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and where would this be right here right here um the other thing is I have this note from the board secretary we remember we ask asba or we were given a choice of asba things training I'm I'm thinking that if we put this retreat in we really just need to drop one of those trainings but the training that I'm really most interested in is using the new superintendent tool that the evaluation tool and learning how to use that so that we're more successful we can give better guidance so we need a date for that Cass says that you need to have a couple of dates so that they sorry so that they have uh you know so that they can try to help coordinate with you so we're kind of into the month of June with that cast without you I'm the only one that uses hard copy there we have also appearance got their phones out Karen primary I don't even know where my phone is um yeah exactly I don't answer it anyway yeah I know she turns it off and then forgets to turn it back on and it's like well is she okay do I need to go on over and check on her um what what time frame are we looking at it's like an all day type of thing it's only an hour I think oh it's got to be more than an hour it's two hours it has to be more than two hours document y'all it's two hours so it's a two-hour thing um are you looking at June or I'm looking to June okay how about June 8th that's important Flagstaff we will be in Flagstaff Melinda then I guess that would be in Flagstaff for asba oh that's right then I guess it won't be a board meeting and we have a board meeting that day too oh yeah and I guess not if you're gone is that a is that another bolts or is it a yeah this is the leadership conference that's good oh so we need I got free did you get that yes okay free um I messed up so another day I was teaching um well I know I don't have anything specific so you want to pick a day the following week the 22nd or the 15th 15th at what time nine o'clock um so that they can decide so okay so we can give you two dates so we can get the 15th and the 22nd okay okay two times um how about nine in the morning and one in the afternoon no I like nine in the morning okay but we've got to give them to do we got to give them a choice well I thought we were giving them to okay we could give them 9 A.M oh two options for both two options for morning now so oh a morning option say nine and one then you do that yeah that's right yeah that's right kind of said okay on either the 15th or the 21st 20 seconds okay got it Fred was that a problem I'll work around it retirement schedule yeah this is nap time okay Cassie is there anything else we need to do for you okay date and time for the future meeting uh May 11.
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okay just getting it right thank you did you make that correction for the field trips or for the appreciation for this one teacher appreciation okay uh I just want to um you know highlight the work that our teachers do day in day out um and not just those that are in the classrooms teaching but all those that are going to school right that will be teachers um past teachers present teachers and future teachers just thank them for their uh work and um commitment to our children um and sometimes you know for some parents who have two three jobs end up spending more time with children than their own parents so um yeah just I wanted to make sure we didn't pass this on you know pass us up and make sure that we appreciate our teachers and all the work that they do thank you okay okay I'll just wrap up what uh you know if I said our uh classified staff or our technical theater uh this is Central Casting and you know teachers are the uh core of our work we would you know we wouldn't have Education Without uh classroom teachers in their day day in and day out and I'd like to take this opportunity to to express my appreciation to uh all Alum Rock teachers so with that I'll move to a vote I'll call you as I see you Christy Chavez aye vice president Herrera loera aye Clark Quintero first explorer Shelton aye and my self-loading eye item is approved unanimously now we can deal with the item 7.06 approved school-sponsored future and then or are you going to keep the same second by vice president Herrera loera uh let's see here I'll open it up the public comment seeing none questions and comments by members of the board I'll just say bon voyage and move to the vote I'll call you as I see you trustee Chavez hi uh vice president aye and my self-loading eye item passes unanimously uh move to item 7.08 approved resolution number 57-22 Mental Health Awareness Month um motion by uh trustee Chavez uh second by vice president Herrera loera open I'll open the public comment seeing no public comment questions and comments by members of the board vice president Herrero error oh I just want to highlight the importance of this um I know that our community has been impacted you know unfortunately by suicide in the past and so um making this just normal and um a topic that we at Alum Rock you know we highly value is important and um having a 14 year old who was recently trained as a suicide gatekeeper I'm wondering too if we can you know obviously a age-appropriate um trainer are used to be Gatekeepers within each other um so I'll be talking to you Dr Barr about that and following up um because it's important and uh working with youth myself you know I know it's something that um unfortunately is really effect affecting our our children's mental health is really been affected by this pandemic by you know so many different stressors that they're going through so I look forward to doing more but I'm glad that we're having this uh resolution approved today thank you looking for comments or questions by members in the board I'll just wrap up with you know mental health is uh you know important you know it's the presence of mind that that you know enables a child to learn and I want to express my appreciation for uh our counselors and uh as well as uh all staff who work with our kids in regards to mental health uh you know uh a reflection of the uh ever changing and evolving field of education so uh it's with that that I'll be in support of the resolution so with that I'll move to a vote I'll call you as I see you Rusty Chavez vice president trustee Flora Shelton hi and my self-loading eye item is approved uh unanimously moving to Section 8 Human Resources uh item 8.01 is resignations uh you know that's it you know it is uh information only item so I encourage members of the board to read it at their own uh convenience so move to item 8.02 Declaration of Need for fully qualified Educators for 2023-2024.
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motion and a second all in favor say aye aye
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okay same time change channel 5 30 for our Workshop do we have another school coming in nope you've had all of the schools for those plans and so if you wanted to go back to six o'clock I think you could probably go back to six for your meeting okay at this point I don't know any other uh you know we'll have we'll have you know we'll have Workshop stuff from 5 30 but I don't know that we'll need more than 30 minutes okay how about 6 p.m then on the 11th and 6 30 oh you went 6 and 6 30 or 5.6 let's just go to a rig 5 30 and 6 5 30 and 6. okay okay May 11th um looking forward to May Junior High promotion do you know what day that's it's on your account I just looked it up it's me it's on your calendar that May 23rd May 23rd okay are are we being asked to be there to be yes please they would love to have you on the on the stage okay yeah what time is it 9 30 is when it starts right okay May 23rd at 9 30.
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motion by trustee Chavez second second by uh cor Quintero I'll open the public comment uh seeing none superintendent I'll turn it over to assistant superintendo Charter vehicle okay assistant superintendent to Rico you have the floor yeah thank you thank you Mr Pam uh this is the name that must be filed every year it's really in order to ensure that our our any teachers requiring emergency permits to teach and get them and this kind of simplifies the paper crisis we used to end up at least after returning one for each digitally recorded print and our latest meeting with the county uh they told us to you know you kind of see a large number of teachers there it's basically our best prediction or I guess but really it's our worst case scenario because they said if you under report and you need more we have to submit additional paperwork they said always go for more than you need because then that covers you because if you don't do enough you may have to go back and you will have to go back and file paperwork so it's kind of an overestimate I don't believe we're going to have a need for this many but it's really our kind of our high high estimate to make sure that we're covered and we can hire people that require if we need to require folks that need emergency permits in order to start the year in the classroom that way okay thank you assistant superintendent tariko so with that I'll move to questions and comments by members of the board Krusty floor Shelton thanks um I just have a question as to um and then when we hire staff that are um fulfilling the requirements for service vacation but they're in the process of that is it also a requirement that we notify families that they have um we have staff that are in the classroom yet not fully certificating yeah as part of my annual reporting yeah we do that in conjunction with state and federal program it's a requirement we have to do and that goes out to each individual family correct each individual family each individual school that's affected okay great thank you okay seeing no further questions and comments by members of the board I'll move to a vote I'll call you as I see you Christy Chavez vice president Herrera La Liga crusty floor Shelton aye and myself learning eye item is approved unanimously moved to uh item 8.03 to approved resolution okay uh 54 22 23 classified School Employees week May 21-27 2023 motion by clerk Quintero second by trustee Chavez I'll open 8.03 public comment seeing none uh let's see I'll move to questions and comments by members of the board okay uh vice president Herrero just want to thank our classified staff who uh are like the glue to our schools and make sure that we have everything we need and that our teachers have the support needed so that they can be in classrooms focusing and our children can as uh board president mention have lunch uh have staff supporting um you know with the recess and all the additional um support that the classified School Employees provide to our children thank you okay and I'll wrap it up by taking this opportunity you know and hopefully please correct me if I leave out a particular uh thought but you know to our pair of professionals our cafeteria Cooks custodians repairmen uh let's see here maintenance uh landscaping and uh and any and all other classified employee positions a business office that I have not uh included uh you know thank you so much for uh in many ways making this District thick you know and move forward you know like a you know like a clock in the service of our family so uh with that I'll move to the vote I'll call you as I see you uh Krusty Chavez vice president aye Kirsty Flores Shelton and my self-loading eye item is approved unanimously uh item 8.04 approved new job description Equity diversity and inclusion coordinator so I'll open 8.04 to public comment seeing none uh superintendent I'm gonna turn it over to assistant superintendent Campbell to zeld Awards what this is all about yeah good evening um the we really need um in part of our work with the lcap is really looking at the being able to look at all the plans and the services that we offer for our students with that Equity lens the lens not just on what resources and services we provide but in relation to inclusion of our special ed students in the classroom and then also the equity lens of voice around part of our strategic plan in Multicultural multilingual and supports that are out there in order to recognize all our different populations that we have here in our district so this is um kind of our first step in moving towards really having that lens to really look through how we bring those that Equity to our sites and our students and our families okay thank you so much assistant superintendent Campbell so with that questions and comments by members of the board I see trustee Flores Shelton first thank you um this is important that the district has an EDI coordinator um and I kind of like along the lines of the question earlier where I was asking for data by like race and ethnicity right that's sort of a standard form that that would be used in a racial Equity lens um I would ask that this sort of some sort of work plan comes back right so that we can we can understand how the racial Equity lens will be applied because we can say a lot but right it's really in practice um and I I think it should also reflect on our hiring practices um not just it obviously in the classroom but also on our hiring practices um and ensuring that we have a diverse you know um diversity in the classroom diversity you know everywhere and um I'm just really interested in how this moves forward because um this is a first level commitment right that we're putting you know funding towards a person um but this person could be you know yanked in letting lots of different areas so being really clear about what the vision is what the objectives are and how it will apply because these positions usually get overwhelmed really fast these days um so excited interested in learning more about what the role would be superintendent Valor and I was going to expand it a little bit in terms of the ethnic studies in the curriculum because it you know we we had a committee the committee had some proposals so we don't want to just leave it at that we wanted to begin a very um strategic move into how do we interweave some of these Concepts into the curriculum and for us is Decay through eight and figuring out what is the appropriateness according to the great spot that's one the second one later on the board we're going to ask for the board to approve um a very specific travel in 1007 this is our effort to uh really diversifying our teacher population um the trip to Texas to Marshall Texas is to a traditional black college so that we can really make a real leopard not just talking about the concept but actually sending our staff to other to traditionally black communities to that we can recruit and so that they can hopefully come and be part of our community and hopefully the the the board will consider granting us but that's just an example of the kinds of things a real uh walk in the talk that Alum Rock is doing towards this HBCU is that what you're trying thank you thank you thank you thank you I yes I learned something yes thank you so much and thank you Dr power I know in our one-on-ones I've talked about you know pushing how do we go to the next step and not just passing resolutions or championing and advocating for things but how to um go to the next step and so this is definitely exciting for me as somebody who advocated for the ethnic studies uh resolution that we passed one upon once upon a time um and you know the committee work that they've done um and you know for me the budget right like when we put money behind um some of these moves that we've made um that's the action right like ensuring that there's Budget moving forward um and you know thank you prestigler Shelton for ensuring to say those things because it's true you know unfortunately because that one person ends up being the one that can like look at everything and see everything and measure everything to see if it's you know um to the equity standards and diversity um but that we think we think about that as administrators when we um hire them and how to get them the support needed um when needed because it'll get to that point especially when we go to the TK probably Early Learning Centers through eighth grade um one person won't be able to do that but as we move forward and we grow that we're able to provide that support so I'm excited I'm truly excited thank you Dr Bauer for um ensuring that our actions um back up what we say we're gonna do okay and I'll just say it this is our commitment to providing a culturally relevant education and reflective of the diversity of Alum walk and you know I think part of you know and a lot came in and our ethnic studies committee uh 1619 club and uh you know earlier in the year I I and Dr Bauer met with uh uh Ms Talton the the 1619 Club adviser and we had a productive conversation uh about you know what you know what we could do as a district to support our African-American uh staff and students and I look forward also to supporting the uh entirety of uh you know of all all those who you know live and work and uh learn within our district so uh with that I'll move to a vote I'll call you as I see you firstly Chavez hi uh vice president Herrera loera aye Kirk Quintero and trustee Flora Shelton myself loading eye item is approved unanimously moves we need to section nine contracts over a hundred thousand item 9.01 okay motion by Kirk Quintero second by uh Krusty Chavez uh how open to public comment seeing none uh uh superintendent Bauer this I asked the board to respectfully approve this contract to support our special students okay saying no questions and comments by members of the board seeing none I'll move to a vote I'll call you as I see you uh trustee Chavez aye the vice president Flores Shelton and myself holding eye item is approving unanimously moving to item 9.02 motion by trustee Chavez second by Kirk Montero I'll open the public comment staying there now I'll help move to uh seeing no public comment uh superintendent power uh this is also in support of our special education department okay thank you uh questions and comments by members of the board staying then I'll move to a vote I'll call you as I see you trustee Chavez aye vice president Herrera loera thank you Presley Flores Shelton and myself voting eye item is approved unanimously uh moved to item 9.03 motion by trustee Chavez uh second by Kirk Quintero I'll open the public comment being no public comments superintendent power this is a very exciting moment for Alum Rock This is this contract is going to provide our students in the east side but kind of Summer Camps that only vary uh wealthy students have opportunity to take we work very hard to make this a possibility it's a different kind of summer camp that we're bringing to the east side um and we're I'm telling parents please sign up because this is something is a true investment that our district is having in our kids and our families to provide them very high quality summer camps this coming summer we work with the Galileo Corporation to be able to bring this to it's all project-based students are going to have a very different uh experience for summer camp and looking forward to seeing them if the board approves this tonight okay thank you questions and comments my members of the board trusty floor Shelton so we know summer camp like the city of San Jose you know you enroll in February and you know the scholarship slots are taken in in a minute right so um do you anticipate sort of over enrollment how do you have a prioritization or is it just the kiddos in these two schools that are these are just the sites of the campus it's just the site so where they say what is going to happen is it a first come first serve I'm gonna turn it over to Supreme uh sister superintendent Campbell those are the logistics yeah um so this year we are we have a variety of summer programs happening certain programs are um we strategically invite certain students so that we can support their academic growth obviously that's kind of the first round as we we reach out to them but this is open to anybody that wants to sign up and we have 300 slots which is a big chunk yeah so it is first company it will be first come after the targeted people yeah we send out the target list to the first group and then to some of the programs we we would encourage them to take to support their academics but but they don't have to pick that they could choose to pick this I've given this is the first time around I would highly encourage you know thinking about what first come first serve really means you know um are we going to be getting our the families and children that most need all day you know support for their kids so and so man yes yes we have now a program that the board approved um I believe in January February they are electronically we're going to be able to um really uh have the parents sign up and kind of commit to something because we in the past had this issue with people signing up for multiple slots and kennel can holding it and then families make a plan and then they don't show up so we're trying to avoid that this year very uh proactively and so we're going to be able to have kind of what Bard was talking about um that first round of students that need the supporting math that need the support in English language arts for them to kind of be what they need to be and then all the other programs because this Galileo Camp is just one more remember we still have music we still have Arts so we are anticipating a very robust summer programming in our history okay yeah thank you and if I may add um board president um all our programs this the families have the option to stay full day so there could be an academic in the morning but then there's an enrichment piece in the afternoon so they can go all the way till five o'clock hey for questions and comments by member Clark Quintero I think that's important to note that well the traditional summer school no longer there were enrollment did enrichment or catch up if you needed but Alum Rocky to join its best to provide that summer programming whether it's the Elevate map Institute sure some of the kidneys that aren't really pumped about it but they're getting them what they need um and um be in public I think it's important to really outline it's uh cafeteria options that is being provided uh and no charge to our story students and you know other folks go out there and stick a price tag on everything you need to provide to their kids I love rocket does is with your tax dollars uh it's reinvestment in our kids okay so with that I'll just wrap up you know thank you Alum Rock Community this is your tax dollars at work here you know we are you know we are providing in a in a way a year-round educational experience beyond the standard academic year you know this is a you know proud to say that we're offering our kids the ability to you know opportunities to catch up academically but also opportunities to enrich themselves so it's with that spirit that you know I'll be in favor of approving this so with that I'll move to a vote I'll call you as I see you trustee Chavez voting eye item is approved unanimously moved to section 10 consent calendar I see trustee Chavez um first poll ten oh fight for discussion but also to uh vote all on the 1001 through 10 10.
