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and are there any modifications we just have two modifications under Personnel um we have the van Buren Elementary School a paraprofessional spongy Rex roads twelve dollars per hour part-time benefits effective August 22nd this is a replacement for Cindy color and then we also have a couple of modifications for historica elementary school ECA positions for the 23-24 school year um we put Abby manners maintenance instead of her married name so we wanted to fix that and then um we are not ready to bring instructional coaches to board yet so we struck that up modifications Amy yes Carol yes Vicky yes yes and um we don't have any visitors or do we everyone looks like they're an employee except for um all right and Chrissy just entered the room but you're up whenever you get a chance let's do it okay okay so I thought a little bit tonight is attendance and what we're going to try to do being a guaranteed to improve our fits we'll talk a little bit about data I won't bore you with it it's going to keep it really short and sweet just kind of talk about what we're going to do to try to keep students coming on a regular basis um now what we have up here is school is the best part of a student's day um last year was Tracy asked me if I want to be a part of an ollie I agreed to it and we had a conference this past summer in July and the speaker John Ackley superintendent of that at the schools uh if you wrote a book that's called three broken shelves um and basically it was about a head and to his best friends were also School ministers and different corporations they all got colon cancer at the same time okay they're not related um one there's kind of like Domino's Cyclone just stuck down after the other so they had a lot of time to reflect online and what they were doing in life as they're receiving treatments together but one of the things he said you know when he made the statement you know it really rang true to me you know there are a lot of students that come to school that know they're safe they're going to get fed you know I was told one time get the kids to school safely give them something get them home safely and if they learn something in the middle there you're doing pretty well but then like I said this really rang through me you know kids they do love coming to school leaving those kids are tough saying I don't want to do this they like being there they like seeing their friends they like seeing the adults they like the people that are impacting their lives okay in the backs okay so this came from Indiana data dashboard something we've been looking at here um over last year 69 of maybe our students were in school 94 of the time okay you see the average is 60 or 60 students 10 94 percent of that sort we're doing pretty well but we could do better currently the lowest tennis levels to be in Europe are kindergarten 57 and participated 60 now these numbers are a little dated okay so a little older but I'm gonna be honest with you if you were to look at our attendance uh from this past year it's probably pretty similar to that and you know and to be honest with you especially if these lower grade levels okay there's a lot of factors especially in the kindergarten haven't really been to school full time ever okay so you're looking at a lot of different illness just being scared to come to school there are a lot of things getting used to the school environment those are some things I'm going to talk about but we're going to try to mitigate as we go through the year here and you don't need to be honest with you this is something that at the end of this past school year that was when heavily on my mind now we're currently reading a book in uh we're in our leadership meetings and it's called the advantage and one of the things that we talked about this past week is we have permissions now the reason why I bring that up is because the permission to play is a bare Mill okay the kids are going to get on the bus the cropped off our parents regardless how do we keep them coming regularly how do we make sure that they're having fun enjoying school you know and I've said this when I was at this year so yeah I said this I still believe to this day our very best Billboards and advertising for school corporation Art School are the people who attend there okay once you have a bad experience with one person or one family you lose them okay and you don't just lose that these other spinner families so the goal is not just to make people happy making excited to come to school and make sure when they talk about being here they're talking about us in a very positive way foreign that's the goal first teacher day 80 that's the goal that's what we're shooting for improved kindergarten 67 cents we want a 10 increase there first grade seven percent we want a 10 increase there okay that is that's what we are shooting it for there's one of some things that we're going to do first and foremost I've had this to Bishop priority plan okay School family community we're gonna have a weekly blog something started last year we're going to talk about what we're doing on Facebook Okay weekly blog information is due on Thursdays at 3 30 P.M every teacher in our building sends me information about what they're doing in class I'm gonna be honest with a lot of that I get from what's going on in class just because I know in class and I'm there every day okay so a lot of times when they're sending me things all right now okay and or sometimes I'll go into a classic you know this is really awesome please send me an alert about okay so I do this every day no more in the paragraph just a short little hey here's what's happening okay show the community what we're doing right I don't want a parent to call me and say yeah I didn't know you were doing that in class you know what there's no reason why you should not saying maybe your participating Master script spelling bee it's all about program I know Mr seals talked about a lot of the program to do with middle school you know we need to increase our program at elementary level as well give students a reason to want to be at school okay currently the assistant's mobile map of sizable robotics across country track and field 4-H there are room there is room for more there's currently talk of having a a garden program for students to learn how to garden okay you have quite a few of our teachers and staff that are that love to garden and really they have the perfect spots to do it okay we also have a legal cash program where students become uh leaders of our school and learn how to get their voice what this means for us is we're always looking for more programs we're always looking for properties where students okay next thing maybe you're supposed to be offered a sentence throughout the year for tennis Behavior academic driven let's get back to celebrating student achievement let's find reasons to celebrate guys I want to celebrate everything I make no mistake about it okay if your parents are supposed to make State tests in a faster than that I am so tired of sneaking technology no I don't care you know what we're going to do a good job of safe testing and we're going to make it fun okay I want students to come to school tomorrow oh man I got to sit through another two hours don't care you know what let's have fun doing it let's find a way to make them want to come and take effects next thing PTO the host invest throughout the year ice cream social has come up I want to say the sixth of your own life please tell them help yourself some ice cream um and enjoy the people that they have okay one of the things I want to see about being urine is you have a fantastic detail of turnout and you know what that's one thing I love about it you know we are a simple point in that part of the community and people who enjoy being there and I love hosting them what the spacecraft will be the last opportunities to celebrate with Jewish students let's celebrate as much as possible we celebrate any and everything kids come up here we're going to have it's my birthday today Mr Bernard okay let's talk about on the speakers let everybody know it's birthday okay let's find a way to make people feel good okay baby understand at least five family surveys if you don't know what's going on in the community see it there's problems okay um the surveys for our families we throughout school year survey topics will include but not limited to communication safety engagement environment stem I'm gonna be honest with you this one right here is safety okay I've had a lot of phone calls last year and this year and they say things like my child doesn't feel safe in school okay why doesn't your child feel safe in school how can we fix the problem because before it becomes a problem okay so that's what we're going to try to do try to head off before it's an issue because once it becomes an issue then you got to put out a lot of different fires because of Springs that's another one I'll get a phone call hey my child doesn't feel safe at school because so-and-so okay how do we help those students feel good about what they're doing feel good about coming school not being afraid to walk in the door okay what does fees for us we'll be collecting data that we use to help us make help us become better stewards in our community okay we're going to be prepared for the future challenges what do our kids need to feel wealthy okay I wanted to walk in the north I love it when kids come into my office and say Mr how are you damn I'm doing great you know what thank you if they're not comfortable they don't do it okay so I want everyone to come and talk to me and tell me about her dad and the things that are on and on next thing happy staff happy students Independence great celebrations celebrate perfect student attendance at the end of the movie times okay it's been going on forever okay be able to hold a tennis competition it passes as well when the passengers do the popcorn party each Friday we'll have a theme Friday is a big day for us okay because everybody wants to have three day a week yeah all right so how do we get people to stay on Fridays okay so that's the push how can I get that job and say I want to be in school for that okay so we have been last week it was where your wife and go and I'm gonna be honestly we had a great blackout in the in the school half the class one half classes more than last year it was actually really awesome and of course the two people that didn't work my two boys right here because they don't have Life Church they had more black shirts or shorts sorry but we just don't have it's doing yes yeah hey next Saturday this Friday is crazy soccer okay so this Friday we're gonna have pretty soccer Mondays music Mondays when kids show up this morning okay make it offensive then um if you don't know me I'm a huge fan of college football and what I do is I'll watch different shows where they talk about the culture of the programs you know and one of the things I really enjoyed watching is a a short clip on Penn State and on Sundays after each game they celebrate with their players for five minutes but yeah five minutes to celebrate a win okay and I got to thinking I've talked in this course or counselor I said we'll celebrate being here you know we've got a few minutes to celebrate Pizza that's what we're trying to do make people happy that they're here some Network that we appreciate you coming great little celebrations please support our own AV honorable who's loving up and improving except I've got to find a way to sell it I don't care what it is there's somebody to celebrate we're going to sell next thing um okay um one of the things I do hear about attendance is my child doesn't feel safe I don't want to come to school because I don't feel sad last year I lost two students because of safety Brews hey hey everybody they couldn't handle fiber they so thinking okay what can we do to make changes so that people aren't scared of the fire drill you're not scared of a lock in place what can we do so I'm a school safety specialist please test our own fire department we're gonna introduce them to students I'm not afraid of them as soon as the staff participate monthly drills as soon as we cringe not fear girls for safety personnel after a drill kind of teachers a few minutes to talk about the drill and why they should be afraid of good students a chance to ask questions each teacher know before we do a group I'm not going to tell them that there's going to be a little hiccups here in drill for example if the doors like it doesn't actually talk for students about why we are doing it folks it takes more than just once it has to be practice it has to be discussed now doing that you're going to lose some money okay somebody is going to be afraid okay like I said I lost two students last year because I'm not blood lose anymore plus we'll have uh conversations sorry we'll have conversations about why the girls are important why they should not be food pause the discipline I'm a firm believer and letting people know what is expected of okay this one and Van Buren will be restored okay assume that all students have positive intent what the difference is why I tell my teachers as soon as we'll be at school students want to be in school all right suspension harmful to sell for others if they're not that then we're not sending them home okay we need them in the school I don't want to give anybody that out we got three CPI trained uh staff members the Sports Mesquite and myself we need to be business all times if I tell everybody hey you need to be watching okay there's no excuse for for crazy things to happen because you should be watching what's going on Behavior expectations lessons we spent a half a day last week going over behaviors in the cafeteria hallway playground basketball we practiced everything with every student there's not one student who didn't hit these areas and we showed them this is what's expected of you in these places those who could talk into your Facebook until they do it to practice so we are going to visit all these areas throughout the years have a lot of time on Friday mornings that we'll discuss problem awareness okay so like I said they didn't have one people can see I don't want someone finally said pay to jump around the bathroom and look at all the Stalls I'm going to bathroom now I don't want to go back okay perhaps okay I don't want that to be a problem in front of the congregation put them in a pound those about Behavior the fun things at school hey we sent home we crafted a letter I asked I gave her a school nurse uh opportunity to type something up and show it to me and uh we sent letters home honestly July first in this past year I bet you're close to 100 students okay that missed at least five days all right so we sent them home we made sure they went out I know that we sent postcards home just recently linked students they want you here okay and even the letters that were sent home talk about our school policy on the tenants and we want you here okay so uh principal snow concert Centerstone will be on Tuesday to discuss student issues and individual students and communicate the families okay we're gonna kind of Hit the promise before they become a problem all right matter of fact this past Tuesday we had a first meeting I know it's the first Tuesday of the year it was never too early to start so we're gonna have a meeting tomorrow we're going to talk about some students that already are going to have attendance issues or whatever issue they might have and figure out a way how we can help that whether it be talking to parents talking students building the models whatever we have to do we're going to do it and the idea is to identify students who are in need of assistance as soon as possible it's not when it's too late we want to be proactive Sunday is not a day once again John acted he closed with some days now today basically saying get your butt on okay today's the day starting out and at the start of the school year this year you know this was my plan this is what I wanted to do going forward try to get our attendance you know and so so Sunday is today and we practice this every day and this is something like I said we should meet the students and you know even today we've got two interviews on kids that are who need help throughout the year you know and I'm gonna be honest I love it love the kids and uh we're gonna see uh some real positive Improvement in attendance and I hope that uh in Europe and stand up here saying you know we got done maybe he did a little better than what we thought we would so does anybody have any questions get this ass no I've uh I'm telling you five around us sure and they did the fire and the tornado we did them all in one day he did not like that was scary especially if you've never done it before yeah and uh last year I learned that pretty quick that uh you know we've got to do a little bit more on the front end get people prepared for that meeting parents um so you know I saw parents a lot about and keeping students safe you know I'm talking to students just making them understand okay we're doing this not because we're expecting something to happen you know any other questions well thank you guys for your time I appreciate you right Christy is that next evening thanks for allowing me to do here this evening to share with you the uh 2020 work proposed budget for the prayer Resource Center of Brown County um you all have this in your board packets but I've got it up on the screen to share a little bit with you and kind of prepare out 2023 to 2024. um the career Resource Center is an adult education center for students age 16 and above we serve anyone wanting to obtain a high school equivalency um or a certification or wanting to brush up on their skills to enter into some sort of post-secondary institution or perhaps a job an example would be I just this week brought in two new students one student is coming out of the Navy and now we're going to go into a career and you need to brush up his math skills another student went to apply for a Cummins job and did not pass the writing portion of the application and so as brushing up for that position that comes so we like you said that anyone 16 or above an adult basic education covers the gamut not just High School thing um I've got this divided the budget for 2024 uh divided into revenue and expenses on the revenue side of things at the very top in yellow you're going to see that in 2023 of course we have the uh referendum and the referendum brought in about 148 000 every year to the CRC to help support our organization um since the referendum failed uh in November of last year we are preparing for no referendum dollars to exist beginning January 2020 starting this January we will not be receiving any additional uh referendum dollars going forward um interest on investments um has increased a bit and you can see that we're estimating twelve thousand dollars that's actually not a lot different from the previous year when you consider that uh that's a typo it was an error that I made in the in the 23 budget that 300 should have been 300 so I'm not going to change there in the interest on investments that were that were probably most people were dancing right now um student fees we brought we proposed back from 2023 to 30 000 would be brought in on student fees um we actually have already brought in thirty three thousand dollars in just six months of 2023.
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right it's to do it without msba if we if we have an option um of waiting and stringing this along I think we should so we will do the best we can with that but I mean if you don't give us any money to do it right yeah that's a problem because it will get to the point where I don't know it's just going to be it's going to be really a poor learning environment at some point the way this is going so so you know we're not there yet hope is not lost you know we can if we receive I mean this is a relatively I know 225 thousand dollars is a lot of money but in the grand scheme of what we're trying to accomplish I don't really think it is a lot comparatively speaking and hopefully we'll get some support for that thank you professional almost sounds like in in the long run we could be you know putting uh good money after bad to to you know holding this together with you know as they say chewing gum and bailing wire so you know have to keep fighting I'll have to I haven't heard anything either on it so but other than that I have no uh no comments there you know again it's everything that we went through though we went through before I guess my only question that I have is I look at this now and I apologize I'm the uh the vehicle for the for the atlas program downstairs like what are we doing for those students come next Wednesday so you're right right important question right we knew we weren't good well first of all even if we had been funded at the June town meeting we wouldn't have a vehicle because um they take forever to come in nowadays um even if if we had ordered one at the end of June after town meeting wouldn't be here uh so we're prepared to uh with alternative means of Transport um so really looking at other ways that we can provide opportunities for kids in the meantime and really since the program is developing right now with our first year it makes a lot of sense to you know get this funding at some point so that we can expand to our access to the community for the kids but in the first year it's certainly a program that is going to take some time to develop those connections with the community and develop opportunities for kids we do have you know demand response transportation that can be available to us um and and certainly for some activities we can utilize you know a variety of different means but long term you need you need something for the program for sure thank you sir Mr Oliver thank you madam chair so yeah absolutely part of my uh vote in approving this program knowing what the um the program is all about is making sure that these students were going to have access to our community into those types of opportunities so I want to make sure that this this gets prioritized with the capital Mr Mr Shea is here in the background I think he'd like to come up and say or a few words appreciate that priority first thank you um we knew this year was going to be that um so like Mr Kylie saying the Ada the on-demand Transportation that's a good skill for some of our students to also practice as well so um Miss Steph Church who's the teacher and I have talked a lot about what that's going to look like and really for the first for the first months anyways it's getting the students adjusted to the transition and and working that way um but I do appreciate your commitment we're gonna but we are going to be working with like outside transportations for now but um thank you for the commitment but we're in good space with the program and we're really excited about it no I I'm thrilled I'm happy to see that dartmouth's giving students the opportunity to to stay in District versus going to a program like smack or South Coast has I'm not sure if South Coast has one um but I would certainly you know suggest and maybe I'm sure our new uh director of special education has already had conversations reach out to the collaboratives that are offering these programs already um you know why reinvent the wheel for sure yeah absolutely and on Steph church and I have talked a number of times too about her visiting the other programs in the area already using some of our professional development to do it that way um she wants to do a lot of like even just going to the grocery store to start and getting it some of the students is going to have a little bit of a struggle adjusting to um you know they're so fond of Miss KP and for very many reasons they've really matured with her so we're expecting some transition just in the program that way anyways so it does buy a little time on that backside of getting to you so the program getting ready for everything coming and then being um getting out in the community but one of the essentials is the community connections and being connected into the community and looking for future job placement for our students whether it's starting some of this in with our own in our own community and then working out into the town and stuff great thank you Mr thank you yes just the one thing I'm thinking you know and I had a note here too uh one of the things that Mr Kiley put in in his his brief to us is uh with what the town possibly could be looking to do and convening the uh facilities and field subcommittee of which you and I are on so whenever you want to put some put some dates together and such right so I'd like to talk a little bit about that I wanted to just talk about the you know the current capital Improvement plan request first but um but now's the time so uh in terms of long-term capital planning I'm pleased to say that I was invited to a meeting um by Mr McGinnis with representatives of that had different uh you know different backgrounds and interests in the town to discuss long-term capital Improvement planning and I think that this is from my experience my third you know 13 years here is the first time that we've really approached this issue in this way um the initial focus of the group what we discussed was to look at Major projects that might require borrowing or debt exclusion votes and to look at 30-year window so you'd imagine that with a 30-year window we we have quite a few projects in that in that range um you know clearly several schools should be replaced in that 30-year window in addition to the high school roof repairing you know renovating the stadium um other things that you know are fairly large scope projects so I I'm super encouraged that we're you know having this conversation um I I think that to prepare for our participation in this we have the facilities and Fields subcommittee I love the opportunity to right now Mr Nunes and Mrs Amaral are the representatives I'd love the opportunity to call a meeting for sooner rather than later and we could get together and talk about the process our priorities in terms of how we would want to report back to the school committee you know what we're thinking so um I've been doing doing some research on on construction costs and it's interesting to say the least um for for major School construction projects right now but um but it's important that everyone knows and then ultimately in the end that the town can decide what you know what they want the town to look like so hopefully if you both are willing to do that and if that's the way the committee wants to begin to approach this um I'll you can either provide me with some dates when you might be available or I can offer a few dates and see if we can get together in the next two weeks maybe yeah absolutely and that way we could report back to the school committee on a few progress um yeah that works for me I don't know how you think John with your schedule no I you know any day that ends in a y is a good day so you know but no sir I mean I've got a couple of things on my calendar but you know see what everybody's got for dates so Jim if you put some dates together okay yeah we'll send a few dates send a few dates at any particular time of day that works best for people the earlier part of the day for me where yeah you know yeah I mean times five eight nine I'm not being eight nine o'clock and a mono works for me or you know because of your schedule if it's going to be four o'clock in the afternoon I can meet early it doesn't matter yeah no no I understand yeah I'm even gonna I mean this might be too soon but I think I'm meeting Miss dionisio on Friday at noon so you do have to we would have to post oh that's right yes yeah yeah if if that's agreeable but send some dates that you and then uh Friday doesn't work okay Friday doesn't I know this Friday does not work for me unfortunately okay so I'll offer up some some early morning meetings and we can work something out and then we can report back to the committee with some progress and um then certainly engage in the in the larger process with the town yeah sounds good well I'll do Jim Mr Kylie's I'll go home I'll take a look at my calendar and I'll shoot just that's bad for me like Dr Jenkins so in anticipation of this would it be possible for us to resurface that old study that we did I don't know I think the conclusions are not necessarily the same but if I recall that that firm identified many of the deficiencies in the buildings um in terms of space per student and things like that and so that might be useful I think