their uh makeup of Administrators look like there's a whole bunch of things that you would look at and not just pulling some number out of the sky so you know I want to listen to but in this community and and I won't ever out a person that I speak with like this safe to say this is all real but the piece that's missing is that this is still new being big in a lot of people's minds so in a lot of our communities minds they don't look at what other large unit districts are doing because in their mind we're not one we are we are very much so this is a new process so the education piece it's it's real harmful to just make a bold statement that I I need to have leadership yep everyone's always agreed but we need to understand all the different pieces that that goes into and why it hasn't been here at this point yeah and I'm sure I just want to think long term and yeah we talk about it a lot when we talk about looking at um the organizational chart and in a in a comprehensive way in making sure that the all the pieces fit together nicely in the puzzle and that we're not just making arbitrary decisions and so and and just let me for the last point I want to make and then you go um I respect every one of the board members who's ever sat in these seats I would never disrespect any of you or anyone who's ever sat here because I know the sacrifices that are made for us to be here for the sacrifices our families are making and so when I say this is these are reasons why I wanted to come to the board it's more about just the the two things that are that that we're responsible for is organizational Effectiveness in student learning and so when I say come to the board to see things like this be proposed because it's a part of having us an organization that is effective and that's that's all I meant by that no disrespect the highest of regards for anyone who sits in these seats and has to make these type of decisions can I I was waiting I was just yeah can you go to slide five for a minute are there not 17 members of our executive leadership team who's missing I have been part of the conversation and uh I've spent many hours with the uh with the cabinet as well as uh faith and I talking about what we're going to talk about in closed session as well as the presentation here the reason my my face is absent from there is because I will not be here next year that that's that's the only reason right but I but here's my point we can't talk about leadership and empathy and Grace and all of these other things that we want to talk about if we're not including a everyone in the conversation which is part of that executive team so whether it was an oversight or whether it was and I'm not going to be here is is not lost on me and the second part of this is if when we're talking about adding positions you're going to add the biggest position and I don't know that we want to do that before we add that position well you know what I mean we don't have that conversation well we're going to have that conversation but like I may not be here to say it first over my two cents for what it's worth well my Yeah my two senses she may not start here later tonight is what she's saying yeah yes you are oh listen I work life balance um what what I'm saying is it wasn't lost on me that there was somebody missing from this and and B our first job is to hire the superintendent and before we hire any other positions I wouldn't even entertain hiring like I understand y'all are working very hard but I'm not going to entertain hiring anybody else until we hire the superintendent because that's not our job that's his or her job so that's kind of where I'm sitting right now for what it's worth okay okay Jim this is very hard for me because um this is my wheelhouse this is what I've done this one of my Deb I dedicated my masters to this the financial impact of a poor culture um and with regards to turnover you have all heard my soapbox a million times we couldn't even do a fundamental put a dynamic work chart together I've been asking for two years so it's beautiful to see you can't start to fix things if you can't even see it it's about really simple foundational that's in the book what book that they're talking about oh Upstream what I struggle with is this is all great and for me not has nothing to do with the three of you sitting there in the work that went into this that the executive leadership did this is all performative much like Dei it's all performative until each of us look and I've had to do this in my career over and over until you look in the mirror and you take crucial accountability for the part that you've played in a toxic culture some people have paid bigger roles some people have played lesser roles when you had me until you got to the money because that is the answer that I hear all the time let's throw some money at it and it's gonna make it feel better yet almost on a daily basis I talked to someone that works in this District that does not meet one of the foundations of culture of foundations of a positive culture are three things safety you belong here vulnerability you can take risks and we will support you and number three purpose you are here for a reason and every single phone call one of those things I can say is what the other person on the other line is telling me that they lack so what is missing from all of this is what have we as an executive leadership team done the work because it takes an incredible amount of work an incredible amount of crucial accountability and setting our egos aside and that's her I have a hard time doing that because until we do that and until we build those three foundations of a successful culture the rest of this is all performative it sounds beautiful it looks great on a piece of paper her but it doesn't matter and all of it links back to one thing our vision and our mission it's why I will continue to vote no to it because our vision and Mission is is vanilla as it comes it doesn't take into account yes we've talked to people yes there are stakeholders included but it could be plopped into any District anywhere in the world I wanted to be a mission and vision for Oswego Illinois District 308 and let me share two pieces of um to more statistics 23 percent of employees strongly agree that their organization's values do not impact their daily work that's that's a problem number two only 27 strongly agree that they believe in their organizations values mission and vision so let's just pretend on a high that's 50 for us We There is a disconnect and what I try to share with you and sometimes because I'm so passionate about this it comes off and and I've shared this with Teresa and with faith that it comes off as me pointing fingers it's not it's passion because I know that when this works the best thing happens our kids are rocking and that's the only reason I'm here I'm here because I want every single one of our kids to have every opportunity available to them so frankly I don't think right now we need more people I don't think we need more money I think we need to be as real as we can with each other and John has now exited that that part of the formula you have to do that work with a new person and it is going to require building fences with people that need to be built fences need to be built and relationships and you have to figure out these three things along with a vision and Mission that accounts for every voice and sometimes they're not the voices that we agree with but they have to have a seat at the table whether they're students whether they're family members whether they're us she's not going to respond to that or it's our local government and right now none of those things are working we're just not communicating with each other and it is literally what keeps me up at night I don't have all the answers but for somebody who does this all the time I literally see these holes and I've tried to help and I haven't been as um successful as I would like but this is this is really phase two phase one is sitting down with that group and saying what do I what do I bring to the culture and what do I take away it's like a checking account what do I deposit into the culture and what do I um withdraw from the culture and I'll give a very generic example when when I hear an employee tell me that they are being told by their administrator that they can't do something that they've been doing for a long time and there's no reason given why or I mean that's just I don't even know what the examples are but it we are not all standing in line having set expectations Ellie and I talk about accountability all the time it is when your mission and vision are aligned to your expectations are in a line to your organizational values every decision is easy you say oh we need to spend nine hundred thousand dollars on this okay check check oops doesn't check this box and we continue to stumble over this we continue to disagree at the board level you making you guys might have that opportunity you wonderful human beings might have that effort to make have that in your meetings and so forth may happen on the building level meetings but all of these things are just not unfortunately cascading down so I strongly advise or ask or whatever it is if our end point is ours as many as possible of our students are achieving their highest possible potential and we are putting supports in for the students that aren't to get them there that is all of our end goal what are the steps that go before that to make that happen what are you depositing into that culture what are you and I don't mean School climate culture that's a whole different story I'm talking about the day-to-day workings of what we're doing with our people and it all starts with those people right there and that's going to change because our superintendents up there and because um Dr Hildebrand is leaving and because role org charts might be switched and it's why I I harp upon an org chart and job descriptions because when those foundations are in place you understand what everybody's doing and when you have role Clarity and you ask the board to support um chain of command all of these things are linked together so I strongly urge you to look in the mirror and say and have a really vulnerable conversation with each other and say Here's where I've been making deposits and here's what I'm making withdrawals help me help me be accountable help me be accountable maybe that's already been done I don't want to make a ton of assumptions but I I've seen that's one of the reasons that I ran for the board because all of this if you fix this will result in two different things you'll find a lot more money available because when your goals are clear and your values are clear you will make decisions based on them and so you will find money more money available number two you will be able to identify the gaps and you will have a group of people that will do anything to support you and say yep take it we'll find it for you we'll give it to you all those asks that you have will become so much easier but I agree with um Ali that I won't even begin to say do you need the help I guarantee you do that I know but until that person comes in whether they be interim or a full contract hire it's a really important piece of the puzzle I think this work is phenomenal it just needs um us a step before it so I don't want to detract from all the work that's been done I don't want you to be um anybody to take it personally I just want to make sure that when we had the culture survey results I was waiting for for somebody to come forward and say we've really taken a look at our foundational leadership and these are the things that need to change and I haven't seen that yet and I was really hoping to see that tonight before we got to money money doesn't fix everything there are people groups that and teams that work across the world with just such a smaller portion of the budget that we have available because they have the principles of a successful culture built they trust they have the safety they have the vulnerability and they have the purpose and the purpose frankly is as much our responsibility it is yours so yeah I'm sorry I'm sorry I really am um I I agreed with um where you save money in the culture I totally agree with that but we need people to do be able to do what you're asking um so 10 of these people are going to be gone in two years possibly uh 13 and four and pay getting people in at least that are able to do the job that have experience doing that job hitting the ground running is going to help get that done so I'm not saying that hey maybe we wait until New superintendent um I'm not saying that but we really have to take this into consideration um we can't wait for everything to get fixed we need people to try helping fix it too so yeah but you're asking them to fix something that there's not clear Direction on that Clarity is so important and we we don't even agree on the vision and mission of our district our our stakeholders don't agree on it and I know you're passionate about this but he just thinks about it differently than you no and that's okay I understand that I just want to get I want I want I expect the administrators to be able to do that stuff um and it's just when when you have this kind of turnover it's very difficult so okay that's all I'm saying thank you oh go ahead Eugene oh thank you I'm sorry it's not the easiest to hear you all so please forgive me if I repeat and or admit anything that anyone has said but um I appreciate you all for the presentation and um specifically I mean I I I I I personally understand the impact that turnover has on a on the culture and climate of an organization um and I appreciate this slide that is up currently we're all 16 members of um the executive or 60 members of the executive team contributed and set around the table um to brainstorm and and do research and I I just I appreciate the contextual knowledge that you have not just industry but also for our district to identify what you believe is needed in order to move us forward and uh Jen I don't disagree with anything that you said but I also agree with what dominic just said as well as within their presentation they pointed out that um a clear