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yeah that's what I put down yeah it's at the Anderson Anderson Fields yeah okay and uh and I will say that um for what it's worth uh fairly soon after it's over I'm hitting the road because my grandson graduates family ah then you even think so from from high school so I'll be heading to Gilbert so yeah yep okay any other things that we need to know about what time was that nine o'clock okay what day we have a motion to adjourn please May 23rd I'll make a motion that we adjourn this meeting is there a second I'll second that motion all those in favor I'm Melinda sabraski aye Charlene Diaz hi Fred Rushton you mean we're going to call quits to this fun we're having tonight hi Barb zarzicki done [Music] thank you [Music] thank you
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okay but is there a particular one in 10 because there are multiple memorandums of understanding um on the Nintendo 5 is there a particular mou that you would like to see pulled there's two yeah two actually I would like to see full the state of California Department with the multi-year contract to furnished administrative law judges okay very well so with that I have a motion to approve uh was it uh item is 10.01 for o4 and 06 to 10. uh and approve the you know and hang on and approve the what is it the Concordia University mou in 10.05 so I have a motion by trustee Chavez and I have a a second by Quintero so with that I'll open it up to public comment seeing none I'll move to a vote trustee Chavez okay so um my question is now we're voting they're voting for the rest of them she's talking to me at the same time okay um hi okay vice president Gerardo era aye uh clerk Quintero all right um and my self-loading eye so uh items 10.01 through 04 and the human resource the Concordia University Irvine mou in item 10.05 and item is 10.07 through 10 are approved so I will now move to item 10.05 uh uh with the you know regarding the memorandum of understanding with the state of California Department of General Services office of administrative hearing so uh I will open that up to public comment saying no further public comment I will move to uh trustee Chavez you had a concern on the uh in item 10.05 the mou with the state of California I would draw it now okay uh okay so check that we have a motion by trustee I mean Quintero second by vice president Herrera loera so uh seeing those further comments and questions by members of the board uh call usacu trustee Chavez I'm vice president gerardoira aye or pontero aye Christy Fuller Shelton aye and myself voting I item 10.05 uh memorandum with the state of California against rude so with that moving to section 11 closed session 11.01 resist the closed session the board will resist the closed session at approximately uh what is it nine o'clock Open Session will resume at the conclusion of closed session item 11.02 I will open uh for public comment for items 11.02 seeing no public comment uh superintendent Bible you make the announcement of uh items to be discussed in closed session sure item 1103 conference with legal counsel anticipated litigation as stated in the item 1104 conference will leave a council existing litigation as stated on the agenda item 1105 conference with labor negotiators employer employee organization area and 1106 Public Employee appointment employment as stated on the agenda okay thank you superintendent so with that the board will now uh and turn to post session uh it will take a 10 minute break and the board will resume in closed session at 907 pm thank you very much um MJ foreign everybody everything thank you our lady [Music] Okay so saying that we have Quorum the board Is Res board is has resumed Open session at 11 16 PM so we move to section 12 reconvene to open session item 12.01 report of action taken in closed session 11.06 [Music] automation from clerk Quintero second by Tracy Chavez board approved the appointment of Sophia salsa as the assistant principal of Adelante won with an effective date of May 22nd 2023.
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um [Music] trustee challenge second in my vice president the appointment of Chrissy Sanchez as principal of Ocala middle school with an effective date of 7 1 2023 and was approved by a vote of 5-0 [Music] um uh sorry but we can't we can't hear like it sounds really choppy oh just stay away from the the mic oh okay is that better yes okay I thought I was helping okay the information for do you do I need to start at the beginning are we are we good with just repeating I think we left off um with uh Chrissy Sanchez at uh principal at Ocala okay so let me let me pick up uh after that then so again on a motion from uh vice president Loretta uh second in by trustee Chavez uh the appointment of Syrian Jimenez as principal on special assignment for TK through 8th grade with an effective date of July 1st 2023 that was approved uh 5-0 and on a motion by uh trustee Chavez seconded by vice president Ezra uh Kelsey white as the assistant principal of Hubbard uh effective date of July 1st 2023 it was also approved uh 5-0 okay thank you assistant superintendent ferrico so uh third second 13 future border gender request 1301 request from Board of Trustees and or from the public requests shall be submitted in writing to the superintendent or designee with supporting documents and information if any at least one week before the scheduled meeting date I am submitted less than a week before the schedule meeting date may be postponed to a later meeting date in order to allow sufficient time for consideration and research of the issue so the board will adjourn at 11 19 pm and the next meeting in regular meeting is May 11th thank you so much have a good night good night
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it's time for that are you ready up and running okay we're going to call this meeting to order we're going to start with a this is a little short uh one item board meeting so that we can pass uh so we can pay counselors we forgot to put on the agenda last last board meeting so we're going to do that real quick we'll start with the Pledge of Allegiance as everybody would please stand and follow me in the pledge [Music] I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you [Music] okay so we only have one item on the agenda for this regularly I mean this uh special board meeting and that is uh Dr Ryan turn it over to you and explained exactly why we're doing this today that's kind of why we didn't do it last board meeting yes sir so just to be clear we are going to have a work study that's going to be after this one item we need to make sure we have board approval to give counselors a contract a two percent increase and the same retention bonuses afforded to teachers that was my oversight so we need to have just the board's approval a two percent increase for certified counselors so we're talking about certified school counselors and also a for the same group a two thousand dollar retention bonus paid in October so that's the we're looking for that approval Mr President okay that's item mile 1.1 can I have a motion to accept item point one point have a motion from check out a second from Diana all in favor there'll be three of us and so we'd carry that uh we are expecting Jennifer Brimhall and uh Margaret Gabby soon for the work study so can I have a motion to adjourn this special meeting have a motion a second from Diana all in favor we are currently adjourned from the regular I mean for the school board meeting now
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last cow comes home the cows come home all right we're ready to go we'll call this meeting to order this is a special work study meeting open to the public for public input on basically three items for a bond override and a four-day schedule for for school so we'll we'll talk about the bond and the override first and if you if you'd like I mean this is open you can raise your hand and we'll try to get everybody's comments and questions in we have to limit it to those three things we can't talk about what what was going to be served and what shouldn't be served in a cafeteria or things like that so we'll just keep it to those three things so Kimberly Miss dugdale I'm going to turn time over to you so you can go over this can outline Dr Wright if I could add just a couple of things so what we want to do Kimberly has a two presentations the first of which will be our current state of the budget where we are now why we are 1.3 million dollars short the impact of the covid funds the last three and a half years and the impact of those run and dry that's the first presentation the second one will contemplate the data that we have gathered through two different efforts on the bond and over right one was an old school call phones that are connected to Cable which we know most people are even older than I am in many cases much older than I am that they have a phone that's still connected to cable or a landline that was a different demographic still favorable second was social media the demographics won considerably younger in age and the support is considerably greater so as we're going around if it pleases the board we want to make it conversational and so as we as Kimberly goes through each slide she'll ask about the board do you have any questions of the audience we'll take time to answer those questions as long as it's Bond override we'll get through that and if it pleases the board then we'll do the discussion of the four day that we'll start talking about as a potential it couldn't happen if we started tomorrow couldn't happen any earlier than 24 25 but there's no foregone conclusion that that's the direction we're going but if it loses the board and that's what they wish to do in the future there is a set procedure we must follow which takes about nine months much like what we went through in the sex ed conversation wonderful remember that it was beautiful so it'll take a while to get that done that's why we need to start now the next if the the board decides to hold another work study session that'll happen sometime in May and then if it looks like that's what the board wants to do is call and vote for a bond override or both that election we'll have a special meeting two items or so the first week of June to make sure we meet the deadlines there are prescribed deadlines for these elections that we must follow and so tonight the board has asked me to organize with our team this forum for you to provide some back and forth on those areas are there any questions either from the board or the participants Harry do you have one Dave I'm just going to say we originally kind of thought we wanted to meet down there but the way things are set up it wouldn't it wasn't going to work we kind of in the past we've just sat around tables and and talked like uh you know individuals so just because we're up here standing in this these higher high seeds just uh you know we're not those people so we you can talk to us I'm sorry anyway go ahead we'll turn the time over to Kimberly then all right good evening governing board president governing board members so I'm going to do the state of the budget here at Blue Ridge at the moment so uh just a comparison for our enrollment because as you all know our budget is based on our enrollment so we are we are down about 100 students from April of last year till April of this year you can see that negative 99.3275 that's ADM so it's not actually physical students but FTE for our students so we are down about 100 students from last year at this time anecdotally I guess it's not anecdotally it's it's accurate if you look April to April those students a vast majority were from White River when there's the correlation is we quit running the buses they not those students didn't stop overnight but after a while we lost 20 in the first week and then some thereafter that shortfall is almost completely White River students and not being able to run those buses them just being open and if you remember board the reason that we did that is for drivers and expense it wasn't a sustainable model and so what we found is this uh frankly we still have many of the highly motivated kids that found their way there are still here but we did have a group that were counting on Transportation they're not here that accounts for a large part of that almost all the hundred shortfall thank you sure okay so we did a budget Revision in um December but we had to use November numbers because our um enrollment wasn't out yet so our enrollment from December until now is down about 27 um ADM so again that's not students that's FTE so that gives us about uh 135 000 shortfall with those students leaving us that we have to decrease our budget when we do our May revision um so just I just wanted you to be aware of that number um as we go forward and again Dr Wright's um correct those 27 students are majority from White the White River Area so in December we adopted the budget at 13.2 million our expenditures at the moment are 11.1 million and we have encumbrances of about 3.1 million so encumbrances are the anticipated expenses that we have for the rest of the year um that is mostly salary and we do have a big chunk of money that's going to go out for salary because teachers balance of contracts will get paid in May and that's five paychecks so that's why that number's a little larger than it normally would be for the month if you tack on 135 000 shortfall for declining enrollment we have a total difference of about 1.2 million dollars so that's our shortfall for this year we will be able to take care of that shortfall this year with a combination of our Capital money and our covid relief money from the federal government we've been getting coveted relief money for the last couple years because of covid that money will run out in 2024 and we will no longer be able to utilize that money to deal with any shortfalls that we may have if you remember correctly that was about five million dollars that we received a couple years ago from covid relief just a reminder our budget is about 80 percent salaries and benefits so that's where when we have to cut or we have to cut or we have to look at um lowering expenses we have to look at salaries and we have to look at people because that's the majority of our budget all right are there any questions about the state of the budget may I added a little bit before after that before may add a couple things Mr President so Kimberly did a great job of of outlining where we're at I just wanted to reiterate the impact of the coveted relief funds have made it so for the last three and a half years we haven't had to make Cuts we took that five million dollars and strung it over three and a half years in addition we've been dipping into our Capital as well there are a number of other driving factors that Kimberly will cover like inflation which has been static well hasn't been static has been increasing from about initially five percent up to as much as 11 depending on what category you're measuring it's started to slow now with all of the increases in the uh with the increases in the interest rates that's good but what hasn't slowed is the cost of operating our schools fuel has gone up considerably electricity's gone up Insurance in every category will be higher than is this year so it shows a 1.2 million dollar shortfall after those factors we're probably closer to 1.3 1.4 or higher we will not have the code funds to make up the difference so we have made proactively as indicated to the board last week we practically are making some budget reductions inside of this year for next it won't get us close enough to where we need to be so without a bond or an override there will be additional Cuts in the form of people and programs that's the only place we have to go those purchase services are static or rather they're they're fixed in some respect the need for them is fixed those are special services for exceptional needs kids that's not we don't it's not a decision and we're going to provide them or not we must provide those supplies ten percent of our budget 130 000 it's not going to get us there if we cut them all out so the place you have to go essentially in all the other areas we've gotten smaller teachers and fewer teacher means larger classrooms fewer teachers mean larger classrooms it also May mean fewer programs remain containing a Fab Lab which is amazing that costs money we have a dedicated person that manages that that provides teaching and instruction and that's a multi-million dollar facility with donations that we have it's not sustained with mno so we're having to look for alternative funding that's something perhaps an override could help out with the other is the board has approved a two percent increase for teacher salaries and counselors we won't have an increase next year without a bond and override we there's just not it's not there those those costs are not sustainable and the monies that we're using for the retention bonus those are coming from the coveted relief funds those will not be available either so we're we're living just like in a paycheck by paycheck like many of the other people are right now and so this is why we want to bring to this body and stakeholders a case frankly for a bond and or an override and ideally both so with that I'll turn it over to Kimberly for your second presentation yeah I just wanted to have point before I go to my second president Temptation when we had our override here in Blue Ridge in the past that expired in 2019 it was about 1.8 million dollars so that Bond or that sorry that oh excuse me that override was covering our shortfall for our teachers so we have not decreased Services since we had that override because we were able to to supplement that money with our coven money so that's where that coveted money or the Covenant money has been filling in for that since we have not had that money I think just for people listening and people here can we make the distinction between override and a bond sure I mean they're both have to do with taxes but the funds are used differently can you can you explain to everybody what the difference between this override and a bond is they're not the same yes so a bond is essentially a loan and it's for Capital money or capital projects so like for buildings for buses um for textbooks for things like that and mno override can pay for mno um things like salaries um supplies non-capital items and that's not a loan that's just an additional tax that comes directly to the school district I would I would also if it pleases what I'd like to explain mno is maintenance and operation that's salaries benefits things it takes to maintain and operate your schools that's what your m o comes from that we we get about two percent a year to the student Baseline support and I remember inflation has been running six to seven percent six to seven percent it may slow to three or four or five percent this year Arizona's inflation rate is higher than the rest of the country people continue to move here because of the climate and job elements so Arizona 6 or seven percent we're getting two so every year we're falling behind five percent Baseline support and so that's why we're in this boat it it's not a mismanagement of money again and Kimberly said it well without that override the coveted funds had filled in that 1.8 million dollar Gap but as you you can do simple math you can run through 5 million pretty quickly but that's what kept us afloat what we're trying to convey is if we want and if the board wishes to maintain the current level of programs and services provided to our students to provide a secure and successful education we're going to need additional funding to do that otherwise The Next Step would be it's going to have a pejorative effect there's just there's no way around it it's going to be tighter means larger classrooms and fewer programs now what those mean exactly I don't know yet what we've done in the past and just recently if folks retire or resign we don't fill back those positions we have seven people retiring next year they've already put in their retirement five of those are not coming back we will not hire back those five teaching positions unless we pass a bond or an overwrite and or in November 23.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