you know helping some of us not aware of that but also I don't remember I just remember there was a report about deficiencies in space so it might be a helpful refresher for all of us to to read that with the understanding of those numbers are no longer valid and we may come to different conclusions but I think the the issues part would be super helpful for us if we could resurface that and share it with the committee good okay well that segues right into talking about proposed School committing committee dates um from October actually September through December of 2023 and I know that you've had certain dates that you've worked out in the past and I think that this is just representative of the way that you have have committed to dates in the past so we're looking at September 11th and 25th for the two September meetings with one of them I'm not sure which one being the meeting where we introduce the new hires I understand that that's a big deal here and there's a lot of fanfare accompanying that so that sounds fun October there would only be one date and that's because the the Monday that you would normally meet is a holiday so there would be one meeting in October two in November and then one in December and so that is apparently aligned with what you've done in the past and what you've committed to for dates Mr Nunes yeah thank you madam chair um aside from November 27th and December 11th those are the two I cannot make I am not here unless you know somebody wants to come join me on a cruise ship that's yeah I did I think I did respond in the affirmative yeah that's fine I'm not I'm serious I'm not here for those two okay how about the rest of the committee I'm good okay so I mean I don't know if is there any need to sort of think about do we typically what happens in the Mr Nunes is there anything that you can think of historically that we've had to vote on when um at that time oh you know it would be no push it off yeah you can put you can push it off or if you have to vote on something you vote on something and you know I'm good that that type of thing I mean the other thing you can do is you know for Grins and Giggles if you wanted is uh move the 13th to November 6th and then go November 20th which is uh Thanksgiving week that's up to you know if you wanted to do that or just leave it and I'm good however this committee wants to do it I'm fine any thoughts I can do the sixth and the 20th that's fine I could as well I mean that gets the two you know and again um and then you know I mean yeah then you're in the Christmas weeks are there any conflicts uh I think I think that would work for us leave leave December 11th the way it is only because you get into the holidays the following week so I'm good with that I'm fine and again I'm I'm good if you want to just leave it the way it's been presented I'm no I think do we have okay we don't have to vote on that we'll just edit to note the um I got the head nods John so we're moving we're moving the dates yeah that's fine okay great great and then we're all going to join you on December 11th on YouTube no problem great thank you that's great nice good for you yeah yeah okay so I'm gonna move right into the superintendent's report I'm going to start off by introducing you to my new superintendent coach I mentioned Dr Maureen Lacroix at last month's school committee meeting and I'm super excited to have her here tonight I think I mentioned to you last time that I felt as if she was the perfect fit for me so Dr Lacroix has been a superintendent actually she was superintendent Bedford for 11 years I think I said eight at our last meeting and three years as an assistant superintendent and so I'd like to welcome Dr Lacroix up to the microphone to explain a little bit more to you about what the new superintendent induction program entails and also hopefully provide a lead-in to my overview of the entry plan thank you Dr Saba McGuire it's nice to say that in front of your committee here tonight um and thank you to the committee for allowing me just a minute here um to tell you a little bit about the new superintendent induction program and to thank you for supporting her participation in that program it's it requires your support and it's critical from my perspective that you do support that this program in Massachusetts has been in existence for 14 years and it came about through a partnership with the school committee Association the superintendent Association in deci that decided probably 15 years ago um that superintendents needed support in their jobs they the organizations talked about we were at the time mentoring teachers and we were starting to think about mentoring principles and nobody was thinking about coaching and mentoring superintendents and the program started it has involved most new superintendents in Massachusetts participate in the program and superintendents who come in from out of state also participate so they can sort of learn the Massachusetts way the people like me who work in the program as coaches have to have been a successful superintendent in the state of Massachusetts in order to do this work and the work really is an honor I get to work with people like your superintendent I've worked in this area in Fall River I've worked with the greater New Bedford VOC superintendent so get a real sense not only geographically of the work that's being done in the area but get a sense of different superintendents in their leadership styles what's interesting to me in this work is that when you're in the superintendency you can be in a small district and I've worked in a district that had only 100 children or you can be in one of our Urban centers with over 10 000 children and the challenges of leadership oftentimes have similarities across those different venues so part of what we do in the program is try to bring superintendents together so that they not only have a coach but they have a support network in the area and across the state the other thing that we do in the program is we're not agnostic in the program we think there are certain skills that you need as a superintendent and that you need feedback on that as you're developing those skills so we have a whole section of the program that's content so superintendents in their first year attend probably six content days in person in some online so that we can talk about things like leadership how do you build a team we can talk about school committees how do you work effectively with the school committee that's an important part of your job how do you work with individual members and how do you work with the committee as a body so those are just some pieces of work that we do we think it's important work and the people who've participated in the program tell us oftentimes that was my lifeline that really enabled me to do a better job to sort of have somebody that I could talk to in full confidence in somebody that would give me honest feedback about what was going well and some things that maybe I wanted to think about and work on so I don't know if the committee has questions I'm happy to take them but appreciate you taking time thank you thank you thank you welcome thank you for mentoring all right thank you appreciate it thank you lovely to meet you thank you and you were supposed to set up my entry plan Dr Lacroix my test so let me just I was trying to be quick um so the three pieces of the program and the first part of it you're going to hear about tonight that are program requirements we required the superintendents to do an entry plan where they get out listen and learn from all of the members of this community after that this superintendent will be back to you probably in late winter early spring with what we call a report of Entry findings to tell you here's what I learned and that report of Entry findings will be Central to developing a strategy for district Improvement here so that is work that will start probably in summer of next year and go into the following year what's exciting in Dartmouth is you've already had a lot of good work done in this area so it's not like a new superintendent is starting from scratch here she's going to be building on what's already happened here in terms of the work of strategy and having an effective strategy in the district so Dr save Maguire is that enough talk just for a few more oh there we go thank you so much you did a wonderful job thank you it's the down arrow not the up Arrow okay so um thank you thank you for that and and again it's it's really interesting to go through this process and have support and and I think at the beginning when I sat and talked with you about the importance of participating in a program like this I talked a lot about networking and how I felt that networking would benefit Dartmouth not only because I have the ongoing support as a new superintendent but also because it really does allow you to be plugged into a lot of different things that are going on around the state and for example right now I know what's going on across the state right now around public records requests because I'm part of a network of superintendents who are informing other superintendents about those kind of issues that are coming up on a daily basis so for me that's been really important to really just be locked into what's going on not only here in Dartmouth but certainly what's going on across the state and how that might potentially impact Dartmouth but as Dr Lacroix said the purpose of Entry planning is to provide an opportunity to learn more about the school system and I certainly am doing that I'm getting to know the community and with the end result my goal of gaining a deeper understanding of what the district's current status is we had a district leadership team meeting today a couple of times we've talked about the feedback that they are sharing with us as a central office leadership team is meant to be just that to give us the current state we're not making any judgments about that state we're looking to collect honest feedback about where we are as a school district in Dartmouth so one of the things that I've been able to share with the district leadership team and I have to say that they have I believe it's been well received is a focus on core beliefs that schools districts must act as ethical organizations and so for me in entry planning and I know you've got a copy of my entry plan and this is just a brief overview of it but this plan does focus on this core belief that school districts must act as ethical organizations I was able to share some of this again at the leadership team Retreat a couple weeks ago and and we'll be sharing it again at convocation I think that it's an important work that can help to Center everything else that we do and if you look here you can see that the after there are five ethics that I believe can Center an organization with Community being at the center and so for example one of the most important ones that I think about here in Dartmouth and I think it's like at a critical time that we consider this is that of the ethic of community and understanding and even here in the conversation here tonight as we're talking about indigenous people and how that work has to happen not only at the school level but at the community level and that's what I mean by Community the schools exist as part of a community and the moral agency is the responsibility of the community as a whole and that we are all responsible for the interpersonal and group skills and yes we name them very specifically because that's important and what does that look like it looks like listening with respect and again I love that I saw that here this evening even when there are differing opinions striving for knowing and understanding others communicating effectively working in teams engaging in ongoing dialogue and creating forms that allow all voice to be heard I mean in the last hour of this meeting all of these things have happened to some degree and you can actually check them off and say okay this is actually something that is is obviously already valued in this community again a draw for me as a new superintendent coming to a community ethic of care this is one that I actually know I talked about in my interview because it's one that I hold dearly that we have regard for for the Dignity of each person and understand the uniqueness of each individual the ethic of critique and this is one that is going to be on an ongoing basis all the time and again happening here tonight to some degree we consistently examine barriers to fairness I'm hearing that conversation here we examine our policies our practices and our structures and just decisions that may disadvantage one group or an individual over another and it's not about seeking that out but it's about being critical about what policies and practices are in place and when they come to your attention being able to have honest dialogue about how to address those things ethics of equity and Justice we're doing we are going to be doing a lot of work around this in the school district this year we talk today about diversity Equity inclusion and Justice and diversity Equity inclusion and belonging and the interesting thing is is that we really had to back up and Katie can Katie and I spent a lot of time talking about this on Friday and where we start with this work because those are words that are pretty commonly used in education and in in the corporate world in the business world right now but we first have to develop a common understanding of what we mean by that and so we're working on that as a school district leadership team and we'll be we'll be focusing on that work this school year and and the ethic of profession and Educators regardless of the position you hold I consider every single person who works in a school in a school district to be part of a team of Educators and we all have different roles but in fact we all do bear the responsibility of being Educators and we understand and this is critical that students are the center of ethical decision making and so when we continually bring back our decision making to student-centered decisions I listened to Mr Kylie a minute ago say a few minutes ago talk about these this school and if we don't if we don't if we don't engage in the capital Improvement that needs to happen here around the roof that this isn't going to be a healthy learning environment for our kids that's what we mean by ethical decision making we always have to be thinking about our students so it's not just the Aesthetics of a school building it's what does that mean for the students who are being educated inside that building and so all of that has been sort of grounding the way that I'm thinking about the work here and I want to say and eventually we will be here talking to you about portrait of a learner one of the things that I'm incredibly excited about is what the district has already developed and I know again that this team this leadership team has come together and developed a really powerful model for what a portrait of a learner should look like in the Dartmouth Public Schools it's not done yet though we recognize that we need to include more stakeholder groups and again that voice is incredibly important and so part of my entry planning has been some of it some of it has felt sort of organic to me and that's why I appreciate new superintendent induction program because it's not enough for me to say oh I'm out here doing this actually I need to name it name what I'm doing and why I'm doing it instead of just doing it because sometimes it just feels natural and this is a way to capture what the work is and what it looks like in a way that makes sense to people so that they understand like Mr Taliban I think you reached out to me I'm not sure if I reached out to you but why do I want to meet with Mr tattlebaum because I want to get to know this community really well and so Community Building phase one you know I started that back in April as soon as I got the call I missed the call and then called called Mr Oliver back against you thank you um so was around Community Building listening and learning and that's really where I I it's really where I am right now analyzing data sharing findings action planning you heard Dr Lacroix talk about all that so that all of that is part of sort of the big picture and again I included this in your packet but I do want to say that I'll have this on the on the district website and both the PowerPoint and then the The Narrative that goes along with the PowerPoint but you can see just from April to August it has been about establishing relationships with key stakeholders and the action steps are I I hope that again what what I've been sharing with you you can see that that that's what's been happening I've been setting and in the informal meetings have been as important as the formal meetings because building relationships comes before the formality of a relationship so I've appreciated that time and you've all taken that time with me each School I've been able to sit down with principals individually collectively it's been important time um I already mentioned the school committee I can't read any of that but um establishes out let's see that's why I brought a copy so I'm not that I'm going to read it all off to you but really it's just about establishing the the community groups that we continue to meet with I just this past week sent out a key Community communication both to the faculty and to the families and again that's part of the entry planning so that people can kind of get to know me and what I'm thinking and then vice versa so listening and learning is phase two I think I said that earlier today when we were with our DLT it was about listening and learning it was really let's hear what you're saying so because we're going to need that and we are collecting data as we do it and we'll be utilizing that on an ongoing basis and the questions are all like I said the questions we're asking folks are all part of the document that will be online so we're going to continue that entry this is entry planning out at a glance so the analyzing data piece isn't for a bit thankfully November through February and that's when we're really going to spend time making sense of what we're learning and that will culminate in phase four which seems like it's a ways off February to April but I have a feeling I'll be making a joke about that in a short amount of time reporting out and that's where we'll report out on the data and collecting feedback so we'll bring you our what we've learned and then we'll be looking to you for feedback about how you're experiencing our shared findings and then from there it's really about action steps and that is where the strategic planning comes into place Dartmouth does have a strategic plan it needs to be updated right and that's pretty common in most school districts so that's not unusual so that is what this entire year is going to entail is building up to um it makes me think about Capital planning and it is to some degree it's a five-year strategic plan that will be presenting next year and so part of what I'm sharing with the community and I want to share it with you is together we're beginning a journey of continuous Improvement Guided by ethical principles to create a learning environment where every student thrives academically socially emotionally and experiences a true sense of belonging as superintendent I want you to know that I'm committed to upholding these ethical ideals and working collaboratively with all stakeholders to lead our district toward a future of Excellence as we work toward our vision of and I love this one Dartmouth and so thank you I don't know if Mr Shea is back there hiding or anything but yes he's really helped us out with that don't worry I'm going to be calling you up in a few minutes to talk about schedules so you can't hide so anyway I wanted to share that with you it's been again I The Narrative was in your school committee packet if anybody wants to read more of the narrative that supports this this is really the entry plan at a glance and so it's the work that is embedded with the entry plan that's more important thank you so much for that that was wonderful thank you I um like I'll start with you Mr thank you thank you madam chair I uh went through it and it's it's it's funny um I got to page two and I was reading it and then I went you know continued to flipping on August to October and entry question and I had to make myself a note because I got the feeling on a good way in a good way that you were really getting into the nitty-gritty of what you wanted to do here in Dartmouth and you know I was you know overwhelmed excited when I when I saw that with you know meeting with this group and talking with these people and working towards this goal type of deal and and I had to write that down because I know I would forget thank you and that is we're I think again new superintendent induction program really helps to guide you in that or even though like I said that was happening but it allows you to to be intentional and be able to articulate what it not just what you're doing but why you're doing it um I I love that you're talking to everybody and reaching out and just hearing what they have to say and where we are um I really look forward to hearing what the responses were and where we are at great thank you I think it's a great plan I'm super excited to hear the results I know you like plans Dr Jenkins I I think it's a fantastic plan I I like to see how you're centering around ethics I think that's huge some of the feedback that I've already received um since you've started is you're certainly very approachable down to earth um uh seems as though you're big on getting to know people I think an education is in many professions but education especially relationships matter whether that's with your staff that whether that's with students as if you're a teacher and it's certainly important with parents in the community at large um it it's so important getting to know people and I love the ethics of care I'm very happy with this so thank you relationships relationships relationships they're the center of everything yeah Julie R you know you break down those barriers and you get to see one another and I think that um What drew me um to your candidacy coming here was all that I learned about your lifetime of relationship building and um it was something that was uh yeah it's it's beautiful to see you here now thank you bring that to us into facilitation but um and I agree with my colleagues and uh and I and I love the uh just that real true honest emphasis on the opportunities that can come from getting that feedback in in a way that allows people to be vulnerable to be honest with you because they know because of that relationship building that they can share um what they're truly feeling um would improve or or you know the good and bad and I just love that emphasis on just allowing that to happen and to inform um you know planning and you know constant Improvement for the district so I just love it I look forward to I just look forward we have a special apparent advisory Council will be inviting you great looking forward to learning and offline I'll talk with you the Rotary Club uh wants to wonderful to a meeting I always wanted to go to a river Club it's fun so to see how we could be of service to The District in that way absolutely yeah yeah can I just say I just want to thank my team who was here and they have been amazing to me in helping this onboarding to be incredibly successful starting with Kate genthner who is actually my like total guiding force every day and I'm so grateful and I know I said this to you but Kate is amazing and what she does and it is really incomprehensible how much she manages as one human being so super grateful I've already told you that about Jim Kiley so if he wants to hear me talk about him he has to go back to the meeting he missed I did call him a unicorn at that meeting so and that's truth and and Jonathan he's like on boarded me got me on my technology when I was super nervous he did he can he's very humble but when I came here I was like where is my technology and um and he was great more than that it's more about the relationships that we've built in obviously Katie and Ross have been amazing we've had some really great opportunities to get to know each other and to really think critically about the work that we have to do here we've got a long way to go believe me it's still real new and I know that and we know that but we're looking forward to the challenge so a great team of principals and leaders here in this school district can't thank them enough for the last couple of weeks the time that we've spent together has been incredibly beneficial Mr Oliver it's all about those relationships because the kids are coming through the doors next week and we're going to be leaning into those relationships as we Face both you know some of the wonderful things that we're going to experience and then some of those challenges and so that's really based in relationships so again great team of folks here and I've seen some of your teachers and in action and can't wait to see the kids and teachers in class and thank you I have a couple other updates if that's okay yes please do yeah mister nudes just for formality in for Dr Maguire's saber Maguire's records and and such and also her coach make a motion that we approve her entry plan as presented tonight just so that it's on file and we've we've accepted it I'll second that any other discussion all in favor hi first vote thank you great and so you have just a couple of quick things one I just wanted to give you a quick uh update on what's going on with hiring uh principals team their teens have been busy with um interviewing and you know even though we've had a smaller pool of people I do want to say that the folks that the principals have been bringing to meet me have been really high quality folks so you have to be happy about that I already mentioned to you that Kate is your HR person extraordinaire and I can't say enough about that we do have a couple of positions that are still open that we're working on two special education positions I think one's at the high school one at the Early Childhood Center a computer science teacher we're working on a computer finding a computer science teacher for the high school phys ed teacher at the Cushman a Pre-K teacher so but at this time I think that we had it that we have hired approximately 11 Educators and other positions and project time begins tomorrow so I know that there's been a lot of great work that's happened in preparation for that so we'll stop by and meet some of these new people that are are joining Dartmouth so I also wanted to mention at the last meeting there was a presentation about the summer academic programs we had mentioned that the summer ex the Desi sponsored acceleration Academy was was something that the state had supported and again can't give the team here enough credit for being able to lift that program and being able to walk through it many of the classrooms and seeing the teachers and the students at work it's really remarkable what folks do here with somewhat scarce resources and yet they put put something together that I consider high quality for the the students and and the teachers here so I already mentioned we met at the North Dartmouth library today with the DLT team that was great it's so um I think it's just such a good idea to get folks in a different environment to disconnect as we talk about some of our work in a way that allows them to be centered in Where We Are although I have a feeling that they're getting more anxious about the fact that kids are going to be in school in a week and a half even though a week from then they'll forget that the students were ever gone I talked about climate and culture I wanted to keep bringing it back to that and just update you on on why we think that's so important and how we understand that communication is the key to building climate and culture so I mentioned to you that we were able to send out welcome back messages to staff and families that was important the schools I've read their individual messages there's lots of welcoming communication going on across the district at every single level I do want to acknowledge and let folks know if anybody's watching except for you know especially our high school parents and Mr Mr Shea please come up we have had some technical glitches with Aspen and again technical folks working on this really hard and and it has impacted high school schedules we have put out communication to families but I know yeah he has Mr Shea has not been sleeping