Reader

She does it not only in the deis but also on stage. Uh be careful. I know Miss Dunn and I will also be dressed as monkeys uh jumping around and we will have lots of other members of our foundation board joining us uh for the presentation. So, please make it a point to be there. You know, you got a good opening band because superintendent was going to bring it. You know, I'm gonna bring it. I'll lay it out for you for your band. You guys be ready. Lion hunt. I'll be on the lion hunt. It really It truly is one of the greatest events for our young kids. These kids don't need an invitation. They're going to be there, aren't they? They're coming. They'll be there. It's going to be a lot of fun. Okay.

Uh with that said, um the meeting is adjourned.

all right I'd like to call this work study and brief board business meeting to order it's Tuesday October 10th 2023 at 6 p.m. thank you for those who are in attendance and those who are watching either live stream or recorded we appreciate you being here I've called this meeting to order and we'll just get right to the presentation and discussion topics 2.01 FY 2023 annual financial report and school level reporting form thank you madam president governing board members everybody we're in our second week of fall break and um we just have one presentation tonight and that'll be given to us by our associate superintendent Miss Bonnie Betts and her crew so thanks it's all you uh good evening governing board members president wood Dr McCord so actually I'm not going to be giving this presentation this evening uh Miss Jackie mattinen and the new budget man manager Lauren torsa are going to give it but I don't see them so I don't know where they are right now was waiting they left they left so wait a minute I'm on my own that would not be good however I do reserve the right to add my color commentary as always uh wanted to remind everyone that we are talking about a year ago so this is not this is not budget this is our actual spend data from last year and um also it we are on Spring bre uh spring break we are on fall break um but we are obligated to present to you tonight because the uh annual financial report is due by the 15th of October so given that I'm very happy to hand this over to miss Jack e Matan our Director of Finance thank you Miss bets Madame President members of the governing board Dr McCord do we have anybody on the phone uh no one's on the phone yes yes Ronda page is on the phone right okay thank you um so as Miss Betts mentioned we are presenting the FY 2023 annual financial report um you'll note on this uh cover slide here it says revised we did find a couple of um errors and a typo so this will be posted first thing tomorrow and this is also uh it's important to note that this is unaudited um and before we move on I want to give a shout out to Lauren torsa this was her um third month here and tax ing the annual Financial reports there are three of them so um it was a it was a huge undertaking so I'm very thankful that you're here so today's report will include the annual financial report or AFR details we'll talk about Levi funds um ending cash balances unrestricted and M unrestricted capital and M revenues and spend there's a new tab on this AFR um that reviews fund balance Reserve we'll talk about classroom site fund other funds and average teacher salary uh the Food Service AFR and school level reporting and then uh we'll have the appendix this was a slide that was um adjusted so that it was aligned better with the flow of the of the presentation I don't have my notes uh FY 2023 Levy fund analysis so you can see here this is our cash balance uh we wanted to bring your attention to the unrestricted Capital um 49.6 million please note that this is our ending fund balance and is not necessarily our our budget balance carry forward into 24 so if I could add to this one um The Debt Service fund 700 note that $780,000 that was that we had at the end of June 30 just so you know that those monies are applied to setting the tax rate for the new school year so those monies are all eaten up um when we set the tax rate we consider those that car carry over um as part of the revenues to offset the tax [Music] rate so can I just clarify that that means that because we have this fund left over the tax rates will be a little bit lower for the taxpayer that's right okay thank you is it cash and this is Cash yes it's total cash the other thing is as Jackie mentioned the um this is not representing budget balance carry board except for in unrestricted Capital so the cash as you know in unrestricted capital is all available to be spent that's not true in m fund1 b is it not that is am I correct in asking this question or um when you have the cash you have you you should we should keep it until after we've done all of this before we spend it correct I that probably wasn't a very clear question so the any excess cash that we have available to us let's let's just use M as an example because we have excess cash available to us it does improve our credit rating because we have cash on hand that's correct can we spend it I guess that was part of my my question after the tax rate has been set correct so the um yeah the The Debt Service fund 700 as an example that money is as if it revenue and so if we just let's just assume we need $24 million so then we only have to Levy for 24 minus $780,000 so it does directly impact the tax rate here we have M excuse me and unrestricted Capital revenues by Source we've combined M and unrestricted Capital they're the biggest contributors to our um balances and this um aligns with the monthly reports that we see every month you'll notice here last year um the county contribution was 13 million um or prior year rather in 22 and 23 it was about 150,000 um the offset to that of course is the state contribution of 148 in fy22 and 180 million in FY 23 in uh the 22 legislative session um they passed a Senate bill that that shifted some of this Equalization um the model and the form didn't change necessarily we still receive the same amount of funding but it does adjust uh where the money comes from uh this is M and unrestricted Capital expense comparison year-over-year so you can see operating went up slightly Capital went up a little bit um salaries increased considerably and benefits increased proportionately with salaries but also you'll see the $25 million increase and 20 million of that is our um Arizona State Retirement System prepay and unrestricted Capital expenditures by category so just some detail here um some technology Transportation um about 5.12 million to the schools um this slide also had a had a correction the dollar amount um included in radios and repeaters was hiding from you so I made sure that that was um available and uh the other category includes some other smaller categories such as Marques um stage curtains things like that so again M spend increased 45 47.5 million year-over-year due to compensation increases increases in cost due to inflation that we saw and then the prepayment to Arizona State Retirement unrestricted Capital increased about 4.7 million um due to budgeting to schools and departments and and adopted curriculum just just to clarify for our constituents when we talk about budgeting to schools and departments what kind of funds are we giving them and what are they spending that on just some examples so the last uh two years we have developed a a zerob based budgeting process for the schools um they put in a request and those requests are reviewed periodically um and whether or not they're approved then they're allocated Capital some of the things that they ask for are supplies um and they can use their school budget for that some of the items that they ask for are bonds so that goes to Albert and Miss vetts um for the Departments most of their uh Capital spend are is districtwide so you think about technology um they're buying laptops and software that's used districtwide okay all right thank you you're welcome so the fund balance Reserve erve this was a new tab this year uh this is new on the 23 AFR the data is pulled in from the accounting data that we Ed to load the AFR um but we did have some options on the categories um for those different funds so it was really um kind of a a fun exercise to go through um and if you remember in February of 2022 you approved the revision to policy DB which states that the M um budget shall include at least a $2.5 million carry forward um and subject to the final budget process should include a 4% carryover the 4% carryover uh was based upon the prior statutory maximum uh the state used to only allow us a 4% carry forward and in addition if you remember we at the same time that was when we um made a recommendation to allow schools to carry over their unspent M monies and so last year at the end of 22 I think there was about $100,000 that we allocated out to our schools uh going into 24 there will be close to I think a half a million dollars is that right Jackie so our schools are learning now how to use that and how to how and have trust that we're not going to take the money away from them if they don't spend it so you'll see that on the the on the audited financials you see a a line that says carryover awarded to schools as a fund balance reserve line in the in the Final Act for and I'm understanding that some schools are saving this so that um they can purchase some more expensive item that they might have not been able to do with one year's worth of funds but over two years or so they can get something that's bigger that they need that's right yeah okay can you remind me what do we have any parameters around the school uh saving their funds you want to that Jackie yes the policy states uh that anything over a $50,000 balance uh should go to the cabinet level leader for review and approval they should have a plan to spend uh to carry forward more than 50,000 so will it typically be just like a one-year carry forward is that kind of what we're anticipating or do you think people will be saving up for several years 50,000 for several years to try and buy something uh we do have one school that has quite a large balance but we've seen that most of them are spending um at least a majority of it uh they are saving some so um they're doing some really exciting things with it it could be year-over-year okay I think one of the reasons that we did make the recommendation to you is just before they would feel almost like they had to spend it because if they didn't spend it then they would lose it so I can't tell you in my own experience where there have been closets full of expired science equipment and all those kinds of things and yeah markers even dried up yeah dried up markers yeah there's so it is it it has proven to be more prudent to allow that but but always having a um a limit is smart as well where we are asking we we as a leadership team are asking okay what are you saving this for now and we're not going to take it away from you but what do you plan on buying in the future which kind of aligns with the zerob based budgeting process really just that thoughtful conversation right so moving on to classroom site fund we wanted to share the history of classroom site fund we have the amount per student in the top row um so you can see that it was around 400 and change for 19 20 and 21 and then went up to 733 in 22 and to 758 and 23 and um that increase obviously has had an impact on our revenues and ending fund balances and should note the $19.3 million at the end of 23 so recall that when we built the budget for 2024 we made the recommendation to utilize $5 million of that available balance to uh provide pay increases going into the 24 school year and do we what do we anticipate going forward that it will level off or decline we've actually done those calculations and if we um if if we were to go back to that $425 per student so you can see that we would generate about $17.3 million so we would have enough fund balance to get us through um a couple of years uh obviously this is in salary we'd be obligated to put those salaries into M if we don't have the classroom site fund monies okay in other words we've been careful yeah because it it likely won't keep increasing like this well and just like our M dollars though as well cuz we don't know all is a subject to legislation and state revenues so okay this is a graphical representation of this previous slide any questions on that do you have any idea what caused it to go up so much I think it was purely the economy just skyrocketed here in the state of Arizona it's all based on sales tax it's all based um plus a little bit of the permanent uh land fund as well piece of that goes into that was a that was a ballot initiative a few years ago wasn't it yeah actually that's going to expire in right so I I don't know that's the um that's the 123 isn't it prop 123 which is related to the state land trust but not classroom okay okay got it it gets complicated yes it does she was just asking that just to test us to see if we remember how do we do so now we're going to talk about other funds so first FA as federal and state grants we just uh shared a a summary of each for you um you'll see uh on page five of the AFR a lot of federal projects um start and end actually in a negative um with a negative balance that's due to the completion reports and the payments coming in after we run the AFR so that's pretty normal um in this particular grid you can see that we do have a positive ending balance and part of that is because it's U Medicaid is included in these Federal projects and then on the state um we don't typically see a negative balance with the state funding uh the increase there uh was due partially to Esser school safety and an increase in results BAS funding and then on to cash funds Community Education and nutrition services Revenue [Music] comparisons animation that's great awesome very good Jackie you go that's actually better than the colors not animated not there I just do it myself give you a marker so we wanted to highlight um fy19 revenues and FY 23 revenues um and show you the difference um the fy19 was pretty much our last um normal year if you will um so you can see the change in 2021 and 22 um due to co also on the AFR 521 those Child Care Grants from Dees were rolled into fund 520 so we pulled them out here so you could see the revenues in community school and then 510 um Revenue in 23 was almost 14 million so the good news is that the revenues have come up and are more consistent with what we would consider in an average year um over time and still actually increasing a bit in Community Schools as well as in nutrition services so pretty good pretty good news MH and again other cash fund Revenue comparisons um highlighting 19 to 23 kind of back to that back to that normal level um actually very close to to what was normal um in all of them Civic Center auxiliary operations tax credit donation Student Activity most of these most of these revenues are collected at the school level and they stay [Music] there any questions on those so FY 2023 average teacher salary this uh was included on the AFR and this is taken directly from the revised number two budget for FY 2023 so you have seen this before okay mine yes okay um going right into the 2023 Food Service AFR we talked a little bit about Food Services already I really wanted to share that um so you can see the beginning cash balance so we did have on hand $10.4 million at the end of 22 largely due to the fact that we were on 100% free and redu um Universal free right all of our students were receiving free meals every day and that allowed us to build up some fund balance so we've responded to that I think that when we shared the bond and override Report with you in early September we shared some of the other fund work that we've done which included some serving lines at Greenfield Jr as well as uh mosquite Jr so we are using this fund balance to catch up on some Capital items that are within the nutrition services program but even with that and knowing that we kept Staffing so we didn't lay off anyone at all during 2023 in nutrition services even though the participation did um drop significantly um but by normal attrition nutrition services was still able to not draw down fund balance by more than a million dollar and that's a very good news we anticipated drawing down over 3 million just because of the work that the team has done to make sure that they're moving around Staffing Etc they were able to keep our costs low and appropriate against the amount of participation that we have so this is a really good um result for Gilbert Public Schools well then I I do appreciate that effort that we didn't we used attrition didn't lay people off when we had had to staff up when we had so many um students that we were serving breakfast and lunch yeah and I meant I meant to mention too that I did ask Natalie Tenny the director of nutrition services to to join us this evening so if you have any specific questions as we go through some of the few slides I'll think of one she will be here to um to help answer those so we can't let her off the hook so um this this slide is just showing the the trend that we've seen over the last four years and it's interesting to see that in 2019 the blue is the local the local Revenue and the Orange is the USDA reimbursement fast forward to 21 and 22 you can see the Orange is very large and there's very minimal blue uh indicating that our students were very much participating and now if you fast forward to 2023 and compare that to 2019 to me this is a a a reflection of the fact that over the last two years under Universal free lunch I think that the entire School Community has discovered that nutrition services is providing kind of a pretty good meal and a pretty good value and so the um the participation rates are are still staying uh a little bit higher than than they were back in 2019 and then the revenue and expenditures this kind of goes along to what I just shared you can see the revenue in 2022 the large Blue Line and compar to the light green uh you can see where the revenues greatly exceeded the cost but in 2023 you can see the revenues were slightly less than the total costs again we anticipated because we had a $10 million fund balance we could afford drawing down as much as3 or $4 million fortunately with the efforts of the team of Natalie and her directors and her supervisors they were able to move people around appropriately again nobody losing their job and just doing natural attrition to narrow that $3 to $4 million down to less than a million and then this is just the meals served again you can see that in 2023 meals served were very comparable to 2019 so back to normal operations at Gilbert public schools that is a lot of meals though over 2 million Mills we're the biggest uh restaurant in the town I guess you could say that's right that's right the biggest food business maybe all right moving on to the FY 2023 School level report this was new in 2020 so we uh have shared this information with you before today's report will include a school level AFR summary the school by school comparison and revenue to spend comparison for those schools so uh as in the past we want to caution um you when you review the this report um it is uh common to compare one school to another but it's important to note that not all not all schools are the same there's different programs the two schools that we will compare tonight are very different although they're very close in enrollment um they're special Ed um a lot of the costs are at the district level um so we just want to make sure that everybody's aware that the comparison of schools side by side um there's a lot of information that isn't necessarily obvious in these reports so we are going to compare again Gilbert Elementary and Carol Ray Ranch Elementary again they're very similar in size uh about 11 students off Carol ra a little bit bigger this is function 1000 spend only so you can see that the amount per pupil for both um salaries benefits um purchase Services it it is higher at Carol Ray Ranch even though they only have 11 students more they have a lot of special Leed programs there so the class sizes are smaller the other thing is keep in mind too that as a school district we allocate out resources based upon FTE so we say k Ranch you can have this many teachers based upon your your student enrollment and uh Gilbert L you can have this many teachers based upon your school enrollment however the costs of each of those individual teachers are not at all considered so you could have more higher paid more experienced teachers at a Gilbert Elementary then you might have at a k ranch or the opposite again that goes to uh Jack ja's cautionary comments that there's so many moving Parts Within These comparisons the numbers don't really tell the whole story another good example when I was reviewing this I thought wow $628 and $657 in capital for each school knowing that we have a zerob based budgeting process I didn't remember allocating $300,000 to these schools but um this includes the multi-purpose room AV refresh the AV refresh technology um those large purchases at the district level are all coded to each individual school so the report pulls in this the school unit numbers um so that's why the the capital purchase is so is so high and on both of those schools we probably haven't done a refresh before on those schools right on a lot of those items this is probably the first time since they were built that they've had a refresh in those items yeah that's right I I this report does include the bond spend to correct yeah so it's not just unrestricted capital and M it includes all funds across the school system well I don't know how old is go we Elementary 50 years old so was built in there you go yeah not fully rebuilt but added significantly right yeah they kept the Cottages they kept the Cottages yep y but still that's a long time to go with um equipment years and years so we've done very well it's time to give him an upgrade so this uh will compare again both of those schools um on all functions so including instruction Support Services um and there was an error on this Slide the four highlighted cells have been corrected um so you can see by function and again hire at Carol Ray with the um support services for students that's where you would find um some of your special ed support services and school by school Revenue to spend comparison um the um the State of Arizona uh allocates out the revenue in this report per pupil um so it is a a challenge I guess needless to say is that a good word to use okay um it is a challenge to um compare the revenue and spend when the revenue is already put there even though we don't allocate out that way um so you can see um under Gilbert Elementary the revenue to spend for group a and special ed um is in the negative for Carol rat it's in the positive overall districtwide um it is in the negative for the group a and special ed and then the districtwide report um again keep in mind that the districtwide portion of this report includes all utilities we do not um break that spend out to the schools it includes the district office Personnel supplies um operations expenses not charged the School site uh Central Food Service and all Transportation costs uh the special ed Transportation last year was by .6 million so that was all at the higher districtwide um report even though that is certainly a student expense so the percent of reported district-wide expenses um excluding federal funds is 31% of the total spend and of the total districtwide spend 34% of that is associated with transportation and operations so that leaves 3% for everything else okay so part of this report includes individual school reports so a separate one-page report for each school is included in the AFR um and they will be posted on our website any questions so I know it's uh difficult to compare school to school and even like you said even some of the reports are difficult just because the assigns it a certain way which is different than how we actually allocate it but can we use this to look at um like the same school year-over-year or to see maybe how our have our costs gone up significantly for some reason or another is it is there a way to use it to help help us see are we using the money the best we can we could we could use the year-over-year school IND individual school reports to see um how financially they compare year-over-year um if that is something um that you're interested in I I I think it would be more beneficial and probably more accurate to just pull it out of our general ledger and do it that way okay um because there's a there's so much behind this file uh that is generated from the state and they allocate it out in such a way um that we asked and they weren't um exactly sure how how the how the funds were um directed into certain cells so okay um okay so we are looking because we do look at year-over-year school by school and again kind of with that show based budget analysis for the capital and for different things like that we're we're constantly looking to see that if there's a huge anomaly some way mhm I mean you you're basically the you oversee as the district anything that goes to the schools it's not like something comes to the schools besides the one account that we have of um like their fundraising or their um tax tax credits tax credits yeah yeah that would be the only thing that doesn't come like through from the state through the district to the school correct okay the other the other thing is as an example and is why the data is a little bit um a little bit uh unclear and that we're so cautious about the conclusions that you might arrive at so let's use Burke Elementary as an example so prior to Neely moving over to Houston Burke had 400 350 something like that students so on a per dollar per student basis um and I haven't verified this but I would presume that on a dollar per student basis Burke Elementary's dollar per student spent in 2021 prior to Neely moving moving over to Houston would be higher than their 2023 spend because now they have 460 students so if you think about your administrative costs yes you think about your administrative costs that's fixed every school has an office a principal registar Etc custodians right so the more students you have the less per student you're going to have to spend and so that might be that might be a problem for some people not understanding that saying you just cut Burke by $50 per student so that's why it's it's a little bit um it's a little bit misleading if you take so even looking year-over-year so to your point it would be useful to see what happened at Burke in year 2021 versus year 2022 or year 222 versus year 2023 to see the dollar amount per student it's helpful though for all of us to know oh this is why and also the value of having a school of 450 versus 350 in terms of being able to provide the ACC ademic uh environment in a more efficient way with more students than less but we know that it's not in the numbers right we all know that CU that happened but it's not in the numbers and so that's why numbers can lie or not tell the full story be misinterpreted misinterpreted for sure yeah so if someone from the public were to come and look at this report what would you want them to take away from as they browse through these different schools and what we're spending per student I mean obviously there's a lot of context that the report is not able to give but what correct what would you want them to take away from the report I think they'd almost have to have an explanation because it if you interpret it just based on what you look at here it doesn't seem to be fair but when you when you have an explanation you know specifically like the special ed students I think what I'd want them to take away is there's more to the story period and hopefully would ask help them ask questions and we'd be willing to answer any of those questions related to any of those types of things well and I think to to say that we're each student is unique so we're trying to meet their needs in a unique way which doesn't necessarily mean equal dollars it's addressing needs equally but not in a way that everybody gets the same everybody gets what they need so well and when we when I was in um Colorado we we absolutely allocated out dollars to our schools and we had a Community member come to one of our meetings and they said well you guys are lying on these budget sheets because I look at high school a and I compare it to high school be and you're just absolutely lying because every single teacher has the exact same salary and that can't possibly be true because we were allocating out based on average salary so even that is still not not clear but that's funny right so so my hope would be that if anyone is doing some comparisons my request would be please contact you know Jackie or or me or whomever and ask the question about could you explain why this is happening to me to make sure that they're asking for the context when they look at the numbers that would be great okay thank you are there any further questions Mrs Paige did you have any questions or comments no thank you anything further board members thank you very much we appreciate it yes we will vote on this later in the meeting and then oh wait we have to have a difficult question for Natalie and then we will sign right okay thank you Dar I just I can't think of one so she's off the hook next I'll get her when I do the taste testing next week all right we appreciate you giving us that presentation and again we'll visit that in our action items so we will adjourn the work study and move to our brief board business meeting I will call that meeting to order and ask Miss Wilson for a roll call Miss Lorie wood here Miss Sheila ug jetti here miss Jill humph here Miss Rhonda pagee here Mr Chad Thompson is not president Madam president you have a quorum thank you very much that will take us to our consent agenda items 5.01 approval of consent agenda items board members is there a motion so moved thank you Miss jetti it's been moved is there a second second thank you Miss humph it's been moved and seconded that we approve the consent agenda items all those in favor please vote by saying I I I hi any oppose with nay thank you that passes 4 that will take us to our action items 6.01 FY 2023 annual financial report and school level reporting form I don't think we need an explanation since we just went through that I will call for a motion board members is there motion I move that we approve the F fy2 FY 2023 annual financial report and school level reporting form as presented thank you Miss jetti it's been moved is there a second second thank you Miss h it's been moved and seconded I will ask for any discussion if there's any further discussion I juste appreciate all the work that was put into that and I know it's a lot so thank you Miss Paige anything to add not at this time thanks thank you and again just that we are this is required by October 15th to be submitted in this way so by law we take care of it in this way so appreciate that I will then call for the vote all those in favor of approving FY 2023 annual financial report and school level reporting form please vote by saying I I I I any oppose with nay that has passed 4 Z that will take us to the adjournment of our brief board business meeting board members is there a motion I move that we adjourn thank you Miss phrases there second second thank you Miss jetti it's been moved and seconded that we adjourn I will call for the vote all those in favor please vote by saying I I I I and any oppose with nay thank you we are adjourned

Board of Education meeting for October 10th 2023 can I have a roll call please Mr Cerone Mr Gatewood present Miss Johnson hi Dr Mario present Mr present Miss Simon present Miss present please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liy and justice for [Music] all okay 4.1 public comment on behalf of the Board of Education I would like to thank the public for attending tonight's meeting we value the feedback we received from our members of the public and encourage everyone to take an active interest in their Public School System members of the public interested in speaking to the Board of Education this evening are asked to have completed a comment card and presented it to the secretary to the board when the secretary calls your name I ask that you come to the microphone state your name for the public record and provide your feedback please note that comments are limited to 5 minutes per person and that no discussion of personnel matters stating staff names or responses to your questions are permitted the board does not participate in discussion during public comment followup to your questions or concerns will be addressed by Administration through the contact information provided on the comment card thank you elen f hello my name is I'm currently a freshman at East High School when it comes to minorities who do you think of well I'm will to bet you don't think of a like during the summer of 2021 I was diagnosed with hearing loss and throughout the rest of the year I was ined the death Heart ofing Community which I'm still learning about today the death heart of he Community is an important part of society from people who are you to people who can and all the hearing but this community has been significantly isolated from the world for Generations due to a practically impenetrable language barrier when my parents were the age I am now people people were bullied and shunned for having glasses since at the time not many people especially kids would have glasses and kids would either have terrible eyesight or perfect with nothing in between and even the mere thought of a child having curing AIDS at the time was unfit now having glasses or contacts is not unheard of and we are at this pivotal point in society again where people aren't just deaf or hearing but often in the middle the world is no longer black and white we are discovering more and more Shades of Gray I am one of those Shades of Gray last year I took a survey of the students at benari Junior High to discover the student interest in an ASL class speaking on behalf of the student population as of last year approximately 50% of the students asked were enthusiastic about a possible American sign language program to become a part of one of the many many foreign languages offered in sd308 I do not understand why high schools don't offer ASL as a foreign language language especially when it was more and when more and more people are coming to terms with hearing losses Perhaps it is because the lack of Interest understanding or publicity well I'm here to tell you that the interest still exists and as a person who gets excited when they see someone else wearing heing nades proudly as I do and a person who starts to cry when someone translates what they are saying in Sign Language during an inauguration of of a president or a child meeting Santa Claus I am here to say that people like me who are part of our society are needing to feel less isolated less invisible as humans We crave connection be it interaction holding someone's hand or just a simple conversation people in the deaf and heart of hearing Community need this as much as anyone else and having a class dedicated to the culture and communication with this significant Community we can make all the difference in the world the difference of being Hur thank you for your time thank you thank you thank you R hman uh Rick Herman welcome um I'm here to talk about the uh Transportation uh for the buses and uh the communication that goes along with it um I'll give an example was September 29th uh my kids uh gets out of school at uh 3:40 at uh 4:09 we got a message that it was going to be 30 minutes um behind schedule of arrival well it had already been just about 30 minutes at 4:50 p.m.

