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and will include presentations from department heads tour of public facilities and interactive Q&A sessions class size is limited to 15 people so apply early to secure your spot the November shop local campaign support Ash businesses this November with the shop local campaign follow Ashland bizbuzz on Facebook to see daily highlights of local businesses and keep your spending in town Town manager's coffee hour will be held on November 20th join Town manager Michael Herbert for his coffee hour on Wednesday November 20th at 10:00 a.m. at the Ashlin Community Center it's a great opportunity to ask questions and connect with Town Administration the last yard waist pickup is on November 25th curbside yard Wass pickup ends Monday November 25th so don't miss your last chance to dispose of those fallen leaves the ashin holiday program so important donate gift cards and filler gifts help spread holiday Joy by contributing to Ashland visit the town website for details on how to donate the vaccine clinic will be held on November 19th a flu Co RSV and other vaccine clinic will be held on Tuesday November 19th from 11:00 a.m.

[Music] hello clockers my name is hi silver and I'm very excited to bring you another segment of waa news blog today I'll be giving a quick update on the latest Ashlin happenings as highlighted in the town manager's newsletter coming up we have a special town meeting which will be held on November 19th so mark your calendars for Tuesday November 19th at 700 p.m. Ashley will be holding a special town meeting at the high school all registered voter voters are invited to participate in this open town meeting where critical financial decisions and Community bylaws will be discussed new businesses welcome to Ashland this week two exciting businesses joined our community with ribbon cutting ceremonies Chase Bank at 320 Pawn Street offering top-notch personal and business banking services Chase Bank is now ready to serve Ashland and the surrounding town This Modern banking Hub is a welcome addition to the community the future Masters chess Academy at 200 Homer Avenue a state-of-the-art facility for all ages to learn and master chess founded in 2016 by chess master lawyer times the academy teaches students from age four and up don't miss their open house next weekend let's give a warm ashon welcome to these new businesses and celebrate their success welcome us and she has the citizens Academy learn about your local government Ashlin is launching a 10-week Citizens Academy starting January 8th 2025 to give residents an inside look at how local government operates the program meets on the 2 and fourth Wednesday of each month from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m.

to 1:00 p.m. a.m. at Town Hall registration is required and some vaccines have limited availability a simple gesture support the food pantry consider donating to a simple gesture a community program supporting the Ashlin food pantry High School volunteers will collect donations for the holidays helping provide essential items for families in need the next pickup is December 7th very exciting pickle ball tops Town's Sports poll a recent Town poll revealed pickle ball as the top choice for a sport residents want to play locally good news for enthusiasts you can enjoy indoor games at Clock Tower pickle ball which is also adding a bar and food options for outdoor play consider the courts at the University Club at Warren Conference Center available with a membership this week's Community shout out goes to Megan Baker this week we're recognizing her for her incredible dedication to the Ashley Community from coaching soccer and organizing youth basketball to volunteering offering rid Child Care and More Megan is always ready to help her tireless efforts and humble attitude make her a true unsung hero thank you Megan for all that you do some upcoming meetings stay informed about your community meetings are held in the town hall select boardroom or remotely and can be watched on waca Tuesday as mentioned November 19th there will be a special town meeting at 700 p.m.

and will include presentations from department heads tour of public facilities and interactive Q&A sessions class size is limited to 15 people so apply early to secure your spot the November shop local campaign support Ash businesses this November with the shop local campaign follow Ashland bizbuzz on Facebook to see daily highlights of local businesses and keep your spending in town Town manager's coffee hour will be held on November 20th join Town manager Michael Herbert for his coffee hour on Wednesday November 20th at 10:00 a.m. at the Ashlin Community Center it's a great opportunity to ask questions and connect with Town Administration the last yard waist pickup is on November 25th curbside yard Wass pickup ends Monday November 25th so don't miss your last chance to dispose of those fallen leaves the ashin holiday program so important donate gift cards and filler gifts help spread holiday Joy by contributing to Ashland visit the town website for details on how to donate the vaccine clinic will be held on November 19th a flu Co RSV and other vaccine clinic will be held on Tuesday November 19th from 11:00 a.m.

and Wednesday November 20th there will be a select board meeting at 700 p.m. agendas are posted at least 48 hours in advance so you can visit the town website for more details mark your calendars for the Holiday Stroll on Saturday December 7th from 4:00 to 7:00 p.m. downtown Ashland enjoy festive family fund with 25 plus local vendors giveaways shopping marshmallow roasting and letters to Santa at The Corner Spot don't miss this annual event the Ashland tree lighting will be coming up on Saturday December 7th from 4:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. Montenegro Square join in the holiday cheer with caroling hot cocoa cookies and the Magical tree lighting at 4:30 p.m. to welcome Santa to Town the future Masters chess Academy open house this will be held on Saturday November 23rd from 10:00 a.m. to 4 p.m. challenge Master challenge Master players and attend a free tournament on Sunday November 24th from 2: p.m.

to 1:00 p.m. a.m. at Town Hall registration is required and some vaccines have limited availability a simple gesture support the food pantry consider donating to a simple gesture a community program supporting the Ashlin food pantry High School volunteers will collect donations for the holidays helping provide essential items for families in need the next pickup is December 7th very exciting pickle ball tops Town's Sports poll a recent Town poll revealed pickle ball as the top choice for a sport residents want to play locally good news for enthusiasts you can enjoy indoor games at Clock Tower pickle ball which is also adding a bar and food options for outdoor play consider the courts at the University Club at Warren Conference Center available with a membership this week's Community shout out goes to Megan Baker this week we're recognizing her for her incredible dedication to the Ashley Community from coaching soccer and organizing youth basketball to volunteering offering rid Child Care and More Megan is always ready to help her tireless efforts and humble attitude make her a true unsung hero thank you Megan for all that you do some upcoming meetings stay informed about your community meetings are held in the town hall select boardroom or remotely and can be watched on waca Tuesday as mentioned November 19th there will be a special town meeting at 700 p.m.

to 7:00 p.m. details at Future chmsc the ashleen public schools fall band and coral concerts coming up on Friday December 6th at 700 p.m. enjoy performances by by ashin high school and middle school bands featuring classical pieces movie favorites and a tribute to jsbach celebrate our talented young musicians Ashland's Thanksgiving Market on Saturday November 23rd from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. in Montenegro Square the Ashland Farmers Market wraps up its season with a Thanksgiving Market featuring produce meat Dairy baked goods and Artisan vendors don't miss your chance to shop local before the market returns in June the Ashen Police Department Marine Corps Reserve Association is holding a toy drive on November 1st through December 11th donate new unwrapped toys at the Ashlin public safety building to support the Marine Corps Reserve association's annual toy drive the holiday Boutique will be held on Saturday December 7th from 12:00 p.m.

and Wednesday November 20th there will be a select board meeting at 700 p.m. agendas are posted at least 48 hours in advance so you can visit the town website for more details mark your calendars for the Holiday Stroll on Saturday December 7th from 4:00 to 7:00 p.m. downtown Ashland enjoy festive family fund with 25 plus local vendors giveaways shopping marshmallow roasting and letters to Santa at The Corner Spot don't miss this annual event the Ashland tree lighting will be coming up on Saturday December 7th from 4:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. Montenegro Square join in the holiday cheer with caroling hot cocoa cookies and the Magical tree lighting at 4:30 p.m. to welcome Santa to Town the future Masters chess Academy open house this will be held on Saturday November 23rd from 10:00 a.m. to 4 p.m. challenge Master challenge Master players and attend a free tournament on Sunday November 24th from 2: p.m.

to 4:00 p.m. at the Federated Church of Ashland 118 Main Street stop by the holiday Boutique during the Holiday Stroll for Unique Treasures and goodies just in time for the holidays now some happenings at the Ashland Public Library for adult events we have the ESL conversation Group which will be held on Monday November 18th from 6:30 to 7:50 p.m. there will be some card making with Jan pomp andc Monday November 18th 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. now some half-past crafts giant Acorn decorations on Wednesday November 20th 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. and now for the children's events there is a Lego Club with Kim the legol lady on Wednesday November 20th 4:30 to 5:30 p.m. La quento Spanish Story Time Wednesday November 20th 6:30 to 7:30 also Friday free play Friday November 22nd 10:00 to 11:30 a.m. a big thank you to our town manager Michael Herbert and the town staff for putting together this newsletter and thanks to everyone for tuning in this is Hal silver with waca wishing you a good night and go clockers [Music]

to 7:00 p.m. details at Future chmsc the ashleen public schools fall band and coral concerts coming up on Friday December 6th at 700 p.m. enjoy performances by by ashin high school and middle school bands featuring classical pieces movie favorites and a tribute to jsbach celebrate our talented young musicians Ashland's Thanksgiving Market on Saturday November 23rd from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. in Montenegro Square the Ashland Farmers Market wraps up its season with a Thanksgiving Market featuring produce meat Dairy baked goods and Artisan vendors don't miss your chance to shop local before the market returns in June the Ashen Police Department Marine Corps Reserve Association is holding a toy drive on November 1st through December 11th donate new unwrapped toys at the Ashlin public safety building to support the Marine Corps Reserve association's annual toy drive the holiday Boutique will be held on Saturday December 7th from 12:00 p.m.

5 The Benchmark is 430 it also obviously increases as the number of points you can receive on the test increase and 49.4 was the average over the college K Benchmark same idea with math 4935 480 is The Benchmark and our students average 13 Point 13 and 1 12 points above that benchmark so this is looking at again class of 2025 when they were 11th graders taking the SAT if we were to use the College Board benchmarks okay remember the state benchmarks are higher we know that this is using the College Board data um our average score was 5343 The Benchmark is 480 and um that means that our average is above by 54 points and when you look at what the average grow should be 70.9% of our students met or exceeded that growth out of that group of students at cohort of students for math 535.148 and about 50% of our students a little bit over that men met that Benchmark you notice that the College Board Benchmark and the state Benchmark for math are very very similar we also look at the growth between tests so PSAT 89 to 10 about 87% of our students met that growth so what the expectation is for growth between n9th grade and 10th grade tests 87% met that on average and for math the average was 82.7% and then looking at the 10th grade test so growth between sophomore year testing and junior year testing and they're both at the same time of year by the way so again the average score was 5.5 we saw that before for the evidence-based reading and writing 81% of our students met the expected growth math a little bit lower at 4935 the average being 535 for sat put us about 88% so our students are definitely growing on average certainly there are subgroups that we look at there are certain groups of students that are not necessarily all meeting it but we're looking at over 80% of our students meeting it in uh evidence-based reading and writing and math the expected growth between tests the expected growth is the difference of the College Board Benchmark from the 10th grade PSAT to the 11th grade sat yes but we literally go almost score by score so let's say a student 400 they should grow just I'm making this up now I don't have the concordance tables in front of me but like 450 so then all the 400s did they make 450 if they had 410 what should they be 460 you know and we go not necessarily student by student but range by range if that makes sense what the range should be and determine did they meet or not meet and then that 81% for the evidence-based reading and writing and the 88.1% for math is a number students that met so even though we have just like roughly a little over 50% meeting The Benchmark for math you're saying those students who are falling below benmark are still moving up yes they're still growing at a rate that is expected yes and so the College Board gives for each score what the expected range is and those students are meeting or falling within the range exactly so isn't it just surprising that that's not higher for the score that actually matters the SAT compared to the practice ones the percentage does that does that surprise you even if I think that our students by and large take all three test series I'm not sure I understood the question what am I if I look at the act the percent that met exceeded for the actual sat compared to the pre-tests the percentages are the lowest isn't that right my question is like if that's the test that actually matters yeah just curious yeah but again I think that goes back to what percentage of students have the opportunity and finances to take it multiple times and how many people you know is that the one that you've had tutoring but you know I just M I think there's a lot of external factors that really muddy and it's not necessarily their highest score for some students that might be the first time they take it right exactly for other students it's not it's their second maybe even third time they take it was this it'll be a class that had the opportunity to take that review course that we offered yeah okay and we are offering uh act review as well well we're transitioning obviously to act because the test is changing um but um but during resource it's a little bit different than the class was last year but we will be offering review and we're focusing um much of that review on math which is the area where we seem to need to focus which makes sense based on the scores now again it's a different test so we'll have Baseline data next year that's the challenge of all of this right if if we had been using sat consistently for a decade we'd be able to show you class by class are they making expected growth are we improving that Trend or going the other way like all of those things but by changing the test multiple times and format of the test multiple time it just it makes it really difficult for us to tell you based on standardized test data what does this mean about student performance I mean you could look at the numbers you can see what they are we could try to guess what caused those things to change but it's really hard to use that as an academic measure the state even recognizes that it's when you look at our house and what it's buil out built out of it very small portion of that are these scores right um and by the state changing it to a new test this year that test going digital the following year Illinois has put itself in this same kind of cycle data even without the external factors of what colleges and universities are doing around standardized testing it just it's a really hard way for us to rate ourselves year over-year which is why I commend the board for challenging us to put together our own indicators and measures of things that we value that we can track year over-year to see if we're making growth in the areas that are important to the board any other questions for Gina thanks Gina we we ask questions as we go along all right now we're going to shift gears to talk about uh things that support the learning so that that can happen where we talk about our facilities and planning and capital planning and um one of the things that's important to note is that we've had a lot of conversations to get to this point right now with the information that I'm going to provide uh to you and um had had a lot of different conversations at the building level about what are what are your needs in the building and they've done a really good job of of saying hey here's here are things that we want to tackle that uh they have a ongoing list and this is not everything that's on the list right this is uh things that they've prioritized in looking at as well as um having some conversations uh with specifically with jeree and talking about okay what's our what's our process what what have we gone through what have we done in the past and one of the things that that we're shifting a little bit is that we're obviously presenting possible projects tonight right but then we're going to be looking at the financial projections in January to say how much of that is feasible now now that we know what what our projections are we have a better understanding of what our financial picture looks like what does that look like um in the intermediate we're going to be doing work on Gathering bids that we need to uh so that if we can move forward with the different projects we're able to say okay let's go uh we're ready to we're ready to run with that obviously any bids that uh we need to have approval we'll be bringing to the board uh for for such so that is a a different process than than what we have done in the past um some other things that that we've talked about that are are different um is related to how how we've had this structured we've talked about it as capital uh in the totality what we're talking about is both facility and capital planning so facility improvements so I'm going to go and break this down um by building and uh different areas so when we talk about facility maintenance and improvements at each building we're looking at those five things in the building budget that is going to go towards improvements and maintenance uh in total between both buildings it's just over $252,000 and the funding source tried to lay that out for each of these things so you understand where that's coming from uh we're looking at the fiscal year 26 budget is where that funding source is going to come from this is nothing new uh what we did was we had this in our Capital list where really this is a purchase service or repairs type of things that's not really capital in looking at it but we want to make sure and include that when we look at the numbers because that's what you guys have seen for a good number of years then when we move on um and we'll talk specifically about capital projects um we do have two drivered vehicles that we need to replace uh we have already gone through and secured some quotes for these we think that 60,000 is going to be that ballpark um currently right now we're looking at our uh sourcewell has some Cooperative purchasing uh incentives there and so we're looking at that Avenue as well as some fleet pricing so we've we've submitted um an application to get Fleet pricing we're waiting to hear back on that and then we'll be able to see what those prices look like uh once we have that but that is definitely something we have two older driver head vehicles that we're um that we need to replace we've been uh having a lot of repairs and even yet this year uh we continue to have those so we'll be uh planning for that and again that's going to come from the fiscal year 26 Budget moving on to specifically at North the total estimated for these projects is uh just over $35,000 again this would come from the fiscal year 26 budget and these are the different things that they have identified that say hey these are the things the projects the bigger ticket prices that that we want to go and that we want to tackle I want to specifically talk about the garage rooftop uh replacement that's something that has been needing to be addressed for some time but we are also uh going to submit as we're going to talk about next uh the school uh maintenance Grant from ISB so 50,000 of that um will be if you will come off of that it will apply to that so our cost in that project would be $125,000 so um that's that's a grant that we're going to apply for and we'll apply for it every year that we can that is uh it's a pretty straightforward application process and as long as the state has those funds available we're going to go after those go after those funds where is that at what is where is that the garage it's um by the tennis courts yes right right next to the tennis field building to the side okay yep yep and and we're working with white on that on that project um they're they've helped with the the different application uh aspects and the the age and and what needs to be done uh with that specific rooftop replacement so then when we move to South uh we have uh $250,000 is what we're looking at for these three projects again fiscal year 26 budget um these are more furniture flooring uh specifics when you're looking at Aesthetics and and functionality those divider walls much like what we did in here um they they are not working as well uh this will provide a lot more flexibility in those in those spaces as well moving on this is something that we talked about last year um and we actually had uh in our conversation um we had an estimated cost of $600,000 when we actually again working through those um The Cooperative purchasing agreements uh I worked and got three different bids um for these these different projects when I got the first one I was like wait a minute that's I I knew it was going to be I thought it was going to be higher but I didn't think it would be this much higher but that is that's the number uh when we look at it so we're we're confident in that um so we if you remember working uh cash Bond proceeds for athletic improvements we had $600,000 uh set aside for this work you can see that it's at least double that uh you can notice the range because there are that is for to have the floor uh and the surface look exactly like it does right now um but also there are variances in whether you can go over top of it or whether you have to start from scratch and and take it off in demo so you can see there's a a range of of prices that are there so what we are doing this is not in uh when we look at that number it is very off from what we had and what we were planning so what we're looking at doing is uh pushing this back delaying it to Summer of 26 uh and then utilizing our fiscal year 27 budget numbers for that knowing that we need to budget for and plan for uh plan for that project is it going to be okay to do that well we can make it we can make it work for a another year is there any repairs that you can do in the meantime or there's nothing else that we need to to do at this point because isn't it basically pitted is it is what its problem is it it is old it's 20 they're 20 to 25 years old um so yes they are they are BN and and 04 I believe because my daughter there you go yeah there you go um it is it is not we don't feel like it's a a safety hazard in in looking at well that's what I was more concerned about no but it it definitely um it it needs to be addressed and and one of the things I'll I'll say that from um the other the other work if you if we go back to the the beginning one of the things that we had um in this was you can see Fieldhouse painting so we are going to do some work in those spaces to get ready for that so we have Fieldhouse painting that we're going to do in both of those spaces as well as you'll you'll see we're going to work on some lighting uh projects as well so then moving on one of the things that we are uh we are looking at doing um one of the charges that that we heard loud and clear last year was how can we save on our electricity what does that look like so we've been doing a lot of work in and um investigating that to see some options uh so we had um we had some different work done by we work with nania energy um and they did some estimations on some solar work um at both you can see at both the ASC and at t99 part of our challenges are in our buildings we've had the roofs looked at and structurally um we can't just use our our rooftops um so we look to say okay where can we use them um we have a newer roof here um as you know we just had a new addition put on at t99 as well as we replaced the other roof if you remember so we looked at that we have uh both of those projects come in at those figures you can also see that we would have some rebates from ComEd uh totaling just over $47,000 and then that following year we would see some federal investment tax credit uh at just under $187,000 those have paybacks of five and six years so when you look at that um they that is they are 100% um there's no additional electricity or delivery charges that would go in and out of these buildings um so they would be 100% sufficient with the uh with the array that would be placed on top of the roofs um as well as we would have some additional incentives that I've I've noted there we also looked at some different LED uh lighting our pool at North is in dire needs of of getting new Lighting in there uh the bulbs that are are in there and as we go through and and we go to replace them um they they don't make those and as we're going through it is precarious to even get a light bulb changed uh the way that the deck is laid out and where the lights are placed um we need we need to have those lights uh lights replaced and then you can see at both schools um Fieldhouse LED lighting and Stadium LED lighting are things that we're looking at as potential projects uh in total you're looking at just over a million dollars for that um we are working on we have not received yet but a study on that lighting and seeing what the the payback is in those areas that those are large consumption areas uh that the lights are on a lot and so we expect that that the turn uh turnaround and payback is going to be pretty quick on those on those spaces so you'll notice the funding source we shifted gears here this is from the fire prevention and safety funds that's from fund 90 we have funds currently in in fund 90 that we can utilize uh for this project as well as I'm going to talk about Paving uh next and so that is something again that we're working with white on uh in the process that we need to go through um Jer was talking with some colleagues and this is something that is um out there as a as an availability we we studied it we had lots of conversations and this is something that we want to tackle and try and go after as uh something to get these Pro these types of projects um done so that is something that we would utilize white and they would have uh paperwork that they would have to fill out and and we would get submitted additionally in the same vein uh we have some Paving work that needs to be done uh pavers in the in the actual stadium and the Gated area as well as the walkway that's between uh the stadium and the other turfield uh those need to be addressed uh there's some safety concerns there as well as our B bus parking lot uh needs to be milled and resurfaced at South as well as the seal coating thank you seal coating the uh visitor parking lot so we're looking at those things this is a different uh process that you have to do uh we do have to if we go after this path we do have to have a public hearing so we're investigating this further um and if we do that that would be something that we would want want to bring to the December 16th board meeting for a hearing uh to be able to move forward at least to work on these projects and see what that looks like um again remember anytime that we go out for bid we can always deny them we can say you know what we thought we were looking at these as potential it's not something that we are uh going to be taking on but this is these are two Avenues uh that we feel strongly that this would provide us with a great opportunity of the fund 90 do we have money in that fund yes how much do we have in there I'll defer to jury on that around 1.5 million okay so that would cover um not everything but it'll cover a majority we believe it would cover it all it would it would cover these two things those those energy conservation and the paving okay all right yep sorry just why why does Paving require a public meeting it it is something that they that's in isb's uh rules that that's something that you need to do for any of the other areas there's other things that you can use fun 90 funds for but for pavings specifically um I I not exactly sure the exact why but that's what they have in their rules so when we look at the overall of of all of the different uh areas that we we talked about those are the totals um in some for the different areas um one of the things I I laid out a timeline of of what this uh this kind of looks like so right now obviously uh presenting to you guys we're still investigating and solidifying that the funding to pay for these uh projects um we're going to continue to uh go through and prepare any Associated bids that we would need to um and get those going and bring those if that is something after we look at the financial projections in in January we say yes this is something that we can afford and that we can do and we would bring those to the board for approval you can see I also noted on there the December 16th uh public hearing and this uh school code is is stated there um in January is where we would submit that recommended work statement to is and that's what what white would help us uh with doing and then we would uh bring forward and and look at all of the different projects uh and make decisions based off off of our financial projections you can see last month if you remember we presented on the 10-year Health Life Safety um we can wait and delay that and that's what we're planning on doing so we'll look at bringing that back in April if that time frame changes based off of what we what we learn it's not going to be any earlier than that but we may be able to delay it a little bit more we we feel very confident that April is gives us plenty of time to get that paperwork submitted and get that approved uh so that we can move forward with those projects um as well any questions about um any of the different projects or the the funding Travis can you go back one slot I can so I just want to highlight for the board the work that Travis and jury have done to try to get as many of the board's goals accomplished to take care of as many safety projects as we can and to uh work on long-term paybacks on some of these electrical items uh that you know we'll pay year over-year after they're in place and to find a way to fit it into our budget without you know having an impact on our taxpayers um it's been a lot of research and creative working and and looking at a variety of different just budgets and purchasing options for us to get to this point and to bring this plan so uh a lot of time and effort by Travis and jury to get to this point very good work thank you thank you thank you J all right all right I need your magic finger again all right Travis mentioned the school maintenance project Grant application we I know every year I've been here we do this I don't know how long Jer we've done it for a very long time I'll turn it over to Jer to give you the highlights sure um as Travis mentioned we identified the project of the garage at North the roof I should say um um on the garage at North High to have it replaced and so um this Grant application requires board approval first before we can actually submit it just so that ISB knows that the board has committed at least $50,000 to the project so that's all this is it's just a formality just to seek board approval for us to submit the application and go forward with that project sounds good action item this evening any questions for questions pretty straightforward it is all right the next one is Drees as well uh tonight this is a typical we in November we bring the tentative tax levy to the board to review and then we'll come back in December and seek final approval to submit the request to the county in December um right now we have tentative figures on on the uh eav property values um in our area the assessors range it from 8 to 9% increase on eav for existing property new construction right now we don't have all three of the Assessor's new construction figures we have two of the three and it's around 31,000 or 3 31 million right now um but we went ahead and just um increase it up to 50 million just so that we aren't leaving anything on the table um do you have a slide in there showing the proposed extension I do not okay I think it's in the board packet it's in the board packet so as you can just see on this slide that the overall increase uh in the extension is 4.24% that includes The Debt Service it's a small decrease in debt service for next year um so we're under the 5% marking where if we had it at 5% or higher we would have to have a hearing uh we do not anticipated to be over 5% at all uh last year new construction came in at about a half of percent that's kind of what we are predicting for again this year so we'll be well below 5 per.