expectation meaning a Clear Vision is needed in order for them to do what's being asked and so I think that it's a at first I thought it was a you know chicken art egg which one comes first but I actually think it's simultaneous work they will have to do and it's a very unique position that we're in because typically of course vision is always cast before you actually begin to execute and so I believe that we do have to continue we have done some of the work already we do have to continue to do more work so that we can I won't say come to a consensus but to to make sure that we have Clarity within ourselves to to do our role as providing that Vision but I do believe that this presentation or partly I guess I should say from what I've seen thus far um could could help us gain some traction that we need in order to gather some momentum thank you very much Eugene so simultane can I share one other thing yes please to respond back a little bit to this so um a couple things and this is just coming from from me on a personal level when I look at the faces up on this slide um I always used to feel like the new kid on the Block but to be perfectly honest um sitting as the longest team member as part of the executive leadership team with just going into my eighth year sitting here um it I I totally agree with what um you know Mrs Johnson saying as far as the importance of being able to be vulnerable and have systems in place and all those things but I feel like when you you look at the climate and culture results and you see um kind of some consistency among the satisfaction in our other positions outside of the the leadership positions we've taken the role and this is you know kind of being vulnerable I feel like we've really taken the role of insulation so we've kind of taken the big mess and the unclear vision and we've tried to insulate um the going from the um the tasks but also what Jared mentioned as far as like the the money when the cost cutting came it came and it hit us right because we wanted to keep it as far away from the classroom as possible but the problem is the US keeps changing and so when you look around the table when we do interview and I've personally done it where we've interviewed people for positions and First Choice this is a person that's going to come in with great ideas and great experience but they won't take our position because they can go 10 miles away and make 20 more you know why would they or somebody that that does come in and they learn great things from us but they realize they can get plucked away somewhere else really easily so I don't think that we'll ever attain the ability to be vulnerable and to have clear direction if the people around the table change every year at the rate of 80 plus percent and we already know several spaces that are changing again but to look back just eight years ago in my opinion when you look at who's around the table and that's every single that's representing every single function of a school district from the business and operations side to the curricular student and learning side you can't not have it impact the classroom in some way when the people are changing because it takes time to build relationships it takes time to build trust and if if you're expected to kind of insulate from the bad but also you know develop the systems so that we have sustainability long term you can't do it when you're just spending every year learning the new people and trying to develop the relationship and then the next year it's a new person at the table again so what so while money isn't the only solution from first-hand experience I would say that it's it's definitely been the reason why a number of people have chosen not to come here or the reason why people have left the table and when you look at the work-life balance and satisfaction numbers I think those of us that have stayed which certainly weren't staying for the money we were staying for other reasons can't do it anymore yeah right like the the ability that we can sit in front of you right now today and have this kind of conversation it speaks Leaps and Bounds about you know vulnerability and about this team coming together and really understanding the Upstream but we can't move Upstream if every time we develop a system to save a kid from falling in the river a new person comes along and we have to retake the system again you uh listen we are actually saying the exact same thing what I hope that you hear from me is that and honestly it's even less about this team and it's more about this team is making sure that we are giving you Clarity but also that I'm what I'm suggesting is if we raise salaries and if we give you two more people that will not fix the issue if the other stuff isn't fixed that's why it's for so well it's not either it's not I don't really work it's about it's a either or it's a both and that's what I was saying just got to do it all to say I just feel like we have had like um we're saying the same things yes we are right so you are absolutely like hitting the nail on the head and frankly you have really you have insulated a lot of people and have really taken some hard hits so I hear that in you and I just want you to know that I'm we're very grateful for you and everybody at that table but what I just want to make sure that the board understands is that two people even if you did find the money somewhere else which I knew you would because I know it's there and um and um meeting some of the and putting some of these things in place these processes these systems is not the only not the only parts of the puzzle we have to be really really cognizant of where we've played a part in it I have I have responsibility for that too you know and so I don't want anybody to think that as a board member I am immune to that right we all have to take a look at the responsibility we've played but this board owes you what was the superintendent which then he Cascades that down Clarity and I just don't feel like we're there so I we're all saying the same thing and they're all parts of the puzzle and when all those pieces come together we're gonna be soaring and our kids are going to be soaring and that's the most important thing okay thank you thank you for this conversation thank you for this conversation it's been really enlightening and um we will have more of it thank you all right we're going on the 9.1 action item approval of roof bids can I have a motion I make a motion to approve are we do are we going here and I have a 9.1 roof yeah nine point okay okay the motion to approve the bid from JL Adler Roofing and Sheet Metal ink for the OHS roof replacement in the amount of 531 400 and 70 and the bid from Metal Master Roof Master Inc for the homestead roof replacement in the amount of 423 dollars second one yes Mr Gatewood Mr Gatewood Miss Johnson aye Mr ploger aye Miss Swanson yeah Miss Doyle I miss simulton aye motion passes 7-0 action item 9.2 approval of District mission statement can I have a motion please I make a motion to approve the district mission statement as presented I'll read the mission statement together we Empower support and motivate all students to thrive along their unique educational Journey second Doyle I miss Swanson aye Mr Sharon aye Ms simultan aye Mr Gatewood Miss Johnson no Mr cloaker aye motion passes 6-1 action item 9.3 ratification of letter of agreement with school exec connect can I have a motion please I make a motion to ratify the letter of agreement with school exec connect second oh second Ellie said second yeah Miss simultan aye Ms Swanson hi Miss Doyle aye Ms Johnson aye Mr Cerrone aye Mr Gatewood motion passes 7-0 action item 9.4 approval of advertising costs associated with the superintendent search can I have a motion please same to me no yeah I did I make let me know if I read it correctly I make a motion to approve the following advertising costs for the superintendent search aasa job flash National Alliance of black school Educators in association of Latin American superintendents for a total cost of 999 dollars second Mr ploger aye Ms Johnson aye Mr Cerrone aye Mr Gatewood all right Miss Swanson aye Miss Doyle aye Ms simultan aye motion passes 7-0 action item 9.5 approval of memorandum of understanding I make a motion to approve the memo memorandum of understanding as presented second Miss Johnson aye Mr cloger aye aye Ms Swanson aye Ms Doyle aye MS simultan I motion passes 7-0 action item 9.6 approval of the bargaining agreement with the OTA I make a motion to approve the 2022 through 2026 collective bargaining and agreement with the Oswego Transportation associate Association as presented pending attorney review second aye aye Mr pluger aye Mr siron aye Ms simultan aye Mr gate what all right Miss Swanson hi motion passes 7-0 can I make uh just now that it's passed yeah um can I just make a quick statement about that I mean it was a you know it was a long journey and it's only a 30 second thing um Dr sparlin um are we able to say what the the vote was the ratification percentages yeah yeah that's right okay um so I basically I'm excited that we were able uh to come to an agreement that resulted in 90 of the Oswego Transportation Association voting yes uh it was a pleasure working with everybody the 3008 administrators uh the OTA negotiating team LaTanya um actually and Jen filled in a couple times for me our board attorney and uh Mr Healy he helped a lot too he was a mediator right we've been diligently working together for the last seven months to reach an agreement that addresses safety concerns allows for flexibility eliminates many previous salary issues for new and existing drivers within the contract's duration addresses salary concerns for our current employees and makes SD 308 competitive to new employees uh this contract is a huge step forward in reducing our dependency on third party providers and making sure students and families in this District are properly service so I'm just excited I'm more than excited that this one's done that was an ordeal yeah so excited yes this is very exciting yeah yeah to give um you know to give the I I can't speak I'm just so elated about it so I'll leave it at that but great job um rapid you know summarizing that I really appreciate that yeah um so now we're going to go to 10.1 can I have a motion to go into closed session I make a motion to enter a closed session under statute 5 ilcs 120 slash C1 the appointment employment compensation discipline performance or dismissal of certain employees and individuals second aye Miss Johnson aye Mr K ate hi Mr
which will it passed will cap the graduation waivers that you can do it at 10 percent of your graduating class which would move to five percent in the next couple of years so I don't know what our current uh waiver percentages at the high school I do not know that so I know Mr marsnick had to leave the next one after that Senate Bill 391 closure of school buildings basically what this is saying is when a school building is under utilized it is available to Charter Schools or universities for that's that one dollar bill does that affect Crown Point uh not at this point depending what happens with this building though wow this building is going to be used so as we move forward as we move forward on that um another thing on the last pay or the second to the last page student Mental Health Services bill has a lot of attention when I was in Indianapolis on last Tuesday in the State House a lot of talk was going on about this bill and this is a dedicated funding for students social emotional and Behavioral Services for trained mental health professionals which would ease the burden on our classroom teachers and something that's note there Indiana has a state ranks last in the nation in Consular student ratio of 694 students to one counselor I think we're a little better than that in Crown Point yeah and school psychologist ratio of 1 674 students to one school psychologist I'm not sure where we ranked there partisan School Board election that was a that died today where students school board members had to register as a Republican or Democrat that died today but that doesn't necessarily mean when a bill dies it actually dies because the language could be reintroduced as an amendment as it goes forth so none of these have passed yet there's still a lot more to go we're not going to know much more until April 29th or actually April 30th and I answer any questions just like to thank you Tim for your work put into this has been updating us on where things stand thank you you're welcome all right back to Mr Reese I think we have our resolution to the issue with technology thank you let's hope so good evening members of the board so tonight I just want to go back through you starting off the process with where we started with redistricting and some of what you heard at the last board meeting in regards to data driven the demographic report and then also the work we did with the local municipalities regarding the new home starts anticipated um with that we have I think what many people don't understand we'll talk about this a little bit is that we have four municipalities we work with five really but the county didn't have any uh when contacted but we do have uh obviously a city of Crown Point Town of Cedar Lake in Winfield but then also the town of St John has a small area up in our district as well in the northwest corner of the district group so we communicated with them to see where they were at with their new home starts as well one of the things we looked at was also the Equitable balance between schools and that's the efficient use of the capacity we have planning again for that future home growth so we can make sure that some when we say Equitable balance it doesn't mean everybody's going to be equal what it means is some maybe lower some higher based on where those new home starts are coming in with the idea and just to remind you we haven't done this since 2009 at the elementary and middle school level we had a small tweak in 2012 but overall the major redistration hasn't happened in 2009 just give you an idea what that means I'm lucky enough to know that my son is going to be graduating this year and he started kindergarten in 2010.