well so he can share that um before I begin I do want to think uh thank a few people Mr galash I'm Mr Faraz um Friday night I think we were texting until about 7 30 back and forth and trying to get it thought we had it up and running um needed to do an adjustment this morning the adjustment s oh nice um with our full guidance team that are in to make sure that it's 100 committed we have um we've adjusted the really only impact honestly is the AP summary because kids didn't know what AP classes they were in so we have adjusted those work assignments and timelines based off of that just in in the sense of that we can't ask kids to do work if they don't know exactly what their schedules look like there's sometimes AP classes are one-off and if they run two at the same time that's what then they have those choices to make about the classes that's always how it's been in the sense of that they have the first 10 days of school to adjust their schedule as needed anyways so um the other people I did forget was the admin team and our guidance counselors who even gave up time sometime in the summer when we thought we had it solved early August gave up time thought we had it going it went down again and it's back up now I think we're in a much better space I will say on Dr C McGuire and myself had a conversation that when this is all said and done in their up end we will run in like an autopsy about what happened um and what went wrong um and go from there so it's not where I want to be and 100 transparency but we will have schedules not where anyone wants to be so we know we need high school schedules that is a critical piece of of starting the school year off but I know you and your team have been doing a great job in Jonathan and his team and we will be trying to figure out exactly how all this happened and determine if maybe there's something that we could have done different so for next year so I can answer questions I I absolutely I think you did you raise your hand well I have a question on a not this but for Mr Shea so if anybody else says anything about this so uh Mr I just would like to ask you a question I think there is some misinformation presented earlier in our meeting and I want to give you the opportunity to clear it up when I was a parent and my children were selecting summer reading um they were late we're we're a little late in this and in part this is because I want to make them owners of their educational journey and when the school tells them they have to do something I don't do it for them I don't remind him but even when we signed up for a book really really late my recollection is there were many books available for them to choose from maybe not their first choice but certainly they had several choices and I just want to confirm that that's still the policy and the way summer reading works yeah absolutely absolutely there is um that's why we have such a vast selection of books it's trying to gain students interest in in interest that they are we have some students at a student-led run books because we want that ownership of our learning that we've really focused on and we've really also um in that bigger things is that at any time we've really tried to make a community of reach out to and we will like we will adjust if that if that's needed that's why we start this selection process in May I'm sorry saying you relate but that gives time in front of your teachers the teachers present the books they talk about the process Mr Higgins goes to every class well that's not on you that my kids are related to some of my kids but we've always tried to that's why Mr Higgins goes to every class to present the books early to make sure students we also communicate the books to the local libraries as well so they have the list in case there's a run because that's I think that's an equity thing as well that we want to make sure that um that their books available for them thank you I think I just just think that again for anyone watching and worried about your schedules we are on this it is top priority and we will be communicating on a consistent basis yeah it's totally taken over sleep it's taken over everything there's a lot of people and it's not just me and I really mean it it's it has been way more hands in it because I have not the technology Savvy side of things and it's really nice to have a really good technology team and you know sometimes you have to wait on the phone with Aspen for four hours you know and like you're playing a game of tag and call back and I think Mr galliser now has like the CEO's number probably because he's talked to them so many times but um they've been excellent the IT department has been phenomenal thank you thank you everybody thank you thank you so the only other thing that I wanted to mention was that we'll be welcoming staff back on Monday August 28th All staff here at the high school if you're planning on joining please let us know we definitely want to recognize that you're here and then everybody take a deep breath because school opens the 23-24 school year I know I'm super excited about it so thank you thank you thank you I don't have um anything else to report but Mr Nunes yeah thank you just with uh Dr saber Maguire's two things number one I will be him I'll be here Monday okay thank you and number two going back to the opening of school anybody that's been driving around town the every place you go you know the old adage you can't get there from here because of all the cons you know gas work and Road pulled up and that type of what's this done to our transportation for students yeah it's it's messy so the notices from DPW that went out go through September 22nd and right now so it's roads so it's all over town which is great because you know fixing the roads fantastic full support of that but it is a little challenging when we're trying to get our get our kids to and from school um so it's off Rogers Rogers Street near the Demello school is one area there's in in uh Panera Village there's a bunch of streets that are going to be worked on there's off Slocum Road near the golf course um that's going to be worked on solomar so it's all over town so what we have worked out with the police and DPW is that if a road is passable even if it's closed we'll be able to go through with the buses we normally you know work that out with them and in most cases it's not um it's not a problem and they're aware of the times of day when we need to be there and try and work with us if in fact a Road is closed that we need to get to on a given day we will contact parents and have them meet us at a certain location nearby corner and and go with that so yeah it's it's challenging it's great though that so many roads are going to be fixed it's fantastic I just thought of that and yeah it is a challenge somewhat related to that if I may uh where we still have the app with the GPS tracking which is super helpful um so if parents new parents aren't aware of that hopefully they'll they'll find that but I was just wondering if and I don't even really know how you can do it with the the driving shortage but has there been any communication around providing that capacity for our Auto District students I mean I I'm fortunate that my son goes to school with three iPads due to battery needs but and I'm able to track him by GPS I I don't know that all families are that fortunate yeah we haven't added that GPS capability to all the other vehicles so right now we're down to 30 bus routes this year we've actually eliminated a bus route in an effort to be more efficient and save money um and uh at this point we have not expanded that Beyond those big buses love to do that yeah yeah I would love to see that happen just because some of our you know traveling obviously we need to tell you that stuck in traffic and that sort of thing can be incredibly yeah those are typically some of our longer you know our longest Roots right right well thank you for having it on the list anyway but um does anyone else have any I don't have an update I do have something for not anticipated another matter but does anybody have any updates Mr Nunes yeah I do thank you um I think you saw her outside when you were coming in band campus that is you know our students here and I know our fall Sports all started out today so you know it's that exciting time of the year uh in the standard times in the past couple of months they've finally started uh saying then congratulations to their spring super athletes and all-stars and that type of deal and I know we've had several of them in there so congratulations on that and the last thing that I have uh and I'll talk about I can I'll remind you of this a little bit later on as we go but just to put on your calendar um the music department has got two home shows this year one on September 30th which is a U.S bands and then a nesma show was October 14th I don't have times they're usually four o'clock six o'clock till depending how many bands are performing so I mean I will I huh I love that account and I will and I will be looking for presenters type of deals so I'll you know as I get more information I will let you know okay okay thank you have any updates no um I I so I have something um I spoke to uh Cindy Dr Marland um and she called me to say that she knows that we typically like to be updated on uh the school committee her and uh Mr Shea wanted to know uh about being you know coming to us um if we had anything specific that we wanted to ask them that they could be prepared for they would make themselves available I let her know that we were setting our calendar for upcoming dates but they were I said you really what are you referring to Dr Mike Shea I'm sorry thank you yes yes yes yes they would like to to you know they they are aware that we you know like to keep updated on things and uh I let them know that I would mention it um and perhaps reach out to them to invite them if it's the pleasure of the committee and if we had anything specific that we wanted them to report on that they could uh to let them know so that they could be prepared um but I just talked to her a few days ago so I thought that was good personally maybe you know once they get in one you know like at our October meeting as you know they've had their school opening and you know cut things in you know some semblance of water there type of deal and they can come and Report how that's going and what's going on at Vogue that's evoke that night that would be okay I'd be good with that or absolutely you know October November okay you know depending on what schedules either they're they're available okay she said they'd be available and I said well let me don't don't promise yourself if yeah but I thought that was nice proactive about coming because it was still when you talk to her teller was still not seeing the VOC minutes okay well I would also say anything else I would also say the VOC minutes are still lacking the detail as required under mgl but I'm not going there that's that's that's above my pay grade but I'm just saying it was you know I thought we had this straightened out but I guess we don't such so our next uh regular meeting is scheduled for September 11th 6 p.m you know we moved our our meetings from 6 30 to 6 for this upcoming year um here in the library media center um so I guess that's it I will entertain a motion to adjourn so moved second um all in favor roll call no oh no roll call unanimous oh no real cool only for executive [Music] foreign
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finances I have a couple of questions when's the last time this was Megan it was five years ago correct about five years ago and it went from 194 and it went from 94 per day 96 per day to 100.
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and I have a motion please both miss high and a second is that Miss muscle okay Miss muscle yes I'm sure there'll be a couple extensions any discussion at all okay yes sir real cool on the minutes Mr Bell yes Mr Dawson yes Wilson yes Mr mittenhouse yes Miss hi yes I have five affirmative votes amendments that's the majority of the members see if it's no motion passes thank you moving on to Personnel resolutions the years all the superintendent recommends for approval the resolutions as outlined in District Personnel resolutions which 7.2 through 7.45 so there's a lot there to look at and I have emotion motion all right Mr zubko in a second sounds like Miss muscle again all right any comments give you a minute because there are quite a few of them and it's on 77. seven seven yeah I thought that Mr benedetto had retired no son he has a son Junior oh okay thank you anyone else um quick question for the number of folks that have retired or left um how are we doing compared to the year before that are retiring or left let me replacing filling open spots yeah because last year we had a lot of music and how are we doing this year from first glance and I've talked to uh I was talking to the union of the day it looks like it's much better but I'll get you uh specific so it's trending down yeah yeah because along with all those you know not all the retirements and resignations there are quite a few buyers on this well anyone else on number seven and it is it's 7.34 and it's just to say I'm happy that Sony solid Sonic inter topic is retiring but I'm also so sad about our teaching team okay seeing no further comment we have a roll call please yes sir Personnel action items yes yes item eight be resolved the Bound Brook Board of Education approves the resolutions as outlined in districts and solutions that is equal to two through eight 29.
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but we only have 24 science stations in a classroom right no we have more did we did they're up to 20 28 28 exactly because remember we increased the square footage but that didn't get any bigger no it did not so Sean are the um the enrollment is it in line or where our projections pretty close in line with what correct yeah this was the year that we were going to see a little bit more of a jump than in previous years um so it's coming to fruition we're just actually just needed to submit the data today for our most upcoming our upcoming projects but if you look at projections four years ago correct yeah we're pretty much yeah I usually wait till um we get the sixth or fifth or sixth day and then um the state has changed it to October 1st now I believe is that right instead of the six day enrollment so normally at that point I'll do a comparison like hey here's where they were predicting and then you can see how on how closer on target they are but yeah I expect that usually in the October board meeting now is this a bigger freshman class I know that like from like 103 it was a huge you know the class of 2027 that eighth grade class that's now our ninth grade class was very big is that across the board with the senders did they send us more kids across the board I haven't looked at the individual breakdown by the eighth like by the Center Schools excuse me but overall yes our classes now are getting bigger every year when will we get updated decision Insight numbers those usually come that's what they just asked for today so I gotta get the data file over to them make sure our feeders schools send them the data file as well and then we get up usually something in the fall and hearing just strictly anecdotally yeah from my people out there that the some of the feeders are bursting at the scenes with the young kids that is not not anecdotal it is so we're going to do a couple things not only are we going to rely on decision Insight which is getting their numbers from our feeders I mean that's where the but one of the things that Sean and I've talked about too is just kind of double checking their work by literally buttons calling and getting butts in seats counts because decision Insight also remember gives us projections based on new development and Trend and and that's good and it's helpful but I also want to know like how many kids are in desks in our schools just to give us a sense of you know the effect that we're hearing is that it was two years ago that the first grade class I think at 96 was just exploding you know so this year's sixth grade cohort is really big like there's just a couple of years well we knew those we knew about those kids right but it's actually the kids like in secondary right now that are blowing up where we typically see like the kindergarten like we get Pre-K one right so you can see that but where we tend to see bumps in our cohorts are in that fifth sixth grade year and then the ninth grade so they they you can intention you can see the intentionality of when people come to our district and they wait they either come right from the get-go they make a break for like the junior high-ish right and then or they just wait till High School that's kind of the evolution over time and houses are selling fast I mean just again you can totally my neighborhood in the surrounding area it's they go on the market they Excel immediately there's bidding wars and then new families with young kids so it's we're seeing it for sure so that makes sense [Music] gonna be okay um okay uh dates for next year's Leadership Retreat are included in there for you we have some um it have some uh board dialogue dates as well our first board dialogue will be next month um and Wendy will be um working with us on our new career pathway requirements from the state of Illinois and then in December in April I think could be uh um Ted is going to be facilitating some more dialogues with our students so great opportunities to get back into that rotation uh P has included some information about The Joint annual conference and some registration information so please take a look at that and then po will follow up with um everybody um over the course of the next couple weeks um and then uh we gave you a copy if you are interested if you do not want this just give it back to Pia at the end of the meeting but every once in a while some of you have asked for copies of our student guidebook so you may remember in may may you did a first reading in June you did a second reading of the student guidebook oh it's the same but it should be the same it's the guidebooks in the front it's in the it's the same thing yeah just a little bit just a little bit different a little bit bigger and easier to read yep than the smaller one so yeah I'm sorry did I say student um but the guidebook is in the front so these are all the rules that you the student rules so to speak that you approved in May and June so you have a copy of that um and then uh we have included one of the questions as great as our website has been over the course of the past few years and thank you to Jamie and her team for doing a lot of hard work we have gotten questions in the past about well who are the members of the administrative team and how do I get in touch with Sean Carney I want to complain about um the food take your pick or whatever um so Compliments are welcome too yeah Compliments are welcome too uh so for those who are interested in making a quick phone call or email to Sean to complain you can see now that um that information will be on our website so thank you Jamie for pulling all of that together and then finally um we have included uh Mark and I had the opportunity to sit down with Mark rajonik who is our parent engagement coordinator um and Amara put together her initial plan for the year um in developing parent engagement opportunities uh and defining her her work and you'll see that there's going to be a series of parent engagement monthly breakfasts uh usually here in the district office um there's gonna also be a series of virtual um meeting opportunities for parents who can't come in in the mornings and then there's also [Music] um our multilingual parent action committee meetings that she's a part of helping to structure and organize and then there are Community partner presentations that are more consortium-wide that Mara plays a part in collaborating and organizing as well so I wanted to share with you all of the different things that we're working on and that Mark is supporting Mara in developing and implementing this school year so I'm really excited about the different opportunities that R is going to be leading out and that is all we have right dude do you want to update the February meeting uh not yet okay so we'll think about that we might have to make a change to the February meeting we're still working another one we might have to move it a week later yeah so we will let you know though in the next couple days all right can I have a motion to adjust hello second thank you all in favor
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um report on land activities Jenny no activity yet our first meeting will be at the end of September okay uh Dr thiely report on sassa yeah um I was not at their meeting last week because it was at the same time as our opening day a couple of things enrollment is down a little bit right now but that is typical at the start of the school year and then they they add numbers as time goes on uh they're looking at their Staffing patterns to make sure they're appropriate and then the biggest thing is that they're beginning their work on their executive director search Terry a report on the Education Foundation yeah uh our meeting is Wednesday so I I really don't have anything except um the um us meeting now at South High we need to make sure that either the door is unlocked or that someone knows we're coming yep there was a mix up in the summer it was not communicated we waited a half an hour outside to get in I apologize to the foundation for that mix-up I know I'm just up and running here during the school year I don't anticipate that that would be will happen again well um and you know the room needs to be available for us too sorry but I'm just I'm just throwing it out there so I can report on the iasb uh nothing specifically gearing up for the annual conference in November to list the speakers is out there there's some really great workshops when you have a chance take a look and looking forward to it networking with board members from around the state it should be very excellent networking opportunity yes yes it is okay um item 13 upcoming board meetings next board meeting will be September 11 2023 here at the ASC for the workshop at 6 30 followed by September 18th the regular business meeting again here at the ASC at 6 30 p.m I'll have to remind board members that's the unusual back-to-back weeks with board meetings because of Labor Day yeah mm-hmm you have no closed session we're canceling it down and I decided we're good oh we're canceling yeah you get to cancel it I know you're disappointed oh we're weeping over here on this side of the table we're blocked as a tournament so I just need a motion to adjourn so moved Terry first Chris second all in favor aye aye aye motion carries for adjourned thank you everybody look at your service we're off and running
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while the board as an entity cannot endorse proposed legislation as individual citizens you can contact representative Underwood's office and ask her to sign on again and you can contact the offices of senators Durbin and Duckworth and ask them to do so as well as always I will be happy to provide information for fasd awareness month and any other information that would be helpful to serving students and families in 308 thank you thank you 5.1 Dr Calgary we will have your superintendent thank you madam president and so this evening we begin this is our first official board meeting and uh within the school year we had one right before as we began to prepare for the school year and now we are we have officially launched and uh just really want to congratulate first and foremost all of our students for coming to school prepared how are the children prepared I have to tell you I was so it was so joyful to be a um with many with all the board members we have visited so far I would say two-thirds of all our schools high school elementary and middle school and I want to thank the board and its board members for its dedication in joining me in these walk-throughs and welcoming students and I say prepared because I got to tell you I was impressed I don't think I think every kindergarten we saw arrived just said Bye Mom and walked in the building or buy that or buy you know and uh it was just really a joy to observe that level of confidence and that's not by accident them right those things don't just happen in a vacuum there's a reason for that and the reason is two things number one um our parents our families are you are our partners when we see that happen it means that you've entrusted and you've prepared your child to be ready for school and they are excited and they are confident and they are walking in ready and joyful and so I want to thank our families for their partnership in this work secondly are Educators I don't know what you did but you got them psyched you got them ready and you communicated a spirit of confidence and welcome that invited those students into those spaces um I think the week before I attended um everything from a uh there was a foam bath a foam machine at one of the schools to a foam machine yes they had a beach party at Long Beach I saw students running around uh soaked uh to uh events where there were jump houses and and everything you know from the outside you may see some of these these things is a bit Superfluous but I gotta tell you what it does for the child for the students is it makes them feel welcome it makes them feel like this is a place of Joy a number of board members that would ask are you having fun and I got to tell you I think every student said yes they're having fun so I want to thank the board for that journey and the teachers the parents are building a grounds team our finance team our human resources team our our student services the registration work all of this the curriculum planning getting the books ready for teachers all of this plays a role in making sure that when we land we land well and we're able to prepare for our students and so I think that that is a huge um celebration to starting well now before I a couple other things I want to bring up for the board this evening so this will be a bit of a longer update than usual but I think it's important for this meeting a lot is on people's hearts and so one of the things that everybody I've been getting a lot of text there's a lot of where I hear there's going to be hot weather this week so it's getting hot in Oswego this weekend across this Northern Cook Area we are expecting significantly higher than normal temperatures and we have been tracking this we actually had a meeting about this on Saturday I brought members of my cabinet together this past Saturday we begin our preparations we've reached out to neighboring superintendents and school districts to find out how they're planning and preparing so number one is awareness many of you if not already you've received a message this evening from me about awareness around what we are doing in the district and so number one we are going to be limiting our time Outdoors everything from drills have been canceled and lining up for the buses and any of those things that will happen within the building it's essentially going to be kind of an inclement weather situation and we're not going to do any of those things we're going to hold off on those we're going to encourage remind families to send your children to school with water bottles we will also have our buildings and grounds team will have water bottles um prepared so as students get ready to go home they'll have access to water if they need it as they get right on the buses number two transportation we want to encourage our families if you can again if you can drive your children to school even if they can walk if you can drive your children to school we want to make sure that children are not walking in that heat we don't know what this may or may not feel like and so if you can't pick up and drive into school that will make a big difference and we'll be prepared for that know the signs understand what heat what are the symptoms for really being impacted by the heat we're concerned about our staff warm buses or in the in our arrival areas and so that is something we're working on lastly we'll know where the cooling centers are the message I sent explain the awareness around the cooling centers in our County there are a number of cooling centers and in our school buildings we are also having cooling areas and so principles are prepared that if a particular area in any school building gets a