more details to come cool thank you all thank [Applause] you okay now we'll move on to our board committee report starting with equity and learning and Innovation um at the equity learning and Innovation meeting it was very similar to the items that we saw today so we had a chance to dive into the framework that we presented as well as uh some of um or a lot of the data presented on uh the school report card uh and that work showed up here today okay else okay finance and Facilities all right at the finance facilities uh meeting we discussed student fees and our collection rate um we looked at previous years um as well as year-to date um something that I believe you're going to be what okay I was wondering if I was misrepresented um something that's going to be uh uh brought to the board um routinely uh facility rentals um talking about the uh facility rentals fees and what we're bringing in for that um Human Resources update we were wondering kind of why that was being brought to the finance facilities but then it was pretty clear why um they were looking at um ways to um increase revenues through human resources there's some cool projects that that's going on I don't know if you want to talk about it or yeah Dr I was there yeah I'd be happy to um going over your head y uh we shared uh that evening about really focusing in on our staff uh in a three-pronged approach uh in terms of their physical health their mental health and their Financial Health and we've laid out a program over over the next uh 6 months to a year uh to achieve that um we talked about uh memberships at at at gyms and rush reimbursements and things like that since 2021 since um the board and Human Resources adopted a rush reimbursement policy Rush uh Hospital a great partner of our has paid out to our own employees $500,000 of uh Revenue uh coming back for simply going to um the doctor um through our affiliate I think that's a huge celebration um in addition to that we talked about um some of our goals around an EBC audit um as you know last year upon the arrival of myself and Mr obafemi we have switched to a um employee benefits cooperative and within that Cooperative um we just recently uh completed a audit of dependence at a 98% clip um um it was um to say the least a grueling uh process very similar to going to the dentist uh but necessary um and this should happen in our system about every five years uh to make sure that we have on our insurance role who should be on our insurance role so I appreciate um Everybody uh in particular Glenn Campos uh who is our benefits coordinator and Dr Adam russik for for their support so uh many opportunities for human resources um to connect from the finance perspective as Mr obafemi and I talk about it our human resources are most important resource in our system um they also make up 80% of our budget and so we want to make sure that we focus in on the Financial Health our mental health and our physical health of our most important asset which is our teachers uh and our staff so that they can do the great work uh with the kids on a daily basis so thank you yeah and then I remember there was something with uh kind of our health insurance policy where um they have different initiatives and you know depending on how many people are participating in those initiatives that reduces the cost so brings us some Revenue things like that so um it was uh pretty interesting and some big dollars um and then uh we also discussed the health and life safety survey um I think we're going to be going through that so relatively soon so okay and then and then policy and legislation um policy and legislation we were able to review several um uh policies uh that will come to the board uh through the pre through press um and that's mostly what we spent our time doing we also chose some as per our what we decided is going to be a practice to highlight uh some legislation or some bills going through the Illinois assembly um and so we could do that now you want to start sure um I found this one interesting SB if I can read because my eyesight SB 30 holy cow 3649 uh which is employee freedom of speech uh just kind of defines a little bit more um parameters behind um workers freedom of speech act um and so um talks about declining or attending or participating in employer sponsored meetings or um so forth and um kind of just I I don't want to readed this entire thing but it just kind of goes over the act a little bit more and I think I think it's interesting to kind of ponder and look at when it comes to talk about uh freedom of speech and and in the workplace as well um talks about penalties potentially for the employer so I think that's important to know as well um and um yeah like I said I'm not going to read the whole thing but I I I think there's some changes there that are relevant to us I chose to highlight um Senate bill one which is the creation of the department a depart a department at the state level uh for Early Childhood the department of Early Childhood act uh this creates a new state agency that would oversee Early Childhood uh when previously it was kind of overseen and managed by a variety of agencies so um hopeful that this will bring you know um necessary streamlining to Early Childhood Mary Jon did you have one you were going to have now unfortunately I was I have been kind of in and out of being under the weather so I did not pick one for this time all right that's it thank you thank you moving on to 7.4 board member comments any board member comments okay I do um I just want to one of my goals has been to um make the community more aware of us as a whole and who we are and how we're spending their money Etc um and so to that end um Mr obafemi and Dr katti they did the presentation I just showed up um and I set up a uh a presentation at the asigo senior center where we they did a presentation on basically where tax dollars are going and and how the School District budget Works um we had a great slot it was right before Bingo um excuse me anyway it was it was I I I I feel that it was well received I it's something that we're going to um do again with a different topic next week um you know they're taxpayers and we're spending their money and they need to know where and they've heard so many stories over the years and when their kids were in school um that um setting them setting them straight I mean that in a nice way as to what's happening in the district I think is is pretty key to um maybe getting a little bit more Community involvement so I don't know I thought that went well yeah it was very constructive dialogue and they had a great questions for us and uh about just some of the you know misapprehension or clarifications rafhael Jo and we got a couple of feedback about things that folks have been talking about uh that we needed to know about so we were able to address that so it was it was very fruitful thank you we did not stay for Bingo we did not at least I didn't we had to get back to work anybody else okay 8.1 the consent agenda can I have a motion to approve the consent agenda please yes make a motion to approve all items under consent including 8.1 minutes from the Board of Education meeting on October 21st 2024 open close session minutes from the Board of Education workshop on October 28 2024 close session and minutes from the Board of Education Forum on November 4th 2024 open and close sessions 8.2 to acknowledge the foyer requests received by the district and 8.3 to approve the field trips for overnight and or over 200 miles second are there any questions on the consent agenda I do have a couple of questions I reviewed um kind of at length the field trips and I have a question about a couple of them first of all I would like to say uh to the OS band and uh the professional business of America Prof business Professionals of America and for the mock trial they all did a great job of filling out their um their permission slips but when we don't have things filled out it makes me very uneasy about approving for the boys bowling there's no permission they're not having permission slips done parent permission slips but for the girls they are they're actually the only one in the group that is not having a parents permission slip so that I just want they check no I think it's good business practice I think it's also a liability so I'm very um I have some questions about that the other thing is is that um whe when they don't fill out where it's funded we definitely have some Equity issues across uh Sports and activities and co-curricular and extracurricular it's very helpful for the board to know how this stuff is funded so when they don't fill that stuff out again I'm very uneasy about um approving those things and then for the mack trial mini buses uh Mr Almy where does that cost come for because that's not in part of what their cost is for are we absorbing that as a district the stands right now we are but we are moving to a system where organization will be assessed their share of Transportation that's where we go okay that these are all things that you know when we look at our our finances and understand where money goes and and where we're leaking a lot of money um I think it's really important to especially when um we are using our mini buses which we should and that's what they're for but understanding who is absorbing those costs so um I don't want to necessarily take the opportunity away from these kids but I would ask that who is ever in charge of this make sure that those permission slips are filled out um intentionally and so we know um everything so thank you for the feedback so wait so just so we're clear when when this comes before the board we are not approving all of those logistical pieces that that should all be cleared up before it gets to us correct and so whoever is responsible for that before it gets to us those things should be addressed because all we're doing is saying that those trips that are over the what is it the 200 miles is all we're okaye because I know in the past um parents have been confused about what this vote is about and sometimes they will come back and say well the board approved it but that's not what we're approving and so when there are issues like what Jen uh Miss Johnson is um bringing up I am I need to be really confident that before they get here that those things are taken care of and you know those kind of issues um we're not because that's not what we're doing here so are is there anything that we need to be to M doc oh sorry anything that we need to be I apologize well is there anything that we need to be like CU I don't want to approve something and all the eyes haven't been dotted and the te's crossed correct I agree I will follow up with a person who is responsible for this um on both the B boy bowling of why there was no permission slip and to ensure funding so I appreciate the comments and I will follow follow up directly thank you so much and then sorry did you want to say something Dr katti do you or who is the designate who signs these do you do it after the board is there a there's a process after the board yeah okay thank you really I want you to speak if you need to I'm just curious like I wonder if it and I don't know you'll do your due diligence to find out but I wonder if it's like kind of misunderstanding because I know for when I was a coach like I don't I remember using permission slips but there's stuff that they had to fill out at the beginning and I'm curious if maybe that covers it doesn't I'm not going to worry about it you'll figure it out yeah we need to look into the facts to your point and I think uh you you notice something we need to look into it we don't have we we haven't spoken we need to get some facts on the table uh we can come back to the board with clarification and I think I was was looking for the inconsistencies and that was the only of the 10 or so that said we're not going to ask for permission slip so I kind of wanted to understand why but also when we get lacks in our processes and our procedures that's when Things fall through the cracks so if it's on us to approve it we just want to make sure all the eyes are dotted and tees are crossed so what are we doing right now as a board are we only voting on a few are some being taken out what I don't want to okay I just want to make sure we're all on the same page and I and I trust that Dr conade will follow up and make sure that those things are done I don't want to take any opportunities away from these students perfect okay all right so then oh go ahead gwood hi Dr Maria hi Miss Johnson hi Mr Cerone hi Miss similon I Mr ploger hi Miss vmou hi motion passes 70 okay uh Mr Obi uh 9.1 financial statements in our investment schedule I think there's a Nuance yes we uh we included the financial statement uh up to date in the board package what I wanted to point out is on the revenue page there where I know I'd mentioned that we're doing a more aggressive uh job of investing our money even though we're complying with illino Municipal investment policy one example is uh property tax that we have uh that we received that sits in our Reserve account uh we budgeted 128,000 for the whole year to date just till the end of October we've already exceeded that we've made 505 $55,000 already just from investing more aggressively so we continue to do that and um as far as the other expenses and revenue they're in line with what we spend at this time and uh I wanted to point out again as you saw in the investment as you see in the investment schedule we continue to lather and we actually at an investment placement of about two 8.5 million uh last week where some of the reserve that we have instead of just sitting in a savings account we invested it uh with a due date towards the uh the spring period when we need that money in the meantime we were earning we're going to be earning some some return those Investments the last document I want to point out I've been tracking the uh CPI can I ask a question about the before you go so um in your time you've been here or any time that you've observed since you've been here have we ever in invested if so how much have we approximately not exact but how much have we um earned in the past versus this past year what I know is when I got here we left our money in the savings account with PMA and uh what we've been doing since is we've been actually placing them uh on a series of investment we do CDs that are ensured backed up by the full fate and cred of the FDIC the US government and we place them in such a way we don't invest money 249 500 so that if anything happen to the financial institution we fully uh reimbursed by the US government we also have been doing agency funds uh agency uh bonds and so what we've been doing we've been putting the money to work we look at since we have a well-developed cash flow and we meet every month with our Municipal advisor we lay out the cash flow and we see where we need money and when we don't need we we on average we spend about $18 million a month on payroll for example and we spend another $6 million in operations so when we lay out that cash flow if we don't need all this money that we got now in September that is supposed to last till June instead of just sitting in a savings account what we do we just lad for different times during the year and try to get as much healed in conservative conservative invested instruments as possible so it's safe to say we've earned significantly more in the last year than we have in the past yes we did thank you yeah I was looking looks like you know on the schedule here started in early October all the funds come back early February and in that time period it's about $900,000 so that's signant can I ask what what you're looking at the investment schedule there an investment schedule in there so if you look at the subtotals on investment summary document if you look at the board dos as of November 13th is that correct right at the know the date when this was pool we actually have uh $137.2 million cash on hand at that time but I want to point out though that since then we've had payroll on the 15 which is approximately $9 million we've also paid some operational bills related to other bills so it's actually gone down from that but this is a snapshot of a date of of November 13th can I can I back up a minute to you had talked about um and I can't I can't remember it was it was property taxes right you we were ahead we were ahead by what $400,000 or uh cppt I I'll talk about that if you don't mind when I go ahead I just want to I just want to emphasize the yeah difference so that was part one yeah so I'm just real quick piggyback that it doesn't surprise I'm just more of a statement it doesn't surprise me I mean don't get me wrong I'm very happy and and and trust me I my head just went down when I heard savings account so thank you like I want to make sure that we give credit I want I don't want the following comment to come off the wrong way because it's not aimed at you but it doesn't surprise me though that we're able and ahead of um when we're investing I mean anybody can look this year and if you're talking about your long-term Investments or people who are investing you had a great year um I understand and listen I'm not trying to downplay what people are dealing with and all that stuff when it comes to like inflation and those pieces um but it's a really complicated conversation to have with people and I mean I'm looking at my long-term Investments and I'm I've been happy all year long it's been great um and so uh thank you um because if if we weren't if you didn't invest which I have a feeling that's where people are feeling it probably the most if you didn't invest you probably didn't see your portfolio expand and it's it's been crucial we you should always like whenever we can right play it smart but this year has been great he's keeping us short though right because we don't have a whole lot of money right so but I get it I'm not saying you know but my point is the knows that we're not looking at and that's that's my ultimate question I'm I'm sorry go ahead Jared finish I My ultimate question is okay we've got all this extra money what we doing with it what are we doing with it I are we right so the the extra money per se I just want to point out that we 40 about 45% of the revenue that we get comes from property taxes and we get it twice a year we get the first installment in uh May June actually the biggest trunk in June the first installment of the PRI year property tax extension and then we get the second installment in September and we have to make it last for uh for 12 months as I pointed out uh previously just payroll alone every two weeks is $18 million and then we have some operational expenses that are not payroll related that are non-personnel light bill gas bill uh supplies that we buy that's another $6 million there so we have to really be careful how we spend that money while at the same time putting it to work I believe last year and the audit is going to be presented on the N we made about $2.5 million just an interest alone from investment last year now that less money we wouldn't have had if we hadn't we hadn't invested and if you think in terms of the fact that every two weeks we do 9 million that's a pretty substantial contribution to our bottom line but but to your point Mr Gatewood it's not extra money no no extra money that's the point I was trying to make this is not it's not extra money those are some of the reason why the the actions we've taken to lessen our chances of having to Bor right by just keeping the eyes on the on the till on the expenditure side as well as on the revenue side yeah because before you got here we were using tax anticipation warrants to the tune of about $120,000 for three months I believe it was we were yes that was the cost of insurance M the cost of insurance it was $20 million each year so it was $2 million for yeah we've been we were doing that for a long time and that was one of the things we as a board really wanted to get away get away from and so how were you able to make that happen we just we look at our expenses very carefully on the expenditure side which we have more control on on the revenue side we don't have as much control on Revenue because we get Revenue mainly from property taxes and then the last few years since ebf was passed a big chunk we get from uh from the state and once we get now the state is more regular we get about $4.7 million every month from the state in ABF the property taxes I mentioned earlier twice a year so what we have to do is we we have to be very careful about what our cash flow need is and plan accordingly and also invest the extra taxes that we get that we don't need at this point instead of it sitting in the account we put it to work to get as much yield as possible but while at the same time selecting conservative investment choices and making sure we comply with the lard Municipal investment uh policy so those are the thing we look at from the expenditure side and also from the revenue side and we manage the money tightly yes thank you um thank you uh next up Mr Bei we have some uh presentations regarding the Recycling and Disposal of electronics RFB I want to invite um we've got uh Brent Kyer and Kevin McDonald here if there any questions regarding this uh proposal we'll get it we'll get it yeah this first one is uh just talking about the recycling RFP uh we don't have a formal uh presentation but it is in the memo um we did go through the RFP process for our uh normal recycler uh we had a couple of uh vendors bid on that uh RFP however after the bids were submitted we found that our Uh current vendor that we recycle with uh was more of a value mainly because the items that we recycle uh in real life really have no value they are parted out uh devices that are a h of what they once were uh so our recommendation is to go or stay with our current recycling company and just to clarify we're talking about obsolete devices right I'm obsolete devices yes obsolete just to clarify when people hear recycling could be paper could be so these are devices that obsolete they are no longer use for parts but we need to try to uh to get rid of them correct okay any questions board okay all right thank you gentlemen for being here and for your work on this and okay next up next topic is there too yep yep two for one tonight yes uh next topic 9.3 Yep this next topic is talking about the Chromebooks um that we uh have in uh in circulation uh last year at the end of the year it was a there was a decision made to um give out the handbooks to the graduation graduating seniors um we think that it was a uh well-received program uh mainly because again uh there's not a whole lot of value um for us to either retain it or um even sell it uh they have at that point uh the devices that we have given out uh have been in circulation for four years um although the devices are still supported by Google uh for updates uh they have become somewhat Antiquated as far as uh new devices for new students so we are recommending that we continue this um program however with the recommendation that we now instead of a handout we want to uh make it more of an incentive and so we are recommending that the seniors that uh do not have fees uh to the district will receive their device anybody with current fees uh they will need to turn those devices in okay um with that how do you do you wipe the devices or do you just give them to them is there anything that's on the device that's decommissioned like any software Etc yeah uh the Chromebooks are very easy to manage uh Within our admin console uh when we deprovision them it automatically the next time the device talks to the network wipes the device and it it it's basically an outof box experience for the end user got it I just had a question you made your first statement by saying oh sorry I'm over here uh your first statement was that there's that you feel like there's no really purpose of keeping the device but then the second statement was that you're only giving devices to students that do not have fees to the school y so I'm I'm just confused cuz then why would they have to return it if there's no purpose of you guys taking it back we could still use it for parts uh there are still different levels that may have uh it but there isn't a value in trying to sell it in in in and try to recoup costs we may have it for parts or spares um when students may forget their device at uh school we can use those as spares is there any Communications to the parents about the fact that there's an opportunity for their student to have a Chromebook if there are um outstanding fees to pay those fees so that they maybe that's an incentive for them to pay their fees yeah uh there hasn't been yet but that is the plan of uh making this recommendation uh that that communication if uh approved uh would go out to the parents and students uh specifically saying that if you pay your fees the seniors get to keep their device um I actually missed this note in here because I I am familiar with them keeping their Chromebooks and stuff and so um I mean I'd be okay with the like doing this this year to see how it goes but I'm really wondering if this will will be an incentive for them to hand in their Chromebooks and are we if I think about students who might have outstanding fees they might have other Financial constraints in their lives at home and a Chromebook might be actually more valuable for them to keep it um as they transition out of high school so that they can apply for jobs and things like that um I don't know and but I also understand we need to collect fees I'm not sure that this is the exact way that I would have approached trying to fees from students I can I can answer that so uh are students are eligible for free lunch they don't have to pay the the fee okay the ones who are eligible for reduce they pay a reduced amount okay so this will be folks who didn't belong to either category okay and a dimed based on their financial information has been capable or pay the fees okay that helps thank you it doesn't exclude it doesn't exclude students who are eligible for this so there are students who are eligible for this so there's a category can you explain but I also think do we know every student that is capable or not capable there's a reason I get we need to I get it but I want I I'm going to I'm going to probably say this from now until my last board meeting we have a lot of fees in this in this community and or in this school district sorry and I what Amy said I continue to reverberate those students may not know their parents owe fees but if they need a computer for college or for a job or for something I just I find this to be punitive and I don't I I don't care for it as one voice on this board um I think there's plenty of other ways to um collect fees and I don't understand I don't feel that this is just the appropriate way to do it or incentivize to do it I am I'm just wondering if it'll be effective like I'm not sure that a fam I I'm not sure that there will be it will initiate people paying their I think to your question so I think what I'm hearing is that there's some questions so one of the questions in here it says it was a positive experience what I'm hearing is a request for some data I think for the next you know this is being brought to the board uh so I was I would say that this is the information and I would encourage the board I'm hearing questions that are about like okay so how does this Mr spoke to like if a student qualifies for pre reduced lunch they're not going to be excluded from getting those crowns right so but this is there are there are some gains and Lessons Learned so I what I'm hearing is there some important questions could you make sure that we have some of those in terms of why you described this as a unless you have the data right now but you probably want some time to prepare that uh for the follow-up memo I would say that some of the questions are like why are you describing as a positive experience there's some concern that this may be seen as punitive how does it address that and so this was a pilot that was done last year there's a desire to continue it um what was the the data that came through that helped do that so I think these are important questions and I appreciate the board's questions but Dr kot I'm thinking we did do the let's keep our Chromebooks last year but the idea that we are now keeping the recommendation like there's a change for this year that they would not if they hand in their Chrome how am I reading this hold on there is something new here and I'm not sure we have the data that you're referring to like can you speak to that BR yeah the new part is to to try and uh if they if the student slamily still owes fees to the district they need to turn in their Chromebook rather than it just being a handout to those individuals okay and we have no data on how many last year paid fees in order to keep their Chromebook I misunderstood that the first time I misunder I think I think the data then would be how many wouldn't have gotten it yeah how many students are we talking about because what what I see an administrative students with you know what Rafael said is not in here about you know students um with free and reduced lunch it just you know says if you owe money right um You would not you could hand in your you need to hand in your Chromebook but then you still owe money right yes right so why would I hand in my well somebody there I guess the idea is somebody would hand over a check instead but if it's I don't know I'm just um but I'll let you speak and I guess part of what we're trying to do is I I think about three or four years ago there was legislation passed that made it uh almost very difficult uh to incentivize uh parents to pay fees that their kids owe yeah was there were no there was no longer any leverage yeah so and we've seen a drastic reduction in fee collection we really have and let do we have an idea for example well I guess we wouldn't until we're at the end of senior year right how many people have outstanding fees like how many seniors last year we actually impacted we actually have it's part of our annual financial report that the state ask us for since they passed this law they're trying to see the impact of it on our finances so there's a page in the annual financial report that actually ask us for graduating senior how much did they owe the the the last graduating senior so we that is including the AFR for the 2024 that is going to be presented to the board next month so that amount is actually in there and that amount would that that would be that would not include student fees that were owed by students with free and reduced lunch no because because those fees not NE right they don't they don't have to pay I mean the the free the students who are eligible for free lunch they don't pay any fees the Fe the kids who eligible for reduce they'll pay a reduced amount these are oh hi you actually just answered my first one but for my second question how last year um the computers wasn't worth that much so you decided to just give them away as computers are going through over the years they keep developing for example last year the computers didn't have a touchcreen but now they do and I see in the future um different things about the computer will will improve so over the years as things are improving and the price of computers will go up will this plan still need to be like ex happening because if we keep giving away free computers as like computer prices go up to like oh $8 to like $10 to $50 would it become just a waste of money handing it out to people who have like the money for or no well when we again when we look at the devices uh we look at the value of uh the longevity here at the district so a device that has already four years of wear and tear if you will on it um it it the uh I guess kind of the sequence of what was is going to happen for those devices it's just spares uh for us uh we don't want to provide that to a new student coming in um because now we're also talking about Equity issues got it uh so yes it does have the value will still be relatively low in comparison uh for the original purchase price uh honestly uh the model except for the model um that is not not touchcreen um has all been within the last 3 years have all been within the same approximate price strange M and and sometimes they even go lower I would and then just to clarify people families that have free lunch they don't need to pay the fees was that what you guys were talking right they don't pay fees okay and then for people who don't have free lunch but still have fees to pay it would there would there be a plan for where they have to pay it in full or would there be a plan set where they can pay like slowly up to graduation and then when they completely pay the fees then they get the computer we are happy to work out a payment plan it we we flexible we just want to collect the money at the end of the day I had a follow-up question actually thinking about what cie said um uh my question was do you have a range well do you have a range for these feed like is it like a $5 fee $500 fee that you're not providing these Chromebooks for because I feel like if a student owes 500 compared to a student who owes like maybe like less money of a fee they should like do you have a range that you're going with when it comes to this fee that's a good point we haven't thought about it and I I'll be very honest with you from my point of view I want all the fees collector every dollar counts every day whatever it takes ladies don't go there withes so I think did you have no that was all I that was the only question that I had cuz I was a little bit confused CU you said that there was a positive outcome from last year so like I'm so confused about like changing it up this year but I do understand you know all money counts but that was getting less I think he's trying to be creative in in some incentive program because it wouldn't violate the spirit of the pay to play yeah which is what he's called it used to be you with old service and kid if they owe money the legislation made it so that you know Essentials or you have to give it to them but we don't the district doesn't have an obligation to give a device to someone so we are just extending that as a courtesy and we saying in order to get that courtesy can you pay us what you owe us that's essentially what we saying do you gain anything by getting the Chromebook back uh yeah we can use it as uh we can use it as parts to fix uh other devices well it's and it's actually an educational tool I've seen it uh in practice at the high schools so um I think this raises some qu I'm sorry D go ahead um this is for information so I guess some want some more information I would like is how much were uncollected fees for example from last year um I don't need that right now but and if possible like how many students did that represent in the senior classes I don't know of this so so we get a sense of how many people this uh could impact and then if we move forward with this and then are there any other ways that we're suggesting trying to collect more fees besides this from our seniors or is this the only have there been other brainstorms around around this um and then if we move forward with this idea I'd like to see what it looks like once we enact it yeah so I Mr I think either tonight or next time I think you can bring in more detail around fees collection period I know that's something that your team has been working very hard to understand and address um I know there are lots of questions about for example act uh Sports fees Rich which uh parents submit but really are really a small are you know they subsidized our overall expense on Sports so I think there's a lot of questions about fees and how they're used so that is something we can come back to I know that the scope of this was really to focus on part of it but you're really bringing up a more holistic and how are we think about the whole package of fees and so I think that is something um Mr OB if me if you don't mind and I will consult and either it's at the December because I know we're in the midst of the levy process or in January if you don't mind we can bring it we'll do we'll we'll bring back the additional information requested I'm just the only last thing I'll say is I'm also thinking about the the enact like enacting this process a senior keeps their Chromebook doesn't pay their fees someone's going to go and like take take it from them you know what I mean like in the middle of the night you know it's having worked in high schools before during graduation time when you're trying to do these last things um I just want to be you know considerate of that that time period as well but I know we need to collect fees too so I want to be you know cognizant of both you probably get back a lot of broken computers yeah correct um when the seniors are done with it previous to last year we had receiveing back cracks screens yeah Keys missing blah blah blah so in some cases they might I mean I don't you know they might just hand back their computer and be like they could my fees remain they could but I I think also if we start this plan uh seniors understand that hey I'm going to take this potentially after four years I'm going to take better care of it too yeah yeah yeah and the original legislation was really about transcripts and report cards and access to grade based information diplomas um when it as Mr OB mentioned it changed a few years ago um so it really was to allow um access to those items specifically the diploma and the transcript yeah I think I'm remembering some Trauma from that when we were try when I worked at high school and we were trying to collect fees and parents wanted access to grade like all this stuff and it was just yeah it was a lot that that is what's not allowed in yeah yeah okay thank you I had one more question sorry um do you is the fees the what the fee that you pay in the beginning of the year beginning of the school year a variety of fees is the fee what you is the school fee what you pay in the beginning of the year well it depends by building and by grade but um like based on the classes that you take you could AC crew morphies or if you take different sports or if you sign up for different clubs um there are fees all different kinds of fees there are registration fees class fees um you know don't any kind of D fee oh cuz I was going to ask like you can maybe I don't know if you already have this data collected but between freshman year when a student first receives their Chromebook and how they decide to pay among these fees up until their senior year is there like um a reduction of how much they're actually paying every year as they go throughout their grade level or is there an increase in these fines and then figure out where we get that inbalance of students or parents not paying for these fees starting from the freshman year to the senior year so that maybe you can reconsider way another way about collecting your money at at the end of their senior year instead of taking their Chromebook I think what what I like to recommend is and Brent and Kevin if you would invite to meet with our student advisory team and get their feedback and include that in the next presentation and I think a number of other things so we want to thank you all for your time and your presentations toight thank you thank you um next we want to invite uh Clayton Holderman and Charlie johnso for update on our health Life Safety survey for our junior high schools welcome so Dr catti i' like to speak of course and I want to lead in with Mr Queen so this is a survey that we're required and mandated by the state to do every 10 years um this is a process that we started last year with our high schools uh District our size we need to run this in three phases did you say we started this last year we started this last year with with both high schools okay um and our first phase so this is our second round phase with the junior highs where we walk through the buildings with with clubber and we identified things in a in a priority with uh urgent uh required and recommended um to document all that information and get it down so we can move move through the process of uh completing those tasks and getting those safety concerns taken care of great thank you Charlie okay I'm all done I don't have to say anything more you we're good that was my goal thanks Bill um for the all all of you were here last time to go through this as Bill mentioned this is the um um a three-phase process for your District simply by size um it is a requirement you can go to the next next can you go to the next page thank you um again uh there are um 22 academic buildings that we surveyed that we will survey when we're done with this process by the end of next summer um actually this time next year because we'll go through the same thing of presenting you the information we have gone through the two high schools last year this year was focused on the U junior high schools um we had five buildings total totaling over nine um that's not right 900 900 uh, not 9 million square feet of building housing over uh 3,700 students the total uh square footage of the of the district we've talked through again as Bill mentioned we have the uh the categorizations uh a b and c priorities as discussed previously with the um facilities team we've migrated all of the the c um elements the recommended elements to District staff to look at review because those are recommended not required by the state so bill and his team have those and bill has a plan to uh get those into your uh system to uh become work orders essentially um again our methodology is our we set out teams of people we have engineers and Architects that go out and review everything from the roof to the buildings and grounds to the grounds as well to walk around the buildings and we produce um uh violation schedules and we produced uh safety reference plans which are kept at your buildings and we reproduce what's called a safety reference document and they're all they're all here you this is the safety reference document safety reference plans and then the schedules of violations um uh again we we viewed these items with District Personnel walking through kind of highlighting the big ticket items which is what we're going to do for you tonight as well and also identifying those things um that they can accomplish themselves or put on their own to-do list um then we then they then after tonight um next um board meeting you guys will approve these this list of items and then clubber will uh input them into the Ia system and submit them to the regional Office of Education who then reviews that and submits it down to to is to the state and then the state comes back and says yep please continue to get those things done which um is a great thing to talk about in terms of key points um last year as Bill mentioned we did the two high schools and um uh the interesting thing about the two high schools is that well that the the uh your staff has been working on some of those items pre previously identified so in this document you'll see a reduction in costs associated with the high schools but then you'll see the additive of the of the junior high schools that are there so some of the high level um overall and for the junior highs there's like 1.4 million between the A and B priorities of work and I'll I'll Identify some of the the high ticket items um most of the items fall in the B priority which I think is important to to Showcase because the a ones as you might remember need to be accomplished in within a year and B ones can be accomplished within uh five years um this next slide I sorry I walked through that slide and didn't didn't let you get a chance to read it this is um a graph where we've kind of outlined and I've and I've included the high schools at the top as well as the five junior high schools and one of the items that I added added uh for your benefit Mary Joe is that which which of these high level ticket items which category they fall in so for Bernard there's um a chiller replacement and uh a carpet replacement which are both B categories at this point um and they take up more than half of this big red bar down at the bottom okay and same with these other items at Murphy uh and plank uh asphalt paving as you know uh bill is and his team are working through uh School each schools to try to jump on those those are big ticket items between um Asphalt Paving and carpet replacement in a building wide th those those numbers get pretty high this next slide I you might remember from last year this was um the high schools that we showed you and what I the only thing I'm pointing out for you is these are last year's numbers and when we roll into this year you can see those values coming down so when I go to the combined this year with the uh high school and the junior high schools the um I don't know if you can read up there but the uh number at Osgo East High School was in the a priority was like 118,000 so they've done some work there as well as many in the B priority as well and for o Wego High School also a reduction there that they these have come come down between these two numbers from last year um you have access to the entire report in in your backup so you can see each uh building's schedule violations and walk through them on your own but if you have any specific questions I'd be happy to answer those Mr Queen anything else you want to have what is the purpose of putting the um expenditure per student that was from uh that's a hangover from years past that we've added that there was an effort at one point to see um um payment across