defense we've always done well Dr nespa so let's cross our fingers for the Bears and Wildcats okay we'll be ready thank you madam president well thank you to everyone for being here tonight thank you for the board question for thinking things through with us and that being do we have a motion to close so moved properly moved and seconded that's the close of this meeting um thank you oh boy I got a bunch of stuff today um guys we got more to we've got more at this time
so nobody currently in our school corporation has gone through a redistricting parent may have but no student has gone through a redistricting in our school corporation the goal with this one is to have the same thing happen we'd love to go another 10 or 15 years and not go through this process again and that's the goal as we stated last time also use of major roads since we did the last redistricting we've had some changes in the transfer the Bus Transportation laws we want to make sure we're adhering to those as well as some undivided subdivisions we'd rather not run different buses to the same subdivision I think the big piece before we get into this is remembering um well it's important to each individual and their family and their students um our task is as a school corporation and this is our family we need to worry about all of our students and that's who we're trying to build this around not any individual one and I can tell you as we work through this and working through the the lines uh that wasn't taken into account of what's going to impact this person it's all about what's going to impact all of our students and provide the best situation for us moving forward as a district so that being said here's a picture of the current K4 moving into the elementary areas the different colors of the students notate where they currently are going to school at again this is K4 obviously fifth graders we'll talk about a little bit they'll be moving on to the middle school next year because we have not had kindergarten registration we don't know where the kindergarten students are so what you see are current k-4 students that we're projecting into first through fifth grade for next year you can see the smattering of where they're at it's important to note specifically we're going to talk right off the bat about Winfield Elementary and really the lack of students near Winfield Elementary that building's been there for quite a while but the Housing Development hasn't gotten that far south in Winfield Township yet as we've moved through it so without further Ado here are the proposed boundaries for the 23-24 school year um I'll start off and what you're going to see through the presentations I'm going to break down each one of these individually so you can go we'll go through them with you so we can break out the lines specifically as we get down to that um one thing I do want to point out as we pointed out the number of students that were not around Winfield Elementary one of the other issues we deal with is the proximity as you'll see here of Lake Street Solon and Eisenhower and what you'll notice in there is that we've kind of put those in the corner and then worked our way out from there similar to some boundaries that they have now they're trying to make sure we're we're heading those schools and getting as much many students as possible into that area so let's talk about Jerry Ross I'm going to try to start the uh what's going to be the northwest corner of each of these areas so starting here this is grant Grand Boulevard right now uh the northern boundary along here is the Township Line or 101st Street we're going to come down Grand to 109th there's no Street currently or will be that runs from 109th down to 117th but all the development is going to be on both sides of this imaginary line as we talked to the town of Winfield that comes down to 117th and then goes to the east along 117th over to Randolph from Randolph then it comes down to just south the Lake of the Four Seasons and runs over to the boundary line which it runs over here along the eastern border of the township so that gives you a breakdown of what Jerry Ross looks like the important part talking too much already the important part to remember this is geographically the smallest area we have however what you're going to see when I show you the projected enrollments is the most populated Elementary we're going to have one of the issues as we get into this wind field we understand that this this while Jerry Ross sitting right here is really close to this intersection of 117th and Randolph uh what we have is a situation of where we find more kids to take down to Winfield Elementary to try to alleviate some of that pressure and frankly anybody else along here is because there's not an extension a grant from 109th down to 117th everybody else would have to run along 109th and then come down Randolph and drive right by Jerry Ross going out to Winfield that's why taking anybody else from this northern part was difficult we also wanted to keep the other Lake of the Four Seasons kids so they were all in one one area we looked at potentially dividing that and it just didn't work out from a transportation perspective so we come along here and that's why we have this line that comes 117th over to Randolph and then on down and everybody there will figure we'll come down from there this neighborhood of latitude and longitude that's going in right here um while we didn't we we talked about the possibility of moving some of these these areas right here are actually going to feed out onto Randolph they don't yet but they will and so what we did want to do is take a situation where students potentially to live across the street our walkway to Jerry Ross and not go to that building and head south instead to Winfield so one of the areas we know we're a little tight is going to be at Jerry Ross participate a little over 600 students there as we get started moving on to Winfield and it's important that you can see the geographical area here of Jerry Ross and how small it is when you compare it to the area of Winfield and the number of students that this is going to generate if you remember back to showing the numbers of the K4 students up there and how sparsely populated that is a lot of the population for Windfield as we're proposing it is right here along this Corridor where some of these subdivisions are near 117th 121st out there in Randolph so starting here in the north this is I-65 in the northern part of our district with 101st Street the boundary will run down 65 on down to the southern part of our boundary across and continue across the southern part of our district it makes it all the way over to the eastern part of our district on the Township Line comes on up and in this case it's actually the county line in this case comes on up sorry I'm losing my body good um I don't know where I'm pointing at I apologize it comes up to the southern border then of that uh just south of the lakes of the Four Seasons and then there it is and then on across uh to the southern portion of the Jerry Ross and then that that Western portion there along the Grand Boulevard up to 101st then so geographically our largest boundary district is Winfield Elementary what you're also going to hear a little bit it's one of our smaller populations out there majority as we looked at the growth taking place in Winfield Township though is taking place along 109th and 113th as we get into this area and I think I've got it right there yeah right in this area here there's quite a bit of uh development happening there along the southern portion of 109th a lot of that new portion that will transfer on down to Winfield Elementary moving on to Tim my ball so Timothy ball reaches the furthest Northwest porn of our district at the cross of the two Township lines uh here at 101st and Klein and then when it comes South down to 231 would run along 231 all the way over to 117th 113th then continue running over to I-65 and then up to the northern part of the district 101st Street and then across the northern part it's the easiest one to look at all major roads uh 231 Klein 101st over to I-65 the only small piece there is about 113th as you get just south of the Sportsplex complex there in the city Sloan Robinson sure t-ball's right there in the middle the little purple Apple I'd call it purple I apologize you're good okay blue okay that's what you get you let a colorblind guy do with colors let's call it the Apple in the middle how's that stolen Robinson Robinson located uh right here in the close to the center or near the edge of the of it there uh starts at the square Works its way South along Court Street on down to Franciscan drive one thing about Court Street currently the boundaries for Solon in Corpus says anybody lives on Court Street would attend Solon that would still be the case we wouldn't change that uh boundary for that across Franciscan now across the southern portion a small trip down nine The Nine Mile or Grant Street uh to just south of the uh the village is there Faith Drive uh all of that so we have now what we're going to have our first timer going off script other than the Grand Boulevard extension but we're going to travel through some uh non-road uh following and so we're gonna come across here uh to the the northern part of an area just off of The Nine Mile we're gonna jump jump South and what we're trying to do is grab this Stillwater subdivision so the Stillwater subdivision now would all go to to Solon it comes across here on the bottom comes up the the Smith ditch and then juts out and so then comes back up to 231 and then on down along 231 to 65 back up to 113th to meet the southern part of the t-ball border and then along 231 back up to the square so a little bit of change there by grabbing some students in Stillwater we need to get some more students into the Solon Robbins area so we grabbed we extended their southern border essentially from the line it currently is on down a little bit to grab some of the students from Eisenhower speaking of Eisenhower so the Eisenhower we just talked about that northern border there that kind of jig jogs its way across the northern part there it runs then down uh the the Court Street to 133rd so from just south of the fairgrounds there on down past the hospital uh to 133rd across 133rd to The Nine Mile and then the Nine Mile on down south to the very Southern portion of our Township over to I-65 up I-65 meeting that southern border of Solon Robinson that forms a northern boundary line Verizon hour the next one is Lake Street the Lake Street similar to the situation at Solon where all the students on Court Street go to Solon that same thing happens on this little street right here called fatkey so at fat key same line as it currently is all those students on fatkey will go to Lake Street no matter which side they live on on fatkey then that comes down to Burr where it connects at Burr on down to 121st across 121st on down then uh Clark Street over to the 133rd across the southern border of 133rd and then up Court Street or Marshall all the way back up to 231 and then forming that northern border at c-31 where it meets with Solon in the corner of the square of Solon t-ball and Lake Street again trying to keep that somewhat in the edgier and then working our way away from Lake Street to gather some students the MacArthur also covers a fairly significant geographic area it starts here at the 231 and Klein comes down Klein through the lake on down to the southern portion of our Southern border of our district across to Nine Mile and then up to Nine Mile to 133rd 133rd and then this is the same board I just discussed with Lake Street where you go up Clark across 121st and then on up Burr to Fat keep and that gives you an idea of what that border then is of MacArthur is so what that looks like with the new boundaries in students you can see here um the different colors and obviously where students are in a different color they'll be going to potentially a new school if they're in that boundary and we'll talk about those transitions here in a little bit this gives you an idea a way that Maps out for the district where those boundaries are and also where the current student is and this is where we talked about the Jerry Ross and and Winfield uh situation you can see the number of students that attend K4 students we have within that Jerry Ross and trying to figure out how would you pull any students out of there given that they're going to be over 600 students and the fact of the matter is we just couldn't find many students to try to get out of that area because of their proximity to the building so with that here are the estimated enrollments and tied to that are the growth rates because as we talked about that with the new home starts in each of the different communities so all of our building capacities months were completed with construction will be at 700.