good evening I would like to call this meeting to order for creep Moni Comm committee as a whole today Tuesday October the 10th 203 at 6:30 p.m. can I have a roll call please sure Mr alre here Mr gagos here your is here Mr swales here miss s stumbris here Dr Hall here president Brown here let us stand for the pledge Le board member gyos and followed by him is the mission statement read by Dr Hall I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all our mission statement Empower each student to positively impact the world for a bright new future thank you Dr and Mr gagos up next is public comments we do have one public comment and it is regarding dress code and the participants will be our Student Government however many you want to bring up hello everyone I'm t h The Freshman student body president and I'm damaya Salis The Freshman student body vice president on behalf of all of the CM 2011 you students we want to thank you all for allowing us to feel heard and considering our ideas the student body would also like to personally thank Dr KAG Gan for hearing us through and um speaking on the behalf of us tonight we also want you all to know at the end of the day we want students to feel comfortable in the school environment just as well as you all we have come to the conclusion that most of our dress code is a safety issue but we believe with the right measurements and thorough consideration we can fix those minor issues we hope that you all can meet us in the middle thank you thank you all all right I like that Unison passing off that was you guys were in sync thank you so much and Dr Cogan in sync oh okay all right thank you just freshman look at look at our Future Leaders here all righty no other further public comments going to move right to board updates I would like to just first uh give an update regarding the dear loss of a community leader being our fire chief at Creek JP Morehead and I was able to attend the services I believe I'm not sure if any other board member but Dr K Lise uh attended as well yesterday and I just heard nothing nothing but good things about him and to to just feel just a titbit of the pain of his young wife and his mother siblings sister and brother it just just life is just so precious so that being said before we move forward to any other board updates I would just like to have a moment of silence for him thank you all right any other board updates all right okay I think Dr I think uh University Park I think Dr Hall was at University Park it was a game for a breast cancer yeah I saw you there what they called the pink really nice yes I think they said you was there too on Sunday yeah she said she was there by the time I got there I didn't see her but I did get my picture taken I got a hat she was she was there we got a hat it was really nice I think she got there with breakfast ser you was a chain man huh that was good event very good event all right good things you're doing over there in up throughout the district Monique I mean cre the whole nine yards just good things that's happening here Park Forest I not forget them all right so moving ahead we're going to move to agenda item number six a midd of straight updates uh 68 by our superintendent all righty we've got quite a few items here to review with you the first is the discussion of our healing paw stifen um I'm going to invite uh Mr Robin Tobias to come up and talk a little bit about that um as you know our healing pause program has been quite successful um in bringing on many of the dogs therapy dogs uh and working with our students and staff um but you know as our program is growing you know certainly the handlers do have quite a bit of a responsibility in um in managing the animals with their extra time as well as you know feeding vet bills and those sorts of things that they take upon themselves so Mr Tobias is going to talk a little bit about um our our request for a stien for our handlers mras thank you very much Dr Kagan uh members of the board um you've said everything I think I needed to say so have a good evening it's perfect uh I'm I'm here to um ask the board's consideration for a stien for our our healing pause and our Therapy Dog Handlers uh they burden the cost of these animals on their own at this time uh the dogs they adopt are theirs they're expected to care for them take care of them handle their needs uh some of the costs include um basic equipment which are utilized through their um deployment amongst our schools food um snacks uh which are shared amongst our little ones when they go for school visits and some of them as far as some of our students this is the first time they're maybe seeing a dog um or a polite dog in a Handler situation uh they've been very valuable and used throughout our district um besides some of the equipment and food our handlers also bear the cost of health and and medical bills as we require our um handlers to make sure their dogs are kept up to date with their shots um any other their pills uh the medical allowance um is nothing we've been able to afford yet um but something we'd like to look forward to to help on our handlers burden um take care of the burden of that cost the average cost um in research for uh a dog for somebody to own is anywhere from 1,500 to $2,500 uh I'd like you to consider 1,700 at this time for our handlers um they do a great job in maintaining everything they need to as well as working with our community events besides our schools uh two of our dogs are actually certified and trained to work with our local police departments in um some witness um and interviews with Childs um uh little children that might have experienced a trauma and the police are looking to get some information um and better their um Peace of Mind at the same time so our handlers can participate in that as well as the needs of our district individually uh I was not um sold when the program was starting to build I was not against it but I was not sold um seeing our dogs in action throughout the time period that I've been here uh it's been wonderful uh we've had sadly a number of tragedies uh that we've experienced as a district individually with staff or students and our dogs have been there to help comfort those in need and help control the situation and with them as to what our needs are or other community needs and we're grateful for that partnership at the same time uh so at this time if you have any questions I'll take them but I'm looking forward to you considering this opportunity for our handlers as we look to grow our program as well thank you Rob did you say did you say that the handlers are also responsible for the V costs everything at this time they they adopt the dog uh we have um supplemented the cost to getting them trained with the animal but um once selected as far as trainer and animal when they're certified together then our our trained Handler becomes the owner of that dog they adopt it with official paperwork okay and and then they own the dog and take care of everything with the dog that is our expectation and um we've been doing that very well with our current handlers okay Robin Excuse me give me an example I you might have stated a couple since she's been up there but when the dogs is actually deployed What scenario or also give me the frequency sure when a dog is employed as a weekly basis on average twice a month and X Y and Z reason very good question we have three dogs associated with our district right now and they're all assigned to a building one's at the high school one's at the middle school and one is at tala uh the dogs that's their resident base um our handlers are able to leave their building as as they can to go meet the needs of another building that may not have a dog um one example is last year when when we had some student tragedy strike us and um we were kind of all hands on deck with dealing with the loss and some of the injuries to some of our students um we were able to have all our dogs on site um we use the high school media center as as kind of an emotional Trias Point uh with our dogs there we also had the the village of Creek Police Department dog on hand to making a visit uh emotionally uh the day could not have been handled as well as it was was without the presence of those animals and the use of them uh and they're they're real in terms of they get tired and and they need their brakes and handlers are expected to take care of their needs at the same time they're trying to take care of the needs of somebody in experiencing trauma um that's one event um to just kind of narrate through that um they were there it was a multi-day process we were going through um and the dogs were in and out with um the needs of people that just maybe needed an animal to sit by to pet um the animal is is trained in a way to um have empathy with one's emotions beyond the the owner handlers um emotions but empathy with others that are nearby and the dogs kind of interpret that make themselves available or cozy up to somebody um they did a great job the dogs were pretty amazing uh another experience is when we do uh some drills could be a fire drill could be one of our Alice lockdown drills to simulate um an intruder we don't want in the building and people need to lock their doors and barricade some things to be safe um those experiences create um some trauma for people emotionally our adults and our students um and when we find out about that either ahead of time or just post experience of that drill we've been able to send a dog to that building um and be with that student or be with that staff member um calm the situation down so we can kind of resume operation normal for them I would say that occurred twice last year to my recollection um with two different buildings um I can tell you at one of our other elementary schools as well they had a student um that was being uncooperative some emotional imbalance could have been something stemming from outside of school um the student was very difficult to calm down and uh we were able to bring a therapy dog over there and within minutes uh the situation was uh very calm uh it it was a great experience for the staff to see that in action and the experience of the dog being there and the student with the dog um without the dog being at that moment it would have been very difficult to um calm that student down deescalate the situation without the assistance of the animal and the Handler being there to understand how to um approach the situation and be there for the student at the same time um how often uh couple times a month on average I would say our dogs are in use um for need um beyond that we uh try and move them around the district to make everybody familiar with the dog um to understand what the needs the dog can meet uh I know our coordinator Dave Hall just recently s a letter to all our principles um acknowledging the program again and making them aware of what the capabilities are and how often they could be used if needed uh so they're on call based on uh what the the school needs might be um particularly the ones that don't have a therapy dog there right now uh the feedback I've gotten from uh the other newest dogs um in terms of Snickers at the Middle School we've had biscuit associate with the high school and Dave Hall for a couple years uh Snickers is new to the middle school and those experiences have been positive to my knowledge and the feedback and we have Bella at tala who was there last year um is is growing and and kind of going into her own role working with those students and staff U right now my experiences are positive and the influence they've had with staff and students has been great so how did that work you mention Mr Hall and is he considered he's the coordinator is he also considered a Handler he is he would be defined as our head Handler he's the one that oversees our our program with the other handlers coordinates their needs and additional training as we might have it so if he's doing his 9 to5 job and the need arise to deploy one of the dogs how do that happen is can he leave his 9 to5 he his his roles the best the best part um right now as far as are handlers we're working on an application process for interested people that want to be a Handler for our district a current employee um some of the criteria as we grow our interest would be you have to have the ability to first meet the needs of the dog um which means it can't be somebody who might be classroom based supervising students all the time uh somebody that might have a role as an administrator a counselor a therapist somebody who might be office bound but not bound to constantly be supervised in the needs of of other people and students so our handlers have the ability and they have to have that ability to um handle the needs of the dog whatever those might be um and then that allows them too to handle the needs of another school on call okay um in that moment so if there's an issue at CSK which doesn't have a dog um that principal knows who they can reach out to Mr Hall um would be our first resource I can be a resource as well and then we coordinate um a what need is and when they need it and then we get a dog over there as soon as possible excellent great program great program thank you all right thank you so much Robin for answering those questions any any other questions or comments for Robin thank you Robin you thoroughly and convincingly answer all my questions here okay doc keep it on keep it moving all right the next item I'm going to have Mr okasinski come up and talk um just about revision our athletic policy for our activities thank you Dr koganes members of the Board of Education um at the beginning of the school year we were made a aware of an incident that happened outside of the school um in University Park that involved some of our athletes um upon meeting with principal holfield uh he and I consulted with the district attorney Mr gleon uh to get his opinion on how to enforce the uh code of conduct for athletes that's included in the student handbook um after speaking with Mr gleon and sharing the facts that were known to us at the time of this incident and also the current policy we have in place he made a suggestion to enhance that policy and um I included a copy of the current policy and the proposed policy uh in the board book which should be in your packet um the current the current well the new policy uh differs in three main areas um if it provides a clear expectation regarding the behavior of extracurricular activity participants both in school and well outside of school um on school grounds and off school grounds with a specific time frame which the current policy uh did not provide um it did provide Mr gleon would just like to have it enhanced in case we ever had to enforce said policy or we ever a challenged on our enforcement of the policy second uh aspect of the proposed policy has clear consequences uh the current policy has language um may lead to half a uh 50% reduction in the season um and then it also has uh language whether or not you self the athlete or the parent self-reports the issue in another section Mr Gleason's draft clearly states those out in three subsequent steps based on the infraction and the incident and last but not least I think most positively the proposed policy does have something in writing uh regarding a restorative option uh mainly if a student is involved in these incidents and it's okay with the coach or the sponsor of set activity the participant can still attend practices and be held from athletic contest or activity uh activity particip um activity tournaments anything along those lines so those are the three main changes to the policy are the recommended enhancements from Mr gleon um I'd be free to answer any questions at this time that you may have regarding the enhancements per Mr gleon well you agree with all his recommendations um I do like the structure of it um I I think uh the loss of an entire season um may be a little harsh where I said the initial policy says may result in 50% but Mr gleon did say you know it's up to discussion for the board and it can be revised based on consequences proposed you said lost the entire seon um maybe I missed that what which part was that um it's in section section g um of the proposed policy G4 actually um first two examples have to do with uh the athlete or the parent self-reporting and then also them self-reporting and participating in like a substance abuse prevention program I believe that's along the lines as if they were found to uh be partaken in any illegal substances um but number four says if neither section two or three are applicable participate participant violating section two and one will be suspended for a period of 1 full activity SL sports season why do we say will instead of could be excuse me why I I don't know if you know this but instead of saying would be I don't we say could be can be or whatever because you I would think you would look at everybody's situation on a Case by case instead of just having to flat out this is what it's going to be and this this is forther recommendation of Mr gleon um like you said the current policy says may lose half a season but he said in based on the current policy it would be better if we had more structured uh consequences in there so he could support it in in a case we get challenged on a more high-profile case and we do have athlete lose in a certain amount of time does that give us room for flexibility though that's what I that's what I would need to know because it says it it it seems like it states solidly one thing and it doesn't give PR for flexibility okay we we could probably change it to whatever we want that's what I that's what I'm looking I think that's the premise of this is he's just introducing it but I think we can change it to could be that's what I would yeah I think we could for sure that's yeah agree with and I'm not trying to come I'm just trying to get an understanding so no believe me I mean uh you know you talking someone that Co coached for quite some time so I understand things do you know and I think you're right a case by case is definitely because one infraction to another is going to differ yes it's going to be you know it's going to differ for sure and you can't have a blanket of if you do this that's this or you know it's going to be different for sure but I think that gives us the the necessary like that could be it just gives us the opportunity to yes take it out for a season or or not I think we should just have that run by Bill one more time just you know if if that if you do that and I'm not arguing that there shouldn't be some judgment in it but if we're trying to have a policy that can be inforced um you know then you have people well this person did X and you only gave them this and you know it it it Waters it down I think and I think before we vote on that then you have to list under that P specific number four what entails then meaning if like he said if he's been found with a substance um did they come with a a weapon to school like you have to have I think at that point levels of what are the terms if we're going to make it a I know Mr gleon put in there you know you'll be spended for a season I'm fine with that but what are the criteria for that because if a student does something that's you know let's say they senior and they do a prank you know uh or something are they going to get suspended for a whole season for that I I don't know it just depends on how severe is is way way I look at it you got to have flexibility you got to depending on the severity of the incident you know what I mean I think that's where we got to look at it Case by case because I know that we always say you we want to try to stay this is what we always do but when we go into close session we talk about stuff sometimes it's Case by case because every incident is different from the other and you're right and even if it has such words as will should could shall it could make a difference but at the end of the day these policies belong to the board and we have the final say so even even if it have driving words to say it's black and white go no go so and then we have you know obviously we chime in with our conso to see if it can get us get us in trouble if something says shall or will and we go the other way so we have been down that road before too where we have been calibrated did we also I'm so sorry did we also want to then look at five and six below it no I think at that point if you're getting to a second and a third violation that's I mean I'm kind of with you there but I just wanted to the initial violation Dr Hall of saying that should there be flexibility on the initial but if you do it a second time shame on you for doing that all right so is it the consent of the board will revise that for you to look at with the May versus could and then provide perhaps some examples just number four for now does anybody else have any other other part of that what you said there was three areas yes um first area the proposed policy provides Clarity regarding the expectations of an extracurricular activity participant on and off school grounds and or at school events um proposed policy states new and current students electing to participate in extracurricular activities are bound by the terms of code of conduct expectation 12 months a year including summer winter and spring break periods both in and out of their activity season the expectation shall apply to conduct occurring both off and on school grounds and or at school events um when I spoke with Mr gleon he referred to the current policy was in place and um the grounds for disciplinary disciplinary action also applies whenever the student's conduct is reasonably related to school or school activities including but not limited to there was three options before number four uh anywhere the conduct interferes with disrupts or adversely affects the school environment School operations or an educational function including but not limited to conduct that may reasonably be considered to a be a threat or an attempted intimidation of a staff member or B endanger the health or safety of student staff or school property so if I remember reading this if a student this is for one year right so whether they're in school or not their conduct is that is that how it if I read that right correct that's what kind of led to the situation so now if you think of a student most students are probably thinking hey M from August 25th until June 1st and I'm in school they have to conduct themselves but is is that student policy or handbook for when they're when they're in summer sports or Sports outside of June you know let's just say June 1st is the last day of school from June 1st until the next school year is that what it's for or is if they're at their friend's house you know I guess the question is we got to make sure they're aware of that right and I and I understand they have to conduct themselves you know they have to conduct themselves for their for their parents but if they're going to do it for the school they we do they know that and and I guess that's not a question you I I'm expecting you answer right now but they should be aware that if they're on July 4th doing something at home are they you know in conduct but now if they're on and I'll use an example when uh Dr Hall when do they start football July 1st no oh no usually they start well it depends on what you mean start you know the the the camp is probably right after right two weeks after the first is like two weeks so a week after the school start okay week after so anybody participating in that kind of a sport that's in our school I understand that that need but I guess the question is we got to make sure everybody knows that well the intent if this does go into effect uh right after the board meeting that we would um have the athletic uh director go and meet with all the coaches meet with all the students so they relay that message to review this absolutely and with the parents because this is this would be some new language and I understand being a Warrior from this date to this date but when you're on you're you know it's kind of like hey we all have jobs right when you're on your own time you kind of do your own thing but is if you get caught with a DUI does that affect your job kind of the same Theory right so but they're students they're they're young adults they don't know that yet so I guess I want to make sure that if that's the policy that we as the board really let them but they need to know that I think I think we just want to make sure they understand that correct so we have the I guess the propensity to look at this and and kind of gear it towards the athletes right but it is extracurricular activity so can this be a person that's on the math team MH okay yeah have we to your knowledge had any issues with non physical violence on no no should it tends to be more within the sports field the sports field okay but it could apply to some to any of some sort yes does Sports and activities Sports and activities yes is that what the what it reads it it say it says Athletics and extracurricular so with taking courses at KI or Prairie State be considered under this policy too or no no now as as an extra it depend as an extracurricular yeah in some manner I mean that's yeah school so would be so that would that would not be applicable to this those aren't extracurricular activties that would not be considered okay okay you can get high in school long you don't get C that's I'm just that's what kids we got so we can revise this and then bring it back you're going to bring it back to the board for for me just number four as an I just think number four yes we can revise before yeah I'm going digest it I might send you something I really think that this is good to like he said let the kids know because like I I mean I I jokely said that but kids sometimes they they will people will say like crazy things like I didn't know or it wasn't I or nobody told me and it's like how do you not know that you can't do these things like even even joking you have to some of this stuff is seems common sense to us and it's like if you don't teach them this stuff then they won't they they won't they think about how many adults you know that did something on their own time and it affected their job it just did you know and they didn't they and they're adults and they they you know and we're I just don't know that we expect our young adults you're right we want to teach them that we want to make sure that they know they're Health accountable you know that maybe they don't know that well a lot of times we say they know from the mere fact that they sign this the code of conduct book we we as adults do that we sign and then we we do a driveby on it just sign it signed it and say you signed it that means you know yeah and it's up to you you have ownership to read it go over it with your kid and make sure that the rules are being followed and at the end of the day they still are held by it because they signed it but they it's just better to I think it helps clear us as much as possible even if we did it what I think they have annual athletic meetings if they did it annually and just say hey this is you know and at the end of the day these still are young adults they're kids and uh I hate to see one mistake caused a kid future you know kick them out of school or they can be we we came across a case last year I think similar where you know we had some great athletes that get into some issues and I think you really stepped up to the plate Dr kise and yes and and did the right thing because I mean you reverse some things and and that's I you know and those kids were since I'm knew to kids and they were you know very good kids and they made a mistake and they were about to lose something that they worked hard for as kids so yeah you got to take it Case by case I think had incident where we had kids drinking and their thing was it's legal but it's not legal for kids I've had kids who come in with marijana saying it's legal I'm but and and they really really they think it's legal and it's like no it's not legal like no you can't have it legal is 21 right you have to really explain it to they some people really think I don't know even if they're just using it as an excuse It's you know it depend you don't know what goes on in the house yes but again our only my only problem I see when we don't have it black and white is we be consistent with it you know you have a different board say they allow this kid to do this now this other kid is being punished for the same infraction so that's the thing with not having black and white rules to be followed that's the only thing you know you can have you cannot have a respect of person you can't pick and choose you got to be consistent with it okay so you going to bring this back with got all the changes so far I still may have to digest this a little bit yes go ahead I've made the coms I'll send your email yep okay before we get to the next agenda okay right thank you thank you thank you there you go School dress code is that on me may I go ahead and go on to the next item oh yeah yeah sorry like okay yes next item is discussion of the change of the School dress code and man B you sheet please which one yeah yeah there was a front and back to that sure so as our members of our Student Government came uh today uh to attest I did uh go out and meet with them along with Miss Perkins and uh Mr hollyfield uh earlier it was actually last week to go through our existing policy discuss with the students uh uh areas in the policy that they thought um could be changed um so we had a really good discussion on that um a very reasonable discussion uh and hearing from them so what I've done is I've come back uh revised some of the policy um based on some of the suggestions that they had based on also the administration at the high school um looking at this as well so I'm going to just go over some of these for you uh we've given you a hard copy at your desk so you can follow along any of the changes were put in red and um Miss Perkins and I also met this afternoon with the student government to re to share these changes with them and they were very comfortable with these so for items one and two uh there were no changes for item three thank you for item three um you'll see in red it says no hats or headgear including hoods may be worn inside the school building we've added this except in the classroom beanies or hair coverings for Hair Care are acceptable as long as does not cover the face uh meeting with the students uh a lot of students you know are doing their hair differently so they need to have them covered up on some days um I think the main purpose was for a safety issue as long as we can see faces um that was the real key pieces that we wanted to look at and they were comfortable with making that adjustment and and as far as being in the classroom um you know we had explained before when they're in the hallways um kids will want to put their hoods up and walk around what the safety item is is if you need to get a hold of a student and you can't identify them or if there's an incident in the hallway and there's anything on videotape you cannot identify any of the students so we need the hoods down so that we can see who the students are so we can call them by name address address them and so forth and the students uh were comfortable with that as far as being in the classroom uh they felt that the teachers knew who they were and so they didn't need to have that up but it was also very clear that often times students will put the to disengage um and so that um uh they could have it up as long as they were engaged in the classroom um and they understood that um and for the variety of the students they said some of them are very cold in the classrooms and it is is just kind of more comforting to have the hoodie up um some of them had said a lot have anxiety issues or things that they're working through and sometimes um that just makes them feel better in the classroom where they felt that it was a little bit safer and that they could focus um a little bit better in school so those were some of the changes that we made on that may I may I ask a question for the beanies and hair coverings that are our hair care acceptable I'm down but does that count for the hats and headgear that have to be taken off in the hallway or can those that are wearing the beanies or or scarves as a way as a protective measure for the hair can they still wear those in the hallway so so as far as hats like I said those are you know considered to be outdoors and to be taken off now as far as scarves we the next sentence is beanies or hair coverings and I don't know how you're defining headgear in the first sentence so are beanies and hair coverings headgear because then they would have to take those off in the hallway and I don't necessarily think that's necessary right I think you know they were describing specifically the words beanies in hair coverings um you know I I there's probably a variety of them out there like some of the like little skull caps and things like that you'll see some of the corre the boys will wear um as far as head gear and I don't know what else you would consider a headgear besides a hat um so they will I'm just for clarification they will be able to keep those two items on the beanies or hair coverings in hallways perfect that's that's all thank you yeah because again the the um the litmus test on this is can we identify you okay perfect okay on that no yes can we identify you uh for number three you said as long as it does not cover the face so you're saying if the face is exposed that's good that's what we want all right so we can identify you what about wearing a mask well then your face is covered right right then it's outlawed because it it should not cover the face that's what I'm saying yeah the masing that's because of Co right and because the governor put a restriction on that type of mask like a no I mean people have big you can't I mean yeah that was actually brought up turn around turn around do you know who that you know who that person is right there yes yeah that that was actually brought up for a health issue and I said you know during that time for health restrictions I think if it's for a health reason a mask for we just need be able if we this was in place before and I think that's a government ruled it so we didn't have a choice I'm just saying that if we come to that bridge we need to be able to handle that yes I don't see that as being a concern at the circumstances where you have somebody U not covid related but for health reasons is autoimmune or immune compromise just how we how can we challenge that that's all you can have a person and nothing wrong with them and now they say you know hey I I just want to wear a mask and how can we defend it don't have to answer that just put that in your back pocket okay all right moving on number four was the same number five um this was a strike through outdoor apparel such as and we got rid of coats and jackets we just said outdoor apparel such as sunglasses outer vest glov scars are to be stored in the students's locker during the regular day and not be worned or carried to class and here's what we added other outdoor items such as jackets and coats sweaters may be worm indoors throughout the day and a lot of the students were saying that that some of the classrooms are cold and they like having the coat around them uh you know it's not everybody there are just some cases so that was the the suggestion there number six was uh left alone number seven this was probably the most controversial topic I think of our team our group meeting um and this is about the uh the length of skirts and crop tops really so for the beginning we struck this one male and female students must uh be covered from the upper shoulders to the mid thigh and that again is the length of the the um shirts sleeveless tops and then we added skirts shorts and uh skirs may be worn as long and then we cross that out as long as undergarments are not visible I guess everyone believed that no one wants to look at undergarments so they would as long as they're perfectly covered and they also showed that you know based on body types and Heights of students it can vary you know depending on how short it is for one student may not be as short on the other uh the one student that came they used the phrase when an infraction is identifying What's the phrase they use dress coded coded or something CED yeah like CED dress code became a verb yeah it was coded and I believe they said it's it's kind of normal and it's not done intentional for a female to have exposed her strap there mhm accidentally it just happened and then they get coated so where are we identifying that you said to expose undergarment so no that's considered undergarment but yeah I thought that was confusing because we wiped out all of eight that talks about a bra strap but I would I would assume a bra strap is an undergarment but I know that was one of the issues that they brought up that was one of the big issues they brought up so and they said they got tagged for that a lot yeah I I think um some of the issues that they had talked about is U maybe some you know frilly things that maybe looked like undergarments were being charged as an undergarment is that correct yes thank you now I I guess I have I do have a question so was like Robin involved in this and um any teachers involved in this discussion uh I had a discussion with uh just the student council at the time and um the student council um teacher that was oversee them as well as Miss Perkins and uh Lamont holfield okay but no like Union leadership or no okay have you discussed this with the Union leadership I have not so again as as according to this number eight is that allowed and I think this was about these are basically the crop tops um that they're referring to crop tops are very prevalent in the Adolescent community and none of them males or females so that it bothered them either way seeing them or not seeing them yeah I think we again we put this in Play We Monitor and see how it goes yeah okay um number nine was the same 10 came back to looking at house shoes slippers and then we included the words without straps and this is at CSK right because it says CSK uniform policy you know what that got where are you seeing that at dot I think that's top yeah you're right that's a wrong header that's a wrong header uh prob yeah so again just looking at shoes and slippers without straps um we got rid of uh pajama wear a lot of students were wear the lounge wear um and that's quite prevalent number so you're saying that that's allow yes pajamas are allow well the pajama pants they look like sweats they just look like loose sweatpants yeah like those lounge pants like the flannel pants that you wear are that are pants are they pants or pajamas well I mean you can sleep in jeans does that make them pajamas I mean I'm just asking the question everything most of the things that we're seeing out there are just kind of a loose a loose pants okay so we just we let them Define they're flannel wear it's like flannel wear so they Define it say it's flannel wear it's pants and we have no argument yeah I think the definition needs to be spelled out because as Dr Hall alluded you're going to have cmea and ecme you're going to have people in the building and they're not going to know what what they're looking at and they're going to be coding people for stuff even though it's written in here it's not spelled out though see I mean the teachers and the staff that are that are you know writing them up or whatever they're doing they need to be on the same page and again I'm not against the change I'm just no but they need to know otherwise you're going to cause more confusion because the teachers aren't going to know what to do and then the kids are going to come to dress one day and and I think that if bringing them together they get at least get to voice their opin opinion and at least get to hear each other's side of to why for example a hoodie my thought my thought is why can't you wear a hoodie well they'll say well people hide stuff in hoodies but maybe we have a Hightech uh screening device in our schools that can detect those things and I'm I'm not trying to be I'm just saying mate what if that's the case so then you can say okay yeah you can wear a hoodie but people hide could hide stuff in hoodies so some staff member may have had a a situation or I don't know I'm just I just think that it's better to bring them together I love having the students there and I would love have the staff there and I would love having or Union leadership or whatever so on the same page so everybody's on the same page right because if we roll it out right and we vote on it and then the kids go to school and they start getting busted for stuff you got to make sure that that the leadership understands how to how it goes down the line because then there's going to be frustration on both the student side yeah and then our side and then they're going to do something and you know they're going to protest and they're going to get trouble yeah you know my my point is it's the same conversation we had at the last meeting they need to understand the timeline so they're not frustrated with how long everything takes because it takes a long time but everybody has to be on the same page because teachers are going to go there and they're like that's not approved and that's not approved well what's approved I mean I'll be honest I mean we all read this it's it's really like it's vague of what is I mean you cross out the bra strap but on the one before you're saying that is is it okay so then and we have to monitor it because you know they're going to challenge it right so you're right you're going to wear a hoodie and they're going to put it up and you can't see the face and they're going to wear a mask so it's it's got to go both ways we got to get teachers on the same page or staff members that are going to be in the hallways so that there's no friction because we obviously don't want friction with the students we want them to be comfortable I agree I agree that there should be uh consensus uh between the teachers and the students um I think it definitely needs to be cleared up uh but I don't think teachers enjoy uh dress coding students I don't either so um this might be beneficial on the children and the teachers so right and that's why I think bringing them together is beneficial um not I don't think they it's a hassle to have to do this I mean this is probably easier to to do but it's just all to me it's always better if you can have them on the same it's like a cop writing a parking ticket it's a bunch of paperwork yeah for what so instead of all that time you know clear up the rules a little bit and then there's less of that so just some context um a lot of districts have gotten away with dress codes altogether many of our surrounding districts because what they're finding is they're spending more time dress coding kids writing referrals than teaching and the dean's offices are being full of students with dress coding and spending all this time on that and referrals and not getting to some of the bigger issues so a lot of districts have moved away from this and have not have reported they haven't seen any difference in the kids attire how they look at things and so forth so those are some things to also consider that's regardless even if the teachers and the students and the or the union and the students and the and you all come together and say this is what we're going to propose no more dress code that's fine it's just bringing them together so that everybody has that I agree with that and they're all on the same page and I think the students just a mere fact that they saw that they have a voice here with this process here they came they spoke we listened here we are at the table trying to address the issues and no one is going to be have 100% their way it's just not going to happen but you know I think it's we are going down the road of a win-win situation here so what I can do is um like I said we've got a week uh beforehand so I can reach out to uh our Union leadership some teachers and share this information with them and I can also come back and share what they say as well and then we can also talk about perhaps getting some of our student uh counsel with some teachers as on this if that's what I've heard everyone say and if that's what they I mean and if you talk to the union leadership and they say oh we don't need then that's fine to me too but I would like them to have a opportunity I have no problem that that's a good idea I I just have one question regarding just the safety component with kids participating in some activity that requires some safe apparel shoes or whatever what's the rules on that if they are in the manufactured class and things like that do can are they allowed to wear sandals or things of that nature is there separate thing that would probably be the class requirement like if they had to wear I you know safety glasses or a hard hat or something or a vest I would say that would be yeah you're going to have to have shoes that are not open towed for sure right in case they drop something on their foot absolutely so I'm just wondering if it's like manur regardless of what they're wearing they might have so all right I will follow up with the the teachers on this um was oh I'm sorry there's one more um I think the one was just with leggings and tights uh leggings you see everywhere um as a fashion statement so that one we just uh X through and then um I think that was it number 12 you just got majority of that sentence bolded any reason for that um that's where it was um copy and paste it it could be because I didn't touch any of these so that may have just been um in the copy that I worked with I think it is to emphasize it I meaning so now it's back on the students to say I'm dressing and I'm causing A disruption that's not my problem I'm wearing what I want to wear give some latitude for the administration okay to to overrule some of those that catch catch sprays all other the duties as aign yes very much all right okay I've got my assignment and any if you guys can think of anything just make sure you get it to Dr cogin before the next agenda comes out for our regular board meeting so we can approve this and for item four this was just we had to bring back and amend some of the policies just because we were changing one item and that's the people that were complaint managers so we had to adjust all of them so that was that okay and that is it for superintendent's report Dr K can can I go back please Mr I want to go back to the code of conduct I I want to I want to look at this and I want to share with the board that and try and understand this a little bit more and so there are expectations in there in the code of conduct it does say things will be handled on a caseby casee basis so that is in there okay okay but the section Mr swaser you're referring to only refers to section 2i is when that will kick in all right and what is 2i 2i is when they talk about um marijuana yeah drug abuse so it says refrain from using possessing Distributing encouraging use of tobacco nicotine alcohol marijuana controled substances all of those things and what it says in there is that there are two other exceptions or two other things where they will be suspended for one or suspended for a second game and if those two things don't happen then they're going to be suspended for the season so it's just it's understanding that that number four does not apply to the entire code of conduct it only applies to that one section So when you say that one section that means if they've gotten caught multiple times then it's and I'm just trying to get understand because because like I said before you somebody you know until you get caught you know you right so here's what it says here's what it says it says participation participants violating section 2i will be suspended from the activity in which they are enrolled that's number one number two says the suspension will be for one game match if the following conditions are met and then there's certain conditions that you have to meet to be suspended for one game then number three says the suspension will be for a third of the season if the following conditions are met there's a bunch of other conditions now so okay that's like a restorative things or or like uh not maybe I said that wrong meaning if if they do something they have they have requirements they got to meet if they don't meet them then you go to number two and if they don't meet then you go to number three and then so number four is if neither section two or three I love lawyers if section two or three are app if neither two or three are applicable a participating violence violating section 2i will be suspended for a period of one full activities toward season and and how do you start the sentence that it's up to our discretion each Case by case no that section is not Case by case but it again it only refers to section the violations in section 2 I not all the other ones okay soank gone wrong a prank gone wrong is going right okay right and again it's it's based on discretion on how the severity of the issue is Right a prank gone wrong and so that's what I want the board to understand is that you know you do have that discretion on a caseby casee basis there are some other options even in that area that they will not immediately be spended for the entire year but again I I just want to give clearly so that helps but I mean like we said earlier still make sure they understand this um and like I you know so we we definitely have to see where this align with our board policy in some manner so we got to see if it's a parallel path here because sometimes our board policy uh really Dives in some consequences and levels of infractions and things of that nature and then we take a more broader View and let things like this the code of conduct and the dress codes drive drive everything but we approve we approve the code of conduct right we approve the dress code but our board policy does list different things in there about I haven't looked at it to see where this cross path if if it does sure so but good catch uh Ken for bringing out thanks for bringing that out yeah thank you okay so you have the floor I believe superintendent gave you the floor right so don't try to get out of it by stating discuss cre extension I think Dr car yeah I can talk just a little I'm passing the buck president Brown all right all right discussion on the uh cre Tiff extension I wanted to bring this back to the board for discussion um as you recall earlier uh this fall mayor Einhorn representing the village board uh spoke to us asking for your consideration to extend Tiff 2 three and four and attached in the uh board pack is as a uh um the template for the signature for uh granting that request so the question I think I have on the floor tonight is for that discussion is the board interested in providing consent without conditions to the request of cre Village to extend Tiff to three and four so so they want to extend three tips yes and that they feel like this will help the village and the overall um well since we're in the village of cre just overall yes they have quite a few development right yes they have quite a few projects that they've aark and they would like to have that money kind of secured so they can start their planning okay so the strange thing is two of the tiffs three and four are 12 years out right MH so why is for the extension now which is kind of odd but then we've already specifically told Mo we are not extending a tiff and we also had the discussion with University Park we not extending the Tiff and now we're in discussion with them of closing the Tiff so and they asked for extensions Moy in University Park they kind of right uh University Park did right no University Park did a business within University Park it's it I don't I don't I can't explain that but I guess my question is was was this Tiff extend ever extended before it was it was it was so this is the second extend this would be the second yes I would be willing to extend Tiff two I'm don't know that I'm comfortable with the three and four that are 12 years out and I understand that we have said no to other Villages but I mean if we've learn if I've learned anything my sixth year is here and we we're talking about case-by case bases I think everybody's situation is different I think C's situation is different than University Parks is different than mon um I understand people that don't agree with that but my feeling is I'm willing to extend at least two and same here I think three and four got a long way out and I I think that and in the case of Moni yeah we said we wasn't going to extend a tiff with Moni but we did and I these are words coming from our former president Nelson Alber he said we want to be good neighbors as it related to Moni when we were looking to it wasn't a t area I think John was involved with that with the one business I don't know where we stand with that but we gave them kind of a deal a tax we a tax abatement in some manner right and it was based on Mon saying hey can you guys do this for poti business that we have it wasn't in a t area right so we did that we we all approved that as a board and I don't want to go with University Park because we're not talking about that there but we're looking to do something with University Park too not it's outside the Tiff but we're looking to do something and so cre again uh they are still in a plighted area uh I mean all things in my opinion done line up really really like I would prefer in order to move ahead and approve them to extend their Tiff especially the first time I've heard of a tiff been extended looking to be extended twice so you get original 23 years and you got two 12 years so you got 47 years in totality there so but I listened board member gyos was in the meeting with me and as well as our superintendent a Council John here and I listen to their plight I asked questions and you know and I think the mayor had came here and shared some of the plight to some numbers there were some issues I had with them not having a What's the phrase I'm looking at econom a development economic economic yeah economic plan economic plan that that kind of I said okay but yet in all they did share some ples that they were looking to overcome in the heart of of their downtown so I'm all forward to you know again sharing the wealth being good neighbors and it would add some value to our school district in some way shape or form sidewalk streets and things like that that our kids need access to even come to school so and I think we're looking if we were to not extend that till if I think we're talking about $20 some, plus a take right Ken that's correct on a yearly basis so that's my take so I'm I'm in favor of extending two but not three and four this time can we table three and four and just I mean can we wait it's a it's 12 years out I mean oh yeah we don't have to we don't yeah okay all right that makes sense to be like okay let's decide on two as a group we can decide on two but then like you know for three and four why don't you come back to us when there's you know because they may have some solid plans yeah and I I agree with that if I was on the other side of the fence let me know down and better I know I can better prepare and pl so I get that as a group looking at us I don't know if I want to plan and make decisions for community members that might be in this position 12 years out while Alex has a kid that's like not even in school so he might be around that long but I don't know if I feel comfortable making that decision for I I would agree and I just look at it like if I'm understanding this correctly we get to year eight and all of a sudden they have all all these developmental ideas and this this and the companies decide they don't well we don't want to come because if we can't get the or whatever trying to do with it so I would rather wait on that than to make a decision now but I could agree with two I exted to I guess my only concern is being the primarily Mo representative and then we voted on that and I listen to everybody and we were adamant about saying no and we voted that direction I just from one to the next I I I don't understand it help I mean help me on what was that a t I'm trying to remember I don't they asked for an extension for a company that was coming in for something for kind of very you know similar to whatever you know to whatever why would you extend a tiff one for economic reasons to develop that TI or a company coming in so we said no and then I think if Ken was if I'm mistaken you asked them like we'll extend it but it's going to cost you 13 or $15 million to extend it we told them that yeah and that was again under the Tiff right umbrella but not under a potential Tiff that one that one business that we approved I'm not sure if you said yes I think you said yes I think it was it was unanimous separate and a side was sear exactly but but what I'm saying is we still you know we we possibly the business would not have came in I think that's what John said possibly had we not did what we did okay the position if I remember that we took at that on the mon extension was come back to us with a revenue neutral proposal that where we would agree to an extension if there was some kind of Revenue sharing or something that that could work because they were looking at one particular business um and I think they worked very hard at that and were not able to come back to us with that so basically the bottom line was that we we said no to that but the one business the one business that came it wasn't under the Tiff it was not even in a tiff area right it was in the village of mon and they really wanted us this business to come in and it was based on it was predicated on the US giving them a tax break basically remember that and we agreed right cuz if it were in the tip there wouldn't have been issue there is we we passed a resolution giving them a tax of batement yes on on a business that was going in it was not in a tiff it was not in a tip it's a whole it's a whole as Nelson said it's a whole separate but I'm seeing at the end of the day we did something that was we thought was a win-win situation for that Village am and Creek right and again saying the words may not be quoting exactly our former president said we want to be good neighbors I know we said and I me personally I was taking a hard stop no I am not going to extend a tiff Tiff no no no no but I started looking at you know Case by case basis so I heard the plight over cre and I said no three and four that's too far out two I can do it I know I'm sounding like a broken record here but when when you met with them on to did you explore kind of any Middle Ground where the the district could benefit from some of the increase in eav but not you know extend we did ask them what can we you know that's that was the wind we talked about it after they left the meeting and there was there were some options that we talked amongst ourselves that we want to get more out of you know something out of it and you know so I asked the question what are we getting out of it at that time and they pretty much said hey you know we're working on these sidewalks and these streets and all of that I didn't look at specifically I say you know what can you help out the Glee club or can you help out the softball team and out that 200 ,000 that we will get once the Tiff expire you know hey we're losing $200,000 can you take 2 was thinking more you know could we you know and we could split the yeah the eav the current eav kind of split the taxes on that and then they reap anything any increase from you know here forward on the extension right there's a couple of different options I mean besides saying yeah we'll agree to it or no we won't agree to one of them is to negotiate some kind of some kind of Revenue sharing along with talk absolutely and then another option would be um is to suggest that if the if the village ends Tiff too early we get the benefit immediately of that couple hundred, of a year Revenue increase and then if the village simply reiffs creates a new Tiff in the downtown cre um if if it's still blighted they should be maybe they'll be able to meet those requirements problem what's the cost of creating a new TI cost like $50,000 to apply for a new Tiff that's something that that's part of the blight of the community trying to they're trying to avoid doing that well okay I'm I was just saying those are the other options that were on the table so but as far as the district's concerned you know you could you could say yes to the extension on two you could say no to the extension on two you could try to negotiate some kind of Revenue sharing or you could say we would support a reff if you turn and turn Tiff early and reff those are kind of the range of options but so so far I've kind of heard seems like the consensus here is um supportive of extension of two but not three and four is it that's kind of what I've saying here not yet I mean in other words just too early for three and four those AR not going to expire for another 13 13 14 years it's pretty much it's pretty much way out there so I think everybody pretty much agree with that so I think the what's on the table now is two and how much we can get out of it where we can have a win-win situation with two if we can have that so is that your recommendation to put that on the agenda to approve too I will also go we see where the vot we can see where the votes land up or down that's what I yes that's what I was saying I I will go back and share this with the mayor he is here so he is listening but any sort of conversation and then I will bring it back for a vote for it next are we going to approve it without a plan like like what what it's going to be used for because I think when Moy came when they came they have an idea what they were going to extend it for you know up has an idea what they want to extend it for like what are they extend it for iess guess they did kind of share it they they were saying what they was going to do and and it was R was going out there that they were going to use it for sidewalks out there for the most part in there and that was shut down I said no I wasn't going to be used for that so I mean the whole purpose is to entice businesses to come to the area and and open up I mean that's that's what it's for they've started to develop the corner and hopefully once that gets developed that will um bring other people seeing that it is getting built up in that area and they have work to bring in some new businesses I think they said if I'm not mistaken there was a pharmacy moving in right downtown mhm so the uh the gun shop is no longer there uh so that's going to be a different uh different company coming in I don't know what it what they are but and I think it took a lot for them they got the business going up the new gas station and things like that that's going up right on the corner that's Tiff 2 MH area so and they had to use funds and things of that nature to that to Bill's point though having a plan that shows you know extending the Tiff what's the plan because ultimately it's the purpose of Tiff is to raise the eav for the benefit of all the taxpayers so that's how it would benefit yeah I'm sure he can come up with a plan I'm sure he has a plan I'm sure he has a [Laughter] plan he talk to us so all right he's right there I will go back and ask um and see if there's something that he can share sure okay okay thank you residency issue Mr surma D you go ahead and pull that up I've given you uh good evening board Dr Cara and everyone else thank you I've given you copies of the presentation hard copies so you have that I've also given you another document that I'm going to refer to um so you have it um as we're well aware uh the board has asked about kind of giving an overview of The Residency process and uh some other data so I'm going to I'm going to go through this I I will caution you um that there is a lot of data that I'm going to be giving you and sharing with you um some is easily understandable some is not so uh you know I I hopefully won't spend more than two hours on this uh what was that you know well I haven't been up here in a while 20 minutes today 20 minutes next okay so let me go quickly through the agenda and what what is in your packet and what is in the presentation one is understanding the process of verifying student residency some historical student enrollment that I pulled from the Illinois report card some student Mobility rate which I think is really key in our district I pull that from our own my report card the registration cases of residency that we've had both from 2223 and 2324 the fifth point is does less students mean less money operating expense per pupil Financial discussion so you can kind of see where we're at with that I've pulled that from our annual Financial reports also I wanted to talk about evidence-based funding and that's our state funding that we get General Aid that we get um I've got in there about tiers based funding tier funding all of that I I'll talk about that when I get to that but does this whole verifying residency reduce our evidence-based funding so hopefully I'll answer that question for you seven is kind of a summary of you know I put together kind of what the data is telling us and and sharing with us and then finally some recommendations that I have so let me start by this other manual that I've given you this is a residency when when Dr Cara asked me to take over and begin supervising registration one of the things I created was this residency manual and it's a manual that goes through the process of residency and it also talks about our mckin vento students this is actually the second version of it the original version that we had I created back in um I think it was 20 or 21 and that included when people had to come in and bring their documents in and it went through a step by step what documents you had to bring in like a lease or a utility bill or something like that this has been updated you'll see the date on there in 22 I updated this to include what we're doing now with national investigations all right so this is our current one we have always had this on our website this is always on our website it's been there under um registration um so I just I just gave you a copy I'm not going to go through please I'm not going to go through the whole manual so you don't worry about that uh but what I wanted to go through is just this table of contents about what we go through in the registration process when it comes to residency and you will see here where I have put into this document um things like our Board of Education policies that we have so all of that is in the document residency of new students returning students and then it goes on and on I want to kind I'm just going to kind of look at new students here and I'm G to kind of walk you through the process of what happens all of our registration processes are online and so we have an online portal that the parents will will go into so the first step is a parent or guardian of a student applies for enrollment through the new student online process so they go in there and they start filling out all this information and once they fill all this information out has demographic information it's got family your uh who the family members are who your siblings are did you go to another school all of those things and once they do that they hit the submit button and it goes into our queue in our in Skyward in the student database and that's where the registration office sees it they begin acting on it the second step then is K excuse me just take a step back yes sir so at this at this point National investigation is not involved not involved got it not involved okay the Second Step then is a confirmation of the adults identity and the relationship to the child so we require that all parents when they apply have to turn in a birth certificate and has to have the parents listed as them being one of the parents whoever is registering them being on that birth certificate so we can tie the child to the parent now there are extenda circumstances where there may be foster children and all of that so I'm just really talking generally here because there's all those one outliers but we have to tie those things together so that is required and that's we contact the parents we talk to the parents and say okay we need to do that a parent can upload that in the registration process also and so if it's uploaded then we have that and then we can verify that so this is the first critical piece of information critical piece of information does it require a copy of a birth certificate or one that's stamped of so here here's what I will say we have taken copies especially if they're uploaded into the system and that because there is an act in Illinois called the electronic records act so you can take that um we a lot of times do not ask for an original copy we'll take a an uploaded copy so we're consistent with that we're consistent it yes okay and then the second part of that is on step three by those documents by that document we can confirm the child's age and that's important of course with placement of the child of what grade they're going to be in so we were able to confirm that okay step four is where natural investigation comes into play so what happens now is that their the students name and so the one thing to understand about residency is you're verifying The Residency of the student not the parent even though a lot of times it goes hand in hand okay you're actually doing a student so so what happens is we put on a DAT a a Google spreadsheet actually the parents name the student name goes onto that and that's what national investigation has access to they run that student through a database that they have a proprietary database that they have and it comes back whether they are um at that Resident or not that they talked about all right if they are not at that resident then we contact them uh our registration office contacts the the parent and says you're not a resident of this District so you cannot go here can yes what were we actually doing before National investigation for this point for information sure so what we were doing before this point is asking the parents to either send in or bring in a number of documents to prove their residency as an example if I'm a renter I need to see the the lease I also need to see a sign lease I need to see the first page and the signature page I can't just see one page um then we ask for utility bill that has the address that you're living at on it then we're asking for a bank statement or some other document there's a whole list of documents and I can I can get you what those are but there's a whole list of documents that a uh a parent can choose from because one one of the things the residency law says is that you can't limit it to just one document you have to give them options but but you're saying that we're not using these documents now National investigation is going to run this particular new student through a database right to find out if they actually live at the resident that they claim that they're living yes and what they're checking is I God knows what I don't know I I I can go into it and I I'll talk a little bit at the end about that Mr okay yeah so you know the hope is the Hope is is that it becomes more efficient by doing it this way because one of the issues we had with the documents is either the parent has to bring them in or they have to upload them and a lot of individuals don't know how to upload documents all right when you see the registration numbers that I'm going to share with you that's in here you know this year we had a th000 people register so you're checking residency on a thousand people again these are new students these are new students not returning students just new students so it's a it's a massive task especially you know and that and and one of one of the complaints that we heard also about National investigation was it taking a long time to get a decision on new students understand that National investigation is a tool it doesn't mean it has the final say on things we have the final say so again there are cases and I know like Mr Brown you you shared with me that there was a one of your constituents was having issues so you came to me we went and you know we talked to the parent said we need these documents they would bring them in we got them in okay and a lot of that is because they were having difficulty getting hold of national investigations and that's one of the issues we had and we understand that all right so so our contract with national invest ation is to conduct initial I guess SC a scope of work is to go out there and validate and verify residency through this database yes through the database and then possibly through investigations also and do we play let's skip the investigation part so do we pay them a flat fee for that yes we pay them a flat Fe the flat fee per student and that's about $3 to4 do per student so in this case $4,000 for this yes despite of any investigation going on the initial run of the students to validate and verify residency a th students they run through this database and say yay on nay yes okay yes all right so $4,000 right roughly and then and then there's returning students too so they do the same thing with returning students so all returning students get verified on The Residency on an annual bases too they run them through the database also but no birth certificate or that or anything like that it's just strictly through the database again that's $3 to four dollars per person and you're talking probably about 3,700 students okay so you're talking about another 14 15 grand yes all right okay all right okay then after that all that happens there's enrollment so they get enrolled then all right so that's how a new student now I I've simplified this a lot please understand that so I I'm just going to pause there to see if anybody has any questions about the process at least well going back to they get a hit through a process yeah electronically database come back and say this kid for whatever reason I don't know they're sound like they're not looking at electric bills mortgage at lease they're not looking at that so whatever they're looking at they say we get a hit this kid is not aligned up with this district and now they go and move forward and start investigating further yeah they they'll start moving forward and start investigating further in that and that charge is about is $65 an hour that they charge us to investigate $65 an hour but we do not put a limit on that do we or what what that is one of the faults that we have not put a limit on it and and that's one of the problems that I feel we're having with national investigations and that is you know they they just go ahead and do this at a whim even though we've had many discussion on them so I've got solutions to all that though okay okay so yep all right okay so let's talk about student enrollment so one of the slides I put in there your next slide page five is I've gone all the way back to 1112 over here you'll see what our student enrollment was this is again all according to ELO report card we have 4962 in 1819 we actually began using National investigations those that were on the board if you remember this we were using that and we did it kind of for one year there and then kind of went by the wayside but our enrollment went down to 4473 and that right now we are sitting and you'll see here in 2122 where we began using National investigation for all residency and so we're sitting right now at 4331 this is in 2223 so this is last year's data we don't have this year's data yet I didn't want to skew it by putting in I just want to go by the Illinois report card so right now so we've gone from a high of 4,900 down to 4,300 are we still promoting on the website that we have a student enrollment of 5,000 I'm not sure that Mr Brown we we we changed that 5000 yeah okay I I'll have to check that I'm not sure Mr Brown I haven't I didn't look at that and see okay okay all right the next one is a student Mobility rate and this is interesting because here's the definition the percentage of students who experien at least one transfer in or out of school between the first day of October and the last day of the school year graduates are not included now that does not include those students that come in as a transfer the first day of school it only includes from October 1st all the way through the last day of school our Mobility rate right now is 12% and the State Mobility rate is 7% so it's almost double and I would venture to say we haven't looked to see how many students actually have transferred in from other areas either so I because that would kind of skew this number but this number is real high which means students are moving in and out of our district constantly you know and that that's that's a pretty high number does that of homeless kids as well I I don't know that Mr Brown uh I would say I would say no because they could have still been in our district they didn't move out of our district they may how do I explain this they haven't moved out as a student even though they moved out residentially they haven't moved out as a student this is considering if you moved out as a student and that so as a homeless child if you move out of our dis District to live you can still go to our school that's part of the homeless act so that would not be considered as part of this okay okay so here is a big slide this is the residency registration cases and I'm going to I want to explain this to you uh because this is a little bit confusing so this is on returning students so we investigated 2223 37 49 returning students were investigated we determined that 242 were nonresidents National investigation did I didn't National investigation that did and then there were 36 students that we cleared from the nonresident books okay uh go ahead correct me from wrong here you're saying 3700 this is this last year students that's that's like 80 9% of our student body right well I mean that that's preek through 11th grade okay oh not so returning students is all returning students so when you say investigate I'm what if if National investigation go out and they want to acquire to validate and verify that a student in fact live in a district which whatever method our own method was to verify these documents right so National investigation used to say okay we got to hit right and from that point the investigation no I think you're investigation is just all the students that's what I'm saying from the beginning so we ask so that's that's very it's kind of like okay 3700 who are run through the database that's what I'm saying that's it says investigate okay so so that's going to happen regardless that's going to happen stud and we decided that up front that we're going to do all students F but I so we're not discriminating and that's that I'm I'm good with that yeah I'm good with that I just used investiga because they actually are investiga I I know that's confus how are you defining cleared what does cleared mean like cleared as in they are actually residents or cleared as in they're no longer on our books we we cleared them as a resident so these 6 are part of this 242 that originally they said were non-residents but we cleared them as residents so what we did was we we would have contacted them or they were contacted to say you're a non-resident but they're saying whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa no no no I'm a resident I'm a resident so what we would do then is that we would gather the data from them um and we would then go ahead and say okay you're clear so we would actually clear them and that which again is our prerogative I mean you know again National investigation is just a tool that we use and the other 206 either didn't challenge it or didn't challenge it or one away yeah yes so on new students again 1,59 students applied last year as new students 70 were identified as uh non-residents so we didn't allow them to enroll except 11 of those 70 we then cleared they came forward and said no no I really live here let me try and prove that some other way and so again they went ahead and improved it the other 59 did not enroll okay so then this is just this one here this column here is a combination of all of that and so this is actually the total net total of all and this number is interesting when I get to the next slide it just really is this is 4543 so it's kind of a net it's this this minus this plus that is what you how you get to that all right so it's a little little confusing with that but keep this number in mind 4543 because now we're at 4576 I mean it's almost identical the net numbers which which was just astonishing to me from one year to the next from one year to the next so it'll be interesting to see how the trend goes here you know as you as you move forward and that so again you'll see the same numbers we've got 4170 on returning students 8814 new applications this year this is going into 2324 this year along with all that for a net amount of 4576 so again one of the purposes again of of me doing this is the volume of students and checking residency and that um how much how many staff would you have to have to do that I bill I wish I can add what would the cost be to the district Staffing doing that yeah we would need probably especially with all the returning you know but wasn't that the issue before we hired National investigations we weren't checking the returning students period we were only checking the new students so you'd have 319 or 7.64% here and then that compounds year after year after year exactly so my my point is how much would it take how many people times their salary and benefits if they whatever it is we'd have to have probably somewhere between five and eight people in the additional people in the registration office to to just do all this right you know and then especially if you're talking about documents you know and then you know the other is we found and I I don't want to be labored talk a lot but but is the falsification of documents we've had that also you know that that's diff you know people it's easy to get a lease online I can pull one right now you know so you know um so let's talk let's talk a little bit of money here and that so this is our operating expense per pupil taken from our annual financial report so this is a calculation that our auditor does every year to determine what is the operating expense per pupil and you'll see back in 1112 $1,026 and then again in 1819 when we started this it all of a sudden jumped here $2,000 which is a pretty big jump actually and now we're up to 20,000 you'll see a big jump here also when we started that yeah post yeah it could so the last month I think we asked and it was like 15,800 a student right or am I off on that or did you guys say it was 18 or 19,000 can can that numbers but the last two years that's a 27% increase I just calculated it I mean I I I can pull the financial and our enrollment actually went up six kids so that the denominator actually increased a little we haven't our operating expenses have not gone up 27% we got more money in though Revenue yeah but why would why would the cost be more like I I can look at that I'm not familiar with with operating expense for people about def finding that but let me let me try and look at that look that because that that seems to be misleading to the public we were talking about that earlier and I'm like I it it it's high yeah I I think it's hard to when you say for example it takes 15,000 $12,000 to educate a child okay and so now if we if that kid is no longer here for whatever reason you would look one would want to look at it and say hey you know what we just save $155,000 but in the case that we get hits on 300 kids is not in this District right and you multiply that times 15 and whatever that number comes up to be that that's what we saved that's what you would think but the labor and this is not pointing the fingers at no teachers we're not we're not we're not downgrading or or cutting our employ employees at all okay so but now you can look at it from a good point to say you know what you got a better teacher the student ratio there's some good things could happen to that but the biggest expense we have in our district with any for for the most part business is with labor so we're not getting rid of Labor when we lose a child we say now we got rid of $15,000 but that's not the case well but we we have a lot of fixed costs so you don't you don't get rid of a whole third grade classroom when you lose two kids I agree so you're kind of spreading that have some cost and the other thing we're we're we're missing is so if you s you don't have to slide back but say there was 200 kids right 300 kids whatever the number is That's How many kids that are in our district that where their their families aren't paying taxes it's not helping the district but they're taking an opportunity of something away from a tax paying child I agree so that's my% corre and I always was for if a kid doesn't belong in this District they should not be in this district and I'm just cing people as high as taxes are in Illinois that we want to make sure that our taxpayer is their children get the best education the most opportunity if they need a service an IEP um uh I think he's brought uh elll right the that stuff huge downside when you bring in all these uh children that are unregistered and I think I talked to Ken earlier we're not even talking about the current situation with all the the kids coming in that are migrants and stuff like that you're talking about e you're talking about huge disadvantage for so many um in our district that are paying high taxes and I mean you represent up Dr Hall represent up how high are their taxes I know and mo our taxes aren't cheap and cre so I just want to make sure that our taxpayers and their families have every opportunity to maximize their dollars because 67% of their tax bill goes right here and I I agree with you 100% on that I agree and my only issue and problems that I've seen is just how is National investigation going about providing us a service that we want that was that was my issue and I see that that was my only issue here and I think the original thing is because of the cost you had eight people and all that cost I just don't I think every time I have a conversation with Ken the first thing I say is all right so what are we at in five years you know I even talked to uh Mr okasinski today I'm like every conversation I have is about where we at in five where we at in 10 where are we at for longevity because if we do something today how does it affect us in five years just can we sustain it you know even all the money we spent in estra funds 8.4 8.6 million whatever it was over three and a half years now that we've created all that stuff we spent all that money are we able to retain and sustain everything that we've spent it on that's my only argument is making sure we can keep our staff make sure our teachers are employed we we are we are on the same page same page on that so and you know M teachers and janitors and custodial and food service and absolutely so I have uh actually Brian and Jason we're going to look up this the operating expense just to I want to we verify it right away I've also put on here you'll see operating expense versus enrollment so you you'll see our enrollment number numbers here um that I put on here just to kind of coincide with our operating expense um and then I've added this on here and I'm going to go into this next this is our enrollment for evidence-based funding um that you will see and this is the enrollment that they use to determine the funding they get it's one of the data points that they use to get our evidence-based funding um you'll see how it has dipped um it is on a threeyear rolling average how this goes and everything so I just wanted to put that all on one slide for you uh just to confuse you more with numbers that's all so um so this is evidence-based funding this is a table I put together to share with you what we get from the state of Illinois when it comes to our evidence-based funding so I'm going to kind of walk you through this and let you know all right what some of this stuff means so I'll start start with 1718 so this is our e ebf ebf is evidence-based funding enrollment that is there we're a tier one school so there are four tiers in evidence-based funding um tier one is the I'm just going to say the lower funded schools um by using a whole bunch of calculations that take place so we're in tier one what that means is that you those districts get the most additional money uh that is allocated by the state you'll see that here this was our base funding for the year then this year we got an additional $631,000 to get our total ebf 15.5 million with an adequacy Target of 64% so let me kind of try and explain that also adequacy Target is the amount of funds that you need to educate children based on 27 different data points that they have by this calculation in that year they're saying if 100% is the best they're saying we're only 64% funding all right so we're short 36% of the funds that we should get all right and so you'll see that on every line here you'll see our enrollment you'll see the tier we did hit tier two at one point and you'll see the reduction in the extra money that we got now at that time I remember the board asking me what I thought the reason for that was I thought at that time it was our enrollment I don't know if it had something to do with covid to be honest with you because all of a sudden we bump up to tier one again yeah I I couldn't figure it out with students because I thought it was all predicated most of it predicated on the enrollment I know so I I I'm not sure that I think you're going to have to see we bumped it to your one with less student with aund with 80 some less students he so again this year and I I need you I want you to make note of this we are getting $1.5 million in additional money this year in evf funding because we're in tier one all right and our adequacy rate has gone up to 73% which is the way it should go it should start going up but it doesn't necessarily mean that you're still going to go you're going to drop a tier because while we go up everybody else goes up and so it it's it's all these calculations that are done all right so it's just going to give you an idea of how we are being funded evidence-based funding and what the enrollments are versus the money that you're getting this amount in this column you are held harmless for what that means is that once you get that amount it's guaranteed the next year and then you go into another tier to see it so this is always guaranted gued money that we should get for the next year also from the state from the state only yes doesn't include grants or anything like thaty Target the state legisl said we want to get every to 100% yes yes yes exactly you know their contribution their contribution not going to get rid of local property taxes all together but it's going to increase the percentage right yes that that's what the point is yes okay so let me go through kind of a summary of what at least my conclusions are of what the data kind of is telling us that verifying residencies for all students is an enormous task due to the high number of students registering in our district doesn't have anything to do with whether they're residents or not it's just that there's a high volume amount the mobility rate of our students is close to double the state average enrollment decreased significantly 99.14% The Residency verification process was strengthened used in National investigation the annual cost of verifying residency is high 7938 650 for 2223 through National investigations I think I shared this with the board before enrollment has begun to stabilize at 43 to 4500 students prior to residency verification student enrollment was in the 48 to 5000 range we continue to be categorized in tier one for evidence-based funding and receive additional revenue for this even as enrollment has decreased so that's kind of what the data is kind of I believe is telling us so what are the recommendations I believe sorry it takes a while to get through this um number one continue to provide a thorough residency verification process on all students annually I do believe that you need to check residency and verify residency on an annual basis for all students I believe that's what what would be what would be the difference if we did it every so often every uh two years or three years or something like that yeah you run the risk of not catching everybody I think you know you want to get into a a habit of doing it every year but let me before I answer that fully Mr gagos let me let me go through this and let me let me talk about some costs and all that stuff investigate ways to reduce expenses there's a piece of software out there called clear investigative software actually uh uh Dr melano uh Mr osinski and myself went on a demo of this um this is a proprietary software that we could use inhouse uh to verify the residency status we believe it's the same database that National investigations is using all right we have found and I have a list of schools I believe in the state of Illinois I forget how many they have but in in the area Chicago area there's probably about 50 school districts that are using this software already uh it is amazing they showed us what we can do and we could do that all inhouse I believe it would cut our cost in half right away I think there is going to be some need to use invest National investigations at least in the beginning until we can get this software you know become an expert in the software and eliminate them Al together the cost actually of the software is between 20 and $225,000 a year all right they would give us six users for that um so it would basically be our registration office uh that is in there along with Mr ozinsky and Dr melan Cheno would have access to this software um it is very detailed I I will share with the board that when I worked at Troy I had actually a piece of software like this and it's incredible incredible they also have license plate recognition in there so it tells where a car is all the time Ken I I I just want to just say just thank you for you and your team just looking for other ways to be efficient that's all sure and and to give you the same results that you need and I wasn't expecting this this is and I was okay with national investigation fulfilling what you needed them to do but to go out at a cheaper cost and still provide the service that you need is very commendable well thank you and I'm going to tell you Mr O is the one that found this so he he's the one that brought it to my attention and then we sat around and talked and uh got the demo right away um they're ready I I'll be honest with you they're ready we could we could start the software November one we're ready to go um and like you said you're not looking to do away with national investigation I nor do I want them gone if they're providing us a service that is needed yeah I I think there are some you know we we we've kicked around you know can our truy office Handel can they do they're not equipped to handle that they're they're just not I and I think we need to get to a situation where we have an outside consultant that if we feel there's a family that or students that need to be investigated we can we can do that you I think from looking at this clear software the three of us are in agreement that this is the best way to go to make that area more efficienty than it was it also the time it takes to run a a person through there is about 10 seconds really so wow so that's the question there's 4,900 you ran through this year yeah or they did yes do you have the staff for that yes okay because what we can do is we can batch upload those they showed us how to do that we literally so here's what happens and again I'll be happy to give you a uh demonstration of the software so you can see that and the public can see it but what happens is you you can upload this batch files in there they give you a template to do that within I I don't know it's like only within like a minute all these results come back and everybody gets a numerical grade between zero and 100 and you put a threshold in there you just say okay we think that we should look into anybody that has 79 and lower and in ident identifies all those people for you you're done and then you start you know you can go and start investigating that so we would have the staff to do that and the results would be a lot more efficient for us so do and will the same staff so if you put it 59 below is that same staff going to start doing the investigating well what they'll start doing is they'll be contacting the parents and saying you've come up as being a non-resident I need to start seeing your documents you need to bring those in start setting up appointments with them and start getting that stuff and start that commun communication piece and they can handle that they they should be able to handle it we feel that they can handle that yes you go through those two filters before you engage National investigations to do a physical inspection yes if that's what we wanted to do yes yes as opposed to the coming back National investigation just kind of going out on their own right yeah wow good right good stuff here and we're not violating anything at all no by running them and then calling them no not at all not at all wow because it's all their data it's all their information I mean it shows everything I it's amazing it shows it's public information okay um the other thing we've talked about and um is you know coming more efficient and I and I've kind of talked about that but start collecting data on where transfer students are coming from and to analyze that dat data to better serve them for services and academics I think it's important and we we've talked about this as a cabinet that we start looking at that and and seeing where those students are coming from to better assist them so that's also part of the process um you know as we start moving forward so again my my takeaways from this um I believe that we'll easily reduce our costs by half on this I think it might even be more but I'm just being conservative when I when I give that um I don't see us I think the software itself is around the 20 to $25,000 figure a year and then I just put some extra money in there just for investigations and all that K do we have a statement when registration began to inform the parents a statement such as that you can possibly be prosecuted or or you would have to pay money spent on your child back for knowingly enrolling your student in school do we have something where the parents know no upfront and we we do we will investigate or ver verify and validate The Residency of each student we do as part they know that do they sign off something yes they do as part of our electronic registration process there a acknowledgement of residency and residency process and in there I've bolded it in red that you'll be investigated by a third party National investigations I've give the company and all that and they have to sign off on it they can't it's a required field so they have to sign off on definitely everything so that is both in our returning student application and in our new student application so if we go to the clear software I'll be adjusting that in the system to to make sure it says that and not National investigations and that there is also a statement in there saying that it's a misdemeanor to give false information and you could be prosecuted for that also excellent that's all excellent okay man you knocked it out the park thank you do you know how much we spent on on them so far this year looked at that I can try and look at that and see where we're at okay um if it supports consensus I'll I'll come back with approving a contract for the clear software maybe at the next meeting so we can get this up and run if that's okay does that work I'm fine with it okay I that's me I'm a person I like that idea we all agree with whatever to thank about time um for we I guess my issue is we had a I I don't know if I'm we had a whole discussion about some other stuff that I not just this I don't huh oh okay just say it about the family liaison person and oh it's a great segue okay oh okay we have that's on the agenda that looking for it's it's right there no the best part your presentation okay recognizing a board that is that is a great we're close I'm just thanks K this is the big one this was the big one a lot of data driven and U I really really appreciate right all right great job Ken thank thank you Dr koganes for your team U I think that was a lot of good information very good information all right so you're calling Jason to do BU on the maintenance uh project Grant yes definitely that uh as aab as our last presentation so um we're looking for next is we're looking for uh approval from the Board of Education to apply for the school maintenance project Grant this is a matching Grant uh provided by ISB in the amount of $50,000 um we intend to use that $50,000 if we're awarded those funds to replace the carpeting in the corridors and the ramps of the original section of creone Middle School um we have an estimate to for the total project it's coming in right around $235,000 um the remaining funds the additional 180 yeah $185,000 in funds will be uh used from eser funds to cover the difference with that project if you so uh approve the application and allow us to apply with is be for this matching Grant okay let me just for clarity you said that there's a matching Grant of $50,000 is that we put up 50 and the state put up and give us 50 so that's 100 uh uh well the proceeds would be $50,000 we have to show the ability we have to show the ability that we have the 50 to match their 50 that'll be in part of the 180 that's that 50 will be captured in that 180 yes sir got it okay and the total project was 20 235 was a an estimate that we have so that was bided out no we haven't bid it out we just got an estimate to help us with the application process you will bid bid that out yes sir okay thank you and this going to come back to the board for approval okay thank you yeah so we got 50 Grand yes one of the stipulations of the uh application is the approval of the Board of Education to apply for the grant so that's why putting before you today and it will be an agenda item for the next meeting absolutely that was easy thank you thank you Jason thank you sir no problem C you want me to speak to the high school edition yeah why don't you go ahead okay all right look at this next one um last Thursday we were uh held our weekly meetings with the architect and the contractor for the Edition at the high school and we were informed that substantial completion date has been moved to December 15th this is still due to uh Logistics issues regarding the hookup of the main electrical and the addition uh the piece of equipment that we are missing is a switch bucket that is needed to complete the installation of the main electrical panel in the addition to the existing High School correct Keith so we have word that it uh it arrived and it shipped from Texas so we're not uh waiting on something to travel overseas or anything like that however they don't have the ability to track it right now so we still have our fingers crossed that will be in route so um the panel and all the uh I would say guts so to speak everything that goes inside the panel is on premises and on site so we are just working uh waiting on the core uh the switch bucket for the coure and uh if you have any more technical questions I would definitely refer to Mr mcle on that the only question I have is so December 15th are we going to have our our Roe inspections right after that do you know or so we come back to school January what 6 78 something like that are we going to be ready to go in there that's that's the plan so that's the plan so that is what we're looking for so is are we scheduled right around December 15th or can you have them scheduled before they get power no you can't schedule them before they have power because you need the power in order to get substantial completion so it would be somewhere around there now we're saying substantial completion the power is going in long before that you know it's just that substantial completion would be at that time the the one thing that is holding us because of this power is conditioning the wood for the floor the gym floor because we poured that concrete early we got lucky the concrete's already poured so we have to have that now we do have some contingency plans if we get to such date because we've expressed to them we cannot go past December 15 period we cannot and so we have expressed to them and they've come up with an alternative plan to power up that place um if we see that this thing isn't here in the next you know week or two portable generator pardon me portable generator uh I forget what they're doing but they found some empty fuses am I right Keith they found an empty fuse there's available we've got like temporary power in there right now but the flo installation the gym floor installation company will not install that floor unless it's no permanent power right so that's kind of the hold of like K said that the power will be here you know long before um the you know the substantial completion they but but you still have things like once they get the power and they have to put in the gym St stuff like that right now case workk a lot of things are going in the place is you know painted there's a lot of painting is done but there's little holdups like that gym floor really hold back and that's because of it's called a bucket yeah I've never heard of a a bucket what is this a switch panel it's a MCC oh and just 480 and you waiting for that from Texas wait a long time for it yeah so you know where we can get one for the most part Mr com but no but for the most part is these MCC they do you know they call it a bucket I guess just the compartment they they are all of them basically the same they have to mat existing bus work in the backs of the you know EXA switch GE you know it's to I'm not going to solve world hunger but I'd love to come come over and see it okay I love to come over and we're waiting for this small piece that's basically it's about this size right that's what the MCC motor control center is yeah one of these buckets and it's located in Texas Texas have this the last communication we had is that was it was shipped it has shipped from Texas it has shipped and we have to wait till the 15 to go to for that to get from Texas to here no we're not waiting till December 15th December 15th will be the substantial completed so in order for us to and or we're going to continue to work and and progress through the construction so when is the estimated time of arrival of this bucket that's what we're trying to work with the contractor for because they they're they don't have the ability to track it once it's here then we would have permanent power to the addition which would allow us to install the gym floor which needs to be conditioned seems like a barcode what you think I just and I I don't want to get into all the details here do you who's the manufacturer Seaman or Weston House do you know the manufacturer it is local regular not so I think maybe and it's for this to be a showstopper that is something that that could be readily available locally have we tried that have you had your contractor try that I can talk to Ken offline on this this should not be a showstopper I thought you was talking about a whole whole MCC but this is just you said it earlier you said bucket you said bucket but that's what the layman term is called and initially when we were having this conversation with the contractor it was the panel and then we found out the panel and all the insides came we thought we were good to go we heard about out you can take that thing out in 3 seconds right but I just can't see that being a showstopper we'll find out Thursday Mr Brown okay we have another construction meeting on Thursday so let's find out and then I can hook up with you okay please what was the original completion date October October well I mean the actual the actual original one was August actually was August and now was December keep on pushing it out you know D we we don't have any contingencies written in our contract do we in what regard delays what if it doesn't come what if we don't finish by December 15th then mec's open another we're finishing by DEC app okay let's move on yeah yeah all right it thank you and and uh just real quick so we we ready for Staffing uh with the high school addition Staffing is ready to go yes it's just just a transition and we are looking for manufacturer are we looking to increase we got the Staffing for the manufactur portion and all that too well that'll be the next recruitment process okay keep us posted on that all right good job all right so we're bringing back the um Family Outreach specialist position family liaison uh we got some sample job descriptions from other school districts um so that's kind of where we tailored ours to kind of meet our new needs um just to give you some additional context since our last meeting uh the number of elll students in the district has increased by 95% over the last year for from 142 to 272 um the number of uh migrant families since our last meeting has more than doubled we're now up to at least 66 students in the district um so the need is definitely there with all of the support that we need with our uh English English language support um also ISB has put on um some additional recommend or not recommendations requirements for certified interpreters within our district so we encapsulated that within this position too where they'd have to take some ISB design courses to become a qualified interpreter as well as some special education terminology coursework that they'd have to do through is in order to sit in IEP meetings and be able to translate for families that need that support um so we're bringing the position back with a recommendation of a salary of not less than $40,000 um it would be housed here at the in the within the regist ation department they would also lend support to registration um so as Mr Sur explained clear and all of that that would be another hand in the Registration Department to help out is that going be an Administration position if they're in registration no no it would be a classified non-union position subject to the employee handbook and the benefits that list wait you said not less than $40,000 what's what's right what's the not more than can you give us between not less than 40 but not more than 26 a big number why we qualify it not less than because what we would need to look at is if another certified or another classified staff member within the district applied for this and let's say they're at 45,000 we wouldn't say okay well the starting salary for this position is 40,000 and and force somebody into a pay cut so you're going to post this position is that what what you're saying correct yes yeah we'll bring it back U next week for approval to post oh for next week to post I still you got to give us a salary to say not right thank you say not less that that that was I starting salary we have is by saying not less than starting salar is $40,000 for the position and that's I think what it should be though so that would meaning we wouldn't want if a staff member just chooses to take that then that's what the starting salary is it's a fulltime job yes yeah it's a full-time year round physician 12 so 40,000 us typically Works 280 hours so that's about $20 an hour okay that's so can you do me a favor to the 66 migrant students that's is that some of them currently of what's going on in the country where they're coming in Chicago on buses I mean are we is that are we so it's the find that is that really what that is is students that um that are coming from you know on the buses from you know over the border and they're coming here and they're in our school that's from anecdotally what I've heard is they're being bused to Chicago and then they're being busted down 57 South and they're coming here so with that being said can we find a cost per student of what that is so we know what that is and the other thing is these Villages are getting money they're getting money to to handle this is there any way federally or statewise we can get cuz if this continues if you're generalizing at 20,000 a student times 66 and they're getting an education they're no different than than the other students well the village of of jolad I heard on the news yesterday's whatever I think they actually actually declined the money they decline there was a dispute between a Township of Jolan and a village of jolia it was a substantial amount like $8 million and they said we decline the money dispute between the trustee and the and the uh Township commission Township there you go so yeah because it came with strings attached so so so even with that this Family Outreach person we have a job description and just to be clear they're going to work with all families yes okay yes I thanks for Clarity okay any more questions for the doc just just one more I know this isn't directly to this topic but it came up the conversation if just anecdotally if you're talking to different districts and you I I'd be interested how many migrant families are different districts seeing are we are we high are we low or we in the middle you know kind of what's attractive about cre Moni you know is it because the NOS that are taking you know families out of Chicago are located here yeah part of it could be the apartment buildings in University Park cuz I see quite a few families now over there walking up and down going to the store it could be just I'm I'm just curious and just more information we have we can understand the problem and then m b I would say that we have um in our network uh when I meet with other assistant soups of curriculum um in our local area from Joliet and uh pone um we uh when I talk with them their numbers are in the hundreds and so um but it's growing um I will say within the last two weeks um I know on Friday we received four new newcomers last year we had 15 this year we're um at 72 right now and the question is is that sustainable and I mean all the way through not only financially but if we're adding all these kids into these classrooms is is sustainable for the teachers and for everything else going on I I think uh we're going to fall into um we don't have enough classrooms at the Middle School uh again but uh I I I think we do have I correct me if I'm wrong but didn't we see that the the classroom uh sizes were were going down yeah enrollment as yeah you know we was at close to 5,000 now we at 40 43 so you know and at one time the middle school was pretty much at capacity 80% we considered capacity right can about 80% of the student body we consider that at full capacity 80% yes and I know the middle school was there at one point so I don't know where these kids I guess that L us up for another conversation you may not have that information but where are these kids what grades are they all in high school kindergarten whatever no it's it's everywhere it's just kind of spr it's across the district yeah I get a breakdown from from uh M Perkins here and it's everywhere a lot a lot are going into tala M uh because that is uh in up right yes yeah and so uh um a lot of there's an apartment complex L of families are are just I guess I guess that again for a conversation on we can have a whole influx we can have 400 kids I mean that's a very hypothetical comment I just made but nonetheless how are we going to prepare for that how what do we do what do we do well is this family liaison part of your preparation for this um yeah this is part to help address some of the disparities and resources that our uh newcomer families are coming to us again to help um just not allow Karina to be the sole interpreter in the Registration Department one of the other things that we are doing too is the district was awarded a teacher vacancy Grant of about close to $350,000 uh what we're doing with the the bulk of that Grant this year is earmarked towards uh getting teachers certified in elll and bilingual endorsements so we're looking to do up to 28 teachers that will go through a cohort at Governor State University to receive elll and or bilingual endorsements to help again the influx of families and I can see because this is a whole culture change for these migrants coming here and I can just see the academic component there being disrupted in a in a negative way overall just the learning just these kids coming in as a new culture and trying to get adapt to our things and how we learn and not saying it there have a lower standard than us just the learning takes a while so I think it may at the end of the day may have an impact on our academics yes prepared speaking about being prepared and stuff like that uh these families come from you know maybe Venezuela Southern uh south of us and uh uh we I was in communication with someone who wants to help uh that Community out because I don't know if they know how cold it gets it's a whole different thing and and winter is coming very fast and so uh I'm going to get with her to see if there's uh like a a clothing drive a food drive anything that uh could help out uh families I'll I'll have more information about it later wow um that's good but yeah she's talking to uh community members and as well as businesses uh to uh contribute to uh helping out I've I've I've also talked with our Registration Department about putting together a closet here um and they've gotten some great ideas from the the Registration Department about how to build that closet out um and also around holiday time uh the special education department usually has uh asks for a list of names for um I I the Name Escapes me but some something sort of like a Giving Tree where you know staff submit names and then those people are blessed with some some items wow wow okay good information and you know we welcome all of our students with open arms and whatever we can do to again a lot of stress is going to be on the teachers and just need all hands on deck to get us through this okay thank you doc all right have old business out there I have some old business and it really just came up today newly old huh newly old right U well no it it the tonight was when it uh came to mind it's it's been spoken to more so in private than in public like tonight Jamie said I couldn't get in I'm always complaining about being able to get in the building you gave up on using the car about getting in the building you said just forget it if we can't get this I'm not going to do it I want to get to that point but I feel like we shouldn't have to fight to get in the build if we have a timer on ours that's fine but that Tim of D Shield should work at least when we have to get in the building for a board meeting I I just park up front and say forget about it I'm I'm not I don't even try it because you you never know when it's going when they going to shut it off not shut it off when you can or can't get in is a different door or something cuz I got in look I I just went through the front she said she couldn't get in whatever got and it could be a to different place this was this morning this was at 6:30 this morning in the morning cently we like there's a set time 6:30 is too early so they just buzzed me in but I think that we need to have I mean we don't have to have like 24-hour access but it needs to make sense to me because I tried to get into a building the other day and I couldn't get in I had to get buzzed in so I have to just assume oh my car just didn't work at that time and that was doing regular hours and I was going in so I know it's not just that something I don't know it's not I'm not saying the conspiracy thing but I'm just saying something has to work go change with these with these cards and so so I did this uh for the for the meeting I was like an hour early just because I'd like to get set up um but I was able to get into the front doors but then the second uh layer of uh I wouldn't be able to I so I had to set I had to sit by the uh the doors there that's because it's a preschool you can't get in that set of doors unless you're buzzed in this is a school still right I think what we have with the board we've set this everybody can get in there shoting any school the front door the front door uh and it's usually scheduled during uh regular business days and then as far and then also should be key for board meetings com earlier I don't know what it is 6 o00 I I just know I don't even try it anymore but the for board me I just yeah they just buzzed me in this morning no big deal no no I I I get what you're saying cuz it's the first time it's happened to you yeah so keep doing it and and experience it then after a while you might think oh I'm sure I'm sure I just meant like this morning I assumed it was because it was a 6:30 meeting and I was you know there at 6:15 so I wasn't I thought nothing of it I guess is I know you that's why I'm bringing it up I get thank you and and I'm not saying you say anything against me I'm just telling oh no no no yeah no we're good we're good I just wanted to bring that up so so doc just kind of look at that if U I don't know again what quals do we have if if there's an individual board member that maybe want a little bit more access I don't see why he or she should not have that you know within reasons so I just let it be on the individual case that's my opinion okay I think he's saying you can't even get times he's supposed to be able that's what I'm say like I said the only I can do is we JP the team and figure out why or or or do like a business give us a card to say these are the hours you can EX access the building so I can have an idea and I'm not frustrated trying to get in give us something like send an email in the in the FYI you are allowed to access the building these outs can you at least give us access to the the side door here where many many come in when we park there where you have to go around the front can we get into that is is that a different door well I that's no bigy I'm not I'm pick and choose my battles here again I'll look at the hour and verify that the hours should be set like iured they should be okay thanks uh DOC for bringing that uping I'm sorry all righty dude I have a couple things if you don't mind for Ken OB or oh bus bill yeah yeah um summer ELC and and tala uh for the renovations here we didn't do it last summer because of the cost have we decided started exploring that yet or is that still on the docket to explore no we've already started those conversations in fact we already had a meeting uh Jason myself Keith and The Architects um to prioritize what we're going to do so they're in the process of putting the vid docs together um getting that all done so we can get that out on the street yes all right and I saw the last Chiller showed up at cre yeah so to um Bal moral and CSK are in yes and everything will be and C is CED is in also am I right Keith Keith Creed is hooked up also yeah and that's so they're all so all be dialed in in the spring yeah I I don't know if they're testing them now we had talked about are they Keith or not they want to do start up I think two two weeks from now and I I doubt that I'm going to let them okay good all right you know there's no sense in filling that system and then draining it again the day later test it yeah so with that being said our contracts for summer of 22 which would have been ELC and tala are done and now summer of 23 we have Creed Elementary Bal moral and CSK the last parts were the chillers so does that mean that other than startup we're going to hold money until next spring until they start them up uh I believe so I'll have to check on that and I'll talk to Keith and Jason about that but I I'll check on all of that to see but the latter part of your question is yes we will be holding money back in we test and balance the system along with the retention along with the retention on you know until the spring until that startup happens yes all right and then if you can by next meeting or in the FYI can you let us know what percentage of the high school has paid out yet so far to CC Holdings considering we have pretty much four months of sure delays yep and then the last part is prevented maintenance for all the buildings couple of these buildings are up and running for 2 years do we have any prevented maintenance for the buildings that been going on to make sure that everything's maintained we have we have some preventive maintenance going on not a lot but we have some going on right now and that uh you know things like changing filters and checking some things out however uh we've had a discussion internally now about um Contracting out to like an hbac company to preventatively maintain all of our new rooftop units because we quite frankly we just don't have the capacity in house to do that so that's one of them now that we've added all these units so to begin that process so we're going to work on an RFQ or an RFP to get that out in fact Jason's going to work on that and because I passed the buck all the time uh he's goingon to start working on that um so that we can get contractor that's probably my number one concern for preventive maintenance are these rooftop units chillers allers for winter coming up and everything like that yeah all right and you said that ballpark for print of maintenance for the entire district is about 2 million have have have you guys have you started talking to Jason briyan about possibly getting that in as a line item or how we're going to Future fund that to make sure that the buildings that we have just now spent 54 million or whatever it is on that we are maintaining these and because you said about 2 million a year I think is what you were think quite honestly we could spend more than that if you wanted to but you know we just kind of earmarked two to two and a half million a year um you know one of our we already have a preventative M maintenance plan laid out that was worked out with the architect and Keith and myself that has already been worked out so we have that um it's just getting the funding for that um and you know our thought was to use some of the funding when tip five rolls off over at up if that were to roll off then we start using some of those fund funds to fund that those prevent maintenance issues but no backup plan if it doesn't uh just in case yeah there isn't there honestly isn't because there's there's not the funding all right and the last question is any update or thought process on the replacement of the Fieldhouse floor uh I don't know you've had I can go ahead I can speak I can speak to that bill we have um we did have one company come out and give us a proposal to replace the floor um during the presentation I said will this address the cracks in the floor and they said no I mean it basically just laying over the cracks making it good look good aesthetically so so the cracks won't be addressed am I clear on that and she did confirm that the quote to replace the floor came in just under a half a million dollars for the Fieldhouse floor um and we actually reached out to a helium vendor um to get the original contractor who laid the concrete down in the high school when it was built so that's our next step to touch bases with them to see what they can do to rectify the situation in the Fieldhouse Florida it's like anything else fixed underneath before you l in Florida correct that that's that to go along with it yes we are pursuing options to replace the floor and then we also subsequently got a quote of just under a half a million dollars to replace you know the Fieldhouse floor obviously if it came to that we would go out to bid and look for alternative uh Solutions but that does kind of give you a realm of the price tag to to address the Fieldhouse floor thank you okay yeah that $2 million for PMS that's been a hot item for a long time having a cash to do that but it has to be done we have to look for ways to do that so all right thank you any other old business yeah so a while back I asked for uh a flowchart of sorts organization chart organization chart yes um and I have it uh I can't find it on online anymore but I have it I printed it out um and I wanted to I I just saw some things here that uh we have recruiters for our schools and stuff like that recruiters um but what do we like um so we have people in charge of recruiting but do we have anyone in charge of retention so like our current uh teachers you know uh do we have anybody we don't we don't have and and and right now we don't have a teacher voice on the board uh I know that's not you know the teachers are not supposed to be on the board and stuff like that but like uh why you know what are we losing why are we losing so many teachers and is there a way to stop that you know to retain them well part of putting in the recruiters it was retention and recruitment um and we've put it an exit interview process and then that's also again Dr melan chenco uh kind of oversees both of those pieces but um we are we have been looking at ways to um retain teachers and a lot of it was looking at finding ways to support them there was a lot of issues out there with social emotional support uh that's what we're doing a little bit with the um Insurance committee um trying to find more supports um through our vendors um we're doing kind of a this theme with supporting you this year trying to find ways to um support teachers that's why we have the SWAT teams out there for elementary buildings so we've done some things to help some of the things that we heard that were concerns for them we've put in uh ways to help um you know address some of those needs so it's kind of doing a little bit of everything at the same time okay but I was surprised to learn today at our insurance committee meeting that supposedly several teachers have left because of the class I going to say I was going to say that and so we are looking into that also that's great yeah yeah because I think it's not just one reason I think there's a lot of reasons and I think it's like plugging the holes right you're trying to figure out um same thing in our district I think is with other districts too you lose people and they come here or they leave here and they go somewhere else I mean you're always finding ways you're always going to find ways because everybody leaves for a different reason you're trying to figure out why so I think one of them we lost all our Deans well we've adjusted that issue you know right so and it is always a moving Target we're trying to U address what we can when we get information and that is a concern of ours thank you thank you thank you uh Alex for just being an advocate for our teachers and I think we all are but we're bringing that to our attention thank you so much any other old business oh I did allude to uh Dr koganes and her her board I don't want to say her board her cabinet her cabinet bringing the board uh and efficiency plan of some Manner and Ken you can take credit once you guys get that together you can take credit for something you did today with the residency issue making that process more efficient so I'm sure that's work in progress so just get the give the board an update on where we are with uh efficiency plan when you get a chance not next week it could be when I know you got a lot on your plate but that is something that we ask for okay all right any new business if not I would like a motion to go into close session for the reason being the appointment employment compensation discipline performance or dismissal of specific employees specific individual individuals who serve as independent contractors in a park and motion so moved second move by Nelson uh second by Alex any discussion we should be in close session for 59 minutes there about there were no further action after we come out a Clos session so we got a motion on the floor no further comments or discussion roll call please Madam Secretary okay well rup is and I Mr swales hi Miss site sters I Mr Al I Mr gagos I Dr Hall I president Brown okay I we are going to