the district that was commens to the students and how many students were in a building um it and it it's um also a document that that we had put into the Invision Plan before so that rolls in that the Align to to each other so it's specific to our district these are specific these these enrollment numbers are updated as of this last demographic report we got those uh values from the district well I think you're saying this request is specific to the district right yes yes correct yes I'm yes 100% it's not standard this this particular summary sheet is solely for your benefit it doesn't go to the state in terms of cost per student that's so you're aware of where the the costs are needed um uh so that you can see them by building um thank you Don overing Mr over do you do you have um these numbers already um incorporated into our no they the majority of this we cannot pay for out of our operations fund okay so that's the that's the goofy thing about the health and life safety it's one of those some funded man mandate and there's a there's a health reason why it's an unfunded mandate you it's an un unfunded mandate and it's for health and safety reason why the state requires it but the state doesn't provide us any money as out to pay for it and we still have a you know thousand other things as a district that we need to fund so what we try to do we try to as much as possible our uh facility folks do some of the work uh internally and then if it becomes a major issue and we have the money we do some of it but we don't have the means to be able to do all of this all at once right yeah so how does this Dr K fit into our comprehensive facilities plan there's going to be an overlap there's going to be an overlap some of this will be things that uh once the facility assessment happens it will be an overlap about things that needs to be to be fixed and then um what when do we start the elementary building we'll start them next summer as soon as your your uh students are out of the building actually clubber prior to that will be planning when our staff could get in there and then as soon as they're out of the building we'll start to make our trips to walk around the elementary as well as brok off is in that uh group as well and So based on what we know about your experience with the high schools and Junior High do we have any idea like where we might come in as it relates to the elementaries and the dollar yes unfortunately we do and the and the biggest indicator of what we know is that in years past the district has not been successful in managing the health Life Safety work prior to last year you we could probably say with very high certainty that items that were on your previous list in 2017 will be on there again and I can say for the junior highs that was 100% true for the high schools it was proba probably 85 90% depending on which building so the high schools have a larger staff if that's fair that were able to accomplish a lot of these things um before but the bigger um plus and I think this is a big uh kudos to to bill and his staff is that now they're aware because I think a lot of the building level folks weren't even aware of these documents that they kind of stayed at central office and not at building level build building level team has these documents as as as soon as he does and I think that's a plus and the data that I showed related to the high school and the work that they were able to accomplish over this last year speaks to exactly what Mr obami said is now they're actively pursuing completing this work and so the dollar amount you're thinking might be um I can get that back to you I don't have at the tip of my tongue because it's it's in the older document that I didn't bring I only brought your newer ones but I can send that forward and let you know give you heads up and he goes up every year as we all know cost of conr is gone up considerably so yeah it goes up every year not only that we have to escalate the costs that were originally put into that document in 2017 to be commens with today's dollars but I will forward that dollar figure to you uh dry and or M when we're done I was think Dr I will get it to thank you that's that would be very helpful yes I think that's the important piece that I think I want to make sure people realize that by not fixing these things now they'll only get more expensive in multiple aspects first of all breakdown is like going to be higher and second of all I mean you want some inflation I know that sounds terrible but the alternative to inflation is deflation and you certainly don't want that so the the number the price is just going to go up anyways from that as well the other element is some of those B priorities all of a sudden bubble up to a priorities and become more urgent for the district which you all are familiar with great Mr Queen you had a comment you want to make that's we've just taken a very aggressive approach with getting these jobs completed in a timely manner I got a great team I got great staff underneath me and and we've been really reactive to these situations and just trying to stay ahead of them and the last couple of years we've actually appropriated more money to get some of this stuff done what exposure do we have uh from the state level if we give a report back now unless they want to pay to do it the the big asset that the district has is as Mr oemi said you're not asking them for dollars dedicated to this so therefore they're they're less concerned they are concerned but they're less concerned about your Prosecuting of this work the good news again is that the district is taking a proactive approach to prosecuting it versus a reactive thank you thank you very much very much do you think any of this I was thinking about letting the students go I yeah you guys can thank you for your contributions today yeah have a great night thank you all right m Mr oemi uh the 2024 tax levy adoption cycle update is the time of the year again when we have to do a levy preparation uh as I always say the levy makes up the the majority of the revenue that the district gets and so it's important that that we do this uh it uh it pays for a lot of the money that we get as a district so Dr can can you share the clicker clicker good evening see you guys thank you thank you now there's uh there's a specific statutory adoption cycle for the levy and uh today we're presenting the uh the levy to the board for approval for a resolution and then uh um on the 28th we have the uh publication teed up we'll do a truth and Taxation notice in local newspaper and then uh on the 9th we'll have a public hearing as required by Statute for the uh for the levy and then by law we need to file the levy the last Tuesday of December with the Three Counties where the district live is from now I've gotten a couple of emails already from citizen who saw the uh the post in online and they are questioned and what I to explain to them a levy is just a request it doesn't necessarily mean that's what we get and uh what we actually get is what is called an extension the actual amount that is extended and the reason why that is important and I need to to clarify is that the way the law is written is is it's a little weird in that we need to complete the levy and have a file by December last Tuesday in in December except the assessors the assessors in the Three Counties where we Levy from they don't know the equalized value of property is till January so what we have to do we have to make an assumptions and then the assessor would then they'll T up the actual number and they'll come up with a number that is actually the right number so when people see the L they assume that is uh automatically the extension it is not the extension so uh one of the the driving factor of the levy is the CPI and it's specific too that is the uh the prior December CPI so with the 2024 Levy the uh CPI uh factor that will be using is the December 2023 CPI that comes that came out in January of 2024 and another important information that goes into calculating the levy is the equalized assessment value eav and what that is is the value of all taxable property in a taxing area and that final number is actually going to be determined by the the assessor their process of appeal and that goes all the way that may go all the way to the Circuit Court before the final determination is made and that's not going to be made till next year so so I I I pointed out the uh what the final level will be is is governed by pel and that's the property tax extension limitation law which says it's going it can be 5% or CPI whichever one is is is uh lower so even though we we Levy uh we we calculate the levy with a high amount we will never get more than what the CPI is and I'll talk some more about why we do what is called balloon Levy later on so this is where the money that the district used to fund itself comes from 48% is from a property tax so it's by far the largest source of revenue for the district and then over the last few years since ebf went into effect in 2018 it's become a larger share before then the state contributes normally about 12 to 15% so ebf has been a game changer for us uh especially since we were tier one district and then the rest of the revenue falls into 4% Federal uh 4% uh local and then the rest of it now um I know Mary Joe asked me about cppt now cppt is considered local fund but it's not really it's local but it's not property tax what cppt is back before the uh the new Illinois constitution in 1970 what used to happen is each municipality where actually go out and they will go to all the the companies and and factories that make products and they'll try to determine the value of the equipment that they use to make those prod product and once they determine the value of the equipment then each municipality can then tax those equipment which is why the term personal property replacement tax that's that's where that term came from but then after the Illinois constitution starting in 1979 what the the Department of Revenue decided is we would do we would determine the tax uh the amount that uh companies will be taxed but instead of actually going out and doing personal property uh determination what they did is they set an amount based on the uh the structure of the company if it's an escort they pay certain amount if it's a c they pay certain amount if it's a a partnership they pay certain percentage so it was benchmarked to whatever the municipality got back in the 70s and that's what they continue to get now which is which is weird in that some of those communities if you think about some of the communities that had nuclear plants before where those nuclear plant have closed now they still use the same Benchmark that was used back in the 70s to get the same amount now the last three years or so co uh once co uh started and it kind of went down a bit businesses wrapped up to be able to produce more products and what that did is it created an increase in uh company profit under the cppt so we went from preco receiving about $2 million in a district in cppt to last year we actually received a record $6.4 million but when doing the budget projection for 2025 I kind of figured that that things are going to pet it down that that was a a one-time bump so we projected um uh cppt of been 2.5 million and as things will come in we only will allocated $2 million so we only had to make up about half a million dollars in Revenue compared to if we estimated $6.4 million that we got the year before it would have been catastrophic for us fin so going forward we we believe that cppt is going to go back to prepandemic which is going to be about $2 million so uh the uh the levy what it does it funds the budget but the way the levy works is it crosses to fiscal year there's the first installment and the second installment I'm going to try to explain this as simply as I can the first installment of a levy is actually not that current year Levy if you remember what I said earlier the assessor is still trying to determine what the valuation of our taxable property is so what the assessor would do is they will take the prior year where they had the actual Levy calculated already and they will give us 55% of the prior year Levy and we get that in uh normally in May June and that's in the current fiscal year when the Lev uh was uh was developed the second installment is actually the real Levy for that year because by then the assessin knows what the valuation of the the properties are and then extension can be made and then that second installment comes to us in the fall September which is the beginning of another fiscal year so I always try to explain that levies cross two fiscal year instead of just one most people think it's one but it actually goes through through uh through fiscal year so I want to point that out because it's important in this case the first installment that we reive of the 2023 Levy was based on uh the 5% the 5% for the first and the second one but the second uh the the 2024 Levy that we're going to get in the first installment in the spring is going to be based on a 3.4 CPI so it's going to be a lower amount in the 2024 than it was in the 2023 because CPI was lower so I talk about CPI a lot because when pil was passed back in 1991 and applied to the Coler County in 1994 what happened is the increases that a school district in uh in the color counties of cook uh Kendall McKenry uh Kane and Will County and all those counties it has to be his P to CPI so it's 5% of CPI which everyone was lower the last couple of years in 2022 CPI actual CPI was actually 7% 2023 actual CPI was 6.2% but in those two years we have to use 5% and I would say the uh pel took it took effect back in 1994 the last two years were the first time ever where CPI was actually 5% the highest it was before then was 4.1 so if you go back the 30 years that pil is been in existence and you do the average of CPI it's actually been about 2.5% I remember a few years ago when CPI was one base point1 I remember a couple of years ago too when it was 7 70 basis point and 80 basis point so what we are seeing right now is abnomal for CPI so I just wanted to show what drives CPI things like housing apparel uh utilities and the things that most people spend the majority of their money buying if the prices of those go up then CPI goes up for that given month so I wanted to show you historical CPI uh going back to 2013 if you saw in 2013 CPI was 1.5 and then we are those two outliers that were brought on by uh covid in 2021 where CPI was 7% and then in 2022 when it was 6.5% in those two years that was where we used the uh the 5% but now the CPI that we're going to use for the 2024 Levy that we presenting tonight is at 3.4 so the district would now be getting as much revenue in property taxes as it did in the last couple of years can it yes as much of an increase as much of an increase that's what I meant yes thank you so I wanted to show two different ways of showing that the first one was the line but then I wanted to go back to the Inception of of pel and you can see that uh this is what cpis look like and the average as I mentioned before has been about 2.5 so when we do projections moving forward we know what uh this year cpis but we need to do projection for the next five years so going forward for the next five years next year we assuming I'm assuming 2.5 CPI up to date if you look at 12 months up to date the document that is in the uh in uh in the B Dog uh actual CPI from September to September it's actually 2.4 but we assuming that Christmas which is the December CPI people tend to shut more then so which is why I'm assuming it will be closer to 2.5 as opposed to what it is right now but in the out years from the from the 25 Levy all the way to 2030 when I do my projection I'm assuming CPI of 2% because if you go back which I've actually done this I went back to 1914 I looked at CPI from 1914 today and what you see the average has been 2% which is what the feds always try to uh to set as a benchmark for inflation you said 1914 194 and I'm happy to share that but anybody want to contest in the audience no noing out on yeah he no but I will add one time we got tonight I will one thing that 0.1% that was the year the the Great Recession started so that's why I said earlier be be careful uh yeah I'm not saying you want High inflation but you certainly don't want no inflation I remember doing H levent too it it was painful it was it was very painful so this is the levy that uh that we are we are proposing uh in 2024 the at for 94.6 and if you saw that that's actually higher than what it was to Prior and I when we get the out Shore comparison and for operations 15.9 Transportation 8.1 what we've done we've steadily increase the amount of money that we actually Levy in transportation and since we have a c we actually couldn't Levy anymore what we've done we've taken what we would have Levy in education and put it in transportation since we've spent more in transportation than we've received as far as Revenue uh State reimbursement as well as fees that we collect special education 9 uh 10.9 imrf and Social Security those two funds they're actually lower than what we Lev last year and the reason why by Statute you only Levy what you need in IMI refence or Seca you're not supposed to Levy any more that you need and in looking at the reserves that we have in both funds we do not need to Levy what we've done the last couple of years and I think what happened is a few years ago here the uh the fund balance for those two funds were lower than they needed to be so it was made up but we've gone to a point now where we didn't need to Levy as much and what in in the levy strategy that has been presented tonight what we've done what we've done is then took the difference and then tried to Levy them in the Ed fund instead which is where the majority of our expenses comes from and that's also the fund that provides us the most flexibility as far as what we can do we can transfer it to other funds we can do what we need to do with that and then working cash we only live in 241 and what that is is the district's bank and whatever we have in working cash can be loaned to other fund and they have to be the money has to be paid back within three years of the loan without having to pay an interest can I answer a question question here as you know I I asked I was going to ask this question right about can you explain to me like how that works as far as maybe from a percentage standpoint like I know we're CA at CPI but how does that work when it comes to adjusting like what we're bringing in for each of those funds so there are some funds that have uh rate limitation and some funds don't the fund has some rate limitation it also has more flexibility onm doesn't have rate limitation Transportation doesn't special education doesn't but imrf you you get to Levy what you need for imrf but working cash has a rate limitation and you can't really spend money directly from working cash so you don't tend to Levy more it's more of a bank I a back up in case another fund needs to borrow money so I'm not saying we would want to do this by any stretch of the imagination but let's say you Levy Transportation by I I'll use Simple numbers so that it's like not complexer let's say you wanted to Levy Transportation at 10% how would that affect your ability to Lev Levy elsewhere or would it not okay so the aggregate doesn't change so it's kind of like a pot you can Levy a pot and then you can distribute it so if you Levy more in one then you have to Levy Less in the other it's kind of like a bail it's a balancing thing that you have to do you can't get and I I I let people know that they see the levy and they think you're going to increase it by all this money but we really don't the most we can get as fast increase request is what CPI is but what we do this may be the time that I talk about it we do what is called balloon Lev and the reason why you do balloon Levy you look at L stre as extension you add cpri to it and then what you also do then you have new construction nobody knows what new construction is going to be until the Lev is completed that's the thing and no construction is not cap but the problem with that is if you don't balloon Levy you you get data from uh from the uh from the municipality to see what the economic uh development is as far as no construction but then that data is guesstimation nobody knows so you do based on the data that you have you try to to infer what the new constructions are and then you have to put it in there now if you miss on there and you don't balloon that becomes the new Benchmark that means you on the levy so that means that new Benchmark becomes the Baseline for future living you can't go back and ever recoup that so in order to protect against that oping what you do you do what is called balloon Levy knowing that you actually probably not going to get there but you're trying to make sure that you don't live any money that the district need to operate on the table and create a situation where you have a lower Baseline for future levies thank you so I wanted to point out uh we have a pretty high burning interest and I want folks to know that goes back to the referendum of November 7 2006 when the district was growing by lip in Bound and uh we have a lot of children showing up here who needed to uh to have a school and the only way District can pay for that is to do that referendum and that referendum was actually approved for $450 million but thank God we didn't issue all that Bond we issue about 250 of them and actually the amount was so big that we actually had to go to Springfield and ask for legislation to allow the district to be able to have a referendum for that big amount but we only issued two uh $250 million and of that amount we've been paying approximately 36.9 million a year in debt service and what we've also done along the way is the older debt when we can have a situation where interest rate is lower at the present time than it was that we issued it for what we did we did what is called refunding and we took the savings that would have gone to the bond holders and we gave it back to the time ta pay it may not be a significant amount of money but every little bit counts the last one we did was a refunding of the 2014 bond which just closed on November 6 I believe and that uh refunded about $300,000 plus to taxpayers in and before that in the spring we did something similar to the 2024b which was issued in 2013 where we had a low interest rate and we were able to refund some of that interest rate that we will pay to bond holders to taxpayers but I want to point out you can only do that after the bond has been out for 10 years Bond holders want to make some yield before you can refund those bonds so we can only do that after 10 years and if interest rate is favorable to us something else that I want to point out is as we keep paying down this this debt here the amount that we ow keeps going down so that by the time we get to 2027 we will see a significant decrease in the bond payment that we have to make right now and the reason too if you think about I just I want to explain this if you heard me I said the the bonds were issued back in 2026 for 251 million 25 2006 you mean uh 2006 I'm sorry 2006 and we still owe the same amount even though we've been making payment the reason why that is the case is because of how the bonds were structured a big chunk of the bond that was issued before was issued as a capital app appreciation bond what you what you call a c bond and you do that in order to make the bond payment uh easier for us to make because if you were paying everything all at once it would have been a significant high amount for us to pay every year so what the the downside of the c bond is that you then you defer interest and you defer principle but when you do that though they don't go away you just have to pay a higher amount later so I I wanted to include a table that compares what the actual extension not the levy what was extended by The Three Counties uh Kendall Kane and will last year and those are the in 2023 extension those the what was extended uh alog together 125.95 milon less uh uh Bond and interest Bond and interest is actually Lev separately directly because whenever we issue a bond we send a document to those two uh to those three counties and the counties Levy those and it goes directly to uh to to that fund we don't mingle it with the operational funds so when you look at I I think I mentioned earlier that we asking for the dollar change in the Ed fund a big chunk of that is the uh the levy strategy where we Levy Less in imrf and Social Security and Levy more in education fund and if you go down you will see a decrease in the corresponding decrease in the uh in the imrf and Social Security so you see the uh the imrf and Social Security went down by the same amount so yeah I just wanted to show that the percentage but at the end of the day what we are asking for as a levy with a balloon included is 5.99 knowing fully well we would not receive that the most we're going to receive as far as an increase is CPI by Statute the County Clark cannot Levy they cannot extend any more than what CP was which is 3.4 but we put in the balloon to capture new construction which we don't know yet so and this is what I try to say here too that the ballone is 599 5.99 but that's not the actual amount because we're requesting it before before we know what the total amount of eav is going to be as well as new construction so why Levy to to cap uh the critical reason is that the majority of the fund that we use to run the district 48% comes from property tax so in order for and we know for the last three years inflation has been high the cost of everything has gone up the cost of electricity cost of gas everything is gone up so we have to keep up with the cost the increase in the cost of everything even our Educators when we negotiate contracts with them they expect to to get an increase commensurate to inflation so we have to try to keep up with that and another thing another reason we want to do that is it was it was perfect timing the architector did the health and life safety just left we have millions of dollars in life safety work that we need to do the only source of funding for that will be from the levy that's a big chunk of it another thing is we need a rainy day fund we need to start building our reserve the um good practic is for a district to have 25% of his operational Fund in reserve we're knowwhere close to that and uh in case of of of unforeseen circumstances if you remember when covid happened no one was predicting that and the economy just kind of froze thank God that they there was extra funded I don't know what we have done as a district since at that time we didn't have much of a reserve so that's another reason why we need to Levy what the district is entitled to to be able to start building that rainy day fund which is essentially savings and if we do that then we'll be less relying on uh on what I call a payday loan which is the tax anticipation Warrant Where We borrowing money so we can Tire us over for the next uh couple of months from the levy so we get the first installment if you remember in May June we get the second one in September and we have to make it last again in September till May June so if we have a reserve we can weather that without having to do short-term borrowing and when you borrow shortterm you pay high interest you also pay issuing cost and I would just add from a historical standpoint part of the reason we got ourselves into the issues that we did here is because this was not the philosophy we were operating under at all we were stagnating revenues in an already precarious situation right and that that's an important point and the other important point that I want to point out one of the reasons why we have a higher tax rate in addition to the fact that we're paying our standing Bond and interest is the fact that we have a very homogeneous tax base a lot of communities if you go to valy viw next door not too far from here they have a lot more commercial uh base in addition to their residential base 90% or 88% will be precise so if you round it up 90% of our taxes come from residential single family homes so as a result of that there's no burden sharing if you will that you will that will exist if we have more commercial here so that is another reason why we have a higher tax rate relative to that but we know we need those funds to provide a worldclass education to our children is there a way to restructure our capital appreciation bond like when we've been refinancing like you know how you refinance a house you can you can go from a 15 to a 10 you can do all sorts of things to help with your savings is there anything we can do at this point that was the agreement that we reached we defer interest we defer a principle so those Bond they expecting to be paid now and because they've waited without getting what they should have gotten so we're spending $36 million a year and we are not even doing anything we are We Are One chunk of it is the cap that's about 80 million okay out of the 20 and 51 million all right the rest of them are just go buns that we actually were hitting pretty good okay so yeah and when you hit a certain point it really starts to yes it's kind of like if you someone took out of mortgage and if you remember back in 2008 or before the the bottom fell out there were folks who would takeing interest only mgage where the first 10 years they were only paying interest and they didn't pay the principal and then once after the 10 years then the principal and the interest came do and so the amount that it were paying then Belo up so it's something similar to what we are seeing here and we did that strategically to be able to make the payment more affordable of course yeah okay thanks well and the other the other part to add here real quick is because we were operating under that previous philosophy that's part of the reason we have not been able to upkeep our building yeah and so those those pieces are are an issue as well as I mean at some point those aren't young buildings anymore and right yeah and we'll never get that money back right and it continues to oh it it's comp it's still doing it becomes the lower Baseline we're probably at like 5560 million at this point so I I'm bringing this up even though we don't have any a tiff uh do right now but uh I get calls sometimes email folks asking me about how Tiff impact a levy strategy a levy development right now we don't have any Tiff that is due but I know we have a couple of tiffs in the in in the taxing area for the district we have a tiff there was established by the village of uhgo and there's also a couple of tiffs that were established by the village of Montgomery but those tiffs are not coming to and I personally am a big supporter of T because a lot if it's set well a lot of time you have an area that but for uh for investment in t growth would not happen and if it's done well over time when the property goes back on the tax road it creates a really good increment that the district can then draw on and it lessens the burden on residential property owner from having to pay higher property tax so we are recommending to tonight that the board accept and approved the 2024 tenative tax levy has presented authorized the uh the 2024 ta Levy public hearing to be held on December 9th at the at the at the board meeting then thank you to your for your attention any discussion any questions please I know it's not a real sexy subject but it's fundamental to our existence I would say the opposite around here honestly I was going to say there's been so much uh education over the last decade that I would disagree I think like I think there are a number of people who get it who used to not get it so trust me there's some people who that's what they want to hear that is really what they want to hear yeah we we know that not everybody gets it I still see all over social media that we want to raise everybody's taxes because we're talking about the ly and I just silently cry I would wish I wish we could afford to send this particular presentation to every household in the district I don't know if we can do it via email a paper version but is so this is everything we can do that this has the history this has we can explore that put it into at least email um and make sure it's on our website this was a great comprehensive overview of historical and moving forward thank you I think the tricky part is having someone to explain it to to folks because I had a couple of people they saw the presentation and they email me they were saying you increasing the levy by 5.99 you can't do that pil is only 3.4 and I said even if we wanted to the clerk would never do that because the clock follows the statue which is that 3.4 you do one of the you know where you record yourself presenting it well I think you we just did so yeah and I do think like we you know I'm just going to be you know speaking bluntly here and honest we had someone who um and and you know Mr mahanti um who did an excellent job probably close to a decade ago right a little under um explaining all of this and it was it was fundamental it was very important and and so um I really like just want to say it is it is crucial um for whoever sits up here or whatever time we have to have um competent diligent um and effective people running our finances at all times and and we have paid the price in the past for uh losing talented people like Mr mahanti and and we're very happy to that you're here you you remember my reaction when I saw you so thank you it was genuine thank you okay all right 9.5 I think you already spoke to it but I Dr I I always call you Dr Raphael rapael Mr overi you mean the uh the truth and Taxation we need to have a hearing uh on the uh 9.6 I'm sorry yeah so yeah that's another process uh in the levy yes right all right 9.7 integration of Pest Management Services rfp's a all right so this is another RFP that I worked in collaboration ceration with uh Caitlin earwood to develop we uh sought out the requests from three vendors to help us keep in order in our house with the little uh pests and mice and things in the district that want to try to integrate our buildings and uh out of those requests Kim Weiss Pro proved to be the best candidate for that and we're recommending that we sign that sign off with Kim Weiss for a pesticide any questions and this is another way what we're trying to do we're trying to Le leverage our buying power because in the past what we did we bought retail on a lot of things and we'll call uh for p Services even yes we'll call A P company when we needed them we didn't negotiate up front where we got best pricing where we didn't have them sign an agreement not to raise their prices for a year so we're trying to use our economy of scale of buying power to try to get the best uh pric in for some of the important things that we spend money on that's great Mr Queen anything else all right what is 9.8 okay 9.8 any questions oh I see we left out the demonstration regarding any pests wanted to see the ear works yes okay we're done yep okay moving on to um 10.1 action Dr Kade oh okay so go ahead in 9.8 um in our last policy and legislative committee meeting uh we reviewed several policies for first read um starting with section two for the school board um we reviewed 270 um exhibit for the checklist for following filing board vacancies By Appointment um we also reviewed 210 5 ethics and gift ban uh we specifically looked at prohibited political activity and prohibited sources um and we will be Consulting board attorney for additional uh consult but we're currently not recommending any changes um also in section two we reviewed 2120 uh board member development um and the changes there um focus on required PD changes by Illinois school code um primarily focus on trauma informed um throughout the remaining policies you'll see most of the changes are in response to Illinois school code or also um Illinois Human Rights Act um in section four for operational Services Revenue Investments are the updates are in response to Illinois school code changes um also for 460 the refer references our updates due to Illinois school code we are not recommending any change to our own policy language that we um adopted last year for 4150 the changes recommended by press is increasing the renovations or permanent alterations to buildings or grounds increase from 17,500 to 35,000 um the the change would then trigger uh board approval necessary in 4170 um the changes to the safety policy focus on at least one AED being present um during District ATT or at each district attendance Center and at District sponsored extracurricular activities um in terms of section five for General Personnel both 510 590 all focus on changes based on the Illinois Human Rights Act and Illinois school code and Title 9 in 5120 um it changes to um the verbiage of school counselor um and then also includes bands um of in receiving uh travel lodging food or beverage in 5125 um it does broaden from teacher to school Personnel um I apologize in 5125 um it changes the social media apps and devices and but then in 5230 for maintaining student discipline that is what broadens from teacher to school personnel and prohibits uh corporal punishment for 660 so section six is about instruction um additions based on Illinois school code are uh worker safety personal health habits career exploration and development which you've um heard Dr Paul and her team speak to as well as College and Career pathway endorsements and then new for fall of 2026 would be the inclusion of um Environmental Education um 6 135 um possible changes include um uh going from meets and exceeds for automatic placements to just exceeds um we're currently still talking about this it also the changes include notification both for qualification and for changes um we currently have followed the policy and the recommended changes um we have recently submitted and sent out our AP letters to our parents um in 6270 uh the changes are in relationship to school counselor services and professional development and then finally in section 7 um changes to 710 similar to 510 um in regards to Illinois human rights and Title 9 in 7100 it removes the requirement for notification in regards to um and kakle I apologize for any mispronunciation uh materials and then uh 7180 um is updates in response to Title Nine any question second can I just ask a question about um 6135 The Accelerated placement program yes um I love everything that's in it I get this is just a policy and it's pretty generic but what U what are the um criteria beyond the state assessments so in terms of the early entrance to kindergarten or first grade there is a variety there and um I know Dr Paul can also supplement um they do interviews they look at a variety of because there is no State assessment in kindergarten first grade um they uh monitor basically play um they um do administer some small Assessments in terms of our Rising 9th 10th 11th and 12th graders they are using State assessments um so they will consider other um additional assessments as needed um in terms of fast Bridge um if additional courses are requested um but at our high school currently it we pretty much have an open enrollment to any um honors class um so the communication that went out to parents was based on both meets and exceeds of either I or last year um uh PSAT 89 or psat1 or the SAT um and then uh the courses that represent the next level in math science English or social studies um was Pro that information was provided to parents and students I just think that when we you know when we continue to look from an equity lens and recognize those with ADHD those with anxiety disorders and with regards to testing you are just to base it on testing alone just concerns me um because we know that there are a lot more data available that um that affects how kids perform so I just wanted to I just wondered thank you we we're talking about placement we're talking about placement for advanced placement right I I'm I thought we had discussed this in the past that there's more criteria than just the testing portion right correct so this depending on the grade level so this not this is notification in terms of above and beyond what work is done and recommended by the teachers so for example a teacher can recommend a student for an honors course that regardless of the test score um they could place into um as I mentioned many many of our honors and AP do not have prerequisites so a student can choose to take the honors or AP course at the high school the application of the advance placement plan currently is just additional notification and qualification so there are many ways to be able to take an honors or an AP course at the high school okay thank you Dr K thank you and uh policy Team all right action item 10.1 approval of bills for payment can I have a motion please make a motion to authorize the bill the payment of bills in the amount of 7,147 667 and 62 cents as presented second Miss fenmo I Dr Mario I Mr Cerone hi Miss similon hi Mr Gatewood hi Miss Johnson hi Mr cler hi motion passes 70 action item 10.2 approval of Transportation hazardous route study can I have a motion please make a motion to approve the hiring of Ericson Engineering Associates LTD to conduct a hazardous uh walking route assessment for asigo Community Unit School District 308 for a cost not to exceed $66,000 second Miss vmou hi Mr Gatewood I Miss Johnson I Mr Cerone hi Miss similon hi Dr Maria I Mr pler hi motion passes 70 action item 10.3 approval of radio and repeater RFP agreement can I have a motion please make a motion to approve a LLC as the vendor for our radio communication needs and the three-year lease agreement with American Capital to fund the acquisition of the radio and repeater second Mr ploger hi Mr Gatewood Miss ven oh sorry I I Mr Sone hi Miss Simon hi Dr Maria hi Miss Johnson hi motion passes 70 action item 10.4 approval of fiscal year 2025 2026 budget calendar can I have a motion please make a motion to adopt the resolution to designate the CFO to begin the fiscal year 20126 budget development process prepare the budget in in tentative form and adopt the fiscal year 2026 budget calendar second Dr Maria I Miss Johnson hi Mr ploger hi Mr Cerone hi Mr Gatewood hi Miss vmou hi Miss Simon I motion passes 70 action item 10.5 approval of resolution and request for kindall County Land cash can I have a motion please make a motion to approve the resolution to request the Kendall County Land cash in the amount of $ 5,669 second Miss I Dr Mario I Mr Sone I miss similon I Mr Gatewood I miss Chon hi Mr CL hi motion passes 70 action item 10.6 approval of intergovernmental agreement for sharing Services can I have a motion please make a motion to approve the intergovernmental agreement for the installation of a multiuse path from Ogden Falls subdivision to asigo East High School school second Mr Cerone I Mr Gatewood I Miss Johnson I Mr ploger I miss venmo I Dr Mario I miss similton I motion passes 70 action item 10.7 approval of estimated tax levy and Truth in taxation resolution can I have a motion please make a motion to approve the truth in taxation resolution as presented second Mr Gatewood I Dr marel I Miss Johnson I Mr Cerone I miss similon I Mr ploger I miss vmou I motion passes 70 action item 10.8 approval of board policy second read can I have a motion please make a motion to approve board policies section two School Board two colon 260 to colon 265 Section 5 General personnel 5 1 0 section 7 students 720 7on 185 second Dr marel I miss vmou hi Mr Cerone hi Miss similon hi Mr Gatewood I Miss Johnson hi Mr Koger hi motion passes 70 action item 10.9 approval of resolution and fee agreement can I have a motion please make a motion to approve the resolution authorized izing diabetes medication overcharge litigation and the France Law Group lawsuit agreement second I wanted that one miss venth hi Miss Simon hi Mr Sone hi Mr ploger hi Mr Gatewood hi Dr Maria hi Miss Johnson I motion passes 70 action item 10.10 approval of destruction of audio recordings can I have a m please make a motion to approve the destruction of the audio recordings of the closed session meetings from October 11th 2022 through April 24th second Mr ploger no Dr marel I miss similon um I Mr Cerone I Miss Johnson no Mr Gatewood I miss venoth I um motion passes uh 5 5 52 52 sorry yes um action item 10.11 approval of the release of closed session minutes can I have a motion please make a motion to make available no closed session minutes at this time due to a determination that they require continued confidentiality second Miss Simon hi Miss vmou hi Mr song hi Dr Mario I Mr Gatewood I Miss Johnson I Mr ploger I motion passes 70 action item 10.12 approval of board agreements can I have a motion please make a motion to approve the board agreements as discussed on October 28th 2024 and change the name to board protocols second Mr Cerone hi Mr Gatewood hi Miss Johnson hi Mr ploger I miss venoth I Dr Mario I miss similon I motion passes 70 10.13 approval of personnel report can I have a motion please make a motion to approve the Personnel report as discussed and presented second Mr Gatewood hi Dr Mario hi Miss Johnson I Mr ploger hi Miss similon I Mr siron I miss vmou hi motion passes 70 action item 10.14 approval of resolution for dismissal can I have a motion please make a motion to approve the resolution authorizing notice of dismissal to educational support staff employee Nicholas chosi second Dr Mario I miss vmou hi Mr Cerone I Miss similon I Mr Gatewood I Miss Johnson I Mr bloger I motion passes 70 um action item 11.1