Eisenhower we're anticipating about 500 students with a moderate growth Lake Street at 550 with a low growth rate there are quite a few developments within the Lake Street but most of them are not substantial in size most of them are smaller developments in nature 10 to 25 homes MacArthur at 475 you'll notice it's the lowest populated building but also has the highest growth rate because it doesn't encapsulate all of the potential subdivisions and growth out in the Cedar Lake area and does grab a little bit of what the city of Crown Point doing is doing on the south side of 133rd there is a high growth percentage that's why that building is at the lowest enrollment estimated enrollment starting next year Solon Robinson a low growth rate not much development going on about 530 students Timothy ball similar at 550 also a low development rate Winfield we're at 520 you'll notice that outside of Eisenhower and MacArthur there is some high growth going on at Winfield do those developments I talked about as we looked between 109th and 103rd taking place in Winfield Township last but not least is Jay Ross at 630 and that's the moderate if anything that we're slightly uncomfortable with or concerned about that we'll be monitoring closely is Jerry Ross because and you can see just because how close the number how many and how close the number of students are in Jerry Ross with that moderate growth rate um that is one thing that we're aware of and we'll be monitoring closely before we go on to the Middle School let's stop right here pause and ask any questions try to answer any questions that you may have for us any questions at all if you'd rather wait till we get further along that is fine as well but give you the opportunity here as well I mean I'd like to make a couple just general comments this passes the eye test for me so I mean I know what's going on out in MacArthur with Cedar Lake all the developments that are going on there and then Winfield we know that everything around the new middle school has already been gobbled up by developers and that's just a matter of time before that catches up so but you're right that's exactly that was exactly my thought was on Jerry Ross is how soon before we hit that 700 um and if it's not moderate growth and it ends up being high growth you know how do we adjust to that so that's just me that's just me thinking out loud yeah so in looking at that Jerry Ross with the moderate growth it's really on the low to moderate where does it go based off of what we know is coming from our conversations with Winfield with the town of Winfield and looking at their planning proposals that are out there so we feel like we're going to be fine there as far as that that number goes with the uh them being the highest just simply because of of looking at the options for additional housing there which which schools are most impacted from the elementary schools by the redistricting yeah so the easy answer that is Winfield to Jerry Ross so because just because they have the two different grade levels you have K2 and three through five so approximately 300 students that are I think at Jerry Ross are going or other all the way around or at Winfield are going to be going to Jerry Ross because they're in K-2 and they'll be moving on to Jerry Ross because they now live within that District so those are the easy ones that I can Easy by easy I mean they're just because you're going from a K2 and three five building they're going to swap essentially now not quite because of the the overpopulation at Jerry Ross they're going to swap more kids than everybody else right and we'll talk about the impact here yeah it's also nice to see that some of the the load has been taken away from Lake Street as well yeah if you go back to last meeting that was the big issue the wiry district well we have a building with over 740 students and we have other buildings that are a little over 400 right and we haven't redistricted in over 14 years so we've got an imbalance and we need to get it right now's the time to get it right because we have doing a middle school redistricting and we have the expansion of our buildings taking place Mr Reese I like to see it's very nice out of our had gone in afterwards so I know like Regency for example had jumped over a school to go to another school so it's nice to see a lot of that address the way you guys kind of took the buildings that are so close together and kind of branched outward from that so that seems to make a lot of sense we had a lot more information this time than what we did in 2000 all right thank you all right under the Middle School current fifth through seventh graders so we've looked at it and again the color coding or where the current students are currently at um so what we have is a situation where we have the current fifth through seventh graders and then you see the new Apple there for the future Taft Middle School that won't say future in a few months but right now it's the future Taft middle school and you can see where that's going to be located out there in Winfield Township as we look at the Middle School boundary um obviously with having now one essentially on on one side of 65 and one on the other side of 65.
we really looked hard uh you're going to draw a north-south line to to separate the district and so where you move that north-south line and you can't tweak it a bit as it turned out um uh this line works pretty pretty well at the Nine Mile Stretch we started you know at 65 where's that look as you split it that way and then you move it over to Broadway and where does it look and when we got it over to uh The Nine Mile um as you'll hear in a second that's where the balance occurred uh between the the two buildings where we have fairly equal enrollment on both buildings and also really equal growth uh new future home starts projected as well so that this line obviously not nearly as many aligns as you're working through the elementary process but we found again it met the category of we're not dividing subdivisions and also or using a major road to divide it when you're splitting the district in two so this is where we're at with Middle School boundary this is what it looks like with students and believe it or not when you look at that the next step is what's it look like 1085 students are estimated at Taft the new Taft 1050 at Colonel wheeler and the growth rates equal with a little over 3 000 potential home starts on both sides so the numbers just worked out to be where they were fairly equal at The Nine Mile moving in anywhere further east than that just didn't get us to a balanced building on either one of them it offset the balances between the two so talk about middle school and I'm going to hit the impact here in just a second any questions on Middle School Russian Dr Terrell will consideration be given as I mean I'm sure obviously with boundaries just coming out transportation is probably next in the works if we can go back to that the size of space that's taken up for the new Taft some of those look pretty far away well consideration be given to Transportation routes for those students so that we're we're minimizing that impact for them yes we're actually working through that process right now we're probably a few to several weeks away from actually having bus routes that we can look at and roll out with that right now we believe that we're going to be able to get those the time on buses down quite a bit um but again we've got to get to the point where we can work through those transportation department has been very involved with looking at the boundaries throughout the entire process to work on what bus routes can look like because one of the concerns is we don't we can't get to a point where we've got to add several buses simply because of the financial obligation that goes with that but at the same time we want to make sure that students aren't spending any more time on buses than they currently are the goal is for that to go down as well as we work through it and just to follow up to that is it still feasible to to the high school combo bus with the location of the new Taft again that's one of the things we're working through um trying to figure out what that can look like and what the different options are our goal is that we'll keep those schedules as close to being what they are right now and be able to still accomplish getting kids to those buildings as needed most efficiently and effective way thank you foreign so quickly summarizing the impact elementary students a few over a thousand students will be changing buildings that's a significant number approximately 35 percent of our students believe had impacted by that about 400 to 500 of those students are Winfield and Jerry Ross So majority of those come from those two buildings as we break the two grade levels and put them into both being K-5 building middle school students changing a little over 900 students that makes a lot of sense considering the current Winfield Township students come into Colonel wheeler they'll be going out to Taft so you have quite a bit of change a lot of the students are on the far west side let's say the elementary students from MacArthur are Lake Street as those currently going to Taft will now be going to Colonel wheeler so it just makes sense there's a significant shift as you move one of those buildings out there and the students that we're going to the other one are now going to the new one so that's why we have the significant shift in the number of students both at the middle school level but also Elementary due to the changing grade level at Winfield and and Jerry Ross any questions for me on the impact or where we're at with the boundaries I have one more question for Dr Tara um do we know about how many obviously we noted Lake Street being reduced um significantly to to take the pressure off there do we know about how many teachers are impacted with the the changes that we've made here yeah so we're working through that right now with the goal of having that information out to the buildings um no no more than a week from tonight to be able to release that to the teachers so they know but also so then as we look at Staffing for next year what we do know right now is that the preliminary numbers that have come in show us at being able to do all of this with maintaining the same number of teachers at the elementary level in other words not increasing that number or decreasing the number of teachers that we currently have and just to clarify Dr Terrell can you speak to whether any teachers will be switching schools or do we know as far as Middle School just for clarification as far as the middle school goes in particular yes at this time the the plan is that wheeler will be at Wheeler Taft will be at Taft as far as the staff goes um but with saying that we always have our volunteer transfer opportunities for our teachers that they can put in or request a transfer so where that could happen is is if there's an opening at um Taft or there's an opening at Wheeler and a teacher at one of the other at the other building sees that opening and would like to be considered for that they would go through the voluntary transfer process that we have in place and that is currently open right now yep okay so at this time what I'd like to do is we're going to have our directors of education so Sabrina and Mark and Heather are going to take us through looking at this slide right here and knowing that 35 percent of our elementary students are impacted 45 percent of our middle school students are impacted what's that transition process going to look like how are we going to help students parents get in those buildings to begin to become more familiar with them so we'll start off with Elementary and Mr Ramirez thank you Dr Carol as we think about redistricting we know that there's a lot of opportunity for Equity I think that it's also honest to say that there's discomfort with uncertain and what I can assure you of is for the past two years we have been intentionally working to align our seven elementary schools we have a collaborative team of Elementary administer administrators that meets multiple times a month to focus on Elementary and District needs we have comprehensive curricula driving our teaching and learning in all seven of our buildings with ongoing professional development support the growth of our educators teachers meet as building level teams regularly we also have K-5 District level professional learning communities that meet discuss data and instructional best practices in order to meet the needs of students and to develop our network of collaboration and really aligned education across the district we have grading practices and instructional minutes that have been developed and that are in place to further support an aligned educational experience for our students irrespective of the building that they attend we also have common extracurricular activities for our students throughout our elementary schools with exploratory options that are developed based around interests for our families who will be attending a new school next year we will have our principals reaching out to you on March 7th and they will be communicating with you first welcome you by a message in parent Square they will also then be adding our parents for those new families attending a different school next year to their newsletter communication so that they can start to learn about the school community and about happenings within that school we also encourage our families to follow their new school on social media which really gives a great view into what it's like to be a student and a family in any one of our schools lastly with our welcoming opportunities our administrators teachers and staff are ready to welcome our new families and they are excited about this opportunity to support a transition to make this as smooth for our students and their parents or caregivers so we're going to start in may with principals and or other staff members going to the school buildings of students who will be attending their school next year so that they can meet their new students get to know them start talking to them about the culture of their school and what to expect and this will also be an opportunity for students to ask questions and to get those questions answered by staff that they will be working with we also want to really maintain a very social and family focused environment in August with popsicles on the playground where we will invite all of the families who will be attending each of our seven elementary schools to connect and really have some fun activities out in the playground as well as opportunities to tour the building learn about procedures like arrival and dismissal so that we go into the school year very soon we will also hold all of our open houses before the start of the school year this is an opportunity for our students as well as parents to meet families and again get acclimated with their school schools expectations and kind of the culture of that building what I can really assure all much as I started this is that we are as an elementary team as well as a district of Crown Point schools all in for all of our students and I know that this transition plan will continue to evolve to make sure that we're meeting our families thank you I did it thank you president board members so for our middle schools um very similar to our elementaries our middle school principals and administrations have been working very hard for the past few years to make sure