[Music] hi I'm on Bridge Run and welcome to this uh Bon briefs episode in this episode um we have an exp Linda Heimer uh who is going to be talking to you a little bit about long-term care insurance uh so I'm often when I talk to clients as most folks know I do nothing but elder law I'm dealing with these issues all the time and this question always comes up how do we try to deal with if somebody either needs nursing home care or needs a lot of Care at home in order to avoid going to a nursing home and for those of you who can in specific situations I really suggest one of the things you got to talk to about is whether long-term care insurance solves this problem so I asked Linda to join me to talk about that Linda can you just give the folks who are watching a little background about about you and how you ended up doing this uh and about kind of the who you who you typically see as a long-term care insurance applicant and and and what their issues tend to be and then we can kind of go for ab absolutely so my name as as you mentioned is Linda taller been specializing in long-term care insurance for over 23 years my background is that I am an occupational therapist I have my masters in healthc care administration and I transitioned from healthc care into long-term care insurance when I saw the challenges of of uh the nursing home setting that they were becoming more challenging setting settings to provide uh you know the real high level quality of care and so my clients are people who tend to be planners um or have seen the high costs of care and they're trying to figure out how do we stay in our homes longer and better and how do we afford the very expensive cost of long-term care giving us more choices and options um in in a more cost-effective way that's a that's a that's a wonderful quick quick summary and so let's let's just kind of talk about um a couple of things the first I know when people hear long-term care insurance they're thinking nursing homes how do we make sure that I've covered for the nursing home cost and they're not often not thinking about the cost of not being in the nursing home the co which because of which is everybody's last possibility oh my God keep me out of a nursing home right um and so and so for those folks can you talk about what what that long-term care policy might offer in terms of Home Care in terms of dealing with assisted livings can you just kind of talk about that for a little bit absolutely yeah so I actually call long-term care insurance nursing home avoidance policies nobody wants to go to a nursing home and the reality is that the nursing home is where people go when they don't have any money those are the settings that are covered by Medicaid home care and assisted living are private pay settings generally speaking and they are very expensive so for example in Massachusetts the average cost in home care is about $37 an hour you can't get anyone to walk into your house for one hour of care it will be a minimum of four so you're talking about you know $4,300 a month just to get one hour of care and home care and I usually tell people this is the most important amount of money for a long-term care policy to cover because when you need care and you know you need an hour an hour and a half a care and you have to pay four hours a care people say you know I'll just do it myself and and that is the beginning of the end because families get overwhelmed and then people end up in facility settings sooner than than they would otherwise so having that opportunity to to quickly access care stay in their homes longer and better is great um assisted livings expensive right so we're looking at averages in Massachusetts about $6,500 a month you know the nicer ones up around 75 8,000 and if it's a dementia unit It's Not Unusual to find them at $11,000 a month so very close to the cost of nursing home care right absolutely absolutely in fact I tell people that the you know it's in the ultimate planning it is to uh set yourself up so you can go to an assisted living and supplement your care and stay out of nursing homes right because nursing homes have become places for the very sick and the very poor which is not a good Financial mix right right and that you know the the as I spoke to spoken to people about and I remember thinking about it from myself you know because I say to myself I have I have so I'm the last of six kids I I have a one my oldest sister died of cancer a couple years ago but she would would have been 89 my next sister is in a nursing home right now excuse me and then he's she's in her mid 80s my next brother should be in a or would be in a nursing home except that he's at home because his wife is taking care of him but it's really hard they don't have a lot of resources and they hate to be and it's a finite pile of res s ources so they're trying to figure out how to manage she doesn't want him to end up in a nursing home but she's killing herself and I and I I regularly talk to my clients that say you know when you have a husband who's or a spouse who was going through this the last thing the worst thing you can do for that spouse is die if you die your spouse at that point is a really going to be depressed that you're not there and B is definitely going to a nursing home and and and and I also kind of talked to him about the fact that you know the thing about the nursing home care is that it inevitably there are there are practically no singles in a nursing home so that to the extent that an important part of your life is your privacy right in the best nursing home you can't get it you know because you're in a double and you're you know the other person has got their own lives and people are coming in so trying to figure out how to do this home the home pieces are really really important right absolutely now can you can you know one one of the things that people get concerned about though they're talking about the long-term care insurance of course we're always talking about a can I really qualify and then B aren't the premiums going to kill me right so can can you just can you talk a little bit about that right absolutely so let's talk about the the additional protections that longterm care insurance provides most people aren't aware that a very small policy two years $130 a day no inflation even up to a a year of elimination period um for a 55-year-old couple who was not in fantastic Health you know they got a little high BL blood pressure a little anxiety they might have had a hip replacement $100 a month for the couple so we're talking very very little money to get a long-term care policy to provide a catastrophic protection which is the protection of your home in Massachusetts by the way that's that's a great that's a great example I do a lot of work um in my own area in matro west but I do a lot of work in the is and N talk in Martha's Vineyard a lot and I told houses are worth2 million you know and and and but I tell people you get this little policy and now your house is Sav it maybe that your other assets may be exposed but you're not your house you know yeah so and so in um so actually it was in 1995 I believe that the um in two I'm sorry excuse me 2005 that the um the the law changed bit so you can't hide everything in your house it's a graduating increasing number in your house it's it's about $890,000 that is protected in a primary home and the reason for that was just as you were saying many people were throwing all their money into a home to to to hide it so they are they are trying to cap it but still it's a huge protection and if you have any people in any in the surrounding states like Rhode Island you know for example Connecticut there are partnership policies which you can protect dollar for dooll so every dollar you receive from your policy is protected um against your estate um one of the other things that I think is important is a lot of people are concerned about the cost and what I tell people is this is that you know this is all about leveraging the insurance companies are looking at 100,000 people in a room and they're saying how many of these people are going to end up in claim and for how long so there's no question that putting money into a long-term care policy is going to be the strong strongest leveraging of your money as opposed to an investment um and for those who are concerned that they may put money into a policy and not use it we have hybrid policies that return the premium and interestingly those policies have reduced significantly in fact one of those hybrid companies have reduced 24% in the last few months due to the high interest rates so there's no better time to be looking into hybrids with this return of premium and within the last month we have the first hybrid cash policy shared so that means that you could have for example eight years of coverage between a couple first one can use all of it first one could use nothing everything's left to the air and if no one uses it the whole premium or greater than the premium is left to the airs tax that's a pretty wonderful yeah that's a pretty wonderful policy so can you talk a little bit about eligibility I know the went the first issue people talk about is premium the other issue is how could I possibly qualify you know and and and just talk about so is is there a magic age above which this is really out of the question at this point for you to get a long-term care insurance policy no age is the the least of my concerns um so we're really talking about uh 18 to 84 off as as an opportunity the biggest thing we worry about is health and health does decrease your opportunities although I do have an 83 year-old who just received got a policy so um the the key is that I always tell people they're younger they're better for those people who have lots of money and planning on leaving money in a state I en encourage them to get a long-term care policy for their kids while their kids are young and healthy as as a part of Estate Planning and they can you know they can pay it up in a single pay or over 10 years and uh but in terms of this insurability there are home care policies that are not insurance that I help people with that provide home care with no insurability at all as long as you are independent with your daily living skills your community living skills and you're still driving so as long as you can do all those things you could have a mild dementia you could have MS you could Parkinson's you could have had a stroke but as long as in those that moment that you're signing you are independent you can still get that that Home Care policy that's a huge that's a big big deal because I often I once again I'm often talking to folks who are saying if you're a couple and one of you needs to qualify for Mass Health because you're in the nursing home I we can shift assets around we can get you qualified into like all cases right the the the issue though is and that there isn't I tell them there isn't Mass health program that will help you try to stay home the frail waiver program right but the problem in that case is that you're so constrained in terms of the caregivers you could get because you're stuck with only the caregivers who have signed on with the regional uh a the regional Aging Services access point as opposed to you really being able to find any caregiver that kind of works for you right but I had no idea until you just said that that there existed a policy that could deal with those issues that didn't have the kind of more serious con eligibility constraints to them that a long-term care insurance policy might have yeah absolutely and actually these policies start much earlier um than long-term care so um you know for example I I got this policy uh from my father-in-law when he was uh 85 years old and he start to access benefits at 88 and used him until he was 90 and so the the definition is just that you need help so these are really designed around keeping people in their own home um shopping laundry uh food prep money manage I mean uh yeah it could be money management it can be um food uh preparation and then gradually increasing to the daily living skills and um as well so I I try to to tell people when I'm talk toing about this whole cluster of issues they say look your attorney isn't going to be the expert on this you know it's like when people look for me for financial advice I'm going like wrong person you know I understand a little chunk of the world this elder law I don't understand that so so I just really try to encourage them to just to talk to somebody right so do so do do you find yourself just it obviously doesn't cost anything to talk to you right and are you um do you have people like just from all over or are you in a specific geographical area yourself you know yeah so um so I I live in Massachusetts but I am a national expert in long-term care and I um provide long-term care uh education as well as as right people across the entire United States and um and so I'm actually a trainer for agents so as well that's great so what I'd like you to do and I know that you know we we'll put up a slide at the end of this right and and so that'll have your contact information for folks that may want to just talk to you about to get more information but in the meantime can you just give folks you know once again a lot of my clients they're still emailing like yeah maybe right so can you just talk about a phone number what is the best best number to reach you sure sure so the best number to reach me at is 201124 99 and an easy way to remember me is to think about long life planning if you're going to live a long life you need to plan so longlife planning.com and all my information will be there and they can also click on a link and schedule a time and uh but feel free to email or text or call I'm I'm open and I do uh love educating people and helping you make an informed decision with regards to long-term care planning so Linda thank you so much for coming on I really appreciate it so folks once again this is the point about long-term care insurance is like you know you call and you check on and stuff and you know if you get turned down it isn't like they're going to sue you you know you just get turned down just no right so you have to check this out this is an important piece of how you may want to think about really protecting your assets for your family that's really the goal of this is to make sure that after you die your that the family gets the assets and not just home just care providers so thank you very much for watching Linda thank you very much for tuning in uh and folks I hope you enjoy this and and and check my website with my my uh YouTube channel once again elder law Frank and Mary to look for other burgon briefs episodes that it may be of interest to you thank you very much perfect thank you so much hi I'm art Bon and welcome to this Bon briefs episode uh today we are talking with my friend Scott aen from Cornerstone Bank about an issue or a part a POS a solution to an issue that comes up with my elder law clients all the time as folks know um I always talk about my friends Frank and Mary and their kids Peter Paul and Mary Jr the joke is if you you know if you can get the joke you're old enough to be my client and and their goal which is to live in their house until they die and be buried in the backyard and ideally leave as much as they can to their kids not to the nursing home not to the government to their kids um but what often comes up for my folks you know is you get older and you got a house and you killed yourself to pay off the mortgage right or maybe there's a small mortgage left um but you don't have a lot of money you're on a fixed income now you're getting Social Security and pension you got a little bit of cash but you got a house and your goal is to stay in your house forever but it's a house and houses are expensive you know stuff happens with a house it's not $5 dollar it's a thousand a year it's 10,000 there and so you're trying to figure out that and you're also trying to figure out as you get older you know you never never never want to go to a nurs nursing home which means you want to stay in that home and it may be that there are some home things that you need to do to make that home safer for you right because I tell my clients you know you can you can live in your home for a long time but just don't fall down you know do not fall down right um or you may just need some help you may just need some personal help and you don't have the kind of savings you know to deal with that personal help so in all of those issues I often tell people I know you say forever and you really want to leave the house to the kids but you want to stay in your house until you die so how do you do that Y and so I asked Scott to come on and talk about those issues so Scott can you just tell us a little bit about um you know you and Cornerstone Bank and how the two of you ended up being connected uh and talk a little bit about those issues okay yeah so again like Arthur said my name is Scott Allen I'm the Executive Vice President of retail lenion at Cornerstone Bank uh I I've been with the bank for 11 years you know quarterstone Bank was uh derived from a merger between Spencer bank and southb Savings Bank uh I've been in the financial services industry for over 30 years I worked for larger institutions small institutions in the midwest on the East Coast so I have a broad range of experience and exposure to uh all types of financial issues um you know what what you're talking about with the home equity um it's a big product right now for us and we've seen a very big uptick in home equity lending really is around 2021 because interest rates dropped um homes appreciated you know through the roof so there's this wealth of available funds and equity and you know speaking to you know your type of clients qualifying for that and be able to getting that um you can definitely get done and it's easy to do but there are a little bit of nuances to it which we can talk about today Arthur and that's and I kind that's what I'd like to do so you know think think about say so I'm Frank and Mary and I'm trying to weigh my options in in that situation I have the house I have a little bit of extra cash but what I really want in in in in in this case which I hope and I try to make the typical case it's not an emergency yet it's not an emergency yet I'm not I don't need a check for $100,000 tomorrow you know but I want but I want to sleep well at night I tell my clients you get to our age you know and fame and fortune has pass Us by you just want to get a good night's sleep right so I want and it's going to help me sleep knowing that I because I think about these possibilities you know what if the roof goes on the house and what if I need a deceptic system or or what if I need I am personally more disabled and therefore either need to change the house to add things you know to add whether it is something to get me to the second floor or or flights or whatever or I need some Care at home H how can I how can I sleep better at night yeah and and that's with obtaining a home equity line of credit and ideally they should be thinking about this before they retire during there years of you know higher income it'll be much easier for them to qualify but let's say they've already retired and they're on that fixed income whether it's pension Social Security we can still qualify but we have to qualify him off of that new income stream so it can still get done but we have to look at really their ability to pay it back but the beauty of of those emergencies and sleeping well at night is having that home equity line of credit in place because you only will have to pay it back when you utilize it so it's that flexibility and be able to access those emergency funds when you need it is really the main driver why you should have a home equity and retirement so so can you talk talk to me or talk to us it is now you know it's August of 2023 and the rates have gone up you know and and and so can you just talk talk a little bit about if a person came in say they've got their house and it's worth $500,000 not an unusual house anymore right $500,000 no mortgage this Frank and Mary they've got their you know and he's getting Social Security of a couple thousand she's getting half of his so she's getting a thousand so they get income about $3,000 a month and once again what I'm telling you you've heard a ion times you know in these kind of variations right C can you just kind of walk it walk Frank and Mary through what the process would be that the that the bank would use if they came in to kind of analyze um what what their what what might be available to them and then if they wanted to to go through with this and use what what I always remember these used to be called Improvement loans or what and I keep thinking home equity lines of credit are helocs right but if they want to be they want to be accessing that what are they going to need to go through to do that how are we going to figure out how much they could afford to get as a line of credit I always tell people what this is a social this is like a this is a credit card that's supported by a mortgage you know right so how big a credit card and you get a credit card limit it's a credit card right so how much credit can you get and what are you going to have to go through in order to get it in terms of um of upfront costs and closing costs and any of this Jazz and then down the line how's that going work sure you know how long does the line of credit run for when you know when if ever does this have to get paid off you know as often people are comparing this to like a reverse mortgage so you're saying you know you know which where am I going so and I know you're you're you're you're shaking your head but that that's why I want you to understand how why they should be coming to that conclusion sure they would simply you know come in one of our local branches we would sit down with them take maybe 15 20 minutes spill out a simple application then getting into the qual fation process it's really looking at their credit which we're assuming is typically always very very good um how much Equity they have a ton of equity and then we'll look at what their income is you know pay stubs um Social Security pension have they been taking any draws out of their investment accounts and then based on all those characteristics we would determine how much they would be eligible for and the mechanics of the helck is there's a draw period and a repayment period and the draw period is typically around 10 years where they can access those funds and draw it down and typically most lenders there is no fee if you don't utilize it all lenders are different um and that that payment is typically an interest only payment which is tied to Prime and granted Prime has gone up but again you're only going to pay and it it's only interest only payments during the draw period and it's only interest only payments on the money that you've used not the entire amount of the line of credit right exactly only amount you use so you want really want to think about you know it's not be to be used as an income stream it's really for you know Home Improvements emergencies things like that or you want to help your kids out with a down payment or something major or significant um and typically the there's a margin tie to it whether it's prime plus or prime minus you know Prime minus a half every lender is different and there's a typically a floor rate which is around three or 4% um and and and once again if I were walking in today and you know once this is August of 2023 if I were walking in today about what would that rate look like about well for us we're Prime minus a half so that would be 8% I get it yes Prime is eight and a half um but we also have a future where once you open the home equity line of credit you can take a fixed rate advance and lock that in for a period of time whether it's 5 10 or 15 years but you're starting to pay that back and amateuring payment but the advantage of that is it's a fixed payment and a lower interest rate I see I see so so so these when when I think about HELOC I'm thinking about something that's more kind of cut and dry but you're telling me that at at corstone because you're doing a lot of this stuff you're also looking at different variations on that theme really in order to accommodate what the uh what the customer is looking for right exactly and then you get you get into the repayment period That's typically a little bit longer than the draw period but at that point in time you can no longer draw on the funds the repayment period runs from anywhere from 10:15 I've seen some as far as 20 and that payment is really an amateurz payment so you're starting to pay back principal and interest and this is a good point to remember for you know Frank and Mary that payment should be or will be significantly higher than the interest only payment right of course because now you're paying back principal so during that qualification process up front we try to qualifying them to avoid what we call payment shock right we don't want to be shocked by a large payment if you have to pay all that back over the repayment period so that's why it's we want to put them in you know the the right credit limit knowing they the ability that they have back and and when you're and when you're doing that kind of qualification is your analysis of ability to repay based on the the ability to repay the interest only or or be on the ability to pay if they if they start in that at that point where they're actually having to repay the principle yeah we we try we look at it as far as if they drew the entire credit limit out yeah and that payment during the repayment period so we we are qualifying that much higher than the interest only payment and most lenders do that and they should do that right because that's you don't want to put them in a situation you know and I guess from my from Frank and Mary's perspective therefore right if they were if they were doing this you know they they they might really want to be looking at once again H how old they are when they do this because you're telling me that in the typical package you've got interest only for 10 years and then that other thing kicks in and and and and you're saying to yourself well I don't want this other thing to be kicking in and I'm like 90 years old and I've got like and now really because the older you get the more you're kind of stressed in terms of these finances right that's what and that makes sense to look at that up front right so it does and you know the you know you are accumulating debt and like you said it is a basically simplistically a credit card tied to your home right and you want to make sure you use it wisely and um you know it's a better tool than say pulling down funds from your investment accounts right especially in a down Market you know you're losing um you know wealth accumulation by pulling those funds out right and it's better off utilizing that helck and then when the market turns around then maybe utilizing those funds to pay back the helck and by not drawing into your investment accounts you you're avoiding you may be a tax implication right because that's the other issue most of most of these folks you've got my classic folks you've got a house and you paid off the mortgage and you've got some tax deferred you've got a you've got a 401k that turned into an IRA you you've got some tax deferred so the one of the other advantages I tell people of doing doing the the HELOC is that you're not having to pay income tax on those Reserve funds at this point you may want to kind of save those for later on and you just and you know once again ideally people say yeah but then what if I die and I always say well that solves all the problems dying is not the problem you know living well until you die is the problem right dying solves all issues right so can you you just also just talk a little bit about what's getting they walked in the door and they're thinking about this what's it going to cost them to to do this and is it related to the amount that they're borrowing because because once again when they're trying to compare apples and apples you know they're they're looking at this worth versus a reverse mortgage where where the I tell people The Upfront costs are really really high so you you need to really be absolutely comparing right yeah and for us in really most lenders there are no upfront fees for the home equity line of credit unless you get into a a much larger credit limit request or a higher LTV then yeah there might be some cost Associated but it it's it's marginal compared to especially a reverse mortgage or doing a full first mortgage refinance so and there isn't a kind of an expected automatic fee like a point or a percent or two two percent I say we we majority of our hel loocks there are no fees to take it out right and then and then I know that also I tend to be the one of the biggest fees on this the the attorneys tend to be big fees when it's when it's a first mortgage right been my experience that's much that's a much lower that's much lower because a lot of that is handled internally when it's a HELOC or a second it is we don't get full title insurance we get a property rund down title report uh you know rarely do we have to get a full appraisal um it's typically just a uh automated valuation um very quick you know typically we close them with less than 30 days it's really a a very simple process for most applicants of course you get into the the larger requests or more complicated borrowers um it might be a little more more to it but really not much more and it's pretty straight pretty straightforward so yeah I really appreciate you're doing you know taking the time to do this I think these are these are questions that folks come up with all the time and we'll have a slide that we ask we'll ask you to you know to give us with your your contact information or the contact information for the Bank you know whoever they should be calling but I just I just like you to leave people with so if there are questions who should they what is the number who should they call who should they talk to right yeah they can reach out to me directly and uh my phone number is 0945 or if you go to our website Cornerstone bank.com um you can search for our lenders and any of our mortgage loan officers anybody in their Branch can help you with this product um it it's pretty simple straightforward um you going to a local lender that liveing works where where you live I think is beneficial uh my suggestion is to shop around a little bit not all Hecks are traded equal um they're they're very similar in nature but they they can vary from um fees costs um interest rates um so it's important to really investigate those and and check them out and I think heck's a great product you know I I I encourage everybody to have one but they have to be be used responsibly uh and carefully uh because you don't want to use it as an ATM so to speak it it is emergency vehicle to help you out when needed and Scott and I know you're you're referring it to as an emergency vehicle but to me it's a sleep well at night vehicle it's that you want to use before the emergency right so you just know that if there's an emergency you're not going through anything you're just you know writing a check you know you're just and and and so I really appreciate you taking all this time you know and and and I hope that that uh that uh if folks have got questions F folks this is something you have to do if you're Frank and Mary if you want to stay at home if you've got limited other savings which is most people's situation you need to make sure that your house is available and I know you don't want to take use the money because you want to leave it all to your kids but what they're going to tell you is Ma look and Dad you you saved that money this is your money take care of yourself right and so this is an important tool for us so thank you very much Scott I really appreciate it and folks I hope you you know tune in to our on our YouTube channel you can find any number of these Bon briefs as well as other seminars that we do on other facets of elder law other facets of elder law so thank you so much all right thank you Arthur