58% compared to 37.0 a year ago expenditures are at 3449 per compared to 28.75 um a year ago um we received impact fees for $3,652 129 for four home starts and there were no transition fees the Bill's payable reports for Central and Northern cane are typical for the month of November um included in there is a payment for our bond um our bond series 2013 for 6, 975,000 um next on the agenda we will discuss the tentative Levy for 2024 and then also um the Illinois State Board of Education um back in February um requested documents to kind of um do an audit on Northern canes financials for fy22 and fi23 um there are a couple accounts that were just miss coded like a 2210 should have been a 2110 whatever um but in total all the dollar amounts tied out so there were no findings the the only the only finding that we had was um just moving forward how we're going to prevent this so we put a report in place we're running reports from the accounting department now to give to Doc um Terry stro to file those claims so that way what he's claiming matches our expenditure reports monthly and isb's accepted that correction action any questions right maybe Fulk yes Hil yes Nolan yes papus yes fuli yes aief yes Gorman yes motion is carried any Motion in second to discuss and approve the tenative tax levy so move second sorry um attached in the board book is this um PowerPoint um is for the 2024 tenative Levy the presentation in the board memo and the resolution are also included in your board packet um tonight you'll be asked to adopt the tenative tax levy resolution resolution for the next school year um in December next month at our regular board meeting a truth and Taxation public hearing will be held prior to the regular board meeting on December 16th and then that's when you'll be asked to approve the final December Levy as it as in in the past it is necessary for us to request a little bit higher than we anticipate getting um because the new construction amount that we um the new construction estimates that are out there um and that will ensure that we get full access to the the dollars that are generated for the new construction eav um the law provides that a district cannot receive more than what's entitled um to us and we cannot receive more than what's requested in each fund so you have to put a little bit more in each fund to be able to um receive all the dollars that you are ow so this slide just shows the levy timeline um it starts When the Levy is due at actually at the bottom it starts um the levies are due December 31st and then you can kind of see work your ways up for the day count um because we are having a public hearing the publication timeline that we'll put it in the newspaper is um between December 2nd and December 9th um we're going to put it on December 4th so on Wednesday December 4th was when we will be posting that notice into the newspaper um tenative Levy estimates need to be presented at least 20 days prior to the adoption of the final Levy and then the truth and Taxation notice which I just said was 14 days but not less than seven days so that's why this timeline was created just to keep us on uncheck so this slide shows eav history um I usually start with this just so you can kind of see the trends of the levy year the the eav which is our equalized assess value um new construction and our total tax rates so you can see that um back in 2019 and even back even in 2016 our rate of eav increases higher than the CPI and the percent of increase in our debt service payments which results in our tax rate to keep declining this holds true as long as our percentage of our eav is high enough to cover the bond payments um we do have a slight increase in our bond payments this year um but because of the eav percent growth is higher than that we're still seeing a decrease so in my 2024 Levy estimated I'm estimating eav to be 1 bill1 15, 300,000 and the new construction is going to be estimated at 23 million and then the total tax rate which we currently at 6.31 it will decrease 43 46 cents to 5.85 this is just a representation of those numbers on the prior slide in just a graphic form to show you kind of how eav when it goes up the tax rates go down in the fall the tax K County tax extension um publishes this P this out for anyone to see online it's called the assessor estimated eav report and they do it for every single Township every single School everything in K County um this is Central 301's page um they usually do this in September and I always call the tax extension um director John Emerson to get a more current one right before I do this just to see how much has changed and every time it does change so this one is through November 12th um it's the most recent that we could get and here's where you can see in the middle in that bottom where it says rate setting eav that's 1.1 million 1.15 million and then over to the right is the new construction the new construction shows you the 19 million eight something that's too tiny 923 um so those two numbers are what we put into the tax calculator formula to calculate it all out um and then based on the history of the eav always going down from this this projection and my new construction always increasing that's where I added the 3 million to the new construction and brought the rate setting eav down here we see the September numbers from that same report so you see them from the last prior years um you have this the September new construction September eav columns are what comes from that report the final new construction have been updated to what it finally where it lands in March when we get our total ending numbers um and so you can see in 2024 that was at 19 m923 and we're projecting new construction ction to go up um another 3 million so that's where I got the 23 million and then the September eav is the 1.11 billion 154 million um and I'm decreasing it down about three million for that so this is just a slide that shows you the four main variables that that are put into the tax levy calculation um so you have your known which are your actual variables your 23 extension base at 54,9 51,54 that that we know and then we also know that CPI is at 3.4% this year the projected variables are those two that I had talked about on the previous slides and then those two amounts get put into another formula um that kind of projects out the the costs this slide I I include every year um because this is why I think central and even we we unique um is that we lack commercial eav um if we had a lot more commercial in industry in our in our boundaries um we wouldn't be so heavily reliant on property tax um and on the on the residents but because of this you can see Central is always at the bottom we only have 41 million um this was based off of last year's numbers so we had 41 million kin the next closest was at 70 million um and then the ones at the at the top the dundes um I think it was 618 million um between their two different counties and St Charles 472 million so it just goes to show why we're so heavily reliant on on our taxpayers um and why some of the surrounding schools can maybe have a little bit lower tax rate sorry um this is our tax levy page this is a slightly different than the ones I've used in the past this one is um PMA Finance Company put this out for a lot of people um to use um so this year I did use it and it has a lot of really exciting formulas in there if you're an Excel person like me um but all the same information's in there um a lot of the information feeds from tab to tab so this slide it basically shows you um in the upper right the assumptions that we had so you have your CPI at 3.4% your actual eav for 20 2023 at your 1 bon6 million um and then it has those estimated numbers that I had put in there for the 23 million for new construction and then your estimated eav at your 1 billion 150 million um so all of those will calculate out and then the green boxes is where you can play with Levy amounts by fund so you can make sure that you are not going to be too low in any One Fund so even though I can ask for I mean a levy is what you ask for it's not what you are going to end up with um I know some schools they balloon Levy and just say I want 50 million in every one of those which is not realistic um I try to get it as close and accurate as I can um but in order to make sure that we don't leave any money on the table going forward um this is the page that will calculate all of those different scenarios and stuff for you so on the bottom right corner you can see that yes that um red little it says yes we're we are over um our truth and Taxation 5% there doesn't mean that we will get more than the 5% um the the amount that is asked for some houses their eav their house value may go up more than 10% it might go up 13% so they're they may pay more in taxes than somebody whose eav may go down so it all depends on their home value and then their um in aggregate we from all of the commercial all of the taxpayer we're expected to get about 6% so some may have 3% some may have 8% it all is it depends on each person's situation so because that box is red and it says yes we're over the 5% we will have a trth and Taxation hearing um next month so the recommended 2024 Levy um we're requesting 58 m480 58,4 180,000 which is a 6.42% increase and the truth and Taxation hearing um we expect to only get 57 m97 because we're going to be kept at our amount that we're allowed to get so we're going to get an increase of about $3 million um and to to kind of put that in perspective if you if your salaries and benefits for the whole District are about 53 million and they have a 4.2 4.6% raise um that's about two two $2.4 million in just the raises that will eat up this 3 million so you're left with about 500,000 for capital projects and curriculum and everything else that we need to do to run the district so if you think of it in that perspective there's really not that's not a big ask over our total budget um our bond and interest Levy has gone up it went up $400,000 so our total Bond payment is going to be $9.4 million um which was a 4.57% increase and then um total all funds increase with the bond and the levy or the bond and the operating funds is $3.4 million our anticipated tax rates are um as I said earlier is probably going to go down 43 to 46 cents um I think that's a typle it says 43 cents but I think it is 46 cents um so our operating rate is going to be $54 our bond in interest is going to be8 one and then our total tax rate would be 5.85 and that's only if our my projections come true this slide I created um to kind of just show how the levy receipts are distributed um this is normally we get 50% of our levies in the spring and then 50 50% in the fall sometimes it's 49 51 um it's been consistently about 50/50 um the last few years so I'm confident is going to be staying on that Trend um and just to show you that 2023 is Levy we received 50% of those funds in the 2024 budget that we adopted in September of 23 and then the other half of it came into this year's budget which we're getting right now 2024 Levy is also for this we receive it this budget year so you're in the 2025 budget but then you're going to get the other half in 2026 budget and this 2024 Levy is for all of FY 26's expenditures so so in summary this should allow us to receive all the money that we're we're allowed to to receive um without leaving any money on the table and then just we should get our final notices in the spring any questions I have a question Dana like uh the hearing that we're going to have at the before the the next regular board meeting is that going to be um uh like what what's going to happen there so it's just a it's a it's a board meeting that will present out um the same information pretty much um if there's any changes and then it's it's a more of a public hearing so if the public wanted to come and speak then they could make their comments okay so if they have questions based on what you presented today and whatever they uh research between now and then they'll be able to come and ask those questions it would just be public comments okay it would just be public comment okay if they have questions they could reach out to me before then okay and then um you make this comment that uh we want to get we don't want to leave any money on the table um that's is that because you you've done the budget and we need that money it's it's it's not that we're trying to take taxpayer dollars that we don't need correct okay and you you need to be able to like I like your your amount of money that you get you get a p of money say you have it's like a size of a penny is your pot of money is your normal eav your new construction numbers you don't know what those are going to be so I'm projecting that it's going to be the 23 million so in order to capture all of that that if you leave if you short yourself and you don't take all that money then the following year your penny would not be like if it through to the size of like the quarter you're going to leave some of that money so you're not getting your full new construction amount that you were trying to capture okay thank you what the increase that we're getting here I'm like looking at I guess it's not numbered but the different things that you listed here for educational you know the uh Social Security all these different amounts that you're listing so I'm seeing special education so is there potential that more dollars could be allocated since we are looking at an increase of this or is there C ways to I don't want to say move the money around but like you said we don't want to leave anything on the table so if we do have some accxes are we able to put more towards that or is this kind of in stone of what you're thinking so the special ed and the education fund go together okay um and the amount here is um your special ed fund is capped at 80 cents so it can't go higher than that it can't go higher so um I don't it doesn't show it on this slide but and a different one of my forms we were really close to that so I think I maxed out as much as I could ma out that's 7.93 yeah million okay but it doesn't mean that it's all that that that 7.9 million is the only amount that can be spent on sped because the Ed fund has all of the social workers and the syes and everybody in there um so all it's it's essentially one big pot yeah so then for some reason we didn't go like if we I don't know voted not to right increase it then obviously the dollars that you've allocated we'd have to decrease like some of the things that you maxed out we'd have to I guess so if that was maxed out I would just plug it in the Ed fund so I could use it for other stuff okay correct yep got questions Hil yes Nolan yes pepis yes fuli yes aif yes Fulk yes Gorman yes motion is carried next a motion second to discuss and approve the renewal of the contract with Larson and Darby second so lson Darby has been a contractor for us for well over two decades so over 20 years uh have a very good work relationship with not just Dan P our buildings Grounds Maintenance as well as Shel mcnut who we work with for our construction management company um this is a contract for the master agreement that we've been under for quite a while um so we've been working on trying to get this updated for several months it's been back and forth to try to get it completed um they obviously know the history of our district very extensive they work with Dan and his team um relevant to all of our community our facilities that we have very well acquainted with our district facilities and our needs um as well as our 10-year Health Life Safety plans that we work with one of the things that Dan has talked about you know bringing the board at some point in time time is a different architect for other elements that we might have for smaller projects somebody that's a smaller architectural firm um but we have found this partnership to be very invaluable in terms of he does know our buildings does know what's going on he's been the person that has constructed Country Trails additions PV hbt constructed prol Middle School addition U works very closely with Shel mcnet which is our construction management company that we have as well um so there's a recommendation that we would for with Dan can you come up for a sec I'll just I'll just be direct have we had any concerns about the ethical workings of this architect in any of our project no not at all and as a matter of fact the partnership has has grown to a point where when we did have some issues or questions about things within their firm or individuals they've work very closely with us on making sure those issues were remediated quickly and get to a point point where we're very comfortable with them the time period I've been here we've had a great relationship with them and with shales withn my recollection we this has been talked about a couple times that you know we've always come in under budget nothing has ever been concerned sh mcnut because they work directly with it that they're the ones that work in partnership with that specific finan Financial component as Dr manga mentioned we've talked a couple times about looking at a second architect which is not uncommon within districts for smaller projects and other things so we've talked about that option as well I have a question uh when is the last time we rfpd for this ask when have we marketed this for an architect that would have been like for for the the the role that uh lson and Darby play for us uh uh the school district when is the last time you know we rfpd for that like for that role that was previous to my tenure here when Larson and Darby um I believe the the previous architect was uh Gillian yeah yeah guilin and Gillian um I think that was the last time the district did you been with the district long uh going on 12 years so it's been 12 years since we marketed it roughly what we've done an RFP or anything correct I guess that was my question too like how do we know that we're getting you know I don't want to say the best bang or just you know I understand that we've been there for two decades but I don't necessarily know that that's reason to continue so I guess my question is how come we haven't marketed and looked at other firms just to make sure that we're getting all that need from them well we believe in looking and you can talk a little bit too um but talking to our legal team who actually works with us for our contracts right I did ask are we Fair within what's reasonable she said we definitely have a good rate from L and Derby within this contract believing that that relationship and I think now if you want to talk a little bit about that yeah it was roughly three years ago we had a conversation about looking at a second architect that was the first time that that kind of came up and we am not directly but we talked especially with shales mcnut about other OPP options other opportunities other vendors that were out there I've been doing this for 20 plus years I work with many architectural firms and I think the working relationship the district has with this particular firm is very good or I wouldn't have you know supported moving forward with them how much money do we spend per year on them it depends it would depend on their projects and what they on average capital projects like well not the capital projects are major construction projects like the high school we just spent lots of money last year the 20 pass condition but that's not you don't you don't do that every year yeah correct I don't know there's an average number okay yeah it fluctuates all over the place so um and I have another question um I looked at the contract and uh it uh doesn't have an hourly rate listed in the contract is that still under negotiation this we well we don't usually have the we we do it by Dollar of project which is pretty standard for Architects so but there's a there's a section in the contract though that um says uh if it's under a certain dollar value it's an hourly rate and it has an X in it because we had ranges if you look further in the country we have a range from zero up to a certain level it's a certain percent and another range it's another percent and that's what the contract's under um I'll just make this comment um it's not a question uh i' I've worked in government for 20 years and um you know like uh the the value of having uh somebody that we have experience with and that we have a relationship with uh that has done good work for us is uh definitely valuable but the flip side we don't know what we don't know unless you RFP things are they they may be the most have the best expertise at the lowest price that's that's that's definitely possible but after 20 years or at least after 12 years how do we know that there isn't somebody with equal expertise at a lower price or somebody with higher expertise at the same price right we don't know that unless you from time to time RFP things and in most agencies uh at the state you know you you can enter into a contract for two three four even five years but there's a limit and then you have to send it out for another RFP because you want to see what's going on in the marketplace so um if we have not done an RFP in over 10 years I that that concerns me and I'm I'm gonna try to find the section where I couldn't find the hourly rate uh if anybody else has questions please feel free and I then let you know when I find it well what would be the downside to doing an RFP now I don't think there's really any downside I mean just it's just the time to do it there's not really a downside I mean because I'm I'd be sure that Larsson and Derby would would resubmit yeah definitely oh for sure so I I I found it it's on um it's on page 24 of the contract and cost of work under 500,000 is hourly rate it say it literally says hourly rate but um and I may have missed it but I don't know what that hourly rate is it's not stipulated in the contract it's probably not because the cost of work would always be more than 500 is what I'm guessing I don't know sure but if if you do go forward with this you got to put an hourly rate in there you can't just say hourly rate when does the contract with them end it's long standing right now yeah it's just long standing so we could potentially Market this and see what else is out there and it's not going to necessarily derail or we did not have mate on the contract the reason we went forward with a new contract to try to get some stipulations okay current contract we have does not I personally think we should Market it just to make sure that I agree it makes sense concur yeah so you want just table a vote then yeah table and maybe see what a marketing would look like je yeah that's fine you know if you have the RFP from the last time so not from the last time we did an architect we could tweak it we just did the RFP for civil engineer and and MEP Engineering Services so we could tweak that RFP and use something very similar to that would sh that do it for you like would they go out and Market no because it would kind of be a conflict of interest for them to to have any say in who we yeah so it would solely be on our on our shoulders I would probably reach out to them for some local contractors or other options as I reach out to other districts kind of see who else everybody else is working with so okay I guess if this is a new contract it doesn't matter if we don't approve this tonight correct it's in existence it's in existence currently right this was just trying to re reop and try to get some timelines established well would you mind updating us next month with RFP and the timeline for that absolutely thanks yep so do you need a motion to table Yeah so moved than second well do we vote on the other one first or no we have a motion in second to vote on there we should vote and then or change the motion or change motion which is what they did to change the motion table it all right fine so to clear by the motion is a table to vote cor and we're going to that okay Nolan yes papis yes fuli yes aif yes Hulk yes Hil yes Gorman yes motion is carried ex a motion second to discuss and approve the 2025 School maintenance project Grant second good evening um the new school maintenance Grant is coming due to be submitted in December uh before we can move forward with that we need board approval to spend the $50,000 local funds because the grant calls it provides 50,000 with a 50,000 um dollar match we have used this grant in the past it was for those of would like a reminder we've put um generators on some of our school buildings pkms um PB um and so this year um we were looking at um some of the areas that we could um attack with these dollars and we thought enhancing some of the school uh security Fe teachers um specifically some of the Locking mechanisms in our classroom doors to make sure that they stay locked for student safety was something that um director paway had done some numbers on and so that is our plan right now that still has to be approved by is we just can't submit the grant until we have board's approval so I'd be happy to answer any questions that would be for all building all classrooms in the district yeah yes we would tackle that that time frame might not toed the $100,000 but the $50,000 Grant would help offset some of those cost yes years correct correct any other questions thanks welcome pepus yes FY yes aif yes Fulk yes Hil yes Nolan yes Gorman yes motion is carried a motion second to discuss and approve the cost country overnight trip the state competition in Pur Illinois that occurred November 8th and 9th 2024 moved so this is our standard operating procedure I would just more so give an update and see if you have any questions about it but Abby Burke was our sole Runner to go down to Poria um she placed 27th so she didn't place at the top she did achieve her personal record for the season which very impressive she shaved 2 minutes and 1 second off for beginning time this season didn't she almost have the school record too was she close to the school I thought I saw something online about that I'm not positive about that she might have approached it I know she was at like 20 minutes and she did 1759 down there so aesome and that's the end of The Fall season basically which Ted could not be here tonight sends his apologies but do a update as we kick off all of our winter stuff and we do have the Mark ewick uh basketball tournament starting tonight so we're excited to get everything kic going and kicked off great thanks Patrick thank you thank you ful yes a yes Fulk yes Hil yes Nolan yes pepis yes Gorman yes motion is carried move on to information items first up is our facilities update move oh yeah not doing moved on sorry trying to throw me off aren't you um so the first thing I wanted to to talk about is so we completed um our electric uh reverse auction um that you approved last month for us to go ahead with that and we came in you have a memo in your board packet we did come in um closer to the lower end of that range right at the low end of that range which is about uh little little over a cent higher than we paid in the past we did a one year just to give us the options and the flexibility to go back out again it's not a huge it's a lot more work for Nani energy it's we kind of just participate and kind of let them do their thing so we thought you know going out one year and then kind of seeing what things happen was the best idea so that's how that turned out the other piece that um we attached in there is Nan wanted to make sure that they know that's our energy advisor that they have a program um where they plant trees to offset our carbon emissions from our energy usage so right now our district they have planted in our name 81 new trees across the country so they uh Becky Thompson our rep wanted to make sure that we shared that that there is you know something that they do to give back so just thought that was kind of interesting Dana thought it was really [Laughter] interesting um so then moving on um so we're kind of wrapping up the uh high school edition um completing some of our last of our owner trainings um getting the closeout docks kind of getting that all wrapped up we did get first wave of furniture delivered um so we'll be working on getting that built the next wave um I believe Grady has coming in uh December so we'll get all that built and be right at occupy for that second semester um kind of moving forward some things have been working on with Dr mongan and Dana is kind of our plans for over the breaks projects we're going to continue with some of our flooring and some of our painting projects that we were doing over the summer continue those through the breaks the holiday breaks fall at an interesting times we have a lot of Staff utilizing some vacation time so we're going to be a little thin but we'll still have plenty of time to get some work done um we've also been working on updating our capital projects so kind of trying to plan for summer of 2025 um and then you know five years out we always try to have that um Dana is great about creating those spreadsheets getting us five years out so we kind of plot those projects out in in big scale kind of about five years so we're kind of working on this summer right now so we'll bring have some more to bring to the board the next month or so and then final thing is we've been working with uh Ted and the athletic department and and Dana and Dr mongan on updating our facility use documents we brought that up um last month um we'll probably be still working on that updating some of the fees updating our groups and kind of getting those documents updated so that'll just be an ongoing thing we'll be kind of just talking about every month and that'll be starting next year presumbly next yep yep our next fiscal year y any questions thank you thanks Dan all right curriculum director bookme is here to discuss the instructional coach good evening we have a few of our instructional coaches here that are going to walk us walk you through um some of the work that they do throughout the year they are a critical uh component of our curriculum team and providing that professional development throughout the course of the year so they're here to highlight some things um and I'll go ahead and introduce them come on up here guys there is a team of nine um we have here this evening yes oh no I join using so we have Kim paus we have Michael Doyle we have Leah Harold and Katie we are a team of nine or they are a team of nine there's four here that'll walk you through some of the things color coordin assing I can connect say connecting it connecting I this problem Play-Doh the other day let's go back and try it again do you want to email it to okay it's canva I have to invite you I know me neither you do Dana I'll s it to you Dan oh the whole thing the whole thing going on sorry guys sharing while doing that we're gonna move do you have a mouse Transportation update while they're working on that we'll go on because I'm gonna have to I'll have to like maneuver from your computer Kim do you want Pam let's have Pam's come up y don't we do that while we wait I'm gonna send it to you right now D good evening is it national school bus safety week was held October 21st through the 25th we good go ahead okay keep going um during this week uh the district was audited by the Illinois Department of Transportation the audit consisted of inspecting our entire bus fleet of 80 buses inside and out out and I am pleased to share that all of our buses passed with flying colors except one and uh this is really a tesate to our drivers uh for reporting their bus repairs as needed and to our Mechanics for providing quick res um repairs and quality preventative maintenance so we can keep our buses safe for the community also during national school bus safety week um daily bus safety informations was shared through the district's um media platforms with items such such as the 2024 national school bus safety week theme was driving safely into the future Central transp Central School District transports over 4,000 students each day across approximately 87 square miles and Beyond the importance of stopping for buses whenever we see right red lights flashing there were over 43.5 million School Bus passings during the year of 2223 identifying the danger zone as the 10 ft surrounding the sko bus and the dangers that distractive driving brings to the community that's it what was the minor repair I'm f um lug nuts we had a leak ex y that was it so the Eng I'm assuming we have good buses our buses are really good they take care of them so keep them safe for the community thanks for your work Pam thank you thank you I don't think the driver would know that did you guys get up do I need this or no is that the west or is that the North View