little warm there are cooling areas in buildings and so we are prepared for that as well this evening I'm going to switch gears we're going to talk a little bit you'll hear you have a chance to hear about our budget of the the FY 24 school budget Dr petsky will be leading our conversation through that this is really an important opportunity for the community and for the board of course to hear about you will hear a presentation tonight of the 10 at a budget this will then be placed in this budget will be on public display at the library notice of this will be circulated and then the final budget presentation and voting will happen on September 20th oh I'm sorry the final budget presentation will be on September 25th and then it will be adopted there will be a public hearing for this beginning September 30th Dr pesky will review this uh more detail Transportation I want to thank the community for their communication about the challenges the team has been working very hard overall we are seeing significant improvements though it may not feel like it we are delivering many students every day so there is a silver lining many many many students are but we can do better and we know this we can do better and we know this and those things we can't control around communication we have been working to figure out what are the gaps in the communication members of the team are there every day we have been working we have check-ins every day at 12 and at five to review the challenges and to address them and to improve them so it may not feel like it's improving yet but we are working on improving those significant challenges that we know are happening we can't control bus there's there's everything from traffic backups to accidents that happen on the roadway we know those things are going to happen that are going to delay our transportation what we can control is communication so we're aware of that and we are done applying more and more resources every day to that problem some of these were known problems some of them are also were unknown to us and so when those were unknown we are working to address those tennis court updates now I understand that the the good news is that oehs high schools has completed their tennis courts those have been updated and are ready to go and we're grateful for the team's work on that OHS I understand we'll be ready as of October 6 and that is the anticipated date for rhs's tennis court updates I'll be working with our new CFO to review what were the procedural challenges that occurred regarding these things so the board is aware that it's not lost to me that there were both some delays due to to rain weather however how our contracts are executed how we're reviewing this I'll be working with our new CFO to identify are there procedural are there contractual things that we can identify and we can work to improve so that looking ahead when we get these contracts we can monitor them in a way that then ensures that we are timely and it does not impact our students which it did and that is a concern for me and that is a concern that I want to bring to the board in full transparency to make sure we address those the same goes for our tracks our track update in OE my understanding is that is still um in a challenge and I'm sorry I think I'm reversing those so always track is ready to go and Ohs is there are still some unforeseen I'm sorry OHS is going to be complete by midweek of next week and started at the beginning of next week and then OE was the update Mr Queen did you want to add anything to that just to make sure please come to the mic I want to just make sure you have a chance to correct anything I may have reversed there how you doing hi Mr Clean thank you yeah director introduce who you are for the director of operations Bill Queen so yeah we're experiencing some issues with getting the plane surface purchased and bought and brought here there was something there were they shut down sold out whatever but we're in we're in a situation now to where we need to find a new rubber surface to go onto these tracks so that is where that delay is going to be for those okay but they are on point they're asphalt's in the asphalt's there we're doing some remodifications to the jump pits here at OE OHS they're in the process of getting laid and they will have asphalt on them this weekend anticipating we get the materials for the base to go over for the running surface and I've communicated already to uh Mr Queen and to Dr pesky that we're reviewing fully art notes regarding these actions and so that we can go back to these vendors around why there are these contractors why there are these kinds of delays and what we can do to completely avoid these kinds of situations in the future so thank you Mr Queen thank you and your team um last just one of the things that I I did mention in my opening comments just that our human resources department and our school leaders and our teams work very closely to ensure that we were able to staff all of our classrooms day one that is a big deal that students arrived with a teacher not a just a we we appreciate our guest Educators but those guest Educators were prepared to welcome students fully and make them feel welcome and prepared for the school year so that's a that's a significant given all the national shortages for educators if you watch the news you know that is not a small thing meanwhile we recognize that as staff exit the district at times we are we are working on exit slips to ensure that we are understanding what's leading to this change in climate and culture in our district and if any of the things that we can improve upon so we have a staff survey for exiting Educators that we are making sure that we can then provide them and that's been put into and that brings us to the close of our our comments and 0.2 board member comments who would like to start I had a wonderful opportunity um last week first day of class to to do walk throughs at three different schools um at Long Beach had an opportunity to walk through every kindergarten or kindergarten first second third grade and fifth grade we missed fourth grade because they were all in specials so we didn't get a chance to see them but that was wonderful I was able to be there for students as they dropped off at Thompson and then give a lot of high fives to kids as they were exiting Plank and I just wanted to say that um I try to be very observant I have an operational eye and what I saw from the staff was a very well coordinated hard-working intentional staff that work with care to and I saw that firsthand so I just wanted to thank all of the staff for all of your hard work everything you're doing and I look forward to continuing to support throughout the year who what other board members were when you and your it's different in every school so I think Dr kilgotty and I and Jen were at Long Beach and then at Thompson it was myself and Dr kilgotty again and you're yourself yes and then at plank it was myself and um Dominic and I think that's it knowing Dr gilgotty was there as well I know you've you've already addressed this but um I just wanted to comment too because I lost track of how many schools I've been to certainly not as many as you Dr Calgary but I think it's either nine or ten in the past week and um it was just a great experience I mean there was one there was one student that when I asked if you were having fun they did say no but you know that that makes it that makes it real so that's all good uh the realest moment for me was when I um first grader came up to me unprompted and looked at me and said are you a grandma at which point I thought I need to start dying my hair again but anyway um no it was it was really great to see all the kids um I don't know it cheered if you want to say anything about Springfield at all or so talk to I mean I can when I okay so I will uh I'll defer to you on that but anyway it was great to see it was great to see everyone at all the schools um good first week of school um kudos to the staff and to the students and I know I'll just mention as we go around there's more meet and greets coming up with the superintendent so I was able to attend some recently along with other board members so um we're keeping busy making sure everyone's got a good start to the school year and also getting to know our superintendent um I just want to thank the school visits have been very impactful for me so I want to thank you for the invitation um I think that when we have the opportunity to be invited we're a little bit more prone to attending because sometimes it feels overwhelming with all the things going on so thank you for allowing us to um join those schools one of the assistant principals said to me I said this you are ready and he said yes because we have good systems in place and good people in place and that was music to my ears so shout out to assistant principal ferco at trauber um those are I'd love to hear those things um and secondly I just wanted to say I had a very quick stop at um the silver bash at OE on Friday and then a little longer stop at OHS at the panther Fest and I had I was beaming with pride our students were so energetic our parents were energetic and it was the full range of students the young ones to the older ones and um it was just it was such a great experience and saw a lot of Administrators and it was just I I couldn't be more proud of Oswego on Friday and finally I just want to reiterate um I won't get mad that someone stole my thunder but uh September is fetal alcohol spectrum disorder and that does refer to the broad range of lifelong birth defects and neurodevelopment abnormalities that occur as a result of prenatal alcohol exposure I really had no idea about this two years ago and have come a long way and I didn't realize how much it affects our day-to-day students and the classrooms that they're in along with all of our educators statistics and data support that roughly and this is the best that we know one in 20 children have been exposed to alcohol during pregnancy after the pandemic that number is expected to rise greatly I am proud that SD 308 is Raising awareness for this spectrum disorder and on September 9th International fasd day I will be rocking my red shoes and spreading awareness of this invisible but prevalent educational disrupter and I ask everyone to join me Echo it was a great week enjoyed my visits so yeah and I think one of the things that's great to see is you know we all visited schools we um certainly all shared great experiences it's good to see the board acting as a team and I think that's uh that's something to I'm not trying to Pat ourselves on the back it's just when people want to look for you know high functioning boards and and what's going on the fact that we're a team and we're all in these that's that's a great sign um Mary Jo brought up Springfield I did have the opportunity to meet with some with um us rep and a few state senators and state reps I I continue and I'll ask again about how much we're going to rely on evf when it comes to the budget and eventually when we get to projections and so forth and I can't stress enough that please please Oswego Oswego School District 308 needs needs those funds to continue there's also the concern with Title One um and some of the spending cuts that are proposed that the national level too so uh it never hurts uh somebody told me one time that if you go in person that's uh that's like five phone calls uh and and calling is is is pretty high and and of course if you all you can do is email an email but um District continues to need those Title One funds and uh um the other conversation of course was around infrastructure and um the residual effect that'll have happened on all of our taxing bodies um because uh I I know last Friday of course absolutely that was something out of everyone's um control uh Route 34 being but you got to see firsthand how delicate our infrastructure already is and and some people are like well no duh I've been sitting on Route 34 now all the time because it's a parking lot where instead of in the past where it was only during rush hour and one of the things to consider is when you are traveling these back roads realize that whether they're Township or County Roads um there's there's there is a there's a cost there as well because then those roads are getting more wear and tear quicker so our infrastructure continues to be very fragile um you know and and I brought this up uh and you know there was a person in the district who had talked about um when they were younger dealing with a trained derailment our state is one of the if not the most elite or leading the nation in most derailments we have uh any of you who uh reside with me over in the ninth ward you you see those tankers going down a very tight infrastructure if we had to evacuate I'm curious what it would have looked like if it would look like Friday so um uh we we I know Dr kelgadi have talked about trying to be a conduit if we can because we deal with a lot of taxing bodies whatever we can do right to help with that infrastructure and um and we we certainly are we want to be people who help in that regard and uh again that's something else that you can reach out and write about to to your local legislators as well the the need is there I know I said it last time but I'll say it again if you were to take some of these municipalities around here I'm not going to go through the whole list but if you went through all the municipalities that are listed on our front we would be the I think I think it is the 40th largest city in the United States so think about the infrastructure that we have in place for that so um I'll continue to talk about it because I I hate to see our community dealing with the stress so our school district and we're looking forward to the work that we're going to do legislatively to impact our school district I like the rest of our team I do want to Echo what Jen says about the invitation um I you know it took a lot of coordinating from Ursula so thank you very much for that um but the invitation to be a part of the first day of school is really important and I'm glad that we were all able to participate and are continue to participate so I was at Brokaw today and it was just so nice to see those small little faces oh my God it was adorable and there was one girl she had had a great day at school and she was sitting there and her teacher was entertaining her and when she saw her mom she just broke out in tears and I think it was just because you know she realized oh my God I missed her I didn't realize I was having so much fun and the tears just came but we assured her mom that she had a great day and the and the difference between that and and Junior High when you know you get to Junior High I mean the sixth graders they were you know you saw the apprehension on their faces and so as a mother I understood that and so I was trying to encourage them you know I would tell them what I always told my son go be great have a great have a great day have a great year and so you kind of saw the weight kind of lift off over their shoulders and then when you get to high school it's just like oh this is no big deal you know we they had the bands out there and they were running through these the Panther and all that and it was like oh this is okay for me so it was just good seeing it and um you know thank you for for leading us then we are going to have a great year so thank you I think Kudos goes to our principles I would say that they really welcomed Us in all these spaces not just us they're students their staff um there's a lot of groundwork that goes into doing and experiencing what we experience so really a huge shout out to our school leaders in in making making it making it happen right and that they they are often behind the scenes you do but when you see the magic come together it's really their leadership that shines and we're just getting started right so this is the the school year has many days in it and so as they say keep going and keep coming where it's going to kind of hard work for all of us but it's exciting to start on such a high and positive note where we're thinking about our community um the back to school batch was uh another uh way that we set that and that was the time where we brought all our staff together to start the year and our theme this year's Community because none of this can happen uh without that that Community Focus and uh and uh the the Panther and the Wolves Fest were both highlights for me and seeing those football teams really celebrate and the bands coming together and the cheerleaders and everybody both events were really highlights for me as we ended our first three days of school may I say one more thing I just wanted to say I had the opportunity during one of my visits to uh sit in a cross cat classroom and the dedication of the staff for these students we was amazing and one of the students met their goal in class and we got to do we got to dance and sing to Miley Cyrus's Party in the USA which is one of my favorite songs so we had so much fun and so that was at Fox Chase and it was phenomenal and then um I I just want to give a shout out to the robotics team at the back to school bash because they were next to us I got a chance to see them in action and I've been following them on Facebook and logging on to all of the events that they go to but to see them and to meet them all and to watch what they have brilliantly designed was so cool and I just wanted to give a shout out to that and then all of the vendors that joined us it was just a great event and to me students and or teachers and their families and Educators and all of our staff was just way cool so kudos to the entire team that put that together 6.1 consent agenda are there any questions on the consent agenda you gotta make the motion first to make the motion can I have a motion to approve the consent agenda please I make a motion to prove all items under consent including minutes of the special Board of Education meeting on July 31st 2023 open and closed session minutes of minutes of the Board of Education meeting on August 7 2023 and closed session and to acknowledge the foia requests received by the district thank you Dr Mario aye Miss Johnson aye Mr Cerrone aye Ms simultan aye Mr poker hi promotion passes 7-0 so this evening board we have a presentation from Dr pesky as I mentioned in my comments regarding our FY 2224 budget presentation yeah thank you Dr Calgary thanks for letting me present this to the board tonight um we uh want to present the tentative budget for as we look up there sometimes people get confused about how we list our year but it's the 2023-24 school year but we refer to it in finance terms as the fiscal year 24 FY 24.
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um so far we've already got 10 so I kind of use that up to 30 000. so this slide basically shows all of the expenditure objects throughout the budget every section of the budget has a salary as a benefit a service a supply Capital always so these are just the basically the head categories of how the budget is broken down and then the expenditures for all the operating funds this is kind of just a breakdown to show you how much salaries and benefits make up of all the other expenditures throughout the operating fund so this does not include the um the Debt Service which is where our bonded interest is and our capital projects is not included in there this is a little bit more breakdown of the expenditures kind of by funds you can see here you have 69 percent Just For Education fund which is where a majority of our bills and performance were in 90 I mean well 69 of our budget comes out of yet fund and then capital projects the own fund kind of shifted a little bit from last year and that's just because foreign expenditure side of things these are the kind of the main big buckets that I mentioned earlier we adjusted all of the salaries for to tie to the best NCAA contracts and then any other increases that we had for insurance we plugged in all of the staff changes tools or additional activities were needed capital projects we have the 20 test position High School generators we have the district office being renovated and Hospital in high school and then the every spot those were kind of just the big ticket items that are over hundreds of thousands of dollars that we spend so I just pumped those ones out for years these next couple slides are going to just show you some of the highlights throughout the budget um I didn't want to go through the whole entire budget so I these would be like the same ones every year so you can kind of see the salaries this is strictly just salary so the first lines Elementary classroom salaries not including benefits and then you have the middle middle high school and athletic and then you kind of have your total all fun salaries this is kind of goes more departments and just some bigger ticket items so you have your food service department you can have your special ed new technology budgets and then your total education expenditure for the whole entire Ed fund all together is 58 million dollars you have the O M fund which is our maintenance so you kind of have a little bit one fun little bit you get your salaries your services supplies and then your Capital outlets and then your total for all now would be 17.6 million Transportation fund you have salaries you have the bus leases which is all of our buses Fuel and the contingency and then your total for transportation is 5.5 million and then this is a recap of all the remaining funds that are left you have your debt service at 9.2 million so those are the bonds with that certificate that are due this year that we'll be paying out then you have your IMR Social Security your capital projects if you're working cash and then your court homes so this slide shows you the projected revenues that are at the in the actual budget if you went and told all the summarized all of the funds you have all your funds on the on the left you have all your revenues that we're projecting in total then you have your expenditures that we're expecting to spend and then the far right column is the difference that will put either a surplus or a deficit the only deficit is in your home and fund because of the projects and then this town here in different town will be shown on the next slide and then so this slide shows you your time balance as of July 31st so this is an unaudited balance some of them might shift a little bit depending on some journal entries that we have then you have the middle column is the one from the previous slide to show you the change over the revenues over expenditures and then you'll have your final project fund balance on the on the right where we think we're going to land so you can still see they're all positive numbers um but with the on our project that you see quickly from the 8 million drops back at 2 million so that's that's how fast that can drop and that's only one year dipping it to reserve so it's something I don't like to do very often but the need is there to be creative with how we're coming up with our funds um so with the next budget when I present the final budget there might be some shifting of that negative balance I can move some of the evidence-based funding revenues from the Ed fund to the omnf to make it be a little bit less I'm going to try to see if we get some better buddy estimates because right now it's just I didn't just to kind of go where numbers to see if you love is going to come in higher we're working with TMA Financial which is our financial advisors to make sure that we don't we don't dip or make something look too crazy and out of whack that will affect our credit rating when we do go out for months if we need to and then not dipping too low and puts into the financial Jeopardy down the road so you know I just want to point that out so that way you know um where that is and then this slide so this slides same every year I don't think I think I might have taken one thing off of it from last year but these are just always things that we always have in the back of our mind we have classes split that a new teacher needs to be added to a new section you might have we do have our our buildings are out of space we have moles everywhere so that is basically known for our transportation and parking um we keep adding more buses but the parking lot's not getting any bigger so we have to find the spots for ads then you have your the stamping shortage in some department so like maintenance and food service it's hard to find books and drivers and maintenance people so in that reason one respect you won't have no salaries eating up their budget money but then your it's fast and you might have overtime on other staff and then the supply chains is still a little bit of a thing with food and maintenance not so much what we got our copy paper this year in time so we didn't have that delay and then the state always has these they're still out there these property tax raising the pizza and he's still sitting out there and hasn't moved so I don't want to take it off my radar until it was dead yes and then that's a curriculum requirements Dr Michael team I hope you're doing a great job walking the high school to make sure that all of these things are being met whatever needs to be implemented they're working on that so I think that wraps up and questions yes Nolan yes yes both yes yes Paul yes Mormon yes move on the information items and the first is the 23 and 24 school year yes we just wanted to do a few thank yous of course our maintenance crew and our Billy's Grounds Maintenance team did a great job um really did a super job in the high school already on the outside for our kickoff that we had done buildings look beautiful um you go out there because they can skate on those floors I don't know how they get so shiny but they do a really great job so um because you know big shout out to our custodial maintenance crew they did a really good job Along with Dan and his team other big shout out is for transportation they've done a good job even Limited in terms of their staff members they're able to get the buses going they're doing their best to limit the number of buses that are running late to schools the first week of school is always a big challenge uh Pam and her team does a really good job of Trying to minimize that try to make adjustments as they can throughout the year so we truly appreciate that my district office down for help this year with changing up the kickoff of course at the high school on office chain and and Stephen talk a little about that because they were one of the ones that helped lead the charge on some of those ships that we wanted to make this year to get us off to a better start as well as our Mentor Protege program with our instructor approaches so Shane and see if you guys want to talk a little bit about that experience yeah my God Dr Mangan had mentioned this year we changed up our beginning of the year we typically would have the start of new staff coming back to enter in and doing breakfast we'd all meet at the high school and welcome everybody back and then we go back to their buildings this year we decided to shift the process and rather than starting the day we met everybody at lunchtime so just a shift we really wanted staff to come together for the first time and spend some time together what was summer like and and have those collegial conversations in a reduced um environment so we did something a little bit different we offered a picnic style lunch so everybody came we had somebody come in and cook our Burgers Breads and chicken hot dogs hot dogs there we go and macaroni and cheese and salad so that was the flavor for lunch and then we offered from the hours of 12 to 1 30 you could have lunch and then between 12 and 2 we had different activities did these spread throughout the the campus some were inside some were outside very scary games and was all about the central cups so staff came together the challenge was to participate as a building staff and who was going to participate in most of those games to receive this this Central cup for the first time so we did that we ended that time at about two o'clock everybody came back to the stadium and uh Dr Mangan had announced our Central cup winter what which was hbt they took it home so they are our first winter that winter that we had and then we also had an opportunity to acknowledge our our retirees this year so Dr monkin had done some trivia about the historical components in the district so I had a chance to celebrate and recognize those individuals as they're entering into their last year here in central 301.