to situations it speaks to not only to Har to school to be academic going out to the world and becoming nurses they becat whatever they choos to do they need to be that's app I hope we figure out because from the community's perspective right last year huge budget asking for all this stuff this year big budget asking for all these new teachers programs curriculums where we have certain individuals who telling us that we're spending two money for kid at one school you're spending this much already and your your ranking on a website is really high but then you look at these scores and you see well this 40% of kids not meaning in so it's hard I think for the public and for teachers to understand just what's going on we're spending all this money we're asking for more money asking for more teachers more programs we're talking about can you fail a class and still play a sport and now we're talking about academics still not where we want to be how do we get there what's what's the plan what are we doing and you answer some of that it's a fair question it's a very fair question what are we doing and part of the part of the discussion there is a difference between not meeting this which is a very small yeah there are a lot of there's that bulk of the kids who aren't on that graph it's partially different so there are weak areas strong areas we have to look at how literacy imps mathematics because so much of the is reading now you to read the question before you understand you got make inference say you know could think through what is what does you know t word mean I agre my kids when we get I see I know exactly what you're talking about are you doing homework in Elementary grades first grade second grade third grade are you requiring homework or I know my kids that homework is especially the elementary different different Middle High School at the elementary level it's for practice and preparation yeah it's like four questions it's done in 10 minutes but it's still something that needs to be done homework yeah oh than because you have a better idea because it's not the math you learned in school it's certainly not the math I well AR I learn Stone ta I know we kind of hijacked your presentation but I think personally I believe the conversation is better than just regurgitating what's on the screen because we've read that we've seen it we have questions I've asked a lot of questions I don't know if you guys have questions but wait there's more I wanted to make comment like you made a good point but I started to think about it you said we did a big ask for budget last year and we we got it but we really only a month and a half into using that budget like we're just starting with like the new tutors and everything so I think it's kind of hard to assess what we asked for that last year and how it's going this year it's an excellent point we should keep our eyes on that but I think we're only like middle of October 27 days yeah I remember is the big ask was not so much of the elementary level if you take up those three kindergarten cars and it reflected these this last year get it but these conversations totally one things that we're doing is that vertical we're having vertical staff meetings which we had to get the union to approve we're sharing across the schools so I see those numbers of there's a discrepancy there why um so we're gonna crack that we are so this is um I won't spend too much time on here just the different categories um and where we scored again by the two School schools and compared to the state have to skip through this pretty quickly are there any questions about this if anybody has any questions yeah we just have a conversation but I have to go through each one okay just real quick in science there's a science is fifth grade test tiet fifth grade the tiet eth grade um so it's kind of a cumul thing you can see again the two schools and where they stand one more time um there are the results over the last five years against the same graph for science um there was in the report a test that only Carol passed in the report I said that both scores went down that's because I'm not that good at cutting and pting um last year the scores went down and we were disappointed this the score is recovered so we were pleased with you know the recovery not necessarily the amount 74 I'll take I'll take a 74 on that test and I want to know what you did at your school to to make that big achievement whereas we kind of just went up up again it's not cohorts it's different groups of kids every year I mean BMS has a a steeper drop but also steeper recovery all right any questions about I have a question um so do you guys well I guess it's more like about curriculum in general do you give the same work like in second grade at Berlin are they getting the same worksheets that second grade in Boon gets and vice versa it's a bigger question so there's a curriculum yeah so like we do foundations yeah that's our five card and we do a k to 40 and there's a set approach to that over time but each classroom teacher one using hopefully that approach may see that her particular group of kids especially I can't speak to points but in berland we tend to put kids who are receiving services like pull out services for academics in one class yeah and then not the other so one class is always weaker so you would see different types of worksheets or practice sheets or other supports um depending on the needs of the kids so if you've done the big curriculum piece then we're going to trust teachers and this is where it gets tricky to supplement in response to what they see from your students so is it like every single page the same thing the same day no because they come kill me in my sleep which TR to make them do that um but the Fe should be the same you know so when we're talking about our inter reading program the stories are the same the expectations are the same the skill we're working on inference or whatever is the same but one teacher might realize my kids need this level of support this group needs this level of support our biggest challenge right now is getting them time to share their resources I'll do a quick a quick brag Christen Collins is my fourth grade ELA teacher you know in BO or Berlin rather we um platooned one teacher teaches both groups Ela the other teacher teaches both groups of me it lets them specialize a little bit more dig deeper into what they're doing and it has helped us um Kristen Collins has gone out because she didn't think that the resources in our reading program were explicit enough after we talked about writing last year so she went and developed this whole packet of things don't tell is St no good she's gone because we're copying a ton of stuff oh we're copying a ton of stuff for every got new cop what are you supposed to do huh we got you new copy what are you supposed to do not us because I get yell that because I use them too much why do you use them too much because my teacher say l colored cop truth also Christ found these really great resources um actually we were both together sorry question but teachers don't have time to sit with each other and share the resource and develop the trust to accept the resource one of the things I'm GNA I've already started bugging Carol about bug you guys about as well we need a half day professional develop and we've got a we've got a build that answer that they can sit together at Great level and find out these differ so very so at PD they come together that would be my plan so like next week we're going to be in the same building okay and we're having a staff meeting afterward to talk about writing all fourth grade teachers all third grade teachers that's the kind of work we need to do in big school districts it's routine in really good school districts it's routine it has not been our way how often you have it now this year we're G have what do we have seven we have almost a half day every month where you specifically meet it might not be we had a change to change number of days right and we have to take that into account and then we had we talk the cind mentioned that we talk the teachers into um having the second staff meeting of the month at the end of a PB day it only happened three times because of holidays and other things um but we just build that into that'll be more contract discussion we have to get them together we have really good teachers but they're different places and we've got to get them in the same place because until we do that we can't harness all the things that the towns are providing for us have shared V owners ACR the district part of it they can share the images it's getting them to work together because otherwise it's just like spam you know until you can sit down with Christen for example and go through and this is why this is working with this human they're not going to buy it they had to build up that relationship piece that trust pce and I go into classrooms every day and I'm like oh I never thought of that as a teacher can you share that with your peers they have limited time to do that um that group planning and sharing their ideas it's it's very limited right um no so the great resource in fourth grade was not shared with Boon and does boon split I feel like I should know the answer to this like they do where they have one doing all the ELA and one doing all that is that okay and is that something that might be looked into I just I'm sorry to keep drilling the Gap in the ELA is what kills me you know the math okay you that's relatively consistent between the schools but it kills me to see bees so far behind in the reading if we're using the same curriculum I just don't understand why that's my Fel there's a scheduling problem with it's harder to do when there's three when it's two it's a really easy oh because we have three classes well third grade doesn't have three and neither does fifth grade but yeah fourth grade has to yeah I get it I get that that type of stuff where we you know it's just harder if you're teaching all the subjects it's just little work and and one of the things we've talked about also is because we have certain grades with two and then three like say for instance last year I had three fifth grade teachers I didn't have them but they were there one went to fourth grade yes you're changing you get different standards they have to they have to get used to that they have to get used to that whole grade and there's been some I don't know how much um but flexibility with that of changing grades you get better if you keep on doing it be more consistent on that even if it means smaller class sizes some years smaller classro we have the teacher if you're saying it works John but you can't do it because like you said changing from year to year you just need to bite the bullet and just say we're always at three maybe it's 22 kids in a classroom one year and 16 the next year who knows I don't question we did I they used to do that absolutely is that partially they did it with science they did with science that's right what it was yeah we talk SL talks and talk about policy about having class it's time to do it so we have the teacher in the budget for Boon one teacher we could easily add in a second teacher and then you have three in every grade that's just something we have to decide if we want to do in this budget we already have one in for the fifth grade so Boon will have three at every level after this year if this budget passes do we want to add another one and that's an interesting question G to look at the numbers because I think you could probably get away with one one next year or you do it that way but yeah it depends on because the class that would have two would be the fourth grade and if you're trying to do this platooning do you just do it once it depends on your strategy I think if you came up with a plan and told us a plan I think support teachers buy it too took me a while teachers all right School accountability seconds colossal waste of time School the school accountability measure is designed to provide some num to incredibly low performing school districts Southbridge their accountability report would make you weak [Music] um for us it doesn't have a ton me just go back for a second so they look at MC scores they look at student growth they look at aism and they look at progress towards English proficiency we don't going to have a group big enough to do that so it's just those three categories and then they score as you that gring into two parts normative component the Criterion reference component go again this is the criterian reference component they look at those three categories that we just talked about achievement growth and anism and they assign you points based on your performance towards these measures so you can see there's a a difference between the two schools not a huge difference here um that last number 9.2 or 7.6 it's because the those three categories are weed to get kind of a function they also look at your lowest performing students and if you don't have a lowest performing subgroup we don't they look at your lowest performing 20 kids and lowest performing 20 kids is like you know most of a grade um and they look at each grade so there's not a lot of difference between the Berlin numbers from lowest performance in our regular slightly um o on the other this is that talked about this an entirely different story we're working on we're working on yeah those scores aren't great we're gonna get them up okay then just the last one they also that at normative Park it's a percentile thing um ber Memorial the 84th percentile meeting R seaing goals we just had a good year that's going to change next year but you know I'll take what I can get in boil and here's you know kind of where you go there you know even though the numbers are like significantly lower they're the 77 percentile so you can only imagine what the 50 percentile look if this is you know that high up um and that's why this report does not help us because it doesn't with that one little exception and then Sim is going to dig into they give you a list these are your lowest 20s questions about for tutoring it seems like you wait for the a we scores in the fall and then the ordinarily um the scores are done a little bit earlier um but the time it takes us to do the game f stuff and then we kind of go through with teachers in terms of a list kind of let kids settle curious like spring web sorry I this but the spring am web scores um they're handed out for Fort pres St um I didn't know like I feel like it's a lost opportunity BR work over the summer like if student is is struggling or not meeting goals for the year I don't know I don't know if you agree with that or you know that's I think that's a great question you know we pushed in this past year I remember Stephanie W did a whole thing on summer reading um and I would be satisfied I would argue that you get good result of reading two hours a week pick whatever you want I don't care you Captain Underpants the bridge to terapy I don't care what it is a lot of reading is just practicing um but yeah that is something we could probably talk about later in the school year there other things or is there something that parents want B John Bri great well was it it was okay anybody else have any questions am have next time yeah I think so right so we're not okay we're not going to look at the original the right the scores right off the bat we're gonna look at it next month is all right that's fine thank you all right that was good I know pretty good that's not bad yeah okay uh thank you very much for putting that together um yeah work to do but uh We've covered most of business items we just have BBS Surplus left so I have a motion to BS Surplus jie second second Megan NY real quick what do we got here I'm looking at computer tables and Library tables computer tables Library tables pretty much all stuff we are going to open up to the town's people and not and we also just ordered a storage bin for outside and we are going to clean anybody questions conversations you put through the towns we'll communicate through the towns oh yeah all right any other questions no all in favor all right motion passes sorry I didn't realize uh okay the motion passes uh that brings us to any future agenda items anybody have anything interesting we talk about t what's that the yearbook what about the yearbook the hand okay cool Julie and I had talked about um what's this talking about this about colleges the colleges seeing the schools that um coun Department that's in the counseling department okay that's what I thought and then U October 24th we're having session right yeah yeah first session with Mars using buds how we approach those for Regional Schools and that's from 5 to 7 we'll take a 15 minute break and then we'll go into our discussion excellent all right um Mo toour today's meeting Megan all in favor I I against all right thank you very much know