east east there we go y are you staying there or coming here go ahead start uh thank you to Shane for the kind introduction uh thank you to the board and District administration for allowing us a few minutes to present here tonight and the members of our community for staying here long enough to listen to us uh my name is Michael Doyle this is Kim paus this is Katie normo this is Harold we're part of the instructional coach team here in the district um ah and click to the next one thank you uh so our roles as instructional coaches are these kind of main categories this is where we work most um new teacher induction program every new teacher comes into the district they're assigned one of us that they work with throughout the year as well as the new teacher induction days where they kind of learn their District systems and learn their way around the district uh we're also working in tandem with the district leadership on Institute days including January 6 which we'll talk a little bit about as we go here um we do some curriculum training when there are new curriculum materials we assist with that we also do ongoing opportunities for professional development over the last nine or 10 years we've done all kinds of professional development everything from coffee in the morning to lunch breaks to something called py and your PJs where we did py from our homes to people in their homes at a time that would work best for them we also offer instructional support in the classrooms for those teachers who want to work towards a goal that's another thing we do and then any kind of new systems that we have in the district we also help with some of those new systems particularly when those systems are something that the teachers are using on a regular basis and real quick this is kind of our philosophy on that professional development so obviously because we work mostly with teachers our philosophy is based in adult learning so we want to make sure the instruction that we give them is focused into a a specific point and a goal that the teachers can get to that we try to keep the learning very active so it's not so much just sitting there and getting it's maybe we present give them a chance to work with it and then go back and reflect on that um job embedded and modeling these are things that we'll do with teachers to work with them provide them a model of what something might look like in their classroom and working with them to help develop those kind of things uh coaching opportunities the can these can be as small as working on a specific lesson or something as big as working on a unit plan we're also involved with that is Teachers request um we also one of the most important things I think that we look for is feedback we want to go back and reflect and get feedback with that teacher to help them move forward as they desire to and then finally the last thing up here is sustain all of our programs we try to make sure that these are opportunities that go from semester to semester year to year maybe over a period of 10 years as we've done something one of the first things that we're really excited for this year is um called Adventure so in the beginning of the school year teachers were able to pick a base camp and it's all based off of research based books so there's three different base camps Peak Pros which does writing across the curriculum and then we use the writing Revolution book for that we also have Peak Performance movement in the classroom getting the students up and moving while learning and they used the book building thinking classrooms and then the third one was Peak strategies which did a lot withal multilingual and um instead and that was removing labels so again these are all tied to District goals and sit plans across the across the district one because we don't have the live links but go ahead so again how it applies specific targeted strategies used um and again teachers get to pick the base camp they create a goal and it's a lot of it's voluntary and the cool thing about it is that so many teachers are coming to us they're excited to use the strategies in their classroom and we've been able to go in there and watch them and then support them along the way and again we're going to do it over the year um some of the examples are spark boxes it's once a quarter again it's to your base camp the teachers base camps and again it's voluntary but we've had so many people sign up and it gets us into the classrooms to see the great things the teachers are doing um we have L newsletters so each month a newsletter goes out for that Peak and it has different strategies that they can use um coaching Cycles so three hour or one hour PD that teachers get to earn when they um when they finish a coaching cycle with one of us so it's a pre-conference planning observation and then the feedback reflection and then we're also working on Institute right right now so we're excited to roll that out in January 6 in addition to that we're also doing a program called Minds in motion and Minds in motion is based on the book uh building the thinking classrooms by Peter LOL so it's actually both we're doing two things with that we're doing the the peak um performance is one of the things that we're working on with that but we're also targeting math and um so it's targeted math instruction k12 and the premise is is that that student discourse about math pract they're going to the students are actually practicing talking about math and then doing the math with each other um when we pitched this idea with Shane and and Stephen and we were really kind of talking about it we um knew that it had to be a volunteer basis so we did a call for volunteer we did a road show we went to the each building and we were able to get approximately 50 teachers um across all seven buildings that are are working with this and I'll tell you more on the next slide here um and we shared the wrong presentation so there's no like links in there oh um but um we've got that collaborative planning with the um other teachers to increase the math practices as coaches um there's four of us assigned to the um minds and motion program and we meet with them on a regular basis um the first quarter we met with them as individuals or their teams um the second quarter they are required to actually have us in during a lesson um and so we're obviously working on that now through January um so that is um the regularly scheduled um grade level meetings um and we work with them on modeling lessons and we co- plan and co- te with them um again like Michael was saying the feedback is always non-evaluative for observations with reflective conferences and it's sustained um if you don't know anything about building the thinking classrooms I wanted to tell you a little bit about that it's centered around thinking tasks and So within the first five minutes of the class the the teachers give the students a thinking task um it started off with some non-curricular tasks at the beginning of the year but now we've moved into curricular tasks an example of a curricular task would be like for maybe a fifth grade would be how many ways are there to make a dollar out of quarters nickel and dimes and so they're talking about different ways of adding things um so the kids get to work on that um they work in visibly random groups so every class period every time they get up to the board to work on their um which are the vnps is the um vertical non-permanent work surfaces um always acronyms in education um so those visibly random groups they're always grouped with somebody different um I will tell you that this has been very um it's it's been great in fact meeting with the high school teachers about a month ago we heard that the the kids in the high school were getting up in class and shaking each other's hand and saying hi I'm Kim because they don't know everybody in the class and so they're they're really introducing themselves and um working with everybody it's it's been really great so those visibly randing groups have been phenomenal with our for our teachers and for our students those soft skills as as long as as well as the math skills the vertical non surface just is a fancy way of saying they have to stand um we know that look at us right now we're standing in front of you we're the ones giving you the information the students realize that they do school really well um they know what they're looking for so giving them the marker giving them the stand and having them explain to each other and to the class um is what we consolidate at the end so um it works well with all of our multilingual Learners our special ed students our regular ed students and and our teachers we've had nothing but really positive feedback um we even had kindergarten um students um last week um self-checking so they um we were were we were able to provide them with ways to selfcheck in kindergarten with their math so it's it's been a really great program Kim's being really nice here she's under selling this when you see second grade kids peeking in the classroom door and they back from PE class wanting to know if the boards are up so that they can do math they want to do it they're excited to do it that's amazing and that all that credit goes to Kim and Rachel who designed this whole program from the starts I think the self-checking is kind of awesome honestly you should see the video is super duper cute when I was that age I was just eating R crackers I wasn't self check I think that's amazing personally but yeah I mean they were able to they we had them on you know they were able to take their card fill it out and then um bring up the card flip it over and then self check to see if they got it right yeah um and like I said that that's our kindergarten kids so awes and we're second quarter so I can't imagine what we're going to look like by fourth quarter they're they're doing great yeah so teacher induction not is it still me okay still me oh we were gonna start one to um that's right um so our new teacher induction program we have our new teachers um for two full days at the be in August um and we help create the handbook for them with that um that includes um with our monthly meetings which somebody's going to get to here in a few minutes and um this year we tried something new and we had a mentor training so a lot of times we heard the feedback that we've heard from being reflective is the mentors weren't really sure what their role was and um so we had about a three-hour Mentor training with our mentors this year and we we heard feedback that that went really great with them as well one of the other things we do is we found out early on when we started doing this program was that you cannot have new teachers come in and sit there for two days straight so we used to go through a is it like 60 slides PowerPoint presentation on on Gmail and then we do Google Calendar and then we and next thing you know three hours later people hated that so we did is we created this thing called Adventure awaits kind of like The Amazing Race So they work with their their mentor and they go around to seven different stations we have a couple of roadblocks thrown in and they have to go through the necessary District systems with their mentor and figure out how to do certain tasks and that trains them on those District systems in real time and in real task super successful they love it we do after school month six times a year um to kind of get creative with some of our time as well we take out boxes for November December so they work asynchronously they work with their Mentor with some of the strategies we shared with them and then they observe mentors and teachers observe each other doing one of the strategies it can be the same it can be different and then they with the coach to kind of De and um so we delivered their takeoff boxes start November um Cup theme art group loves a theme we really run with it and so they got a few goodies as well and then when they complete their task they can with us and get our and then for monthly we meet once a month with Mentor prot um just as a way to reconnect kind of catch up with like catch it check in with them and then we also do a theme we feed them they love that um and then like we go over data how we use data to um help instruct our students so just there's usually one type of them and then something to go on so when it comes to new teacher training we've talked about these same common themes with each type of programming we do so you'll see some common terms up here it's instruction focused Active Learning job embeded modeling feedback sustain so these programs are things that are that we think are well thought out we try to keep things the same with every program we do so that the backbone is nice and strong for all the things we hang out with the most important thing here is the feedback making sure we have those conversations and reflect back and then finally sustaining a program there's nothing worse than doing a program for three months and then never going back to it so we try to make sure that we finish a program when we started and that we build the next year and build the next year towards the goals that our teachers need assistance with and um this one we are continually fine-tuning and being reflective in our practices um and that is that piece of we sometimes we're not sure what will work unless we try it um so we our team like I said the the nine of us are extremely Innovative we run with themes and we go for it and we we try different things and we we keep tweaking it until it works um the takeout boxes um and our our spark box that we've had um kind of EV and flow um we're trying them again this year and it has been um a great success where last year they kind of you know tapered off a little bit towards the end of the year um we like to always remember that we need to listen more than we talk and and get that feedback from the staff as to what they need from us as well you wouldn't necessarily know that by this presentation but we do like to listen right and uh so thank Youk thank you anyone have any questions like to ask no but I want to thank you Bill and especially everyone doing building thinking classrooms it's amazing and Peter Lyell is amazing and I will never say his name right but it's the best thing that has ever happened to math so just plug in that a little bit you guys are awesome it's been it's it is it's just been great I can't even tell you how great it's been and it just touched K2 so great right cuz seeing like kindergarteners all the way up to seniors who like probably never spoke to each other for 10 years all of a sudden like knowing that they're in a safe space to talk to each other it's amazing so cool it's been wonderful thank you move on to teacher attention so as Dave mentioned last last month we actually had a Community member also ask us to clarify what the definition is so obviously I wanted to bring forward what the definition is there was a sh a shift at the state level so pre 2023 uh which wasn't that long ago it was teacher renion rate as we talked about at the district level as a ton full teachers in the same school in the past three years it was a threeyear trends of school to school if they move from one school to the other which we are a very mobile District it definitely impacted our retention rates post 2023 so 2023 forward is when they shifted it so the rule change came through December 22nd December 29th 2023 where we actually saw the marker and the way they calculated the actual retention uh to still keep the school rate the school rate is still consistent on the school report card school by School uh but they've also moved to a teacher retention rate the district level where they're actually looking at from District loss year to year and it's a threee again it's a threeyear um average percentage for those three years so it's total number of full-time teachers staying in the same district in the past three years divided by a total number of full-time teachers from the past three years um the mathematics problem that I gave you here was not about us having retirement or any other District it was just a sample of who could be leaving we have lots of reason why teachers leave we just use we used retirement because it was an easy one to use but we used a 100 teachers because it's easy to understand the math behind that we are a growing District part of the challenge of a growing district is that obviously the denominator gets higher the more the more kids you have the more teachers you have so your denominator increases districts that lose it their number goes down so mathematically when you divide by a larger number Pi is a little bit smaller where it's a smaller number and so we showed you there is a difference about a 4% difference if you just had a 100 teachers um and you had four teachers that chose to retire or leave whatever you they chose the distribut left with 96 teachers out of that 100 teachers if the Staffing numbers did not need to increase and District remained with at 100 teachers the retention rate would have been 96 out of 100 or roughly 96% however if the district increases their need by four additional teachers because of growth so we have to add four additional teachers the total number of teachers that we would need is 104 teachers not a 100 teachers thereby a retention rate of 92.3% because 96 teachers divided by the 104 we now need is 92.3 so almost a 4% distance due to growth so our retention rate has been exactly the same since pretty close to exactly the same since 2014 so retention rates for the State Board of Education began being kept in 2014 and then every year thereafter somewhere we sit somewhere between the mid 80s to the high 80s and it ranges within there um so a 4% difference can make a difference there in terms of just the growth not people that leave the district as well um and so when you look at our compared to St Charles bavia Geneva they've been losing enrollment keeping teachers and even adding some teachers but overall retention does matter in terms of how you do mathematics and how it affects or impacts the overall retention rate not saying that we can always do better nobody's arguing that you can't always do better but it's important to understand the calculations that are utilized for retention rate at the State Board um so any questions regarding that I think are we going to say something no go ahead okay because I know you're the mathematician I guess for me and I'm just going to kind of dumm it down I guess my biggest issue is if we we take retirees out of it we just look at who do we have you know in buildings right now and who's leaving and what that looks like and are we losing more teachers compared to other districts you know I guess that's what I'm looking at fundamentally are we losing more than another district is if we take out retirement if we take out the shift between buildings but literally just who's leaving our district that's not an easy answer because we have it's multifaceted first of all we we hire teachers every year and do we have teachers that leave us we don't keep teachers that aren't of quality we do have teachers that we release this is the retirement was not about retirees this was really about an example St Charles matavia Geneva kanin when you look at them they're all losing dramatic enrollment so even if they lost teachers probably would imp pack their their atten R somewhat but they also have a much smaller denominator when you look at um just their total enrollment and what they do in some districts bavia has pretty much stayed pretty even to us where St Charles Geneva and Cana have kept their teachers and increase in that do I I don't I don't know I don't look at their retention I don't look at their numbers it's not a true comparison I don't know how you compare I don't know if that data will be available though either right no I have no idea I have no idea what their retention I mean I can see the retention rate but I don't know all the ins and outs of that I just know that not a growing District we are which has an impact I also know the difference between central St Charles Pavia Geneva is they have communities that teachers belong to we don't we have Virgil and udina and Burlington and parts of Elgen we don't really have a true Community for teachers which I'm sure plays a role I haven't done the research I don't have not looked at research that supports that there's a multitude of reasons um we have teachers that decide to stay home teachers just like any other District I mean I can't answer that question with a sort of I just know this is been since 2014 since we've kept the data we're pretty consistent this isn't a new trend this is kind of where we've been why I I'd have to go back and I I guess it's a research study I don't really know I think it's important the most interesting thing to me is that it's on top of each other we've not seen you know a 10% difference four years ago with the pandemic or something two years ago or eight years ago that was super low I mean so I think the consistency is an important factor just with if it's in that few per I mean you know I think that's extremely important to recognize I think that even the concerns about retention I to your point like of course we can try to do better and I think the idea of exploring like you're doing right now right going to schools and trying to understand what workloads look like and and you know I can appreciate Dave and car and other people with emails great like but we have to have some data to support that right so I think it's extremely important that this board the seven of us uh with what you and Sarah and another I forget who else is doing CHR there you go so some of the the meetings to try to meet with these the our staff members especially the ell special ed as we talked about um they know that's something we're going to be talking about next month I believe right so I think it's important to highlight that you know we're not oblivious to this this is something that I think it's important that we have information and data to support because the same I want the same data if all of a sudden somebody says well we need three less teachers well okay well we're not going to just say okay we're going to say what what data supports that so I think to I will speak for myself I want to know understand what the case loads are like what are the minutes like and yes to you know we can feel overwhelmed and I want to make sure that there's data that supports that and if that is the case I'm confident that this board will support the recommendations I personally believe that we would do that yeah based on what our conversations have been otherwise like like the data for me is it's kind of a mixed bag because I'm not seeing like I feel like if we have different things thrown in there like retirees and people I'm not talking about retention well yeah but I'm talking about the needs in the classroom right and if we're talking about the needs in the classroom people feeling overwhelmed and then a a lower retention rate because of that I think that that is you know Dr mongan and the support staff are are our leaders on that department are the ones that are taking the lead and trying to get the information necessary um to help us this seven of us right to understand what the next steps are and what the recommendations will be I think it's important to recognize that that you know um you know to understand the passion of our CA leaders and I absolutely appreciate everything that you guys do I hope you know that right like I think that's fantastic but we also want to make sure that there is a measured approach to how we go about doing this um and so sometimes data collection sucks and it takes time but I think I I want to understand how we're coming at that so there is consistency yeah right so you you know we we all know we got negotiations coming up that's something that surely is going to be talked about right that's fine that's that's great and what can we do now what needs to be done now what needs to be considered moving into subsequent school years I think with hope that we're all in agreement to some extent that that's what we want to do want to meet the needs but we have to understand what the needs are before we can do that that's the variable for me so it seems like the retention calculation kind of got better in 2023 it's not looking at the specific School true so I would anticipate it slightly increasing who knows we see I know well that was always an explanation right was that they were switching schools so I would think it' be better I think some of the stuff you touched on Eric for me is what are we doing to raise that retention rate too um how much can we keep teachers here it's really kind of cool when siblings get the same teacher or you know you I've actually at prayer review there is a teacher there who had his teacher is actually still there too and that's really kind of cool to have that and you know passing down from generation to generation oh I had that teacher too I know that one the really good one like and keeping good teachers and so ask for me what are we doing to make sure that we are kind of retaining those quality teachers and raising that retention rate I agree agre agree yeah and I I don't want to hear what other districts do because because I I want to be a leader you know what I mean let's let's find our own solutions that make teachers want to be here or not it I don't really care what other districts do and stay yeah so what are we doing uh to to that end right now what are the things that we're doing right now towards working towards that like what uh Moran and Jennifer said well we we try to do culture climate I do a listening tour to do a listening tour now for two years to go and hear what's going out in the field I give you guys Recaps on the listening tour so you're well aware of what we're hearing we're definitely doing a listening tour in terms of special education and other related Service Groups to find out what's happening out there so we get true action what's going on out in the field um obviously our principles work very diligently for culture and climate within their own buildings working consistently to try to improve those cultures this isn't you know one person's responsibility it's a two-way street I've talked to Dave and kir about they have responsibility as we do in trying to promote a positive culture within the district this isn't one way where it's just Administration or just one group it has to be both parties working together to have a very positive relationship and having those conversations um and so those conversations have occurred between myself and CA um I see for the most part I hear very positive things is what I'm hearing I think our Administration feels that they're they're hearing very positive things they work very hard out in the field and so trying to build systems inside buildings to make those connections for staff but I do think the reality is we have to recognize that we are a district as hard as it is to say that we don't have a community the community is Central High School so how do we make everybody feel like they're part of being a rocket or part of being a coyote or part of being a you know Falcon so they make those connections is important um but I think you know Pam does a great job with her bus drivers I mean I think everybody tries to look at those things um promot it um and as a follow-up question um so you know you talked about if the feedback that you get when you do these outreaches is really positive but then we still have this like significant attrition rate um or or like you know like a low retention rate so when administrators like the principls or you you know go out and talk to you're talking to teachers right yeah I mean I'm talking to any staff all all staff yeah all staff um maybe they don't want to give candid feedback so maybe there's a way for us not cea but for us I don't know if this is allowed um to you know create like uh methodologically sound like surveys to assess you know like what they think in a uh what's the word for it in a confidential way where where they they can speak frankly without their identities being shown but then when we get that data we can also see I mean if I get like really negative data or really positive data with a 10% response rate doesn't mean anything to me um you know if if I get data if I get anecdotes if I get a hundred anecdotes in a community of 800 people um doesn't mean anything to me like I need to see you know what the feedback is and I need need to see that it's somewhat representative so is there a way for us to do that we've done surveys before I mean we have a five essential surveys that we do those are building wide so sure you can always do surveys I think sometimes staff get tired of surveys there's a lot of surveys that happen in our district um but sure we can do that Ian I would want to look for an agency that has something that's evidencebased not just me writing that's why I said methodologically sound yes I mean I don't know what's out there i' have to totally do that absolutely we can always do that isn't enough when you've done them the other surgeries those um sorry surveys but homemade I've not we've not used one that's been yeah think it would be more sound to go Jay's route I agree with you say it again like something that's more method I can't even speak right now but something more where it isn't just homemade like a Google form it needs to be something that is going to collect correct data sound and anonymously yeah where you actually feel safe because I know if I don't trust that it's going to be anonymous a lot of times I won't fill it out I think the challenges data is great but what are we going to do with it if you don't know where it's coming from right I mean I think you have inherent challenges with getting a report that has 120 responses of words positive negative neutral critical highly supportive how do you aggregate that into actionable items right so in a meth like so so in a methodologically sound survey uh there there would have to be some demarcation of where that data sets are coming from the concern is below a 3.2 average what are you going to do with that what's what's the what do you do if something needs Improvement if something's going well if it's something going well we have other people saying well that can't be right because look at these five people that say it's horrible or vice versa these people say it's great and then there's something that comes back right the data cannot be The Driver what can't be the driver that kind of data because what are we going to do with it well the the the data by itself may not be like the singular Factor uh that helps us formulate solutions to improve retention rates but it can be a component right it's a start I would argue that's not a start it might be one piece of a puzzle there's no doubt about that yeah that's what I'm saying it's it's a piece all right so I guess you want to look for the first piece or a piece for a certain and then next one do you want to discuss anything with anyone all right that was pretty clear can move on to four fores uh we've had quite a few forers again uh Mr Carlton we received a request for the names titles positions email addresses date and of hire and building of office locations for all full-time employees uh we were able to comply with that request Miss Martinez we received a request for all meeting minutes phone notes and emails between Aron Mark and Dr M between April 1st 2023 and October 1st 2024 related the proposed service for current current or proposed high school we were able to comply with this request however there were no records regarding proposed services for the current or proposed High School Mrs carus we received a request from Material provided to the board of education at September 21st 22 board retreat we were able to comply with that request Miss car says we received a request from Board of Education Clos meeting minutes that have been approved to release between August 21st and June 24th we have to comply with that request Miss W received a request for invoice toar D from April through September 2023 and payments issued toar D between August and September 2023 we able to comply with that request and Miss Tesa we received a request for Master's agreement addendum on agreements Darby IM and er engineering proposed new high school and we were able to comply with this report or was that request any questions on the all right need a motion in second to adjourn Open Session and move to close session for the following exceptions 2c1 2c9 2 C10 and 2C 21 so move second a yes f yes P yes Nolan yes papis yes BBY yes Gman yes motion is carried take a five minute bre guys