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I didn't really settle into this path until I had the fortune of being paired with one of one of history teachers I have ever met as an introverted and quiet student I was honestly completely overwhelmed sitting in his room for the first few times he would come in and greet the students like a rock star taking the stage it was an experience but the energy he brought to the class was reciprocated those kids loved coming into his classroom they wanted to learn anything he had to share with them and so that ability to engage students quickly became one of my biggest goals and that missions continued now almost well kind of 15 years in while I like to think that everyone finds our founding documents riveting and just so interesting I can assure you that's not the case uh when 13 and 14 year olds think that you at age 36 are a fossil they are pretty sure that history is just about a bunch of old dead people um getting excited though about coming to school and getting kids excited about learning again so that some of them have lost when they reach Middle School is probably one of my most favorite parts of my job and with all of the people I have thanked I need to thank my students past and present thank you for trusting me inspiring me rolling with my crazy activities and ideas whether that is turning the Declaration of Independence into a modern day breakup letter experiencing freezing conditions at Valley Forge when Mrs Fountain opens the windows in December so it's really really cold or scrambling through an obstacle course blindfolded to experience the challenges of people like Christopher Columbus middle schoolers are the greatest and I am so fortunate to have been surrounded by them for my entire teaching career once again thank you so much for the honor and distinction I am eternally grateful foreign clap for her again because being teacher of the year probably deserves more than one round of applause so at this time I would like Nicole Cunningham the executive director for bcsf to please come up she has a presentation for Molly I can help you hey yes okay thank you um the Valley Forge thing let me just tell you um my son is a sophomore and he still talks about it so um the day you froze my child thank you so much but no um I can I can say though that I got to witness her teaching Excellence during covid so that alone I mean we're thankful to her as a family and though I wasn't on the selection committee for this award um we were all just tickled that you were picked so um so the school foundation for those of you who don't know who we are um for almost 70 years we've been a non-profit supporting teaching excellence and I think we've seen it here tonight so thank you Molly congratulations right so the foundation is presenting Molly with a check and a really big one that's not real but it's for 500 to help support her amazing education and to help celebrate the achievement so very proud of you does have a plaque for Molly that she can have that announces her as teacher of the year and we also have a plaque at the entrance of the administration building that has Molly's name on it already as full as past member members our teacher of the year selection so you know what one more time just because she was so entertaining even with her speech please join me congratulations Mrs Molly Fountain our teacher of the year thank you [Laughter] [Music] okay can I just point out those three cute kids have books and not devices right now so that's how you know you're a teacher's kid how impressive and they're all perfectly quiet congratulations kids okay we're gonna move on to school board member reports I'll start down as I said no got anything Logan okay Mr Grimes I don't have anything we've not had anything down there Mr major the uh the Redevelopment commission met today and they had a lot of good things that they talked about um the Second Street thoroughfare 8th Street uh gateway to Mill Race Park they have a potential unnamed tenant for bachettos they've done some improvement on brickwork to the second Street Garage they had a former probation building that was demolished and they went through and did a recycling study and fortunately just under half of that building uh during demolition was able to be recycled the Taylor apartment complex leasing office is open and accepting applications and providing tours the housing study plans to move forward with initial paperwork being filed in September the riverfront project received a permit from items so that's going to also move forward and that's all I have to say but that's not all that was spoken about so I'll leave it at that uh Health Trust is on Wednesday Mr Brown do you have anything to report out all right cabinet reports we have I don't think we have anything there we go all right well that will take us into four policies that we left off the last time in terms of approval so you uh approved as a board a great number of policies but these four have been uh set aside and what I think we're going to look to do Mrs Wilton has maybe set up an opportunity to have some conversation um on these at the one public meeting that we had these were four policies that we set aside had some conversations about so we're working on revising those we want you to have a chance to talk about them again before voting on them as a reminder those policies one was 5420 reporting student progress and there is hga 1093 that we're trying to pay attention to but at the same time we were brainstorming other ways that we wanted to make sure and inform parents and keep them up to speed not only with Statewide assessments just but just with how their kids were doing period and then we also had 5610 suspension and expulsion of students so we were making sure we were capturing all of Indiana code with the reasons for suspensions and expulsions but we were reviewing the appeal process there so seeing how that could come to the board and what that process could look like uh policy 8400 uh has some specific things that have been changed uh the new definition of a school resource officer does now require that person to be a law enforcement officer with required training timelines established by state statutes so just some specific things outlined in code as for hea 1093 that we need to pay attention to but additionally we're just looking at that process to how do we set plans at the corporation level at the building level and what's the responsibility of the safety Specialists besides just the SRO so it was more broad school safety than just sros and then lastly 8510 this one's going to take a little bit so I believe the next time we will have a chat about policies this one will still be on the back burner because there are so many components this one and our Wellness committee has a group of people taking a look at that to make some recommendations for you to take a look at and then see what else you want to change but they are checking through all those pieces because it it runs the gauntlet of of things that we cover as a school corporation that may have something to do with Wellness so those are the four just want to make sure we keep them in front of you we want to make sure and bring them up each board meeting until they're approved but we're looking at some point maybe having a meeting to review those so I can take any questions with where we might be at this one okay all right okay good uh and and just uh as a reminder uh to the audience the the board has decided to use a public works session which is what Dr Roberts referred to to help us work through as a team what we want to um put into a policy that then comes to a vote in this meeting so we will announce those meetings as they come up as he said we will plan to have one of those on September 11th we will talk about these four policies we will also start to move into policies regarding books so I've seen the blue sheets we will we will start as a team familiarizing ourselves with current policies regarding books and decide as a group how we want to move forward on that very important topic as it seems in our community so just to put that out there it'll be listed at the end in an upcoming meeting so it would be at five o'clock here in the administration building on September 11th covering those policies as well as diving into our book policies for the first time okay and the decisions occur here decisions occur in the public business meeting and that that meeting is just prior to the next regular meeting okay so we're moving on to public comment I'm going to start with just a couple of reminders on how public comment Has Changed For Us given some of our subcommittee changes that were approved over the last few meetings so we do allow public comment on any topic during our business meetings however we still have the same stipulations in that we will limit each spokesperson two three minutes we will only allow 45 minutes total okay and so I have people helping me keep track of that some some other notes if if a team is here kind of on the similar topic you can defer to a spokesperson that represents your views and then when your name is called you can just say I agreed with Bobby or whoever that might be okay so you can defer your comments if you're in alignment with someone else who's already spoken um and and then pass if your intending Point has already been made um we have heard several people read books we understand that there's profanity we've we've heard several things over the last few meetings don't feel like you need to read out of a book for us providing a book name and so that we can consider that is is perfectly okay and we'll make sure to note that down and keep that in mind as we work through what we want to do on the book topic as a board moving forward um let's see also note board members do receive information from the public in lots of ways so this meeting is one of them email is another phone numbers another so there's lots of ways to reach all of us if for some reason you don't feel comfortable or you aren't caught on tonight you can certainly reach out to us in another way let me see if there's any other notes I'm missing nope I think that's it to start I will share something that Mr Schultz provided to me just before we sat down it is a petition that I will read just for just for clarity amongst the audience Ms wheeldon on August 7th 2023 the bcsc board adopted policy changes for policy 0167.3 specifically sub section g that permitted written public comment be submitted in lieu of public speaking by signing the below people affirm to have a relationship to the school corporation as either student parent resident taxpayer or any combination that fulfills the requirements of subsection C enter the first 500 signatures received last week as a public record for this meeting at the request of the undersigned for their request the quoted text is in their written public comment for each individual at this August 21st 2023 bcse school board meeting I ask that the bcse school board Implement standards on profanity and vulgarity that is appropriate for each school's audiences Elementary Middle School and High School these standards should not discriminate against any group of people however will hold the bar of decorum for what our children read and its appropriateness within common Society there are a list of names here and then this will be provided to the other school board members via email after this meeting okay so if this is a topic and you feel like this covers your input for tonight then you may you may refrain okay that being said Nikki you ready okay all right I'm going to start at the top and we'll work our way down I did check Mrs Littleton there were no agenda items on there so you can we'll pass and go straight to them you're welcome um Mr John Edwards hello sir okay and Mr Edwards I'm in for anyone speaking tonight there is a timer here at three minutes I cut you off I'm a stickler okay so uh hopefully I'll hear it and I'll give you a little motion all right thank you good evening BCS warm board members my name is Sean Edwards and I serve this community in three different areas I'm an elected Community leader for a non-profit organization I'm a pastor and I'm a parent first I would like to say during covet I realized I did not have the necessary experience to be an at-home teacher there were significant changes to How I Learned specific subjects compared to my child's learning however as a parent it was my duty to be involved in the process of knowing what material she was learning and I did so by Community communicating respectfully with the teachers in the administrative staff in other words I actively participated in my child's learning with the trust of a licensed and qualified teacher providing me essential guidance I bring this to the board's attention because it takes patience and understanding to teach the children of this era especially while navigating through their political and religious beliefs that they bring the school from home but I want to say I thank the teachers and the staff of this district for dealing with everything they have to deal with and still caring about the welfare of their of our children as a community leader pastor and a parent my main concern was last week's meeting I listened to what was supposed to be a group of people who stated that they were concerned about the children in this district and the material they read but after listening to the adults repeatedly used explicit language that was still with children in the room there's no way I couldn't understand how come they couldn't dial it down they could have used abbreviations to get the same point across but oh they still felt it necessary to read this material out loud to me I honestly felt many of them enjoyed reading the f word the s word and some of them even enjoyed using the n-word to you elect officials on this board I don't mean no disrespect do you miss disrespect but we the community expect you to represent everyone in your District not a particular interest group the community expects all of you to represent all of us parents and all of the children so every person every child has an opportunity to learn we the community do not expect you to only benefit and serve the ones that benefits your personal beliefs and your agendas if you're not willing to do this or believe you're unable to please step down yes Marlo that we read up in the board says together we learn so I ask each of you how do you define the we as a pastor it's my job to love everyone is Christ loved the church as an elected Community leader I'm to stand up for those who cannot stand up for themselves but as a parent I'm to guide my child so that when they get old they will respect everyone no matter their lifestyle the religious preferences no matter their skin colors the bottom line is this none of us is God however we must answer to him in the end as how we treat one another foreign good evening Cindy fry 1611 Parkside Drive it has been my privilege to collaborate with Dr Roberts cabinet members and building administrators both as a parent volunteer and a professional in economic and Community Development the prosperity of our local economy is intricately tied to the triumphs of this exceptional school system year after year this is the district consistently nurtures well-rounded educated individuals who transition seamlessly into the next phases of their lives beyond High School community isn't it be guided by educational leaders who embody true excellence and we just met one of them tonight Mrs Fountain what a star I extend my my heartfelt gratitude for their unwavering Integrity profound intelligence trailblazing Innovation and genuine compassion for each and every student bcsc stands as a shining example and is a source of admiration not only in the state of Indiana but Across the Nation I want to share one example of innovation that I'm personally involved with the Columbus Area Chamber of Commerce proudly sponsors the work ethics certificate program in bcsc's middle schools now back in 2017 the governor's work ethic certificate was created but bcsc in its wisdom decided it would have a similar program at the K to sixth grade level sponsored by the mayor's office and the Middle School sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce what we impress upon the students we work with is that employers like the 628 chamber members I work with value not only what a student knows but what they how they behave and while these skills might not be traditional subjects like Reading Writing or math their crucial life skills that we try to cultivate and recognize things like collaboration effective communication problem solving demonstrating critical thinking being Dependable accountable and a team player being organized punctual this work isn't about academics per se but these are really essential skills and one effective way for students to embrace these fundamental skills for life and work is by empathizing and putting themselves in another person's shoes when we read a variety of books we step into the experiences of someone with a different background whether it's related to race religion sexual orientation gender identity we're cultivating understanding and empathy this approach should not instill fear rather it encourages growth thank you very much [Applause] Beth Strow foreign Lafayette Avenue I am the current owner of viewpoint books a small business in our community that will celebrate his 50th birthday in October when the Edwards Whitaker family opened the store in 1973 they were intentional about choosing a name that would be welcoming to all thus Viewpoint books has always been a place where we strive to include all points of view non-fiction from a broad spectrum of perspectives and fiction for all ages that serves as both mirrors and windows books are mirrors when readers see their own lives reflected in the pages seeing ourselves people who look like us a character that has a similar name someone who shares a similar background families that look like ours is uplifting it helps us feel connected and creates a sense of belonging because each of us is different in some ways I'll be a albeit alike and many more for each of us to see ourselves in the mirror of a book requires that the literature available to our students must include the beautiful diversity that defines our community books are windows when they allow readers to see lives and stories that are different from their own we may not be able to relate to their life experiences but we learn and grow from Reading their stories we can learn how others overcome adversity and we can see how families change and grow stronger through challenging experiences we can recognize that people that live in different kinds of houses and eat Foods we've never seen are still like us in many ways Books open windows to the world in the safest possible way we gain understanding and compassion without ever leaving home I'm sure it's happened many times during the long history of viewpoint books and I can assure you that nearly every day since I bought the store in 2016.
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so we are doubling that for the next year and we are anticipating that our student fees will bring in more around the library thousand dollars the rental of our facility we have one office at the CRC that is rented by work one and they pay us 500 a month to be in that facility um that will continue in 2024 and they would like to continue to be in that space and pay the rent um donations are always welcome and accepted but they're the unknown sometimes we receive um a 200 check for a 500 check um it's always a wonderful surprise when we go to the Post Office and then we get that donation uh coming to us but it's not guaranteed money so we're going to estimate two thousand dollars which is generally what we'll bring in as far as a donation our endowment from the Community Foundation is a result of the um leftover cake grants from earlier and every year we receive endowment dollars those endowment dollars fluctuate depending up we are anticipating that we are going to see a drop in 2024 um we had proposed in 2023 that we would receive sixty thousand dollars in endowment money excuse me 65 000 in endowment money when actually we're going to only receive about 57 so that's why there's an adjustment there for 2024 24.
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and how long have we been using using Morgan Hunter yeah one thing I should also point out that I didn't in my uh in my explanation here Morgan Hunter is also to help offset this cost our contribution to them they're willing to lower their percentage markup for that so how many of us it's a couple percentage points yeah with the puzzle there so they're currently their pit we're paying a 34 markup they're recommending a 30 for the 120 per day and 32 percent foreign I have a question is that rate something that would be locked in for for um a year at a time is there once you establish that how does that work in terms of length of time it's my understanding is that's that's the rate until it's changed again so before to increase in the future they could if the board were to decrease it we haven't increased it for a while but I just wanted to make sure as we're talking about which way to go is that an annual thing that we have to revisit every time or is that like it was last time it stays where it is until the board makes a decision to change it okay thank you decision okay thank you 45 years I guess natural yeah I totally agree foreign Andy I couldn't hear you I know you moved but I couldn't hear what you said I'm bored you are for Mr Dodge's recommendation at 120 yeah as presented okay thank you uh it's been moved okay sorry it's been moved and seconded in to approve the substitute pay raise as recommended all those in favor please say I and raise your right hand I was anyone opposed okay okay motion carries 7-0 chairlift bid okay um I'm gonna have Mike come up to give you uh explanation on his recent date for the potential junior high lift shirt lift for the gymnas games yeah foreign so on the 24th of July I sent out invitation or I posted an invitation to bid for the new chair lift for the gym it's only had I contacted three companies only had one submitted bid um and the bed was for a total of 62 455 dollars I don't think that's a bad price but I think we need to try to send it out again to get more bidders involved so if we could uh reject this and I could fill through the painting process again to get more bitters that way we can ensure we're doing our due diligence what's the status of this currently individuals can students who need this chair lift can they get into well I'm looking at we were looking at um for this particular bid maybe a winter break okay to get in we still might be able to if we can get the bids in next month um it's it's it would be nice to have but it's not something like you know the HVAC where it's a time sensitive that's the question yes we don't have any students no I wouldn't move I know where kellier I'll second that Kelly has moved and Chris has seconded to reject the chair bid all those in favor of rejecting said bid please say aye and raise your right hand I motion carries 7-0 23 24 meal prices thank you Mike I'm gonna have a Charlie Jewett the food service director come up data on the Food Service prices while she's coming up we really didn't adjust much of the fees this year but we did have some some increases to the adult breakfast so what do you think um okay so I did the sponsor application and there's a section in there that I walked through and it has me check the adult prices um for School meals for when they eat and with the formulation that I use and stuff it did not show that we needed to raise student prices this year so we just chose not to do that this year with all the changeover and give the parents a break another year hopefully the only price that I had to change was the adult breakfast and it went from 235 to three dollars that was the only one that was under the limit that I was allowed to do so that is the only price change given the changes that were taking place I think this is a good way to rule out cost within their efforts and I will just tell you solid plates that are coming out the cafeteria at the high school last couple days because the changes are well received so far so what so you get free and reduced yes but we have public comment we have one signed up okay okay um we can go ahead and finish uh Charlie's 23 24 meal price and then as long as we the person is signed up before seven uh that's fine let's finish the topic we're on and then we'll come back to public comment thank you generally it's teachers the teachers parents want to come and eat with their shoes sometimes at the primary Center beginning of the year there's some parents okay so lunch is exactly the same that's the only shift is in breakfast which is about 65 cents I moved we accept the meal plan as presented second all those in favor of the meal plan changes as presented please say aye and raise your right hand I motion carries 7-0 okay thank you Charlie uh before we go to administrative reports we'll come back to public comment which is an opportunity for the board to listen in accordance to District policy bcbi this is the agenda time during the meeting when an individual May address the board the board welcomes up to 10 patrons to speak each of the patrons will have the opportunity to speak for three minutes those wishing to make public comment are asked to sign up on the night of the meeting prior to 7 pm with the exception of not discussing specific matters related to identifying students or staff by name due to confidentiality considerations without permission there are no restrictions regarding the subject matter the patron wishes to share with the board also this is the delegation we only have one person signed up so we'll skip over that board members are not to respond during this time again this is the time established in the meeting for board members to prioritize listening to the public and I'm sorry I don't have the sheet in front of me oh it's just me hi Ken all right time begins okay I'm going to stop talking about food just to talk about taxes uh so the question you know in the this tax season now um question I have for the board is what is the limit to the tax increases that we're going to see here um so far the proposal for this year's to raise at 27 compared to the 2021 school year back then 5.76 million in property tax revenue was enough to fund the schooling in 2022 that amount wasn't adequate so we needed to raise it to 6.6 million then we had the boat out so that didn't go through as planned but now we want uh 7.27 million to the same job that only took 5.76 million a few years earlier I understand cost of increase because my family's costs have increased as well but unfortunately my income along with my other families in Baldwin have not kept up with inflation you know I think it'd be nice to get a pay raise so they can pay for the increase in property taxes I realized that hoping for a raise solely to cover increase in property taxes from the previous years kind of a sad commentary regarding what we've grown to expect here in Douglas County uh working overtime or extra shifts or striving for a raise just to cover tax increases Not The American Dream going that extra mile at work should be for things such as saving for a down payment on a home going on a family vacation saving for a car or finally getting out of debt so there are five competencies in social emotional learning based on the castle framework self-awareness self-management responsible decision making relationship skills and social awareness I want to focus uh first just a second here on the competency of social awareness according to Castle a definition for social awareness is as a and I quote the abilities to understand the perspectives of and empathize with others including those from diverse backgrounds cultures and contexts this includes the capacities to feel compassion for others understand broader historical and social norms for behavior in different settings and recognize family school and Community Resources and supports unquote for the next three weeks I'd encourage the board to practice empathy and compassion for those in the community who are facing the financial burden of a tax increase at no fault of their own and to take time to reflect on how high taxation is a point of frustration for the community and then with that information time for reflection decide if your proposed course course of action is appropriate thank you Mr Snyder and I just want to verify that no one else signed up for public comment okay thank you all right we will pivot to administrative reports um as Charlie's coming back up to talk to us about Food Services guidelines for 23.24.
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I have a motion please it was high and second second Mr menos yes sir thank you Mr midnight discussion every year the virtual learning plan yeah every year oh no no we don't have to do it we just have to have a plan yeah I've learned to change to last year can they speak into them yes they're talking about the virtual learning plan which is 8.3 just asking if that's something that we do every year which it is and there have been no changes from last year to this year yeah I have a question he says he says I have a question uh 8.3 is this uh have we is this a new facility that we're utilizing or abuse that before it's important it's foreign can we turn it up a little bit it's for a new purpose that was my question yeah no oh no all right um so jumping down to 829 is more about the elementary school hours yes um T3 and P4 so those are just ones right you know and some parents still happen to have kids that are in two different breeds little that's that's a basically a great time for getting one child at 2 30 and you haven't been to the next one and three okay all right we uh we spoke about a Google look into yeah but I mean a lot of it comes down to the data like how many how many kids are in there so you know that impacted me I don't know that where what their um how the logistics will work yeah we we have we'll put a plan in place for those that have difficulty left with that Google have um the afternoon program stuff and you know all right I just wanted to uh congratulate the administration for the comprehensive for the comprehensive [Music] concentration of Mental Health Services and I I as a clinician myself I think it's extraordinarily helpful and not only students but staff have those resources I can't tell you how bottom of my heart I I I'm excited because as a post-pandemic that's what I wanted to say and thank you we have a continued adherence to this because I think this is this is uh has and it will be uh upcoming issues so thank you very much any more discussion okay can we have a roll call please yes sir education resolution just about yes this is awesome yes yes Mr Wilson yes Mr Midas yes Miss High yes and moving along to board action resolutions be resolved the Bound Brook Board of Education improves the resolutions as outlined and board action resolutions these owner items 9.2 through 9 126 can have a motion Please Mr self code thank you in a second second like it was high any discussion estimated correction to one of the agenda items if I make okay item 9.19 approval change order number two and number three to bison Contracting due to the diligence of our facility director soliciting additional quotes for the service next time I would like to pull the current number two from the agenda and make the number three to do number two is to keep the sequence with the change orders and just for clarity I'll read the motion yeah be it resolved at the Bound Brook Board of Education upon recommendation of the superintendent and as recommended by drg Architects to approve the proposed change order number two which is currently listed as number three and that is 16 178.80 for revisions to electrical service upgrades the total amount of the change orders for this new number two 16 178.50 the next meeting you will have a replacement for the previous number two which was called and it will be materially less standing okay any other comments questions nope okay then can you please have a roll call Mr Bob yes Mr Dawson yes okay yes yes Mr benhas yes it's high yes motion passes thank you other matters come for the board or new business has anyone has anything they'd like to discuss at this time sailing through okay then at this time we are open to the public for discussion into Utah there's nothing online nothing online anyone here okay then we are moving along to executive here um Board of Education inter executive session as well by mjsa 10 4-11 for the purpose of I don't know what numbers were going in for tell me that Mike yes 13.2 update on security and advice regarding saying 13.3 harassment intimidation bullying 13.4 update on bbea negotiations 13.5 we know what numbers they fall under and then that would be one three four seven okay one three four and seven and I have a motion going to Executive motion thank you Mrs up though in a second thank you Mrs Austin that's what I thought all in favor all right foreign thank you very much foreign thank you very much thank you foreign thank you foreign thank you foreign thank you foreign thank you foreign thank you foreign thank you foreign thank you when you're ready Tom you are unmuted okay we are ready to reconvene an open session can I have a motion to reconvene motion give us up go second all in favor all right I moved to I had a 14.1 didn't get yeah we're gonna be resolved report of Education the approval of the resolutions as outlined in approval of hip cases under high school only which is just item 1442 have a motion promotion Al Dawson yes thank you Mr Dawson and second second okay Mr Homer thank you any discussion I guess we can't really discuss him so we have a roll call please yes awesome yes Lima Christine yes looking past okay and item 15.1 be it resolved the Bound Brook Board of Education the approval of the rest Solutions as outlined in approval of hip cases under middle and elementary school can I have a motion [Music] thank you Ms Russian and in a second thank you miss high any discussion okay can we have a roll call please yes yes thank you yes yes it's high yes Mr Coleman yes motion passes okay uh procedurally Mr Gorski we're up to 16.1 which is our Workshop here do we just move right into that I would recommend but we don't do anything here as far as we adjourn after that okay all right let's move down thank you usually it says very nice okay what hey how are you good how are you doing it's hard to leave so much time so much summer so much although Sue's tree has started falling into my pool so you must be getting close it's hey John thank you never they have a way of growing thank you sir it really is um are you giving him ideas so I know you've already so thank you for having the patience to this and it's actually it's appropriate because we because there are last year's goals they're also in the PowerPoint but I sat down and it's like there they are um so we actually titled this year's old setting sustaining the learning and accelerating the growth really because this was the first year um that we were really back full time from Cohen and now it's really as we begin to play catch-up how do we think about accelerating the growth um and talking about goal setting for 23 and 24.