here yep the Facebook order of business tonight we need a motion for the Board of Education to approve the needs of the March 20th 2023 businessman the March 20th 2023 closed meeting the April 10th 2023 Workshop immunization item and April 10th 2023 closing Year Mike and Chris thank you very much Mike Davenport aye Christopher Espinoza aye Cheryl Fuller aye Terry pavasich aye and Nancy report reception officers for the first reception the hybrid black schedule process review so I'm not presenting the survey results because it just closed on Friday at 4 pm which actually I think we closed it Saturday morning instead just catch yeah be sure to be caught everybody um and so today I'm just going to go through sort of the process of where we've been high and where we are I know we have a couple of the new board members here so we'll tie it to the board goals or I'm sorry to um the goals of the schedule overall so um so as we're going through the survey results um it's all about communication and making sure that everybody's voices are represented um and so today as I kind of talk through where we're at I'm going to try to tie the questions that we present in the survey to the goals of the survey I'm sorry to the goals of the schedule sorry um so for the initial schedule change right um that it was an opportunity for teachers so thank you um for teachers and students to connect during the day also for extended week learning um at least one day in class also to reduce some stress levels throughout um and also also ones was to make sure that students were preparing them for college in the workplace and to make sure that we're addressing students social emotional needs and future career planning on Black Days for the first goal um opportunity for students to get help during access that we took the first semester survey and we made a couple of different decisions on changes and so we simplified the schedule um we also streamlined and took out some lessons that were planned or offered them only for certain grade levels also we tried to allow for more study time we try to [Music] students I'm actually going to try to move this closer to you I'm thinking the game on this microphone's going way up we'll see if that helps thank you hello um so um if you move to the next slide here are some things that are in progress right now so um on the 25th and 27th we have a teacher committee that we will convene and a couple we do a couple of things then we'll review the survey results from the students and the families and the staff um and we're also going to again revisit some of the access lessons right students are still you know like the videos um and we try to remove some of those some of them are safe mandated we want to make sure everyone gets the same information some of them are pretty specific and so trying to figure out a way to engage the staff and students together without it necessarily being video based so we're going to do that also on the 27th we're looking at software for the student Choice program that the idea the staff and the students said like yes we would like to do that but the technology of the form was an issue and so we're looking at software that will answer a lot of the concerns the staff and the students had about that initial pilot also looking at interventions during resource first semester you remember the part of the survey results were talking about student structure making sure that students who maybe weren't using the time as wisely how can we get them to use that time a little bit more wisely and so we're going to be talking about that and then continue the survey results but we also sent an email out to the staff asking if you're not on the committee if you have any ideas why don't you present it to the president of union or vice president or me and we will bring those to the table we're also looking at increasing student support and study time during access but also looking at how the counselors feel about how their presentations went this hear what they need in order to effectively deliver those because those are really valuable curricular aspects and so we're also looking at that specifically with the counselors I have a meeting with them in early may also at the bottom you can see I have some questions questions related on the survey so those are questions that I specifically asked that will help us gear on how are we doing towards goal one so we asked them about the adjustments to the schedule how to go are you feeling better about it and then also the last three questions on the survey for families students and teachers they I took the benefits and challenges that were sort of our High Flyers our sort of top 15 benefits that people reported out in the free response section from the fall and also the top challenges 15 or 16 challenges that people reported um from the fall and I just listed them so uh they could select the benefits that they're still experiencing or select the challenges that they're still experiencing I think that helps transmit the transparency about some of the statements that came through um from the fall and also how they're feeling about it and I can sort of quantify it with numbers by how many people chose that um and then the last one was open response and so um you know those three will be there so on the different slides for the goals you'll see um questions that we're asking towards the goal and then also benefits or challenges that were available for people to select that also help us track our progress towards that goal uh 25 to 30 depending that's a great question so um uh when Josh reached out to the staff he tried to get someone people from both buildings um also have every Department represented we also have support staff on their um Josh and Jocelyn who were president vice president Union they're also on there we have two Department chairs from each building and also there's an AP from each building that will be there our principals tend to attend they don't attend the whole time one might attend one one it's on the other um and then Karen spartanus is uh covering for Josh while he's out on paternity leave and um you know we just communicated over earlier today and said if you know there are other people who have shown interest absolutely have them come so she's reaching back to some staff members to see if they're interested in attending as well yeah it's so yeah it's after school so it's voluntary um and we do it from 3 45 and 5 15 they'll do it twice so we'll cover half the survey and then our goal is about access and then we'll cover the other half of the survey and then we'll look at the student choice and interventions specifically um for resource and this is a new committee um that we did it in the fall as well yeah it's the same people from the fall um and so um you know they can weigh in about whether or not they see progress based on the comments and also they help make recommendations um and so uh yeah please so for gold shoes we have a couple of questions on there about deeper Extended Learning so we asked the families and we ask the teachers we're also asking about whether or not they feel that they've had they can cover the same amount of curriculum or skills this year that's a teacher only question and then there are several benefits or challenges available for selection so you can see um that whether it's a lab Class A benefit or um on the black days they don't feel like they can do enriching because they feel like they're trying to put in two periods so we try to balance it out for everyone and to encapsulate all the feelings that they might have with their experiences this first year because for the first year it's going to be a challenge and our staff students and families are feeling that challenge this year and um like Hank office John says he's like this the first years I was the most difficult year um second side this will be a little bit like I won't try I'll try to figure it out um so I was trying to think um you know teaching is a calling um and um sometimes it's really hard to understand the emotion that you kind of put in your teaching and when you're planning and how that comes off in the classroom and so when I was teaching on AP and District 204 um a long time ago and uh We've decreased from 52 minutes to 47 minutes I office and I added up the minutes and I said how am I supposed to do this and um you know I worked through that first year and I did and I got better each year um but the emotion that goes along with that I think you know it it's tough especially the first year so when you're reading designing lessons you think you know how that's going to go um you have 78 minutes and if you get to minute 78 and we still have six minutes left um that's tough and um so next one because you're thinking I don't have all of all of the minutes that I'm gonna get and then if I don't see them the next day I'm thinking wait a minute I had a lesson plan I'm stuck how am I gonna get it and then if I go to the next one um if my student is absent on a block day fans are you know crazy um and also if my students aren't doing their homework I may have lost time in setting it up I have my other responsibilities down to families and then in the end if I have an AP course and I have course expectations there and the test is coming up all of that stress can roll up and you even if your students are feeling good about it you may not be feeling good about it or you may in your discipline you may be feeling great about it but people down the hall don't and so I think after the first survey results um some teachers told me that they were surprised at how negative some of the responses were and other teachers thought that I was you know making it more positive than it was it's because everyone's experience is so different and also across content it's so different and so um next slide um a lot of concerns came out about how students would perform these are just grades over the last first semester over the last couple of years and you can see from last year to this year schedule the schedule obviously 2020 is not there because of all the things that happened but it's almost identical and that but that feeling right doesn't go away right so what I know that when my AP scores came out every year I sat on the phone with my partner who also taught the same class and we went through what our results were and what kids were and I know that we're not supposed to do that right because basically reflect specifically us but it does and so um you know as a a former AP teacher I I feel that and so I just want to sort of talk about the The increased instructional time for deeper learning that it has been a challenge to sort of roll that through because you're doing it for the first time not everyone teaches a semester class where you can try it again the second semester and so but I'll just say that you know this year's the tough year and then hopefully you know we are doing a momentum there on the second um looking at 2023 and we make such a big change for they not have been I mean I would have really been surprised that they've been a little bit of a drop off the fact that we're when we haven't yeah to me seems like a big win for me where we've gone through uh extraordinary amount of extraordinary amount of change so I this is promising to me yeah absolutely and you know now again I want to make sure that this is macro level right this is across all students so there are some students that feel like they're doing better um in this and there are other students that feel like they're not doing as well in this but across like across the whole student-body North schools there hasn't been a shift yeah okay all right next one so uh later starting today during this stress throughout the week we asked some specific questions about that um we asked about the absences um and being more engaged during the day that was also a question we asked in the fall so we can see if there's any growth there and also feeling how have we adapted to the schedule that is a specific question for staff um and then again benefits and challenges um I believe sherwell asked me if I had any questions on their last time about students who take the bus so I added one about are they receiving the same benefits um about the bus if my bus arrives earlier or am I think at the same time and so um I added those in there and then also sort of talking about balance foreign 6 on the same slide because I think they'll serve intertwined so whether or not it's social emotional college and queer planning but also that there's voice and choice for students since both of them were talking about future I sort of put them on the same slide so we can see how they interact um and so we have several questions about that whether or not students are using the resource time are effectively about their skills how did it impact their course selections we asked that question in the fall about how might it and then this is now how did it so we will be able to see the differences there and then also someone asked the last program I can't remember I think it was Nancy um if if we asked a specific question about being able to access counselors social workers and psychologists more and so I Incorporated that question this time and then also are the challenges and the benefits below specifically about either managing their homework load or not being able to manage their homework mode feeling more prepared for college or my student needs more structure um so you'll see those questions there foreign about using the time oftentimes it comes up about creating time during the day for a resource and why did we create that time I just wanted to remind everybody that really um is just more of a shift so we just took that late start time and we shifted it into resource time some students absolutely convinced that they missed that late start time and we are trying to add programming in during the resource time so that students that were one there at school so they're able to have that programming and we've been trying to add different things you know some have hit more than others so on the next slide you can see what we've done in resource this year so far one I'm just going to highlight so in case everyone at home is watching um we do have Western Park District in Woodridge Park District coming in this week and next week they're going to have a table in the Commons at both schools you've got an email students from your Google classroom and also we send them home to parents so if someone's looking for a summer job that we're doing that um taking advantage of that time during resource also we've been engaging a lot with the military anymore than we have in the past we delivered the ASVAB which was exciting we have 30 students take advantage of that we also had some military members talk about career opportunities we did a service opportunity for operation gratitude in the fall we've also done some College and Career Expo exploration there was a panel of graduates that came Comfort dogs is always a hit during stressful points in the Year Jen Martinez itself added quite a few activities along with it where we're making dog toys it while they're already in line to go to see the Comfort dogs and so that was a really a sweet idea that she had also the cultural Affair and activities Fair school safety presentation a lot of students still talk that that was appreciated to have that right at the very beginning of the year we have another idea that's going to come out here before we go oh uh can you explain uh what the ASVAB is oh sure um it is a career exploration test and also students can use it to enter the military um and so it's also a College and Career indicator so if a student scores 31 or higher on the ASVAB that that would count as being College and Career ready and so students can take that score and they can take that to their recruiter or you can take your score and go on to the website for the ASVAB and they will talk about your aptitude in different careers outside of the military so you can it can show you what you would be what your app student is for careers in and out of the military so I'm not always this opportunity to just double down on what Brian just shared because I think it's important concept that kind of got lost as we run into the school year and remember last year at this time like masks were just starting to come off it is a tumultuous time to absorb the change that we're proposing that was going to happen but this is a key one that has come up over the course of the year right the concern of this free time too much free time on the Block days and really before on Monday during that late start a student might sleep in like off for breakfast with their friends those kinds of things but we didn't have all of our programming or or resources available to a student during that time now when that time slides into the middle of the day on that one block day where it falls so we're talking about one day where that falls just like it was one day a week before now we can offer all the resources that sit in our College and Career Center our counselors our psychologists social workers Deans all of those kinds of things and then even in this first year as we're just getting up and running all of these other opportunities were available to students during that resource time that wouldn't have been available in the past during the late start time this is just in year one is we're starting to get things up and going so it feels different obviously because it is different but the time shift is pretty equivalent between last year of free time unstructured time to this year to where it falls in resource it's just it's something that we probably should have been better at pointing out I should have done better myself pointing this out last year at this time because we were looking to make that change I will just say it was a little tumultuous at that time so if I was to go back this is one thing I would have done better for our community of explaining like how that shift in time works it was one day a week before it's still one day a week now but we can offer so many more opportunities for kids in that time than we could in the old structure so now I'll turn over a life if something else he's working so because that is something that we hear from a lot of parents that my child has this waste of time so the takeaway from this is to kind of push your students we'll talk to that teacher to get some extra help right use that time productively but really if they did that once in a year this year and last year they just slept in every Monday it's already more productive this year than it was in the past right if if a student sat down with their friends and worked to study for a test or collaborated on a project or even socialize with a friend when they would have been in bed before you know any of those things are more productive than just being in their house sleeping in on a Monday morning right that now there's all of these structured and unstructured opportunities that now are available to students that one day a week just like before that they have with us and for families that that feel like there needs to be more structure that this is a reminder that the committee that we're talking about for students who are struggling in school and that maybe they're not using that research time as effectively as we had hoped that we're going to start talking about intervention programs and entrance and exit criteria for that for students who need a little bit more structure during that time yeah and the next one okay so um I think it was gosh it was February um when I had presented on something and um a Community member had talked about the SAT and talking about the school day and I left the meeting and I had taken my notes and I started thinking like sat school day how can I make that work um and so this is an idea that we're going to try out for next year so um we're going to offer SAT prep at both schools during resource it is something that students will be able to sign up for juniors will have first shot at it and we're going to have an English prep teacher and a math prep teacher for each of the resource periods um and so um that's then we can take 25 students for English in a session 25 students from math and we offer six sessions we should be able to address about 450 students on the English section and 450 students on the math section it would be free of charge to students and so they'll be able to register we'll probably do it old school like go to the College and Career Center and sign up to prevent any sort of technological issues things like that and you know a student if they don't want to sign up for the English and they want to only sign up for the math great also for students who are needing a brush up before the nmsqt there's a session that does that other students that just want to brush up before the school day sat session six all four of them happen before the school day sat and then if there are open seats we'll move into the sophomore class and we'll offer it there too so offering more structured things that students can sign up for is is the direction that we're also moving so this is hopefully addressing some uh concerns for either structured resource also about the SAT and so I'm excited to start doing that I'm starting to work with Gina on a description to be able to post it and then once we have those four people hired we will work through the summer to talk about what those sessions will look like and I'll be reaching out to staff if they would like to participate in how those lessons are structured as well I like that a lot so we have it'll be more of a first time this opinion yeah I mean every time I think like oh this is going to be a packed house so um I do think that students um yes it will be first come first serve and we'll have I think we're going to do just the old school sign up um but I do think that students at the beginning of the year like if they're the some students are going to want to roll through and do it in the winter some students are going to want to do a record for the SAT other students are going to want to do it before the mmsqt so I do think that students will tend to space that time out also because it's a 60-minute uh it would be like 60 minute lesson that they would still have about 20 minutes of a resource available to them so I think that that makes it a good use of a lot of their time but they still have a little bit of their social time if they need it and so I'm excited to continue to explore this with Gina and work on this through the summer you know we're also dilated with information so everybody's information yeah I think how are you going to I think I've asked this one advertisers to the students to make sure that they know it's available to them and two stars for you yeah we're definitely so um with the first session being August 29th 30th that's the second week of school um so I do think that we're going to advertise it at the beginning or the end of the school year this year but this summer it erases a lot um so um I do we're as we do the back to school push that I have to work with Arwen and Courtney with their messaging um also with on the first day of school it's you know a half day for freshmen half day for juniors and seniors are or maybe it's freshmen and sophomores through seniors um that we'll have to promote it there as well there's a couple of there's like a large presentation that happens and then they go through their different classes and then we would do it at the beginning of the day on one of the days of the week so they had an opportunity to really hear about it both long term and short-term do you have teachers maybe targeting some things that they know are going to need it I think that to sign up for the first session I don't know if teachers will be able to Target students yes but I do think that as students are you know working through their classes teachers mates say like hey if you haven't signed up for it you might want to um because teachers tend to know which students are going to Excel and which ones aren't yeah and but I do think that you know with the SAT and not not to go on a tangent but the SAT possibly going to being online next year um that you know pushing out Khan Academy practice is going to be super important so one of the things with this one as well that the tutors would be working with them through Khan Academy so that they're practicing between sessions so they're not only getting the problem but they're also getting used to taking a test online so it looks like it does but do they line up with the other dates during the year when the SAT is given it's like the December test kind of yes I didn't necessarily so to get the four sessions and I was like all right I have to have it before the school day sat and I have to have a session where most of the sessions are done before they take the mmsqt um and then the rest of them not like you know if there's not a resource week because of Acts I couldn't use that week so this this is basically almost every week throughout the year yeah I was so excited when I saw this seriously so so um there's access teachers you get to see them all four years so in terms of a teacher knowing