that the same course offerings curriculum social emotional um um programming that we have during our advisory times all exist in both middle schools there's the same extracurriculars co-curriculars and very very aligned with our clubs as well so we hope that as our students and our parents kind of transition to a different Middle School they'll see that there's a lot of similarities in both middle schools so in planning on bringing our our parents to the new middle schools we we've been doing this in the spring and it's really geared towards incoming sixth grade parents it's about that really if you've never had a middle school student before what to anticipate from that Journey from sixth seventh and eighth grade and off to the high school but um we are going to continue to have that meeting even though the new Taft won't be ready we'll have that the meeting for our Taft parents at the current half building and internal wheel or have that meeting as well once we have that meeting we'll also be able to explain exactly what all this transition planning looks like and how the communication will go for those parents um we will also be sending out some parent messaging come March for anyone that will be going into a new middle school for next year so they'll be hearing from the principals early on as soon as these district lines have been approved um as we get closer to the school year it will have our traditional parent night again this was normally for uh incoming parents have never been to the building but they're going to offer that to every parent so whether you're just starting all over again or if you're staying in the same building you want to hear what's kind of new on August 10th they're going to have a parent night and obviously with that parent night there'll be a presentation from the administrators but then we'll also kind of have an open house so you can see the new buildings and there's plenty of improvements that are happening at Colonel wheeler it's still a fabulous building in great shape but there's been more things that will be we'll be looking forward to adding to that building so then for our students we'll have our Bulldog Rush which has been a tradition for our sixth graders when they first come into a new building they get to meet their teachers they get to get those first aid Jitters out go through and see what it's like to get the lunch in the cafeteria and just kind of meet all the folks that will be there with you students and administrators and teachers but in addition to that Bulldog Rush we're going to have one for seventh and eighth grade students as they return back for the year because everything will be a little bit different so we want to have them have that opportunity to have that structured time in the buildings kind of see the new buildings see the teachers and the administrators and then finally we'll end with our open houses that we have which is kind of the meet the teacher night so that all of our our students and parents can come together be comfortable for the start of the school year any questions on that are we okay good evening of course so for exceptional education our work with inclusion and that commitment we've made does not end with this redistricting we will continue to refine and improve our inclusionary practices at all of our schools and build the capacity of staff to work with students with diverse needs and this includes in academics and behavior we'll continue to provide high quality instructional supports and services at all of our schools as well as our very high quality staff we will include our new buildings that are hosting some specialty programs they've never hosted before we've already started the work of training staff and admin teams in those buildings to prepare for the arrival of some different programs they've never housed before next year for our classrooms with students that have emotional disabilities those will continue to be housed at Timothy ball and Jerry Ross for elementary the middle school has a switch next year the Ed program will now be housed at Wheeler and that was just merely due to where the students live so there weren't enough to have a Taft program and a Wheeler program they were almost all-wheeler Crown Point High School also houses that program exciting is that we have applied skills programming in all of our buildings next year so all seven elementaries both middle schools and the high school so more and more of our students are being educated in their home schools um Mrs oops my assistant director and myself will be calling several families tomorrow we know change can be a little more difficult for some of our students and families so we're going to give some phone calls to families that are impacted by a change in a different School many have had the same teachers for years and we know that that's stressful to think about having a different site in a different group of Staff members but we will assure them that we've been working with all of our staff to make sure our students get high quality instruction at all buildings so before we go into questions that you might have for the directors of Education just something I think that's important to pause here and point out over the last two years the work we've been doing Mr hardman's headed up being our chief academic officer and working to make sure that our elementary schools have a common language that that experience while is unique to the building is is similar in what the students experience in each building also then looking at our middle schools and making sure that what we're offering and doing at Wheeler we're doing it Taft and vice versa has really put us in a situation where now if students go to any of our buildings they're going to have a very similar quality of Education as well as programs and Ms pasquis mentioned the inclusion work that we're doing being able to have all of these different programs within the the students home school to be able to provide that and that's a big part of inclusion and looking at that we're able to provide the services that our students need within their school that is closest their home school as they go into that so we'll pause here before Brooke and I kind of take it the rest of the way with the last couple of slides just to see if there's any questions that we can answer for you guys about the transition and what that looks like as we move forward yes Dr Terrell doing this for 43 years now I know and I don't want to speak for any parents that are in the audience or maybe I will that I think parents want two things for their kids in education they want their kids to have a good education and they want them to be safe that sound about right are we guaranteeing then that wherever their child goes to elementary school that education is Sabrina said the opportunities are going to be the same you know school boards are charged with providing opportunities for students so are we assuring that all up those opportunities are equal in all schools yeah so I think that one of the things that's very important is the the short answer is yes that is going to be the case in all of our buildings um the longer answer to that is we take a great pride here in Crown Point of the schools the services that we provide the educational experiences the extracurricular experiences as you saw demonstrated this evening that we provide for our our community for our students and that is still one of those driving factors of what is making our community continue to grow as you talk with those coming in with you talk with people who move here those who are developing different subdivisions developments housing developments is based off of what the academic experiences here at Crown Point schools nothing will change with that we only look for that to get better okay let me ask another this has to do with special education so with the programming Miss pascus I know students are going to be changing buildings and as as a former special educator I understand those are difficult well any of these program building changes for our students that I see Timothy ball Jerry Ross Colonel wheeler at the high school as well will any of the buildings be available for these students in the summertime to come and you know there wasn't any mention about the students being at the schools about the parents being at the school is there a chance for the students to be in that environment well part of the transition will be um can we go back a couple of slides there for someone will be opportunities for students to be in the buildings as well so popsicles on playground was part that will include the students being part of that at the middle school level we have Bulldog Rush we're going to do for every student every grade level will be a part of that they're included in they're all included we do it all together so we'll bring them in when we bring in margin ed students go ahead if we have a special circumstance personal visit might be appropriate we've done those as well so we're happy to do that we typically do that for sixth graders ninth graders so that's not a problem any other questions on that I I'm assuming we'll get to communication with the communication director where parents with director that question thanks so that's a great transition into Brooke information pending approval this evening tomorrow our first step will be to update our staff we start with our front office staff all of those individuals need to be able to field a lot of questions and information will go out to them first and then we'll update the rest of our staff with some items that are very specific to them we covered a couple of those things this evening Staffing and how that will progress over the next couple of weeks we will make sure that the website page that's there now will be updated so this presentation will be there we'll have a map that's um more detailed than the maps you saw this evening you can zoom in and out you can type your address and you can see exactly where your house is with a new boundary I would say around noon because all of those things take a little bit of time around noon any family who is changing to a new school will receive a notice it'll remind them of the redistricting process what went into it and then it will list whatever their new school next week which is the one that I'm a little bit more excited about parents who are going to have a change in placement for their children will start getting messages from their building level principles I think that's the more important component here because those are the ones that you start to feel the environment of your new building and you start to really feel that new culture be a little less formal um on our website that redistricting page has a form at the bottom for questions and I can't emphasize enough that we hope people use that form if they have a need or a question or they need more information if you call a building sometimes you get put through the next person because we're trying to figure out who needs to receive that call but with the form all of those will come in to our team here and then we'll divide them out to the individual who can answer the question the best do you mind advancing it to the next one you can tight there for a minute so some of the questions that we're getting a lot that we want to make sure that we address tonight that we will address as well tomorrow and the information that Brooke has mentioned out of District students so our current boundaries as far as Crown Point Community School Corporation are not changing so with this that doesn't mean that additional students who live outside in another Township that still have Crown Point addresses that is not changing to allow them to come into our our school corporation our boundary does not change voluntary transfer requests these are in those situations that have extenuating circumstances McKinney vento parts that come into this with being displaced from homes for various different reasons that process will still be in place and will be followed just like it has been before again this is very few and far between where those voluntary transfer requests are granted grandfathering going back to the last time that we did this we had an opportunity for if you were in fifth grade to stay where you were 8th graders to stay we're not going to do that with this redistricting process and part of that is again looking at that Equitable experience for our students and what we're doing at Jerry Ross and Winfield there's no way to make that happen and make the transition that we're doing there so we are not going to grandfather students in were they because they're going to be in fifth grade they get to finish or they're going to be in eighth grade the change the boundaries are what they are and that is what's going to be their school start times we already mentioned we're looking at keeping those as close to what they are right now Staffing again we already mentioned and information will be going out to buildings and to teachers here within the week of the tonight so again Brooke stated this question form really is going to be very important for our community members as they have questions part of that is as you can imagine many people will have the same question and as we get that and can put the answer to that question online that way when people go they can see the same or the answer to the questions that they may be thinking about or that have already been asked with that I'll open it back up for any additional conversations about communication of the plan and how that will be rolled out Brooke could you just reiterate again the time frame for going on the website and be able to see where you live and find out what school you're going to be going to and then the second half of that noon noon tomorrow everybody plan on unless you're a staff member okay thank you let me jump in for just one quick one here um part of that will be a link where you can actually scroll down zoom in to where you the different addresses are streets are within each boundary and people will be able to go to their home and actually see where their home ends up being on that map we also Our intention is that tomorrow we'll also have it where you can go in like you currently do and type in your address to find out what school you're supposed to your students will go to next year the plan is right now if there are no glitches with that which we think there won't be that that'll be operational tomorrow as well uh one question the question link there the questionnaire form on the website is that for all inquiries related to redistricting meaning if a student has is experiencing anxiousness and a parent wants to seek out help for the adjustment you know we're a few weeks out to the question box absolutely so in that instance if a parent had a specific concern we would make sure we're following up with both buildings and then we would Loop in probably one of our directors they would make sure support staff is brought in that's a good example of how using the form we can involve everyone great and and the second thing I just want to reiterate I think it's important that we talked about this last month too that as students are adjusting they may have a hard time some may be anxious some may be sad we want to as a school corporation partner with the parents to meet the needs of the students and I really just want to emphasize that again so please if you need help or if you need help more support from the schools please reach out we have those resources available and