e e e okay it's 6:30 Julie will you call the role please certainly Cara Caston here Ken Dawson here Chris Espinosa here cherelle Fuller here Jenny Hegstrom here Terry pavisic here Don Runner here and Jason Trio here thank you all right having a quum let's stand for the Pledge of Allegiance Al 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 [Applause] all all right Hank I'll turn the first item over item number three for recognition all right uh last Friday was school board members day in Illinois today is our first uh meeting after that so we get an opportunity to publicly recognize our board members uh a reminder for the community they are volunteer positions uh thank you all for all that you do to represent the students and staff and Community uh as you sit on the board here uh as a token of our apprec appreciation we gave you calories because we need spend them wisely uh but uh thank you all for all that you do thank you thank [Applause] you all right item number four um can I get a motion from the Board of Education to approve the minutes of the October 2st 2024 business meeting the October 21st 2024 closed meeting and the November 4th 2024 Workshop meeting so moved second Terry moves Ken seconds thank you very much Terry pavisic hi Ken Dawson hi CHR Espinosa I charl fuller Jenny hagstrom hi car Kon I and Don Runner I motion carries item number five Julie do we have any slips we do not sir all right thank you Hank I'll turn for item number six please yep we go got experience I'll hand the remote the clicker here over to Gina all right good evening good evening so one of our indicators and measures we're going to talk about tonight uh in doing so I have Jake Giblin who is our associate principal for in curriculum and instruction at South and Keith Pals who is North counterpart and we're going to share with you some data regarding Capstone experience so as I said um Capstone experience is part of our indicators and measures and that's about really having students engage in experiences sometimes courses sometimes individualized experiences that we could would consider as Capstone and really to provide them with an opportunity to hone in on areas that really interest them and This falls in the indicator that's um involving student engagement in post-secondary planning so why is it important for students to participate or engage in Capstone experiences and so obviously we believe that these experiences which are rigorous specialized experiences as I said oftentimes focused on a particular area that of their own interest um these experiences go in depth they provide skills and learning that align to whatever their passions may be and their own goals as a student by taking these experiences students have an opportunity not only to challenge themselves but really to see what it is like in that particular area in some cases it may affirm a student's desire to go into a particular area or study a particular area in other cases it may actually do the opposite which is also valuable for students um as they really try to determine what interests them and you may recall each year that we did report on Capstone experience um but with that I'm going to turn it over to Jake so previously when we had talked about Capstone experiences we focused on kind of three things um either AP or dual credit courses um maybe the highest level course in a pathway so even though it was not maybe AP or dual credit depending on the the the study uh just the highest level there and then anything that was honors or grade weighted and so when we use those criteria um the next slide will show you kind of the data we would typically produce this is the most recent version um and what you're going to see is for the district just the total number of enrollments um in a particular year throughout the district um and the percentage of students enrolled in Capstone courses in that particular year um so you'll see that we've got the unique students and the total enrollments but it is year byye um in terms of how we're tracking it with that keid will present what we're going to look at now so after uh reviewing our why and thinking about this um we've added two more criteria to the Capstone courses and that would be the career-based work experiences or the individual student experiences depending on all of the different things our students do um so for the work-based experiences it may be an internship it may be something that they do at tcd at the technical center of the page and for the leadership uh leadership experience it would be my individual student experience example so we have some snowall snowball uh leaders over the weekend that might fall into that category we had some students go over to Europe this summer for an International Leadership uh group um so those would fall um in those two categories so we're also going to change a beep the way we're the way we're looking at the data um there as well so where is the data that Jake shared um was focused on the entire school year and that took into account all students in all grades taking these courses we're now going to be looking directly at cohort data by graduation year so doing so is going to help us align the information with the goal so that we can identify students we may want to support because again the goal is all students will engage in a Capstone experience um or be supported doing so so we want to make sure we can identify all those individual students uh right now just for um everybody this is Baseline data as we start to look into and dive into this goal so in summary we've expanded what we consider a Capstone experience which is the new criteria and the new methodology is doing it by class or you know the class of 2025 so they may have taken a Capstone sophomore year or junior year or senior at some point in the four years that they are with us okay so this is our Baseline data as we move forward certainly class of 2025 is an estimate based on what we know right now so you have like a thousand students unique students am I reading that right so how does that translate to 95% of total graduates so 1,58 is 94% of our graduating class potential graduating class this year that's our estimate obviously so we usually have in our senior class okay oh both school okay both schools yeah both schol so so it'll be over 1100 I don't I'd have to pull up the exact number I see sorry I wasn't thinking I know that's all right bad math any other what um so a student who traveled abroad this summer to Europe what would that be a Capstone of like what international studies is it history is it so that's uh I think a little bit of both because it was also an opportunity to build some leadership knowledge as well and to um experience that with others from around from but leadership in and of itself is not really a course right that's no that's correct some of this is based on the idea that we're trying to look for um classes or uh things that students can participate in that would prepare them for um either College obviously with AP courses and type of courses they take but also for um leadership experiences that would translate to job and career Readiness as well and so some of that was when we were trying to think through what are some experiences that could um give someone uh maybe not direct uh in a particular field but General experience that would translate into the workforce that's where some of those came in in our discussions but you're right it is not like a specific um line of coursework it is about the experience itself and at this time again it says estimate for a reason right those are not factored in that 94% is based on coursework right now and you felt that the old methodology just wasn't capturing the full amount experiences it wasn't capturing all of the experiences and especially after we receive feedback from our district leadership team which is composed primarily of our department chairs and getting feedback from them on what courses they believe really apply also in the old methodology it was two go back real quick so they had to meet two of the following so it had to be an AP or dual credit course it had to be the highest level in a pathway it had to be an honors level or grade weighted in some cases uh we have AP or dual credit courses that are not um well dual credit courses that are not honors weighted and certainly in some cases that are not part of a pathway so by definition to look at courses it also changes only one of the following so even though we added the career-based work experience which is factored in there for the most part although there may be some that we don't know about yet individual experiences so we have an internship class those students we know are engaging in an internship right they're doing it through school there may be and there often times are experiences that students have that they've arranged outside of school even internships paid internships primarily that we don't usually get that knowledge directly from the student unless we're asking those questions when they're like meeting with their counselors or filling out surveys so also it wasn't just adding the courses it was changing it from two of the criteria to one of the criteria and I think doing it by class makes sense did the student engage in a Capstone experience as opposed to the percent of students that engaged in a given one academic school year um how do we assess success here because by changing this criteria it looks like we're knocking it out of the park um should we be expanding this to the number of kids who are doing two or more Capstone arrangements or is this are we happy with this and this is this is commensurate with what's happening in our district and we should all be padding ourselves on the back I mean certainly it wouldn't be bad for students to engage in more than one Capstone course especially when you consider some courses fit together okay so for example we have financial accounting and we have managerial accounting Stu either one of them is a Capstone managerial is at the honors level financial accounting is a dual credit course so they both meet the criteria would a student who especially is considering going to school to learn accounting that probably would be great to take both so certainly there are going to be money to fit that criteria um especially as as some of the students work pth um in the pathways for the diploma endorsement they have to take multiple courses in order to even get that endorsement so that also factors into here too and in some cases too we have for example AP microeconomics and AP macroeconomics under this new criteria taking one would qualify but many students take both we even have personal economics which is not a Capstone but it isn't because it's not the highest level in that pathway so those are just a few examples okay to well I'm just saying like you know I don't think we're ever going to get to 100% that's probably an unattainable goal we can support students we can explain what the rationale is for engaging in Capstone experiences and we can offer students that so that's part is the supporting part but whether or not 100% of students are actually going to engage that's a different okay that's clearly so all we can do is look at where we're at today and where we were in 2023 and use this new methodology going forward and that'll be our Baseline for comparing how we're doing in the future years and encourage and we're certainly getting information out to students so for example in our academic planning guide which we publish every year um which is accessible to families we put down for each Capstone course if they were Capstone so you know it will say for example you know AP C ulous Capstone course so that families are aware of it and students um just food for thought um you know if next year it's 96% 95% that just tells me that we're doing a really good job with getting students to take at least one of these Capstone courses um I guess I would be interested to know how many students are you know doing multiple and is that percentage staying static or are we getting more kids to do multiple Capstone courses that might be an interesting data point sure just to and there may be some more fluctuation there potentially absolutely uh just curious um on the um Capstone enrollment by year under the old methodology there was a spike in 2021 any reason why that occurred in 2021 then we kind of regressed in 22 and 23 and then we're back kind of to where we were in 2021 just curious yeah I don't know of any particular reason I can't think of a particular course that escalated substantially or set of we certainly have increased our dual credit over the years so uh if we were to go back about 5 years we were at about I want to say 350 maybe 370 students and we're well over 500 so some of that could could pair up with the Dual credit cuz we have definitely I didn't know if it was maybe an expansion of Capstone courses maybe that year okay the the old criteria was pretty much the old criteria for a very long time um that's not to say we didn't add some courses along the way certainly we did but I can't think of any one particular course that would impact 21 okay I mean you're in the beginning of Co there right so you had a year where there was a semester with no failures yep and no failing assignments because we went virtual in 2020 but and we but we were already pass course enrollments and everything at that well that that's yeah just a group different group of students yeah I mean that's that's also the disadvantage of the old uh methodology it's a different group every year and we're just looking at that year in school MH as opposed to look looking at the class of and what they're doing over the four years okay are there any additional requirements now that these career-based work experiences and individual student experiences are now Capstone like do you do an independent project do you I don't know like to be now in this Capstone category is there something that comes along with that so we'll look at each individually each experien individually I don't anticipate having hundreds of them by you know or impacting you know that many student students um but we'll look at each on an individual basis to determine whether or not it pairs up with what students would be getting out of some of those courses okay any other questions thanks thank you thank you both thank you thank you thanks the next one too it's all me oh sorry I'm so used to you having the clicker no you have the clicker all right so last week we or last time we met we talked about school report card and we looked at two areas we looked at our Summit of designation and we looked at graduation rates and one of the reasons we looked at graduation rates is because that is 50% of our rating so tonight we're going to look at two other areas not quite 50 % but important areas that make up some of the academic measures of the school port card and we're specifically going to look at 9th grade on track and our SAT data we'll also look tonight at our data relative to growth from PSAT to SAT but PSAT data is not on our school report card so we're going to look at some school report card things but we're also going to look at some growth between the assessments so these are the two areas we're looking at uh for ninth grade on track that is 8.33% of our rating and that's an area I've reported out to the board pretty much annually for a very long time it's an area that is really a focus area for us because we know that it's very very important that students get a great start and it directly impacts your graduation rate look at students that are not on track after 9th grade there's definitely a correlation sure many of them get back on track but we want students to get off to a great start and so that's an area we focused on for a while and then as I said we'll look at sat sat between the ELA and the math composes 15% of our rating so tonight we're looking at just under a quarter of our rating so nth grade on track in order for a nth grader to be considered on track they must earn a minimum of five credits that does not count summer school so during the school year they have to earn five credits and they cannot fail more than one of what we would consider core classes so that would be English Math Science Social Studies and if the student has a reading class not all of our students have a reading class but we do have some students and that does also count this is a criteria that's set by the state so as we look at at how our students are doing in terms of ninth grade on track you can see um that in so last year so 2024 the 23 24 school year our rate was 96.3% so 96.3% of our freshmen were considered by the state on track compared to 88.2% which is the average of the state um which means that we're a little bit higher than the previous year different group of students of course um but we are also and this is where I think it's more important we're about we're 1% higher than our average of The Last 5 Years obviously 2020 was The Big Year where there was limited failures um and so that impacted our rating even if you were to go to for example 2018 and 19 um we hovered just under 95% we were at 94.6 on 2019 and in 2018 we were 95.1 so we're higher if you were to exclude 2020 but I wanted to keep it there because the state actually did provide that data on the report card that year unlike sat which I'll talk about in just a minute so for nth grade on track we are higher than our average and0 2 higher than the previous year so now we'll look at SAT scores we're going to look first at meets and exceeds and that is what the state looks at the state does not look necessarily look at average scores they look on at whether or not the student met exceeded standards and as we've explained in the past Illinois uses higher bar than the college board so you can see that our scores this is in the evidence-based reading and writing which counts for the ELA um evidence-based reading and writing we are down a little bit 2.3% um the state also went down and we're slightly below the average again different class of students taking it every year but we're down a little bit from previous years and this is the where I was stating that I skipped a year still gave you five years but that's because of um not having those test scores so this is mostly what Juniors and seniors we're looking at here Juniors Juniors okay there could be some seniors that's true so if a the way it works is if a student doesn't test junior year for particular reason they depending on the reason that they didn't test they're required them to test senior year okay we usually have a really small number of seniors testing and that is because it is a graduation requirement so then they have to test senior year there are some reasons for absence junior year where they don't have to test senior year but it's limited so this slide here Compares um the Dage High School Districts these are the high school districts not unit districts um in the state or in the area I'm sorry in the county um one of the things that I appreciate about looking at it this way is we also look at the state and where dup page rates in terms of the state so the blue bar is District 99 as you can see um again evidence-based reading and writing this is for ELA you can see the county went down as well so we went from 45.7% in 23 to 43.4 the county went from 37.4 to 34.2 and then you can see how do you explain that like what's what what's the discussion amongst the professionals as to why we see a countywide and district and Statewide reduction there could be a lot of reasons again it's a different class every year we also went digital which they changed the test and we went digital the College Board would say that the scores are still accurate scores and representative of of what students are able to do um but there was a change in the test whether or not that accounts for it whether or not there's proximate cause I can't I can't say for sure um but that is one factor to consider is it interesting to you that the state average didn't drop that much while the DuPage while DuPage dropped a lot more than Statewide very interesting yeah any because if you were to argue explation it's a different group of kids yeah it's a different group of kids every year yeah but it's that's a big subset that you'll see cohort here in a second how many how many students or I mean how many schools is that to cage county is it like five so those are the districts so each district has a different number of schools of course so obviously we have two schools Lake Park is one although two campuses Fenton is one uh 94 is one 88 is two schools glenart is four schools Hinsdale is two schools and the state is obviously the state so um so this is again evidence-based reading and writing the dup page High School Districts as you can see they're colorcoded couple things to note um about this is that um you can see where we lie we're in kind of that bluish purple color um in terms of evidence you're writing and most years we have been second or fighting for second uh among the high school districts and 2024 is pretty comparable with what the other years were in terms of us neck and neck fighting for second place out of the high school districts D paage really dropped in 24 I mean they it's a different group of kids each year kids and slightly different test yeah I mean that's really different delivery of the test frightening yeah but remember not who knows what this year does it's a different this year is going to be the Act Right it so it's going to it's not we will not have any longitudinal data like apples and oranges right but one thing to point out again the the College Board would say your College and Career ready with a 480 on the evidence-based reading and writing section to meet you have to be at 530 for Illinois so that's 50 points higher which means you're already falling in that like upper third of all test takers Nationwide which are not all states that require that use the SAT as their accountability measure okay so not that that accounts for everything but when you consider it that way um but you're absolutely right we will we will lose our longitudinal data mhm which is really sad it'll take us a couple years to bounce back because they are doing you know act secure 9 our freshman will take then preac secure sophomores and then act Juniors so we will and all three grades will do it this year so in roughly three years we'll have we'll be back to longitudinal data and don't you think external factors too like the way the colleges are treating a lot of colleges yeah at first like we're not even looking at it now it's starting to come back and like it just I how is that sturing yeah everything goes in a c i feel like there are so many variables it's yeah and I think it e and flows a little bit with that too how many students in April of their junior year know exactly where they're going to go they might be going between three four schools at that point April or more for some and remember this isn't their best score this is the score on that one test day that's true right which is the state test day is the way to go which actually be a little bit different this year since she brought up act because they're testing Windows um a twoe windows so same idea for math um you can see that in 2024 44.5% of our students met um which is obviously down from the previous year state is not down as much as um as we are but they're down a little bit more than they actually were for the evidence-based reading and writing um and that average of 47.9% I mean that's really because of the one year that we peaked um yeah 19 yeah was a strong year or an easy test one of the two one of the two I'm going to say smart kid yeah absolutely um so this is again comparing but this is for math of course for the DuPage High School Districts um and you can see as I said we went down the high school districts also declined yeah and then the state went think some of it is don't you think some of it is students are are getting um back into the swing of test taking and all of that after after covid because perhaps with with Co they didn't have to worry about testing as much not as much yeah well and I think years years so the change in colleges is I mean that you look the first bar there is when the you know majority of colleges were requiring a standardized test as part of their admissions process all of the years following 21 through 24 are where that changed after covid I mean it it is got to be a huge jury though all of those cohorts drop as well it's not like we took a dip and nobody else did right the state took that same drop the county took the drop we took the drop that societally e either something's changing in the test or something's changing in how society's responding to the test that's not just our little group by itself own and then the same idea here for math in comparing it to the other high school districts we're in that kind of bluish purplish color um and as you can see um you know pretty much um for the most part second among the high school districts consistently yeah with a little bit of fighting for second place the one year 2019 is the time everyone does everyone take the test at the same time so the way the state used to do it there was a day where you had the this is your date um when it went digital and and moving forward even with act there's more windows where we have this year we have we get to select now it's a different test this year it's act as you know was pointed out but we get to select which days but it's still okay like a few weeks mhm a couple weeks so it's not a huge variable yeah all right so now so what I just showed you is all data you can get from the school report card you could look on the other District school report card and you could see that data what I'm shifting to now is not on the school report card so I just want to make that clear because um so much of the time I'm talking about school report card data so what we're going to talk about now is looking at how our students are doing their growth from test to test okay and in doing that we Purp Pur L are looking at the cohort of students who have been in District 99 for all three tests in other words as freshman they took PSAT 89 as sophomores they took psat1 and as Juniors they took sat so is it every single student not necessarily we're looking for those that have been our students for those three years okay so what this uh shows is the average score for the evidence-based reading and writing of those students for the class of 2025 so when they were freshmen took the test what was their average score so an evidence based reading and writing it was 4 79.4 The Benchmark the expectation to be moving towards College and Career Readiness is 410 so we were above by 69.4 Matt same idea 4774 the benchmark's higher that's higher for each of the tests by the way for math you'll see that and our students average 27.4 higher than the College Board Benchmark psat1 is taking sophomore year you notice that the scores increase our average score for evidencebased reading and writing was 500.