the student there's there's actually a chance that a student a teacher would know a student well enough at the beginning of the year to suggest so as because of our new schedule second this is a I love that this is a student Choice thing right they get to own it I'm deciding to do this it's available to all students not just the students whose parents can afford to pay for right and I I certainly would have loved this for my students so I just just another huge benefit to you know our schedule allowing this sort of thing to happen is just fantastic one of the reasons why economics are a great predictor of test scores yes because those families to open these opportunities up before students do and then set those expectations and then confine the time to get students to those things and all of those things with this being free to all of our students starting with our Juniors it would be available during the school school day when they have time set aside to do these kinds of things makes it a huge value added for our family the student choice piece of it and if you're a student who isn't looking to go on to college and does not feel like you need to invest as much in prepared for sat you're not being forced to do that and that that's that's what's wonderful about that he said that it was totally new I thought this was just shifting around whether it's something totally moves no it's totally new and this is these are the these are the types of things and what you saw in the last slide that as our schedule is our years gain momentum and traction that these things go into place that if you were to say Well we'd like to go to a schedule where students have less time people will be like but what about the free sat Pro what about the ASVAB what about yeah the you know the job fairs what about you know these are all these new opportunities that we have the opportunity to build in the schedule in which it appears now that we couldn't have done before like there just wasn't time in the day to make these things occur and as Ryan said like you can offer this up the students still can do this and still have some time to get some homework done or stop by and get help or see our counselor those kinds of things because we're not taking up the entire resource so these are the things this is what back when I was a tech guy these are the changes that we would call transformative like once you can't take that away otherwise people are upset that you took away that it's like once you get used to having Wi-Fi and somebody takes that away from you you feel like you've lost something what we were trying to do is put in these opportunities that are like that that are you know so strong and transformative that you can't take them away without introducing the experience but these things take time to build I'd be surprised but do we have any sense as to how many of our students currently go through the prep you know we don't there's not like a certain yeah I wouldn't say that there's like a program that we have kids sign up for anything like that outside vendor or anything like that but I guess the question really boils down to you know this is like 10 of the student population percent of our Juniors could Avail themselves that's 450 students for English and math at each campus so and so the the numbers at the bottom that that could be for north and for South so it's uh we don't expect so all students would want to do those subjects yeah some might just want to pick right yes I would I mean I'm a strong English student so I would only do it for math um but I know other people that are great at math but they just grammar he needs them so there's going to be some students that this isn't where they don't feel like they need this for their future plan so it wouldn't be something that they put their time in you know they choose to use their time in other ways so [Music] you know if um that just like asking for the staff for ideas or hearing Community ideas that just you know talking with different people that that's how these things come about and so um you know if anyone has any suggestions for other programs like this you can always send them to me in the email um or you can give me a call and I'm happy to explore them so that's very the Staffing I think you touched on a little bit but are you having teaches sort of volunteer um so Minnesota would be external people or because the staff they're doing like pde they're doing planning they're collaborating I can't I couldn't ask a staff member to do that for sure and then the next slide is just a reminder of the shift that we made also um based on the feedback from this year um also uh it falls under a goal um four and six by having students be able to make that choice so students who were in fourth period resource that was in the middle of the day that they were unable to access the same choices that fifth and sixth period resource kids did so we shifted that also concerns about see lunch being so late and then also for announcements specifically students saying that sometimes they didn't know about some of these resource opportunities that those announcements are now specifically during access and so that it doesn't conflict with class periods and then go five um so it's about increased time for teachers to participate in professional learning with colleagues we have several questions on the survey about that um that we need some adjustments to our professional learning instead of it being structured professional learning as a group that those personalized professional learning which has been something that the staff has loved over the last couple of years and so we add that back in so we asked like do you feel like that has helped um also about implementing the classroom also a common experience has been something that we've been working on how confident are they that they'll be on point at the end of the year um and then also in the benefits and challenges we give sort of both sides of that you know either I have more time to prepare for classes or I have less time and I'm struggling to keep up with my workload so we'll be able to see the percentage breakdowns of staff members that have chosen either so that we can sort of monitor our progress on goal five as well so I will be back in two weeks and I will so I started you know kind of taking the information um down and I'm sort of organizing it right now um I'll do that throughout the week I'm presenting a cabinet next week we also meet with the district leadership team next week meeting with the staff committees next week and then after all of that I will be back here to report out and um yeah so that's it does anyone have any other questions for me all right I love the process that you're going through to analyze the schedule you know the alignment with the goals looking and asking specific questions about how it relates to the goals I think it's it's a very logical relatable about measuring the success in in deficits and and addressing those things is it gets past all the sort of I don't I just didn't like it or do the kids got too much instruction we can actually look at the data and and how align through the goals is this is the right way to go about doing it so kudos to you thank you very much yeah thank you next topic is the third quarter financial report is this going to be as exciting our revenues and expenditures are right in line with expectations so we're we're right on target where we should be at this time of the year this is just a quick overview of our revenues and you can see that we're pretty much 97 collected which is typical this time and our expenditures right around 70 percent at this time of the year is is correct so we're spot on with that um one thing I should have mentioned on the revenues a couple of items to highlight you'll see the entrance of hum is is up finally so it rates up so that's you know helped us in the other area is that the state has been making their payments on a regular basis so they're not behind um that so that's good on our expenditures we've got a couple of line items that are a little higher than what we anticipated and then we have a couple of line items they're a little bit lower so it all just balances out to the next one and so right now our fund balances look pretty strong we're in pretty good shape any questions there's no surprises tax rates this is an exciting chart actually we've been using this for years it's the first one to ever catch me with a mistake and it was a funding changed they dropped the percentage cap for the educational fund you know that specific great ceilings which I'm sure none of you but it was it was you know they eliminated that Mr Steele okay good zero output as everybody knows [Music] the only school that has greater extension basis is Hinsdale they had Oak Brook and some very expensive buildings there that emblems that I think they're just over 6 billion foreign [Music] tax cap which is the first time we've had something over two percent in a long time um refunds when there's a loss due to a the extension goes out and before the tax bills are figured in at that point if someone makes a correction in a real what we need well this is now in this system that I gotta give credit to the county we're going back and when there are aggregate new funds when there's losses like that they will um the fun part of that money back to us as much as they can which is a good thing so that's that's another thing that's happening this last year since this is the second year um so I totally here it is a 5.5 million percent of revenues it's in line it's it one thing that is not really bad but it wasn't as good as we expected was a new construction but the clerks cut off their books when they report it in the fall this time if they don't go back and check it all the way through to December you can be shorter so some of that may go into the next year and so we're talking to those you know assessors to try and get get the better numbers from that but 5.3 when inflation was seven percent is kind of a tough bill I mean we're going to meet and we're going to meet like we just talked about what we want to do by the end of the year hopefully but that's that's a really tough thing if we don't you know really don't get all of the facts in one year that's about it for that then I hope we get a chance to look through the report from time we are able to reallocate the taxes that we have from the original request we requested by different funds a certain amount and now is it at the end of this point we can because the county is going to reduce our request by several percent and because of tax caps and and so we get to pick a way they can take their money from as opposed to them doing it across all of the tax pieces I hope I explained it better in my letter than I just did next this is really something that um I've really worked hard to try and keep with keep our taxes down with a green calendar we're the second second highest in the in the seven districts and uh since about right that's the second lowest out of the seven high school districts in in DuPage County uh the only one if you look at the department that's that's 86 and the federal Brook and until we're getting over for able to get catch up to them but uh but it's consistently been lower than the second lowest for about 20 years now so I'm very happy to really the same room we do care about the taxpayer in our community and we'll go back to it and try and maybe what they like the adjustments we made and we've done issued Vines for one construction that we did at the two schools um you know we made sure that the thing out of the Dead service would keep the steroid unstable low right and we are going up far but we caught it at a time when interest rates are definitely low and we really did everything right and it was really a good chance for us to to go a little bit longer on our bonds and not ultimately not paying more just because we're going out to infer the payoff yeah that's really about that for taxes there's a property to activate when there's one adjustment that we make taxes Rex and orders a corporation that came in in 2017 I believe it was and in order to attract them to the area both with the Elementary District 58 and District 99 as well as the village all trying to put some money in the pot on winning the pot listing after when we start taxing this 200 000 square foot facility which is a huge increase to us we'll renovate some of the money to and give it to them to the first year we we gave me that 10 now after a few years there was ninety percentage I'm trying to keep those numbers straight so they're um we have made a 90 now we're down to 60 percent and eventually be zero and the good thing about using it this way instead of just waiting like doing it at Tiff is we got credit in the new construction area right away from work so we were a little bit more taxed this property right away instead of a more complicated device which is a tip tip they could have used to to wait 23 years before we can put it out so we have uh the accident that we'll require tonight for you to approve that we had a brewbate to rec center the corporation or facility Well I think the last thing that I have questions on either those two before we move on [Music] to double the size of it basically and this is the funding mechanism it's going to come from our bond issues that the working cash bond that we wish you didn't have because technically it goes to the building fund and then it'll go from the burning crime to a construction type of fund um so as far as the programs goes on with the construction and we thought we were going to catch a real nice couple weeks right up here with him during the winter again yeah so that's it that's um a resolution I just got to go through and pass some money under the operating fund yeah and this is just the mechanics of getting the money in the correct account but we already have the money it's just putting in the correct account so we can pay the bills so when you write the check it does it all right uh next one is mine uh this is one that uh DuPage County has been working on over the course of the year we have several of these Mutual Aid Response Team agreements between other public entities like the police the fire department the hospitals those kinds of things that if a major event happened natural disaster accidents any of those kinds of things that would be organization from the county level are requesting resources and then the individual schools providing those we've done them in the past uh just that's just how we work but this kind of formalizes that and provides like a leadership structure a training structure and provides a little bit of funds to the Roe to bring in some software to help them manage these kinds of processes so it formalizes what we've done informally over the years so it's our recommendation tonight that the board enters into that IGA really the cost of the district is 250 a year to start now and the agreement doesn't allow it to go over 400 a year and that is to pay for that software development maintenance for managing that response so it's my recommendation that the board enters into that IGA this evening everybody cried for something no time's going to happen we don't have to use it that's the main yeah totally yeah hopefully it's like Insurance you hope that you never have to use it doesn't it's a very small investment and and by competing huge dividends if it's needed yeah so nice to have an electric sign to let the community know if they did need to go visual assignment yes that would be a fabulous so these are the last two projects uh a little different uh this year I approached the capital projects and two of them I pulled out uh the two that are over here tonight uh I felt that we didn't need architect engineering and project management so I put the packages together but it's about to start other and I will project Greenwich these two so they're both at South First is the Fine Arts flooring um can I be safe thank you for saving the district the cost of that you know the cost so it's yeah we just kind of really buy that thank you whatever we can put back into uh Capital was another project done so um it's always good we received six bids for this it's a rolled carpet that was put down in Old tiles so all that would be up there is no asbestos and it's roughly around 11 000 square feet so about two weeks worth of work in Total the better that one is familiar to us we've worked with them in the past and the bed does meet our budget goals for the 2023-24 year so tonight I will ask the board to approve the contract to consolidate and flowing in the amount of 945 dollars the other project is the student parking lot again uh good good bids [Music] I put an alternate in on this one to seal coat and crack fill the parking lot that's by the dock area and it came within budget and then some so I went ahead and approved that and that's included in the morning team so this is the big lot though we're moving all the way down building up putting two two inches down so uh in striping after completion so big lot over there this will be at least a week's worth work or more uh more like nine days hopefully it doesn't rain but again this meets our budget goals for 23-24 so tonight I'm going to ask the board to approve the contract to Murphy's Construction Services an amount of 18 800.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
it's called tonight's meeting to order uh Manny can you take roll call president Gorman here so we need a motion in second to approve tonight's agenda second a thief yes bulk yes Nolan yes Henner yes Ray yes Gorman yes please join us in reciting Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the United States foreign ly to thank everyone for coming out we got a full house here and then uh anybody watching at home on any device um Dr Stern I'd like to welcome some of our students that we're going to recognize tonight looking forward to that um we have quite a few administrators and staff members here as well and uh we're fortunate tonight to have us joined by our new board member Alex uh Mr Fred Vogt and Dr Morgan Pappas please stand up [Applause] vote for the county will be canvassed on by April 25th and new board members will be seated through the reorganization no later than May 15th so we'll have to determine the date for that you move on the public comments we have a couple this evening first off Gene Meyer [Music] now can you hear me yes um what the the presentation I had prepared is a little bit more adult and um I would prefer that some of the Kraut go but what I did want to do and so hopefully you'll let me do this a little bit later but I do owe you um a public apology and I think children can hear adults give a public apology I'm asking for forgiveness because I did not do my homework and I accused District 301 of having a book in the library which it did not and so I just want to be accountable for that so once you let me speak later typically pass out to the board they could look at it but this is our only public comment well I think you could be a little more flexible and I'm smiling but I do think you could be I do have uh it should be I think nine there is things I mean you're still free to make public comment on it oh you see fit at this time sure no and I respect that I'm just not familiar with what your Public public comment would be so our next Lori Powell um hi I'm uh Lori Powell I've been living in the district for 20 years so on March 4th the district had hosted that cultural blast event at the high school and um in the letter I've emailed everybody there's a flyer which I know everyone's familiar with um so there was a mission statement with three bullet points uh the first one accepting the internal s aspects number two make minorities comfortable while educating the ones that make them feel uncomfortable number three opportunities to tell stories for transformation take place so my question to you is do all the events at d301 have a mission statement for example does prom have a mission statement I'm assuming the answer is no in this case the mission statement declares that there was more to this event than learning about and appreciating other cultures overall this advertisement should have bullet bullets that describe the event instead of a mission statement the definition of a mission statement is the Declaration of the overall goal or purpose of an organization so I find mission statement number two extremely problematic so my question to you is what does this have to do with the education of d301 students the CMS 8th grade students received a message about the cultural blast in bold letters the 8th graders were encouraged to find two teachers to tell them the secret password to receive a ticket to enter into a drawing for and Amazon gift card at the CMS dice booth and I've included a screenshot of that in a letter so my question is since the since when is it a good idea for students to have secret passwords with their teachers why are the very young 8th grade students being invited to a diversity inclusion Club what purpose do these clubs serve to me this is a pathway to grooming the innocent students of d301 school is already a safe place creating more safe spaces for specific students only further divides instead of uniting I believe the district should cease all of these types of activities and so I look forward to receiving answer to the questions that I have submitted in this letter thank you we will follow up with you okay thanks all right next to Athletics activities director Jessica is here recognize some students good evening everybody's doing all right I know winter uh winners back it's hard to believe that after raining it's sunny but here we are the recognition that I have before you today is of our our art students at Central High School I had the honor and the ability to kind of go to the Fox Valley art show at MCC last Thursday and walked around and see all the great pieces of artwork that a lot of our students uh created and had on display for everybody to see within all of those there were three that were selected the first one was uh Soraya volcanus uh her picture of cornrow won best of show for photography at the MCC art show and she brought [Applause] along along with uh Soraya we have two that were honorable mentions I know Angel Wynn is here today with uh her piece of artwork as well and then finally Nora donkey also had an honorable mention for her uh her Untitled picture Nora thank you unfortunately Nora couldn't make it but I just want to thank uh Miss vassel and Miss Smith who is not here but for all their efforts with all things of our Central High School art department and uh I know what most kids and even even Soraya seeing these kids do different things in different rounds