happy to try to assist now on the flip side of that is also is there going to be any instructions to parents in the initial email that goes out to kind of give some breathing space to your principals and and not have their phones ringing off the hook the first couple days because they obviously have a very important job to do in just managing their building is that going to be addressed in any type of communication that goes out not specifically but I can tell you we like we all know tomorrow will be busy our principles included that's what it is we're here to answer questions we may not get back to you right away because we'll have more questions this week than a typical week but I think everybody's prepared to you know take it as it comes okay all right thank you bro moving on to item 5.03 approval of the new Elementary Middle School boundaries doc or Mr Reese thank you Mr President members of the board after going through the information that we presented uh tonight and last meeting uh we're happy to recommend the boundaries as described tonight in the presentation for the Elementary and Middle School boundaries you've heard the recommendation of the administration for approval of the new boundaries for the elementary and middle school buildings I have motion so moved second motion by Mr Smith second by Mr babjac question or discussion I would just like to bring up something um redistricting in a community like this is a necessity if you go back to 2009 numbers we had 7 610 students we're currently just a shade under 9 000 total so if you look in 14 years almost 1400 students or I'm sorry 20 almost 23 uh no that's right 1400 almost exactly so about 100 students per year in average growth this happens in different areas at times Middle School Elementary and high school but once again most of you that have either moved here in the last few years or been here forever stayed here or moved here for a couple reasons one that these schools are top ranked in the state and there's no argument about that no matter what level you're at elementary middle school or High School and for the low tax rate compared to where maybe you came from with that in mind I can tell you every decision made behind this decision and moving lines coming from the information provided by Dr McKibben is all about the educational purpose of each and every one of those 8 900 kids not just one or two not just three or four but it puts them all into the equation so with that being said if you contemplate 8 900 students you take into effect some split families you're probably dealing with 22 23 000 parents when you make decisions that are going to be affected by this so it's not taken lightly with the help of a cabinet that's experienced in each one of their areas with a superintendent that's been involved in this and other air districts he's worked this is the best plan that we've come up with and I can tell you with meeting with board members individually because you have to do that can have more than two uh three of us in a meet or two of us in a meeting I met with them last week not everybody was on the same page from start to finish on this decision and we've talked through some of those and not every argument has been so-called answered but I just want to make sure that the public does realize that this isn't taken with a grain of salt and there's a lot of hard work put in behind the scenes which you can tell by the presentation and just some of the information and I can tell you kids are usually resilient raising for myself each and every one of them is different the kids will be the easiest part of this yes they'll find friends at the new school between sports they play activities they're involved in the gaming online all of them will adjust accordingly what I would ask those of you parents is that you help them with that and explain to them and if there are concerns like Mr Smith mentioned that we work out those concerns because this is the best interest of your students sometimes mom and dad might not be appeased or applauded with what just occurred or because they got to move schools or do something like that but I just want to say just work with us because I promise you the education of your students to the top of our level that we can provide is what came behind most almost every part of this decision other than just fixing boundary lines well stated Mr angel any other questions all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye those opposed motion carries five zero superintendents discussion groups anything from uh we're still I know kind of uh cities uh Cedar Lake Winfield in the city I know Winfield hasn't done anything uh Brian anything with Cedar Lake nothing from Cedar Lake I know we're transitioning so it's oh typical Cedar Lake yes I have Cedar Lake okay that's okay uh interesting you know the Redevelopment commission and their Town Council are one in the same I don't know if you realize that or not but they're one in the same so it was able to go to their meeting a few weeks back two subdivisions when which Mr Reese alluded to being built in within the Cedar Lake Town limits one is just going from 133rd Street moving south to 141st that's the entire mile as the crow flies just on the other side of the lake side subdivision they're looking at maybe as many as 800 new homes there it's a big swath of land and the Old South Shore Golf Course some of you may have golfed on that at one time that was originally going to be taken over by the YMCA as a campsite that deal fell through so now developer has uh swallowed that up and they're looking at 200 new homes on that site as well for our transportation department soon they're going to be starting a sidewalk project that starts from the boat launch in Cedar Lake off of 100 actually be lake shore drive all the way to the town hall so our transportation department be aware of some delays going on there thank you Tim from Cedar Lake anything for the city Brian the city just the RDC just approved some grants for restaurants new restaurants coming in off 109th I think the biggest aspect or thing that event that occurred at the meeting was the city acquired some property the the hope is that they're going to extend the old railroad easement and a bike path and eventually complete it so as part of that project I'd acquired a piece of property to have proper access um under roads and they're going to extend that all the way down to Hebron that's the goal so that we would have a bike path from Crown Point to Hebron so that's what required there and just let the public know we're provided a opportunity to have a member on the Redevelopment commissions of these three different taxing entities hence why that this part of the discussion is for that aspect of it thank you .02 director of Elementary education anything else tonight sure thank you Mr President board members I just wanted to take a moment to recognize our Eisenhower Eagle Bots they have really put in a lot of hard work and dedication this year this team won the elementary school Excellence award which is the highest Award presented in the Vex robotics program and they also earned a bid to compete at the state level so we're very excited for them and for all that they have achieved and will continue to achieve I'd also like to thank the administration teachers and staff at Timothy ball with their construction project very well underway over Presidents Day weekend they moved 17 classrooms and didn't miss a beat with students returning the day after President's Day and so that was a lot of hard work and just really everybody chipping in to make that a success lastly I'd also like to just kind of share a great opportunity that I had last week which was to attend the kickoff event which was a convocation K-5 at Timothy ball which was filled with high energy teacher and student Minute to Win It um kind of games as well as then the reveal of their one book one school and this has really been something that our elementary buildings have been embracing and will continue to embrace which is really promoting literacy and a love for reading both at school and at home so it was just a great honor to get to see the kids excitement and the teachers um really you know kicking this off with a lot of energy so thank you thank you director of secondary education thank you Mr President board members um Mr Vassar had a question earlier about our waivers for our our diplomas and due to the magic of a live feed and Mr marsnik being tuned in I received a text and your answer is less than five percent right now so that is great thank you Mr Marston for being so diligent um now back to my report so I want to congratulate four students from Crown Point High School for being a named National Merit finalist um you have to have a pretty darn high score on the National Merit qualifying test to be considered that this is Lucas Johnson Andrew goldthorpe Brynn nordimir and Adam fusela and just to put that perspective 1.5 million students take this test and then they could be a semi-finalist you have a score to move to 50 000 students and then from there they narrow it down to 15 000 students out of there so congratulations to these four and hopefully maybe we'll get them in front of you guys at some point in time because that's quite an achievement we also had some other students accomplish some some things over the course of February we had a team of Tyler Anderson and Quentin Osborne they participated in the top-notch Tech Challenge and this was another first place finish and this is through the universal technology Institute Institute school and this is Tyler's actually second year in a row so he's a two-time champ just like some of these other guys we had up here earlier and they receive a ten thousand dollar scholarship to The Institute um which has all kinds of schools cross country and a large toolbox and hand tools so congratulations to them really emphasis for these two guys was automotive and diesel that's the area they were competing and then one more student we kind of gave them some air time last board meeting with Tyler Hudak went on and competed in the state tournament for chess and lo and behold after eight hours of play he was the only undefeated player in his first place in the state as well so congratulations to him um just in closing I want to thank the Crown Point Community Foundation for providing they kind of annually help us with our AP testing fees and if you know anything about the AP test they're very pricey once you start taking three four AP classes so this is much appreciated it really doesn't it really helps our students that need that extra assistance so they don't have to turn down not having that opportunity because they don't have the fun so again thank you for them for always supporting us thank you thank you director of exceptional education Mr pasquez thank you Mr President members of the board next week is National School social worker week and I would like to recognize for staff members we have that serve in the role as school social worker last year was our first year having an Indiana Department of Ed license School social worker on staff and we've gone up to four this year I'm not sure what we did without none we could triple and quadruple the amount and it wouldn't be enough but these ladies provide invaluable support to our students our families our staff they help students navigate social and emotional difficulties that they're having at school they help connect families to Community Resources if they need to carry out any assistance within the community and they're just all around just very helpful ladies so I'd like to recognize Mary ree Sandy specker Tara verdusco and Evelyn Bratton also there's one more chance to catch our exceptional Learners basketball team at the high school they have one last game next Wednesday night March 8th at 6 pm so if you're able to please join us thank you Chief academic officer Mr Urban thank you Mr President we are approaching embarking on our second level of Learn Academy courses these are courses that our teachers teach teachers currently we have 21 new courses that have been applied for if you recall in the fall we had probably over 350 teachers attend these sessions learning from their their peers it's always a great time to see these people stepping out to be able to help other teachers to to hone their Craft on the Personnel agenda there were there's three vital people in our buildings that are going to be retiring and we are going to feel that when they retire all three are secretaries in their buildings Sherry adorowicks at Eisenhower and Anita Griffith at Winfield have been at those buildings for as long as I can remember and they will be sorely missed and just want to congratulate the two secretaries at the elementary schools for the work they've done the support they've given and I look forward to their time of retirement the other the third person is a Sherry tokoli and Sherry is a secretary that works in our office curriculum and instruction Sherry started at Taft and then when a position opened here at central office in curriculum and instruction when Gene Williams went to the treasurer Sherry stepped in I have been trained by two of the best secretaries that there could be and she's going to be dearly dearly missed and I just want to honor her because of the work that she has done she was a employee of the year a few couple years ago and she will be someone that we're going to miss and she is also one that works right to the final Bell so we're gonna we're gonna take advantage of that and maybe even a little beyond that so we'll see so just congratulations to those three secretaries thank you Chief Financial Officer Mr Reese thank you Mr President members of the board there's been some questions discussions come up regarding Tif districts and Redevelopment commissions now that we have some new folks on the board and new people and new spots regarding the their responsibilities towards us so tonight would take a few minutes just to give you a quick uh Tiff one-on-one to give you an idea when you're going to those meetings what that looks like and what's really taking place in those Redevelopment commission meetings so the purpose the simple purpose of a tiff is take an area that is either blighted or not developed and doesn't have the infrastructure necessary to maintain development in that area so what happens is an area is deemed to be a tiff District a tiff area bonds are then issued for the development of that for the infrastructure think water sewer the the roads the things you need to develop an area to make it attractive to develop those bonds that are used and capture the tax increment financing which is what Tiff stands for so what it does is freeze the assessed valuation of the area that they assume at that level any additional assessed valuation they capture those property taxes for that through the Redevelopment commission and those uh the those taxes they've captured are then used to pay off the bond issue that takes place so it's a it's an Innovative inventive way for communities municipalities cities towns counties to develop areas and give the infrastructure a boost to get that development to actually take place that's the prime premise of it before it's now being used as a development because when you define blighted each City in town municipality will have a different definition of what blighted means so that's why you see all along Broadway a significant one that's a blighted area that's due for development also along I-65 109.