does anybody have any questions would you like to discuss any parts of the proposed Levy I think we kind of rehashed all of this out previously so it's not one of the most exciting well and this is like the first installment of the lovey talk as remember right yeah this is like the opening for a and eventually the county will tell us how much we get this is the the guess and check model that the state of Illinois uses yes go high go go high because eventually it'll come in at the correct number yeah we'll bring it back in December and then finally we'll bring it back in April for the final figures all right uh this one is for the board um prepared a couple of slides uh for the resolutions Constitutional Amendment that Ken will represent you at this week at the uh joint conference so every year we have uh the delegate assembly at the um joint conference and obviously it'll be this Saturday uh every district will have a representative and I'm honored to be our representative again which should be awesome and basically we adopt different position statements that reflect the issues which are most pertinent um in the Board of Education around the state as you can see you go to the next slide as you can see um there are six different resolutions which are being recommended to be adopted the first one dual language Prov Ides additional flexibility and allows alternative qualifications such as a seal of Biol Literacy for students to meet the World Language graduation requirement so if you're already fluent in two languages you may be able to opt out of having to take a course so make that easier the other one ebf authorized charter school funding is um uh funding based method where each school district is um basically analyze according to what their needs are so as it is currently the charter schools don't necess have not in the past necessarily been given an equitable portion of the funding and this will make it more equal so that their unique needs can be assessed and taken into the consideration tax Tiff accountability allows that the tax bodies most impacted by tiffs in the specific communities have a voice in approval of the tis you have anything to say about tis oh no I I think most it depends upon the municipality but many are supported uh because it's good for the local communities and economy and then um at the end the those properties that that increment comes back on as new construction and so we're able to capture those funds okay cool cool then fourth face law centralized Agency for EHR review which is the employment history review it streamlines the process and allows for accurate completion of the reviews and a centralized database uh so it's just improving the processes Health Care coverage provides a central Management Service will which will allow more health insurance options for employees while decreasing the cost for school district as we know across the state the resources that some school districts are less than others so this gives them uh more options to sure that all the employees have you know good options to get good coverage and then last polling p is uh if um right now like our high school was closed for the election day and we did have polling here but if your school is not affected by the election day polling and polling is not there and the students are ured to be safe we're it would be a lot o the school district to make the decision whether they honor that as an official designated state holiday or not so it'll be interesting um there also you you know quite a bit about the um election of the officials I didn't I thought you did I ASB yeah oh yeah yeah with those yeah yeah um so they'll have the election on the officials as well I guess yeah which they do every year so and then there there're always interesting um uh potential things that come up which are you know may be not advised to approve one of them which I bring to your attention is a cell phone usage and one of the um districts is recommended that there be a state mandated cell phone policy so the recommendation of of the committee is not to do that and allow that to be um you know customized to each district so so it should be an interesting time and that is about it you got anything else to add Hank it just be if any of the board members felt like uh Ken should go against the ISB resolutions Committee in so these are the ones that they're recommending that are adopted so giving Ken direction if you feel any differently than what the resolution committee recommends here and then the next group are the ones that the resolutions committee is recommending you do not adopt so the the default always is to go in and support the resolutions committee they've spent a lot of time looking into these and making these recommendations to you however on occasion local school boards feel differently than the resolutions committee does so if you feel any differently on these it would be your opportunity to kind of do a straw poll and direct Ken differently than what the resolutions committee is recommended so does the number two the charter school one take funding then away from there are a lot of charter schools in Illinois like no it's not taking funding away it's just making sure that they receive an equ equitable consideration for it yeah but don't you think that that is part of it is they're only giving a certain percentage to Charter Schools where are they going to get that money from money that they give to Public Schools I've got kind of a problem with that yeah I'm not a fan of that I mean I really do I I think public schools are sometimes are having a hard enough time meeting their their own uh needs and I'm not sure p uh charter schools are where we really need to put money Terry I I I would just have you read the the resolution I haven't I so because I'm not sure that that's a proper representation of the resolution oh okay all right well because there is a current funding formula for charter schools and what this is recommending that it would be done is it just go to the evidence-based funding model which is what everyone else is on um that their structure would mirror what our structure exactly so I don't I don't think it's necessarily pulling funds away from our other public school districts okay all right that's fine then I'm and then you have you have the packet that we received I think two board meetings which goes into it probably I just I'm sorry I didn't read it that's okay that's all right we all have busy lives and also remember this isn't any policy changes going to happen this is what your Professional Organization as the school board will work towards accomplishing like this is not state law this is just what is your organization interested in pursuing cool all right so that's the do adopt the Do Not adopt list good that's good uh and anything that the board has reviewed that you'd like Ken to go in opposition of what the resolutions committee has recommended no all right okay that's it for that so uh if you have other individual things you can always talk to can in advance of him going in Saturday morning and voting um Freedom of Information request as always we have received them we respond to them they are listed on our website and can be found just by searching fo you on our website all right consent agenda before the board votes on the consent agenda is there any agenda item a board member would like to pull out of the consent agenda for further discussion hearing none uh can I get a motion for the Board of Education to approve the consent agenda as presented which includes a Personnel report appointment certified leave of absence certified appointment ointment classified B Personnel report retirement certified resignation classified C October Financial Pages d student trip e resolution of statement of completion for health Life Safety Amendment amendment number nine and F acceptance of donation District 99 Education Foundation so moved so I go Chris moves and Ken seconds thank you Chris Espinosa hi Ken Dawson hi cherelle Fuller hi Jenny hagstrom hi Terry pavich hi Cara Caston hi and Don rener hi motion carries a huge thank foundation in that batch of Grant approvals there is a total of $1,970 in Grant approvals for about 10 different projects across uh a so South north and t99 so thank you to the app Foundation yeah thank you on to uh recommendation for Action uh can I get a motion for the Board of Education to approve the school maintenance project Grant application as presented so moved second Terry moves Charelle second thank you Terry pavich I Charelle Fuller I Jenny hagstrom I Cara Caston I Ken Dawson I Chris Espinosa I I motion carries Item B can I get a motion from the Board of Education to approve the tentative 2024 tax levy in the amount of2 12,600 or I'm sorry 112 mil 67,341 as presented so moved second Terry moves Chris Su thank you very much Terry pavage hi Chris Espinosa hi Char Fuller hi Denny hagstrom hi Cara Caston hi Ken Dawson hi and Don Runner hi motion carries Hank any old or new business none Julie for second of visitors are there any slips no sir thank you um Jenny do you have anything to report on lend I do um we had a meeting on October 25th um Bill Foster was a guest at that meeting um and he spoke about some of the federal issues that were impacting school districts um specifically the possibility of eliminating the US Department of Education and um why he thought that was a bad idea um he wanted to note that we use federal funds to effect change um some of that dates back to the Civil Rights era and that the Department of Education is still to some extent the enforcer of the Civil Rights Act in education settings uh they also provide a lot of special education funding um representative Foster also tries to advocate for schools near National laborator districts including like argon and firmalab areas there can be Financial stress that is placed on schools and school districts in those areas um due to different appropriation measures uh so Federal funding can assist with those schools infrastructure improvements as well as all School infrastructure improvements even smaller things like air conditioning um which can help to attract teachers um to a certain Community or district and uh improve productivity both students and teachers um so he you know just wanted to reiterate also that federal funds promote initiatives for safe schools and anti-bullying and mental health initiatives uh stem funding for girls and under representative minorities and AI um and then we kind of shifted into the regular meeting uh we discussed some Title One and title 3 funds and bus driver qualifications um there's been I guess kind of a kind of a trend of school districts supporting bus drivers and getting their CDL licenses for employment to you know work for the schools and then one result is that districts are seeing those employees leave for other jobs where they can use those CDL licenses um for example city bus drivers or other things so there was talk of exploring kind of a school bus driver specific license um so that schools wouldn't be paying for people to get their CDL licenses and then leave the district for other employment um and then we discuss the upcoming breakfast which will be Saturday at the conference um that will be kind of that will take the place of the November meeting and there's no December meeting so we will resume in January of 2025 thank you Jenny Chris any update on it sasset not for my end I think our next meeting is uh somewhere in January yeah and we're really working on facility studies for sassin yeah because the will be the focus of that conversation I believe Terry any update from uh Foundation no we're meeting Wednesday okay can all skip you CU I think we got an update from you and we're all looking forward to the uh conference this weekend great networking opportunity for all of us and lots of workshops and panels and hopefully we'll bring even more best practices back to our district yes um Charelle any update from the downers grow plan commission I did not make the November 4th meeting however they do there's two new planning Commissioners RL and Lincoln who been welcomed to the commission and then um I'll follow up with um any information from the pet on November 4 okay thank you for the public uh the next upcoming board meetings I'm sorry Hank did you want to we're recommending canceling the December 2nd uh board meeting like uh the agenda items that we have for December we can sufficiently cover those on the December 16th meeting and we know four board members and for the public that December 2nd meeting is the Monday night following the Thanksgiving recess um so we feel like it just better in everybody's world to skip that one uh I think we had one agenda item that was non-pressing we'll just move that to the 16th and have one meeting in December that's fine okay so then the next uh board meeting will be the December 16th 2024 regular business meeting here at the ASC at 6:30 p.m.