they need something so I did put that in there as well any question so did we not last year the money just sat in the undesignated account we never designated it is that why there's so much in there yes okay and now we're going to designate it I like yeah it's been there for a while just the commission from the photographies been building up in it right how much is that each year um a little under a thousand depending on the school size can I add to that so I went to Michelle hayum who's been working at the school for a while and she said it ranges from, 1500 to 2,000 sometimes it depends how many photos are bought right so it does range right and the pack yeah what packages they got yeah just a quick technical noted volume issue with the stream back up it's back up now okay did they not hear us Miss we can do a retake tomorrow at school all right sorry about that uh okay any other questions no there was a third one there were two clubs that um have not been there before the other funding is just taking that money and putting it into the other clubs that already exist good you got that all great all right so s these are four these are four after school clubs essentially the Garden Club would be during school during with curriculum for science um the other one student council that the kids are showing a big interest in that too that kind of went to the Wayside again that promotes leadership and it has them have a voice and what is going on in the school that would be after school as well that would need an advisor and the other one so was kindness comic and those two those two are already existing and there are a few others that I didn't touch I just didn't know the history of them we have a Civics Club a jazz club and there's one other one I didn't know enough about the history to kind of change those monies the monies around there so we're going to keep those status quo for now great good job thank you all right so let's move this business item up see we'll take them all together one under business items there we have a motion to approve the undesignated funds for the B Club transfers Lisa and second for Jess iard Jess second all right any discussion on this okay all in favor against okay I in that motion passes as well so congratulations [Applause] maybe later in the year once it's ongoing for a little bit they come back and show some progress or something all right feel free to stick around and watch the rest of me if you want uh all right thanks [Music] everybody all right so consideration is all set now all right thank you we'll move back up to the the top of the agenda is anybody here want to make a public comments going one public comments anyone all right does anyone have any Communications to bring forward all right I have a motion to approve the consent agenda please second Julie second Megan second any discussion on that all right all in favor of the consent agenda I against all right the motion passes thank you moving on to reports uh I don't have much to say other than uh I do have an item on the agenda for SRO and schools uh the town of oils and select board inviting the school committee to come talk to them and their upcoming meetings about exactly what we see as in schools um Carol I think you're going to speak to a little bit about that but just for Logistics reasons uh I Megan Jess myself are gonna go to that meeting with Carol I specifically did not bring a full quum from the school committee to that meeting just so we're not bound to any decisions that we might make at that meeting anything that does come from that meeting we would come back to a regular full school committee meeting with public comments and anything else like that if we needed to do anything so that's the reasons for that but Carol you have anything to say about the SRO position yeah Chief anci and I had many conversations about this position since we voted um we we signed anou in 2021 we just haven't solidify this with the towns and that's what we're going forward to do he and I are on the same page that one resource offic would be appropriate for the two schools toono in royon elementary because the intention of that position is to really be relationship building position and a safety position for the schools but not a security guard in the schools um I also I put in my report that should a Crisis occur that person is prepared to do what they need to do but in general it's really for relationship building um and and reaching out to the community reaching out supporting and children so we want to go in that direction at this time and then the other piece of it that would be funded through the department the police department rather than our department because they utilize these officers when they're not with us um and there's also contract decisions there that they handle we wouldn't be a part of doing their contract negotiations and so on so that's what we're advocating for but this is something we talked for quite some time about on this we signed an mlu in 2021 we W be able to move anybody have any question comments on that I was just wonder why not doing two one for the high school and one for the yeah I both of us talked about this a lot and both of us felt that we really didn't need to have the particular position somebody to the school time think just spent even inand they have an office it's not really for that purpose I think which is perhaps the intention the thought of some folks that it should be St all day but definely purpose of office so there some a little bit of a misc misunderstanding maybe as a a resource officer Community relationship ability not a security guard correct and working in conjunction with the administrators um around ch issues in the school and really problem solving those not being there to to enforce law in a way you think of it or certainly not enforce any disciplinary actions and that's very clear in the so anyone's interested in I thinkable to understand we're asking a policy yeah it's masc policy regarding police officers yeah unless it's aelony we just last year okay any other questions comments question are you going to be publicizing the schedule where the police officers will be in the schools or will that just be it's a very good question and they will not do that that's one of the one of the best place they operate is to keep moving in different ways throughout the two schools is a great question no they would not adti else I think also um when this came up last year I was working on the Massachusetts site and there is very specific hiring criteria for SRO and so I was very reassured about who like what they look for in the candidate um that is actually outl there that's a profile that's important to both of usief and myself he is keeping in mind the right candidate for that and in addition there's an valory process for that individually each year so we will be able to to look at what that person has done or hasn't done determine whether they stay position I appreciate the work that you and chief did this is very important to the community it's important to us I just think really nice to have that those extra people in the building and just of the relationship building a small town to get to know it's very very effective thank you okay uh next we're going to introduce the town C Council representative Emerson Walsh who's gonna introduce yes Emerson this is Emerson Walsh she is part of the student advisory Council so um with um Rich Karen myself the high school um advisory Council discusses pertinent topics that the students bring up and you know are important to them and so Emerson has um taken on this role to report to all of you so so far the school year has been up to a very strong start firstly Danto was awarded the Blue Ribbon award which is an honor that's only bestowed upon 353 schools nationally and seven Statewide so this means that we get the criteria of an exemplary school if we stand out from the rest of the country which has been a great Honor made people very confident in their gring here um as for our freshmen they have transitioned very smoothly into high school life they already started coordinating and planning all their events they have many ideas the sophomores are doing the same they just submitted their fors for their personalized class rings so those should be coming in soon um the Juniors have been doing great fundraising as well they have been in very high demand for to Haun crew NE next that have been you can hear that all around the school everyone's looking to buy those they along with their families kept up with the PTO tradition to put on a breakfast for the seniors which was kind of our first senior event that we kicked off the year with we also had senior Sunrise which was super fun um for the student advisory Council our main focus is student involvement because Tonto we have so many like responsibilities and opportunities because we're super small community but we have many clubs from any interest you can find a club for basically anything here and there's so many opportunities for leadership and everything volunteering through that um we have many events coming up we have our first spirit week on Monday and then our pep rally on Friday followed by homecoming also on Friday um we have our bonfire on the 26th and I know many clubs are starting their meetings in to plan we do Cafe for cause every year um it's usually on Fridays usually once a month and each Club signs up and everyone has to sign up in the beginning of the year else you don't get a cafe but we do a lot of fundraising for Charities um NHS already had one and I know we're doing a lot of planning for that bonfire and we're planning a blood drive upcoming soon um for tont sports all the teams have been doing super incredible The Joint um Tonto West Boon varsity football teams undefeated so far and yeah we're all just super excited and looking forward to the year thank you all right thank you uh moving on to sub committee updates uh Megan do you have an update on the budget facility sube um not really we well we met and we discussed the budget that nany's is going to present tonight so I won't steal her Thunder but Julie and I thought it was a really solid first pass at a budget Jess do you have an update success and Technology we did meet between okay Laur you have for superintendent valuation yep we met on Friday it was myself Jess and Megan um we are Reviving the superintendent evaluation subcommittee um and there's a few things in the drive for people to take a look at um one of the things that I'd like to comment on as we were going over the smart the smart tool which is you know all the different parameters that you're supposed to have in your goals and you rock to Carol with your goals we went through and we compared it to the tool that we were supposed to give you ahead of time and you did phenomenally so um we're really happy with that um and so what we'll be doing is going to be talking in the future about what will be happening as we move along look for a training possibly um and everything's kind of on a little bit of a tighten timeline but I think we can do it and with the help of Carol's goals we went over the evaluation model which we struggle with in the past the way that you wrote your goals is really helpful and I think it's going to help us with that model so we again I don't want to tell who dumping Praise on you but I we're so grateful because it just makes it so much easier for us to go through and do the evaluation it's very meeing so we're using ADR no meeting for the next meeting yeah all right to meet to uh all right that takes care of sub in next up you have a report for us yeah I I I have a report I wanted to go over a couple things um we looked at the SRO SRO already I wanted to bring attention to the fact that the tours of the school are mentioned before there was some great outcomes of that things got fixed and addressed pretty quickly the swing set or the um tire swing and a number of other areas I also want to mention something that I did have this information on Friday afternoon I got an email from fire chief Michael qu in kland um who drew this tour and and some extra fun he has going to add two additional aeds into because he recognizes the importance of that Community Center as well as a school so they're going to put one upstairs actually I think there's three and then two Outdoors as well so these tours these opportunities for folks to see the building see what's going on in there to order the scoreboard um that was broken right or the shop clock that was broken a couple other areas that we we just got on right away so they're very very helpful in moving things ahead so that was a good effort and much appreciated um the other the other question I had for you in in reflecting on on outcomes of our last meeting is to help me and and we can have a little ad hoc committee or if somebody wants to work with me in light of the curriculum review and how we want to approach that what would that look like and I don't think we need to spend unless you want to during a school committee meeting time figuring that out but we want to make it effective and efficient for everybody including members of the school committee you know when do you come in we have a number of review committees going forward this year John has two come in about social studies and science you know when does the school committee want to enter that um and questions like that what is a criteria that we're going to use we have a biased sheet you'll see that in the drive but that's part of it I mean it's a whole process so um Janelle is going to talk about a c material that she has tonight that that she needs for special education it's kind of a different gu and trying to decide what so I need help on that and I think the more we can get on C page and clarify that will help us to look to move forward so I I reach out to you for guidance speaking of the the building tours next year having the burlin fire there is sort of SP of the moment wasn't necessarily plan I think we should plan for espe have those guys too know it is kind of funny how that evolved because we didn't know wasn't that we left people out intentionally folks to show up they kind typical of you know I kind of our towns are like they're just like that speaks to the other hey you come you come tooy party a good party so was fine informative and just some great results anybody have questions or comments Carol all right most interesting part here let's go director financing operations talk about the budget okay so I thought I'd start with closing out of the fiscal year 23 budget before we approached our new budget if that's okay um so you'll find in your drive there's two spreadsheets that CLS up fiscal year 23 budget the first one says fiscal year 23 urine figures this is um split you'll see if you look at it there's columns in blue and columns in pink so the columns in blue are where we started at the beginning of the year with how you approve the budget The Columns in pink are where we ended up where we closed the year as of June 30th there really wasn't anything significant so the first the first page is the district wide and then when you go to the next Pages it's individually for each school I thought to save time I would just present this as districtwide and then if you have any questions let me know so for the category and I use the same categories that I present to you on a quarterly basis so it's the same categor the first category is Administration which is consists of our school committee superintendent Finance technology and Human Resources so we started off with this being 5% of the budget and it closed being 6% of the budget increasing but approximately 53,000 that was due to change of administration mid year um we also had some turnover in our district offices so change of personnel there and we had some increases in conferences and memberships under instructural support and instruction that's our teachers teachers pair of professionals special education and structural supplies we started off the year with it being 56% of the budget and it closed at 58% of the budget which is approximately 382,000 increase um that's a movement in Personnel increase of sub coverage and we have an increase in our legal line now which is just due to change of our eal La fir that we changed during the year other services which is nursing and transportation we have the savings we uh started the budget at 8% of the budget and it Clos at 6% of the budget last year um that's all due to decrease in transportation we had a tough year of Transportation last year we got a decrease on our invoicing maintenance and operations that's anything facilities maintenance custodio utilities so we had a pretty State at 8% it's all rounded even though it's $111,000 increase we had a increase to our electricity line item landscaping and miscellaneous repairs to school fix charges this fluctuates this stayed right at 16% and actually went down a little bit 80,000 this fluctuates due to personnel with Benefits however you know they choose what benefits they want that's just a that that fluctuates a lot and lastly out of District tuition this is another one that fluctuates a lot it started at 7% we closed at 6% it doesn't mean that we have a savings in our a district tuition because we did not what changed is how we paid our AUD District tuitions we had movements between General funds or Brands and C breaker so we we closed very close to how we opened up the bud so that is a very quick overview um if anybody wants to dive into it any further or if you have any questions yeah okay so then oh the other thing I quickly wanted to touch upon is the revolving funds so you'll find a sheet that looks like that in the drive and it has our main revolving funds um quickly I'll go through quickly our school lunch program we came in for a he closing at $91,000 which is perfect preschool program we actually came in above than what I thought we would come in at but that's because we didn't have preschool teacher for part of the year so that gave us the savings they're closing that at 114,000 after school programs we're closing that in about 93,000 um Athletics Athletics one that I wanted to touch about touch upon for the past several years my predecessor um took landscaping and transportation out of the athletic revolving line items over time that's kind of been bringing the balance down for the athletic revolving so this year we have to build that back into the budget um or it's going to drop it down significantly we began fical year 23 at 112,000 and we're ending it at 74,000 um but if we build the transportation and the Landscaping back into the general budget we will be fine in that line item um I did ask the athletic director to start doing some benchmarking to see where we stand with the athletic fees compared to other school districts um he said that we athletic fees really haven't been touched before since 2019 I think he said so we so it's been a while so it's definitely worth branching into and seeing where we stand not saying we have to do it but we should do our theary responsibility and take a look at that um the other ones parking that's just a in and out we kind of use that as upkeep to the parking lot we need it school choice and circuit breaker they closed out fine um I'll definitely touch upon those more as we start building our fiscal year 25 budget you we always dive into those in detail uh Transportation that's a transportation involving uh it comes in and we use it every year it's just a wash um that is a really good overview of the CLS anybody questions I know yeah 250 per sport per kid or $600 Max for your family per sport yeah so if you have a kid that plays two sports you're going to pay $500 and then is there obviously I'm assuming if a family is unable to meet that they're still able to apply absolutely absolutely and Mr is very excited that on that end so then um now we'll move into the fiscal year 25 budget so the administrators and me and Miss Castello all met together went over above level service request for our fiscal year 25 budget it's very early in the year we did the best we can hopefully we captured everything as Megan and Julie will see then I'm going to point them out as we go through there's been additions since we even met on Thursday because you start talking and then you're like oh my gosh we have put this in there we didn't put that in there um so bear with us as we're putting all this in our purpose of doing this early is because we our meeting with the towns on October 24th so we we trying to give them indication of where we think we're going to stand this year um so I'll quickly go through these I think is this the file October 6 above level five say that again is this the file October 6 above level fin that is correct yes yeah there's two we'll start with that one in the interest of time yeah just hit the highlights perfect we've anybody has questions they can ask you yeah six pages y I'll be super quick so the first category is Personnel two we added in approximately 11 miscellaneous positions they're all necessary they're all part of the district Improvement plan um you will see that one is highlighted that means it's on our watch list we're not really sure where we stand with that at this time um and we'll Circle back and let you know where we stand with that as we move forward it so the total of personnel requests is $861,000 it a lot of miscellaneous line items couple software line items total is [Music] $65,100 Improvement plan um that comes to a total of $89,000 supplies and materials we added in supplies um from our last meeting with the school committee it was requested that we add in u no more parents no more Supply requesting supplies kind of dibu that out per student with the number of kids per school so we have that in there we're going to be having a preschool evaluation this year that's in there um that comes to a total of $68,000 transportation we are interested in adding an additional bus run for our Berlin town for Elementary in Tahanto um a Wednesday late bus in athletics as I stated we're going to put that in there so that's an additional 92,000 facilities uh bunch of miscellaneous stuff we did the additional classroom supplies that the kids kids usually bring in sanitizing paper towels stuff like that um and we added in the landscaping for athletics so that comes to 34,000 at the end of the day this comes to an approximately of 10% increase uh was calculated with 5.25% being the above level request 4.75 is General level is your general budget increase it's a $2.2 million request so last year's request last year's increase I'm trying to talk too fast through this last year's request was 18% this is a currently very preliminary at 10% anybody have any questions from Nancy on any of this specific items question can we I have question yes just can you go over the fourth but for Berlin yeah so currently the transportation from burlin takes approximately an hour for the kids to you know to go back and forth um it was requested by a decent number of parents to reverse the bus R in the afternoon so to reverse the bus route and then spoke it over with the bus company it's not a possibility because what it actually will do is increase it longer than an hour because you go buy all the stops and then work your way back um so that's not a possibility so some parents have reached out and asked um if there's anything we can do to make it less than an hour it's a long time especially the little ones the little kidos to spend on the bus so the only way to resol to ratify this is to add an additional bus run that's uh can we take 6,000 so the legal just so the legal requirement is an hour we're right at an hour um you know we're we're performing the transportation runs legally it's just a request to make it more accommodating for kids so potentially next year depending on how population goes where the stops work out it could put us over that and we'd be there anyway if we didn't budget rep then we'd be hurting okay cruo more kids do we know I know last year with all the problem problems with the buses a lot of kids weren't actually riding the buses do we have any information on that this year are there more kids riding it taking advantage of it princi probably could speak more to that you if that's okay I can speak anecdotally at Berlin um only in the morning because there's so much that goes on after school and kind of excuse it in the morning I know that drop off is a lot quicker my impression is that more kids are yeah okay just curious we've been fortunate we have we have a driver for every run right now um last year we weren't that lucky I say 90% of the year we always driver dou brze late it was this year been going much I know personally our stop is one of the ones that it's an hour maybe more and I feel it builds character for the kids but um if it was an hour last year with half the kids ride the bus this year full kids or three quter kids whatever it is the bus yeah I think if we're going to be in trouble with the law legally you know what else I have a question about it might just be my perception because I'm like running or walking on the road but it really seems like the buses go really fast sometimes do we have any idea about that they with it they're not so all the are monit by GPS bus companies um we have run reports before if like I get phone calls I have it this year but in the past I have gotten phone calls that said this bus being blind I just wrote a certain time and I can reach out to the bus company and ask GPS was at time department has been known yet stop too fast perhaps they delayed in their time coming to to school Those runs that we're talking about but they should not so that is absolutely well I just didn't know if it was like a habit for them to do that and then if it is and if they are speing then it probably takes more than an hour so we're not actually now you know what I'm saying yeah so if you have specific spot you're talking let me know check that out yeah all right any other questions Capital yeah I'll go through real quick all right so the capital is on the top it says fiscal year 25 preliminary Capital um so for BMS we have card swipes roof replacement for shingles air conditioning and classrooms it support which is a the Chromebooks iPads projectors intercom system and two steam tables for the kitchen which comes to $1,385 1,385 732 Dees replacement of the cafeteria floor the library roof plumbing repair Plumbing in the bathrooms rep the parking lots remodel the bathrooms that's thing when we went on our tours we got to to see one of the bathrooms um that needs to be done we put in there I can't believe you allow children to that bathroom H that bathroom's I can't believe we allow kids in the bathroom miscellaneous playground equipment we kind of saw this when we went on our tour there's a Cindy school at bees there's the I don't know what it's called that spinning it is it is broken and it needs to be replaced and stuff like that is very expensive so we put that in there so we could be great we want to replace that or repl it something else it support for 168,000 um keeping up with our replacement technology Chromebooks iPads special education projectors and networ withs and this is a new item Julie and Megan two hot water boilers that are need replacement it was from the facility assessment um they're at their end of useful in t yeah we saw they were doing maintenance on there yeah we said if they die like in the middle of a winter and we don't have it budgeted for and what say it's $500,000 that we can't runat in building ra fix it before lastly at Tonto we need a lawn mower our lawnmower is currently broken we're using one that the highway Department's letting us use in the meantime but it's um it's an older one so it's we need a new one uh reping of the walkway it's not ADA Compliant we need a floor scubber that we can use upstairs we can't take the floor scubber from downstairs just fit elevator we would like to refurbish our track it's old it needs to be redone we need um um it needs to include the long jump and the shot CP with it with replacing it replacement of the water heater non-student device Replacements teacher laptops um Auditorium projector security swipe part system uh sound replacement on the stage C out Auditorium music sound system Auditorium L replacement that's with and also renting a lift so we can reach all the lights and replace them and we're going to replace them with LEDs um and we would like to purchase a storage unit so we have room for storage for athletics and facilities and that comes to 3,368 n82 so overall in Berlin it's a 1,585 105 and oil stance $1,783 and8 77 why is the walkway not 8 compli is this something that came into disrepair the walkway out of the cafeteria so I don't think it was ever it was ever done it's a patch of law right that goes between the walkway and the next cave walkway so I'm not I can't speak to the original plan but there's nothing connecting that's my question I don't know why was ADA compliance not a thing in 2012 2011 or maybe they didn't use it back then I don't know question Chon I don't think lar and I think I'm sorry what's that we were talking about evacuation plans last year can you speak to um Caroline we talk about this in the meeting n can you just speak to um why the refurbishing track before the fields and what the plan was with the ation maybe that a step one we're still waiting on a cost from that that open one and they have to add that the capital plan at this point but you looked at the track and track is shape proba the field because we can try the ation first right then we then we can determine if that's working or we need to go to one of the next steps which to refurbish the entire field in a variety of different Poss different mat yeah I just want to make sure if anyone's watching understand that but the track if you take a walk around the track know that that's evident that that needs to be yeah um so the only thing I love this capital budget I agree with Julie about the fields I think we need to keep close eye on them and um that's something we have to add in this year that's something we have to add in I know we've gone back and forth a thousand times on the roof at bees and I trust Dan and Dan thinks we have few more years out of that and I think the study was in the drive right did you see that yeah I did I read it y um which is a little frustrating because we've got a $35,000 report that's saying something polar opposite but um very frustrating for trying to make decision I know and it's not you um I just think that it should be something that's on our radar and I think um again we've got an estimate that says it's going to cost six or seven million to fix and then you know another one that says oh it's only going to cost two million I feel like we might need to do a little bit more due diligence on this roof this year and I'm not saying we have to put it in the budget or do it this year but we should make a plan because if we're going to go to the towns and say hey at some point we're going to need 7 million or five million or whatever we need to fix this roof it can't just come up on a budget as a line item and be like here you go because at that point it might hit the prop two and a half I don't know right so I just feel like we need to do a little bit more and maybe it's just having these conversations like we're doing when we go top to the towns in October right um to just throw it out there and say hey you guys have some type of reserves for this right in the event that we got to throw this in here next year or the year after um I just want to make sure it stays on our radar because we have one report saying it's fine right it's not leaking and another one that says it should be replaced ASAP right I I was thinking two things on that one we bring it up as a conversation on October 24th right Y and kind of get where where they're feeling because this is coming two years three years from now or now it's coming down the road so that we got to make sure that they know that two in February we can apply for that um Carol yes I I can't believe yes yes so and that was another thing that I was thinking we can still apply for that yes it does it's not we know we're going to need this so that we can still apply for the whole roof with that Grant once we can apply in February we we can we do our intent to apply February so I was think that just and we can add that to the conversation in a couple of weeks that is available some point we have to address it's definitely not slipping our minds we know no I know it's not slipping your minds I just want to you know what I mean like just so it's not a surprise and anybody is that else I do my super important not any less important than the next true Services you know sure I do talk exceptionally fast so let's see um so as I Was preparing um to you know talk about the report I submitted this evening my report as you know was submitted um and all about the State of the State of preschool and unique Learning System I actually realized that there a piece of information that we have not previously talked about called um TFM which stands for tier Focus monitoring this is not referenced in my report doesn't require a vote it's just a little bit of background information for some of my information and an upcoming presentation tonight so just this afternoon I did drop the TFM tool kick into the share drive so that you can see that that is a document from desie um the TFM or tier Focus monitoring system replaces what used to be called the CPR or coordinated program review um it is des's monitoring system for compliance for special education rights and English language Learners last school year we completed a very thorough and exhaustive self assessment in all three of those areas um that's the first year of the cycle the second year of the cycle is on-site monitoring so Jessie will actually be onsite in our offices looking at our records um on a date in January and they will also conduct a variety of interviews um with certain groups of stakeholders um this the toolkit that I'm referencing here has a lot of information about what they're looking for and they give us very specific information about what their expectations are and to the standard that were held on each of um those criteria so that's just a little bit of background that goes into um a couple areas that I wrote about in my report including instructional resources in special education as Carol and mentioned earlier um you know in special education when we're looking at instructional resources sometimes we are looking at um we not sometimes we are often looking at instructional resources for a very small group of students perhaps even individually um and this really does go to the school district's responsibility to provide what is known as faake which is a free and public um free and appropriate public education um we design and develop educational programs to meet the unique needs of students and those are specified in an IAP which is an individual education program those documents are developed by teams that are very familiar with students that includes families um parents caregivers teacher classro teachers and special Educators um we there are and I included a chart again for background knowledge in my report of the special Educators in the district there are 27 27 of them and and there are two special education administrators that sit on all of those team meetings to develop those IEPs once we've been an IEP in place it's then up to the special Educators to design and adapt construction to meet the unique and individual needs of students um that allows them to um make effective progress in their whole during as a result of that special education regularly and routinely needs to acquire new instructional materials and as I wrote in my report sometimes it's a $10 workbook for practice um and sometimes the $3,000 set of reading materials it can be anywhere in between and those needs come up on an ongoing basis and that's those funds are reflected in our budgets um and those are ongoing needs the student meets the goals we have to move on we have to provide a new set of instructional materials um so again just background information for the presentation on unique Learning System um I have shared links in the report and in the drive this is a system that's needed as a resource at Tanto for a small group of students that have replacement classes for their core instruction areas and need specialized instruction in transition and life skills um the system has been trialed by the special education teacher for several weeks with input from other special Educators in the building um Sally the um curriculum director for Tanto has reviewed it and has reviewed it along with the teacher to look for bias and stereotyping which is a required part of our instructional material review and there's a link to that document in the drive as well um the this program is really providing materials that are not otherwise available to meet those unique needs at this moment um there's a wide variety of how we go about this but at this moment we have a for some really scaffolded leveled materials that are developmentally appropriate for middle school students um and so that's the description there and that is something that that the other part of my report was about preschool and is separate from unique Learning System um so our preschool um as you may know we have an integrated preschool program in the district there are two classrooms there's one at Berlin Memorial and there's one here at tono both programs run three sessions um and I've given you the data for how those um slots are being filled this year and when we wrote The District Improvement plan together in 2022 we agreed to gave you the exact language there but basically we agreed to do a very formalized preschool study um of the integrated programs in the district to look at several areas um we have often thought about the transition that students that Boyston students need to make from attending preschool here and then going back to Boyston Elementary School um we've often thought about the efficiency of Staff traveling back and forth um we also think about the beautiful space that's available for the preschool here you know we think about all of those things um so we have been able to contract with accept collabor ative they have an excellent reputation and the district has worked with them before to do formal preschool reviews they will be coming in beginning in January will be a busy month in my office in January um they will be um here in January they will look at our programs they will introduce staff they will take a look at our data from from recent years to help us try to make predictions um and they will provide us with a report in March as an administrative team we realize that at March at that point really the budget you know any kind of budget considerations um are the opportunity is largely ped um so we would like that you looking at implementing the following year um for whatever those recommendations may be or whatever we all decide we want to go forward with um there are six identified questions that I've listed for you in my report that will be the focus of the evaluation um and and those will be those are the guiding questions that we'll be getting a lot of information back so that was everything um in my report and then uh so we have we're voting on the uh unique Learning System I think we should vote on that now while it's fresh what was the cost associated with that so the cost it's a subscription based program it's about um roughly $1,500 per year it'll be a little bit more than that to start um because of the training module and completely off topic but there was news about Massachusetts special ed programs being looked into or something by the Department of Education so what's that yeah so the federal um the federal government is going back to several States and um in really questioning what their problem resolution system is um so right now in Massachusetts desie has a PRS problem resolution system unit and you know a family or caregiver or even an an educator can file a formal complaint and then desie looks into it and responds the criticism right that the federal government is looking at is the response time to that um and how thoroughly or adequately or satisfactory those responses are being responded to that's what that headline refers to so the federal government is worried about the time it takes the Massachusetts Government to respond to anything that's funny that's with that article I right there was an article that came out last week about it and it sounded like um there are maybe 22 states that they that the federal government was pushing back on and they're taking a look at it to make sure that Massachusetts is responding to those people ples in a timely and efficient manner so it's a state Des issue not individ district is that was my understanding anybody with the curriculum for the the figure kids um it said it was a threeyear plan so it's it can grow with them as yeah it right there were three um so my understanding of it is is that it's that the tops spiral for every three years so you have the same topic you could do it for example in sixth seventh and eth grade for seventh eth and ninth grade um and that is a methodology in special education right you want to be able to bring together a small group of students even if their instructional needs are different you need appropriate materials to be able to reach everybody in the room um because reading and background knowledge may be very different and independent skills may be very different so that is a um a real advantage of this program all right well fresh take the now have a motion to approve the unique Learning System special education all right any questions discussion 1500 a year plus a little bit make sure to get started all favor I against all right that motion passes thank you very much um okay moving on to to presentations now uh we already went through the Student Activity clubs that was great so next on the list is uh nurse leader presentation volume in the room too thank you for having me so I'm Lisa lamal the lead nurse of the district and I'm here to talk um quick about epinephrine medication delegation and to get the okay to move forward with um the application process and getting that in place for um the district um so what that is it is it's it's allowing the nurses to train non-medical staff teachers Etc to administer um epin up friend um which is a life-saving medication um we've had that in the past um and I had given the application and the information and I think there were still some questions about it and so I'm here to answer questions um or would you like me to go through the process of how that works anyone just a quick overview what what if we approve this what would that happen so what it's going to do once um once we get all the signatures we need signatures from myself our district physici um Carol and yourself um um send that to the um Department of Public Health and they approve it and then the nurses in the district can move forward with training all the staff members um on how to administer it what the signs Essentials to look for and that type of thing so the benefit of that is um several so if the nurse is not available or in another emergency another staff member can do this they know how to do this um or field trips which is very important so sometimes there's a field trip where there's just um there's no medication there's no chronic um chronic illnesses it's just someone needs it they have a b um allergy so a teacher could take that medication as long as they're properly trained and be able to do that medication um so that's pretty much it after school program as well I'm sorry the after school program as well um yes whoever is there right so across all the three schools you'll have some uh materials or documents or something like best practices how to use training yes everyone will get the same training um I'm so I'm somewhat new so my understanding I don't really know um what my school has done in the past I know that I got a power presentation from Toano and Berlin that they used um that kind of goes through everything from start to finish um I would personally I would like to have one type of training for all three schools so we're all on the same page yeah we have trouble with that coordinating sometimes so I think yeah you definitely need a single right page document presentation whatever it is so everybody knows the same thing so you're not you know my kid at school had this and they did it this way and this we need to make sure that happens the information's the same it's presented differently and at least if it's in one format we know everyone's hearing the same thing any questions on this I just think it's a very good idea I agree I agree and I just add since has been with us a tremendous job exactly what was talking about making sure that all the all the schools are on the same page with expectations and training I don't like if you recall I brought this document to you early in the year then you said I don't I'm signing understand you know until your point that is correct because there's there's much more to this that delegation piece this is one part this is one part of it this is the easiest part of it so it's strictly just epinephrine so that's what we're focusing on today and for the other piece we have a lot more talks to do get some more things in place but I thought this would be a great place to start because um it really is going to open the door the have school programs field trips Etc it speaks to lapses we we've had in the past years and getting everybody else subes to be do as well substitute teachers or nurses or everyone I mean personally I feel that there's some substitutes that are there frequently I have no issues I think they should be included for sure I mean obviously this is um optional you can't force anyone to do it but I would say pretty much everyone does it that from my school nursing background from where I came from I don't know anyone that hasn't done it so I mean it could be open to anyone in the district Subs um staff nurses Etc what's happening right now if a child has an emergency well the teacher still gonna Jam him with that up you pen right well I hope so I know I hope so I mean they always come to us first which is great um I always say if I'm in the middle of an emergency someone's not sure call 911 but I know many have been trained um so you know you have that Good Samaritan law that covers you so I would hope that someone would step up and do that that's why I think it's so important to have this on board ASAP um I have the application ready to go I just need signatures it's a very simple process um once we get the signatures so as soon as we get the signatures and it's approved I say we get it out have a motion to approve the delegation for Julie Jess second any discussion all in favor I against all right the motion is approved thank you do you have the form printed there right now I know I had given you one but I do have one absolutely you can both sign it it is more comp she does want to present so we understand for I'm talk then this will be all taken care of and CPR to is that another thing that well I and I know Cindy had just sent something out they were offering CPR class for staff and I think one person registered but they canceled it because there was one person yeah um I know from my past I have offered you know through the fire department twice like a spring and then a fall one and the numbers were never um and I think the problem to be honest thank you so much is because it's it needs to be offered after hours and nobody wants to stay after hours so maybe like part of a PD and you could do some of this stuff I I feel like it's just so important um I mean I remember just to work at a gym I had to get C my CPR certification can't so I just feel like these teachers in these classrooms with these kids if there's an emergency and you're not in your office or something it's just like and you do need more than one person sometimes so it's always nice that there's a good chunk of people um would know how to do that so I don't know I would love to come up with a plan on how to get more staff members um all CPR you know ad certified do we have any like dat like how many are on own there is a spreadsheet I'm somewhat new and I have that I just I don't really know I feel like for me I can't speak to who was taking charge of you know that or if it's a districtwide thing so I don't know you have a spreadsheet well there is a spreadsheet I'm not the owner of the spreadsheet but there is one and um the coaches have to be certified okay so all the coaches and that is part of documentation that we put to to the state so that was something that in the mar yeah it's in the mass we speaking of ads jum you said they get two be outside of BS where exactly U one over by the courts okay and then one over on the south so like near the Gazo area thank you so at some point I would love if you could share that um you know spreadsheet or where who I could find that from you know it's good for two years so maybe we still have some it would be nice to starting point I guess some of this stuff I'm like oh my God track down are I think he brings them with there are mobile ones CU I've gotten questions I don't know how many I know definitely one well that brings us to our Mia update thank you so much you okay so there was discussion um at last time and so when I looked at the Mia um a regulation and our handbook so specifically the MIAA states that um academic eligibility of all students shall be considered official if students are taking at least four traditional year-long major English courses they use English as identifying as at a core content class it has to be a five credit class when utilizing a 4x4 block a student must pass at least two of the four required major courses so 4x4 block is a block schedule so essentially they're having four classes a day so the MIAA requires that they pass half of their course load essentially that's what that is saying our can I one block or not we do not do we have seven periods so we have seven periods now they aren't necessarily all full courses any 2.5 credit classes are not considered a full course and wouldn't be considered in this most of our students are taking six core classes full major classes that would be that would be identified in the um MIAA as equivalent to a major course so they're taking six major courses and maybe two minor courses so they would be taking a total of eight courses totally because the F seventh course is an alternate block and so with that we say that students can fail or they must pass all their courses but one so it's how are you going to say it are you going to say they can fail or they must pass so I think the issue here is is I mean we understand what that is I think the question we had from last meeting was do we allow failure and give privilege for so um the extracurricular activities is it's privilege right right it's a privilege that sometimes get the students to school and actually are the one thing that will actually get kids to school which is in it is very important because academics aren't that isn't um necessarily students are well suited for academics in all respects and sometimes it is music it is Art it is Athletics that is going to keep them coming to school and so yes um if we do um if we allow one failure out of the seven courses that they're taking and that's their Athletics is what's keeping them coming to school I say yes absolutely do we have any data on how many athletes musicians artists are participating in extracurricular activities why while also having that one failure so I don't have I don't have the Arts and all of that but I did um gather um I used quite a bit of time today to um gather the information so this year we have 200 students in athletics so right now we have no grading information because we've only reached um the halfway mark it's based on last last spr is great so um correct so that we have um so last year we have in quarter one there were total in the school 46 failures um two of them were athletes and those were they were El they were not eligible but they all it didn't keep them out out of Athletics because those two were out of season um in Quarter Two there were 62 failures total um one of them was an out of season athlete 58 student failures in quarter three two of them were out of season athletes and 63 and quarter 4 one was an out of season athlete so it doesn't seem like it's a large number it isn't it isn't and in so if you go back I got data from 2021 21 22 the numbers are all relatively the same um it's two you know two% 4% of failures out of the entire enrollment of Athletics um [Music] 1% of the failures are athletes so without naming the kids and keep that information confidential are these the type of student athletes who would not come to school if they weren't allowed to participate yes they are yes I I know them personally yes yes and there only one failure one failure and the the students that are in um multiple failures um that's whole another they're not participating in athletics right anybody questions what is is a or is no I I'll just make a comment I think it's I I have kids who play on in high school and the middle school I think the coaches do a really good job of keeping track of those athletes and touching base with teachers and the to make to making sure that the kids do stay successful I would love to see none of our athletes failing let to see none of the kids failing um I see your point sometimes that's what gets into school um and maybe there's I don't know maybe there's a better system for extra help for those kids so that you know if we have students feeling English or math or science or social studies often times those aren't the athletes right okay yeah it's a very small number right it's just got to be really help but thank you for collecting all this data because I imagine was so thank you anybody else toy please what you're saying is it we more stringent yes the Mi well Lisa continue on financial literacy so the financial literacy so this um the whole discussion around financial literacy came about um I wrote um and collected um a two-page report with um two pages of links that provide information for resources for financial literacy so prior to 2019 there was a financial literacy task course essentially that deemed that nearly 45% of all of our students across Massachusetts had no education around financial literacy they had no cour work they had no context of any type of financial literacy so this um prompted a financial literacy task force that looked at what was happening in um Massachusetts around um financial literacy the summary of recommendations were um really to provide a financial literacy Financial education awareness c campaign as well as providing funding to develop these resources and that report also ended in the um proposal in 2018 of an act relative to financial literacy and in 2019 it was signed into law an act relative to financial literacy in schools to equip students with the necessary skills to be informed and productive participants in our society with that inacted into law in 2019 we are then charged with offering our students that now when we when that was signed into law that was the year that um the schools shut down um in 2020 um in March so then our efforts were looked at and you know um diverted in another aspect you know managing the um the pandemic so we looked at our curriculum and identified the areas they're very clearly outlined by um the Frameworks for financial literacy are embedded in the history and social studies Frameworks and so as um in as a department um within department chair meetings we outlined a specific pathway by the time um students graduating in 2025 all students would have some coursework um as identified by a um required cour work for with front Loan financial literacy so that's how it came to being usually when something goes into law there's about a fiveyear gap because you can't all of a sudden say everybody needs this requirement for graduation you have to you have to build the plan and then you have to put the requirement so far in advance so um students actually have the plan so that has been our plan that all students will have a financial literacy requirement we have different avenues for that to occur but um so I don't know if anybody has any questions but that's kind of the background and the reasons why so essentially this is a graduation requirements starting next year so today's juniors are going to have to do this in order to graduate and that's I think included in some of the budget for the teachers Math teachers years past we had a position we had a teacher doing a business class but it was an elective and that's why we're trying to move past that elective and ensure that bus is for everyone need to take this course whether it's a half year however it's designed um that that would be essential in addition to keeping it in the framework for history and social sciences where they touch on this standard so yeah it's I mean assuming by the time the kid gets a graduation they can read I would say this and typing probably two of the most important life classes they'll have I mean so that's fantastic that's awesome there are different Avenues we really have to appla Clinton Savings Bank they really partnered with us in an exceptional way to help us and they provide um ccum free for us and support um but we need the people we need people in the classro teaching some yeah Clinton save the bank I mean I don't know I know we're not the only school that has a bank in the school but there's not a lot so that's that's fantastic and it goes down to the kindergart K as well so this is an area that we need to look at to the elementary school they do offer the banking program they put that in the school committee Facebook page but doing they've offered to do assem a variety of other kinds of instruction students so some of our graduates are actually tellers some are tellers great yeah I think I know it's a graduation requirement okay so it's a high school requirement but we've had plans in the past that bring computer science to every grade level in some way if we could find a way to do this that would be [Music] is this well do you know if it's a 2.5 or a five graduation primary so 2.5 although there are five credit courses that touch upon this so a student can take an economics course and that would you know that would fulfill the requirement um that if you're in banking if you're a banking internship that fulfills the requirement but there's a very specific um course that that we are doing this year that is half year um we can provide it to more students and that's a 2.5 class and we're using curriculum um supported by thank you uh John and S before we talk about curs of writing we don't need a history lesson in of writing read your report not to be the boss of the meeting you want to flip so that we both had PowerPoint slid so C went first Sally went first she could do her slides okay it was very detailed [Music] did I can go out know as you know while they're setting up and there's a kid sitting next to me har the submitting a paper to the class using chat a split screen right there I saw I had just been with some friends who are professors and teachers we were talking about how to get around and then there's hard NBA way to get around it we're right all right well thank you for welcoming us to our presentation uh we wanted to talk a little bit about um the purpose of Dei being just one part of the curriculum review process so before I kind of get into the intro for that I brought some people to help me I just have to do some introductions if you all want to introduce yourself um my name is Emma bayette and I'm a senior hi my name is colie MTH and I'm a senior I'm Jared Sims and I'm a senior as well help that as well so right so the curriculum review process actually involves many many steps there's all sorts of parts to it I mean when we want to look at um curriculum we're looking at you know um the curriculum that's been developed the instruction that goes along with that we're looking at um you know developing formative and summative assessments we're looking at activities and we're looking at um the materials that we use and when it comes to materials there's all sorts of different materials that teachers will use whether it's a text book or a workbook or it could be um you know a website or a program those kinds of things and we look at all sorts of things we're trying to find out if those materials are aligned to the Frameworks that the state has for us um are they vertically aligned in in regards of where they are in the grade um we're making sure that those um ts are up to dat that they're accurate um that they're you know user friendly for both teachers and students that they are differentiated that um that you know they have supporting factors to them and you know help with scaffolding and um and you know does it follow um and go along with our skok and sequence but there's also another part to it that we look at um because um you know for a few reasons part of which you know jelle was talking about the tear um the t uh TFM is that um and also desie is just asking that we look at certain parts of materials that we use to make sure that all of our students feel included and um that they are represented so what we're do is we're going to show some slides to show you the different aspects of that that we look at as just one part of the CC process all right so we go on to the first slide all right so to start it off making judgments about others based on external appearances uh such as physical attributes and age leading to assumptions about a person's character and abilities so our materials should portray all age groups and rais with a full range of human traits attributes and capabilities they should represent people of variety of body images and opportunities our question and stereotyping with regard to body image a belief system is an organized set of doctrines attitudes values or ideas about some philosophy being phenomenon that have an influence on our accountability so not only should our materials represent the various religions and beliefs that we have in America but they also need would be represented accurately and trally um so all of our material needs to represent these objectively to prevent any sort of bias that could a student's understanding of them ability is the capability to perform or accomplish something and a disability is a condition condition that provides physical and or cognitive challenges to a person's capacity to perform or accomplish something so our materials should show people in a wide variety of occupations regardless of any disability which will convey the message that a disability does not um prevent a person from having a productive and meaningful life or positively contributing to society so so family structure a family is an extended group of related people there are a variety of family structors such as single par parent extended families funded families families with no children biologically unrelated families families with same sex parents and families with interracial or interface pars so we want M We Believe material shall have various cultures with the needs of children and family members in s an outside the home environment to ex set a family through community activities and through G relationships so all genders must have equal opportunities for Personal Achievement and success without the constraints of gender role stereotyping um all genders need information and opportunities to pick critically to be able to counter Prejudice based on gender so our materials should contain Equitable representation of both uh men and women as important figures who deserve recognition and respect they should present authentic role models in a variety of careers demonstrating that success is achievable by both genders males and females should be shown confecting and solving problems with equal skill and resourcefulness materials should represent the potential of both boys and girls to accurately apply attributes such as confidence willingness to take risks empathy kindness and um kindness equally to both genders they should acknowledge an individual sexual orientation where identity does not reflect their ability to lead a satisfying productive life so race and ethnicity race is a classification of groups of people of a common ancestry distinguished by physical characteristics such as skin color shape of eyes hair texture or facial features an ethnic group is a group of people who share particular culture Heritage or background every American belongs to one or more ethnic groups um so material should ensure that the history of racism and equation is presented honestly with a balanced perspective so tells both Sid of the story it should use private resources so that people are describe through their own words and images additionally it should reflect the positive creative contributions that diverse racial ethnic and cultural groups need to and socioeconomic status so this is kind of near and dear to my heart because I grew up in um kind of a low socioeconomic status and indicators such as education wealth inheritance and apption establish of one person's socioeconomic status material should reflect a broad range of standards of living expectations and achievements of people they should depict people from all socioeconomic groups making valid contributions to life in society and they should also include the perspectives of people from broad range of geographical regions in the United States as well as um throughout the world and I think all of these particular um lenses allow our students or they they bring our students to us with a p a particular perspective and what our challenge is as Educators is to understand who those students are and then select materials that allow them to access materials because when you're not connecting with the material there's a disconnect and I think that sometimes when we provide materials that are not within the context or the lens of our students there can be a perceived achievement Gap or um or you know unability Gap where in fact it's really not bad at all it's just that they have no context or no background knowledge for example in the seventh grade ma MC there was a question that nearly 75% of the students got wrong and the reason why is because there was the term alteration alteration being something to be altered like your clothes being altered this is not something that our current Society is is like we understand or like is not common but my parents and my grandmother my grandmother was an she used to sew My Grandfather's suits and often have things cilor and that was common you you have one or two good suits and you have them tailored kids nowadays they've never seen that before and so they were like what is this alteration then all of a sudden it wasn't addressing their knowledge of MTH it was addressing their context and their background knowledge of their EXP experience and so as soon as that becomes you know um unfamiliar to students you can see them shut down you a word or a phrase and they shut down so that is why this is so important to look at our materials and say are we needing are are we bringing materials so that the lenses of our students are being reflected in the information so we can meet them so they have content and they have the curriculum that is capable of bridging those contextual and of achieving GS so you're saying the state of Massachusetts for a test it doesn't perform to DVI so they they they they have yeah they have they have to they they themselves so I think what's important is that they are constantly in review process and they there are you know depending on when the tests are developed because it is so how how do you guys go we just run a short of time the presentation how do you go about doing this in cre are you counting the number of people of a certain status that on a worksheet how do you actually do so we do have personal sheets I think that I have the report and and again that's just one part I mean there'll get other things too but um we will go through the materials and you know we're not necessarily counting something but you know I can tell you HR in Corporate America is doing that for personal experience we're not like like we're not right keeping a Gras how many not it's not that that however you know we as you know myself and department has the teachers we'll look at the materials re them and you know think about these things as for example when um if you ask young people to draw a picture of SST it's kind of like an Einstein like app and there when I would bring materials from Harvard that I would work with my students they um they produced this material called I am a Scientist and it was it was a variation of men women people from every different background identifying you know what type of scientists they were what type of background they had where they you know Rich were they poor um were they interested in sports were they not and it really broke down the boundaries and I know for a fact some of my students were like oh my gosh I I can see myself as one of those people so it's it's not so much counting but it's like who are the students that are in front of you and does my material help connect them with success so these images presumably are population can change from year to year even living so it constantly having to get different materials not not purchasing different materials so you want to make sure your materials um are pretty um standard you know consistent and standard um what you want to do is bring in resources like I am a scientist that is a wonderful resource and they are constantly updating and there are lots of different um you know people that are working on that reviewing you know and adding into that resource so I think that's really what it is are we you know are we only are we looking at our students and helping them bridge that G and again that's one PE you know and I was looking at that um that you were voting on earlier you know I mean we were looking at other things as well like differentiate doesn't we know this we have as as the general population speak we talk about closing that achievement G that's where that that that that lies in these kind of things what do you need to do our L AIC student and that's land we have to consider what are the ways all so it's around all of these kinds of things so speaking of these subgroups right soci techic status low income students want you at nothing to jump on John's presentation there but again mcast scores are in the news states are in the news everybody thinks of Massachusetts as this Bean of public education the Boston world all papers I got Boston Global but it tells me that Florida and Mississippi are beating Massachusetts now in lowi income student literacy is this true I think we look closer so two part answer one part is they are putting a lot more emphasis on the kinds of literacy skills that we're focusing on that are not necessarily being focused on good Comm work choose I know your report says that we're much better than the state as a whole but it struck me lwi income students in Florida all places are beating those in Massachusetts and I just I wonder if spending too much time on this versus actually teaching kids let me put you back a little bit okay Lo students in Florida are getting better scores fing from students in Massachusetts as a possibility and even to look is it turns out that we have these things they have these well I think they were trying to adjust for that but it's it struck me is a surprise you recently WR an article about stupides in they were pretty much all Southern States I mean I didn't say it you said it because I live to be in trouble I live with I live with this stuff every day at work I create training for adults for Cs and I have HR constantly counting the number of people of different skin color in my training and I cannot tell you how much time it wasted doing that and that's why so why I that yes so I think like I understand what you're saying the representation really matters it's important you can't just like have history books from one side of the story you have to have other perspectives because then you can roll and involve because you can't just listen to of those stories so absolutely and I think you know we do pay attention to I don't think I just want sure I just want to make sure it's not taking over like different areas is that's anybody I think kids are more like something they see I think boy you know having be a daughter you know I'm always like shoing the voice section because she likes space and stuff so I think it's it's that of representation oh yeah that goes you know that scientist is a girl or you know Black Or Hispanic or you know I didn't me and yet there is a report in our thing about cursive yeah that's that's his screen saer I it is my screen saber the thing with writing just that fantastic a plus plus plus plus plus plus how many pluses was it fantastic it simply came up from a parent saying oh my kid is learning cursive at this school but they're not at this school so what's the equity what's are they doing it are they not doing it we're not doing it what are they getting that they're not getting what are they getting they're not get 30 seconds oh wa 45 seconds because I mentioned my fabulously want a Plus+ report Thomas Jefferson's cursing have a mix of curs I WR just like Thomas Jefferson I know that because Thomas Jefferson and my kid go same school I've seen Thomas Jefferson at the same time not at the same time um very quickly one of the things that we've been talking about s I've been talking about car I've been talking about is getting people same page what we are are not using scho this is a classic example of some didn't kind of run by anybody that's what we have to start to Mo you the actual we got to is it aw but so we are we are continuing to align our better so don't get those wait can I just say one thing I feel drawn into this so I believe this is your so but what if this so teachers there is some free time during the day there should not be well what if kids are finished before other kids then they should doing something more challenging oh I can't so if you're a f finisher let's say you're a man fast finisher yeah I'm GNA find for you some deeper work to do because that's where the work go right that's what we've got to get better at how do we you we talk a lot about special education we work really hard to challenge our most challenged but we got these people here that we and that's our challenge we are great and we are getting better special but we got to learn how to CH so when I hear something say well let's have a PD something unrelated to learn C Poss I think I really all right I got you your point is very valid gonna jump in real quick I'll make it brief this teacher um was looking to differentiate her instruction so they with foundations and it is a curriculum that we use and there's person in that foundations that we don't really have the time for she was trying to challenge her students um which I applaud because we do want to differentiate my husband talked about that maybe doing a lunch Munch C because their children are interested in learning this so we don't want to hold them back but at the same time could we do it at a different time there is interest in they also talk about different club which we but personally I wish you would do it but I understand we mind we were talking before Miss Tu Rec want fun I was terrible terrible terrible terrible in my school 32nd story um third grade you learn how to write inur you could not use a pen until you like person last child I think just gave up as you can see my handw is all right clear yes M 2023 and City and I are gonna go back and forth I'm G to do language AR she's gonna do math and then we'll step at each other and still see um very quickly I say this every year edcast does not measure the worth of children teachers or schools there's one task in one point in the year that gives us a snapshot of where we are Rel standers and other studs in the it doesn't match up well with other states doesn't match up well with national sample because Massachusetts is a highly changing place to Le and then the last thing is just a remind what we do look for with NPS tests is what can we do better look for patterns of all right so Lang um this is this year by grade by school and it's just we are not comparing ourselves to the state because that's many ways not meaningful the state is you know in Boston Dorchester in Springfield is really really struggling school districts it is however a baseline so we always toss it in there um and you can see the relative performance of the two schools and we've talked about this before I think that you're going he in mind you we he Cindy's was make significant progress um this past year um but that's where we are just this year this is the more meaningful graph this is the whole school over the last five testing Cycles right because we had an interruption with Co and then of course we had you know 2021 which was the half of a task let's make it a little easier task um that kind of skewed the data a little bit and we've talked about this before you can see in language arts that state number has dropped they went up a whole they're very problem um but you can see both of the elementary schools um took a big step up um and part of that and we'll get to it a second was the writing component which those of you well know Mak me crazy every year because they don't capitalize and punctuate perces those were improved um so you can see the statement up a point um our schools went significant more and I broke these out and they're in the report I just put them up here to kind of you know remind you of where we're at we always perform most strongly in Reading it's the uh category with the highest number of points um we exceed the state inv all of those areas um that's grades three four and five and as a percentage of possible point of reasonably happy with this when you're into a high 60s plus 70s mid 7s because you know as we said earlier the mcast mcast test is not for all children it is not appropriate and more and more now you know the rocket scientists at the department of Elementary and secondary education more more kids to take the standard test it doesn't matter their it's not really fair to give somebody with severe dyslexia this what but they and we factor that in that's why I've kind of backed off of my 90% ofs down 80% you're talking about D their group's trying to do away with this right now oh thanks for reminding me so it's really a two-part argument there's the 10th gr that test they have pass grad they're worried about like 1% of all graduates because the task can be taken over and over again it's the easiest test because guess what almost what's our 99% 100% what b i you could D it's not because we shouldn't have a standard for graduates because our de means something but the test that they give our graduates doesn't really reflect a children because guess what up until 10th grade it's 4550 4550 and then magically in 10th Grade a political if you keep on the other if you keep perspective and use it as a method don't get crazed about I think this is still Val it tells us we' just had this conversation where are we now in this we had some real barriers four years ago but in looking at this assessment looking at some Ben markeing assessments we realized a lot of our issues are coach it's sometimes it's something simple as somebody takes me minutes to cursive sometimes it's I'd rather teach this thing that way and while you want to always respect teacher judgment we have a curriculum Reon can't get better if we don't practice the curriculum so I would keep that I it's two separate Ares the 10 grade test well that's my question because we hear time you don't look at it too don't look at it this way they change it's not that big a deal at one point in time but then at the same time it's what we have is it's it's what we have to judge or not to judge but to track I'll judge you sure no but seriously if not this then what no for that for judging where we are where we want to go this is a perfectly reliable Tas it used to be so Lisa mentioned a test item earlier and actually the ma session we got a couple of samples of the report she mentioned a word that kids wouldn't know now and you get that type of a question something that's just not that you know somebody like me would say you're question but the kids would have no IDE about so you look at that you measure your results based on that but sometimes like the Symmetry questions all my um they syry they clearly there was a misconception because have kids in BO have the kids in Massachusetts I have one kid syry so I I saw that in your report I was ask you question about we have the same M apprach at both schools so well so not I can see but what you have to look at so that says to me how do we miss can't which end up fing back in Ni to right now about because that is having a p math instruction in that level created some kind of a misconception never know what it was probably something math coach wouldn't catch it but a math coach math coach did math in here talking a little bit about math um so one of the things that I'm looking at I know this was brought to my attention when I first started is we using same with Fidelity that's the word the to use that's what I'm looking into as the new administrator of this building how are we using it because there is a discrepancy you'll see in the math scores too that real links comes in a little bit high on most things um and we're behind it so we're using the same curriculum and we have the coaches which they were both amazing what are we missing so that's my job is to dive into that um and go from there one other note when I was in the classroom getting my MPS sces is like Christmas time it showed me what I Tau well and where I Dr the well coming in as an administrator uh I look at what we're doing as a whole what are we doing well and where can I support that uh we started that at Boon we have some math Missy math challenging going around the kids are loving it it's about getting them to get the Buy in because one of the things I heard in our school is I don't like that as an educat that prushes we don't want them to ever say that I don't care if they're second graders kindergarteners fifth graders we want them to love now so that's the all they ever here tell that is my favorite subject and it is wonderful so this is very similar to what John went over before but it's math and we're talking about the schools compared to the state I use the state as John set a St line we always want to do better than the state as a whole but if you look at our scores in grade three Berlin was at 68 we were at 61 we got you in grade four there competition yeah 64 to 66 we do have a little friendly competition going on grade five 54 to 50 again we're all ahead of the state gives us a point and this is for meeting and exceeds can we do better absolutely this is the one I like to see and also the one that this is where I I put in the report where are we going if you look at 22 to 23 just for Boon we were we're steady you always want to grow you always want to see Improvement so what aren't we doing there and how do we improve that um BMS was a little bit higher and all year years I like tracking over the years again I just started in July I need to dive into the data which I will tell you is all over my dining rotable much to my husband's dismay I have going back I'm I'm looking at data for all the grades but going back to third grade well how are they going to do in fourth grade so we go up the grades to see where are we going I love the data part of this job I love the data part of mcast and again it's a day and I've had students um in my past as a teacher as a principal where they outscored anything I ever thought and when I asked them what did you do differently and wanted you do this that's huge question John maybe you have more information our district but for the last few years I've had this impression that because of Co we got through and math came back quicker and better than the language but looking at these here over the past five years we're down this trend on this screen is down so I know from last year to this year kind of flat 21 to this year Well up yeah if you toss out 19 that just kind of FL and I I agree I agree I think that the stability of man when we talk about come back from Co stability of man St St fr it's kind of we didn't lose a ton of ground you can see 21 kind of everybody dropped a little bit and then there's that recovery one of the tricks with this is govern in Berlin we're talking about 87 kids every kids you know so when I go down from 64 to 61 that's a S4 the problem is 64 has 61 well no because that was another thing I saw new dat both schools anywhere from 25 to 40% of the kids in any particular measurement are not at the meeting they're partially one I mean how do like how do we go out like this October okay it's Halloween I'm going to be at an event with a lot of BMS parents a classroom or class of 30 to 40 kids 30% of them is 12 kids what 12 parents do I go to and say I'm sorry we not working for your kid it's not working for your your kid is not at the basic level of me I think that's where sometimes the test gets because remember we're not only if you can remind we're not only talking to them about this school but they all just got their in schools where the kids performing there I [Music] I oh it measures differently so we look at the percentile so but like that test m third class special class just reading per very that is for so if you remember this could be a group that's gone up through the years lacking because asking how three years ago we sat we didn't sit in this room we sat on the computer and we talked about how are you going to catch these kids up and the answer was well the next teacher will take the beginning of the year to figure out where they are and and now we're seeing well you didn't do that because college kids can't do basic math or kids are falling behind we're seeing 30 40 50% in some cases ISS not meeting expectations should be something looking at with with that coh students BR so if they Lo we lost them before what have we done and what do we need to do to get those kids on this also keep everything we talking about tonight around what we're going to be looking at what because it ties into Competency Based learning which you probably been reading about too with the state now Jesse is looking at moving I don't know when in the future to competency competencies versus stand and going what skills and understand students to have when time gradu theyig than this not only they have a knowledge base that they can add comp but how they and the outside so that again another step of all this so all of those things are coming Point already see we're already seeing the change so aside from the Symmetry question I put in my report there was a question about it was measurement not

e feels we yeah fur no I'm I'm over there in the corner I'm usually excuse there I'm the custodians set it up okay yeah I'm definitely off e right okay would you please uh call the meeting to order would you please join me in a pledge to the flag and to remain standing for a moment of silence flag United States America theice please keep in your uh your thoughts this evening the conflict going over in uh in Israel poor people and what they're going through and also the men and women protecting us around the world thank you would you have a moment would you call the the role for the purpose of attendance please m fitgerald m Mr M M Mr T Mr L present okay um chair would appreciate a motion of the minutes of September 26th had a motion have a second discussion all those in favor anyone opposed okay very good uh student report please hi guys hi um so we have put together our October student rep presentation that includes club sports and Student Activities we have our yearbook committee the yearbook committee is starting back up this fall they are currently searching for students who are interested in creating and designing the 2024 yearbook the advisors are aie and miss we let we hope to see updates in the future um we have more create creatic opportunities at glts we have a creative arts club we are searching for Creative students that are interested in art of all forms if students are creative in drawing painting croche cro crocheting um floral Etc then this club is for them the creative art Club is on Mondays at 300 p.m.

go ahead it's now quter till 11 no it is 4:17 okay this meeting is being called to order at 417 and let me call Ro Elizabeth here Jean I'm here Glenn is absent all right so um the first thing we need to do is approve the minutes did you see the I have read the minutes and I'm ready then I guess we need a a motion I'll make a motion to approve the minutes from ju July 17 and I will second the motion so let's have a vote all in favor raise your hand all right unanimous minutes very nice okay so now public comment thank you all for coming do any of you want to say anything first oh no I'm good I B lots of can go I want them to go first I'm just going to wait I like to be at the end oh sure um I'll just say something quick I did write a letter over the summer I'm Britney coie by the way um I have two girls at Four Corners one in third grade one in kindergarten um and I've been a Greenfield resident for almost 12 years um I wrote a letter over the summer um because you know we are changing the plans hopefully getting fifth grade back to the um elementary schools um and one of the things I've heard about is whether students who are choicing to elementary schools will be able to stay at those choice schools or if they'll need to go back to their designated home schools so I wrote a letter explaining just some reasons why I'd be in support of allowing Choice students to stay in the schools that they've been in my daughter Charlotte being in third grade she you know her last year of preschool was interrupted by coid she started kindergarten um remotely and then returned to inperson learning I believe it was in April of that year um so really disjointed um very unusual kindergarten start but she's had a really wonderful three years at Four Corners um and my husband and I were really intentional about um exposing our now 5-year-old to kindergarten at Four Corners taking her to meetings and you know bringing her with us to pick up my daughter after school and so she already knows all the staff um and I really would love to see her stay at Four Corners also so just a general um vote to grandfather those kiddos in if possible um and wanted that to be known I don't I'm I'm Sarah Robertson L wait can you spell that you can do Sarah lens l n TZ thank you um I am a new Greenfield resident as of May so I don't have a t to add to the conversation mostly coming to listen and to learn but I am in Support also of uh the middle schools of fifth grade going back to the elementary schools but I don't know if that's the topic that we're talking about today I'm mostly here just to to find out more that's that's part of it for sure okay yeah um my name is Lindsay Patterson I've been a Greenfield resident for almost two years my son EMT goes to Federal Street school and he's in fourth grade so I am here to become more informed because it's a topic that I've been thinking about for a long time really feel that it is developmentally essential for the fifth grade to move back into the elementary schools and I want to learn more about that timeline and advocate for it to happen as as soon as it can hopefully for next year so my son can stay in his school um and yes I'm just looking to learn learn more about it so that I can just be more knowledgeable and help other parents become more knowledgeable as well because I think that there's not a lot of clarity at least among the teachers the parents that I've talked to in terms of knowing what's going on in the timeline oh is it my CH you're I have a fifth grader at GMS and I feel that I've been talking about this because I wanted my fifth grader not to move to GMS however I know this public comment we've had so far we're a month in and I've had an amazing experience so far the GMS and all of my fears let me tell you all of them thankfully have been um brushed aside because I had many of them as a parent I have just we spent a lot of time on this there's lots of different options and I just want to make sure that we are looking at everything from transportation to what what we are doing that's best for all of our students not just a select few and not just disturbing one particular group of kids um I just want everyone to have the same access to the best education no matter where they live or what their income is and I think that's something I've said from day one and I don't want this has been a four-year process this hasn't been a one-year process or a twoe we're like four years in now um so I don't want to see us just or see you guys say oh yeah yeah we're just going to go with 2B um when Star committee did a whole report saying we can't physically put fifth graders back into the middle school or back into the elementary school years ago with the way the numbers were so unless we reopen Green River so I'd just like to see you know and I can tell you my daughter is loving the fact that she has a whole new group of friends they're called the kindness Club and the kids in her little kindness Club I mean Michelle if I was just here we could asked her about it but the kindness Club is Not Just girls from Newton with MJ there's some fragile Street girls there's some um kids from four corners and I as a parent I'm like as much as option one isn't everyone's favorite I wonder what her friendships would be looking like had she had those friends from kindergarten from first grade forward uh I just wonder and and I know we talk a about Transportation right now I'm doing three drop offs at different schools within a 10-minute time frame um I go from Newton pick up a kid at Newton because his mom works there and I drop him off at Federal Street school and I go from Federal Street School to get here before 7:45 to get MJ to school on time so I know it can be can be done if parents are willing to work together and make it happen thank you okay okay so now we're ready to start talking about all right so last we left it so I'll recap a little bit the the pieces that we okay the piece it's a it's a little cart um the pieces that we had talked about last meeting that we still need to resolve is one the um resolution of the in District choice um that so as I had talked about last time there we don't have the exact numbers but when Jake ran um the transportation I'll call it the um you know the I don't know hyp hypothetical um to see what would Transportation look like with the different options um one of the pieces that happened was he literally combed through all of the students to make sure that when he routed for option 2B all the students were routed to the what would be their home school um I do again I don't have this exact numbers because we would have to have Jake go back through and come through 1,400 students um but there does seem to be a little bit of a misperception that it's only a few students that are intradistrict choiced at this point and that not the case there are a there's there's quite a number I don't think it would be a stretch to say probably 40 if not if not more but Jake maybe can see I don't know um but there's not just a few it's not we're not talking about four or five students it's it's more of that um so the reasons that we talked about potentially um having everyone go back to their neighborhood school let me back up and clarify the timeline is has been we've been very um I felt like we had been clear but you're saying there's some confusion but that it would be September of 24 so this upcoming September we didn't want to rush wanted to make sure that we could think about everything um so that would be the target is for next September um when we look at the enrollment that we have now and the physical space that we have now we can in fact act fit everybody so that's been looked at elementary principles myself and Karen sat and took maps of every building and said okay if we have two of every grade level where would they potentially go if we have three of some grade levels where do they go so we did that that's why the conversation about intradistrict Choice came up because if we leave students who are choice CH in the grades where they are four corners would have to have three third grades three fourth grades three fifth grades until those students age out so um what that does is create a scenario where we have space limitations and the way to address those space limitations is to take a special education program that has more physical space that they require and swap it with a special education program that requires less physical space so a program at Four Corners would have to move to Newton a program from Newton would have to move to Four Corners the other option or the other potential is that some of our teachers primarily art and music would not have classrooms at Four Corners they would need to be on a c so they would literally have like a little squeaky C that just went by in the hallway and go between classrooms with whatever materials they they could have to deliver instruction in classrooms because Four Corners would run out of space so the goal with um looking to not continue on with the intradistrict choice piece was primarily to not have any impact on those two special education programs secondarily was to ensure we had space for students to participate in the elective subjects um in a more appropriate or more uh comprehensive way than teachers moving um materials on a cart so that is the first thing school committee you have a question clarification so if we take the INF Choice students out of four corners will there then be two CL two of each class instead of three based on the numbers that we had at the time which we believe still hold um it would mean so I want to be clear too there are intradistrict Choice kids that have choiced into every school in the district so that would mean taking students from all of those schools and putting them into the neighborhood schools um what that would result in is two sections of every grade level in all three elementary schools and it would not disrupt special education it would not disrupt those two programs correct so okay that's it okay so the so that that's one piece and actually the um we added a discussion of this and a decision by the school committee hopefully on Wednesday night at school committee meeting about this issue because the issue of the in District Choice um impacts classroom and impacts staff movement and those are the next two critical pieces that need to be dealt with um I'm not able to meet with our unions and make plans about um addressing staff displacement until I know what the numbers would look like so the intradistrict choice decision has to be the first thing that gets settled good so far it's Elizabeth and Jean um I'm I'm sorry I'm trying to I'm one of the things that I really was hoping to see was a transportation comparison between option one an option 2 B I know that you had said that option one seemed really untenable Transportation wise yep um have you done any um is is that just the end of the conversation like it's just cannot be possible and we can't collect data on on we had presented about um Jake do you still have I know there was discussion about what option one it was uh K1 2 3 4 5 bands in different schools essentially it was every school would need to have significantly like 15 minutes um 15 minute differences or we would have to add a substantial number of buses because this the buses as we as are currently that we currently have can't obviously be in two places at once and if we want to keep it so that they're picking kids in a geographic area then they have to um be able to you know go to one school have a staggered start time and factoring traffic and things like that it's like it would be you know 15 minutes between schools I'm asking because I feel like I've identified something in the two years that I've been on the committee and that is that we have members of the public coming to us like you and saying I'm kind of confused about how all of this is playing out and even though we've had all of our meetings and our minutes having the minutes just having the minutes is a lot of Labor to ask the public to go through and not everybody can watch the meetings and not everybody can attend so I've been feeling like we need to maybe show our work a little bit more so that's something that I'm going to try to talk about this year and next year and so in this particular situation with redistricting we've done so much work but to have the public say that they might be confused I wish that we could have some sort of document sort of similar to and I know this is like a lot of work similar to this strategic planning document which was so brilliant because it really showed all of the steps we should have a document like that for this process so that the parents can see why option one is not possible so there's no question so everyone can really get behind what we need to get behind it seems like so I guess um no and I'm going to say only because um we talked about the options and these pieces at school committee meetings right and updates have been put on the website and they've stayed there and I'm not sure that it would be less laborious for folks to read that document than it would be to read minutes interesting so um happy to recap everything Wednesday night at the school committee meeting without question um and if the whole committee wants a document laid out then obviously we'll do that but I'm I guess being sensitive to the fact that you're saying reading minutes would be a lot so I guess that's the piece where I'm I'm just not sure how how it is different to read a document that would be set out like the Strategic plan but whatever the committee would like it's just something that I think we're going to have to work on in the future and so when we do these kinds of projects we really do need to create a document or a form that we add to as we go through this work so that people can refer to it and see where we are in the timeline what the timeline is nobody should have to ask ask like when this is happening it should be really easy for them to access so I don't and that's just like that's just how things are done now and I it just bothers me that I can't find this information easily and that it's not all in one place so that's why I'm I people have asked me why not option one what's going on with the transportation with that and I literally cannot say you know go on the website because there's information exactly about this in this place written down so that you can access it like I haven't seen that so I'd like to see all of that come together in one space I think it would be really helpful because this is going to be a big leap for the parents and they're all going to have to make adjustments everyone's going to have to shuffle around and if we don't want to have any ranker and frustration and you know we already talked in the beginning that not everyone's going to be happy about this some people are going to be really devastated and frustrated we have to have a little bit of a package for people to be able to slide into and read and I just think that that's just kind of some basic good business that we should do could you please uh prepare uh where they would go look yeah that would be great because that's maybe what the missing pce is that Elizabeth doesn't know where to go look sure so was Jak able to answer the question about Transportation option one yeah now I really understand something that I didn't know before about this 15minute intervals and that you'd need more buses okay so Jean Elizabeth any other questions about so far okay so then the next things that we needed to do would be to look at the elementary Special schedule right now the elementary Special schedule is a little bit um atypical we actually have um an agreement with the Union to allow it to be atypical and a piece of that is related to just how many sections of classes that we have and I'm sure parents are well aware that we split elective teachers across buildings um so we looked at the configuration for a k to5 across all three elementary schools to see if it was doable with the um elective teachers that we have now and if there are two sections of every grade at all three elementary schools we have the staff that we would need to cover those and they would be able to have a schedule that follows the requirements in the contract without any agreements with the Union to modify that so the staff the elective staff that we have at the elementary level would be sufficient to cover electives for two sections of every grade at three schools so that that's one piece if we had three sections of electives at Four Corners we would have to potentially hire a partial person it's two sections right that would be two two a little or three and a little yeah so it's a little bit of a person not quite a half but more than none so a little bit of a a person would have to be hired to provide the appropriate number of sections to cover electives if we had three sections um then we needed to look at the change of schedule for the middle school and there were two pieces that were being um considered sort of a good time to look at a schedule change because um the department of Ed is doing a pilot for a history um Civics mcast which will affect 8th grade and at this point the middle school does not teach science and social studies for a full year so given the um pilot we really feel like we need to move to a full year of history and the fact that mcast is um taken in science as well at the eth grade level we need to have a full year of science so that was a schedule change being discussed um even prior to this but we really need to make a shift now um so with a schedule for 678 we would need let me find it I have it I know you have it can I ask another question Christine yes um so you're saying that the special schedule was a typical and is now are you saying it's now going to become typical or it's going to remain atypical and what does atypical mean okay so I'm trying going to pull up the staff thing yeah um so it is currently atypical and it was atypical last year in that um the specials teachers um the on behalf of the specialist teachers agreed to have a change for last year and this year where their preparation minutes are broken up in the contract it says they have to have 46 minutes of prep um to make the specials schedule work so that all of the kids got all of the elective subjects and all of our classroom teachers got preparation period and that we had grade level collaboration times which has been really important I think Karen's talked about it in connection to our academic work to make all that happen The Specialist teachers agreed to split up their prep time so some days they don't have prep time some days they have a little bit of prep time some days they have longer but it's atypical in that way so if we go to two sections of each grade at all three elementary schools they will have 45 minutes of prep consecutive their schedule will look like they expect it to look they have actual time management time it it um chopped up yeah it'll be their daily prep consecutive minutes as opposed to sort of this chopped up schedule that they have now that sounds like a positive change to me um they've been really agreable to the like they've been understanding about the chopped up but I think 46 minutes is you know certainly much more efficient lets them do better yeah your brain isn't just all over the place well start and stopping is is challenging okay so Middle School oh thank you you're welcome she made it big enough for me to see too that's very nice so assuming that we have um 678 we need an English math science social studies teacher for each team so grade six grade seven grade eight would each have two teams which is consistent with um six and seven now fifth grade has three teams but that um so what that results in is that we would need to add a science we' need to have two teachers at each grade level for the middle school so we don't end up with enough right now because social studies is a half year one of our history teachers teaches team a for half year and Team B for the other half of the year and the science teacher takes the opposite so if we need a full year of Science and a full year of social social studies we need need more teachers to do that so we need six additional staff okay mhm okay so that assumes all of the current teachers remain and then we have six blank spaces well technically we have seven blank spaces because um to make sure that elective sections at the middle school are of reasonable size we would be adding a PE teacher um so it's technically the 7th but I can I can fill that Gap in a second um if we don't then because all students have to have health and PE those are requirements so that's why the discussion about health and PE there would be a rotation of the other electives which include art drama stem stem sorry I'm forgetting all of my my classes um Library we um anticipated adding Spanish for 8ighth grade and general music and then students who want banned we still expect they'd be able to get banned so okay all right so that's we need seven at the middle school when I talked about the change at the elementary I need to go back for a second um moving all of the students and the changes in enrollment and all of the moves would result in six sections at the elementary school being eliminated however most if not all but most I'll go with elementary teachers are licensed K through grade six so there is potential for movement um we all also know that there will be some preference among the teachers that are already at Middle School teachers that are in 8th grade who might come to the middle school so we expect there might be some requests for transfers within some people might want to go to the open 8th grade open seventh grade positions so um I'm not going to say that six teachers would lose their jobs we expect we would have um space for several um but I don't want to speak any further to that like I can't guarantee there won't be any staff who leave um because of loss of positions but we have six um positions at the elementary that look like they would be eliminated but we know we have at least six classroom teachers at the middle school that would be open positions and would have been the high school going to the high SCH okay and eighth grade teachers would go to the middle school so we plan assuming that now I have my have you taken the temperature on any of this like do have people said like oh yeah maybe I do that no we have um wait a minute ask that question again like have you just sort of casually taken the temperature of what maybe these teachers specific prer like do you think that they'd go because I My worry is that oh that you we make these changes and then they're like no way I'm out and then we're stuck with like this yep I understand that um so last time we had a meeting I mentioned the survey that the staff had done I I thought it was 89% it's it's 85% of all staff now that includes custodians cafeteria Administrative Assistant everyone had access to the survey um at least 85% of them clearly chose option 2 be there were a few people who chose option one um and um the comments primarily there weren't a lot of comments that were shared by the staff if I were to categorize them the majority of the comments were concerns about moving the special ed programs because of space um so other comments were in support of one model or the other which they had sort of already voted on anyway so um I have talked with the Union at least twice well I'm going to go back three times because before we even started talking about this the first first meeting that was held all the union presidents were invited to attend we had three MH so we did that and then since then I have talked with the GAA president so she represents teachers in IAS um we've talked several times about sort of how this process would go so once the school committee makes a decision then the next thing would be to sit with the teachers and say you know I'll have to sit with the union and and we'll agree to how the process is going to go but that would be like the first step people would have opportunity to sit like I'd meet with the fifth grade teachers meet with the eighth grade teachers so in order to let that that opportunity happen we really need to talk about it on Wednesday with the full committee so that we can open the door to even it's sort of you know it's um like a chicken and egg I think it's kind of hard if there's no decision to talk about then it's all hypothetical but it'd be nice to talk to see about a decision so it's sort of yeah either you know either way if you if you two would prefer that I offer voluntary meetings with fifth grade and eighth grade before next Wednesday I'm happy to do that um see what they think I I can just revisit with the Union president again I you know I clearly it's going to an impact and they're we're going to give them the opportunity to talk about it but whenever I would I would say let's let the school committee vote on wday and then you you both would prefer that let's let that happen first seem like we need to get this door open for you so you can do your work okay that's fine I will do it whichever way okay so high school what we did was um look at the enrollment current 8th current 9th current 10th current 11th current eth is about 106 if I'm recalling we always work under the assumption that we will lose about 25 students about 20% to technical programs that's just that's just the way it historically goes we lose a percentage of students going into ninth grade um to tech programs so we use that number in terms of estimating so I sat with the two guidance counselors at the high school Derek myself and went through given the numbers given all the required classes um how many sections of each class do we need how many teachers do we have um to look at Staffing ratios so for example obviously every child needs to take English requirement is they take English all four years so we need to make sure that we have enough if it's 100 students we want to keep class sizes around 20 to 25 I'm giving examples this isn't you know School policy or anything just an example then we'd want to have five sections of English n so that's one teacher so we went through that whole process this is all my all the chicken scratch of all of this some of the things we needed to ensure students um have to meet their graduation requirements so making sure that we had all the sections that would be needed for everybody to get into all the English all the math the history and the lab sciences that they need for graduation health and peace also for graduation language also making sure students have access to language some colleges want four years of a language making sure we have access to that not reducing any sections of our AP courses um because I know we don't want to reduce sections of AP so making sure that we leave all of those in place making sure that um we still offer a reasonable reasonable amount of elective courses so going through all of that um what it looks like is that we would have the ability to shift some staff from the high school um to cover um an open position at the middle school and then um there it looks like we'd have to add all the kids actually into the master schedule to confirm all of this but it also looks like we would be able to not fill two open positions we have two positions now staff um we don't have teachers in them right now they're either vacant or like they have Subs so we could it looks right now like we could eliminate those two positions um going into next year and then um to ensure that we have all of our science and math high level elective courses I think we would need to hire um a halftime history teacher those things do does that exist I have reason to believe we may history teacher no I I have reason to believe we may have the opportunity to have a halftime history teacher but I don't want to say anything more specific until I get to talk to some people so between the changes at the elementary the changes at the middle school and then the impact of the high school I think it is um neutral in terms of full-time staff equivalence or we actually end up with one or two less so my point being it's not it's not a good thing to have staff reductions but in terms of impact on the overall budget which we know we need to consider um there does not look to be any substantial impact like we're not looking to hire you know 10 more teachers or anything like that feels like the schedule can accommodate the change Transportation looks like we can accommodate the change but Jake and I actually met with just I know I said looks like we're not pinning anything on you yet um we actually met with Transportation folks today and and talked again about the scenario and we agreed that if the school committee looks like they're going to be moving in the option of to be then um we would try to what we call roll the year sooner kind of make a fake schedule um next year in the back of our student information system sort of in the background and load all the kids into the transportation software and let them look to see if the runs can be accommodated with the numbers of buses and it actually works out rather nicely because this is the year we have to go out to bid for transportation again so if there's an impact on Transportation this is the time to know it so might we have fewer buses if everybody's in their neighborhood just no but we're hoping to not need more I don't think we're going to need less but we're trying to not need more yeah it's not essentially not without reconsidering the walk if everybody that currently gets a bus got a bus there would there's no chance that it would be less yeah um but you know the things that we're trying to think about um offering some um trying to still offer music at the elementary which actually right now they don't have General music this would allow um two sections of General music every day um it would allow eighth grade Spanish it would um fix the elementary specials a typical schedule I don't even know how to describe it other than that um it would allow us to keep all of our um I didn't say it but all of the special ed services at the middle school the high school would remain like we there would be no impact um on any of that that is always driven as you know always driven by student numbers I can't say whether in a year we'd need additional or fewer special ed teachers that's always just driven by numbers so that but that there would be no change no movement of programs or anything in those regards um we would need to look at case loads for special education how they shift so some staff such as counselors speech pathologist um special education teachers at you know we always look at where the um enrollment is for students who need those services and have to make decisions about where um staff are placed That's Not Unusual we would just again have to do it um our elll program we would look to leave things as they are we have teachers in the program we look at case loads and assigned staff accordingly so all of that would be the same I don't anticipate any before school program changes like we still are planning to offer the before school program um you know chrisy with the rec department more than we're thrilled to keep having her do the after school program that she's been doing we looked at Staffing I don't know what else I'm trying to think of what else we looked at Transportation um I don't know what else do we need to think about what else can you think I mean it seems like it's you it seems like you've gone through everything seems like you've been very concise and and thorough so I think now it's time right for the committee to talk and to also maybe that's where that concept of a form comes into my mind is to create take all the things that we've learned all the things that we've decided put it together so that the community can accept it after we vote upon it and understand it there was a when the options were articulated I don't know if I want to say it that way there was a little table that was out it's on the website it's a table three column I can reproduce that but you said strategic plan document that that's very well that's massive and giant if you're talking about reproducing something like the table that's on the website already with updated information I can easily do that yeah I think something like that would be great so we can say well we're gone on this journey and we've come to almost the end and here we all are together that can be done and I would also like to add that the planning and construction committee which I chair for the city is active pushing for a new elementary school that's great to hear J it will take 10 years to have the money available and to do all of the planning but at the moment the state pays 90% of the cost of a school for us it would yeah nice so I think if you if parents will start talking about how much they think an elementary school would matter where all the children are in a school together in a facility that is updated Etc that that's what's in the back of my mind that the city needs for the future got to start somewhere yeah talked about like year one could be should be now yeah and and it takes 10 years I mean it took 10 years to do the library so I'm sure a school will be an equal amount of time but we have to start on it now M instead of waiting till it's an emergency again okay so nothing else you don't have any other questions no you don't have any other questions great job I feel good you really did a lot of work thank you I still feel like there's I don't know it must be Transportation must be Jake that we're waiting for we'll figure it out day one of whenever this starts like you do every year I know um I know we've really tried to think about like all the pieces and oh the other question that was asked I'm looking at you because I'm wondering if you actually asked it last meeting um what do we do with all the space left in the high school I don't know maybe it wasn't you doesn't no I didn't ask that I asked about Green River okay oh okay so at the high school um there will be some classes that are not you know readily um obvious what we use them for but one of the things that we can reflect back with the nezda study is they talked about the potential for different elective classes um potentially we could make you know some special ed programs have more space we could split and use them you know different spaces for different elements of programs so the biggest excitement I have is that reflecting that you know Karen and Derek at the high school and I've met with um Michelle shot the president of uh GCC and some of her staff and talked about um setting up Loosely calling it Pathways that's an official thing with the Perkins um vocational but setting up courses at our high school that would put students in a better position to get into and have familiarity with some of the programs at GCC are you talking about Beacon no no actually different um so Beacon is a um it's an alternative program for students um I wasn't specifically talking about Beacon but things like um if they have an early childhood program at GCC we could potentially look to add um additional Early Childhood type classes you know child psychology or early childhood development things like that as electives so that it's giving students more exposure to some of the types of programs that they have at GCC make it um easier for them to think about college in some way um I wasn't specifically thinking about Beacon that's actually Beacon is expanding I was going to talk about it on Wednesday because I went to the meeting there it is CES program now so um I don't know Green River Green River we are we are looking to divest of Green River um I'm not completely positive I'd like to um there has been some conversation with the mayor about um options for that but I'm not um I'm not sure how much of that conversation there there are some folks talking to the mayor but I don't know how much of that is still sort of investigatory stage but um I have to do all the paperwork to officially close it with the mass School building authority um which is going to take a fairly cons fairly quiet consecutive period of time to do um but and I know I have talked about this um somewhere previously but the language in the contract that mayor Martin signed speaks to that the building needs to be used for educational purposes for 50 years after the loan was signed um and the loan was for just over a million dollar the final audit of the project was in 2019 the last year that our student database shows students enrolled at Green River was 2018 and when they look at how much a district has to PID back of an msba loan they look at prorating it from the date of the final audit until it was closed and for us there was no time between that um I don't know there is some language in the paperwork that makes me hopeful that if someone that if the future use is connected to education we may get some Grace from msba around that um but I don't know that and they won't tell me until I do all the paperwork um and then see what if you know if whatever future use it has is educationally related to the degree that they would say close enough and skip it I don't I don't know that and uh Amy and I talked one day about perhaps if we're building a new school they would forgive the loan to put it toward that I mean you know there are lots of conversations we can have right I think when I met virtually with um one of the directors from msba and one of the other people who worked there basically all the paperwork has to be done we have to identify sort of next steps that we anticipate then they'll talk to us about maybe this maybe that okay but at this point um I know there's always talked about using Green River as an alternative school using it as a special education School which would be fantastic but we still have to deal with the HVAC system which is the issue that created some conversation prior to my arrival that was a million dollars 3 years ago so it's no doubt significantly more than that if we were to use it as a special ed school we would have to do do the HVAC then we would have to upgrade all the technology the plumbing because the water's been off for 3 years we' have to inspect all the electrical we would have have to depending the grades of students there potentially would have to redo a playground um we would have to do the security there um it repaint refurnish it is not pushing a broom it is not in a state where it could be moved into currently um and then we would have to staff it so if we have a special education program there there would have to be an administrative assistant a director principal overseeing administrator a nurse a counselor teachers in every classroom um instructional assistants and potentially at least a halftime if not a full-time custodian and that is recurring cost so it's it's not a situation that I don't I don't think that's a situation that the school department can jump into right now unless you feel differently if you guys want to go in that direction pretend like it doesn't exist just pretend that building's not there for a while I mean I I appreciate that over time there could be a financial benefit to the district if that were a special education program I totally understand that but the out you know The Upfront is well the city desperately needs office space so if we could use it for offices or housing what it would it would satisfy another yeah for the city the sad thing is um the mayor shared that was the newest School in the district mhm that's what she had said so yeah it's a cute school and the gy of cafetorium is a beautiful room but so it' be nice if it's used for something you know so that's that's where we are anything else no I'm I'm good I feel a motion to reside to all right a a motion to adjourn adjourn yes a second 507 okay unanimous all right thank you thank you very much