um the benefit and this is honestly it really is a lot of schools come across as Tiff being negative and I guess it would be if you knew that was going to be developed but what a great way to get an area to get developed so then hopefully 20 years down the road we can capture that growth and that assessed valuation an important piece of the some of this is that the taxes that are are captured the assessed valuation they don't get the money that comes from our referendum fund we actually any growth in that assessed valuation within the Tiff District we get to do capture those taxes the impact of schools used to be different when this first started so the last report I gave to you is back in January of 2013.
we had a completely different funding structure we didn't have the operations fund we had three different funds each were impacted differently by tiffs that's no longer the case so what happens now is because all those funds are Levy controlled not rate controlled it allows for us to raise the taxes necessary up to our maximums and what that does is if it reduces the assessed value we can raise the rate to match the levy that we're allowed to raise all those funds have a maximum Levy that we're allowed to raise so we don't lose any Revenue the only loss comes from the additional tax rate we need to have any of those properties that are hitting the circuit breaker whether inside the Tiff or outside the Tiff raising that tax rate causes a small impact to the circuit breaker to us so in general they've set up those tiffs so that it's actually beneficial now as a word of warning if we were to get to a spot where a majority of our assessed valuation or a large piece of our SS valuation was tied up in test therefore we are raising our tax rate significantly to make up that Levy then it could cause our tax rate really to go high and that would be a problem for us that's not been the case for our entities we have three of our taxing entities that have tiffs right now it is Crown Point it is Cedar Lake on the Center township side and then Winfield Township also has a tiff give you an idea when I did this report back in January of 2013 the impact from the Tiff was 4.37 percent of our assessed valuation was captured inside a tiff in 2023 because we have our assessed valuations for this year that number is now 4.75 there's been very little growth now the dollar amount the AV that's been captured has been significant but so is our overall AV grown in that same period so the percentage of our assessed valuation tied up in the Tiff is very similar to what it was back in 2013 which is a testament to our entities that they've governed themselves such that they've limited the growth of those tips and not eaten up more of our assessed valuation so that's a brief synopsis on that so what you're looking for on these boards is when they're putting residential inside a tiff that's a problem because now we're educating students and other than the referendum fund we're not getting those dollars for them in the operations fund to educate them now some of the obviously is changing with the funding formula proposals downstate that just gives you a general premise residential inside the Tiff not so good um anything else we love seeing commercial AV inside tips because that really benefits us and I think we're willing to play the long game over 20 years to get that assessed valuation when it rolls off the Redevelopment commission and on to the other taxing entities any questions you might have for me regarding the the Tiff and be happy to give you more specific information but try to keep it at a high level tonight yeah Mr Rish you might be happy to know uh last Tuesday there's a lot of talk on tiffs at the state house and there's a push by is ba to have a school board members those who represent on our Redevelopment commissions as as Brian and Scott and and I do we were on the board we have no voting rights bill is being presented for us to have voting rights which would help us in this guard so we'll wait and see what happens with that yep after hearing that wonderful explanation I'm so happy out of the property tax Consulting business for the last eight years but thanks Matt uh director of communications Miss Allen One In Summer and One in Winter residents should see that piece in their mailboxes later this week probably maybe even early next week I can tell you it's a it's arrived in the Winfield area already I can tell you that and and thank you it's a it's well done again thank you uh last but not least superintendent superintendent of schools Dr Terrell yeah so this evening you've heard multiple times about all of the additional activities that are provided for our kids after school hours on weekends and I just want to thank all of those that are involved and for all the opportunities they provide for our students and that's everybody from the elementaries all the way through high school and thank them for the extra work there secondly just want to give you guys a building progress update again thankful for the Partnerships we have in Skillman and Gibraltar I know we've heard comments I was able to take Scott angel on a tour with Dion of Taft the new Taft last week and I know we hear people say as they drive by there's no way that building is going to be open I can assure you that it's going to be open and it's on schedule if not a little bit ahead of schedule when you walk the building right now lockers are in rooms are painted ceiling tiles ceiling tiles are in um it's amazing where we are with that building and very shortly here end of April beginning of May we'll actually have furniture being delivered for classrooms as well so that's just one example you heard of the teachers at Timothy ball who were able to move classrooms over presidents day and way ahead of schedule there actually they're going to get use of their gym at Spring break which wasn't supposed to happen until this summer so those are just a few examples of the the progress that's being made in the fact that we are at or ahead of schedule on most of our projects and given the circumstances with getting supplies in with getting people to work at different jobs in different positions just a Real Testament to Skillman and their connections here throughout our community as well as all the subgroups that work for them as we put this thing together there's 120 to 130 people working every day out at the new Taft and when you go in there I mean it's literally buzzing with activity every day so thank you to those people and the continued work that they do all good thank you any other uh item seven other business of the board other than uh Mr vassar's legislative report anything else that needs to be brought up tonight Diana we received an email yet and the spring regional meeting yet on what a date okay other than that I don't foresee any other calendar dates and be made aware of but as soon as we have that Diana usually shoots out an email with that we'll move it to item eight uh board statements of appreciation recognition anything for you tonight Mr basser well I do want to say I had a great opportunity to talk to one of our bus drivers a couple of weeks back we had a great conversation and he wanted to tell me that he was so appreciative to our it's funny because the wrestling team was here tonight to the parents Club wrestling club I'm not sure if I have the correct name there but uh he drove the wrestling team to an all-day event as most wrestling meets are and the parents afterwards the parent Club gave him a sizable tip for his services and I just thought that was really neat you know to do that so I just wanted to shout out to those folks for that maybe one man really happy thank you is Basin anything tonight uh nothing too crazy except we do have sectionals for boys basketball uh tomorrow evening and for those of you who haven't followed uh AJ Lux as a senior this year we had senior night on Friday so they recognized our seniors AJ Lux is I believe it's two points away from his thousandth point so if you are at all considering coming out to sectionals it'll be um should be a really good evening so um anyway I appreciated getting to kind of go and and be part of the crowd it was very close at the end and everyone was was hyped up hoping that he was going to hit it last Friday so hoping for it this week but um anyway appreciate kind of the community feeling that that gives all together thank you Mr babjac I just want to say a general thank you Todd to everybody that's been involved with this redistricting process and I know that this is something that's gone on for a while this isn't something that happens overnight there's going to be people pleased people not so happy about it but the job of this board is to make sure first and foremost we vote on it we approve it It ultimately ends with us but our job is to make sure that the right people are in place to make these decisions and build these processes and do what's right for the kids in Crown Point I'm 100 confident that you guys did that so I just wanted to say thank you thank you Mr Smith yes thank you just to follow up on uh Mr badjack's comments I remember six years ago when he and I came on the board together and one of the reoccurring themes back then was classroom size over and over and over again everywhere I went our classrooms are too crowded our teacher at a student ratio is too high you know and unfortunately one of the downsides to that that redistricting may have to occur until address that as well and it was never discussed tonight but it is true if you feel like your classroom sizes you have 700 kids at Lake Street and your classrooms are too too crowded this could help alleviate that and as we started mauling over processes and Dr Terrell was hired and we were looking at buildings and expansions and we needed to do that with the growth um you know for lack of better words this is a necessary evil and you know redistricting but it's a good problem overall right it means that our schools are good people want to be here they want to be in Crown Point they want to attend our schools they want to live in Crown Point we are blessed with the great Community great school corporation uh and and we're fortunate to have the problems we have and so again I I want to Echo your sentiments and thank you to all you who worked extremely hard I know Mr Reese you put in a ton of time in your presentation on this so thank you for your effort and it really is a whole whole team so I know it's hard to say that in a day when people aren't all happy but I think it needs to be said there's a lot of work that goes into this and so thank you for doing that the second thing I want to say is um Heather invited us a few weeks ago to the exceptional Learners basketball team at Crown Point I did take you up on your offer and I went out there I think two weeks ago watched the Crown Point little game I saw Dr Terrell and I was blown away uh both on many levels What a what an awesome experience and the the students were just so loving and caring for each other the players were so caring and I was blown away by the fan support because there was a lot of people there at that game and what an awesome opportunity for those those students and those players and I'll tell you there's some people that can really play basketball on our team we're loaded with talent I don't know we had one kid I think hit two three pointers so uh you know it's a pretty good team and um but what a lot of fun so thank you for the invite for the other board members and other other individuals out there if you get a chance to go watch the exceptional Learners basketball team I I recommend you do that on occasion it's a cool experience so thank you thank you um just in on that regard two weeks ago Friday one of the special needs students uh young ladies in a wheelchair sing the national anthem I happen to be there for the Valpo game and I mean if there's nothing that doesn't put Goosebumps on your arms and listen to that in the round of applause she received because she did an outstanding job so if we can get her name Diana make sure we get it in the minutes I didn't catch her name that evening that sounds like yes I believe so Dr Terrell was there tonight so if we can make sure we get our mentioned and then Dr Terrell kind of touched base I'd like to give a appreciation accommodation tonight to uh that accommodation more but uh shout out to Skillman Corp um walking through that building and knowing that we're supposed to have students in that building on August 17th I missed the previous tour hence why I asked for an updated tour it is amazing to see 120 to 150 workers in different aspects so whether it be drywallers Steel Workers uh Mudders tapers it was just unbelievable to see how organized that is and I'm working like for the 45 minutes I walked through that building how nothing was being interrupted um welcome back to see updated boilers which are basically now like scientific tubes rather than an actual boiler I mean I'm not in that line of work in by any mean shape and I wouldn't want to be knowing what's going on but it's just amazing and uh so kudos to them for organizing our projects for a long long time and making sure that um for those those of you that are listening my wife joined the tour because she's been part of this community as well and it was so ironic as we were ready to walk out the door of the side a mouse came through one of the side holes and ran by her and if you if you knew my wife pretty good that that wasn't that but she held her breath and things were okay and it ran through the other side of the room but just you just never know what you're going to see but just thank you Skillman for everything you've done for us I mean I know we reward you compensation wise but knowing that you're we're in your good hands knowing we need to get those kids in that building I feel very confident in our experience with them that that will happen on time uh just before we adjourn here thank you for all that came out tonight whether you be a parent one of our employees teachers administrators of that we do acknowledge you showing up and sitting through the meeting when there's information that needs to be given out to the community and all of those that have sure we probably broke a record today with those following online so thank you to all those that participated for the meeting and they're 230 so see I knew that number was going to be up there today so thank you to all those that stuck with us through the meeting with the technology difficulties that we fixed uh with that can I get a motion to adjourn motion by Miss Basin second by Mr babjac all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye those opposed motion carries 5-0
foreign red light is on thank you everyone for joining us uh Guadalupe can we start with the interpretation announcement please absolutely thank you so much participants is gracias thank you thank you so much um this evening uh as Carmen said but our viewing audience doesn't know Dr Lydia is joining us virtually um congratulations on the birth of your grandson um so she is spending her evening with us thank you sorry thank you madam for answering them thank you madam president everyone I I am here I just need to know that I may not be able to finish the meeting um they was born about an hour ago so we're expecting probably within the next hour they're gonna come out and they're going to ask us to go and meet him so of course at that time I'm gonna have to run I'll try to come back but I cannot promise that um but I am quite excited and uh thankful for the uh flexibility um to allow me to be in both places at once yes absolutely your smile says it all um this evening first on our agenda we have uh discussions with the City of Commerce City about opportunities at the mile high Greyhound Park development um Bill Aiken from ccura the Commerce City urban renewal Authority has joined us this evening welcome thank you can y'all hear me yes thank you all very much for having me many of you may remember I was also at the September 27 2022 Board of Education meeting and at that meeting I did uh essentially this presentation that I'm about to give and today I've just planned to fill in some additional information and answer any questions you have and give you guys an update on the project itself um so there's there was an IGA between the City of Commerce City urban renewal Authority and the Adams 14 Board of Education back in 2018 so probably outdates most of the folks in this room including myself and uh in that IGA there's two uh particular sections that we just need to resolve and or get clarification on between the Ura and Adams 14.