I know she's also Hunter girls wrestling team but to be able to feel like those kids kind of cross over and show multiple talents across all avenues of of academics is awesome because it really is that old child approach so uh thank you congratulations [Applause] all right next to the curriculum director Stephen books an assistant principal Patrick rogorski will recognize some students we have two people presenting the board a little bit tonight on this first of all the work that Stephen books has done to make us eligible for the Illinois City live by literacy and then assistant principal progress he did talk about how it's been implemented at the high school so just to give a little review earlier in the fall we uh were looking at what we could do to expand some of our offerings for uh showing the accolades about the achievements of our students this one's specific in the kind of skill sets that students learn in their foreign language capacity so we offer in-house understand German and Spanish but this actual award opens the door for other opportunities as well so to start off with we filled out our application for isbe to be able to be able to actually do this and be a place that can award the Seal of bi literacy and or the accommodation award and so we were able to do that application and be accepted this year in the ability to um kind of award that process after that we had to go through a checklist some training and some other things to make sure that we are following these State mandated requirements uh select a process for assessments this test assessed the four areas so we're listening Reading Writing and speaking in the other foreign language they also have to the students score at a certain level in English for proficiency to show that they are obviously by literate it's not single so just mad the clarification it is the English and a second language that is being kind of certified here so both of those go into combination and then we had to uh I had the pleasure of working with Mr progorski um Mrs Stoner here in our district office that runs our Isis system because we have to have some settings marked because what happens as the students go through this process they end up when they pass the test at a certain achievement level this gets stamped on their transcript and on their diploma so it's it's not just a assessment that yes they did it and there's there's no Mark it's something that they're going to take with them and and be able to carry down that that kind of future um in the Rough Side of it just to understand the differences between the seal and accommodation the seal is the highest level of understanding that the student is showing the accommodation is they are working towards it okay um there's not I wouldn't say an extreme difference it's like intermediate understanding and high knowledge of understanding in in the difference for when it comes to the seal but I want to explain that the universities by state law are mandated to accept the seal any student who actually passes with that level two years of foreign language credit at their institution so that is one huge Accolade that our students can walk away from our building after they've maybe experienced one two three four years of learning this foreign language they can kind of have that stamp uh to show that level and get credit in kind of an automatic status but I want to clarify what that looks like because there could be some confusion it is not automatic in the setting that our transcript gets sent to them and the university processes the information our students which we are going to try to overly communicate with them they have to contact the register's office at the University they're going to attend to make sure they process process specifically their seal accommodation to get the credits applied at their specific College each College accepts it differently so for example the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign gives eight credits for the seal and the seal only because that's what the law states Northern right down the road gives 12 credits for the seal and gives nine credits for the accommodation so it's really important that we as these students are being successful get the background knowledge note they have to take a couple more steps to make sure they get that credit after they leave our doors um Mr pogorski is going to go into the the side of how he assisted this process kind of actually unrolling at the high school itself so I'm going to let him speak at this point thank you very much like the actual implementation of this program Mr books just explained everything he did almost all the heavy lifting again this all started and I got to do the fun part of getting our kids into the library and testing them essentially um Mrs Marciniak one of our counselors Mrs Stoner as he mentioned and Miss McMahon our registrar have been really impactful on this part of the program of getting our transcripts ready for review getting the stamps ready for the diplomas and everything else but from our testing perspective we were lucky enough to have over 30 kids test and 12 of them earned in the state seal seven of them earn the state commendation also worth worthwhile note that we will have already we know we have both accommodation and State Steel winners next year already because we award this at the end of their senior year with their diploma and transcript but we do already have some Juniors and even a sophomore that has already tested and shown their capacity and their foreign language awesome um just to go in a little bit more detail that the ways that they can test they can get a certain score on their sat to qualify for their English they can get a certain score on their access exam um they could take a dual credit course so there's multiple Pathways for kids to demonstrate this in my mind the thing that's very special and impactful here too as well is that these students that earn this award are a mix of both native speakers or Heritage speakers and foreign language speakers so we have students that tested in Arabic Spanish German and polish this year and a mix of native uh and foreign speakers in both so with that being said some of them are here today if anyone is here come on huh and I'm just going to read the names into the record for both so for our state sealed by literacy which is the higher we have Edgar Espinoza in Spanish Patricia gavina in Spanish [Applause] and Andrea Gomez in Spanish [Applause] in Spanish and also note Commendation for German as well so try literally [Applause] in Spanish Libby Libby Levine in Spanish [Applause] Maria Lopez in Spanish [Applause] Ernesto Lopez meganis in Spanish [Applause] Rodriguez Rubio for Spanish [Applause] Eduardo Cerna saucedo in Spanish Melanie Rojas in Spanish and Lucas sternak for polish [Applause] accommodation along with Jade are another six students Jules apira in German [Applause] Nicholas garotas in German [Applause] Kirsten Lim Spanish Hannah razool Spanish Matthew Schmidt in German and Michael Wood in German so congratulations to all of them we did a larger group picture at the high school outside the front but their hard work and dedication really in multiple languages is a testament to their abilities and we're excited to see where they are going to go we're also excited that going along with this the seal by literacy affords us the opportunity to do a retest as well and along with the Juniors and a couple sophomores who are already going to get the award their senior year we had another I think it was eight to ten students that were right at the threshold of either the accommodation or the state seal so we're going to have a retest before the end of the year and then we find out usually within two to three days that those scores come back so we can do a post-haste application on the diploma and everything if they bring that back so very excited about where we're going and having the first class of winners [Applause] congratulations in a second to discuss and approve the consent agenda so don't move second um in your board packet you should have your revenue and expenditure reports revenues are trending at 45.39 compared to 44.7 74 a year ago expenditures are trending at 57.04 compared to 55.78 a year ago impact fees we received for eight home starts for the month of March 42 443.76 no transition fees were received bills payable for both Northern Kane and Central are typical for the month of April I just put in there and the notes there is one a bigger bill for Mid Valley tuition for 1.7 million and that's for just for the second half of the school year so that's that's it all right uh bulk yes Nolan yes enter yes rape yes a thief yes Gorman yes electricity motion second to improve the softball team's spring trip that occurred March 31st to April 1st second we have athletic director Jessica with us probably be up here for a couple of the next ones sorry um it's hard we had baseball in there I forgot to put softball they didn't go down there but they were able to get a few games in despite whether so that one's in there and you'll also see I know you got to go through the list but just as long as I'm up here you'll also see our math team made it to state that uh that memos in there as well as long as our skills USA so we'll have two more Academic Teams heading down for some State competitions here in the in the coming coming weeks so that's great thank you Nolan yes Henner yes rape yes a thief yes folk yes Gorman yes you need a motion in a second to improve the math teams competition overnight trip scheduled three April 21st to 22nd it's almost second we're excited to see post covert or math teams um active again and participating and they've always been strong and looking forward to seeing good things continue to come from them it's actually their first date competition there's a first one I know in the past they did Regional sectionals percussion right Nolan yes Henner yes Rabe yes a thief yes Falk yes Gorman yes Lexington emotion second to approve the skills USA team state competition over my trip schedule for April 27th to 29th some of second again the first date competition we're having skills USA this is the second year they started it last year piloted it this year is their official year to do skills USA it actually is more of our Career Tech Ed strand Works more in our business Arena our video programs incubator those elements so we're very very excited to actually have some people going out of state so we'll see how we do all right Penner yes Rabe yes a thief yes folk yes Nolan yes Gorman yes the next Indian motion second to approve the contract with ifg engineering for MEP Engineering Services we have our director ability to grounds Dan polloway not one of the boring stuff all the exciting stuff's done as usual um this is our contract with iMac which is our MEP engineering firm mechanical electrical Plumbing fire protection um we you guys approved Erickson our civil engineering with the size of the projects and things we have coming up we thought it would be in our best interest to have these under our roof and working directly for the district like we have our architect and we have our construction manager um the contract you're approving is the master contract so that's just the overarching contract which is similar to all those membership groups they'll do addendum specific to the projects that we're asking them to do that'll be an addendum to that Master contract those addendum contracts in our process don't come to the board for approval we ask you to approve their Master contract and then we take care of the addendums at our level any questions typically the addendums you know what's the range of work and it all depends on the size of the project and for these because we haven't had MEP under our roof or civil civil we've outsourced um typically so it varies based on the project size it's usually a percentage rate of the size of the project so it varies greatly all right thanks Dan okay rape yes a thief yes bulk yes Nolan yes Henner yes Gorman yes we found information items first is the enrollment report um our enrollment is at 400 4780 students uh we're up here today at 134 students from last year at this time um included with the high school account we also now included our early grads because that fluctuates year to year so our current High School seniors in class are 279 but that's excluding the 42 early grads but so notice that is our 279 seniors current seniors go out they're going to be replaced by 398 incoming freshmen so um we will continue to have deal with enrollment issues in the near future all right next up is the valley special education Cooperative classroom use agreement okay um my memo was included in your word packet so the Mid Valley special education Cooperative is made up of school districts Batavia Geneva Saint Charles cainland and Central 301 and we partner together to provide services that um would not be effective for us to do Standalone inside of our districts great partnership we've been with Mid Valley for for many years many many years we currently are working with Mid Valley and we all share the same uh at least dollars at six dollars per square foot so no matter where students are housed whether it's in Batavia Geneva Kane let's say Charles are here it's the same we've kept it that way because we're all paying each other anyway we currently have um two programs at Central High School with new past Pathways and living skills in a new Pathways program also at Central High School we're currently in discussions with Mid Valley about potentially adding one more classroom in the district for our students so as this comes back for Action next month it could move from three classrooms to four classrooms foreign thank you um next up is Country Trails uh School Improvement plan presentation all right good evening everybody uh I'm Greg Engel principal of Country Trails and Theresa kolk assistant principal I hope you guys are having a good evening now you probably saw on your board packet this is in Virtual format but I folded it up pretty myself so now you have the actual uh pamphlet so what I'm going to ask you to do is we're going to actually go through it if you actually just open it up once I want to start with some academic things you read the tone of the inside of the emails or inside of the document it's actually kind of telling you a story and I'm going to tell that story a little bit to kind of walk you through it so as was already reported earlier this school year Country Trails five of seven schools got that um exemplary designation from isbe in our school report card and what it really was was saying that we were in the top 10 of the state which is great my teachers would tease me that I should elaborate on that more but what it really was was is that the state looked at how much uh covet had affected all of the students all of the students and gave us a percentage of where we were at and then what how did we close that Gap well District 301 and Country Trails did a great job of closing that Gap better than 90 of the rest of the state so I think it's something that we should highlight all the hard work that our teachers did to get our students back to where they were so that's something that we have highlighted that was an academic achievement for us the other thing that we did as a whole District Elementary District that you approved was to buy a new um Ela resource hmh into reading so one of the other things I highlighted academically within our within our pamphlet is that we adapted this new program and we've had some trials and tribulations with it but we are working hard we just had Julie our um rep from the company in every Elementary building she was in CT on Thursday got a chance to spend time with every grade level and I'm happy to report that not only are we working at it in a building level but our students are improving their scores are going up you know we're using weekly assessments each module is tied to a test that they can take at the end of a week that might not physically mean five days but at the end of a module and we're tracking that you know kind of In-House it's just an internal temperature check on how the students are doing and they are doing well they're closing hopefully that's going to lead to more uh closing of that Gap when we speak to you guys next year but along that same note of that coven when you open up your pamphlet you're going to see what we're going to talk about next put a huge emphasis on was that you know Covenant affected us all right but it affected our students too and it wasn't just academics that it affected we saw very early on at the elementary level that there wasn't a social and emotional level of need that the students needed and we spent a whole year trying to re-teach the kids how to do school now remembering their age some of them missed out they either did virtual kindergarten and then they showed up to school and we put them in first grade but they've never had a bathroom or a gymnasium or lunchroom or any of those things they didn't might not have had traditional daycare and so they didn't know how to interact with one another so we spent a little bit of time realizing we had kind of two kindergarten classes a kindergarten a true kindergarten class and then a first grade class that had never been so what do we do as Educators we sat down and started to figure out like how are we going to do this now Country Trails this is my fifth year there has always had um cougar Pride Carl the cougar we have a morning pledge we have our The Pledge posted and painted on the wall he's murals of him everywhere and all this but I would admit that over time it had just kind of been a thing a check mark and so we started to talk about some of these social emotional needs of our students and what could we do and so a committee formed and it wasn't one teacher or two teachers I have and I'll list them later up to 14 or 15 staff members that are on this committee ranging from classroom teachers to speech pathologists obviously with social workers everybody sharing that goal of trying to help our students in this realm so we're very excited to tell you that um it was a success if it wasn't I might not have told you about it but uh it's been great and so I want to tell you a little bit about what it is so we we rebooted uh our Cougar Pride initiative and so if you are a Harry Potter fan it's like the house system so we took the acronym Pride we assign it is the logo on your thing we assigned a acronym to each letter and then a color to each letter and the students were given a house they were randomly drawn at the beginning of this year um I'd like huge shout out to PTO helped purchase the shirts every single student and staff member got a shirt the staff are on teams as well I'm like Dumbledore I don't have a team so I wear whatever shirt reps whatever team is winning because the kids are always asking me what team are you on I'm like I'm on all of your teams Mrs kolk as well um and so they wear their shirts on Wednesday but it's not only that we have committee members who take the time to create SEO lessons you can see in the middle page what the themes were for each month the students are taught they actually get together in their houses and they learn with that house community and there was a reason why we did this last year I actually think it stemmed from penny wars we did class first class well you would be happy to know that the fifth graders were manipulating The Kindergartners and telling them to put their coins in the wrong buttons so that they could win and so it actually came out of that where an idea sparked where what if we're going to show cougar Pride we're going to earn this we're going to do something as a school Community now they're bled across grade levels there are blue house kindergartners and blue house fifth graders and when they get together blue houses together so now there's a new sense of community on top of the of the classroom Community the Country Trails Community the 301 community and so that was beneficial that that was something that we saw that was awesome the other thing is the students get little tickets they're called cougar Pride tickets for showing some sort of behavior walking in the hallway quiet in the lunchroom being respectful helping a student anything any staff member can hand this out well before like I said this was just kind of a thing that they got and they were like oh I got this thing now they're collecting them in their classroom they're turning them in and weekly we call out we pull winners and not announced a bus win or a lunchroom winner a class like a grade level winner then we keep track of all that count and at the end of the month we award the school to the to a house so right now Greenhouse is winning so Greenhouse shout out to you guys everything in the school is decked there's banners that are hung the office is green there's a green decal under every teacher's door like everything is wrapped green so now all the other houses are like okay we want to take Country Trails back that is that positive reinforcement to to get working on that and then they come in and they get that when we take those weekly winners um at the end of the month they get breakfast with the principal and yeah I get to be the mayor of the whole organization but I couldn't do it without the help of everybody else so what I'd like to do right now is recognize a few of the people first of all I have some of my on sale committee here with us president thank you this is Miss statlow she's a second grade teacher in Country Trails this is Mrs Milne she is a kindergarten teacher at Country Trails and that is Beth Dorsey who is the chair of the SL committee she's a social worker at Country Trails I'm on a list off so we also have Lauren ferry from first grade Brittany Robinson from third grade Kristen Johnson from fourth grade Kelly Lazar from fifth grade our specialist teachers Becky Thayer Megan raykow our librarian we have a sped teacher Christy Burns we have SLP Andrea Bonk and Desiree minehart and then social workers Beth Dorsey and Marissa helfers I could not do it without the administrative assistance in the office who count the tickets Mrs Hughes also puts together the slideshow that's shared with the community I couldn't do it without Mrs Coco back because she does our certificates that be given to the kids like I said I get to shake hands and kiss babies and the entire team helps helps all that run so what is what what is the value of this well we've put a little bit of data down our office referrals I'm students are still going to have um some poor decisions that they make at times but our office referrals are down a huge percentage we had 65 office referrals last year April to April we're down to 44.