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so I'll be presenting tonight but I do want you to know I've got a great team in the finance office who have been helping to support to put this together so I've got Amanda sitar I've got Debbie Smith is our bookkeeper and Terry Gotti is our executive assistant who's really helped out and put a lot of information together for us it's a big process putting the revenues and expenditures all together so just as a reminder for the board and for the community who are listening this slide I really like to include in all my presentations to let you know that the budget it's extremely important but it's also serves several purposes for the district so one of those purposes is what's required by the school of law we have to have one number two is it provides us the expending and taxing Authority without a budget we would not have the capacity to do those things but more importantly it serves as a financial plan for all of our departments it looks at all of the financial resources that we have and it it looks at all of our different departments the buildings that we have and make sure that we are fiscally responsible in what we're doing and then ultimately the budget that we're looking at is used as a management and communication tool you can really see a lot of the priorities and the things that we focus on in the budget and in the finances so one of the things there are there's a timeline or there's some budget requirements so this slide just kind of points that out number one we are on today and that is August 22nd sharing with the board uh an opportunity to see the fy24 tentative budget um after today the budget will be placed on public display for 30 days allow the public to see what's happening with their dollars as a public body also we'll have a publication in the newspaper that'll be going out in the Beacon News to let people know that we're considering the tentative budget and that they can call the finance office and speak with us if there's any questions um and then step number two is uh the final budget adoption which is at the September 25th board meeting so there will be a public hearing where we formally present the fy24 budget uh the board will then be asked to adopt that budget uh the reason it happens in September is our fiscal year want runs from July until June and the budget is supposed to be adopted by the end of the first quarter of our fiscal year since our fiscal year begins in July that first quarter is in September and then uh when the board uh votes on that or uh it sees that final budget then there's a bunch of budget violating filing steps that take place so with the county clerk with the Illinois State Board of Education um and then also with our regional Office of Education in addition to that though we also keep in mind we've got one more board meeting in between now and September 25th so I uh it's another opportunity where we can publicly talk about the budget and some of the assumptions some of the items that are in there so if the board is looking at the budget and it has any questions September 11th will be a great time to have that discussion but Dr Calgary and myself would also also like to offer the board an opportunity to meet one-on-one so we can schedule some time where we can have you in the superintendent's office we can sit down with the tentative budget and really look at those numbers look at the impact from a board member's perspective so if that's something you're interested in we definitely will extend that invitation questions board uh yeah I have one just so just so I know um along the timeline when will we have the projections with and without uh evf and with and without a CPI Levy yeah you know and I can provide those at any time now that we've got the tentative budget there's just a few other things to wrap up what I'd like to do is uh confirm some of those assumptions that'll be happening between now and September 25th and uh I'm seeing that even on September 25th would be an appropriate time to show with this budget adoption here's what the next projections could look like okay and and will that be open also to so that the PO because like I noticed jumps out on me in the next slide right away evidence-based formula we had an eight million dollar increase so um I think it's important for the community to see what that what that is yeah absolutely absolutely and those objections will give a nice context to show where we are and where we could have been any other questions all right so this is a slide that um uh we use in the finance department if you look at this table this is just Revenue thus the color green at the top bringing the money in and these are several factors that we look at it's very high level but it talks about like our equalized assessed value it talks about new growth in the district it talks about CPI and how that impacts us which interestingly enough in about 30 years we've never had a five percent CPI it's always been about 0.08 1.4 2.0 2.4 and the the economy lately has been in a position where we have seen CPI figures as high as five percent we also have cpprt which is Corporate personal property replacement tax the districts always sees a little bit of Revenue there we talk about our fees and academic and athletic fees so that's another conversation too because we do uh uh you know we do talk about that quite a bit as Jared just mentioned our evidence-based funding we know what it was last year so that's what this slide is showing here FY 23 last year was 89 million dollars that we received in just evidence-based funding this year we got our foundation level which was 89 million but because we're a tier one District we got about eight and a half to nine percent more um so we did see about uh 8.8 million dollar increase in evidence-based funding [Music] um to Jared's Point that's not a guarantee every year so that's that's nice that we got this this year but it's definitely something we're keeping a close eye on sorry Dominic when do we find out what tier we're in when we get the amount and or yeah um what they did is there's a there's a whole calculator uh spreadsheet that the state uses to uh determine what that tier funding is they just uh gave the distribution calculated numbers out I I want to say it was about a week and a half ago maybe even a week ago things have been happening on on uh you know warp speed lately so um it was just in in August here that they released those numbers if you ever want to I carry it around with me literally I carry it around so I can look up every District figure out the percentage they're in yeah I'm just one so did we find out what tier we're in simultaneously with with dollar amounts we're getting or because I know that it changes here we do yeah so so and we're still in tier one so the the thing uh the thing that we'll be looking at and monitoring is is based on the increased Revenue that we get at what point would the district be in tier two and then in tier three right yeah and whatnot so uh in addition we've got our mandated categoricals as a source of Revenue we've got our federal grants as a source of Revenue and then uh we also have their just our final year of Esser the coveted relief dollars that we uh we are looking at using this year too can I ask a question about the Federal grant piece um I don't know how much we've been monitoring the um the federal budget proposals but from what I'm gathering there's a hit on Title One funds if that without some alteration to some of the budget and I'm curious if we are monitoring that when we factor in that what uh I guess where we're at could that change could could this change between because we could they could adopt a budget that cuts those Title One funds and I'm just curious about where we're at with that probably one of the biggest conversation pieces at the district would have to have around that is typically our our grant dollars Revenue line up with our expenditures so we would have to look and look at that and I'm kind of looking out of the corner of my eye with Heather that's a good conversation as a grant administrator if we only pull in half the revenue what does that do to our programs or what would that look like and do we need to supplement with you know are there some things we have in place that we would want to continue well that would have to come from local dollars so that's definitely a conversation we would be monitoring so for this current fiscal year we saw an increase in title one dollars not a decrease okay so that's not to say for future years we wouldn't have to have those conversations but for this current year we actually received additional dollars so this might be something where we would see pop up in fiscal year 25.
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so it's a really a phenomenal day it took a village to put it together so do staff at every Department every entity Transportation maintenance everybody was really all hands on deck so very very appreciative all the work and it was really a fun field we had a couple people afterwards it said it just felt kind of like a family reunion so that was really what we wanted for people to come together spend some time with one another as we're kicking off this school year so it was really great I'll let Stephen Ken talk about um induction so induction uh is where we bring in our new teachers and what was slightly different about this year a little smaller group which is fantastic working on you know as Shane's talking about how we kicked off that first day really relationship building and team building you know if we can keep that up that's going to impact our staff and and really bring them together and so hopefully um our our new teachers came in and they're always overwhelmed you know you can imagine walking into the new job and space it doesn't matter if your experienced or not there's a lot especially in education where there's systems and and a different curriculums and also having all those little pieces it just you know creates anxiety so we have an awesome instructional coach team which we have to give a lot of credit to that Shane and I work with all the time to provide supports uh not only in an interesting way but it doesn't get so much on lecture all day long because you can only retain so much information so coming up with creative ways that team is amazing so they have to be given a lot of credit on how they're able to bring that across also the building administrators were involved on that part of you know individual things that are different at grade levels obviously unit district you cannot have every situation being the same but we're able to knock out those uh two days because on day two they then get introduced to their Mentor so that we still continue down that pathway of having that support that every teacher can go to and that really worked out really nice because Wednesday they did we did a Monday Tuesday intentionally so that Wednesday giving a time that it's not it really isn't a contractual day but an opportunity for those teachers to have basically one more day without instruction and that type of stuff going on to kind of relax a little bit which was part of the design of their induction programming so outside of it a lot of a lot of new people coming together but a lot of stuff going on going through and the feedback we got is that we are not overwhelming it was enough challenging enough but at the same time if we go much more you know that that cup of water is going to tip over and we're going to lose more than what we're gaining foreign [Laughter] thank you all right next door Holloway is here with the updates on facilities um just want to give some updates kind of where we're at where we finish up the summer I just wanted to reiterate what Dr monyan said about our staff um we have a great staff I appreciate everybody all summer to get everything wrapped up and we appreciate that and appreciate you know getting recognized for that we just want to say thank you to them um at the high school we're still wrapping up a few projects we did some modifications to some labs and some classrooms teachers workroom supply chain issues always a thing in our Realm of the world so we're still wrapping up a few things there but still working on the teachers work room we got mobile Baker room is probably 90 percent revamped and relocated that turned out really nice 269 we're still waiting on some furniture again the supply chain issues but I'm trying to wrap up those labs and a lot of working with Sarah Farrington and making sure that they have equipment and they're able to function so all the classrooms are functioning so we're just waiting on some final touches our transportation Maintenance building Transportation moved in before the start of the school year which was the goal we do did finally get water thank goodness gracious um we're just waiting on Final nikor and then we'll get our building occupancy and get everything wrapped up with that and we have yet to move in we've kind of had a few things going on the last month so we'll be moving in after we kind of slow down a little bit um Lily Lake um we kind of started uh the slight um HVAC upgrade that we have on the docket moving forward a couple classrooms had the unit ventilators that were failing and kind of having some issues so we added some rooftop units and kind of getting that that building HVAC upgraded so we did complete those and those rooms are those are functioning um as they should and working out really well um the mobiles CT hbt and PV all receive new vinyl flank vinyl plank flooring over the summer to try to alleviate some of the issues we had with the floor tile and stuff when they put those together so that kind of wrap that up we put carpet in at Lilly Lake to address the needs of some students over there so that's why we chose to go the carpet Direction there door lights we're going to put door lights in all those classroom doors I'm on vendor number two to try to get those we've waited eight almost 18 months for the first vendor and we finally told scrap that and hopefully in the next couple weeks we'll get them from a new Fender fingers crossed um the district office that's kind of an ongoing project kind of you kind of saw some Transformations that are taking place here working on flooring electrical work trying to wrap those things up uh hopefully every meeting will look better and better we're just trying to kind of fit that into the schedule with our staff and you know whatever we can do to get that done um a couple things on the future docket list the generators that Dana spoke about that equipment is still out uh January 24 when we're expected to see that we're putting out we're going to be putting out hopefully next month a bid package for the electrical work that goes into that that's a small piece of that puzzle but there is some work interior that needs to be done we're gonna do that during the breaks and days off and try to get all that stuff done so when those generators arrive we can get them hooked up CMS will be the next one that one was a little more involved and we put this project together so we decided we need to do that as a standalone because that ties in some of the transportation facility and there's some other intricacies with that so that'll be the next one and then once we get that one done and all our buildings would be on generator um high school edition if you've been by the high school you could see we got some construction fence up we're kind of heading in the right direction so we have a permit in um with the arrowia with Kane County for the earthwork and excavation part we broke the project up into two parts and some of the conversations we had with King County to try to get that work done so we can get that building under roof before the snow flies so the second part of that project is out to bid currently and we'll be open to those bids at the end of the month for the interior build out the building structure and all that stuff with any luck by the end of August we'll be breaking ground and digging and making a mess we've been working diligently to try to get some of those things put together so we can get that done and I think that covers my list any questions any update on the lane Plato that's that's part of the conversation that's um we know we're going to have to do something there trying to work with Kane County and exactly what that is we've resurrected some of the old drawings and we kind of had some conversations with them on how we can modify that to make something that makes more sense that we can bring to you guys and bring our community so we've been kind of working with them on what that looks like but that'll probably um be on next Summer's docket feeling at the end of last year cheers no those who have Standalone HVAC units ironically knock on wood we had an issue with one of the classrooms at Lily Lake today but we'll be on it first thing in the morning but yeah I mean those those systems are stand alone and they're in pretty good shape any other questions awesome thank you with us good evening I'm here for a second time but I do first of all want to thank Dan and his crew buildings and grounds we we're in our third week of all fall sports games are kicking off we've been heading out for two full weeks but uh with everything that's going around that you're seeing around the district and being able to get Fields ready safe for kids to play it's a huge undertaking so thank you to him and his staff for getting that up we actually have a home soccer game going on right now that's where I sent Curtis back to but uh volleyball tomorrow so we're kicking off for running uh great great numbers great turnouts had to reduce a couple rosters you know unfortunately but uh got a lot of interest in what we're doing as we continue to grow so that's been great this far and the other thing I do want to thank for those of you that came back to the 301 back to the hill I know that was kind of our our fall showcase that indeed great job by the foundation with everything it was a it was a great event the weather held out and just to see be able to see the flowing between the community involvement and and some of the Athletics it was awesome to see so thank you questions that I can answer right now about any of it feel free to fire away two questions for this week in sports yes I'm just IESA and ihsa go by the same guidelines as far as Middle School sports outdoors the wet and ball thing that you sent us or that yeah I've seen to me and what that actually means so what what Bob reading takes it's not just the temperature it takes humidity relative heat the whole thing we get a temperature reading and then based off the information that was sent out that's right that's where it falls and so if it's 90 degrees out it doesn't mean we're stopping everything it's got to depend on humidity wind and all that kind of stuff so we do have a thermometer that'll allow us to kind of measure what that is cool there's like one for the district I've got one for the district uh talking with Curtis you know we're going to make some trips to just kind of getting that you're reading as it warms up but the thing that we do have going for us is that eventually as some of these at least games like soccer starts six o'clock at night we've got some flexibility but we want to be very mindful of what that temperature is especially for our middle school kids at you know 3 4 30.