we are live to [Applause] the ready go [Laughter] [Music] yeah good evening everyone uh I'd like to call the C Bo of Education meeting to order I'd like to welcome all of you here it's it's a a very refreshing change to have so many folks here in the audience so thank you for coming out tonight and if we now would stand for the Pledge of Allegiance Simone's going to lead us to the flag of the United States of America theu for it stands one nation God indivisible liy and jusice for all in case you're wondering I'm not the normal chair of the Board of Education uh L Daniels is Lou is home uh the health considerations but he's uh he's with us in the digital video so and and uh our first order of business is a report from the board chair which I don't have one but Lou do you have a remarks to make I I actually don't Joe tonight for the first time I have no no nothing really to to go over known L for many years he's never been at a l of words before so this is a unique moment think we had the night off super thank you Mr sh welcome everyone to the October 10th Canton Board of Education meeting I'd like to welcome Mr dep pipo our high school principal our assistant principal Dr Ruth Kidwell our outstanding uh field hockey coach to honor tonight for 100th win and a special Welcome to our all our families and students here tonight for a new tradition within the cam public schools to at a regular scheduled board meeting to honor students so we're very excited that you're all here the this evening last week I was able to attend the Canton Intermediate School 2023 gift eveing of a little free library in partnership with the seventh graders returning to CIS for the unveiling of the little Free Library that their class gifted to the school students involved in the project gave speeches it was a wonderful event to have the community gathered together last week the high school had their National the national induction ceremony for Science and Mathematics it was a wonderful event that I was able to attend where we were honoring students for their outstanding achievements in math and science a special thanks to Michelle a and Gabrielle Henson and Mr RI was there for their work in the program and continued support for our students some of those students I know I believe are here tonight that we're honored congratulations to all those students on the one wonderful achievement over the summer the Subaru program adopt the classroom reached out to Cherry BR Primary School we're excited to share that Subaru has adopted all of our kindergarten classrooms for the 2324 school year each teacher rece received a donation box of various materials and a $500 credit towards the adopt the classroom so that's very exciting for our kindergarten classrooms meetings are being held on a regular basis regarding the space issue at chbg primary school I'd like to thank board member Russell Bush for attending a meeting last week to really discuss um some considerations that we're looking at regarding cherberg primary school and like to thank Our Town CAO Bob Skinner for being involved for the possibility of uh installing module classrooms at the school in the future I want to remind the board and the public that there will be a tri board meeting meeting next Monday October 16th at 6:00 p.m.

three uh Miss jinsky please call the role sure uh Mr grippo here Mr White here miss Rosenberg Mr chairman you have a quum all rise for the pledge I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all and a beautiful rendition of the flag finally finally getting it down after like three years thanks for noticing Mr scour in the internet for the right yeah that was a good one full screen and everything yeah yeah um so today we only have two items on the agenda uh the the first is um something that we had talked about oh I'm sorry that I I jumped over audience but I have not received anything related to policy I don't know if you two gentlemen have uh I have not received anything okay sorry um a little Hasty but uh so the next uh the first item we have is not actually policy but a regulation um which means that it doesn't require um readings but only one uh so I the only tweak I would make you can see here initially it's it's crossed out the uh you know in terms of the old um the old title it references that uh and Carol has tweaked it uh you can see like here every place that it said in the old policy this isn't updated every place it said instructional Services it's been changed to assistant superintendent the none of the um the actual um I wasn't sharing screen I'm sorry but I have my copy up so I was able to see it um none of the actual responsibilities have changed it's exclusively the title if you recall at the onset of Co we had a special Personnel meeting identifying this uh position as the um basically the second in command uh in terms of a succession plan and so this is just a a change to include a change in title and um during my evaluation uh meetings we we talked a little bit about this and it had uh you know resounding support of the board great um do we need to uh do I need to make a motion to approve I I think that makes sense Adam if you don't mind sure um so uh motion to approve so it it's just appr proove we don't it's we don't have to have multiple readings or anything right because it's no it's just proove the change in um resolution okay so regulation excuse me uh motion to approve regulation 2134 um provision April 2020 I don't know if that's part of the title or just regulation 2134 um to include the change and title uh to assistant superintendent um is there a second second any discussion or questions all in favor is unanimous of those present if if I may one question not specific to that but just in general how do you distinguish between us taking like the vote so we we read it three times vote on it if it's a policy if it's a regulation we're voting once is this more of like uh is this something that's required or just something that you think it's better if we do it it's a regulation it would be your discretion you're just asking for a support one I think it's better but I also think it is part of our uh regulations as well Carol do you know that off the top of your head definitively yeah the the regulations have to be the board has to be notified of any changes to the regulation because if the board is against it they can say no you're not going to make that change but it doesn't require you know three readings for approval okay but it the basic difference is regulation versus policy right okay thank you um the next item was the uh 61 25 draft I'll put that up on the screen as well this was uh excuse me this is uh a policy that we took up I guess April maybe um and it was to review our policy around administration of surveys uh this is the foundation of this is law law um and we had to adopt a lot of the language that you see here um the big one that you know the the most substantial change that we made over the two initial readings is what you see highlighted on the screen where we specifically call out the safe School climate survey um and you I'm sure you'll recall some of the conversations we had around this like you know what happens if the board's at an impass Etc but I think we kind of worked that out right yeah the um this Pi was just more of a um almost like an additions of not really a Roberts rules are more of a procedural uh addition for an impass um yeah what do we do if people don't agree sort of thing so right but yeah I think it's uh because of what was it like three votes and then and special meeting or something yeah so that's enough time for like a cooling off period then you come back and yeah yeah gives a curriculum I think a little opportunity to make adjustments too between you know reviews or whatnot if necessary right um so there wasn't any other feedback as well by the way when we went to the full board on the first two readings so right yeah I thought they uh were satisfied yeah during my reports yeah pretty generally accepted yeah um all right so this would be a moved to a third reading third and final reading yes okay um move uh that the uh policy committee uh or yeah move that move that policy 51 the uh move to a uh third reading um second second uh any comments or questions no seeing none um all in favor it is unanimous of those present fantastic Let's see we just pull up the agenda here okay well I have nothing under other uh Tim did you have anything um any other uh issues that we should be speaking about or thinking about for the future no nothing nothing right now thank you okay well then um motion to adjourn right a second all in favor okay we are adjourned now go to bed Jeff thanks guys appreciate take all those vitamins Jeff if you need

PM please and from the agenda you can all see that we have two items on there and I'm going to turn this over now to Kelly and to Kim uh to lead us through good evening everyone um so Kim and I uh will probably tag team on this one what we'd like to start um doing is to walk through the C policy audit review um this audit was done in 2019 it was completed in March of 20 19 um and the board did start chipping away at some of those recommendations up until Co um and then um came back to to tackle a few more thereafter but we thought it was important um kind of starting out the new policy um review our or policy audit with this with this committee to start back at the beginning go back to um the last C uh review that we had as a district um just remind this Committee of some of the recommendations um that should be the foundation of our work as we move forward with our policies and um Kim and I have a few ideas we also had the opportunity to connect with Kay about a week ago um of how we might be able to tackle this project moving forward um and so uh I'll start and I think Kim will just kind of click on click on the screen and bring up some of the um uh some of you know highlight in in the audit it's quite a lengthy uh document so we'll just go through a few of the uh key points of it um so in the audit they really broke it down into what was danur doing well what were areas that we were missing completely so uh they phrased it as required or mandated legally mandated policies that we did not have um where are some areas that they would recommend or suggest um that we um can uh have policies that um but we certainly can policies and they strongly encourage us to have discussions about what we should add and then lastly any policies that we have that may not be needed anymore just are at a date um no longer required uh so those could be removed uh from our work um and so the good news is in in the policy audit is they did um and again this was back to 2019 um state that we were in fair condition um and in speaking with cab who conducted the audit the fair rating was really because we were missing some of those legally mandated policies um and the good news is the work that we've done over the last few years has brought us in into compliance with those um so Kim and I wanted to start by going through all the legally mandated policies that were recommended by the cave audit um that were missing from our policy manual that we've now brought up into compliance I and kind of just go through so you have an idea of the work that's been done over the last couple of years um in adding those policies um to the district um and then we'll talk about kind of the next steps moving forward um where we can look at some of those suggested or strongly recommended policies that cab has that we may want to consider adding to our policy manual as as well as those that are kind of at of date and and com no longer necessary that we can remove um the other U main recommendation from the cave audit was ruming or Rec codifying they they they term it in the um audit and what that essentially means is dber had our own system um for coding coding our policies dating back to 99 and 2000 um and as we've updated many of our policies using the cab service we've we have about I would say about 30% of our policies um that are written in the cab numbered series system and the other 70 that are not and so cave is also recommending as we go through the policies for consistency and continuity that we utilize the cave numbering system whether or not we decide to make tweaks or changes to the policy just for an easy reference system so we can have a table of contents the policies move forward from the 1,000 series consisting of board bylaws to the 2000 series and so forth um and each one of those series numbers is is equated to whether it be um employment whether it be um you know Board of Ed bylaws um student student records things of that nature and so it'll just bring that consistency and continuity so people will know exactly where to go and what numbered system should be utilized the other thing I was gonna try I've been trying to share my screen but it's not I think because it's a cave link but if you go on to the dber website I'm sure you've all seen it but under your board of ed tab um under your board of ed page there's on the right there's a link to board policies and so you can see what happens is we shuttle straight into the cab hosted server so um one of the things that we asked C to do um which they hadn't done was to do a a hard copy of everything we have um because we just want to make sure that everything that we originally started with translated into cab um cab did all of this kind of audit and tweaking work and then we'd like to have just a hard copy I'm not generally super old school but I think it's good to have a hard copy um just so that if anything were to happen um you know if anybody would decide they wanted to hack and mess with all of our policies just for fun um it's good to have them um and there are you'll see in the boardroom um there's a series of notebooks that we originally had so we're going to try to just replicate a couple copies of those to have them um it's also nice in meetings just to have them but the changes um we'll have to coordinate changes back and forth with cab to make sure that they get translated into the hosted website Perry you have a question sorry to interrupt Kelly I'm sorry U uh I think I had mentioned that I had gotten a hard copy uh when I first came on the board from Cara she was very helpful um but I had asked it was missing the 7,000 section uh and I still haven't gotten it or still haven't seen it h what's the story on that yeah I think what happened and and we Kelly and I had exactly the same problem and we struggled with it all summer we couldn't quite figure out what had happened I think what happened was at least the way we understand it from talking to cab is we sent them all we sent them our policies instead of sending us back a complete set they sent us back the ones that needed to be tweaked and edited and changed so things that were okay they were like oh they're okay and we didn't get them back so that's why we have this kind of mishmash of of things that got tweaked and and I you know we said that to the woman from C when Kelly and I talked with her last week and we said couldn't you print out like a complete set and she like oh that wasn't part of the audit so I think we just have to go we've asked them now to do it um just to run a complete set so that we have a one but I think Teresa that's why I think they only sent back to us the ones that had been tweaked and not the ones that were fine so that's why we've had some confusion with it um the other thing is we found when we started this exercise we didn't have the number crosswalk it was missing so we got that so now we can kind of crosswalk all the numbers and make sure that everything is is there so it's a little bit tedious but we're in a much better place than we were four months ago when we weren't sure where all those pieces were so um you should have a a full set pristine sitting in the boardroom and then another one in Kevin's office um and maybe a third one just to have and then they'll be housed on the website and oh I'm sorry go ahead sorry just do you know when it'll be on the website so it's up now um everything is there now so really our Act of printing it out is just like belts and suspenders so it's everything's up on the website now so if you go like I said for some reason it's not it's not picking up this I'm trying to share the screen but it's giving me a whiteboard and I don't know what that is so I'm wondering if it's because this is link into a website um but I can't show it to you but if you go like I said into the Danberry K12 website go under the Board of Ed and then um when you go to the board of ed page where all your pictures are oh there it is on the right hand side um there there it is right at the top there board of Education policies that's where you click if you click on that and then you'll see all the series listed on the left hand side so that's our current state of affairs including things that we've changed but I don't see the 7,000 oh yeah you're right I don't see a SE is there a 7,000 I think there is just curious if during the uh the reing process if perhaps it handled differently but I do see it goes up to 9,000 and that means that seven and eight are both absent yeah sometimes we hold things in reserve but I I just don't recall that one in particular but we'll we'll definitely as we're going through we'll look at them I I think I think as Kelly pointed out our strategy at this point is to start with the start with um sharing with you tonight all the things that we've updated just to see so you can see where they are those are all updated then to go back through series by series and we probably could do the zeros and the 100s 200s are done so zeros and 100s tonight or in the next meeting and then we could probably knock off one the next Kelly was saying the next couple are kind of big um so I would say you know maybe a half a dozen meetings we'll be done going through all of them so we'll look in between this meeting and the next meeting to see what happened to sevens and eights so I will cim I just pulled um just for reference the 7,000 series is new construction so there are policies related to that um they were in draft form at the the time of this audit so we will go back and find them and just to give um and I can um certainly send a link uh an email update to this but the um zero series is the mission goals and objectives um which is a very small number as you can see here only the five you four policies with a form there then the 1,000 is community um relations uh policies the 2,000 is Administration and those were um those were the first um series that were tackled after the audit so those were um brought up to date as of um May of 2019 um so those are fully compliant right now the 3,000 series is business and non-instructional operations the 4,000 series is Personnel for both certified and non-certified 5,000 series is students 6,000 series is instruction 7,000 is new construction and the 9,000 is the board bylaws so there is no eight there is no eight yes but the link for the n for the seven I'm sorry for the seven uh we will follow up with cab on that on why that link is is not not current on the website okay and I did notice that okay sorry go ahead I was just gonna say I think what we can say is at the conclusion of this process with you we will have gotten through all the series we will have added all of the tweaked ones we will have removed all of the obsolete ones and we should have a per pristine set by the time we're done with this Michelle you have a question you're on mute it's still on mute I'm sorry now now sorry everyone apologize um where would Finance fall under Administration uh let's in that um business business 3000 business yep okay all right so yeah the budget is the 300 and then it goes from there so when we go through all these sections are you going to highlight the actual changes that you made yes like it was this but it's this you know what we're going to drop this we're gonna add this we changed this word but we're going to go through it step by step beautiful you've already done a lot you've already passed a lot of the changes that that c recommended um in our work with you last year we passed a bunch of those you're in pretty good shape I think it's going to be more deleting than anything okay great thank you I just want to bring up that we need to adjust this landing page too because there's some old content on here we'll do all right thank you Kevin you have your your hand up did you need hi Kate hi everybody how you doing I'm doing better thank you um so I I think part of the issue around this 7,000 series as well is um they may not have been retired retired required policies um and so that could also be a reason why we didn't have any 7,000 reflected um you know for example I think one of them uh recommended by cave is about air quality which might be a newer policy that's been added to the 7,000 deck um so I just wanted to bring that to the board's attention the 8,000 series I don't for whatever reason I don't recall anything in the 8,000 series and don't see anything under the heading it's kind of odd that it skips from 6 to 8 um but I mean 6 to n but you know sorry about that for whatever reason that's just the way Cape had the number thank you Mr wlson no thank you cap any other questions before we keep going here sorry we're all talking at once I know sorry all right I think we can move forward thank you so the other thing we just wanted to um highlight for everyone's attention and you'll find this on page six of the policy audit um there those were the missing mandated policies um and uh the good news is is from 2019 to present day um with this fall being uh the most recent every single one of those policies um has been added to our manual um so there are not any requ legally mandated policies that are missing from the dber Board of Education policy manual at this time um and so that's the list starting with policy 0521 non-discrimination and running all the way through title one parent and family engagement and again I'm getting that right off of page six of the policy audit um Kim and I uh went through and personally checked that these were all updated uh the dates that they were um that they were adopted by the Board of Education um and they're all uh accurately reflected on our district website as well um so you can take a look at those one um the listing do you did you share that with us of the C uh requirements it's so the the policy audit is um hyperlinked in your um in your agenda from this evening o sorry about that I didn't catch it okay everything that Kim and I just spoke to um is outlined in this report um so if um any of you haven't had the chance I would encourage it's a nine-page uh report uh that you read that um so that it just will help kind of set the stage for our work um moving forward I might be missing this but I'm looking at the policy committee agenda and I don't see a hyperlink for that yeah does anybody else see that no I thought I thought that was the zoom link that's streamed at and that's all I got yeah there it's not linked in that okay we'll make sure that the link is active I apologize for that um what I what we can also do was following this we'll send you um all the members of the policy committee uh just a pdf version of it via email as well so you have that for sorry about that thank you so much um okay uh any any other questions on the audit or any of the updates no questions Kelly I I did have a question I'm sorry Kate Kelly do you and Kim do you guys anticipate um when do you anticipate the update from c um regarding a hard hard copy of what we have and don't have and that crosswalk of the numbers we have the crosswalk of the numbers we we were able to get that today we had I think it was going to a wrong email address so we've got that today so we have the crosswalk of the numbers which is huge um the actual physical hard copy and printing it out um apparently they're getting ready for their convention so they're saying they're targeting January that actually probably works well for you because you've got it all housed online right now so your policies are live anybody can see them at any time and as we go through and start deleting then when they print out the copy in January we know that everything that you've been deleting in the next couple of meetings is going to be gone so it actually might not be horrible that there's a delay um but that's what they're tell telling us that they can't get that to us until January okay and in the meantime if we decide to go through and do um for example uh the zero series and 1,000 series let's say in our next meeting um what Kim and I will do is put together um link hyperlinks to all those policies so that you'll have them with the recommended updates or tweaks um so that you can review them and it won't we don't think it needs to stall our work until January when we get the full hard copy Michelle did do you have a question so yeah I guess we were supposed to have this documentation The Nine Pages to review now right if we have questions but we don't have it so we won't meet again until when we're meeting at the end of this month yeah in two weeks okay so I don't think you'll have so many question I I think what will happen Michelle is you'll see it's it's a little dry I'd read it at night if you can't go to sleep I haven't saw so I'll try it so I think what you'll find is when you look at it there's a lot of numbers there's a lot of and and we went through um and just double checked that we had added everything Kelly said so really I think our next mission having now done that is to say at our next meeting we're going to go through the zero series and the 1,00 series and and if you look at those kind of in the interim there's I think there's five entries in the zero series and then there's maybe I don't know two dozen three dozen in the 1,000 series and they all look good so we're just going to go through and make sure that you know we highlight for you if we had changed anything recently so that you can see it and then we'll put together zeros 1000s and 2000s are already done um so that will leave for a subsequent meeting 300s we could probably do 3 thousands and 4 thousands um and then 4 thousands are Personnel so that's going to take a little while um and then we'll have 5,000 for students 6,000 for instruction and then the bylaws is a fairly small one the 9,000 so I think you're looking at a couple of meetings um but really the plan would be to kind of use that that audit report as just the road map so that when we go into these series we're just going to be kind of comparing you know just saying yep we got this and everything's here or um this they suggest that we can delete it because it's obsolete so 1,600 we recommend that you delete it and we'll look at it together and you'll say okay yep we're going to delete that because there was I know I missed one meeting so perhaps you all discussed it already but I know that there was certain policies that you were looking at like regarding like the playground if somebody touches somebody what was the intention as well as Sports um did that all kind of get resolved or discussed and I just you know in one meeting or is that part of the series you're talking about which is like section five or something way out there right I think that some of those that you're talking about are are going to be student in the student series but I think that what you'll find is what we've done so far in making sure we've got the mandatory part policies are the generic ones so the things that you know are are big ticket like we need to have an anti-discrimination policy we need to have our Equity statement so those pieces we did all the big pieces as we go through them now I think it might be a good place to highlight you know if we're going to do the Thousand series it's not super long we'll kind of preview it and say gee you know in the past we've had conversations about X and here here's where it sits and we can either do it at the time Circle back around with it um but some of the because some of these have been you know we've been using them for a very long time um and others of them might need to be tweaked and that's what we're kind of going through we're doing the broad Strokes with Cade and then the unique to damry Strokes will go as we go through the the series but there's nothing that needs to be addressed more you know urgently than another which is why we're just heading right down the path okay thank you care of all the ures yep wonderful thank you very much appreciate it bar you have a question yes um I don't have the book in front of me and I'm hesitant about screening into the board policy online just wanted to ask are the policies dated when they're changed yeah so that helps so if we have policy for X dated January 2020 then you know and that's what we're supposed to have them we're that's easy that's easy okay excellent all right you'll see the date that it was adopted um is at the bottom of each of each um okay and that was the date that it was approved and voted on by the board okay thank you and and the other thing that we're looking for when we go through this series by series is to make sure that the you know the crosswalk of the numbers transferred correctly too because for example our community relations might have been you know policy 50 or whatever and now it's in the 1,00 series so we just want to make sure that all of that translated as well so it'll be a good opportunity to crosswalk the numbers too excellent thank you any other questions sorry is I think it's gonna feel like a cross between really clerical and then finding some that you go oh no you know what we might want to talk about this one I I think it's going to be kind of a in between and that's why it's you know it's important for us as a group to go through everything so that we do you know we dot our our eyes and cross our te's but then we also talk about the issues that for danur might require some you know more nuanced uh you know application of our policies like for example I want like what Kim was saying doing a hard copy would this be easier if we're in person as opposed to doing this over Zoom um I it would be nice to to be in person I think for some of these I think some of these um are going to be sort of like you know there's not going to be a whole lot of modification that needs to be done um and so for some of those that you know if we can accommodate a virtual that might work better for the you know purpose of us being able to meet in a more regular fashion um but you know for some of these I definitely think having some in-person conversation especially if they're lengthier and there's a little bit you know a little bit more Nuance to the conversation I think for us to sit down and and have that conversation faed to would be great thank you Kim you were saying um um what was I gonna say oh I know wait I was just thinking sorry um I was thinking one really good example that you'll find as we go through is you know the crazy hiring policy that we have where if you're a Cabinet member or principal you go through the two panels and there's all kinds of pages that's a very damber Centric policy so that's one that's existed for quite a while that works for us that there's really not a reason to change it but it's really unique to Danberry so we're looking to make sure that all of that got transcribed correctly into this new world that is the cave structure that's a good example thank you Kim Kate I I also wanted to offer um and just picky back on what I I think I I heard you mention earlier I think it's important that the committee be reminded that this is also a time and opportunity um if you know the board is hearing getting feedback from the community our parents our families and they feel like we need to revisit a policy um that this discussion takes place here and we use this as an opportunity to kind of advance and further that discussion so I just just wanted to remind everyone you know this is an opportunity to do that absolutely thank you all right before we continue any other questions any questions from non-committee Members all right item number two I assume unless you guys have other things to add item number two is an update on the policy review process um so I think Kim and I uh shared some of that information as we were going over this um but we would like to propose moving forward um to be in compliance with uh the cab audit um that we select a series or two to be the topic of each meeting um certainly if we feel as a committee that we need more time to uh delve further into a policy or um you know to extend the when you start to get into some of the Personnel the student records and instruction um those are quite lengthy we may need two meetings to go over all the policies contained within those um to Teresa's point we can uh note when the policy was last reviewed and adopted by the Board of Education um and then what we'll look to do is uh three things um are there any recommended updates based on the cave audit so we've brought all the missing policies back into compliance but if there's any recommended tweaks or changes or updates sometimes it's a new legal reference other times it's um you know a switch of wording um in the policy We'll add those if there are any policies that are no longer required or needed or kind of outdated that we' make a recommendation to remove those and then third look at the numbering for some of our series make sure that we're following the cave um numbering for all of our policies um so it' really be content or is there any that are outdated or need need removal and then lastly um the numbering or Cod codifying all the policies to be in compliance with c um and work our way through series by Series so Kim and I were recommending I just see that Michelle said she can't hear anything just uh oh can you hear now how about now now just GNA suggest you try to log off and log back in it could be the internet connection too we've been having some issues today for sure it's not even raining I don't um I will continue and then if I need to Circle back please let me know um so we were going to recommend that we look at uh the zero uh series and the 1,000 series um for our next meeting um what we will do uh is send you the cave crosswalks for those two series um link all the policies so that you can look at them and review them um and then uh you know we can talk through for each policy uh either it's fine and no tweaks or changes needed um or we need to make an update and these are what the tweaks and changes should be and lastly looking at the coding for those policies and for those two particular uh series do you anticipate that there is going to be a lot of revision or that we're going to need to sit down and person to talk to talk about any of them I mean it's always possible that that there's going to be more conversation but on the whole if those are relatively intact I think a virtual meeting will suffice yeah those are probably easier um series to do um we can certainly go chronologically in order or numerical order I should say um if we choose if we want to go out of order there's nothing that prohibits us from doing that but we were thinking to go series by series would make sense that sounds good um any feedback or questions from uh committee members all right um I would just like to say typically we have uh had a policy meeting once a month and the reason we're having two this month is just because we're a little bit behind in terms of trying to get this moving forward so I do want to thank Kelly and Kim for their work uh to make sure that this happens so we can get back on track with the work that we need to do policy is one of the more important responsibilities that the board has so um I appreciate everybody's attendance today um and their agreement to be here again for a second meeting this month um and also would just let you know that in advance of the meeting um please do go through the material uh do prepare any questions you might have it will make the flow of our meeting go a lot faster um and it makes it a lot easier to have those conversations if everyone comes to the table prepared to have them Terry you're on yes does Kelly want us to vote to say to agree with this procedure just to be formal or do we don't need a vote I don't know well there's no action to be taken by the board on this one so I don't think we need to to actually have a formal vote for anything is that right yes okay thank you all right any other questions or concerns from committee members okay um Michelle you were you were offline where when um um I think I'm back on because I can hear you guys now great did you hear that we were discussing about at the next meeting we'll probably be looking at the the zero series and the 1,00 series yes and then you had asked I believe a question about does it have to stay in chronological order and then they said no and then I lost a little bit but I think I I got the gist so thank you I think great thank you very much um any other questions or concerns from committee members any questions questions or concerns from non-committee Members all right um I think that's it so thank you everyone for being here um Kelly and Kim thank you for leading us forward um I know this has been a little bit of a a process and and a little bit more complicated than any of us would like but I certainly appreciate it um and uh thank you to everybody who's shown up today and and uh help with this conversation uh so I'll look for a motion to adjourn at 603 3M so mooved by Terry in a second please uh bridg it looks like you came in just under the wire there I'll go to get that to you all all those in favor please hi

place your right hand over your heart ready begin I pledge aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible liberty and justice for all thank you so much Juliana we are very proud of you moving to item 5.1 report of action taken in closed session uh there was no action taken by the board during closed session and now for item 6.1 recognition and awards Mr Ortega I'm sorry Mr Chang Jenny if I can have you come over here good evening board president Dr Bo members of the Board of Education including student members superintendent Ortega members of cabinet and our assist unified Community our Career Technical education or CTE program continues to grow our CTE pathway serve approximately 950 students of which 250 are in the Academy of Health Sciences By Dana Gary our pathway students participate in paid and unpaid internships some receive both college and high school credit some pass exams to earn industry recognized certifications that would lead to better job placement some participate and compete in career and Tech technical student organizations are better known as ctsos as state Regional and National competitions and all students learn in CTE classrooms that get regularly updated with state-of-the-art industry approved software hardware and instructional supplies also we currently collaborate with over 20 national and local industry and Business Leaders such as City of Hope Ron and nap which by the way nap is a national nonprofit organization that helps facilitate Partnerships with businesses to shape the future Workforce through career relevant curricular and work-based learning experiences our students are benefiting from these Partnerships experiences and opportunities because we have amazing teachers and staff to help guide and advocate for them one of such teachers is JIA Gary she has been a critical part in the success of our nap Academy of Health Sciences and 2022 after years of dedication and hard work led by Jenny the academy earned the distinction of the Katherine blasic distinguished level nap's highest level of achievement but Jenny wasn't done just yet and I don't think she will ever be done as she doesn't seem to rest the past summer at Na's annual Summit Jenny was recognized as nap's Janet Linton leadership Award winner which honors outstanding Ed educational leaders for their extraordinary comp contributions in impacting student achievement Jenny's husband Ralph who is also in the audience today was smiling from ear to ear because he was there to help celebrate we also have several ausd staff members at the rec recognition dinner including Lori Madden Lori where I just saw her there she is Lori has played a key role in the success of the academy including her work with nap and her collaboration with our Health Sciences team Jenny I just want to say thank you thank you for what you do thank you for empowering our students thank you for always pushing the limits and challenging what is possible thank you for your dedication and passion thank you for providing all those opportunities and experiences for our students we are fortunate to have you leading the charge so that our students can realize success again Jenia Gary good evening as always um I would just like to thank the board for allowing me to do what I do and allowing our Academy teachers um to do what they do uh so freely and just we just we love what we're what we're doing for our kids and ausa is just going to keep going and going and going um I he's right I'm not done yet uh there is still the um this was myamy I still need the Oscar the Oscar will be for the Academy as a whole it's the Wilds award um so that will be my next challenge is to get ausa high school health Academy to get the Wilds award so that's my next challenge so I appreciate this thank you so much uh M please stay up front uh on camera I'm going to read your certificate and then uh the board members and I and your family will join in the middle for uh a photo opportunity this certificate reads the isus Unified School District is a certificate of recognition is proudly presented to Jenny Airi for excellent service to ausd students and receiving the Janet Linton leadership award October 10th 2023 signed by superintendent Ortega and my son on behalf of the board congratulations thank you and is our now is our practice we have the opportunity for our Board of Trustees to offer congratulatory comments to Jenny should we tell her yes you can't go to the red carpet party just yet so please come back so first I like to congratulate Mr um my grand daughter was in her class the first she had 50 students and she was already so she was kind of that she did not oh sorry a complete um you know started as freshman year but congratulations for I know that your class is getting bigger right and we have a lot of students and I love to see students and staff with their um uniforms every is it every Wednesday uh we do every day they have to wear them and then on Wednesdays all day yes that looks really nice the whole school even the principal wear it congratulations M yes so I wanted to um just say congratulations to you and thank you for your dedication and ensuring our high school students and our students are college career and Future Ready for and and thank you for igniting students our students with passion and um for learning and helping shape America's Workforce so congratulations to you again thank you so much apprciate it sorry I walked out so quickly I don't know and I just Echo those same comments congratulations and thank you for everything you do this is just one opportunity to to highlight and Spotlight some of the incredible uh things that you do and and for the for the things that aren't highlighted and spotlighted and and and seen here just thank you for that as well thank you so much thank you the support is amazing you guys are amazing my daughter's only in second grade now but um after visiting your class last year um I hope you stay the course so that she can be part of she can be part of the Health Sciences Academy with you at the home I will definitely leave a very good teacher thank you so much for all you've done to build the program and to take it farther thank you so much I appreciate it thank you thank you Mr TGA we're on a 6.2 uh thank you board president um if I can please call uh Audrey Ramirez uh to the podium please uh Bor I am so uh proud uh tonight uh to be here uh the Rotary uh put on a field of Glory uh event uh at City Hall um and there were many highlights uh that evening from our interact students uh helping and supporting from our uh board member uh reading uh Emily reading the um the principles of the the yeah of the freedom flag are they called principles elements thank you the elements of the freedom flag uh to our Orchestra uh playing there uh but one of the definite highlights was our essay contest winner Audie Ramirez from muuza high school uh she was um she read her essay uh there at the event um and uh we would like to invite her uh to read her essay uh to to you all so what does freedom mean to me in the United States the concept of freedom is deeply ingrained in our culture and our history it is the foundation upon which our nation was built life liberty and the pursuit of happiness a principle that has been fought for and defended by countless Americans throughout our history I have seen this firsthand in my own life growing up in a household where my father father has dedicated over two decades to serving in the military I never fully understood the reason for his dedication until I was older I've realized that he has spent countless nights and days away from home missing out on special moments all in the name of protecting our freedom and ensuring that we live in a safe and secure Society the former president of the United States Ronald Reagan once said freedom is not free I believe he was speaking of the fact that freedom must be fought for and defended it is a responsibility that we all share freedom to me is a Priceless treasure we must work to ensure that is not just a privilege for some but a right that is extended to all members of our society I believe it is up to every one of us to fight for equality Justice and opportunity for all no matter the background or circumstances it is a privilege we myself included often take for granted but one that we must never forget I'm forever grateful to those who have come before us especially to my dad and we must be committed to ensuring that the freedom in this nation is passed down to the Next Generation thank you Audrey can you please return I have the certificate uh for you this Unified School District certificate of recognition is PR to present to Audrey Ramirez for winning the FL to Glory essay contest October 10th 2023 signed by superintendent Ortega and board president Dr saen we're going to come and take a picture with you if you want to stand a center please okay Audrey I'd like to congratulate you again I was there when she um said and she was a little nervous I'm not sure that's CL she ever uh spoke but a fabulous job I was very I'm really glad that she was M High School Audrey I want to congratulate you and you know it really makes me proud to see auua students um you know speaking out for Freedom especially in a time that we're living in today so and just to be you know to be able to know and understand what that means to live in the United States stes of America that's a privilege we all have and thank you for such a beautiful essay and reminding us all in this room today congratulations Audrey I'd like to add my voice to the chorus of appreciation um you're a deep thinker a beautiful writer and an eloquent speaker and so we recognize you today and look forward to hearing you at the podium and from behind the desk for many more years to come so thank you so much now moving to item 6.3 recognition of five isua unified Stu School District students who won the field of Glory art contest Mr orta thank you uh Dr bo uh so yes uh we get to uh continue to uh highlight our students um and so part of the field of Glory uh event uh did include uh an art contest and I'm very happy to present uh the students who uh won we do have uh their art displayed here in uh the boardroom for everyone to enjoy uh we have Michael Sanchez from muuza high school uh deero from azuza high school I believe Natalie in is not with us tonight okay she's not with us but she's from hodj uh we have Winston KN from hodj and Charlotte Reese from Hajj uh we're very H we're very excited to highlight again the artwork uh of our students uh you have uh witnessed um our students who uh do amazing things winning Congressional Awards uh with our investment in the art program launching this year uh also at the elementary school uh we hope to develop uh artists uh as we move as we move forward so once again please a round of applause for our students and could I I ask each of our artists to stand by their their pieces of Art and again just want to say great job um as as we celebrate you and the incredible work that that's on display for us here uh this evening for a moment but in a second we'll call you all forward and and we' love to take a photo but I do have we have a certificate for each of you and they they read as follower follow uh from usus Unified School District a certificate of recognition is proudly presented to each of you for competing and placing in the field of Glory art contest uh dated for this evening and signed by the superintendent and our board President congratulations again thank you and we love to take a photo with you so I like to congratulate all the students um I am a a I was one of the judges and it was very to judge the all the pictures and I want to thank all you students for participating and to um when we start contest it you you could did a really good job I'd like to congratulate all the students that participated in this um art contest but most of all I want to say and express my gratitude for um really putting in your creativity and for recognizing the courage and selflessness and um acknowledging um our veterans our First Responders our service um men and women um that have committed their life to serving right and and that continue to serve so let's be reminded like I said earlier what a great privilege it is to live in a free country thank you so much and to each of our students not only our winners but all of our participants we recognize you we congratulate you on your work we know that you spent countless hours not only constructing these art pieces but thinking about them deciding what medium to use and we hope this is just the first of many uh times where in this boardroom we'll be able to see your work so congratulations next we move to item 7.1 public comment on agenda or non-agenda items hope do we have blue cards for members of the public in person and the first member of the public is Maria bolard program and operations at think together proudly working with the Souza Unified School District supporting students and families of this community think together has been partnering with asusa Unified School District since 2007 currently serving approximately a thousand students in nine schools we I think together are so grateful for your partnership ship and support we are Advocates of the importance of after school programs in the lives of students and Families Our programs provide students with wraparound academic and enrichment support to help them succeed at school and a trusted safe place for parents to leave their children when they're at work we are also fortunate to be part of a state and community that believes in the benefits of innovative expanded learning programs that support kids outside of the typical school day following the academic challenges brought on in the aftermath of coid new state funding has provided support for our students after school on non-instructional days like never before together we are helping students to engage learn and progress towards Bright Futures this month once again uh we are celebrating after school programs with our annual lights on after school event on octo October 23rd we will be inviting business Community district and school leaders and parents to join us at our open house style event at 3:30 p.m.