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we have a roll call sure Tony paragini and Harrison here Faith him here you have a foreign welcome everybody do we have any um public comment let's go nothing okay um first order of business is a review of the minutes of the March 13 2023 meeting um we've all received them and a chance to review them and any comments I have nothing okay who has done his usual fine job that's right um so I need to accept minutes discussion none okay all in favor great all right um new business so um we'll start with new platform for Student Success plans via School link yes so we've invited our guidance director Michelle katusi School counseling director to come tonight to talk to all of us about a new program called School links our new platform called School links we have the opportunity to be on a significant call today uh with that with that vendor and Michelle has really done an exceptional job of um not only looking at our current platform of Naviance but really working with all stakeholders who in any way in our district are attached to navias and looking for a better solution that you may or may not know that Naviance used to be the only game in town when it came to Student Success plans and college application process Etc and so Michelle is here today to tell you all about her findings and to inform and ask questions and let us ask questions about schooling yes um so we currently still are using Naviance and we have our contract active with that through February of 2024 but knowing that all changes take time especially with something like this that is impacting so many students um really wanted to start the research to find the right platform for Cheshire with plenty of time to to make that work so started the research process formally right at the beginning of this school year in September um and the reason why you went through the research process we've had Naviance in District for I want to say about 12 years give or take it was here before I came here seven years ago and as Marlene stated it really was the only game in town as an electronic College and Career Readiness platform that really meshed well with the Student Success plan initiative from the state of Connecticut saying that we have to house these things electronically and this was kind of just the way every school district in Connecticut was doing it that could afford to have Naviance in their school district because there's a cost associated with it in that time they've made some upgrades and changes that have been great but they've also made some upgrades and changes that haven't been so great um and for Cheshire Public Schools last year we experienced an outage from November 1st to mid-January in Naviance yes that was our district specific it wasn't around the country it had to do with um really you know nitty-gritty data stuff that with our student ID numbers that students duplicate accounts were created for every student so when the students would log in they'd see the raw like they'd see their account but it wasn't their account with all their information that was stored from sixth grade on in it um and Scott Conway and Tom liwak and myself Richard Lennon one of us was on the phone with fabians every day trying to fix the problem and it took two and a half months for them to fix it um with very little offering on their end as far as like this can be it's not going to happen again and we've like we know what the problem is it was back in November and January that I was like perhaps when this contract expense we do need to look at what else is out there so informally was just asking other districts within Dirks A and B what they were using um asking around the state working what wasn't and so investigated School links which is the platform that um I feel is the best fit for our district and I'll talk about that research problem part as well but also looked at score s-c-o-i-r and Zello x-e-l-l-o I don't know why they all have such difficult names um but those are the most commonly used platforms um in school districts similar to Cheshire um and schooling actually seems to be the way a lot of us are leaning towards because of what they can offer and because of the cost so in addition to the usage problem with Naviance um some of its limitations it is very geared towards four-year college students which is great that is a high number of of our student population and has been historically but for those students who want more information on just career or on two-year schools it's just not as strong in that area and that's something that we've expressed them I know other districts have expressed to them and they still haven't really upped their game and now there are these other companies that see it as an end of how they can compete a little bit um to offer more of that information so that was one evaluating platforms wanted something that was a bit more comprehensive um wanted something that still was usable for students in grades 6 through 12 since that's where we are using it currently in Cheshire public schools and that there was enough um career exploration tools and things like that in there that they weren't being redundant over time that it matched um you know like reading levels among the different grades because some of the things in Naviance are a little too um challenging I think for some of our younger students in the the middle school and in sixth grade um to really access and understand um and then we wanted something that was a little like like spicier that the you know the students would be more engaged in because right now they truly are only going in when they're directed by um a a counselor or our business department actually uses it quite a bit as well at the high school so unless they're teacher directed they're not going in on their own so we wanted to find something that would be more engaging for students um so when schoolings came around it almost felt like one of those things that was too good to be true like every presentation we had from them was great everything we wanted um they said they could provide um and so I was impressed with it at first and then brought in a larger group um so had our some of our middle school counselors um the whole High School counseling staff our administrative assistants that work with Naviance had them in on the call had Leslie payer and Sean McEwen from the business and CTE departments at the high school look at it because there's a lot of components that could work well for their departments as well um administration had Tom Lee walk come and sit down the calls from a data perspective because the computer stuff I definitely wanted to make sure that they're speaking the same language um and really The Impressions from everyone with it was I see we're not losing anything I only see that we're gaining benefits everything that Naviance has been doing for as well because they don't do everything wrong right um that School links will continue to do so one of the main things that we use in advance for at the high school level is to communicate with colleges and send the college application materials transcripts letters of recommendation um doing the College and Career research so students are informed about what they want to do as a career and then what training and preparation they would need to go there everything in School links is comparable or better in my opinion even from the career piece and I'm stealing this phrasing from um there the rep that I worked with there his name is Sean Murphy he says it's like Tick Tock versus Facebook both are great but the kids want to see The Tick Tock right so a lot of the career information is in those 90-second clips of someone who does that job he showed us an example of a female pilot and so in 90 seconds she was able to say what she does and it was really engaging and then they could flip to the next one and see it which is how our students are used to taking in information now um it still allows a lot of flexibility for it to be like chesterized so we can create what we want our students success plan format to look like in there so that if they haven't done this since they started the Student Success plans but if the state audit audited us and said I want to see a student's success plan that we could actually print a document that has all of it listed in one place through School links whereas now we'd have to say Okay well they've done that like we have kind of like check boxes that we are tracking it with our students and making sure that they're all Meeting those requirements or um the requirements of the Student Success plan but it's not like a document so this would give us that capability as well um another great highlight and I see it's on the agenda later but I'm thinking about with the school Business Partnership Naviance um is really um just people that are in-house so it is just our current students again grade six through 12 and our current staff once students are alumni um the accounts go away because we're paying kind of per student with Naviance um and Community Partners can't really put anything in there we can put stuff in like they can't interact at all um with our permission of course School links expands that our alumni will always have access to it so they can go back in and look at some of those career inventories they can update their information in there so we can stay in touch with them get email addresses so we can ask them questions later um about you know their experiences in Central Public Schools which I know we've actually tried to do a few times in the last few years is to get in touch with our alumni and then Community Partners again in information where I'm putting and people were giving access um could also put opportunities in there so as we build collaborations with local businesses for um you know work based learning or apprenticeships um internships that we can actually house all of that in one space so that our Community Partners and our school district our students our families can all kind of have this central location of interacting with one another that we know is in our controlled safe Cheshire Public Schools environment um so I'm very excited about moving forward with it um in addition to that it is actually less expensive than Naviance so it is also a cost savings to the district which is nice um and um our goal um so right now we did our kickoff meeting today um I was able to find some money within the existing budget for us to be able to um get schoolings up and running now so that when our Naviance contract expires in February 2024 that will have been in this system our students will be in the system we can start using it so we don't have to ever worry about there being a period of time where we don't have one of these Platforms in place um so that kickoff meeting today was trying to to get the timeline going of how the data transfer would work um and hopefully with the goal of having our seniors be able to use it starting their college application process for the class of 2024 start in the fall of 2023.
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April 17 2023 um Ben can you call the roll please okay Planet committee members Andrew Martelli here Sam Rosenberg here and Tim White was not here yet but you do have a quorum Mr chairman all right great could you pull up the flag for us I will do that got it all right I pledge allegiance to the pledge of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands as one nation under God indivisible with liberty okay any uh communication from the audience Mr maciano we have no audience present and I received nothing from audience in their emails either all right great thank you for that uh item number three presentation by energy we have some folks here this evening um so we'll turn the floor over to you and when Tim joins us um we'll just acknowledge Him and we'll go from there so I'm sorry about that but yeah I will just as Dave's bringing up the presentation I did want to just um do a brief introduction you know Kendra um and Dave are from energia and energia used to be known as ECG engineering when we did our energy performance contract with ameresco it's about eight years ago now um at the time ECG did serve as the owner's representative you know for that project we are still a customer they are still doing the uh measurement and and verification work every year so this is a follow-up to our last meeting where we had Johnson Controls did make a presentation and I know you know from speaking to Kendra and Dave they do know Aaron elibrio who made that presentation they do work with with Johnson Control uh Johnson Controls on projects um so they have a lot of experience you know in particular with schools and towns to do you know different types of infrastructure upgrades and we did share you know what Dave and Kendra a copy of our current capital plan and that really is kind of the the jumping off point for tonight's discussion that we do have quite a bit of work to do in our schools from an infrastructure perspective and if there's any Innovative way ways to do that we certainly think that energia can present at least some initial thoughts tonight and so with that I'll turn it over to you Kendra and Dave thank you Thank You Vince Dave is going to begin the presentation I just want to say um thank you for the opportunity to be here tonight we've really enjoyed our relationship with Cheshire um and you know we are excited about the possibility of helping you achieve some more um so thank you again and Dave okay thank you everybody good evening I'm Dave Newman I'm the VP of engineering for energia I was very very much involved in your original EPC um we've also had an assortment of other uh little energy evaluation type projects we've done with the uh the town and the schools over the years as well and I've LED those efforts as well so very quickly um who is energia um we specialize in energy performance contracts uh being owners representatives for epcs it's really all we do and as we said what we have already done for Cheshire in the past um it's a turn we provide a turnkey service that starts from the very very beginning of looking at energy at your your energy bills and your opportunity all the way through to the measurement and verification process of actually verifying that the project worked and that the savings are actually being produced which is something that we're kind of at the tail end now of doing um for the town we have over 125 successful epcs many of them in Connecticut many of them in New York and Pennsylvania and other places as well and our core role here is to protect your interests um we're performing the due diligence and managing the cross project at every step of the every step to make sure you're getting the maximum value and that you're protected and that the Esco is is producing real savings and giving you what you've what you were promised all right uh one other item to note is that we are actually endorsed by CCM as an owner's representative for espc uh work that's something we won uh competitively and we we do have an agreement with CCM that partnership um that we can actually take advantage of uh to work with you again okay so just a quick overview of our partnership in the original project uh and and the kind of things we've worked on so we were um competitively selected in an RFP back in 2014.
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should the board even call it okay I'll turn it over to you go ahead um can you also explain because there's a lot of confusion on the state saying they're giving more money for funding to the schools versus our shortfall so this year we will only get two percent is my prediction they have not adopted the budget yet but my guess is we will just get the inflation increase of two percent may I feel that too yeah and uh in aggregate the state is providing more but generally the schools that are getting more for an example they budgeted the legislature had budgeted I think around 30 million dollars for they're essentially scholarships to go to any private school you want to go to that's called an ESA and to date there's over 150 to 200 million dollars of Esa money out there already they only budgeted 30 million so that's one part the other is that charter schools are funded one-way public schools are funded another way Charter Schools receive more money per student than than public school districts considerably more so while there has been a lot of money and by the way we have in all fairness we have benefited from some one-time money from the state our Baseline support has increased but it has not kept pace with inflation one-time money means here's money once it's gone we're not giving you more we're trying to get increased base level support so we can anticipate what our expenses are going to be against our revenues does that answer your question Jennifer right and from my understanding the state expects public schools to use bonds and overrides for their shortfalls so they've intentionally limited the amount that they're giving because they want the community to help support their schools and because a charter school and a private school cannot go after a bond or override they are willing to not only make up that three percent but they might give them over 10 percent higher than us is that true that is correct that is true I think that the base level support is in the neighborhood of two thousand dollars per student more yes and so two thousand dollars more times our eighteen hundred and seventy five students would be in much better shape we wouldn't be having this conversation but you're right that the argument is well you can always go out for a button or override in fact there's only about half of those pass statewide right and a basic calculation is our budget would be higher by three and a half to four million dollars in what we have a shortfall in is is simply like a 1.2 to 1.5 so if we had that same funding we would be doing significantly more right correct because we would have another two million dollars to play with but we will never gain that correct and there will never be an equalization correct between the two well I don't know if I'd say never but I'm guessing no not in the near future right not with this legislative all right so Bond and override so we sent out a survey um and like Dr Wright said we did it by phone and by social media so you may have seen that uh survey come through on your phone or your social media and you may have taken it so we're going to talk about what the results of that survey are and some of the Implement implement implications of what will happen if we um don't get some extra funding so we had a total of 539 respondents um to our phone and our social media effort which I think is a good um sampling of our community it's probably somewhere in the neighborhood at 20 of our voter base yeah so about Dr Ray said about 20 of our voter base all right so the first thing that we asked um was um do you believe that schools are adequately funded and you can see here that the majority of people 69 percent of people said no they do not believe that we were adequately funded so of the people that responded to the survey our community believe that we we are not funded adequately to do what we're charged to do so I Dr Wright and I worked on the wording of this so we could kind of get you could kind of get an understanding of how much it would cost if we went out for a seven million million dollar Bond so it cost about two to three dollars um approximately um per for your monthly tax bill um per um 000 household yeah if can you explain the difference between the the value of the house and the specified yes so the value of your house that your realtor tells you is higher than what your the County taxes you on so your assessed valuation it from the county is what you're taxed on can I I'll break that down even further because I've been reading the room a little bit if you have a 475 000 home you're not taxed on 475 thousand dollars these the county doesn't has a formula that says we think your assessed value mean the value that we're going to tax you on is roughly 300 000.
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questions I don't answer just Mark mentioned we are on schedule and obviously we're out there if you've joined by there that's the side of the building's dug up because we're employing the structural and getting ahead of the game so we can open in August uh everything's going well uh nothing out of the ordinary yet I'm sure the music folks are more appreciative than that than having the acoustically would rather have the harder surface on the floor than that very much of it plus it'll last a lot longer in the carpet they pouring out so it's an investment the life cycle cost is much better carpet so I've gone and probably not coming back for many many schools all right these are both action items later on this evening Freedom of Information requests we have received several refilled them they're posted up on the website if somebody searches for fly on their website they'll find those those foyer requests a motion for the Board of Education to approve the consented we need a motion for the Board of Education to approve the consent agendas presented which includes the Personnel report appointment Administration appointment certified appointment classified transfer position exempt transfer position classified the Personnel report honorable discharge excuse me honorable dismissal certified resignation certified resignation classified the Personnel report salary and benefits wage increase classified wage increase administrative the financial Pages the student trips 2023 to 2024 amended under 2024-2025 Amendment calendar and the d-a-o-e-s board appointment second Mike and Joanna thank you very much Mike Davenport aye Vasquez Drexler aye Christopher Espinoza aye shirelle Fuller aye Jenny hagstrom aye Terry pavisich aye and Nancy kopka aye the center agenda curies we'll move now to the action items the first one is the motion for the Board of Education to adopt the resolution entitled solution authorizing the DuPage County Clerk to extend specific tax rates for tax year 2022.