good evening um we'd like to welcome you to the regular school board meeting for Tuesday February 28 2023 we will begin with a call to order followed by a moment of silence and then the Pledge of Allegiance led by Mrs page so we'll stand for the moment of silence pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all [Music] thank you it's now time for the roll call Mrs Wilson Chad Thompson here Miss Rhonda page here Michigan here Miss Jill Humphries here Miss Laurie wood is not present Madam clerk you have a quora thank you Mrs Wilson we'll move next to 3.01 approval of the agenda do I hear a motion to approve the agenda I moved to approve the agenda as presented thank you Mrs Humphries is there a second second thank you Mr Thompson it's been moved in second and that we approve the agenda as presented all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye aye so it's been approved by a 4-0 vote Dr McCord we now go to 4.01 for your superintendent recognition Awards best thing that will happen tonight it's going to be the best ladies and gentlemen and uh welcome to everyone governing board members if you could join me and you'll probably want to go off to the side because this first presentation we're going to have some of our oratorical contest winner stand up and give their winning speeches thank you foreign good evening well I know you don't know what to do dear good evening ah thank you welcome as um Mrs eugetti said this is the best part of our evening because we get to recognize our students and our staff and our community members for just some of the great things that they have done over the past couple months and we're going to start off with our oratorical contest winners each year and for how many years now Karen 20 plus years Gilbert Public Schools holds an oratorical contest and it's housed at Boulder Creek Elementary and it originated with one of our principals Mr Bob Reimer who is now 91 years old or will be 91.
the first one is the modular units which there was a contribution of three hundred and thirty thousand dollars and the uh intergovernmental agreement that was paid by the developer and that's not really the purpose of tonight is that's not necessarily an urgent or time sensitive item but the next one is a discussion about a Career Technical Educational Center that uh that's been in the discussion since about 2018 or maybe even prior to that but records indicate around 2018. um just really quickly on this particular slide this shows the overall site plan this was the site plan as of 2018 there have been some modifications to the area shown in yellow that we'll show you on the next slide but generally speaking of the of the units outside the yellow those are all the residential units the residential construction is what is ongoing currently that's being phased out it's all being built by Dell West Dell West is a developer out of Denver uh what happened was that they purchased the entire 40 acres from the city of Commerce City urban renewal authority to build the residential portion the uh the single family homes the duplex homes the town homes are all built and or under construction of the multi-family units all of the landing which is shown as D2 on your screen is constructed and residents moved in last year the project next to that which is shown is D3 which is 50 additional units is under construction currently and residents are going to move in this summer and then the project in the center which is known as F will start construction in 2024 and the last section of residential is D1 which is 330 units which will start construction in 2025.
he is 91 and he was actually at our contest uh back in January or February I don't even know what month it is today um but I gotta tell you this is something that we're very proud of and our students that participate in this are special individuals in the mere fact that they have to get up and stand in front of people and deliver a speech related to American Heritage and they have to do it with uh confidence and a little bit of pizzazz and so we have three different divisions that we have winners from and the first one up this night tonight is brant Jepson and he is a student at Boulder Creek Elementary Brant are you here you good all right get rid of that gum oh okay cough drop hi bran how are you you're right up front big guy what grade are you in second second grade right do you see that copper thing right there that's your cue and there's everybody so I'll get out of the way and stop talking and let you do your talking are you ready you want a microphone you'll be loud look at mom said you'll be loud go ahead [Music] um in the 1800s until life is the most interesting history lesson I've ever experienced it is 100 accurate but that on target is different Trails Larger than Life characters that was constantly but John dinner entertainment you know it sometimes see that they're downstairs [Music] so in 1835 to make the quick cash [Music] please Washington and one time he's eating today he was our robot people according to feel good they have registered good old-fashioned [Music] in 1841 Byron bought the American Museum in so can you just in additions we put a straw in the garden and a hot air balloon under a rooftop and he provided live entertainment magicians juggles dances and human curiosity sadly in 1830 in 1865 [Music] oh so he decided he would create traveling Museum and circus soon all at the same time now you know your mommy is available anyway foreign is not for worship relax super soft we're amazed today that embraced an American Dream by entertaining the tracks it's the greatest show on Earth now you know why it's one of my favorite events of the year right there we have another one a student from Superstition Springs Ruby Webb hi Ruby how are you what grade are you in fourth fourth grade who's your teacher Miss lanigo well Welcome to our governing board meeting and it's all yours and Giants [Music] here are sea wash Sunset Gates South stand a mighty woman the torch whose plan is being prison lightning and her name mother of axis from her beginning was worldwide welcome and her mom as Community airbrush Hardware okay ancient lands or story pond because she would send her lips give me your tires your poor your huddle masses you're ready to breathe free YouTube then be the homeless tender talks to me I live my land beside the golden door in 1865 section Edward de la and artist supporter of America proposed a gift to the United States with close allies France to celebrate the Centennial of the Declaration of Independence as well as the recent passage of the 13th Amendment in the Constitution which abolished designed to the statue first holding this group took three years to complete the classroom statue in 1886 the final piece was riveted in place at a special meditation ceremony on October 28 1886.
So the plan was always that as the residential starts to get built out that the CC Ura would market and sell the balance of the land which is for non-residential uses January 31st of this year we sold a two acre tract of land you can go to next slide please we sold attractive land to a hotel developer for the purple building that you see along 63rd in the center of the project and what the CC Ura is left with is about nine and a half acres of land that land is currently listed for sale we did receive multiple competitive offers for that land and we've received direction from the owner ccura on how to proceed with negotiations on selling that land and one of the largest unknowns that the city and the Ura still have during our negotiations is uh is the 60 000 square foot building that you see on the screen in front of you in the blue building it was originally designed as a a multicultural multi-use kind of community center when the ccura and Board of Education Adams working Board of Education originally started the dialogue which I don't have the date on that that there are some term sheets around and it was indicated that approximately fifteen thousand square feet would be an educational use um in 2021 the ccra did the study that's shown on your screen with the colored renderings and as part of that the the programming in 2021 when this slide right here was done indicated that that would be a 60 000 square foot building that it would have a culinary arts program that would be in cooperation with Adams 14 that there would be a 3 000 square foot Bistro restaurant space on the ground level that students could operate that there'd be flexible meeting space that there'd be four classrooms of approximately 800 square feet and that there'd be about 12 to 14 000 square feet for the Historical Society in the Chamber of Commerce next slide please the next several slides are just photos these are outdated back in September when we had a drone go fly but that project is built out and occupied now you can just go through these pretty quickly that's the park in the center of the development those are some of the single family homes and the duplex homes that are all occupied at this point and all that's under construction currently and keep going and then there's what's left over so the land that you see that's undeveloped on the screen in front of you is the D1 project which will start construction in 2025 and then if you'll keep going on the next uh two slides is uh the land that's left that the ccra owns Which is bound by 62nd 64th and Highway 2.
it is dedication speech president Grover Cleveland proclaimed we shall not forget that Liberty has here made her home nor shall her chosen altar be neglected the answering rays of stream of light shall pierce the darkness of ignorance and manned depression until Liberty enlightened the world our great country the United States of America was founded on the ideal of Liberty and freedom lady Liberty's design is Rich with symbolism for Crown represent light with each of the spikes symbolizing the sun's Rays Illuminating the world her Talent is inscribed with the date July 4th 1776 the day in which the Second Continental Congress has been anonymously adopted the Declaration of Independence and asking the colony separations and Great Britain broken chains and shackles lie at her feet a celebrated reminder of abolition of slavery this past October I got to see the Statue of Liberty and her green Glory as I stood on the ferry leaving the New York Harbor I anxiously later arrival at Liberty Island I thought about how the immigrants must have felt on their long journey to America the hope they felt it was finally particles of the Statue of Liberty and her torch lighting the way for her new life full of opportunity immigrants the Statue of Liberty is a symbol of promise and possibility the promise of a fresh start and a new life filled with that responsibilities the Statue of Liberty is an integral part of my American heritage you see my family was part of the 12 million immigrants who came through all this island my great-great-grandfather Carl heffel immigrated to the United States from to bring up Russia at the age of 13.