we get a message that it was now leaving the school so in that whole time the kids were at the gym waiting for their bus to arrive but no communication to us over an hour after they left um I called the transportation department that moment at five minutes later 455 uh no one answered uh left a voicemail for a call back I've yet to receive a call back to this day uh which shocks me uh they did arrive my house at 5:15 p.m.

in room 5060 all right um our gender and sexuality Alliance Club has begun to meet every other Tuesday from 3:00 to 4:30 in room 4032 with the advisor Miss Reyes it is open and welcome to all and they hope to attend more Regional meetings in the future there will also be an upcoming officer election and we do have a new student representative opportunity as well as school committee um rep opportunity so our hope this season is to increase our number of student rep participants we have sent out an email to the student body for the possibility of joining um either one of these um and we have heard back from a good handful of students and hope to be introducing you to them in the future um here's the pictures we have our senior Captain Sports posters we have uh soccer Cross Country Golf say they're outside the gym if they want see and they're outside the gym too if you want to see them so um this was last Friday right yeah so this already passed it was the Reggie football game the Reggie cheerleaders and football players encourage all reggies to wear pink at the football game last Friday night in support of breast cancer awareness month so October is breast cancer awareness M if you all didn't know all right and we do have a couple of games um coming up this week so today we will have freshman JV and varsity girls volleyball at greater L high school as well as JV and varsity girls soccer at shaen Tech and varsity boy soccer at innovation academy tomorrow we are going to have one home game JV boy soccer against SAS high school and two away games varsity girls cross country and varsity boys cross country at Metropolitan high school on Thursday there will be all home games JV and varsity girls volleyball against Mystic Valley as well as varsity girls soccer against Lin Tech and freshman boys football against Metropolitan High School lastly on Friday there will be three home games and two away games we have varsity boys golf freshman girls soccer versus linch and varsity boys soccer against Lawrence High um all home games and JB and varsity girls volleyball against Kip Academy all our all support to our teams is greatly appreciated and we'll be Ching cheering them on as they take on these games this week if you want to scan the QR code up there you can also find the game schedule all right and then the class of 2026 is having a fundraiser so help us support them by buying some Reggie gear they have many cool options colors and prints with each priced at $20 this will go on for another 81 days so feel free to share with friends and family another awesome idea is the future Reggie te if you know someone who hopes to come to glts in the future um or someone with younger siblings and this tea could be an awesome gift they come in two different styles too my favorite is the last one the proud to be a Reggie te these are all amazing ways to show our Reggie Pride as well as support our students class you can access this fundraiser through the QR code on the last slide or or page of our presentation here are some new and returning win richment activities and opportunities for students to take part in during academic week College and Career planning Monday designed to help grade 10 and 12 high school students prepare for their future by exploring College and Career options ions learning about admissions financial aid executive functioning and as essential job seeking skills past monday past Monday is a yearlong group that is that is Invitation Only Our curriculum will be multi sensory we will be using exess expressive Arts to explore healthy approaches to coping with anxiety art cooking and music are only a few of the modes we will be using this is a group for 11th and 12th graders students who were enrolled last year are welcome back please email Miss Silva if you would like to join um meditation and journaling Monday this group you tzes guide meditation and journaling to introduce students to A coping mechanism that can be utilized prevently or in response to Stress and Anxiety meditation is an evidence-based approach and is a science backed mity that offers a better way to approach the day meditation and journaling is open to all students and will meet in the pack on Mondays during Wind Block y a Reggie now what Tuesday do you have questions or looking to learn more about what to expect this year if so then join your ninth grade counselors for win we will talk more about adjusting to high school what to expect this year and then learn what glts counselors have to offer during your high school career upper class students will also be invited to answer questions share their experiences and offer advice we can't wait to see you next Tuesday next is a group designed for seniors who are interested in discussing life after graduation next stands for new experiences exciting transactions please feel free to drop in if you are wanting to plan for the adult version of you we will be basing our conversations off off off off the last last lecture by Randy p p oh jeez P we will meet all year chect Tuesday rotating physical education sections focused on exploration of healthy strategies to navigate stressers topics include learning about the body's response to stress the importance of self care navigating Pro pressures developing positive thinking learning ways to increase relaxation and calm strategies to improve quality of sleeping and more open to all grades drop in model open for all strong on the inside strong on the outside Friday utilizing purpose P purposeful movement to strengthen internal dialogue and Target negative self image negative selft talk this distri ability audition increased self-confidence and build res resilience be proud be you utiful Friday open discussion when providing a safe supportive space for lgbtq plus students open to all grades closed but will accept new members that request to join College and Career planning Friday prepares grade 12 students for their future by exploring College and Career options learning about admission financial aid executive functioning and and essential job seeking skills this month we will work on filling out college applications all right and then something else that's really exciting we are having our homecoming the theme is glow dance um it will take place on Friday October 27th and our homecoming football game will be Thursday October 26th the day before it should be a ton of fun for all students and we can't wait to report on the turnout of the event it's back spooky tonight will make a return this Friday night from 5:30 to 900 p.m.

I would encourage all board members to attend that tri board meeting it'll be an official board meeting for us I anticipate that that meeting would be an hour in the focus of that meeting will be on the financial forecast for the fiscal year 25 budget the Board of Education next meeting will be held on Monday November 6th please note the Monday excuse me the next please please note the Monday date because the election day is the the normal Tuesday so our next meeting will be Monday November 6 and then upcoming I will also be holding a virtual superintendent Community conversation on October 23rd at 6:30 p.m.

at Murray Elementary to see firsthand the power of after school programs this year we celebrate the Bright Futures of our amazing students uh who work hard every day to expand their knowledge as well as our incredible staff who are alongside them every step of the way we are proud to serve and support auua Unified School District and the community members of auua to provide after school and enrichment programs for students at no cost to families we hope to see you at our annual lights on after school event again October 23rd at Murray Elementary thank you so much thank you Leica do we have any members of the public who wish to make public comment remotely we have no hands raised online thank you now moving to item 8.1 comments reports and requests by the Board of Education board vice president raspa so um good evening everyone um I just wanted to n said I have visited all 10 School sites since beginning when school started including the adult transition and the uh adult school and the campuses are looking great and I know that the students it looks kind of weird would you say because you know I I used to go to three middle schools and two high schools but I'm going to one high school and there's all the kids are there and I go to one middle school and um it's we working out really well so I'm very proud of our district for making this happen um I also want to do a high school back to school night whole house Mr Fernandez did a great job to could do the parents regarding the policies of the school and the dress code I was going to he left early but um there was many parents there and and I'm kind of surprised sometimes because usually you know parents it's always about it when it's elementary school and when it's high school they're like oh well you know they're already older but no we had many parents and and they were just really impressed also with the school and the programs uh I went to Kathy and um over 20 children gots and backpacks and I want to thank mayor Robert gonzale are continuing to to Ser the student the children it's it's students from is it's just students from all over um they don't need to have to live in isusa but they all left really happy with a nice ha cut and a backpack also AA UniFi receive 300 blacks from C for our students and I want to thank mayor Gonzalez also for making that connection between Costco and is Unified School District I attended the lunch for Leo year I want to congratulate again Esther compus wall social studies teacher social science teacher at isza high school while deserve I known es for a very long time since she was at glone high school and now she's at isua high and she's doing all the teachers are are great teachers with they only can pick one and it will say this time so um I also like to our pass to success desert social I want to congratulate all 56 employees ass social management classified employees certificated as Adult School their years of service 45 years and um I want to thank them for all the hard work and dedication was UniFi District also Ian Moro Secretary of HR she did a great job organizing this event thank you what M benas so I also had a chance to attend uh zza back to school night and it was well attended as board member paa indicated and it was good to see that were involved they were there with their um their their children and what was really nice or something important for me was that they were going to the classrooms and kind of getting an idea of what the bell schedule looks like who the uh teacher was so and it was just good to see that turnout um I'm trying to make my way through the school and I did visit Gladstone middle school as is the high school and slowly but surely I'll work on the others thank you and I would like to use this opportunity just to to say thank you and and give some kudos to superintendent Ortega um just to to thank you uh for the the the ways that I I continue to to see you just be tremendously responsive to um just the the number of things that that come our way that come sometimes my way my way as a board member and as I share some of those things with you the way that you continue to be responsive uh to those things continue to be accessible um communicative um just just very grateful for you and and for your your leadership here at the isus Unified School District thank you colleagues I just wanted to Echo an event that I was able to attend um with some of the cabinet members here student staff and superintendent on Thursday September 2th uh we were able to attend the 2023 Empower Gaya which is an annual special event by the Western Justice Center and we had the special privilege of being not only honored as a school district for our seven-year partnership with the Western Justice Center but also three of our alumni were awarded with the inaugural peacemakers award it was an extremely moving night to hear the tremendous power that these students have uh done in terms of restorative justice and Bridge Building and they've really left uh an important Legacy at our high school and on our district and it was it was just so amazing to be in that space of probably 300 people um and it was all about isua unified um so I was it was very proud uh very proud moment and I'm glad we're able to enjoy that special event so thank you so much now moving to item 9.1 comments and reports by student board members superintendent and cabinet Mr Ortega uh thank you Dr Bo um I would like to turn it over to Mariah Santos uh who I believe is online our our student board member from Sierra High School uh good evening board members superintendent MGA and cabinet I'm happy to be here again tonight representing Sarah High School since the last meeting we had a great turnout at our backst school/ report card night on September 298 the September 28th where we think we had over a 100 people our students turned out with their families including younger siblings and even aunts and uncles the zusto adult education center and S College were also there to share about programs that they have to offer students while they were in high school and after graduation it was a great night last meeting I reported that we lost our first football game in the last play but I'm happy to report that we carried a 24 to Zer win against Mount Olive this game was special to us because it was also a home game on September 29th we had Spirit day staff versus students volleyball game we didn't exactly play by competition rules it was 12 or more students against six staff but it was still really it was still really tough game at the end Sierra staff uh won the first round and the students won the second round October 5th was our first blood drive of the year we had a great turnout and it was nice to know that Sierra is Saving Lives I also wanted to share some upcoming events tomorrow October 11th it's Sierra uh Sierra's senior sunrise and pajama day um you as you already may be aware October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month and on the 18th we will have pink day where we be wearing pink to uh share awareness and show our support we are also excited to be participating in this year's Golden Days parade on 21st to show Pride for our school goer SPS thank you Mariah I'd like to turn over to Emily Hernandez our student board member from mauza high school uh good evening everyone um in upcoming events isza High School Community Schools is hosting a desert night with parents on October 16th at 7M for students for parents to share suites with each other and discuss ways to build a culture of belonging among among parents at isua high school additionally isua High School is hosting a college fair on October 24th in the isua gym from 8 from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m.