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okay that is a 42 reduction the students have bought in the staff members have bought in and so it has grown so popular you'd be happy to know that TK has gone to one of the other buildings and talking to the other Elementary they all we all have our homework we all have our own we all have our own um Twist on the pride but just kind of walking through what what this had because of the benefits that it's had for our students so I really wanted to highlight this is not I know in school it's more as Jessica said more than just academics it's the whole student and I think that we have proof that this has really helped country trail students um I do want to highlight just a few things on the back we did a mural for um Veterans Day that's all of our staff and students making an American flag we hired one of the new teachers um Mr Lugo who has some drone work so he put the Drone up in the air and took a picture I thought that was really cool and then down here of course is a staple we were finally able to have an in an in-person assembly for our Cougar reading Madness program which has been remote you know we've been doing virtual for so many years and so this was the students excitement for um the book that won and so it was just another thing that I would like to highlight so again thank you to Mrs kolkbeck to my NCL committee to all of the teachers at Country Trails uh to your guys's support for everything that you make possible for our students thank you great work yeah if you have any questions for us thank you right next we have the Lower Lake sip presentation [Laughter] good evening Dr sir and Dr Mangan and the board thank you for having me tonight I'm Rebecca Jers I'm the principal of Lilly Lake Grade School and um tonight I just want to highlight uh you should have a little flyer as well I won't go through every piece of it but really what I wanted to do tonight is to just let the the hard work of the students and the teachers um kind of explain themselves but I want to give you a little idea of what you're going to view in just a second so the video will start off um with just a little snippet from our English language learning teacher and the explicit teaching that she does there with targeted skills in reading and writing um you'll see this this little clip of it's like a red blue yellow and you'll wonder why that's in there it's because like Country Trails has been working we work as well with uh social emotional needs of our students and our teachers at Lilly Lake across all grade levels and settings are using zones of Regulation so that is what that is it was really hard for me by the way to cut this down to um it was originally 21 minutes um and then I was down to 15 and so I kept whittling it away to about seven minutes so uh it was really hard because it was so fun to go in and um with I have to give a shout out to Gail Stover who helped me put this together but this is really to speak to the work of the students and the staff in PE Mrs Jackson highlights one of our PE stars and one of the ways you get to be a PE star is by studying the students K-5 also set their own learning and behavior goals and then check in with the teachers and also with me to check in to see where they're at with those goals and do they want to tweak them and we found that one if kids are part of their goal setting then they will most likely meet those goals and so there's an example of a student who is proud that he increased his PE goals in second grade you'll see um again Grady Munchen the inter-reading hmh program that is a new resource for teachers this year here uh Mrs kohlhoff Denise kohlhoff will be extending a lesson and the parts you won't see is that after this last time and we did cut it down quite a bit she also meets with the students in small groups to further differentiate um in third grade you'll see a snippet of Mrs sulkey she's also utilizing the hmas resource meeting with students whole group she sets the purpose for the reading for the day does a second round story and refers her students back to their my book which is part of the resource students do a turn and talk and then they're also referred to Anchor charts and you'll see her front loading vocabulary as well in fourth grade Mrs Schultz will be Melissa Schultz will be giving you an example of what she calls well done Wednesday this is another example of a social emotional um some teachers do more of a morning meeting she does it more after recess and at different times a day depending on the need of the day and the need of the kids and the children you'll observe them complimenting one another and then telling each other what they they like that they do well hence the name Wilder on Wednesday and then in fifth grade Mrs Christina Tinsley will be giving you an example of her number talks um Christina does a great job with that and a lot of other staff members have gone in and and she's modeled for them and they have adopted some of her strategies so this is fifth grade and they're focusing on specific mathematical skills you know again depending on the topic of the day but applying reasoning Computing understanding engaging their their talking and um it doesn't these sometimes go longer shorter but it just depends on the skill that they're working at so that's what you're going to see hopefully I can get this going opportunity to thank Dr Stern and the school board for having me here tonight to share the accomplishments growth and achievements of Lilly Lake students this year as well as the positive effect and change that staff have had on that growth throughout the course of this year at Lilly Lake Grade School thank you for having me so for This One Max you're looking you have to go back to your lesson and you have to find the first sentence the first word and put it on there okay and Colby same thing looks like you're on that there's this one and then you're on medium surprised wait is y'all students hi this year Miss Jackson Choice from your PE star because of my growth mindset in my growth mindset I make a lot of goals one of my goals this year was to run more laps on the Pacer test number one of my goals was to do more push-ups during I during my time practicing for a I ran and did a lot of cardio activities and I did a few push-ups every single day because of that the results of my testing was five more laps for the Pacer test and two more push-ups for the push-up test [Music] hello look at your cards look at your signs if you think you see a diagram on this page hold it up everybody else put them down you see a diagram a picture of something that's showing us something this is a diagram so a diagram doesn't have to just be like a map it can be a picture that shows us something if you see a label on this diagram hold up your legal card okay do you guys see the labels Riley can you point out any labels on here like which one are the labels on this case [Music] yeah one yeah exactly so Riley said these are the labels here it says one two three four that tells us and does anybody see caption on this side yes you guys see the caption down here in this box it's in something called a text box so it's today is our second read of TJ there's Siberian Cup right yesterday we set our purpose look at your notes you should have some written in on page 74.
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so um and that doesn't seem like a unreasonable goal based on how the kickoff call went today which is good um there was one more thing I was going to say about it I'm not going to remember it'll come to me any I guess questions I was pretty thorough yeah wow I have a whole if you want to see videos and a whole presentation that I put together but I'm actually I'm very excited about it and just based on so many conversations that we've had I think even just the school year alone about kind of like the the district Vision I feel like this will put us um in a very good direction to achieve that with One Singular system whereas so that was the other piece I was gonna say so Naviance because of where it was lacking we were supplementing with other things anyway so now we'll be able to really streamline into one system a Naviance parent s that was fun um so is security what measures what it what can you touch on that what is yes so is vis-a-b also an Ambiance yes so um that was actually one of the things and it was it was really nice to have Tom Lee walk involved from the beginning all of the the data sharing and data usage agreements that need to be signed they were willing to sign and that all cleared um before we even like went through the process of saying is this something that we want to um move forward with but everything all the data is encrypted they use the clever system which we're using for other systems um within the district so um the same security that's that's there will be there unless a student would give their alumni password to um someone when they're an Alum that would be the only way they could see their their student information but they'd only see it for that account they wouldn't see it for any other students so everything will be um the only other person that could use student account would be their parent that was linked to their account and it all talks through our PowerSchool sis system so um it would have to be someone that's connected to that student in our power school system as well and you said um you'll be ready you'll have the kids the seniors uploaded and ready to go for February 2023 so we'll have one year uh um fuel systems so yeah so we'll have about um it'll end up like half a year so um all seniors will start in this uh this August August of 2023.
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um overall the project was 10.2 million dollars in construction costs um It produced about 618 thousand dollars in annual savings which reflects about a 24 reduction in the in the overall energy Baseline uh the Energy Services Company that was selected I know you mentioned you you had spoken to Johnson Controls your original project was actually done by a company named amaresco who is uh also an equally capable uh Esco who does quite a bit of work uh in New England and Connecticut um some of the major items that were done in the original project probably the biggest items were the complete electronic hydronic heating system conversion at Highland Elementary School uh and for on the newer wing of the high school uh LED lighting upgrades throughout the district tons of exterior lighting uh an oil to gas conversion uh work uh and then other small things like premium efficiency Motors and just general improvements to the water heating hydronic systems in the buildings for heating okay so a few other um a few other items we've actually done for the town schools over time um one of them was that um you were actually contemplating a power purchase agreement you're kind of pointing rooftop solar we did assist in some of the technical evaluation of that and looking at the providers that proposed we did look in an LED Street lighting project at one point uh and helped to evaluate the buyback uh economics of that um and you know just it and just again as we said we're we still oversee the m v and and really overseeing the original project to make sure that everything was that was promised was actually produced by the eskos and it was a very successful EPC in the in the in the original uh project yeah and just to kind of jump on that the you know the real substantial Savings in that first project that we did with Adam Moresco were the electric heat conversions you know and I know that you know the committee talked a little bit but that was pretty low hanging fruit we may not have that low hanging fruit to offset as much energy costs and if we look at another project I mean that's true maybe we do maybe maybe you'll find something Innovative but um that was that was a yeah I mean just purely on rates alone you know being able to get you off of electric heat was was absolutely huge yeah um just a quick list of other clients in Connecticut that we have worked with and have had successful projects with capital region uh correct Regional Education Council Derby RSD 13 Seymour East Haven Guilford Waterbury we had a massive project um I always like to highlight that one because it was it was a project where we did 18 boiler plants in a single summer about 36 physical boilers and all installed in a single summer window it was insane but um very proud very proud of the of accomplishing that um Branford of course Cheshire uh Southington next door we did a youth project um one of the notable ones there was in a similar fashion to Waterbury we replaced all the rooftop air handling air conditioning systems on their High School in a single summer and I forget I think it was like 15 uh units that we had to get done in that summer window um because you know as you know south of Southington has an absolutely huge High School um and it was you know just getting that equipment and getting everything ready for for school start was uh quite a quite a project it really was uh Monroe and then uh Thomaston schools as well we did a number of work there we also did Street lighting replacement uh at Thomaston okay so I did look at the um the list you sent this and uh I just kind of plucked out the kind of the pieces that looked like they were relevant um to an energy project um so of course HVAC type improvements are always on the table they're always available window replacements are very expensive but you can do them under an EPC uh fire alarm Control Systems um if they're you know if you have older systems and it's a life safety type issue it's something that and this operational uh costs with the old systems that's something that can be considered on an EPC mainly on the operational savings uh ceiling tiles we typically do you know in concert with lighting exterior doors are typical uh water savings or something that's eligible so you can do Laboratory um the China and the fixtures and you can't do a full-blown you know bathroom renovation but the actual pictures themselves you could do and then co-compliance issues and health and safety type items at least if it's in some way related to an energy system is something we can typically get into a project okay so really next steps um would be to engage energy in um we always offer a no-cost energy Financial assessment and really what that is is a high level overview of looking at your utility bills looking at your scope looking at the buildings in a very basic manner um and just looking at it to say is there enough work here to build an opportunity that would be you know worth moving ahead with um certainly just the sheer size of the buildings and you know in the number of buildings in the town there's little doubt in my mind that you've got ample opportunity for a project um the assessment we would do would give you a sense for how large and what type of major items we could do now you know we're very much aware of the fact that you have some very very major Capital renovation uh items planned in the schools building with new schools and adjusting so we would certainly need to you know would want to have details on on where those items are as well and we'll coordinate our report to you know to reflect the things you're already doing okay and I guess with that um really if anybody has any questions um we could certainly uh talk about the opportunity Andrew I'll wait on you because I you know of course I do have a couple of questions yeah I just want to welcome Tim Tim how are you Tim did you did you did you hear everything do you need any part of it um reiterated to you uh I logged on I logged on a couple uh minutes after six and I apologize to everybody for that I just got home from work um no I mean is this uh so Vin just as as a recap um ECG energy uh sorry uh you are basically contracted with the green Bank the Connecticut Green Bank as an owner's rep for a number of towns is that how it's set up right now it's it's actually hi Tim I'm Kendra mcquilton I'm the owner of uh energia um hi maybe you could go back to that slide we're we're actually in a partnership with CCM I think that might be what you're we're remembering um and so this is this was a um an agreement that was secured through a competitive process to provide uh the very services that we're discussing tonight which is um helping the town and the school district through an energy performance contract and just doing all the due diligence and Technical and Financial reviews and um you know Energy Engineering that would be required to make sure that your interests are protected throughout okay so you'd be so you'd be the owner's rep for us we would yeah and and so you know in contrast to Johnson Controls um you know they're a great company there's lots of great companies um but what we do is we sit between you and that company and Johnson would would need to um go through a competitive process as well which we would be spearheading on your behalf to make sure that they're giving you a competitive valuable proposal and Johnson Johnson would be acting in the same capacity as amaresco did 10 years ago or however correct yeah so I mean this this setup makes sense to me I mean the number one concern for me well number one concern is energy in the environment but uh good government is very important you've already gone through the process with CCM which is not officially government but in a sense it kind of is um yeah hold on Dave go talk to Mommy okay I'm sorry about this you're gonna be okay you need to eat your walnuts okay [Laughter] um I I mean in general just the the way the way all this is set up makes total sense to me and I'm I'm happy with it um I mean I I want to hear what you have to say then and everybody else has to say but conceptually this makes sense to me thank you Ben and Rich did we have a firm like this when we went through it with ameresco we did except um we did it a little bit backwards in my opinion um we first did um an RFP for the actual company that did the energy performance contract at Moresco and then we went out and hired ECG it was just kind of a timing and and I don't don't actually remember how we got introduced Kendra but I know it was after the fact and you know you did come in before the work started um but after the investment grade audit was done so that that experience kind of leads us to where we are tonight that the the best way to do this in my opinion is probably the owner's rep who will then provide the assistance to find you know the best contractor or the best Esco to do the work and you know maybe Dave and Kendra just kind of name some other names of companies that are that are doing the Esco work these days we know emeresco and we know Johnson Controls but what are some of the other ones that are active so I mean I mean the major companies out there right now are Honeywell noresco which is really um an arm of Carrier Corporation um train is out there Siemens energy does this work that's pretty much the in Connecticut those are the major players um there's a few others out there but they're smaller and not ones you'd want to use in a project this size yeah yeah I know the other one that bid when we went out the first time was Schneider Electric I don't know if they're still operating and doing much of this work we don't yeah they're still out there I I don't think I've done a project with them in probably seven years yeah okay they don't tend to compete their their biggest concern with them is they have a tendency not to want to compete if they want to get a project through relationships and then so they don't they don't bid on competitive work which is concerning unto itself because they don't they don't want people yeah yeah see the other thing that I wanted to ask if you could you know talk about a little bit is you know how you would can we work you know with you and with osc gr for Construction Grants to fund some of this work like the window projects you know um some of the other things that you mentioned do fall under a school construction Grant yeah now we've actually done that um we've done that on a number of the Connecticut projects that I um that we showed you um Guilford pursued um I believe for solar PV they got a grant for roofing Roofing and solar okay um so yes we can do it um we have done it in past projects um so there is a path forward where we can absolutely apply to get the uh the state Bill the state facility AIDS select items yeah okay and I think that's important for the committee the planning committee to understand I've realized that you know oscgr has very strict procurement requirements and and that they're not easy to work with sometimes but it would be substantial on some of these projects uh we have we have two questions um Sam you want to ask your question then kind of asked the oscgr question but excuse my ignorance so you guys would be and this might be a VIN question you would be the middleman so to speak between um Johnson Controls and us then is that how this works then yeah they would well the owner's representative would um you know do a lot of work actually in the beginning stages to put together a solicitation to find who that Esco that would actually do the work would be so that's kind of one major step and then once that firm is selected there's an investment grade audit that gets done where they go into every building and they look at all the potential energy savings opportunities and infrastructure work that would need to be done that's all documented and the owner's rep is is there to basically represent us and provide the expertise that we don't have in-house you know to do that review and when I say expertise that includes engineering expertise you know they're looking at the details of if it's a motor replacement or it's a boiler replacement or it's an HVAC that is one of the responsibilities the owner's rep has and then as construction proceeds you know they are you know working with us and with the Esco to actually do the get the work completed so they are hired to represent us and in the energy performance contract and I know this may be getting into a lot of detail but their their fee I mean the initial work that um Dave mentioned that would be at no cost for the review you know they will charge a fee assuming that we did business with energy