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parents and grandparents have asked me to suggest folks for children and young readers it's a delightful experience to recommend books for happy occasions it's more challenging when they share that their middle school child is feeling particularly vulnerable or they want rather need a book that includes a character whose parents are divorcing or who is grieving and believing beloved grandparent or pet I've recommended books about Blended families about new neighbors who look different and about loved ones facing challenging mental and physical illness sometimes it's the children's themselves who ask do you have a book with a character that looks like me or my friend feels sad and I want to help the answer is of resounding yes and they need to see those books in our libraries they can't all afford to buy them from us thank you foreign thank you Mary Mills I want to say that this school system has wonderful dedicated teachers teachers that spend hours after school on their own time doing lesson plans grading papers and still they do go the extra mile to help a child that may be struggling so I think that we need to all appreciate and recognize the teachers in this community I was truly shocked at what was read at the last meeting and it dawned on me that what do they think our teens are talking about you know when they're on their own and we're not there what words do they think they're using on the bus really that is reality in today's age even in the 1960s when I was in junior high and high school we were talking about sex because we didn't know and we shared what we did know um so our city is a diverse City of people from all over the world of different races ethnicities religion and sexual orientation the message I got from these people was that they were anti-lgbt and I felt that was wrong our children need to understand accept and know the diversity around them to cope with the bigger world that we are going to live in that they are going to go out and live in and I wonder what are you these people afraid of are they afraid that the children won't learn to hate who they hate foreign I hope I say this right Barbara hand Ben Franklin arguably one of the most brilliant American forefathers was born into a family of 17 children his parents could only afford to give him two years of formal schooling as a teenager he effectively became an orphan after escaping from a life of indentured servitude to his older brother he earned the nickname the water American because in a time when most people drink ale or beer with their meals he saved money by drinking water with his and used that money to buy books to educate himself as an adult Franklin realized that he and his friends could pull their books and share them out thereby benefiting all with the same accessibility to books thus was born the first Lending Library Franklin is also credited with many other societal improvements such as establishing the fire department and becoming the Postmaster General we can scarcely imagine what our communities would be like without some of these institutions he was one of the first people to recognize that all citizens can benefit by sharing things that are too expensive for one family or one group who provide for themselves he believed in accessibility of literature and free services for the public which have come to Define our Democratic societies and distinguish them from monarchies Communists and socialist governments and totalitarian regimes today we have federal state Municipal and school libraries where our Librarians who have labored to acquire degrees and certifications curate books that represent their communities and what is that community at Columbus North we have families who speak over 30 different languages at home they're very widely in their values from extremely liberal to very conservative they represent dozens of different ethnicities and religions they come from all ranges of Social and financial backgrounds Librarians welcome them in and serve them with free resources which most could not afford to purchase on their own children and their families are just a microcosm of our larger Community I think Franklin with his love of books on all subjects would be incredulous to know the kind of attacks that Librarians are undergoing in this and other communities around the country I think he would believe that attacks on libraries and Librarians are attacks on the Democratic framework of our society which he labored to construct to people who would like to limit what resources are available and included in libraries I say look to your own child you have the right to limit what your child reads if you have a problem with the book at school reach out to the teacher and discuss some Alternatives accompany your kids to the county library or your neighborhood bookstore and pick out some books you can read together if you have a larger issue reach out to the school corporation which has an established policy for objections to material and follow the steps of that process however do not expect others to sit oddly by while you try to silence their ability to do the same with their own children other families feel perfectly capable of deciding for themselves what is appropriate for their children and do not welcome your curtailment of their rights or the material which is included in their libraries and paid for from their taxes let the Librarians do their job of deciding what books to include in the library and parents do their job of monitoring their individual children thank you thank you David Spencer foreign members of the board my name is David Spencer I am an English teacher at Columbus North High School I am also the 2022 teacher of the year at Columbus North High School my daughter goes thank you my daughter goes to Parkside and my wife is a librarian here in bcsc I'm very honored to speak with so many other community members that are supporting teachers and Librarians and not trying to undermine them the truth is that many teachers that I work with and Librarians feel under attack and there's no amount of jargon or word salad or mental gymnastics that will change the fact that we feel like our jobs are being undermined that our ability to choose books and select books for the students that we work with every day is being compromised one of the books I teach in 11th grade English is The Catcher in The Ride by JD Salinger he was a World War II veteran who stormed the beaches of Normandy and he survived with the pages of this novel The Catcher in the Rye in his backpack when he returned from Europe and came back to America he published this novel about a young 16 year old who is struggling to feel a place in the world a place of comfort a place of safety I'm not going to read a passage out loud from that book but about 200 pages in to the book which a reasonable young person would have to commit discipline to after 200 Pages this main character Holden Caulfield finds uh the f word scrawled on the mirror of a bathroom after he's already felt parental neglect and suicidal ideation and he's already experienced many traumas surrounding him seeing the f word scrawled on the mirror of the bathroom that he's in just trying to Splash cold water on his face is another moment of alienation the book doesn't have a neat tidy ending the the novel which I teach to students many many times over now doesn't resolve itself with a nice you know bow at the end of the story but it provides an antidote to loneliness I provide that the literature I teach and the literature in our libraries currently and the policies and standards we use to select those books yeah established that the purpose of literature is to provide an antidote to loneliness to provide a gateway to empathy and to provide a counter to despair I have a master's degree in literature and my wife does as well and many college educated and licensed and degreed individuals in our school work very hard to provide and serve our community with the literature that we think our students should have access to that includes the libraries and I appreciate all members of the admin at my school and on the board here who have tried to support us and try to make us feel like we are welcome and that our jobs are not being undermined but we would like to continue to urge all members of the board and members of our community to keep in mind that we work very hard at our jobs that is often thankless and demoralizing and we would really like to find Grace and a sense of dignity for the decisions we make at our school and we would like to be trusted as college-educated individuals and licensed teachers and Librarians thank you thank you Laurie Thompson foreign good evening and thank you for giving this opportunity um I want to First congratulate the school corporation for getting off to a great year with our students with most oppositions filled and no major issues with the busing so fantastic it is my understanding though that there are some teachers that are not feeling the love as Mr Spencer just noted and so I thought it might be helpful to remind ourselves of some of the accomplishments that have occurred in the last school year and then do and then you can think for yourself does this happen by itself or does it need some caring individuals that support making those those things happen so starting with some of the stem accomplishments CSA Lincoln Elementary School State math bowl top 10 CSA fodrea Elementary School construction design champions Smith Elementary School Vex robotics World Championship Southside Elementary School State math bowl and third place Parkside Elementary School Vex robotics state champ competitors Central Middle School science 7th grade team state champions Northside Middle School junior solar Sprint Champions and CSA new tech school boiler Tech Challenge winner that doesn't happen without the care and love and responsibility of some of our teachers so I wanted to go on Dr Roberts won the Indiana edtech Trailblazer award and 2023 Consortium of school network and then also a national recognition as the n-power Ed digital superintendent of the year we had transition to our teachers to program to help current staff members go back to school and get education degrees and license and then we had a junior Ms Moon jury uh when the 2023 portrait out loud national champion going on a little bit further the Legato Spanish Immersion program celebrated five years which is just fantastic and then bcsc began implementing the professional development for all of our teachers and and staff four times a year I'd venture to say that that is an outstanding record for the people in our community and we ought to appreciate our teachers and the administration that make it happen thank you thank you [Applause] Amy Menefee hi I'm Amy Menefee I am speaking today to encourage board members to create a subcommittee to address the concern of multiple books found in our school libraries that contain adult material that should not be available to minors I would like to commend the board on the development of recent subcommittees that have allowed for more transparency and communication with the public I believe the concern over book content warrants the necessity to develop a policy that creates clear guidelines to assure that adult material is not available to minor children in our school libraries as a parent I would have never thought that our school libraries would be yet another place that we would need to make sure that our children are not being exposed to adult content I want to make it clear that I believe this is a process and policy problem and not a problem with individual teachers providing these books intentionally to children I believe most teachers would be just as upset as parents to find some of these books available to Children there needs to be some process to review how these books landed in our school libraries the current policy is not adequate to address this problem currently a parent would need to discover a book then make a complaint and file a form for review of the book at that point a minor could have already been exposed to adult content that they are not mature enough to process it is the responsibility of the school corporation and the board to assure that minors are not exposed to sexually explicit material it is also unfair to put this responsibility on parents when it is impossible for parents to know what all is available in the school libraries there is also no process in place for schools to notify the parents of what books are being checked out of the libraries even if a book has an overall positive message it does not negate the fact that the book needs to be age appropriate for the reader if we allow books that are not age appropriate to remain in the libraries we are also creating a double standard when it comes to disciplining students if any student is caught searching on their Chromebooks some of the words and content available in these books they would be disciplined if they are caught speaking some of these same words they would also be disciplined it is simply not acceptable to have higher standards with the students than we hold for the adults who are responsible for supplying their reading material a public subcommittee would be a good start to address this problem any Community member can give their opinion and voice their concerns it is also an opportunity to realize that most community members have more in common than we have differences when it comes to the goal protecting children I asked the board to begin the process of addressing this concern so parents can be assured that the policies of bcsc are working with them in education and other children thank you [Applause] thank you Dakota Hall foreign I'm a librarian at the public library many of you probably recognize me from the library board meetings where the same topic was discussed at nauseam last year I'm hoping to save all of you and the school librarians some time and money because we did this work already I have the report from our year-long study about these topics so part of this includes a survey from the community and one of the very interesting points in the survey is that about 90 percent of the community trusts the Librarians and teachers there's just a loud 10 percent that likes to get their information from Facebook lists of books with salacious texts taken from them out of context and um but ninety percent of the community that we surveyed trusts us to be doing our jobs correctly so I hope that you can take that into account because as has been mentioned we do all have master's degrees in this and we know what we're doing so thank you I'm going to give you all got homework tonight thank you Dakota Barbara day my name is Barbara day and I'm a Community member here too I have the um distinct honor of telling you that Miss Hazel fadre was my first grade teacher she's a beautiful lady and she pointed out things on the wall with a ball bat so we we got our numbers and our letters right first of all I'd like to thank you for listening and for I'm really impressed with how things may be opening up and finding the parallel between the parents and the teachers because it's there we just have to dig for it last week I heard the ladies ask anybody that was a minor to be removed from the room so I saw a note last week two weeks ago I saw No Children Here hearing those horrible things that were read that made everyone's skin crawl and yet those books are in our schools we know they're there and that's what the parents are asking for these aren't just community members ninety percent of them are parents I'm a grandma and a great grandma and I just want you to all know that everyone no one hates anyone I didn't hear any lgbtq bashing I heard people saying our kids don't need to read porn and I'd like for you to all think about that and find that parallel it's there thank you [Applause] Decker convoisey Rosie hello my name is Decker I am also a public librarian I am here to speak in support of our wonderful bcsc Librarians and teachers I have worked extensively with with many of them and the effort that they do to create communities out of their libraries communities based on information and books and mutual concern is wonderful and that's the exact type of community that we want our young people to have I will also say that um I think that the books that are under Fire here the ones that do deal with the tough topics the ones that have Cuss Words oh my gosh the ones that have um that deal with themes of racism or sexuality or questioning sexuality or violence or even sexual violence those are often the books that the kids need the most to feel safe to feel identified and it's my opinion that no Library bored no um excuse me School Corporation board no Administration should have the power to create barriers to those potentially life-saving books the books that the kids often do need the most and these are books that are written with this audience in mind there is no adult content going into these libraries these are books written by authors specifically for middle schoolers for high schoolers for Middle graders for children to try to get them through tough times it is not the role of librarians to force every kid to read these books but it is their responsibility I think to make them available for the kids that do need them and that is what our Librarians are doing an excellent job doing thank you foreign ER I was uh gonna comment on the Ali in the book situation but since it's already been done and since you announced it a book policy an actual official book policy is in the works I'd like to instead speak against uh teachers forming close personal relationships with students some new information has come to light the last time I spoke against teachers forming closer personal relationships with students I vastly underestimated the amount of pedophiles in public school staffs the estimation was based on recent years newspaper reports of Staff members arrested for sexually abusing students in the United States which was about 365 per year but an article in education week from way back in 2004 has just come to light it looked at a different metric student reports granted student reports consists consists of a lower quality data but let me quote an excerpt from the article extrapolating from data collected in a national survey for the American Association of University women Educational Foundation in 2000.
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we're going to stick with um I'll write about 58 000 that we're proposing and estimating grants include the adult education grant that we receive I'm sorry that does not include the adult education grant these grants are additional grants such as the Dollar General literacy Grant and they can be anywhere from seven thousand to ten thousand dollars usually um we proposed in 2023 that we would receive seven thousand dollars we actually have received twenty five thousand dollars in Grants in 2023. um that's a pretty high number and somewhat unusual we don't necessarily always receive that amount of grant money um so in 2024 uh we're going to propose that we'll increase 1000 and if all goes well and our grants are approved we'll be back higher than that but we'll estimate at ten thousand the adult education grant continues to grow we had a hundred and one thousand dollars per Post in 2020 that Grant has increased to a hundred and twenty one thousand dollars uh over the past year and as long as we continue to increase the numbers in our program and students are successful in our program that Grant will continue to grow so we're estimating 121 000 based on the current brand that we have our total revenue then would be 270 000 in 2024 as opposed to the 360 some thousand dollars that you see there in 2023.
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um I just want to thank all the admin team back in the day all principles all admin directors would get up one at a time this was not on my time on the board but not long before and each one would give those reports um there's so much that happens administratively um thank you so much for getting that to the board the Friday before the meeting it really allows us to have a good understanding of what is going on in each of your departments slash buildings and it helps us to streamline our meeting time in an effective way so thank you for doing that um I know that adds extra time to your plate but I think it's really worth it we appreciate it all right Food Services guidelines for 23.24 okay so this is the mill account management guidelines um for the families so there's just some different sections here I'm just going to highlight the ones that we're planning on changing this year and not reading the whole thing so under Mill accounts there is a section that says multiple students in the same Family household may have their accounts linked together contact the food service director with their names and students um whose accounts you want linked so we can't do that on our site anymore that has to be done through the new thing so I'm just going to change that part to um not contact the food service director director but just go into link connect and the families can connect those themselves that's not something do anymore um in the second section there is account payments and I am just changing the um family Titan Link in there we now use Link connect it's still a part of Titan but the family portal side is called linkconnect.com so I just changed that link so that they can get into that and then account balances okay so in this section um it says once okay so each level had their own that they could go to a negative balance so Elementary is once you get to a negative ten dollars you're supposed to get the ultimate Meal which is the cheese sandwich fruit vegetable and a milk um until their account becomes positive again um that's what we've used in the past um so I would like to add on the elementary side that I know like everybody else sometimes you have to wait for that paycheck to come in sometimes it's a week and as long as those parents contact me I thought and I've been trying to pass that out if they contact me we can work something out make payments on those past two accounts and things to get them caught up and then that way their kids not getting that cheese sandwich for two or three weeks um so I would like to add um once they get to that negative 10 limit um we start giving out payment reminders at ten dollars positive and then they get one each week until they get to the negative ten dollars then because we have an excessive amount of donated funds that have come into our department I would like to reach out and let them go another day or two on the meal count that gives them a full five days that's almost a full week for a parent to get a paycheck or something um and to try to get that caught up um secondary level that amount was five dollars but at the secondary level that's one day so I would like to extend that to ten dollars again that's three meals three days two from the extended funds that we have as long as it holds up that again would give them five days a full week to get what their parents remember to tell their parents bring money in or whatever um let's see um at the primary intermediate and junior high level they will get the cheese sandwich after the five days is up um High School level we're just supposed to not with them but that's I figure five days almost seven days if you have the weekend that's enough time to get money in there um okay so second page um and then the last page is just I had to just put in the new non-discrimination statement um mortgage and stuff in it so um sorry you were looking at that so I kind of touched base on the second page where here it said um parents are Guardians who do not qualify meal forbidden so they also be offered to make a payment plan I'm okay with that um so we're just gonna leave that in there I know it was marked out at one time but I think we're gonna leave that in there and then um an alternate meal consists of cheese sandwich fruit veggie and it says white milk but I don't care what color milk they get as long as they drink it so um I just marked out white you just put milk and then I change the no alternate meals will be provided for breakfast um so they need a little bit of breakfast if they come in and they're hungry so we're going to do just a package of breakfast Crafters you know like graham cracker or something and then they'll get a fruit a fresh fruit and a milk so that'll be their ultimate meals at breakfast so at least they have something to start on for them okay and that's [Music] any questions I'd like to give you the you know make a motion that we accept the school meal account management guideline changes second bill has moved and Susan has seconded to approve the Food Services guidelines for 23-24 school year as presented all those in favor please say aye and raise your right hand I I I motion carries thank you Susan uh motion carries 7-0 thank you Charlie I think this is so student-centered so thank you for um those modifications um moving on to Old business uh policy j g f g a and this is the administration of emergency opioid excuse me antagonist um is Lisa here with us tonight she she is not but I told her I'd take care of it for you so if you remember back in March when we approved our opioid policy we had an internal document that was that we were using to document the use of if Narcan were to need to be used um this summer okay ESB made a policy recommendation but we felt our policy was fine and did not need to be updated however their policy recommendation included a an incident form um and so what we asked Alicia to do is to look over that incident form to see if if that would be the form to use or the one that we had on hand and she said the one that was recommended is actually the form she'd like to run with so that that's what I've presented in front of you and so tonight I would ask that we approve the Narcan incident report is that something that has to be hospitals I don't know the answer that question how can you but please let me get back to you on that um but I do know that we want to document that yeah maybe we accept the incident report honest Susan has moved and Tony has seconded to approve the incident form as presented all those in favor please say aye and raise your right hand I motion carries 7-0 facility rental follow-up regarding the PAC all right so in your board packet uh we'll have to get the PDF uploaded again if not pulling up on my on my computer but it should have the mou in front of you this was based on our July meeting the feedback which you provided the items that were that were asked of us to put together Gary worked with with family church and the more unit you see in front of you is what is what uh we'd like to offer them okay so the the use of it indicates the use of the PAC the cafeteria and the commons uh beginning in January now they don't need it until January um at a fee of 400 per day from the times of 8 30 to 1 30.
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so really is studying the course for Student Success I just love this picture of a girl on a pencil writing into the sun um closing those opportunity gaps so that we are reaching all children um and taking them to the next level um and then thinking a little bit from this past school year what do we really learn um certainly talking about school the importance of school culture and climate students mental health all of those have been really greatly emphasized this particular year Equitable access to all of your curriculum and your co-curricular opportunities for students is an important piece of recruiting and retraining high quality staff with the staff shortages all across the state have become really challenging for a lot of districts especially in those areas such as for English language Learners particularly higher level math courses a lack of predictable funding has become increasingly complicated complicating for all of you to figure year to year how to plan effectively because there's always that level of uncertainty I mean the government just signed a bill yesterday to restore courtesy busing for like 10 000 kids it's just you live in a world of uncertainty so those things are really important we've learned again about the limitations of technology and hopefully also about the possibilities of using that technology to accelerate learning to help remediate those students who may need additional time on tasks and so why do we set goals because by setting those goals for the district you enable your superintendent to translate those goals to your building leaders those building leaders translate those goals to their teachers and everyone's oars are in the Water Rowing in the same direction they may look differently at different levels at the elementary middle and high school those goals get translated differently but they are essentially the same goals you're working toward that same thing and hopefully it will increase student achievement for all kids moving forward so here's your mission statement I'm happy to go from the beginning to the end all right that was quick that was easy last time I'm not going to read this I'm sure you know it probably by Art um but it's important to think about it so you know why set these to ensure that you have Equitable policy development that allows for students to all be recognized known and heard of moving closer to your mission statement to achieving your ultimate goals helps for the planning and implementation of your professional development you know staff need to have how do we plan through affect that it allows you for periodic evaluation to readjust if you have to realign you never know when you're going something's going to pop up and it's a wonderful way to communicate to your community the importance of what it is you're doing what you are focused on and in some ways it provides I hate to use the word cover but in essence it does provide the board cover that this is your focus this is what you're working on so it groups come to the table and want something that is so far afield that you can't possibly really do that within the scope of your for a year it allows you to say that may be something we consider further down the road and that's what I mean by cover because you can't do it all in a year it's just awesome so you want to make sure that you have a vision of high expectations for all students which I know all of you do um and then think about what should be your focus for the coming year this past Year's goals um obviously with besides academic those 21st century skills which are so incredibly important that are part of social emotional learning as well um are so important important to be thinking about as well because we are educating children not turning out widgets right and we want to make sure that they leave with a love of learning that they're empathetic that they're civilly responsible um that they're articulate that they can think critically you know there's a new standard coming out about technological literacy so that students can discern what's true and what's not true what's real and what's not real so all of those things are important here are the goals from last year they're in front of you um I think that at least the first one is achieved completely um and I would depend on the rest of you to look at the second and third goals to see if those need to be continued or Rewritten um and then additionally is there anything else any other areas of focus that you believe you need to pay attention to for the 23-24 school year they came out of this past year and so I would ask Dr Freeman perhaps to wait yeah to weigh in on that because I think that um the goals the way they are I mean last year we took the first steps nothing happened in years so I think it's time I think during my evaluation it was said you know one of the things about this environment taking risks and such with the survey which I think is valid you know because we can go by anecdotal information but you know the survey would be quality and then in terms of the measures the goal was to incorporate the qualitative and quantitative however we needed some new systems and because of that we moved from just using um link it to finding some other resources that would allow us to do it more frequently so we could have like quarterly report outs to the board based on actual uh real-time data real-time data which we showed at the committee the most recent education committee where it showed how we used it and we were very successful with a small group of kids so we're going to take that and use that uh with you know the entire um student body you know at each level so we've gotten the actionable qualitative and quantitative measures our tools for it now we're going to put it in place and we would do I would say quarterly report outs to the board which would show what type of progress so we spoke about all of this at governance this past I guess two weeks ago and um almost exactly what you're saying is is what we came up with so I just have a few notes Here we said board or I should say District goal one was met and we can cross that off District goal too we said should remain create the safe environment we should stay with that because while we're working towards it we're not quite there yet as far as everybody really feeling safe and um you know building that perfect culture that we want with it we have a we had a long way to go so we've come a long way but there's still more to do there you don't change culture overnight right and it doesn't happen goal three um we said we would like to have and I think maybe this is what Dr Freeman is saying something a little bit more tangible as far as the data instead of just saying incorporate qualitative and quantitative maybe as a board we could see like quarterly reports for instance see see more data to see exactly how that's going and then at that point we