that night we had an appointment schedule and it's kind of difficult when their scheduled time of getting home is at 4:18 and they're getting home at sometimes at 5:15 uh every day uh today for for example no alert that they're going to be late uh 4:18 is the um time they're supposed to get home 4:39 they arrived I would thought that was supposed to be 10 minutes if they're going to be late we were getting messaging but their bus route is consistently late on the drop off now arrival to the school we have no clue um I do ask my kids if they're late to school a lot of times they are um but we have no communication back to us if they are late I'm looking for answers of why the bus is always late is it this particular route how can they be sitting at the school for an hour and I know it's other routes too sometimes of no communication to us to maybe we can go pick them up or anything is there any work being made for improving the transportation I understand there's shortages and things like that is there better routing they can do any progress being made at all with any of this and is it just their route or is this every single route in all the schools is it there something particular happening in their route before them or just looking for Solutions and also better communication to the parents that the bus is going to be late or is not at the school because there's opportunities for us to maybe go pick them up if we're aware that they're not on the bus sitting for 30 minutes or something like that thank you thank you thank thank you Carol hi my name is Jessica and I am also my child is on his kids BS it is BS number 8110 at Boulder Hill it is 87% of the time that is late either in the mornings or in the afternoons or both that particular day that um the Gentleman Just addressed uh they were over an hour late we did notag get notification uh this has been an ongoing for me personally for my family an ongoing problem for 3 years I've been patient 3 years I have resorted to doing uh carpooling with other parents uh I spoke uh last year about this issue uh they said Jessica hang in we're Hang on we're going to work on it where Mr dvo who is the operate route operation super supervisor manager uh David duvo he it took him 3 months to um analyze my kids BS to tell me that there was nothing that they could do um last week my child they were supposed to be picked up at 8 uh 18 in the morning she got picked up at 8:39 with no supervision because I was trusting that the bus was going to be maybe uh two three minutes late but it was not so there is my 9-year-old on the side of the road waiting for the bus this is constant it is not that it happens just once a week it is constant at the school they already know that if I drive my kid to school it is because oh you're bus 8110 yes I am my kid is in bus 8110 so as a parent of having this issue my I the suggestion to the board is we have to find a solution some of those Solutions I've been talking to other districts uh CPS does Vans they use CTA Vans where because it's easier to drive a a van to everybody can drive anybody can drive a van with a regular license versus a bus license so could we subcontract uh Vans to assist those routes our bus has 10 pickups I met with Mr devote this morning um and he's again looking into this uh so that is one option another option might be po possibly giving the parents a stien to subsidize or to help with their missing work to then be able to drive their kids to school and maybe drive others kids in their neighborhood my particular neighborhood my kids are in the Dual language prog program there's three families in the whole subdivision that go to Boulder Hill so if we could work together and if there's uh incentive for parents to be able to help alleviate some of that issue we can work you know I'm just let's think outside the box you know having a we hiring sign or Flyers is not working I mean we've been working on that for 3 years and it hasn't worked as a parent I am doing my job to bring my child prepared to school to have her ready to learn to have her on time now I need the school to do that for my child she is very stressed because in the morning they are late a lot of the 87% of the time so when they are late she's already in in uh specials and the teacher is like you got to hurry up you're already late you're 10 minutes late late you're 12 minutes late you got to hurry hurry hurry hurry hurry hurry hurry hurry she is like stressed 3 years of rushing her because she's always running behind because she's always late it disrupts the classroom it disrupts everything it throws it I mean imagine getting to work late every day it affects everything and I am asking the board to look into different solutions other than just having um were hiring flyers and um you know to look into other neighboring uh school districts to find out what may be working for them um or to have a group uh of us parents that have those kids and let's brainstorm on how we can help we are failing our children by setting them already late every day at school and it's very stressful on the staff it's stressful on the parents and especially and the children thank you for your time thank you thank you thank you okay 5.1 we will now have Dr katti superintendent report good evening board Community thank you very much um I want to start my comments this evening by just taking a minute um to reflect and request from the board and opportunity in the community here uh to take a moment of silence and why when to ask for this is I want to address the ongoing long-standing and increased violence in the Middle East every life is precious and it is heartbreaking to witness the loss of life and lives due to any form of aggression we hold steadfast in Our Hope and our desire to live in a world that dignifies the lives of all in every way tolerating differences and more importantly coexisting in peace I would like to take a moment of silence in honor of those impacted and extend a most profound hope of prayer and peace for the lasting peace for that area of the world thank you and this is something that's been of concern for me as well as for the board so I appreciate this moment I'm going to Pivot and uh we'd like to move on to some unique and important celebrations we have within our midst in the district one of our students her name is Lucy where she's age nine I listen to this third grader from Southbury and is among 80 Junior golfers representing 31 US states and two countries who have earned in an invitation to compete at the Augusta National Golf Club for their 10th Annual Drive what were you doing when you were 10 years of age this will happen on April 7 7th 2024 uh Lucy earned first place in each of the three disciplines and scoring 132 points and registering a 36 Point Victory now everybody don't go to that school and get your your autograph today but I can't fault you if you do this is an incredible achievement for such a grade uh scale deserves special recognition we send her our best wishes and this well congratulations to her family uh as we know this is a partnership last Friday our high school students participated and Ascend this first day this is the first day of a series of learning and engagement opportunities during the shortened School Improvement days this is using a unique model of having our students participate in their classroom watching presenters live online and allowed everyone the opportunity to engage in the same amount of content but also engage in smaller groups the topics include goal setting and dreams and the importance of community and developing empathy this idea came from our students who are serving on the superintendent's advisory Council along with teachers and administrators from the high school in the district this incredible opportunity was a true collaboration and directly addressed topics indicated as priority needs from our student body through survey feedback that we received last year congratulations to the team of students and teachers who helped to develop this learning event we look forward to hearing more about what you plan for our next sip day thank you all as many of you may know today kicks off the 10th Annual districtwide uh food drive this annual collection or event has a massive impact on our community to help fight hunger and food insecurity at our recent education commission meeting in Aurora I was there this was a matter of great concern um that are we are looking at how we partner with local organizations this particular Drive benefits our local County Community Food Pantry who serves over 2,000 families every week we account for the largest single donation each year while we do make this a friendly competition between buildings at each level the goal is the same for everyone we are here to make a difference in our community when we do all when we all do a little it really adds up a lot and as they say many hands make light work we encourage you and welcome you to join us in donating online um we also through this is happening through October 16th please join us in breaking our record from last year which combined with cash and food donations totaled 413,000 items our district alone has provided 1.7 million items to our local Pantry through this annual collection this is an amazing impact that we are having and we always announce that this celebration the the winner of this effort at our cross town football game I see some shirts over here for our football cross town coming up on October 20th at aohs it is also this evening with mixed emotion that I want to share the news of the upcoming retirement and you may have read of two of our long-standing educational leaders who have really made a profound difference in their time with our district now they will be with us for the rest of the year but I think it's important to acknowledge and take moment in stock right now at the conclusion of this year our associate superintendent Miss Faith delest along with our Junior High director Miss Shannon ners will retire from District um from this District following distinguished careers in public education I think that's worth an Applause faith has been part of this district for The Last 5 Years she's been an educator in Illinois since 1991 and serving as an administrator for 29 years this is in incredible contribution and we are grateful for her leadership and dedication and she most certainly has to earn the opportunity to enjoy herself and her family in retirement maybe even sub I'm just kidding Shannon has spent 17 years in our district uh she's one of the longest serving administrators heing School District 308 she's an uh she started serving as an assistant principal at Thompson junior high then as a principal 7 years ago she moved to the district off office to oversee all of our Junior highs her expertise and experience and knowledge will be missed but like Faith she more than like more than well deserves her free time and retirement we wish both of them all the best and we celebrate with you and we will know we'll have time to celebrate more with you you as you prepare for this change um my final comments tonight are really about the transformative process we've been going through it has really been a tremendous experience coming into this District um as we know um any change takes time um we received questions about programmatic changes uh Transportation as we've heard this evening um last meeting the Dual language program um our the way in which we think about our budget and organizing our finances and a significant opportunity for improvement in those areas um I recognize that in my first 90 days I've been getting to know the district uh reviewing the key areas needed working with Educators parents and community members as Riden through our superintendent Advisory Group recently it is my intention and plan to be as methodical proactive in the exploration of processes that need to be addressed um I am going to be identifying and working collaboratively to identify opportunities of growth we will uncover what is not making our district stronger than it needs to be and work towards identifying ways to make it as sustainable and as strong as District as possible we have to work towards continuous Improvement we have to identify ways to identify the root causes and then work to move through a systematic process to improve what's happening in our district one of the first things we've identified as a district is the need to improve our climate and culture and one of the areas that we're doing that is by identify six core values that will guide our work these include Integrity humanization courtesy dignity collaboration and empathy with these values guiding us we can operate in a way that is more transparent and builds trust when we acknowledge the importance of Building Systems and structure and not just responding in reacting we can make great things happen and is my intention and this administration's intention to work collaboratively with our community and to continue to strengthen it and with that I turn it over to Madam president thank you Yes actually I'm going to share share the time with you and invite we have enough we have lots of celebrations as you notice when we come together so I want to make sure that uh we have an event we have a celebration that we're going to president so we want to acknowledge Stephanie San Roman we want to acknowledge Stephanie San Roman she is one of 30 music teachers to be awarded by the Nashville based nonprofit Country Music Association and um aswel High School's band director has been recognized nationally for her commitment and impact on the lives of students Stephanie San Roman is one of 30 music teachers to be awarded by the Nashville based nonprofit Country Music Association it's the 7th year the program has recognized Educators make the greatest impact on their students through music according to a news release San Roman is the only Illinois educator to earn this year's music teacher of Excellence she joined the asgo school in 2006 as an associate director and was promoted Ed to director 3 years ago all 30 Award winners will be celebrated at a SE a ceremony that took place on September 19th in Nashville the organization will also give a total of $150,000 to all of this year's recip recipients half of each teachers investment will go to their classroom needs and music programs with the other half going to personal expenses officials said so congratulations to Stephanie [Applause] okay yes okay 5.2 board committee reports and we'll have the report of the equity and teaching and learning committee are there any comments um regarding the equity and teaching and learning committee I have one but I'll I'll see if you Eugene OR Dr Mario if you wanted to say anything first um I just had one encouragement for the community um Can Can you all hear me yes okay I just have one encouragement for the community uh we are looking at these committees as a way to really get more input both from uh board members prior prior to going to a full board meeting uh but community members are also welcome these committees to observe the discussions listen in and also make comment uh as they would like we had one visitor at our last meeting and we hope to see more community members in the future I agree um thank you Dr Mario and um I'll uh I'll just add couple a couple of things that um kind of pondering coming out of there first of all a large portion of the meeting was to talk about um um the ASL class and um one thing I want to talk about we it's um I guess appropo that we're talking about equity and also teaching and learning um when it comes to this program um you know sometimes in life you don't know till you know uh and my first time on the board for those that don't know uh one of the reasons I didn't run again is because um um late in my first term my wife developed an acoustic neuroma and uh my wife being um hard-headed as she is uh I believe me no pun intended there um she just kind of kept putting it off putting it off putting it off and then uh it got to a point where they um told her immediately you need to go to the doctor matter of fact doing doing a simple hearing test they actually knew exactly what was going on uh my wife then had to endure uh three surgeries uh one to take out her left ear uh another one to get rid of the um um uh the tumor itself and then the third one to Anchor in um the the hearing aid uh piece uh into her skull and uh I will say this that um you don't know until you know right and just something simple as the last time we were on a flight um the person next to her was trying to talk to her on her left side and she turned and said I'm sorry I'm I'm deaf on that side I can't hear right and uh um so when we talk about uh those in our community who um deal with with um uh heart hearing uh hearing loss so forth um we should realize uh how many people it impacts but sure but we also should um uh remember that there's a huge benefit also to um being um uh accepting and celebrating um uh that that uh that community that exists with us and and I know my wife was very much um uh motivated uh to take up sign language herself she is a um a foreign language teacher so probably helped her a little bit but but you know um but these things do impact people sometimes you don't even you don't even know um my tragically my wife see sees out sees out there certain things that that people will say about me and and I feel bad for that part for her but you know uh I guess it goes with the job um but um one concern that I always have is that I hope we are monitoring the this um Committee in particular um this was a moment that I was excited to see equity and teaching and learning come together uh I know sometimes people have a concept of equity this is Equitable this is this is Equity um this class and what we're doing um but I hope that we will continue to monitor because I don't want that getting lost by combining the two um committees so uh I just wanted to add that piece and uh like I said I guess the theme there is you don't know sometimes till you know I I would just like to share um that I was as many administrators will share with you that have sat on a committee with me I'm pretty passionate about things and um I see some Smiles across the aisle over there last year um I brought ASL to uh Mr arson and Mrs dalquist and uh at the teaching and learning committee because I am part of that deaf in heart of hearing Community I am fully deaf in the right side of my ear which is why I'm always asking people to talk into the microphones because I can't hear um masking was hard for me because I'm a lip reader but um I know that there was some hesit ation and I thank you both for seeing this through over the last year it means a lot just not just to me but to so many in our deaf and hard and hard and hearing Community um I was at the bowling alley a couple months ago and the family next to me communicated fully in ASL and I just don't think if you don't see it you don't realize how much it impacts people's lives so I look forward to our next meeting being in ASL thank you all right anybody else thank you Dan all right 5.3 board member comments any board member comments tonight I just have a you know went on a tour um with Dr katti um Miss haror and uh Miss Jones over at Boulder Hill a couple weeks ago um I will say that it was uh they're very resourceful with their space um there's a lot of uh space constraints going on um uh but uh a lot of vibrant classrooms um excitement in the school um so it was it was very heartwarming as well um I I also uh that was that was pretty much all I want to say I was had had some fun playing Simon says um it's been years I did pretty well I think soon as you go out oh yeah anybody that that knows me probably thinks I wouldn't do very well Simon says right um but yeah so I appreciate uh taking that tour with me and um showing me around and um seeing the great things and the things that we need to improve so okay so a week ago Saturday two weeks ago this coming Saturday um I went with uh couple admins and several teachers to uh serve lunch at hessed house so for those of you that aren't aware um hessed house is kind of a a homeless shelter out out in Aurora um it's actually a pretty large one anyway um it was part of uh District 308 gives so we all gathered and and uh we actually we got off pretty easy we were handing out pizza um so it could have been worse but it was a great experience to to hang out with some other teachers and also to have some conversations with some people that otherwise you might not be talking to so that and again we mentioned the food drive um food pantry was also last week over at Old Trower um we you know virtually 100 families again um if there is a need please make sure that you send people there there's you know nobody nobody in this community should starve so that's it from me you know can I so yeah we got the uh letter about the food drive I think recently or an email or some form of communication but it was uh for every dollar you give it's like eight items of food so I mean it's you can make a significant difference with like 10 20 200 you know um but even 10 or five you know is still good um but yeah that was uh you know I I forget that how how well they do with the resources they yet so than you yeah no we're going to move on if you you have something I just have um two quick things I wanted to say and I did not prepare these so God help me um I just wanted to make an apology to our dual language families and our elll families I know that I've spent the last two weeks really getting to know a lot of them and I will tell say that I was not fully vested in understanding and the knowledge of the program and I think all of them who have reached out to me and allowed me to listen um I do feel that there are a lot of areas of opportunity in our district and right now it is very high on my priority list so to the students that we may have let down I'm really really sorry and I apologize and I have spent um many conversations with Dr katti over the last two weeks um really uh digging in and and and sharing information and really understanding what the root cause of the issues are so I just really wanted to reach out and and say that um to everyone involved and I know that uh there is better days ahead um for that program uh that was the first thing um and then secondly um I just wanted to bring awareness to the fact that October is ADHD Awareness Month um also incredibly personal to me as I have been um I was diagnosed with ADHD when I was 26 but looking back on my history um I've obviously had it uh for most of my whole life and um I encourage um and I shared with Dr katti some resources but I strongly encourage our administrators to look into uh professional development uh regarding ADHD it affects a lot of students and as we know when students are disregulated they are not learning and um most people that have worked with me including everybody at this table know that I I have trouble with executive functions I see it in students every day a lot of the times we label that as behavior issues and they're not behavior issues they are um executive function impairment and um I look forward to um seeing the district dig into that and and the professional development and getting to understand our students and where they're coming from because we know that they're not learning if they're disregulated um when I was in second grade my teacher decided to duct tap my mouth uh shut for the first semester of of school now I did go to a um a parochial school so things were a little different um on the private side of things but um I was so scared that my parents were going to find out you can't really hide a rash from duct tape after so long and um um it just goes to show that you know those kids that we think talk too much or distract or what have you have a lot of other things going on and um it's really important for us to find out what those things are so we can help them in their Learning Journey so I just wanted to thank you for letting me share thank you Dr so I want to close it out I want to invite Faith uh doist to join me and uh we're getting ready to celebrate a very important group of our employees this month so fath I don't know if you're aware of it but it is principal appreciation month um and uh these group of individuals work incredibly hard I know people even in June July and August wouldn't you love to be a principal no you would not um there's a lot a lot of work to do um to be ready for everybody to come I know some of my favorite years were being a principal uh and wow not going to get emotional about that um and it's just a great job but it's also very very tiring and trying to meet the needs of of everybody and I am just honored to work with our principles thank you thank you let's give them we will be sharing a lot more about our principles at our our second board meeting in the month of October we will be kicking off next week is the official week where we have lots and lots of ways that we're going to be taking time to celebrate them every single day um and then at our last board meeting of the month we'll be bringing some more announcements and celebrations around that one it's um one other as long as we're going through this it is also uh lgbtqia plus uh History Month I always uh um talk about uh the story of Albert cashier I don't know if anyone knows this story um but uh Albert cashier served um Illinois uh in the Civil War on marched under Grant's Army um um came over from Ireland um and um was born um born born born a woman uh but the father uh of Albert um when she came over he um encouraged Albert to um to uh present and work a as a man because there would be more opportunities and Albert joined the Union Army served um the state of state of Illinois um was almost captured um uh went through many heroic uh moments when Albert came back um unfortunately there was a moment where Albert became um uh foggy in the head for lack of better terms start to suffer from dementia and uh had to be in was uh hit by a car and at that point um the doctors um realized that um Albert um uh Albert um in their minds was not in their minds was not um a male threatened to take Albert's pension away after uh defending his country uh and his own soldiers that he uh um served with showed up and um they said Albert Albert deserves his pension Albert is one of us Albert is a soldier here for Illinois and um so I always tell the story of Albert cashier Albert cashier yeah so look it up you can fact check me I always tell people to fact check me so please do thank you for that all right and now we have 5.4 our student ambassador reports okay can you hear me okay yeah a little louder okay um so we have had some very productive discussions since our last school board meeting throughout our ssac meetings we have really been focusing on the survey results from the mental health survey that was released last year um we were really able to dive deep into the demographics that made up the results especially we looked where race and gender intersected with kind of how PE students looked at issues um the main result of the survey that really stood out to us was how students of every demographic of every race of every sexuality stated that they had too large of a homework load and that was one of their biggest concerns so we're really trying to kind of get to the root of that and understand what subjects are weighing on students the most what what might just be not wanting to do work and what might be a serious issue because that it can become serious if students are spending their whole night at home doing homework and then we kind of talked about students solutions that help students relieve stress while still allowing them to learn um we would really love to survey teachers next to get their perspective on the homework load and how we can possibly connect teachers to each other so you know if one one subject is having a big test and a lot of homework the other subject isn't doing the same thing because I think that's a lot of issues we see where every single class has a test on one day and then you have no homework for a week so that's something we'd like to try to confront um we also discussed have the survey stated the majority of students did not believe that sexual harassment had gone down in their Community which combating sexual harassment had been our goal of previous year so we tried to address the failings and successes of last year's actions and how we can approve the the attempts that were made and the biggest thing was we really tried to acknowledge how large of an issue sexual harassment is and how we can address it knowing that we can't change society as a whole at the moment um and one small way we discussed was even letting students know the process for addressing harassment within the district because we heard from admin that many times students believe there was no discipline or no action taken against a student that was accused when in fact they're Bound by confidentiality but students don't always know that so we really wanted to work together to educate students so they feel heard and understood and understand the process um but overall we are still in the process of weeding through survey results and creating an action plan plan for this year I also just wanted to speak to students directly um I wanted to speak on what is going on in the Middle East right now so to fully represent student voice I'm not going to share my personal opinions because that's not what this forum is for but I wanted to speak to all people affected Jews Muslims Palestinians and Israelis Al alike are really struggling and hurting right now it's no one wants to see people they know die or people in their communities die so I wanted to remind all students that their feelings are valid and understandable um you don't have to know everything or have a fully formed opinion and there is support if you're struggling to speak personally I'm Jewish and I spent much of this weekend in Temple discussing the issue I've talked to my youth group and the biggest thing is people don't know how to feel it's a complex issue and I think we need to understand that but also understand feelings are valid you don't want to watch people in your community die you don't want to watch people die so this morning I was able to talk with principal Bowski about how to best support students and she re reiterated that Administration is here for us no matter our connection to the conflict no matter what side were on um and may all the memories of the Dead be a blessing and may that re region soon find peace excellent thank you okay you're good yeah okay thank you thank you to both of you Luke and isbel all right point one the consent agenda can I have a motion to approve the consent agenda please if there are no questions make make a motion to approve all items under consent including minutes of the Board of Education meeting on September 25th 2023 open and close session minutes of the Board of Education meeting on September 28th open and close session and to acknowledge the Foy of requests received by the district second Mr Gatewood hi Dr Maria hi Miss Johnson hi Mr Cerone hi Miss similon hi Mr cler hi Miss v i motion passes 70 okay thank you um this evening I want to regarding financial statements and the investment schedule are there any questions from the board on this item you know if you can walk me through um the master total portfolio report and what it's telling me um what what you know what are the takeaways that I should be getting from this report what it is here can you pull the mic closer Rafael please thanks what we are showing is the the amount of money that we have an investment in the district for the month of October so just just in uh overnight investment you know that that's okay so not not our capital expenditure Investments no no this are yeah okay and um okay so these are just generally interest bearing bank accounts yes okay okay that's all I have other questions from anybody else no okay uh 7 okay 7.2 um I want to invite uh Dan artson our executive director for high schools and for assessment and he will be uh I'm going to invite faith doist our associate superintendent also to speak to any questions you may have good evening everyone good evening uh it brings me great pleasure here to uh to bring this course to proposal to you guys tonight so uh what I'd like to do uh is really just talk through this course a little bit answer any questions you may have as you saw by public comment tonight uh and some comments from board members this is something that's of tremendous value to us as a school district in our community so what we're proposing tonight is uh American Sign Language one that would be rolled out in school year 25 which would be next school year and then the following school year will be asl2 and those uh numbers next to that are the Illinois State course codes that would be coordinating with that correlating to that um so those are just there uh there's actually courses one through five in the Illinois State uh course code so our plan moving forward would be to bring ASL 3 and four uh to the school board next year for approval um really this class as we talked about last last week in ETL uh has tremendous value in lots of different different ways some of the things and there were great great questions by board members last week about the course uh one of the things we did change on here was a course fee uh initially we had $25 on there which is uh would would keep it comparable to the other uh World language courses that we have for like Spanish one has that largely those are for consumables things of that nature but we want to get a better handle of what that $25 course fee really would be uh of course as we move forward we will put that in the course catalog uh that could could very well no course fee whatsoever it could be $25 it could be 10 so once we have that definitive finger uh figure we will let you guys know for that so um beyond that uh as I said as we talked about last week in ETL uh lots of great questions uh we had this course again has tremendous value to our students uh it's a course that has been brought up over the course of the last few years in lots of different ways but um again we think it has tremendous value for our students here in as weo and uh we look forward to having it the next slide uh this is the tentative timeline for course selection of course we're here tonight uh presenting for information as we go to the next board meeting would be for Action uh after that it's a pretty quick pretty quick turnaround for some things here uh getting into the course catalog and then of course as we go through there with teacher recommendations all the way through student course requests and the timeline all the way down to the very bottom uh which will be February 16th right now for course selections to be finalized for next school year there's a lot that happens within that window of time really soon as uh October 25th uh the action takes place uh course catalog being made public things of that nature there's a again it's a tight window for lots of things that happen but we've done this before and um you know we've adjusted this the uh timeline just a little bit to the left this year giving our student services department a little bit more time are counselors to work with students one of the things we hear each and every year is we have 3,000 students at each High School uh and it's very difficult for everyone to get the appropriate amount of time with our students to talk about this so we've provided about an extra 10 days for student services to meet with students which is huge um that gives counselors more time it gives our students more time with counselors um so that's something we've tried to do this year which makes our scheduling a little bit tighter but at the same time time is going to be a lot more valuable to our students you have any questions I do and I I'm also okay um sorry I didn't give him submit these sure no problem just was a very busy uh few days I think he got on Friday or something um sure uh how many districts are in the area are offering ASL you know to um as a high school course yeah there's quite a few actually planfield Yorkville uh we do have a running list here our surrounding communities do this is pretty much the norm to offer this okay so this is it wouldn't be something out of the ordinary okay well I kind of was hoping that we wereing UNT we're catching up we are seventh largest District so I think that puts us at the top well yeah Al offered at Harvard so I mean it's pretty common all the way from it's offered in many I would say junior high through college so yeah I um I also just I thatness is just a comment I see this as a um kind of uh helps in that teacher pipeline that we're trying to develop this gives you know our students unique skills to support future students in probably areas that are hard to hire for um um so I I I see that as um kind of complimenting that um and uh I appreciate it I'm not on that committee so thank you well and I also yeah to your point too I I want to remind us that um it sends the correct message well I don't want to say the correct message but it sends a correct message to um our community because we do bring in students from other communities for our um uh dhh program and at the um uh lower levels and so um it's kind of I don't want to say strange but it it I think it's um a mixed message to not have this but then to have um those uh students filtering it from other uh communities that we service so I think it sends the right message for sure yeah and or a right message it'll help it'll help out dep of heart hearing students exactly when they have people that can communicate with them that aren't um and you know it's and that was brought up in Comm a committee we brought that up in committee there's so many benefits um I really appreciate the committee talking about um how courses are vetted and and refining that process I'm very glad to hear that um but there were two other courses that were proposed I just wondered what is h did we talk about this what is happening to those yeah there were actually three other courses that were initially proposed so uh those will go back into our process that we're developing okay uh and those those courses and the individuals who worked in those courses spent a tremendous amount of time and effort on those courses uh I've already communicated that with them about what we plan moving forward with those courses and those will kind of automatically be part of the the process moving forward um this course in particular was just something that we felt um had the absolute uh need in every capacity to move forward uh to talk about as a group last week in ETL um but those courses again people put a lot of effort and time that was really where what I wanted to address was that going back to culture and climate and our goals you know they bring the teachers bring these to you because they're passionate about something so we don't want to lose sight of that I I just want to make sure that those are back on the docket at some point absolutely Faith wanted to add something okay and then I actually think Dan said it better Amy yes um thank you so just a couple so just a couple things I'd like to add um one I want to I want to give an appreciation to the administration for bringing um this recommendation back to the teaching equity and teaching and learning committee I think that's a good process I will continue before it goes between before the whole board um I'm glad to hear that there will be a quick proposal for an additional two years considering that are all of our other language courses have a four-year program I think that's move um you know ConEd on a successful month the first year um I think that uh is appropriate um I also mentioned this in our committee meeting but I want point for the whole board um that we are clear with our students in the course selection process about which schools and universities accept this as a foreign language credit uh just so that they can plan accordingly more and more universities and colleges are accepting this as a foreign langage credit but it's not as widely accepted as you know like Spanish or other languish um and then the last thing I wanted to say was I know that a change has been made on the um in regard to the cor and I appreciate that considering we don't know exactly you know what those consumables might be I would just say that if it is way if we end up choosing some sort of rle or program or an application of some sort that's puts this out of line with other courses and course fees that the board would know about that so it's not a surprise to students to enroll in the course I believe we have to approve it right no no does it wouldn't be here back at the board meeting it is public knowledge of what the fees would be eventually but we're not looking to raise it past that we just wanted to be able to give details we even had the slide written as $20 or less at one point so yep and that's fair right as soon as we yeah that makes sense yep we will absolutely make sure everyone's aware of that too again that we're not trying to hide anything from anyone especially our our um our students and things and and from the committee I thought there was a really good conversation that came about you know um it it's a it's a difficult one it's a tough one to navigate through but at the end of the day like um what what do we what do we do with some courses that we have that have dropped to a certain level and that that's tough because I think I I believe anyways we want to offer our students as many options as we can as we can give them at the same time that you know one of the conversations that came up in the committee was what does that look like what is the balance right do you run a class with only two students right um I mean obviously if if you if you if you um have to right that that's you know there's some HS have toos if you will but um that's a conversation that at some point like you know we will have to talk about and think about because it's not just a matter of oh you had a class and it has no impact and I'm not talking about this class in particular I'm talking about the the larger conversation among the committee um and so we do have to be cognizant of that and to speak to the point about why we maybe uh took those other three classes back to take a look um there's a point where we if we if we add too much we will reach saturation if that makes sense and and so we'll have to have those discussions they're not going to be easy either I think they'll be more difficult than people realize because are you going to offer a class for two students one at both if one is at each school right and Howes what does that look like and we also added if you if we do decide to have to Sunset any class that we just give the students in administration time to make that decision yep Jared and Eugene both of you thank you for bringing that up I think that was another important conversation um with any I think the question should always be if students are taking this course of course are they not and that should be part of the proposal process as well okay all right any other questions all right just thank you so much all right thank you thank you did you have any Luke I just saw your face for second I'll just say real quick um I was able to uh during homecoming week I'm in AC capella choir and at our Pepa L we were able to have the ASL club actually um sign the star spangle Banner along with us and um just seeing that like the amount of support that's in there um from the community and just overall with the students I think I just I can see that students are very excited about this opportunity and just um having that opportunity to experience that you know working with choir it was just really beautiful to see and I'm excited to see this going forward wonderful thank you Luke that was awesome I want to also share that at talk training where we have other districts come in and learn about our talk program we had two sign language interpreters there as well and all I thought was this is beautiful but it's tiring to do that for an entire day I can imagine yeah thank you thank you thank you all right 7.3 update on change orders for the track construction I want to invite uh director of buildings and grounds Mr Bill Queen and Mr good evening welc evening board all right so we'll start with change orders change orders 1 through 10 have been completed with the exception of the installation of the takeoff boards sand delivery for the long jump installation of concrete pads bolt boxes for pull Vault and to raise the storm Inlet rims around the football field at oehs change orders 81 12 14 and 15 we are currently soliciting uh competitive bids uh with competitive bidding these items May cost may be a lower cost of work um items 12 14 and 15 are scheduled to be completed to Summer of 20124 along with the installation of the rubber track surface which is already included into the project was that date I'm sorry what was that date again and which track sorry at this is at o e24 so the track surface will already included at that so that's 2024 for oehs rubber plane surface OE this process was started Monday 109 yesterday at OE the plan is to complete the oval for practicing purposes and relocate the ohos for competitions it is anticipated the rubber installation will be completed over a 3-day period perod of time Without Rain temperatures above 50° potentially October 20th also during this time frame Sher asphalt will be completing the outstanding work noted in change orders 1 through 10 moving on to O upon completion of the oval at oehs Midwest track builders will relocate to O to lay the Rober on the oval and all the jump pins in order for the district to have a functioning track for for the start of track and field where both schools will U Iz for meets and it is anticipated the rubber installation will be completed over a 5-day period over a time without rain and temperatures above 50° potentially October 27th prior to the insulation of rubber shoulder asphalt will be installing the long jump takeoff boards P Vault boxes during the week of October 16th that concludes my track update there there was something that kind of confused me can you go back to the beginning bill just at the start you talked about something for 2024 I wasn't sure what that was the the sound cut out sound cut out so the completion of that work will commence in the summer of 2024 which work oehs that's with the track with the jumps the rubber jumps part not the track the track oval will be completed they've started that yesterday they worked on it today hopefully that rain holds off tomorrow night we can get some rubber on that track is that where you said that for those competitions will happen at OS for for jumping was it uh long jump and which we just I'm just trying to which sports are going that would be the long jump pole vault got it all that good stuff so the ones that we're going out for additional rfps those are related or what I I they are related that that's work right we're we're into this thing pretty far with the contractor and and we would like to see some other numbers to to get that cost lower for the long jumps for the long jumps absolutely at o I'm sorry that's great news thank you I'm sorry I guess to kind of add to what Mr Quinn is saying we've had some issues with the ashfold uh vendor um the vendor is not being as responsive as we would like for them to be and I guess um because of the existing um bed that we had with them they kind of thought they as B bear and they have not been as responsive and they have not been as flexible so we're thinking this would be an opportunity for us to go out back into the marketplace and contact other possible provider to see if we can get better pricing that what it's been provided to us for the work that we can do until the summer okay okay so I guess I have a couple questions question one is have so sorry screen um question one is um have we been actually I'll start with this so I'm assuming that means OE is not going to be able to have any kind of home meets next year and if I'm if I'm making that assumption incorrect then you can let me know but if that is correct have we sat down and talked with coaching staff with with what what that's going to look like for them CU I I will be honest morale is is is is a concern for me and then I have one question for Meen but you go ahead you are correct and I guess we have sat down with the administration and and gone over that with all parties involved I'm I'm glad that we've talked to I I just really want to make sure that we are getting feedback from the coaches we're talking to the coaches um we're doing whatever we can with those coaches Mr bloger I'm I'm speaking with Tony every day I'm speaking with Darren every day okay um I wake up in in the morning and I'm calling these contractors for sing at 420 just to make sure I know where they're at then the next call is to those those administrators those athletic directors just to make sure we're on staying on top of anything that could change or has changed in the future so we we are communicating probably I would I wouldn't say overc communicating but we are communicating a bunch with these administrators absolutely okay and I hope the administrators then are are communicating with their coaches and then um Morin just you know what question I'm going to ask I'll ask it again Ask last meeting so uh is there anything that we have done incorrectly in this process um to at at this point other than obviously I'm just going to speak bluntly other than going off of plans that were old but that's something that's that's another issue right I mean my understanding is what came to light when it came to light other than these things that are going to be postponed what has to get done has to get done now because of the timing before the winter so that it's available for use in the spring um and therefore I think you're ratifying uh those change orders at deeming them as an an emergency okay thank you I'm I think I'm still so Jared's first question something about OE not being able to have not having this for their next season is did I what did I hear OE will be practicing on their facilities but they will not hold meets here at OE Chase for for any of the track field track and fielders is this just for correct okay we we'll hold all meets at OS for both schools okay they'll have access for practice but not for the meet itself because they need all the events the jump pits and absolutely okay that's why okay and I'm going to assume I could be wrong but I'm assuming this question is going to come up which would be well then why not just hold off I'm going to assume correct me if I'm wrong the reason why we don't hold off for the whole thing and we deem it as waren said is because then what you're looking at is one of two options right you either tell OE they don't have a track season at all next year or you're busing them every single day somehow with our with our already fragile transportation system to O and back potentially every single day for practice I'm going to go ahead and make that assumption but you can correct me if I'm wrong you absolutely right and the other variable that we thought about in making the decision is the fact that not only will we have to provide transportation then we put uh uh students at risk of trying to drive to uh drive from OE to o and um and just the uh the possibility of traffic incidents without that we're just trying to do everything we can to lessen any complication related to that by moving forward hopefully hopefully everybody realizes the uh current traffic situation yes yeah that's another story in itself those those tracks were bad those tracks were real bad what do you mean by that cuz I was not here just to give you a little background what you seen in some of those those changeovers were undercuts right and that that's when you go into what's an undercut undercut is is the process of removing an element or soil something that's in the dirt to put something back that is compactable and Foundation proof um when these tracks were built for US 20 15 20 years ago no under drains were ever put in we we open the ground up there's no drainage um which totally tells you where we're at with with these with these tracks and and how they didn't last and and what was not done so there was a lot of extra work involved into that process um um somebody got over on us years ago and it was very very important that things went right this time around so we got it right as a district and and didn't have this problem we would love to be in a situation where we're just running routines right where we're just pulling the rubber off and putting new rubber down that is less less evasive on the on the on the building on the sport and on the district itself we weren't there and both tracks were so far gone OE would have not had a track season at all and O probably would have came up mid season so just to clarify when the things that we discovered as we were attempting to replace it is that would happen we would discover the improper drainage which which caused us to have to go we did and and you're going to see that one change order which is a big one and that one chewed up every bit of my contingency that I had but it had to be done at the time that it was done and found in July to keep that project going got it and and are you saying that that's what contributed to the now delay no that that is not all of it absolutely not got it it's it's a combination of things what uh Mr Queen just mentioned was a big chunk of it the other big chunk of it as we mentioned in the last meeting is that we did not uh engage to final user the way we should live and the decision was made to go ahead with a project uh without recognizing the expertise of the folks who are going to use it and the staff who are going to work with the to use it so construction started uh based on theoretical design um without actually taking the folks who are going to be using it to the field and say this is what we envision to do I mean does this make sense from a user point of view we skip that process quite frankly so it's a combination of uh underly issues with the with the way the the ground was was prepared and the the replacement track wasn't done the replace track wasn't put in properly that was one the other part is that the the project to replace the uh the track wasn't done with the engagement of the final user so there were two things and us us as well to add to that too we're it's an anomaly we're trying to take a square block and fit it in a round hole these football these are football fields and and the things that we're trying to add don't don't equate to the football field that the way we're standard with with standard Turf you know we run off a crown right that Crown does everything on that football field most of these track facilities are flat they're Turf they're flat and I'm not politic for Turf I'm just telling you what we're dealing with when we're trying to put this together on a football field no but it it's it's a it's a valid point to bring up because I think this came up somebody can correct me if I'm wrong in the discussion piece which is you know this is these are the things that in the s for the sake of saving money it cost us money and I'm not trying to sell us on Turf either but I'm sure that if we did a you know cost analysis we're going to figure out that that's actually cheaper Long Haul than doing what we're doing and we're going to make some money right and so the question the problem becomes coming up with the front end capital for that and and listen I understand I understand people's frustrations I I have them too right like I don't even want to bring up the word parking lot but like those are things those are things that if we don't build up enough to to to to invest in something to save us money then then we are costing us money in the long run and it it's hard it's not an easy discussion to have I get it but I think that is where this particular board at this particular Moment In Time finds themsel is G boards were afraid to look to the Future and say we need to spend money in order to make some decisions need to be made I don't I don't I I think at times yes I can I can remember a few boards that were like that yes so I I'll concede that but I also think there were a few boards that had nothing left right so there was there was that's what I mean at this point in time what does that discussion look like because when sparland was here he and I sat down and I wanted to understand what Turf costs and why it why we didn't have turf fields and why we didn't have all of these Community football leagues feeding into our high schools and where all that um was what was happening and so it is one of those things where we have to start to have those discussions which is here's how much it costs to maintain our current field grass field and what it is required to have a grass field because it does there's so many things that people don't understand and that cost money incrementally over time or do we look forward and say we make an investment that we would have to then pay for you know over time I'm just saying we need to have those hard discussions and not shy away from them I agree I I I 100% agree with you one of the first triple eyes that I went to uh former president Banks and I we sat down we listened to the to the to the whole um Pitch from one of these um you know places that will install Turf we came back and talked to the board and it it made sense it made sense the problem was we were also uh at the time having a conversation about how much money we needed to cut from the budget and so uh I'm just going to be blunt uh selling to the general public hey I am contemplating increasing third grade class sizes right that is still affecting us but hey let's put in a turf field but I'm going to put in a million dollar tur field it's not probably two because you have two t it it it was an impossible cell those conversations have happened it's the part that's difficult is getting everyone to to then get to the point of realizing okay this is CAU our our inadequacies are costing us money right and and that effects of all that are still happening they're still here so when we hear from multiple schools about like third grade class sizes those are legit those are those are legitimate like yes I share your concern but they are still the effects of what was happening in the past and so that's why I say that cost piece I'm glad we're having the conversation but that's a cost like that's a cost to our district that's still occurring today yeah and I just I want to say and again it's not specif it is it's arising because of the specific discussion but again I would ask Dr katti you and your Administration while I very clearly know that the board belongs in the balcony I think for the board and for our taxpayers and our community it would be for transparency reasons um very helpful to see um what your staff is putting in place regarding process regarding these type of projects and um just kind of showing us where the changes are made so that we have a level of confidence moving forward no I I appreciate that and I if you want to speak to that Eugene's had his hand up for a minute no it's all right keep going now the the one thing I'm going to add it in though before we end but you can go one thing I wanted to ask the board since we're talking about this we know uh money's always an issue will the board be open to looking at sponsorship as a way to complete some of this projects and that will be uh you know talking to a third party maybe with naming rights that will pay for uh an elaborate uh uh field that wouldn't cost taxpayers money but it would involv maybe having a business an entity's name on the top field as an alternative way to having taxpayers share the but bear the burden of that if that's something that the board will be interested in that's something we can look into as a way to subsidize the cost of projects like that that are sports related we know the marketplace is more minable to providing sponsorship for sports they wouldn't do the same thing for reduction of third grade classes but we know we can those are options that we can look at if it's something the board would be interested I think conversation we we we kind of do that right we we had this conversation before with the you know the new scoreboard scoreboards and things along those lines but um you know if we wanted to expand our I would want it to go through a committee put it that way yeah yeah the the one other thing that I would add just in regards to having the conversation I appreciate all the work that was done in order to make sure that the tracks were safe and and the same consideration I would ask that we do as we start to cons because I know we made some changes uh with with the design so that whatever the prep work was needed we did that or approved that so that if we decided to do uh Turf later that it was it was in place but I would also ask that as we're doing our research still continue to consider the safety of the kids because there's new significant research that talks about the safety of kids when playing on Turf versus grass and so I just want us to make sure that we're considering the safety of the kids as well and not just go the cheaper route with Turf when you know I'm looking at an article right here that says 58% there's a athletes are found 58% more likely to sustain injury during athletic activities on artificial turf so I just want to make sure that we're considering it uh when we're thinking about um anything anything well that'll be part of our process so I think to your point um Jen regarding thinking about a process safety is one of the criteria we wanted to think about in any of our contracted process right so that's one uh so I just I think that's important so thank you for bringing up that research appreciate that okay we're done okay thank you and yes Mr Bei we would want to any burden we can reduce on our taxpayers now if you brought us Fredo Le versus Johnny Walker I mean I think we have decisions to make um but I think we want to investigate any possible opportunities Johnny Walker Mar much TR Johnny Walker malro I don't know the malro man sponsored [Music] umz we would want to reduce any opportunities um to passing it along to the taxpayer we need to have another discussion and I don't think tonight's the discussion but Jared you kind of tipped the edge towards Equity like well we really need to build to a lot of what I have learned recently in the community is sorry Mr Queen um is that in the past Mr pickerel offered to build um a turf field at OHS we said no because you have to build both I think we need to have really um open transparent conversations about what Equity looks like a lot of people in our community always say well equity and well Equity um that's equality having having a turf field at both having a very fancy pool at one versus the other we have to look at our district as a whole and what benefits our entire student population and I just want to make sure that when we talk about Equity we're talking about it and all using the same common language yeah I I'm thinking about um District 300 they just uh endorsed a master facility plan to get started in the next year or two that's going to cost significant amount of money to really be able to review um so has when was the last time the district has done a master facility plan so I thought we did one but did from what you said comprehensive what's the name of the architect that brought us that CL yeah we have one we have clubber did that was not no that's not a master facility plan that's just an Envision what they did was a record of repairs a record of repairs yeah a facility a record of repairs and the state of the facility Master facility plan is more it's more detailed than that it envisioned future use of buildings it it thinks about uh the educational use of the building the square footage is much more detailed than the facility repairs that was included in uh Vision 308 and I've actually had a conversation with them and they they they acknowledged that what they did was in a master facility plan we met with them last week and that were and we talked about in the future immedately putting money in the budget for them to do a master faity plan is much more detailed than what they did common language yeah we have some some pressing needs and so so I'm I'm only raising that as we think about these issues versus turff versus we can't look at these things in isolation while if there are wealthy benefactors who are interested in naming rights for both stadiums we are open to that it sounds like from the board so thank you mrti no thank you sd308.org yes um on that end I want to move to uh item number 7.4 new ISB resolutions um we will have a short discussion on the five resolutions before us Mr ploger will be voting on behalf of the board of the of the board at the delegate assembly in Chicago during the triple I conference this year go ahead yeah so one of the things that I'd like to start off with this is first of all thank you to the board because I think this you know sometimes we'll hear oh you're not transparent we don't know what's going on this is definitely us being transparent um I will tell you that not all School ports do what we're about to do and what we're about to do is also part of that education process for the community because it's a window into what is happening around the state uh not just here and as I always like to say hey if these are things that oh we jump out at us and we can relate to that means we have a problem at the state level if there things that are foreign to us we don't know it helps us understand what's going on in other districts but perhaps at that point they're either unique to that District or a few districts or at least not applicable to us and so as an example to this the first resolution uh it says industrial construction knowing where this is coming from actually makes a lot of sense it's coming from Pleasant taale um I'll try not to get too personal but um Pleasantdale is um near near Willowbrook and Willowbrook was where we had the stereogenic uh piece a few years back there was a high rate of cancer um I will tell you as a personal uh note that my oldest brother lived within a half a mile of stereogenic and my brother is no longer here he had cancer a very rare form of cancer so I say this because it explains kind of where this is coming from from Pleasantdale and it says the resolution says be it resolved that the Illinois Association of school boards shall support and encourage legislation that prohibits the construction of industrial facilities near schools I've given you some background kind of where the school district that you know proposed this is probably coming from uh the recommendation from iasb is to not recommend why so there's got to be some kind of reason and their reason basically is local control and small communities um best know what to do but on top of that some of them are only able to build near schools so you have to also consider the small town aspect right so if you're a small town you're surrounded by a bunch of um corn field soybean Fields I grew up in one of those small towns right um it's very difficult sometimes to build in any kind of industry in some of these small towns that are already hurting unless you're putting them near schools I am not telling you that means that's the way you should go I'm just trying to give context to this so what we need to decide is how you want me to march in there and vote on this on this particular resolution individual votes like we did before and majority and the majority will and we're going to post those on the website and and I don't know that we necessarily have to give you know to to determine what our vote is right now but that vote will be publicized we we have to make sure of two things one I know what I'm voting for when I March in and uh in my in my adamant opinion the public know where we stand yep and obviously there's a timeline that it happened before triple I conference right I'm fine with no um so I I think let's let's make sure we're all on the same page when it comes to the process so we know that when we submit um our form to you and to Ursula it will have our individual preferences our selection right yes or no those both of those will be publicized right our individual vote and our and then our Collective vote so it's not like we have to come back before this body to say oh I vote Yes or no or do you guys want to come back before this body because it's going to be public anyway so what would like to do because we don't have to vote today as to how you want to go about it I think publicly we should at least vote and then just um announce the vote and and I came here prepared to vote I don't know if everybody did but yeah some I mean I don't think we're going to be voting today okay because this isn't like something that uh you know your traditional but who all wants making decisions we're just talking about how we're going to vote at this meeting yeah who all wants to come back before the the the actual meeting uh on November whatever it is I I'd like to propose that we just we we vote on this out in front at the next meeting at the next meeting so that people are prepared just just an agenda item with that as an agenda item we come back and vote we don't have to have a discussion on everything no we don't have to have a discussion because we're having it right now I'm just giving background cuz I was asked to give background so and as yeah next Bo meeting you so you're going to pass those out to us so we'll have those before we go home tonight yes let's let's do that should be an easy sheet too yeah so you want me to get into resolution two resolution what does anyone have any thoughts or comments on um resolution number one no okay well yeah without voting on that one I mean go ahead you the one thing was basically you know this probably should go in front of the EPA um so and part of the other thing with the ESB is that they've they've had discussions about this they thought about these things um so they bring a sort of an experti and what how they're why they're saying adop yeah I don't I don't I don't just I don't agree fully with that Dominic I do I do agree that I don't think they just make a decision out of anywhere but I do think that we need to realize there are differences right there's a difference between whether you're in a small town whether you're in the city of Chicago whether you're in the suburbs whe whether those suburbs are affluent whether those small towns are affluent all those things factor into different types of um uh approaches to this whether your district is a unified district or a k througha District or a high school district none those things I said though I was just basically saying that they already came together and discuss this right but okay so as I understand it each of those regions have a have a discussion right each of the delegate regions yes have a discussion about it and then they all come together and they determine um whether or not so it was more of an education pie so yours was two whether or not the resolution committee is recommending it or not they hear from all of those assemblies yes but I just want to make sure we're not left with the impression of well they already did the work so we can just vote how they voted cuz I don't think that's what we want to do because we we've not done that in the past or at least I never did I just looked at their hours of work yes yeah yes okay and and yeah so all right okay so resolution two uh school resource officer the Illinois Association of school boards shall request that the Illinois legislator legislature sorry consider legislation providing Educational Funding to all school districts to offset the cost of a school resource officer uh the recommendation from from iasb is to recommend reasons sro's help student safety and even with grant money it still costs districts money and for our particular District it also costs money I believe they were even talking about in here about somehow factoring this into um ebf as well um again um that's just that's just the logic that's where things are coming from there are some school districts that don't have SRO because they don't have access to those things or they would be extremely expensive for them to gather because again you're talking about some districts in rural areas intice that's also too um adamant about how they utilize that role yep um can I get a clarification from um president Simson about what we're doing right now are we discussing these or we're just reviewing and then we're going to vote individually we are discussing and reviewing but we are not voting we are allowing you to take the opportunity to take the the information that we discuss here tonight and mow that over and we will be uh voting at our next board meeting okay then I if I could I'd like to add a couple of comments to this resolution in particular yes please um I do want to raise an issue about the funding of police officers and schools generally as this resolution ask the state to provide funding to pay our resource officers whom we are paying out of District funds currently from my understanding there are lingering questions in the research as to whether the employment of police officers in schools actually makes schools more safe I have not found any indication that this is the case and in fact there is a lot of concern among youth organizations and civil liberty groups and advocacy groups about the use of police officers in schools there is research that points to the fact that students of color and female students actually tend to feel less safe with school resource officers in schools so I would just say to my fellow board members that I am opposed to this resolution and that I oppose using police officers and schools generally no matter the source of funding and because I don't have any research that points Theus conclusion that SRO are making schools mle more safe and I wonder if the funds spent on our SRO could be used in more research-based initiatives that support social and emotional health of our students through the employment and additional social workers psychologists or through the funding of other programs one one thing I will say since we're going to have this discussion one thing I'll say um uh Dr Mario is I don't know that um and this is just me just one board member I don't know that they're necessarily hand inand in other words one thing to that I would consider here is the res resolution is basically saying hey um if you have an SRO let's have this count as part of your funding um and let's have this offset rather than school districts have to take the um the cost but I would I would caution us a little bit because the resolution doesn't say you have to have an SRO and so I think that might be a separate they might be two different conversations Maybe not maybe somebody has different uh uh take on that but in mind it's like okay if we are going to have an Ro um what what does that look like right we know we fund it and I'll be I'll be blunt I've heard conversations in the past where you know people have said well why aren't you why aren't you more like the village because they don't uh you know they don't Levy as much as you Levy realize we pay we pay we're paying the V we're paying the village for that SRO so you're welcome yeah you're welcome um so I I I don't know that they're they're together I think you can have kind of both but again I I understand your point and I'm certainly not trying to um tell somebody else how to vote just just just a thought there on that one no I agree I had to say I do understand that the resolution is asking I'm just saying on the basis of like some philosophical beliefs that I have that any vote to kind of push forward um funding And in regards to employing police officer in schools are this something that I'm going to likely push backg on and this does have the potential to do that so well and I just to do what wait what do you mean if they if the ending resolution you know if it were to pass in legislation or anything like that or is be decided if you have an Sr like you were saying then we were going to fund you but if you don't then you don't get any money but if it's just part of an increased um funding total then that would be a different story so it really depends on how they would implement the that that offset so so yeah let's talk about that that actually because if let's let's say it it P let's say the IB is successful they Lobby the legislator legislator agrees right what that will infect you're going to get because you're held harmless already what it's going to do is it's going to say okay you actually need more funding right so that's that's kind of what I'm saying is that that they might tie that to having an SRO tie what though what do you tie that in incremental funding to having an SRO and that's where the philosophical issue would come into play there's also who knows how legislation What legislation would come up can I put you on the on the spot we have talked a lot about this um the philosophical part that Dr Mario is bringing forward I think many of us feel that way and can you explain that we have taken steps um when we sign our agreements with the village and what you have done uh behind the scenes means to change this uh for our district specifically can before you speak to that I do want to say one thing which is as I read this and there was a consent decree in Chicago regarding their use of police and this is really very much in line with where the the direction and the consent degree came from a federal I think it was part of a federal order um that really said the purpose of our partnership with law enforcement is really to support this versus a lot of the other factors that I know are often associated with school resource officer so I'm not commenting on a current use of them in this District I'm just saying when I read this and what this is outlining particularly it is in line with Federal mandates that really it's about the preparedness involved ex regarding um the use of uh the partnership with our police officer and our police departments very different than than a lot of the ways in which and what the the consent decree essentially articulated and I'm trying to remember what year This was um where officers were used in mentoring programs within the schools and a variety of other factors I'm not again not commenting anything here I'm just saying that that is essentially one of the ways in which that it's really important now I think for us if we want to come back before to come back to the board and speak to this a little bit and give some more facts about what's happening in our district I think that's fair here um Dr K if you want to just add anything right now did you want to speak to her question yeah so as sorry as board member Johnson mentioned um we have over the last couple years worked in strong partnership with um our with OPD specifically that's where our school resource officers come from in order to even become a school resource officer through the police department they have addition training above and beyond to qualify for that role um and then we have not only worked and changed our um IGA with um not only us weo but our other police departments um but then we've also worked in Partnership this last summer to put in different kind of progressive steps to deal with two main issues um that we're seeing in terms of vaping and uh fighting so we have tried to really strengthen those relationships um through our sros and have worked in strong partnership uh especially with OPD thank you Eugene I'm not going to repeat everything because I I feel the same way I I fundamentally don't agree with how the SR are being used in the schools and so a vote Yes although and I when I was reading it I said the same thing I said well technically this is not saying that but fundamentally um if they're there then everything that I disagree with it it enables it to continue to happen and even to grow as Dominic is saying depending on how it's legislated so you know I I I'll consider everything that I heard well I do want to uh revisit this the SR and how they are being used in our schools because that has never really been a conversation that we've had because when I hear things like they write tickets students get tickets like I don't even understand what that means it doesn't sound good to me so it's like yeah it's like these kinds of things I mean last year I sat in on a trip last year I sat in on a um session with triple ey and they were saying a lot of things that um validated some of the concerns that Dr Mario Just identified and so I want to make sure that you know we're we have a conversation about it yeah we can definitely work with the board to set up a time to come back and discuss this but I really want to be clear that this is really about um there's a difference between the use of SRO or police and the enforcement of disciplined School climate culture issues versus emergency planning um I would say that our our our law enforcements there is there is a lot of research that shows especially when you look at Homeland Security are the work that's come out of the CIA and the I'm sorry not the CI the Secret Service around partnership and coordination with our district resource officers it's indispensable you cannot beat it it is extremely important that's very different again when you look at the consent decree that came out of CPS regarding the use of SRO for climate and culture purposes right for enforcement those are very different issues no I agree I think you it will be very difficult to quantify or even qualify if it's being effective because we don't know what has not happened because they're there so I don't disagree with you based on how it's written and what the intent is for but for me if it was limited to that scope yeah and then not used if they were not used in other ways then I could say great but the the other thing too that I just want to clear something up I mean I understand the the legislation piece yes I get it but and if this was a if they were advocating for a block grant I I could understand but I somebody can correct me if I'm wrong but I am not aware of like the state of Illinois saying hey here's your ebf dollars now here's how you have to spend it like I don't know that that legislation has happened so to I'm sorry but I'm going to push back a little bit on that to to to question suddenly that the state is going to start telling you exactly how to spend your evf dollars I I don't know I don't I don't I don't buy that argument if it was a block grant yeah I would I would I would understand that uh and I could could understand that but I somebody can correct me if I'm wrong but I'm not aware of the state of Illinois saying here's your evf money and here's how you spend it so all right next one can I oh yeah please okay so um I really this is like awkward cuz I'm looking away but um I really see where people are coming from when it comes to the racial Equity because as someone who's in school and even as I'm white so I'm not going to get the full experience of the profiling but I is Iselle speaking yes but I do go closer and louder she's she's pretty loud yeah keep going yeah yeah I do think that um there are issues and but my only the only thing that's holding me back on this is who's going to stop a fight you're you can't have a teacher like you can't make teach put teachers in that position of physically stopping a fight and I know there's like so many things we can do before that to stop it but we can't we can't make all the structural change happen in a year if like and I know we're not even fully discussing getting rid of ours but no in that mindset of course like it's just a question of I know there are ways to combat this and ways to stop it and structural things that have to be done with the education system but when we get to day-to-day school when we can't solve everything in a day you can't have teachers stopping a fight you can't have teachers you know taking care of that stuff because that's not fair to them they didn't sign up to physically restrain a student and I know there's issues with how that's um disciplined so I think it is a complex issue in Equity but I also don't want our teachers to have to take the burden and also it will like from the student perspective it will it could mess up student teacher perspective thank you so to your point that's why we are going to have a broader conversation um at a later date but I appreciate that comment because we we we need to have the conversation okay go ahead the next one and I'm going to preface this with this if this is if this is coming from the state um it's not been a fun party to be a part of but clearly we heard about it tonight and so it it it's in regards to the school bus driver shortage and it's not being put out there because there's only one or two school districts suffering from this there are a multitude that are right um and I'll get to that a little bit more but the the Illinois Association of school boards shall support changes to the federal and state uh school transportation regul ations that return licensing requirements and Driver trainer liability back to pre February 2023 levels at minimum allow local training and testing for bus driver candidates and increase the transportation reimbursement rate from the state of Illinois to 100% I don't think when we talk about the school by the way I'm sorry the recommendation for ISB is to recommend and the reasons there's a shortage and some districts aren't aren't they they can't keep up they can't they can't function properly now I don't think that a lot of the general public realizes that there was legislation that I'm not going to say led to the shortage but certainly you know was counter to what they were trying to do I don't think a lot of people understand that piece I also question at what point is it that you're just throwing people in buses and how safe is that um like listen this it's a problem and by the way we need roads that function I had a parent in this District tell me they drove from Prairie point to Wolf's Crossing and it took them 45 minutes I believe it 45 minutes now I I like I am very sympathetic like like I've had issues with with Transportation with my own son I have a son who goes here and it's not been fun but if it takes 45 minutes I mean I can sometimes make it to to the white socks Park in 45 minutes on a Sunday when no one's going to go to the game but like 45 minutes there's no way that's not going to affect us so I I this is a complex issue I'll shut up because number four this is number three this is three bus driver regulation anybody got anything to add I like the recommendation I think that's all I have to say yeah I like support this recommendation I I I I wrote that I was reluctant because we have a problem we have to solve it but boy it it doesn't feel good rolling back regulations and if something goes wrong I'm going to be honest with you so all right you want me to go to the next one next one resolution for employment history be it resolved that the Illinois Association of school boards shall request the Illinois legislature consider using the Illinois Department of Child and Family Services child abuse and neglect tracking system as a means to fulfill the employment history review of Faith's law the REM the recommendation from iasb is to not recommend reasons it they State it's not the right system to deal with Faith's law you know administrators we're looking for you guys to weigh in on this say if you got anything to say oh Dr zmy I mean I have if you want you can go first go ahead no I would say that I agree with the rationale which is really that there are both financial and efficiency limitations with this that could really overburden the process and delay the already hiring process that we've already seen I think this reminds me of the last one which is there could be some good reasons to efficiently work with DCFS but they're already over taxed and so for us to now uh defer to them for this kind of important work when they're already overtaxed with what they're doing I I I'm not going to suggest we vote one way or another but I do think we vote as we support this ISB when you say you support you you're saying you're going along with their recommendation I'm going along I support their recommendation Dr Z I I do as well okay any other discussion Dr marel you want me to move on before we move on yeah going back to the bus drivers who in our Administration can give us some more insight into that what would be what would in other words what would be the ramifications if if let's say we were ISB was to successfully Lobby for those pre February 23 pieces and to get 100% funding for all transportation is that what you're asking is who could I agree that would be good to see what would be the ramifications if us now I mean just right off the cuff that will help us that means all the money that we spend on Transportation will get 100% of it back that's a win now the question is does the state have the money to payers and my thinking is probably not I think uh I'm more excited about the prospect of the state funding ebf uh the way supposed to be funded than uh warranted by the state funding transportation 100% which they've never done before since I've been in the business so to now say we are going to vote for them to do it but we would like for them to do it I mean it will it will mean we'll get uh 100% of the expenditure that we have related to Transportation back and and like I said I was reluctant you know I I listen we heard it tonight and I agree 100% I you know if there's things that clearly we need to do on the communication side there are things that we need to do on the communication side but like I mean I watched I watched a bus on a day when I sat on 34 and probably could have gotten out of my car and walked home faster uh and I watched the bus pull up in my neighborhood at 5:00 and they're sitting in the same stuff we are I it's not fun it's not easy and we knew it wasn't going to be easy when when Wolf's Crossing was shut down okay thank you all right I'll turn yeah you may go to next one or wait resolution five resolution five alternative safe school funding be it resolved that the Illinois Association of school board shall advocate for additional funding to be provided for regional alternative safe schools to allow for an elementary appropriate program additional funding and approved certification programs for board certified Behavior analysts uh in school districts and additional flexibility with student discipline to help local districts provide the safest learning environment possible possible we also ask that the state legislature review SB 100 and make any necessary changes to allow for more local control as it relates to student discipline postco especially at the elementary and middle school levels the recommendation from from iasb is to not recommend reasons ebf should already cover this again this is not me speaking I want to make this clear that's I'm just just reading the recommendation and what EV or uh iasb said I agree with this recommendation to not support that and like I understand where this is coming from somebody else can correct me if I'm wrong but I'm sure we are seeing a huge increase in students with mtss and and and other pieces and they're getting younger and younger they are definitely getting younger and younger I I'm not that's not an advocate for or against that it's just trying to explain the rationale of where it came from so I agree with that rationale I would just I guess my I know that I was quick with my comment but I would say that um the solution to that is not to separate students from Local District put them in safe schools in my opinion I appreciate that yep okay all right thanks again too bad everybody was great good job all right moving on yeah um you guys can leave if You' like thank you all great night thank you for all your comments today they're very helpful insightful thank you all right 8 point one action item bills for payment can I have a motion please make a motion to authorize the payment of bills in the amount of 7,872 18244 as presented [Music] second Miss vmou hi Dr Mario Mr Cerone hi Miss similon hi Mr Gatewood hi Miss Johnson hi Mr cler all motion passes 70 action item 8.2 policies for second read and approval can I have a motion please make a motion to approve the following board policies section 2 School Board 2 colon 802 col 170 section 4 operations 4 colon 45 4 colon 100 section five general Personnel 5 colon 230 section 6 instruction colon10 6on 1 190 6on 240 section 7 students 7 colon 275 7 colon 305 7 colon 330 Section 8 community relations 8 colon 25 8 colon second Dr Maria Miss Simon hi Mr clber hi mrone hi Mr gatwood hi M VM hi m johnon i motion passes 70 action item 8.3 ratification of expenditures for cost related to the high school tracks can I have a motion please make a motion to ratify the expenditures for the additional cost related to the high school tracks as presented second and then I have again so Moren we're we're well within our bounds to do this no issues okay thank you Miss vmou hi Dr Maria hi Mr Cerone hi Miss similon hi Mr Gatewood hi Miss Johnson hi Mr pler hi motion passes 70 action item 8.4 approval of board member travel expenses can I have a motion please make a motion to approve the board member travel expenses to attend the triple conference in Chicago second Dr Maria hi Mr Gatewood hi Miss Johnson I Mr bloger hi Miss Simon hi Mr Cerone hi Miss Ben I motion passes 70 action item 8.5 approval of personnel report report make a motion to approve the Personnel report as presented second Miss vmou I Dr Maria I Mr Cerone I miss Simon I Mr Gatewood i m Johnson I Mr cler I can I have a motion to return to close session make a motion to enter close session under statutes 5 ilcs 1202 C1 the appointment employment compensation discipline

guests are encouraged to dress up in their Halloween costumes there will be kids crafts and haunted house and movies tickets start at $7 for ages 4 and 11 and are $9 for ages 12 and up children three and under are free we hope to see you there all right and that concludes our presentation thank you all for your time and attention if you want to scan the QR QR code at the top uh you're able to access any fundraisers or tickets to Spook um just things like that any questions very good very good as uh always a very thorough report uh Mrs fero yes I was wondering about the umukiza night is that how you say it is that sponsored by a class or and I realize it's open to the community I was wondering if the other communities other than our own right here know what's happening because it sounds like a great family thing um again I think this is a it's a collaborative effort between the yearbook and some of the classes um some of the um classes the The Freshman I believe it's the freshman sophomore and Junior classes so they all work together to sponsor this and put it together great Mr hayam yes and Moren I want to thank you very much you've been doing a fantastic job Moren I think just Mr lontine and myself for PR privy to the fact that you had a hustle from your Co-op job to get here to take care of your commitment with us thank you very much of course she wanted the time off anyway so any other questions thank you very much appreciate it okay finances uh consolidated cash Reconciliation Report was a handout revolving fund budget report for in your packet any questions on any of those documents Communications don't oh I'm sorry yes I should have known go ahead M I just had one question actually on one of the warrant things I noticed that we paid uh just under $100,000 to our field people himl I think it is and I was wondering what that was for like what did they do for that amount uh who wants to take a John or I think I believe that one was for the wall uh we had to build that block wall at the end of the field and that was to build that BL that block wall at the end of the field was 12T high and 170 ft long built out a huge block so uh it had to be filled and originally we weren't putting in the uh the wall but uh because of the some of the changes the town is making with um the putting in a a p uh a conservation Pond and for better drainage we decide to go with the wall rather than have it all drain uh down the hill and uh because we also wanted parking at the bottom of that um of the field so that's why add that was what why the wall was added okay thank you anything further okay Communications donations none articles none public participation this evening okay superintendent uh civil rights compliance policy and new nutrition programs this require a vote okay uh in order to comply with civil rights uh and have a procedure that uh is available for any complaints about our uh nutrition program um we've put together uh with the work of uh Mary um our director of our nutrition program uh Mary ring uh ringland uh I want to submit this a new policy to you for a vote um which was just completed have uh that your recommendation yes I would recommend that we approve the policy discussion yes Mrs P one thing that I always add ask is that whatever policy is either new or being revised that today's date of if it is approved that it be included on the final yes point Thank you absolutely I do want to say that uh this is a civil rights requirement by federal government so we uh are required to have this policy in place have a civil uh this particular policy in place Zo did we create a dis Poli or it came from recommendations on its language and uh what it should entail came from uh uh from the state it came from the state yes than anything further all those in favor I anyone opposed Co-op report superintendent uh as of uh sub mber 28th we had 115 students on Co-op you got you uh should see in your packet a copy of how many students from each department is at work uh one of the things that uh stands out to me is dental assistant at this time has 17 students who uh actually has the most students out on Co-op which uh to my recollection in the last 15 years um actually leads all programs which I'm very proud of that proud of the fact they they should really feel good about the work they've done with their students that they're in such high demand I think a lot of that comes from our Partnerships we have out amongst the community with many of the dental dentists out in our community so Kudo to Big shout out to the dental assistant program this year and as usual health assistant right behind them and uh some of our uh continual successful programs are doing very well as also so uh it's good to see the I think this is the most students we've had out for the month of September uh as far back as uh that I can uh Rec remember uh at least in the times that I've been uh superintendent as well as when I was a instructor here at glts so um great job uh on on uh with the co-op director and and the co-op program and the teachers who uh help secure many of the jobs for our students they work hand inand with the co-op director to help find jobs um and also to work with the co-op employers very closely throughout uh the tenure in which the students are out uh working with those particular uh corporations companies small a lot of small businesses depend on a lot of our students so uh it's good to see the success and it's good to see that our students have these great opportunities admission report John uh so as of uh for our October 1st report which is the date in which uh the state um utilizes the uh the admissions our uh student population for our future uh funding next school year we had 485 uh students uh 485 uh freshmen uh as on October 1st which is the largest class uh that we've ever had the most students we've ever had for a freshman class so and a total of uh uh added to a total of 1,394 students um of uh 11 through 12 so uh we have a very uh incre our admission continues to increase to about 177 around uh and you have a report there that shows M Mrs Fel yes I had um two questions the first one is the number enrolled which you just gave us as 485 and the next column shows withdrew after being accepted so were they actually enrolled and then left us after October first or are they not part of that 485 count that would be my first question and and the second part of that question not my second question but the second part of that is do we ever have or do we have a way of following up on the uh students that were accepted and said yes they were coming but then withdrew as to what their reason was I mean I'm guessing they wanted to be with their friends at ABC school or whatever but just the way we follow up with our graduates to see what they're doing later on or why they made the decisions they did is there have we ever done that tracking to find out why they didn't come after they said they were going to students oops uh students that withdraw before October 1st um and uh students that leave once a enroll and actually enroll and show up and then leave uh they leave for various reasons but they typically um would meet with the director of guidance uh to uh for various reasons to determine uh why they may want to leave yeah thank you and my second one obviously there's many many schools that um people apply from some that are moving to the city from another city or whatever but I do notice that we have two students here one from the uh we had two students apply from the W Windam um school and two from Woodbury one each is enrolled and I was wondering how that happened did they move or are they in those from they still living in those communities they would have to have moved moved into the district so they may have been to those middle schools last year but moved into the district since then thank you anything further is that the is that the admission okay update on the after do program please so um the after dark program um which has total um this total doesn't look correct to me it must be this year's new students total of 66 new students um which we have 44 from Lawrence seven from methan Seven from North Andover seven from Andover and one from Phoenix so uh we have an increase in student numbers from all those communities um Phoenix I think we had one last year now we have another one this year but Andover we had two last year North Andover we didn't have any methun we had one and I don't recall the number we have from mein I mean from Lawrence but I do know that it's up uh so those would be uh 11th grade students that are in the after dark program that enrolled into the after dark program any questions superintendent yes zo excuse me no no Phoenix there's a Phoenix Academy law Pho Phoenix is a different they're uh they're a different high school they're in the City of Lawrence but they're not part of the law school lawence high school their Charter School their Charter School yes uh FR yeah I believe we had one from do in last year which are all the programs that are in the after dark what other the programs that are part of the after dark so we have advanced manufacturing Automotive uh we have HVAC we have um what's that uh not this year I believe we have what's that metal fabrication I think we have health assistant this year for the first time and we have six how many is that it oh it correct that's new also what about electrical no no not this year they do want us they would like to be part of the program we have three or four more shops that ask this year to be part of the program so we'll look at that for uh next year and I do want to commend on the success of the fart program especially when it comes to metal fabrication I know the health health FR Brothers hired a couple of our after dark students I know I know that I was told there was three students that were working there uh we found uh a lot of success with students well a lot of uh students actually from the after dark have gotten good jobs uh and but that particular company has paid the students very well and the students like to go to work for them we have a a couple students coming out of Metal Fab that are making first year $40 an hour so they're doing well MH thank you well set the hot top superintendent the uh believe it or not the hot top project is complete other than a little a few more lines paint painted lines that have to go down uh but we finally got a nice day on a weekend that they could finish up other than a Sunday so they finished it up on Monday so uh if you want to uh have a pleasurable smooth ride just drive around around the campus and you get a nice ride uh so we're we're happy to see that project done any questions I I I do want to say the company was very good to work with and there was a few mistakes or things that had happened and they were they were uh really good about uh repairing anything that that might have got damaged or a mistake that we didn't uh or something we weren't happy with uh they were uh they were great to work with were very positive and uh they did a really good job and uh I want to also give kudos to uh Lance ham director of facilities he did a really good job overseeing the project and making sure everything was done correctly and saved us uh $50,000 where we didn't have to hire a uh project manager on that he was very knowledgeable and held them held them accountable to doing everything correctly checking the base checking on because of his experience and knowledge from uh being uh doing engineer work on Bridges he had a good background so I do want to do a special thank you uh to Lance for his uh help with that project very good thank further okay admission Outreach events John so you have a list in your packet of all the uh Outreach admissions Outreach events that we have going on uh this uh school year as usual we'll be visiting you know all our middle schools um and those are all I believe they're all scheduled at this point um but you'll see a list of many other events uh that will be attending some high school fairs uh throughout the communities mthu day I think we ended up there was I don't think we ended up going to methu and day because of the weather uh if I'm not mistaken uh but you'll see various events that we will be and there'll be others that will be added uh to the uh list as the year goes on yes Frank it was nice that day so it was nice that day yeah oh I think I don't know why we didn't go I think I think Brenda told me we ended up not going for some reason I can find out why but it's listed on there but I don't think we went if I'm not mistaken is that correct Su the principal had a had a possible answer yeah I believe that we were on a wait list so we we didn't actually get a spot but then we were accepted really late like almost like the day before um and so we were not able to actually make it was it was a wait list but we definitely have that planned to make sure that now that we know a little bit about how it works to make sure that we have a presence next year yeah you're right that's absolutely correct anything further Middle School counsil is breakfast so our middle schools counselor's breakfast is October 19th at 900 a.m.