right so their fee would be paid through the energy performance contract correct that's right okay that answers my question because I was going to ask how does the fee structure work here because there's a lot of expertise that we're pulling in and I know you guys got to eat so thank you yeah we roll it all it's another cost of the project hard and soft costs it's all rolled together um into the project to be paid out of the savings so there's no out of pocket for the uh the town or the school district Tim you're muted so anybody um feel free to correct me if I'm wrong on this but generally speaking um we are changing the order of how this is happening in part because go back 10 years ago and at that time in Connecticut I don't think that performance contracts were that widely used or at least for say like an entire School District which is what we did so it was kind of like breaking new ground and we were just pushing forward trying to do what we could to save money save energy um and you know it was it's changed since then we have a better understanding people in the state have a better understanding of how this would uh be best constructed in terms of an overall transaction so that's one of the I think that's probably a big reason why the yeah the sequence of actions was different 10 years ago yeah did it initially I I think it uh connected only even established its law the statute that governs it was only established right around that time yeah yeah so what we do is do it was brand new so bottom line Kendra what is the benefit of having you folks involved in the mix like fundamentally if I was going to explain to the taxpayer why do we need an owner's rep to this the reason you would want an owner's rep is that there's a tremendous amount of very complex foreign information that's going to be coming at the at you from companies that are super Savvy and skilled and expert in finding ways to increase their profits off on and I don't want to disparage the companies because they're great lesson checked you know the reason we got into this uh Niche is because we were engineers working with school districts and we were looking at performance contracts this is going back 20 years and we were able to review the financials and saw that the Esco was walking away with 50 profit when the customer could have got say 30 percent more Hardware out of their savings had they even known how to look at it how to hold the esco's feed to the fire um it's it's very very tricky and they are experts in how to pull it in their favor so you need to have an equal level of expertise to pull it back into your favor and that's what we provide um we've recently done a study that shows that on average we generate a million dollars roughly of additional value that goes back to our customer and that's in the form of catching Esco mistakes um you know making forcing them to guarantee rebates for example which they won't do unless they're forced and we have the influence over the industry in doing so many projects that we know what to look for we know what they'll go for we know what's a push for and we can stand up to them okay so that that's really the reason why you would want that um if not I think a lot of entities that have done a project without someone in between them in the Esco are left frustrated or confused or just not confident that the savings were borne out and that's never the case when we're involved you're going to be in the driver's seat telling the Esco what to do instead of the other way around God I appreciate that thank you my pleasure yeah I mean just um to kind of you know that continue along that Chain of Thought the one advantage of doing an energy performance contract that we really didn't talk about and this is whether or not you know energia would be involved but it it is a basically a lease Arrangement so and that's assuming that you know there's enough energy savings that warrants an energy performance contract and it'll work but when we did the first contract it was a lease Arrangement so it did not have to go to bonding and it therefore didn't have to go to referendum even though it was a 10.2 million dollar project it required Town Council approval only so that was one you know I think very important factor um that that we were able to benefit from and the second thing is that the um you know the cost of financing was pretty favorable at the time the market may be a little bit different now but if we do an energy performance contract you know everything is in the mix including the cost of financing the project so you know it either works on its own and if it doesn't that doesn't mean we don't have options and when I say it works on its own that means that the Energy savings will pay for the work that's getting done over a 15-year period of time you know so if the Energy savings isn't sufficient to pay back the full amount of the of the loan essentially then we could talk about ways that we could supplement but you know at this stage you know the the financing you know peace enables you to do a lot more infrastructure without you know having to go out and bond it all at once so I mean I know that the planning committee members you know have been you know involved or lived in town and Tim White has been on the Town Council you know that you know it's very rare that we would get 10.2 million dollars of infrastructure improvements approved for one year but that doesn't happen I mean you you know best case you know town and Board of Ed combined we're seeing five million dollars a year so I mean it would take us five years to get my 10 million dollars right exactly yeah exactly and then the other thing about the energy performance contract is we are not involved in the procurement of the of the contractors that do the work you basically hire the um energy Performance Contractor and they do all the work of finding the you know the subcontractors that are going to do the work there's no bidding involved on the part of the town so that's another big advantage the other benefit that weighs into that too is you have you have latitude to dictate because you can direct the Esco on contractors you like contractors you don't like unless you've had trouble in the past you can keep them out um specific equipment that you want um there's no low bid requirement here so we can direct them to you know to to use the equipment you you prefer which is a really nice advantage if I had one thing I mean the the way you had said before then about not going to referendum that is always something there's a benefit but there's also a drawback I don't I never when we did this 10 years ago since then I've never gotten any inkling from anybody from how many taxpayers that they felt like there was some sort of like games going on with that like people were generally happy as all I ever heard about it they I think people understood what the 10 million dollars was for and it was it was basically just an offset we're switching it out of our energy budget over to our debt budget right it's just important I just say this just to reinforce this for the voters like I think this is something that people would be comfortable with doing the lease instead of a capital Improvement type of thing right right yeah and it's not that was not to say that the the process wasn't somehow transparent the way the financing Arrangement worked like you say you know you spent less on energy and you made lease payments in return so you know under our town Charter did not have to go to referendum it didn't you know it wasn't something that needed to go out to the voters you know go Evan I was going to say just if you could talk one one more component that maybe you could share just some initial thoughts so I had mentioned that Doolittle school is a school that we know we need Windows because they're single pane still the roof needs to be replaced and we do have an interest in doing solar so if we could we bundle that those three things as an example and do you think there would be some you know enough energy Improvement in doing that that it may help us fund this overall project you want AC also at the same time didn't you I was waiting for somebody to throw that in well I'm just saying if you're doing all of them I mean yes laughs I mean the honest answer there is um to get Windows and a roof and have solar pay for probably not um potentially a roof and have the solar offset we've done that in other places there is potential for that assuming the roof can can actually structurally support the solar um I mean there are options for things like canopies and carports you can do ground type solar if there's you know suitable places for it um but that we have done and then of course Roofing is a is a an oacm eligible item yeah yeah and and there's some pretty aggressive solar incentives I know we talked about that that are available right now to municipalities that may not really have been um something that we could take advantage of in the past because of the changes in in the Solar incentives right that's true yeah 810 Brad oh thank you Andrew yeah no I was just curious about that in terms of the solar incentives that VIN just mentioned is that am I right and understanding it's it's 200 a megawatt hour for the what is it the nres program that's what I thought I was reading online but I'm not 100 on that it just says the general is the general guide for a state of Connecticut Dave David or Kendra do you know the answer to that um I do know that I do know the program is changing I don't know the exact that number Rings about um okay okay or if that's the exact number what are the conditions around it um believe it or not the Xerox program is still around um we I think we actually still have some Xerox but I don't think they compete with the enres now the incentives just to be clear the incentives got better 15 or 16 months ago January 2022.
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on a three hundred thousand dollar assessed value which would be about an average home for assessed value we're talking two or three dollars a month for a seven million dollar Capital Bond not a ton of money it won't buy half of a Big Mac it'll buy you a small Scooby Snack somewhere that has maybe no meat in it about so 59 of the people said yes they would be in favor of it and 20 were unsure so I think that's pretty favorable for us in our district um and hopefully that these meetings that we're having will help people with that are in the unsure category and maybe some of the no people um realize why it's important that we fund our school district so the mo one of the most popular things that people are in favor of is student safety and so as you can see here a ton of people are really concerned about student safety and one of the things so we're going to go over a list of things that a bond could pay for for our student safety so one of the things that we would use the money for is to re-key slash give electronic Keys around the district so every door in the district could have an electronic key one of those cards where you just swipe the door that will allow us to manage our keying much more effectively and allow us to lock people out at a push of a button or allow us to put allow people to get in at the push of a button keyless entry is the way that school districts are going to be more safe and to manage the comings and goings of people coming to the district if we did an analysis to re-key every door eight years ago and that amount eight years ago was about a hundred and sixty thousand dollars we ended up putting a hundred thousand dollars at it re-keying most of the doors but security and school security specifically is an evolving effort it one of the things that we know now is that most Bad actors and active Killers whether it be shooter or otherwise enter through unlocked doors most not all Kimberly will talk now our next bullet point no pun intended on bulletproof glass I really try to stay away from puns especially in this but the point is this twice now twice just recently as recent as two weeks ago a a shooter with a shotgun blew out the window of the door glass of the school and walked right through took another gun and started doing the shooting Sandy Hook same thing happened that's those are the only two times of which I'm aware that a locked door has been breached but what happens is these people that and they have mental problems obviously and have acts to grind they watch and they adjust their approach to what's going on the guy at the bank took a similar approach so bulletproof glass my guess is that's going to set us back somewhere between five hundred thousand and seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars or more just to do the vegetables as you enter in the main school areas it's expensive the key re-keen and putting the card key card which would be part of the badge which will we will start requiring for everyone next school year and it's also attached the kids will have a security measure zonars we know when our babies get on the bus and get off the bus we can track our kids and know where they are that's another added expense we don't have now those expenses are evolving if we're going to keep pace and thank you board for enabling us to invest in our community investing in security six years ago with the last Bond of 16 million we have taken that money and we have secured our schools but with the new evolving threats we have to evolve and we have to be in front of it and so that's I'll turn it back over to you on the cost sure going and new if we need it we know that research says that we need people in our schools to support our students that are struggling and to be able to help them work through their problems Dr Wright and I were talking about this morning usually when someone is a bad actor they have shared with someone that they're going to do this and prevention is the best medicine we want to prevent that from happening and part of that is having student support staff in our schools to be able to help these kids when they have when they're having issues the other um thing that we were that we would like to invest in is emergency communication so there's this software that we have been talking about getting that is really Innovative where you can have a map of your school and the map is interactive and you can people that have access can click on the map where there's a camera and they like the police can immediately see what's happening on that camera it's very cool technology it's um was developed for First Responders so that when they come into an emergency situation like that they can see immediately what's happening so that they can take care of the problem in an efficient effective way yeah it's something uh this effort is a county-wide Statewide effort the county was granted a significant amount of money to this end one net is another provider of cell phone provider and they are setting up towers with this money everywhere one net will put an antenna not a complete Tower but an antenna on our facilities where they're needed at no cost for us this program enables all First Responders to communicate with one channel one medium fire police Federal that includes FBI Marshals DPS all of them can communicate with one channel that's not happening now there's a half a dozen different channels so I'll give you an example of problem we had a you're aware of the inclement weather we suffered this this winter one snowstorm I pulled up at 2 30 in the morning underneath hour and couldn't get a signal I couldn't even text I couldn't text or call we couldn't communicate as an Administration team by text or cell phone or landline for a period of time so we have some radios and we said we better move to a radio well after we've visited with this the county we're probably going to still get radios but we're moving to this one net [Music] um solution which we'll require by the way a purchase of cell phones which are about fifteen hundred dollars and we'll need about 50 of them to give to the Personnel that would need to have them so all these things require an investment that's really the point thank you Kimberly yeah so first step would require us to have um special cell phones and we could pay for those cell phones with our bond money uh so the next biggest category that people um felt we needed to work on in Blue Ridge is our technology and you can see a large percentage of people believe that technology is very important which is not surprising in our changing world this goes hand in hand with our student safety of course we need technology to be able to do things like firstnet and to have those interactive maps and things like that um just so you know technology is being used in the classroom daily we're a one-to-one school district meaning that every student has a device um so that's why we would need to purchase over 2 000 computers in the next two to three years to refresh our supply thankfully we were able to get coveted relief money to help us buy on these devices for our students but as you know with your cell phone the device goes out of um uh obsolete yes it becomes obsolete um in a couple years in our um since we have such heavy usage the heavy usage and the obsoleteness um we will need to refresh our um our computers and the cost of techno technology is increasing rapidly um with inflation and just with hard to get devices so we will need Bond money to continue to have one-to-one in our classrooms the the other area I want to add is on our Fab Lab and Robotics we're increasing our CTE our career technology education participation among our among our students it's growing but we have other needs too we would like to be able to have money to continue to fund building a teacher housing we're completing we've already completed two projects and we're working on completing the affectionately referred to as the Waldo Suite that is a building that Mr Waldo started building in 2007 and then 2008 we almost what happened and funding got cut so that that building has been completed almost completely finished by our career technology education construction program but that's going to require to replicate that we have the land we have the labor we have the expertise but the supplies alone to build at around 100 bucks a foot so even if you do a you know a 800 square foot unit it still costs quite a bit of money we're also taking some of our other areas and making temporary teacher housing because we're we're meeting the demand for our teachers that are currently employed we don't want to lose them because they don't have a place to stay and as you know housing is not plentiful in that which is available is fairly expensive so that's another example of Technology career and Technology education and the Fab Lab you're all probably aware of and you've heard at least one competition that these students had at going to a note you're going again right with the NASA this is an amazing program that it takes money we have to support that program we don't want it to go away that's going to require some Bond money to support that so the next topic after technology was the safety and efficiency of our buildings so like we've talked about we need Bond money to make sure that our buildings are safe the bullproof glass the efficiency make sure that we have LED lighting make sure that we have buildings sealed up so that we're not spending a bunch of money on Heating and Cooling and just keeping our buildings maintained well the next the next topic was Transportation um so right now we're blessed because we had a bond [Music] um several years ago and we were able to replace our buses but now our buses are getting old so thankfully we are not having buses break down on the side of the road and things like that but in the next several years we will have to start replacing our buses so we do need Bond money to be able to do that so that our kids are safe and they're on buses that are running and not breaking down and not old I would like to add Denise is our expert in this area but I remember when we purchased those buses six years ago there were about 125 000 my guess is they've gone up probably 50 Grand or more depending on the type of us the type of us we want to get are those that have changed that lower which will be probably another 20 grand 15 to 20 grand but that those that type of Technology we have some of it but we'd like to take that district-wide on a safety level as well so I would anticipate if the bond were approved we would add two to three buses every year the next four to five years to refresh refresh the fleet the other part I want to make just to share is our transportation needs are way different than they are in the valley in the valley if you go to this Gilbert School District and you're in the Central and you drive your bus and get in you go to the main side it takes all of 14 15 miles we drive from here to Window Rock which is really New Mexico and then on the edge of Utah when we go to page and then we go to the valley which is a three and a half hour or four hour drive by bus so we put a lot of miles on these buses and so that that's another reason that our transportation we need to be refreshed quicker more more quickly rather and just so you know rural we do not get extra transportation funding we get the same transportation funding that's that schools in the valley get there is no difference and Dr Wright is right the amount of miles that we put on is Extreme compared to the amount of miles they put on in the Phoenix metropolitan area so one of the things that will have to happen if we do not pass a bond or an override is that we will have to defer maintenance on our buildings because we will have to move our Capital money over to maintenance and operations to pay salaries if we continue down with the Staffing that we have and so that what that means is that we will not be able to fix buildings and repair buildings I was not here in 2014 but I've heard that in 2014 there were some issues with our maintenance on our buildings we could potentially go back to that if we are unable to continue to maintain the buildings at the level that we're maintaining them now I will add I I will I'm glad I know that I've seen a couple of faces that were in the on the committee and in the room when we presented this information in 2000 and early 2016.
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