said we would have to open it up if to the rest of the board if we wanted a third goal having crossed off number one or if we want to stick with two and as far as the board goal our number one priority uh as far as the committee was concerned is that we have to start working on the new Five-Year Plan for the district because this is the final year coming up so we have to work through so you want to begin and execute on a five-year strategic plan right um that's all the committee came up with now that's just three of us so at that point you know anyone else is more than welcome to add input in any of those those places those were just our suggestions yeah that has to be done and from what Dr Freeman says when he walked in the door and saw it it's overwhelming and Broad and needs and needs to be I was going to ask you on the five-year strategic plan are you going to use the old one and build off of it or kind of start with like the zero-based Strategic plan and start from scratch what's your plan um I would well there's some foundational things we would use but uh I have somebody come in and help us with that you know what I mean to kind of show us the best way to go I have an idea of what we need I'm sure you everybody has info but I want to have somebody who specializes okay and is that something that's done in committee I feel like that if so that that's governance how is it done the building of The Five-Year Plan yeah sure old Taurus do you're asking me from your experience so my experiences there's two different approaches um while having five years is a long time a lot has changed in those five years so I'm not sure there's a lot of value in retaining anything from the previous strategic plan because things have changed so dramatically over the course of the last five years especially these last five years things just totally flip right so I'm not sure that there's any value even looking at that and moving forward districts tend to do it two different ways most districts will hire Consultants now if you're looking for someone to come in um and and do real data analysis and a deep dive into the curriculum and instructional program you need to reach out to people like Dr Sakowski from Kane University I mean there are a whole host of folks that do that kind of work we do strategic planning but you're not going to get that level of data we don't do that kind of analysis because we're not staffed to do that ours is more bringing in the community together bringing in stakeholders asking them to identify um what they see from their perspectives are the strengths of the district and the challenges that the district faces over the next three to five years having them identify what's important to them what is their vision for the future of the Bound Brook School District what does that mean to your community and it's very Community specific every District's different as you know and then having them identify from all of that work that Collective work what the where they see are the appropriate goal areas to put a focus on whether it's culture and climate whether it's School Safety and Security typically you know these are the kinds of things we are hearing and getting from districts out there um curriculum the instructional program itself um and then all of that gets turned over into your Administration to write the action plans from those goals that are written by the group because oftentimes if you have the community involved in writing action plans they're not really necessarily in touch with the real world and by that real world what I mean the limitations um teacher contracts you know like they may say oh we need to do X Y and Z but they don't think through well now you need busing and you need extra staff and there's a hire 50 more teachers so you know that is typically how we work through strategic planning but it is less I don't want to say academically focused but it's less driven by data it's more qualitative than quantitative and so I think you can you have to decide which matters most to your District in your community right a big combinations both for me I think a combination of both you've seen that right I have seen that yeah I think a combination of both because we want to give the input to the community you know this way they feel like they we've heard what they had to say right and I think that that's important oftentimes we have found though that those groups that are really focused on the quantitative sort of just do a quick survey and think that that's sufficient right um I am of the mind that asking people to I think there are a lot of intangible benefits that go with strategic planning that you can't necessarily measure in quantifiable terms and one of those is having all different groups in your community work together meet each other get to learn about the schools you know you may get you know we encourage folks to invite preschool parents um senior citizens the ministerium the rabbinical Council you know the police chief the fire department you know everyone in your community who is involved because there is so much that people assume about districts that they don't really know and so having all all of those folks that allows kids Elementary parents to talk to Middle School staff for example and they find out wow that rumor wasn't really true about the Middle School those kinds of things they learn and that intangible benefit of wow there's a whole lot more that goes on here that I just never knew about because we don't get great press coverage anymore because there is no press really left um and so what they learned is generally through social media whether it's the patch or tap into which you know they try but it's not as thorough it is complete as you might like and now the interviews don't have full time unless they're very large wealthy districts Communications or someone who's doing the pr piece that Communications plan for the district and so getting the good news out for the district has become more difficult so it's another way to get some of that good news out about what the district's doing as well as hearing about your warts right because you need to know what the community is thinking what is they want to see is that they're not seeing now you all have different constituencies you know because there are multiples of you right and you live in different places in town and you do different things and go different places and you have kids of different pages but it's helpful to hear from everyone and I and I think you have to have that component piece as well as the data because I think just the day that did tell us a full story right because it's a human business and so I think it's important to incorporate both for what that's worth oh I agree with you so goal number two you would you like to keep it or would you like to reword it that might say something about more fully utilize the data that is so our old goal three you're calling our new goal to that one qualitative quantitative measures yes yeah because they're keeping right I'm sorry I misspoke myself no that's okay I know what you meant goal number three the quantitative qualitative piece um you want to talk about we're fully utilizing for instructional purposes to run them you have to tell me I'm not really clear to review movement you know where the kids are where they you know it's not all unfortunately being on grade level but there's some that are showing rapid movement but we just need to know how they're performing yeah I think we've the district um the Administration has put a lot of this in place um and now we need to report it report it out to us I guess The Next Step they're just getting into all of these different platforms that that kind of gather all the data and teachers are learning to use it yeah and now we need to see how that's working and how we're moving kids forward that's a that's a big piece of it too using that data to really Target student achievement um one of the things we're you know looking at you don't have to do every single standard if the standard has already been met you know you need to focus on the needs of individuals and groups I think we're making that way towards that I do I do too um a Next Step might be how can we make sure that our staff members our administrators our fluids in the data in a meaningful way that's good so for example like when we're looking at student achievement numbers can we have school-based administrators present the story of their building as opposed to one person presenting the entire District like how do we get to make sure that the folks who are on the ground in the trenches you just using the data are really giving us their impression of it in a meaningful way and it gives a vision too of where it started you know what are we doing at the very young Etc and moving on up where are the needs I've seen it too well I think the last year has been light years ahead of where we were absolutely I just yeah I think the next step is because we've we've been teaching how to use the data now can they use what they've learned use the data effectively and also open report coming in that's true too the new staff coming into effective to be effectively trained so that they can use it effectively I always feel bad every year at my school when the new the new teachers just expected here's Lincoln not fun we had this training last year that's a deeper question too of do we as a board have the structure in place to Grapple with that data in a in a meaningful and logical way so for example if we're looking at student assessment results in the fall right are we doing that in such a way where we tie that to how we invested funds how we assigned Personnel what are the needs that we see as a board that would improve the outcomes but is that done in a way so it's done in conjunction with the development of a budget and planning for the upcoming year and putting a focus on kind of the direction we want to go do we need a certain type of personnel is there a certain trait we're looking for so is there a curriculum needs like how do we what happens there is the education committee reports out on what they find and the HR department our committee has to now act on it so to speak or operate or whoever you know whatever we find the needs are have to you know if we find a need like this one segment is you know underrepresented in some way or we need more staff there yeah so it's all coordination of all these different areas which is going to be observations it has just to make sure that those I just mean on our end sure as Administration that's but I think our old board went a long way in in starting that process because again before this year our committees weren't even reporting out I mean that we were getting nothing at all from each other and now it's a huge yeah I actually know what's going on in the other committees it's nice so we took the first step in your in that direction that you're saying would you like it to expand to say something along the lines of more fully utilize the data to inform instruction professional development and improve student achievement in other words the PD piece or the training for the teachers right but using it up fully to your point around administrators but also your line teachers have to be able to utilize it yeah yeah as I was reading this to me the top half is good it's the effective utilization now right we've Incorporated things we've put things in place the Administration has done done a great job of of bringing in a lot of PD to teach them how to teach teachers how to use the data now they have to get comfortable using and understanding how that okay but to more fully utilize the data right to inform instruction to improve student achievement professional development at least I don't really Gwen read that first Point again to more fully utilize the data to inform instruction Drive student achievement and assist and somewhere we need to get that PDP it almost sounds like it needs to come initially okay right I guess PD would PD would take care of right through professionals yeah I just had that thought yeah through professional development we can do those things right to inform instruction which is that in live real-time piece right and then um to inform instruction to inform instruction and improve student achievement I mean that is the total goal of it right it's the ultimate through lifetime data you can see where kids have learned what they haven't learned go back remediate that in some fashion provide those supports which will improve ultimately the outcomes in student achievement does improve imply that we're not well do you want to improve or increase or what do you mean we could say accelerate student achievement if you like well I I think I think improve is an honest word I think we want to improve and I I think people would relate to that the improve I mean everybody sits here numbers we're talking education I think to me it implies there's a lot that we need to make but we do I have no problem it does but I'm not an educator and to approve you're kind of telling me that it cut to me a non-educator it sounds like our students aren't doing well okay but they're not like I'm okay with saying that because where they were but if it's a matter of a word that might put others at ease could you read it and maybe we could put increase or accelerate or I don't know fully utilize the data through professional development to inform instruction and Target I had to Target student achievement um Drive nope increase see to me that makes it sound like it hasn't been a priority and I know it's been a priority this whole year so really we need to understand how about continue to improve continue what about enhanced questions because either way you cut it it's bad right I don't see it as bad I just think it's honest I think we're improving as a teacher like hey I want to improve general public I don't either I like enhance because that's specific to any child right you can enhance someone's individual learning yeah you could also make something that's beautiful and just say or we enhanced it but behind the scenes it's still the same class you know hey I don't go with that I don't believe that when can you read it with enhanced okay read it 10 more times yeah just one more time with healing yes fully utilize the data through National development form instruction and enhance student achievement okay it works I'm okay with that yes what do you want Danny what word do you want in there Danny's not happy go ahead as a parent I want to prove I feel every child can only do better yeah like just like when I go to my professional development every year is to improve me to improve well and I think that's what I or you know I mean there are times when I slip and you know can we just go continue to improve student achievementation because we are improving but we need to continue to do so what if we think about it democracy in action I think it answers are we voting between enhancing and proof this is real minutia here it's going to be on those goals in front of us I think it's important words matter how about accelerating how about accelerate improve and enhance you know I mean I'm fine with all three yes but isn't that the idea David to help accelerate learning yeah to enhance it and to improve it I mean what if we use all three words that's a lot I think it's a lot I think it's very worthy I also think the word accelerate to me it's like maybe it's just because my district uses that word but that leads me to think like accelerated classes and TNT stuff yeah that's what I think you can take it that way to me accelerating means going faster that we would ordinarily be able to do with the idea of utilization of data is to be able us to enable the teachers to more quickly understand where there are gaps and close them and move the kids forward but it's all in how we Define words right it's how those connotations towards improve to me I think the same way you do I continue to improve through my professional development right I think you can reach that point where you can't get better exactly it's around continuous learning that's another way to express it if you wanted to enhance or to I don't want to say to improve but to enhance continuous learnings you know get away from student achievement where where does accountability come in where does the account you have a nice goal there but it's nice to say this but is accountability something that we do separate from yeah the accountability would come through Canada actually looking at has the data does the data move up on student achievement is this making a difference in learning are our kids achieving or at higher rates and at different levels than they were previously I mean that's the easiest thing to measure data makes it really easy to measure as opposed to the quantitative things which can be really squishy like that's this for me it is a squishier gold because that's really hard to quantify how do you measure that right you can say the number of meetings you attended the places he went how visible the suit went empirically it's more difficult to measure student achievement at least and I know that I see it number one I mean when I see it I know I know and I do too yeah but I'm just saying from a word perspective right in terms of something quantum quantically you said accountability work from your per second I so we say we want to improve the education how are we measuring that and if we're not achieving that who's responsible for our treatment and if we are achieving it who gets the credit I mean we could say this is a great thing to do but it's a it's a faculty sits there and says I'm not buying into it well the easiest answer to that is everybody yeah look we're all on the same team so administrators teachers us superintendent all the way down and it comes from the support and the training that they're getting so you're not leaving them to do things on their own but they're providing the support some folks that won't even do it but they are held accountable or should be through the evacuation the whole plan too is going back to you have an action point this is what the administrator is going to do and this is the professional development that's going to be provided and etc etc that thing wasn't there we're handing them the goal and now they have to send it down to administrators to teachers on down the line and create a plan where they're going to bring this home and teachers are evaluated annually and in tested grades and subjects there's a percentage of their evaluation that's direct directly tied to those scores I would tell you I think there are all kinds of other you need to use multiple measures to not only evaluate teachers but also evaluate learning new kids right those standardized test results but you know that's what they print the paper that's what all these various organizations measure districts by unfortunately are those kinds of Statistics not necessarily are we graduating students who are civically responsible critical thinkers empathetic you know willing to give back to their communities which is a huge piece of the educational process I mean the totality of it this speaks to one aspect of it but that is what you're here to do is to help students learn and Achieve so that when they leave they can go to college careers the military whatever they're next step in life that they want to do is so we haven't come to a conclusion on the word now that I've said all of that right what Bitcoin well let's vote on it then as well that's the way to go what are our choices enhance and improve are those everyone except find one of those or the other acceptable okay then let's vote on enhanced versus improve should we close our eyes and raise our hands that's how we do it in my classroom nobody can see who's voting oh my goodness with all right so who would rather have the word enhance I'm gonna say I'm gonna say four Joanna came up with a great one no you only get improver enhanced choices strength strengthen you know yeah it doesn't matter what word he's gonna do the same thing um utilize the data through professional development to to inform instruction strengthen student achievement I love it I love it good job all right so now we have one hold on we have two because we're keeping the only thing I'd hate to even say this and don't the second word create we've already started creating yes so we want to continue to create to continue to enhance no sustain sustainable but I think we have to keep going sustain means keep it as it is right I think okay um to already have a continue thank you I just stole it and then the last question would be do we want a third completely new goal or those two enough I mean I hate to say that I kind of do agree with that accountability something on that level go ahead I think these are two lofty goals I I really do and it really addresses everything and everybody in the district less is more and I think by really going after that um the data and learning about it and using it effectively Etc that's a huge test the data goal is I don't think so you know other districts have two goals or some do they do listen it's about getting the work done yeah right and that's a huge piece and that's these two speak to the two largest schools we're talking about the two parts yeah climates so so that I heard accountability again tell me what your perspective was uh yeah well I think this goes on to what Gwen is saying we need um additional uh what was already data points or additional evaluations on those we can't just go continuing with the existing evaluation that we have we might need to oh so I think I mean if you have tenure this is what you get evaluation make sure we're addressing different points not just like this multiple measures of Student Success I mean the thing is is that I'm thinking you know from the students that are doing sounds like you have a teacher in mind that you know honestly like I feel like I'm uncertainty right what would fix that problem I I know two teachers and yeah and I know of others that would say say something but they won't um and my concern is is does that start to become a problem because we have others that will not say a thing as well can I play Devil's Advocate using Joanna's Supply if you think improve is negative go ahead and put on there we want to weed out the bad apples you know like you can't put that on you can't put something like that you're looking you're looking at outliers you're not looking at the uh by the way in committee Dr Freeman has already talked about this to us about having his his evaluations more closely aligned with the student achievement and why some aren't aligned like he's already aware of this so I don't know if you want if you need to put in words because he knows he's already told us in education and I understand you're concerned about accountability yes um I think a couple of things have to happen we talked about PD we talk about data we have to create a focus so we create a focus of what we're looking to do we have to identify specific practices and then we have to evaluate what the what the goal of making better but I think and this is what I'm working with the principals now is honing in on what good evaluation looks like but also having a consistent Focus between the principal the teachers the supervisor so everybody's looking at the same thing the PD is aligned to it that's what's really going to make it better I understand what you mean about it yeah I don't disagree with you you have people have to do what they're supposed to do and we have to support them but I think creating a focus is very big because right now what happens is we evaluate there's a bunch of sections on the evaluation you try to get every section there's no Focus right so we have to narrow that down to a specific Focus that aligns with what we're trying to improve and that's where we're going with it but that's where the data piece comes in as well so that's the other goals which one the safe environment to me a periodic review of the data and quantitative measures to make sure that we are on track with accomplishing goals similar to that but that's part of the action plans that you will get from doctor um from your superintendent so that you will know when those things are being achieved and I'm a little confused here you're talking about staff accountability right um could be teachers yeah yeah no I'm not criticizing I'm just trying to make sure that I under understand your point some of that Dr Freeman is absolutely on because it speaks to Innovative reliability because when you have more than one person evaluating staff if the if the evaluators aren't on the same page and looking at with the same Focus as the other person then you can get really skewed pieces that that don't align right and then the person sort of skates right down the middle which is what oftentimes happens so that PD for your educational leaders supervisors directors principals Vice principals the people that are doing that evaluation is critically important in getting that accountability to work effectively I think oh sorry we're gonna I was gonna say that the two goals are great and that we have to we're thinking about things from a district Labs right really broad that's going to impact everybody what I think was would help refine the accountability piece is perhaps if we could develop some indicators for each goal some examples and non-examples of different aspects of the district where we could say okay over the course of the year we want to get here so what does it look like what are some things that would be achieved by December by March so for example second goal is a safe environment for students and staff who are comfortable taking risks to work collaboratively toward a common goal so I I see that I think okay you can do a climate survey implemented by December review by March action plan by to align with the budget and we look at a budget we see okay the budget supports the things that were identified yeah you need the results by March so that you can plan effectively for what that survey shows and now it shows a program that we need or an initiative we ought to undertake because otherwise you're not going to get that in the budget and I think if we break those goals down a little bit further and I'm not saying we have to publicize exactly yeah that's the action plan part but I think we've got a pretty educated board here of people who you know know the community know the kids know the buildings no education that I think we could probably identify amongst ourselves here are some things that would be indicators that were making progress of this and here's how we would know it and here's how we would not because maybe we have different definitions of so these are our goals then just as an example education committee then would have to come up with those you know for this for the more quantitative one would have to come up with you know what measure do we want to see right responsibility of the administration to put together an action plan with those specific deliverables so that you'll know what it is you need to know I think we've got a board that could have a good voice and then I think you can through time and talking in committee about what the expectations are you are the what folks making it happen is their responsibility so sharing what it is you're looking for what is critically important let's make sure we Define our conversation that way we're the goal Setters and yes okay reciprocal and they Implement they so what I was going to say about accountability before this is just me being an optimist this is me trying to yeah that goal right there with the safe environment the culture change if that if you can achieve that those teachers you think won't do it Buy in not ever not 100 you're never going to 100 of human beings but the people who you think oh that teacher is never going to buy in all of a sudden like I've had really good leaders and I've had principals who I could couldn't stand and you can and you can see the difference in the Enviro in the way people work and and I I mean this is me just being an optimist if the culture keeps changing the way it is you're going to see less and less teachers say no I don't want to do that because they're they're all they're gonna either Buy in or less effectively but it happens everybody else is going to buy and they're gonna be like oh no I I either Buy in or I'm I'm left behind so that's just the Optimist in me thinking that we're kind of accomplishing what you want and the third goal would also better yeah of course and then the third goals yeah yeah you know if you create that safe environment you will get those who want to do it right yeah and again then you're always going to have an outlier on either side sure and have somebody who's appears all right all right I'll always be a few in any job in any profession are we are we saying we're okay then with two goals the point of reference is is when I first came on the board I looked through The Five-Year Plan that was established 2018.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
potentially depending okay okay thanks it's good so I just have a few questions from a document that was presented to us earlier this summer regarding federal grants it what that number went up significantly and then regarding Esser it went down and we have been talking about and have requested a few times to kind of have an Sr overview to see what's been going on but the last projection assumptions besser was at 6.7 and it's now at 4.8 Dr Calgary will we get some can we have an understanding of how we've spent our user dollars over time please in that uh just to speak to that point real quick what you see here is there's actually more there are more Federal Ester dollars coming in what this 4.8 million represents is the district three years ago was given 12 and a half million dollars and we spent that there were three years we spent the money but we also were able to if we didn't spend it carry it over so there are some additional dollars that we'll realize in rollover dollars so that first number you had was kind of a conglomerate of what do we still have that we haven't spent and what's roll over and what I did here you'll notice here is we're balancing the revenue with the expenditure so when the revenue went down the expenditures went down until I until I see what those rollover dollars are and where we're expending them then we'll we'll have those numbers back to it and I totally understand that at what I still what we haven't seen is where in a long time it is an update on where those where that money was spent and I think even bigger point is one that's once that money is gone what are our contingency plans for what we use that money for what are and I'm just going to use an example and this isn't one but if we hired 1.8 million dollars worth of instructional coaches and we don't have that money past 24.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
you kind of have at that time yeah well not only that I mean football we got football practices going on and even soccer practices so we're going to be mindful fortunately at the high school we have a way to kind of address those the middle school right now is going to be the challenge because that indoor space for a 100 plus cross-country kids and on top of volleyball is going to be tough but we're going to try to make those readings throughout the day and see where that's trending and try to offer that input advice to our Middle School athletic director and then our Middle School administration too to make sure that we've got the safest possible environment in mind for our athletes and still trying to balance that without going too far on the other side even tonight with soccer the officials were putting in a halfway point between the half for a water break yeah there's no kids you know it's like you said it's trying to find that that meeting happy meeting there all right thank you so as you can see we had quite a bit of action here in the foil land of Freedom of Information Act uh three of the six that you see listed came from local Labs one of them were requesting information reader on their current school board members including your name state of burns addresses first date of services and where they're appointed or elected obviously it was from a not secure email address same thing we always have so we did not submit anything to them they did not receive a response as we were looking for verification same other one for local Labs we had they request information regarding current employees including their names positions and pay rates again we did not have who they belong to so there's no way to verify their that was in a secure email so we did not submit to that one the third local Labs we received was they requested information regarding District spending on substitute teachers substitute teacher pay range one of our substitute teacher days and names substitute teachers for the past five years again we were unable to verify or secure emails so they did not receive anything the other three we were able to at least comprise in some part Chicago land laborers District Council their cost a copy of the bid results for the CHS Edition bit that was opened in June of 12 on July 12th 253 and we were able to comply with that request NBC Chicago requested communication received by the district that include requests of reconsider Banning or challenging any book or materials that we had in our libraries or classrooms we denied that they had a very lengthy request in terms of what they wanted to deny that requested it would be unduly burdensome and then the last one was with Mr Davis request information regarding job titles wages departments positions grade level and hours work for District employees listed on the corn link contribution report for payroll of that included November 12 2022 again we denied due to it being unduly important Open Session yes
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above