here Mr Gatewood present Miss Johnson uh present Dr Mario present Mr pler present Miss Simon present Miss venth present our student board members poier and Cali Pernell here okay please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stand one nation under God indivisible with liy and justice for all right good evening everyone Board t tonight we are so proud of our pride Award winner showcased here this evening and all of our dedicated teachers and staff and I want to now invite uh for board recognition we're going to begin with John Francis all right thank you Dr katti tonight the Board of Education acknowledges The Pride winners from Lakewood Creek Fox Chase Hunt Club and Wolf's Crossing Elementary schools for the month of November Pride stands for proudly recognizing individuals demonstrating Excellence the Board of Education began this program 9 years a ago to recognize promote and celebrate the many contributions made by teachers and employees across our district thank our generous District Partners Chick-fil-A Culver's imagination Print and Design Learning Center serve bank and the scoop for helping to make this sucessful we would also like to thank all those who nominated individuals for consideration award after your name is called and we share your nomination please come forward to be congratulated by the board and Dr kti and then wait until the rest of the individuals from your school have been called up first off we have Lakewood Creek Elementary School welcome Heather fiser fifth grade teacher Heather Fisher Heather cares for her students Beyond academics ultimately fostering what someone called a fun learning community that incorporates everyone's talents her students and fellow teachers alike admire her positivity and passion as a nominator shared she clearly defines students academic goals and let them know that is that that is preparing them for junior high and former students frequently remark I learned that in Mrs Fischer's class congratulations Heather next up we have Jennifer Maloney first grade teacher work to create a class students of all backgrounds and abilities makes her truly deserving of the pride award as shared her nomin she understands her students unique needs and strives to provide an engaging learning experience for all of them one parent said Mrs Maloney Advocates tirelessly for the best interest of her students takes immense pride in her work and displays personal and professional Integrity congratulations and finally from Lakewood Creek we have Nikki teer [Applause] assistant Mi is an eager helper always willing to serve her students and fellow staff members in her valued role as a teacher assistant she cares deeply about the wellbeing of each student and as her nominator shared Nikki goes out of her way every day to make sure that every student at Lakewood Creek feels special Creek would not be the same without her congratulations [Applause] Nikki let's give one more round of applause to our pride winners from Lakewood Creek Elementary School [Applause] at this time we invite any building administrators and District admin who are not present to come who are present to come forward and join the awardees the board and Dr kti [Applause] all right our next Spotlight is Fox Chase Elementary School first of all we have Jim Nichols fifth grade teacher [Applause] little known fact Jim has worked in this district for over 30 years and in that time he has left a profound impact on the lives of students families and staff members he is kind compassionate and leads by example always sharing valuable life lessons that positively shape his students academic experiences as shared by a nominator each year he teaches the whole child he makes sure that he not only teaches their minds but that he teaches their their hearts [Applause] congratulations next up we have third grade teacher Jamie [Applause] Wayne jimie has taught at Fox Chase since its opening in 2001 through the years she has worked to promote kindness and friendship among her students and has dedicated personal time to serve on a number of committees at Fox Chase Jim's teaching style acknowledges the district's diverse Community her nominator shared that her Des deposition and respectful communication with all students affirms the dedication to make asigo Community Unit School District 308 one of the best places to educate children and raise a family congratulations Jamie and finally we have Eugenia dasta teachers's assistant [Applause] Eugenia approaches her role with compassion making her a vital part of the Fox Chase Elementary School's special education department as highlighted by her nominator she perfectly balances supporting students while pushing them to be the best that they can be congratulations Eugenia at this time we will invite up some building admin for some pictures the principal andp [Applause] [Music] all right thank [Applause] you next up we have Hunt Club Elementary School first of all Melissa DeVito social worker Melissa is always smiling while working to provide resources to the Hunt Club Community she is a great supporter of students and staff alike Melissa leads the community outreach team thus ensuring she can help families in need a nominator shared Melissa gives everything she has to her students she looks for ways to support and help her students find success daily congratulations Melissa next up Heather mayor first grade [Applause] teacher Heather goes above and beyond to communicate with the parents of her student students allowing them to see all the Hands-On activities she incorporates in her classroom to promote a love for learning as one parents shared we feel so lucky to have her as our son's first grade teacher this year and it's only October congratulations Heather and lastly from Hunt Club Stephanie Zigman secretary Stephanie can always be seen as a friendly face at Hunt Club always smiling and willing to help as a secretary she greets students staff and parents while also working behind the scenes to ensure everything runs smoothly during the school day as one nominator stated she is extremely organized and has an incredibly hard work ethic she is thorough a problem solver and goes out of her way to support everyone congratulations Stephanie [Applause] and at this time if we can have the building administr coming up for some pictures [Applause] our final building we are recognizing tonight is Wolf's Crossing Elementary School first of all we have Stephanie Kus first grade [Applause] teacher Stephanie is positive in the midst of challenges always handling everything with Grace she works hard to make sure her students know they are loved and cared for as a nominator shared she is truly a role model for any educator congratulations Stephanie our next staff member is Nita meta teacher assistant NE sorry ne ne cares for her students stud and fellow staff members consistently checking in with her colleagues to see how she can support them her n her nominator said she brings out the best in our students and is always willing to lend a helping hand congratulations and the final teacher from wolves Crossing was not able to make it tonight due to some family emergencies but we want to recognize Aaron Jenkins kindergarten teacher Aaron is a one-of-a-kind teacher making her an excellent candidate to receive a pride award her nominator shared she cares about each of her students and strives to meet their unique needs as a team met member said Aon frequently has former students reaching out to her to let her know the impact she has made on their educational and personal Journey her current students light up each morning as they are greeted by Mrs jains congratulations Aaron and if we have Administration coming up for a picture all right one Final Round of Applause as we recognize and celebrate these members honores please proceed out into the hallway gathering at the Landing the stairs for one large group photo thank you to all the families and colleagues who are here tonight to support our winners good [Applause] was son heard and seen I didn't look it over okay all right board uh we will continue with our agenda this evening and uh before we go further let's we're going to take a minute to recognize um our board members you know that Friday was board member appreciation day and uh we are so grateful for the work done by our community let's give the board a big round of applause I'd like to invite you to front for a picture I'm just kidding just did that um but in all sincerity really um we are so grateful for your service your leadership and your courage um as you serve on this board um and we really think about the work that's been done over the last uh tenure that I've been here um really my own personal from personal level your your questions your your push your guidance your leadership and I'm so honored to be able to part partner with you and to serve under this board um your contributions enable us to strengthen our school Community our leadership think about our resources that we allocate and evaluate our opportunities for growth we as a community on behalf of our staff and students we could not be more proud of the work that you lead us in and the work we've done together in service to our community and our students on behalf again of our staff and students we want to thank you board president lutan similton board vice president Eugene Gatewood board secretary Jared ploger board members Dominic Sheron board member Jennifer Johnson board member Dr Amy Muro and board member Mary Joe wouth we also want to thank our student board members hope rier and Kali Parnell and um our Alternatives who are there to support um your work really makes a difference and we are so proud to serve under the board's leadership thank you thank you you notice yes all right we'll move to um 5.1 public comment so on behalf of the Board of Education I would like to thank you for attending tonight's meeting we value the feedback we receive 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 and state your name for the public record and provide your feedback please note that comments are limited to five minutes per person and that no discussion of person Personnel matters stating staff names or respond 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 Lauren shoe maker green green green Green anything hello my name is Lauren Shoemaker and I have a daughter at Thompson and twin Sons at Old poost I'm here to make a statement regarding student use of smartphones during school hours in our district our current policy states that in grades K through 8 cell phones are not to be used by students during school hours unless authorized by a teacher or administrator which on paper sounds appropriate however with my oldest recently entering Middle School I have learned that a cell phone can be carried around by students and used during free time in class passing periods and phones have even been offered as a student reward for high school there is no current policy in effect in regards to cell phone usage I am here today to advocate for a policy that strictly enforces phone- free schools for all of District 308 I have brought a gift for each of the board members today I don't know if any of you are familiar it is called the anxious Generation by Jonathan height this book discusses the harmful effects of smartphones for students who have one but also for students who don't let's start with students who who have smartphones students who engage with smartphones regularly suffer from many harmful effects including sleep deprivation so social deprivation attention fragmentation and addiction I understand the board cannot control the Sleep habit habits of students but we can decrease the three other harms associated with smartphone usage let's start with social deprivation the author reports that the time that the time students spend with friends having face-to-face interactions has dramatically decreased since 2009 he goes on to state that even when adolescents are within a few feet of their friends their smart smartphone damages the quality of their time together smartphones grab our attention so powerfully that if they merely vibrate in our pockets for a tenth of a second many of us will interrupt a face-to-face convers conversation just in case the phone is bringing us an important update when students are allowed to have continuous access to their phones the time they have to develop interpersonal skills with their peers such as building relationships problem solving conflict resolution active listening collaboration and teamwork is impeded another harmful effect of smartphones is attention fragmentation in this book the author refers to a study that was conducted with college students in this study students went to a lab and were assigned to either leave their phone out in the entry room of the lab keep their phone with them in in a bag or in their pocket or put their phone on their desk next to them the students were then asked to complete tasks that tested their fluence fluid intelligence and working memory I'm sure it is no surprise that the students who performed best were the ones who left their phones in another room the worst performers were the group of students who whose phones were left on their desks lastly smartphones create device addiction throughout the book the author gives multiple examples of ways in which apps have been developed with the intention of creating a device addiction however the most alarming information that I came across while reading this book is that many app companies and social media platforms hired scientists to study the brain of adolesence the goal was to Target parts of their underdeveloped brains to get them addicted to smartphone apps and social media Platforms in other words these companies are intentionally using a child's underdeveloped brain against them to get them addicted to their products as a result of these harms we have seen a dramatic increase in anxiety depression lonely loneliness and isolation among teens but not just for students with smartphones these mental health conditions have also increased in students without smartphones phones are an experienc blocker they block experience opportunities for students with and without phones the students without phones also engage in less face-to-face peer interactions which again impedes the development of all those essential interpersonal skills like with smartphone users social social deprivation for students without phones has also led to an increase in anxiety depression isolation and loneliness so what can we do to get our students child childhoods back that include more play more face to face interactions more connection among peers and less mental health conditions Jonathan height offers four ways in which we can give our children a healthier childhood they are no smartphones until High School no social media before 16 more Independence play and responsibility in the real world and phonefree schools for all I can do the first three mentioned on my own however I need your help with the last important piece I am asking the school board to please take immediate action in implementing a phonefree school policy in our district I also urge the district to en force zero tolerance with phone usage during school hours that is followed up with real consequences I know that with phone free schools we can decrease the harmful effects of smartphones that have led to the epidemic of mental health illnesses in children that we see all too frequently today thank you for your time thank you thank you I was waiting for my gift sorry uh good evening board we're going to continue with uh 6.1 we have an update regarding the 2024 Illinois school report card I'm going to invite Dr K to speak to that and then I'll have a few comments on the end thank you Dr K so before Dr K begins to speak um I'd like to have a motion to move agenda item 6.2 um as the first presentation can I have a motion to move agenda item 6.2 to 6.1 make a motion to move agenda item 6.2 to 6.1 second miss similon I miss venoth hi Mr pler hi Dr Mario hi Miss Johnson hi Mr Cerone hi Mr Gatewood hi motion passes 70 this is the other presentations thank you um this evening what I would like to do is provide a summary of our summi of uh report card so including our Summit of designations and our school report card um we did a lengthy um presentation at the equity learning and Innovation uh board committee report um meeting and during that report uh we will also get some additional information the focus of our presentation tonight is really connected to the school report card uh data linked to our Summit of designation so all data presented tonight including uh both our overall and our subgroup data is publicly available um on our district website so as our schools are as our schools are uh digging into their individual data what we will be looking at this evening is our overall District data so our Summit of designations uh every school at the end of the school year is awarded a designation there are four different possible designations that our schools can can receive Elementary and Junior High are categorized as 75% academic indicators with a majority 50% of their score coming from Ela or math growth as measured by the I and then 7.5 for both Ela or math proficiency based on the state standard there 25% of the Student Success indicator is based on chronic absenteeism and our climate survey which our dist utilizes the five Essentials the high school is also 75% academic indicators and 25 5% Student Success but a majority of the high school determination is based on graduation rates with fouryear five-year and six-year impacting their overall score um with four-year counting as 60% of their Summit of designation as part of that 50% 30% for 5 year and 10% for six year Ela and math proficiency um in school year 24 is measured for our 11th graders on the sat with their proficiency at 7.5 um and then the additional for our Student Success indicator is our ninth grade on track so in terms of the schools we had one school woles crossing um that received a summative designation of exemplary we had um this is the second year in a row that woles Crossing has received um exemplary summi of designation our all five of our Junior highs both of our high schools were commendable as were um Boulder Hill Church Hill Grand Park Homestead Hunt Club Lakewood Creek pre Point South Bing the wheatlands um we also would like to celebrate Boulder Hill because in school year 23 they received a sum a targeted summi of designation and in 24 they received a commendable designation Fox Chase Old Post and Long Beach all are uh received a targeted designation um and in order to be classified as targeted their overall um performance was um not in the top 10% but did not fall in the bottom 5% but one of their subgroups did fall into that bottom 5% so for this coming year both Fox Chase and Old Post will enter a planning year so similar to Boulder Hill and Long Beach last year they will have the opportunity to really work with their staff throughout the school year to develop a supplemental um School Improvement plan to really help support our children with disabilities so both Fox Chase and old poost the subgroup that um qualified them as a targeted Summit of designation was children with disabilities which includes both 504 and IEP Boulder and long breach do continue into their year one implementation um we did present and was approved for their uh supplemental School Improvement plan this last summer so they have already implemented um additional supports for children with disabilities this year so in terms of overall our school Improvement data um we did see a slight decrease in our enrollment um from 16797 to 16696 from school year 23 to 24 we had slight changes uh to our demographic subgroups in terms of some celebrations we did see growth in our I for ELA in terms of overall so these are students in grades 3 through 8 going from 41.3% meets and exceeds to 45% meets and exceeds in which we were also above the state average um overall for our district as measured by IR in ela we also if you um take a look at the data we did see increases from school year 23 to 24 in I for ELA in all of our subgroups for math for I we did see a slight increase from 31.5 to 32.2 um percent we were also above the state average um we did see some increases um but we also did see a slight decrease in one of our subgroups so over all um as I mentioned we did see an increase from 41.3 meets and exceeds so these are our students that scored a four or five on the I um from 2023 to 45% in 2024 and overall we did see growth in both our meats and our exceeds for I math we did see a slight increase in meets and exceeds overall from 31.5 to 32.2 for sat for ELA we did see a slight decrease in our students um we also saw um some decreases between um some of our subgroups and then an increase in one of our subgroups we were above the state average for um Ela overall for our high schools our math also saw a decrease from 30.2 to 25.4 and we did see again some increase some decrease um in our subgroup so overall um this data has been uh shared and discussed uh with the high schools um Dr Paul and Dr dubiel with their teams are also working um with our high schools in relations to this data some additional data that we wanted to share with you um related to our summi of designation is our growth data um from 23 to 24 um we did see a slight decrease um in our overall growth in both Ela and math but we did see uh less decrease in our growth data in math as compared to ELA so what we also saw though um increase was our um Isa and our El exit rate so um we did increase from 7.7 as our exit rate to 8.3 and we were above the state average um for our exit rate for our students um in our El population um as measured by the access test so just some uh again some summaries we saw an overall increase increase in I Proficiency in both Ela and math but we did see a decrease in student growth student growth has measured in this case from 23 to 24 in comparison to like peers um our El learner um student exit percentage did increase from 7.7 to 8.3 so in terms of our high schools um we did see an increase in our graduation rate our four-year graduation rate in 2023 was 94% and that did rise to 95.5 um and we were above the state average in terms of our gr graduation rate for overall and for all of our subgroups in terms of our ninth grade on track which is part of our Summit of designation in order to be considered on track you need to have five credits by the end of second semester and not have failed more than one semester of a core class so English math social studies or science so we did see an increase um from 92.1 to 92.5 from 23 to 24 um and we were very close in one subgroup but um above the state average in every other subgroup in terms of of our last um data point in related to our Summit designation is our chronic absent we did see a decrease which is what we want um in our chronic absente rate our chronic absente rate was 22.9 in 2023 and then in 2024 was 20.9 um and we um in terms of in comparison to the state average we did have some groups below the state average which is what we want and some groups um um above the state average so these are the um State data points that our buildings and our district do look at in relationship to our suive designations any questions any questions board there's a lot to digest there um one of the things that Dr conc as you heard at the public forum has been leading is our strategic planning process and so this data is becoming will be a part of how we think about what we've learned through the curriculum audit what we've learned through really the partnership we're building with our union leaders our union leaders um and our various committees that are really brought about by the union and the district to really think about how we organize ourselves to really ensure that our foundation is strong and in a few minutes you're going to hear a follow-up presentation um from our Innovation learning Innovation team marting engagement and diverse learner team about how we are going to be thinking about these scores as well I just had a couple comments because um I'm in the equity teaching and learning committee so we had an opportunity to also view this uh in that committee as well and just a couple I guess public comments the public kind of digests uh some of this information um one my takeaways are like there's room for a growth and there's Al also some celebrations right and I know that there some work already going on and then that there's more work uh to come um I also want to iterate that this is not these are not the only data points that we use to determine if our students are achieving um you know especially this um you know standardized tests they're a moment in time they take them one day at school that's their score you know and that's not always it's a snapshot in time it's not necessarily the full picture of their their achievement uh but it's good to add to the mix and then the last thing I'll say is that sometimes in um the public you'll you'll hear people say well our scores are at this rate in let's say Florida 80% of students are you know achieving at whatever rate um so just to reiterate every state is different so in Florida and Ohio and California we're all using completely different tests to um provide us information about the achievement of our stud students um so it's really not a great comparison I think what is a great comparison that we include in here is the state average so that we can see how we're doing in comparison with others um in our surrounding areas in our state who are taking the same exam so just some points of clarification there as this becomes you know publicly digested very good point yeah okay all right thank you board um I'm sorry oh please I was caught in my thought for oh I apologize um kind of in parallel to this but not regarding necessarily the state report card but in the in the future can we please look at what is going on with our K through 8 new Ela curriculum and what the trends we're seeing there um I already know this is being looked at with Mrs man with the different Junior highs I want to bring up two things um that have come out of both the Forum but also as I've talked to parents throughout the district because I wasn't sure if this was just something that a specific junior high was going through but I've now heard from parents at every Junior High that we're seeing um some assessment uh Trends with our new Al two things one of the things that came out of the Forum was and I actually have an email from an Ela teacher that said that we shouldn't focus on grades I think we need to be incredibly careful when we talk about that and when we say that to both parents and students because it does have a direct correlation to whether students can play sports if they are not achieving you know academically but secondly it also when a recently um the students underwent an Ela assessment and a good portion of them did not do well it happens to be 55% of their grade but don't worry because grades don't matter so I think there's a lot of um of communication uh messaging that needs to be adjusted there and one of my favorite books that I talk about all the time of C Street data and when we are looking at grading for equity and it specifically says allowing redus and retakes any student should be able to retake a major assessment for a full Mo grade as long as they are coming to school and putting in effort this this tax to the culture of revision and Redemption that discusses in the book earlier so I just want to make sure that there's more a district review of um how we're communicating to parents and students and grades that matter or don't matter and then ju oppose that to you're taking an assessment it's worth a significant portion of your grade you don't get to retake it and the response to that being well um the specific response being we are increasing our rigor and standards alignment okay that's that's true but when a new curriculum is introduced the students that receive that new curriculum for the first year shouldn't pay the price of lack of professional development lack of understanding of teaching of that new curriculum and so forth so for the future um if we could if the board could see um just how we're doing with that which I was very excited about that new curriculum um and what the trends we're seeing with assessment data and our assessment data um and so forth it would I think it would be very helpful for us to understand and identify where maybe we need to make some adjustments it's really helpful feedback and I think you you hit on a really important point that actually we've been visiting schools the board members and and um Educators and our district team and one of the trends has been how can we when we think of our strategic planning process think about renewal cycles for our curriculum to have a much longer runway in terms of providing teachers the right amount of time to really get the Deep professional learning instead of you know uh processes which are are unfortunately very typical where we you know we adopt the new curriculum and then we go into implementation within two to three months right and so uh that is something that definitely we've heard quite a bit and I appreciate you raising that tonight I I think also the questions you raised about Street data and we think about how we should be uh reflecting on formative assessments really how our students are doing along the way and Summit of Assessments and then what's the coordination the connection that has to the curriculum itself and are we measuring the right things in that pathway so really good points and actually it's a great segue into our next president thank you no you you nailed it I was just moved to respond and speak to it so thank you um I want to invite now if we may please if there are other questions we can move this into the next part which is somewhat complementary to what you just said so in 6.2 which is really thinking about our foundational practices and this evening I want to invite Dr Waller Dr dubiel and Dr Paul to speak to it um in our strategic Ro mapap board we identified the need for what we call our foundational practices because what we learned last year as we thought about the work that needed to get done for this year we needed to identify some key priorities which we're really thinking about effective systems high quality instruction and then really this idea of a culture of welcome and um inclusivity and presence which we call rightful presence which is connected to our board policy and so I want to invite the three of you to please share some Reflections that uh was first brought to the equity teaching learning committee so thank you the floor is yours thank you to our Tech Team for preparing us and getting us there good evening board mic check che check check okay good there you go you're good um on behalf of the I lead group as a reminder I lead there it's at the bottom um stands for Innovation learner Equity advocacy and diversity the I Le group represents Dr Paul Dr Waller and myself uh tonight we're going to reiterate the criticalness of the foundational practices and how we integrate it to lift the academic learning environment two main ideas that we will be discussing in tonight's presentation is defining cultural and relational responsiveness and using what is the iso framework to examine the five essential surveys before we dive in a critical reminder as well to why we're here our foundational practices and how it drives our work um everything that we do is grounded on the shared vision of effective systems and teams high quality instruction equity and right for presence I cannot overstate how often this has become part of who we are as a system um as I turn it over to Dr Paul and she will provide um incredible Insight on the iso framework I'm just going to provide kind of that overview when it comes to supporting students and perhaps when students struggle historically and in many different institutions sometimes it is a deficit view when the students are not thriving so we want to look beyond that deficit View and really examine our own instruction how are we differentiating to support the learning for our students look at our curriculum and how it is rigorous and it is aligned to what we want the students to learn check out our environment to ensure that we have an environment that is inclusive where students feel valued and valid in the space and then look at the learner if all of the i c and e is not met through the iso framework thank you Dr duel um as we continue to unpack the iso framework in our system we know it's situated in our mtss academic and social emotional learning Equity handbook um we are providing professional development for our leaders and teams this year and understanding how to use this framework when they're analyzing data as Dr dubiel indicated we want to really situate our system to look at tier one instruction how we're differentiating our curriculum our instruction paying attention to the environment of the learner and ultimately this is in response to what our curriculum audit tells us we need to have a better systemized way and common language of vocabulary when we're talking about uh student achievement data to help us unpack the iso framework we're using the five Essentials data that is available to our schools from the previous school year you can see in this graphic here there are different elements we're going to touch on today the first one we're going to highlight is is ambitious instruction how this relates to um the iso framework this data here that you see before you gives you an overview of where we're at and the respondents that responded to these questions um in particular one area quality of student discussion for for one of our schools for example is an area they're addressing in their school Improvement plan with high quality instruction the team at that high school is unpacking that data and identifying tier one instructional differentiated practices that they can lift forward in their action plan to make that come alive in addressing this area in addition on this slide you can see some questions at the top of the graphic that are from our learning and Innovation team as well as Equity engagement team as we are lifting forward for our leaders questions they can ask their teams when they're engaging in data such as ambitious instruction the trendline data here you can see where we show growth and then where we go slightly down paying attention to this data we're asking questions such as are evidence-based instructional strategies and materials used that take into account specific student concerns utilized questions like this again reflect what the audit indicates in encouraging us as a system to run after evidence-based instructional strategies as we support our Learners the next area of the five Essentials is curriculum in this area we're making a connection to what the five essenes data tells us about collaborative teachers you can see very similar to ambitious instruction the different measures we were looking at and then the respondents Who provided feedback you can see areas where we are neutral in areas where we um have areas for growth one thing that we are encouraging our system to do again is to be really reflective of the curriculum that we have in front of our students we want to be reflective and analyze is the curriculum unbiased and representative of the diverse ways students demonstrate knowledge again this is a reflective of what the curriculum audit guides us to do in having Curriculum maps and scope and sequence for every course taught in our system and that is something we are unpacking within the I Department along with other departments this year to be making recommendations not only for our curriculum renewal cycle in the future as well as the work we're going to be doing together with our strategic plan the next area to highlight is supportive environment and I'm going to hand it over to Dr Waller thank you Dr Paul um so when we consider the EnV some of those recommendations um Direct Les the dis seeing between our different student groups and truly focusing Dr Waller I'm so sorry do you mind grab the microphone from right there I just don't want what you're saying is important I don't want it to get lost hello hello there we go this one is hot all right um So within the curriculum audit um it it really highlighted how important it was for us to eliminate the disparities that we're seeing between our different student groups and so we understand how impactful um that is to our students learning experience if the environment is not what we need it to be and so when we make the connection to the five Essentials um presentation there we notice here when we're looking at student teacher there's neutral areas academic personalism as well as safety is also neutral and then peer support is strong and so how can we leverage and Elevate that in our classroom spaces much of time spent this year um as well as at the end of last year has been this focus on student teacher relationships and so while neutral may not indicate weak it is still an area of opportunity for us and so when you look at the trend data here the performance across all the surveys from 2021 into this space um you see that it is trending down and so we want to make sure that we focus on bringing to the space um culturally and relational uh responsive spaces and so in highlighting that um rifle presence pathway number three is cultural and relational responsiveness we recognize that there's a difference between those two areas cultural being making sure there were understanding students lived experiences and embedding that and considering how those factors influen their learning experience whether it's students with disabilities whether it's language um whether it's family background Etc and then when we lean into the relational aspect this is something um I know that our student um ambassadors or board members have also been focused and gone through ssac but really wanted to highlight The Importance of Being physically and psychologically safe in the classroom and how important it is for them to have that so that they can take risks so that they can begin to um have the relationships of trust and respect and then attain the knowledge that they're learning in those classes and so we wanted to to make sure tonight that we brought forward some of the work that we have been doing across I lead as well as within other departments um and so when we look at cultural responsiveness we have our English novel renewal that Len I has been focused on although they have recruited and so we have all been collectively reading books so that's been um it's been a nice collaborative space um our SEO curriculum with character strong um students we've gotten a lot of great responses to how they are engaging in those spaces um we are um under the development of our sd308 Curriculum maps again all lni if you have more questions we have Dr Paul here um hmh and Benchmark Ela and cultivating genius has been underway for quite some time um but the equity and engagement department has been able to go through with the collaboration of other Educators and include Equity um resources and information and support for teachers as well as highlighting some cultivating genius as aspects I and then additionally we have worked towards increasing our diverse and Multicultural student groups on the relational responsiveness side we have our superintendent student advisory um committee um who has been lifting both of the high school school Improvement plans which is um their goal is one trusted adult and so I know that you'll learn a lot more from them regarding that um we have been developing ways to communicate with our families and with our students based on background and culture just really trying to make sure we meet everyone where they are um and then we've been uncovering and leveraging axiology that is about how um different groups value relationships which I know our board members will speak about soon um we have been lifting our superintendent Advisory Group um as well as our parent University and our caregiver cafes and so with that how does this connect with our I framework for environment um these questions like Dr Paul had shared um they come from a document that really helps us to slow down this is the the intent with ISO is to slow down so that we are not blaming the learner so that we are considering the work that we are doing in order to lift and Elevate that learner and so two questions um of several that we have are you know do the student and teacher have a connection that supports their success working together to learn and are all aspects of physical and psychological safety considered in the learning environment and so in having those conversations we open the door to learn more about our students and where they're coming from so that we can meet them where they are as we round out this analysis of um five Essentials data and the iso framework we have now um gone to our learner and um you can see the learner touches all parts of the five essential survey and the data that we have here again you can see the respondents um are teachers and where we are neutral in an area for growth as we think about our system and how we can help support our Learners um essentially as Dr Waller was indicating with environment is how do students demonstrate positive connections with other students and adults again focusing on relationships and how important that is for community and in the classroom and when we know students have a sense of psychological and physical safety they are all able to feel more successful in an environmental space where they feel um they're supported um one thing to note that when we administered our fall uh Panorama survey we actually used the five Essentials data to create in grade 6 through 12 additional short answer questions because we were left asking more questions as a team learning Innovation equate engagement student services and diverse Learners along with uh students from 612 Coalition we created questions we asked our students to respond to to give us additional St data sets around belonging and psychological safety this data along with other data that we've received from the Panorama survey that our buildings have just gotten training on is very useful for us as we analyze our student achievement data as we run after looking um at developing and lifting up the whole child here in 308 it okay so at this time we just want to emphasize again the learner and where isil stands as far as the framework and supporting the holistic child and then see if there are any questions thank you uh very much I want to invite now Bor if you have any questions about this presentation I know you have a copy of the packet um so this evening welcome pres uh questions you may have not a question but just a statement I'm I'm I'm so excited because you know can you talk like in the past our systems the ones that existed were kind of like siloed and now we have like Frameworks that are aligned with all everything that that's needed in order for our students to be successful so I'm I'm just so excited um and thank you for the work um of everyone to to make this happen for our students I'm excited to see the results of it right thank you um I just had a statement as well um I think it's really important what you guys are doing because not only is about the Student Success but it's also about the teacher success with the student and creating that relationship so I think it's very important um about how you guys are going about this and involving ssac and involving um yourselves into it as well and getting these other opinions from teachers and students to build that relationship because it's also vice versa it's about our Student Success but it's also about the teacher success with the student as well because every teacher wants a successful student and every student wants a teacher that knows what they're doing and enjoys their environment that they're in so I just want to say thank you to you guys as well well set mic drop can you talk I just have a couple of go ahead after you I just have a couple of questions with regard to evidence-based instruction what are the specific criteria that we're using kind of when assessing um whether it be strategies or curriculum or whatever what is the criteria especially for students that are at or below grade level I can start off and then I can hand it over to D to do Mel um one two areas that we have talked about a lot uh last year and leading into this year using two websites called what works Clearing House and evidence for Essa um last year in leading the four mtss committees I introduced these websites to our system and encouraged our staff to look at the current interventions we're providing our students in academic andal to see what is the evidence behind it and then to dig actually deeper and to look at what the demographic data tells us about the studies does that match the demographic data of our students and if it doesn't this is not the most appropriate intervention that we're using and we need to go back to the drawing board we had a lot of aha moments a lot of like oh no what do we do and I encourage them that once we know more we do more and there's an opportunity as a system to provide some additional piloting of academic andal interventions moving forward because what we recognized is that we have some areas where we need to be tighter to have some Equity across our district as you mentioned teachers teachers need to have consistent professional development around interventions as well as our students need to have a similar experience if they were to go from school to school within the same school year they should have similar opportunities to be provided support within our district so one of the areas I've learned about is quite a number of curricular resources that we may be using in diverse Learners either not truly with Fidelity or hasn't gone through some type of Clearing House to ensure that it is evidence-based so so um learning Innovation and diverse Learners have come together several times to comb through all of these resources there were quite a bit um and now we're going through and we're prioritizing which ones we know um that we feel should be a priority and then make sure that they are in fact evidence-based as historically it may have been purchased without really thinking about the value the of the resource and we're just another uncovering that we've encountered I really appreciate that and I also just want to give you kudos for um I I in the past have been a little um hard on past administration around mtss because I didn't think we were really utilizing mtss so I want to give you you know definite kudos for that you answered like kind of my next question but with with that um can you tell me Dr dual for our um our not speaking Spanish Families how are we connecting with them it's been a goal of ours for a long time I know that it continues to be you know there continue to be challenges um but where are we with kind of getting through those challenges and what are we doing to help those families so um if we're I'm guessing we're referencing Beek Beek has been amazing we've had several meetings um with them and they they were very honest with their frustrations with the Dual language program particularly at the junior high level and so we're working to build their trust and we're working to understand some of the challenges that has come with the lack of quality curriculum so we are actually examined some of those pieces externally we've worked closely with elen and also recognize that we may need something unique with them so just today actually in our meeting we um are considering partnering with someone to help those dual language teachers at the junior high level to build that in working with the parents we have had multiple meetings they feel very strong and very supportive of the Dual language at the elementary level they were concerned about it at the um high at the middle school level and our junior high level and at no fault um of that team it's just what they have inherited and that been provided a scope and sequence and quality curriculum app so that's where we are at and working with those teachers to build their capacity so we may be relying on um some external expertise but we're going to get it done and we did I know we did a contract with a company and I'm it's totally going over my head right now yes we did last year and that unfortunately that Consulting contract did not deliver what they had promised so we're going a different direction disappointing um thank you very much for that I'm sorry I just have one more question with regard to our our superintendent Advisory Group um our parent University our caregiver Cafe how are we um maybe Dr katti this is for you or anybody how do we assess the um success of those programs um I personally just want to share that I think that those have really started to break through and build trust with parent communities and with um taxpayers that may want to have input um especially in the super superintendent Advisory Group um but how are we how do we make sure we're getting and using those resources to the best of our ability it's a great question so um two things the first thing I think that you've used you've talked about Street data quite a bit so I think uh we think about exis we think about at the end of the meetings we sit with those who are participating what did you know what was your experience what advice do you have um secondly ultimately parent University really we've we're thinking about as across the district but really needs to be a situated in a school-based community and so where the direction I'm going to invite Dr Wall to speak to it a little bit where we are looking to strengthen the involvement is to really lean in into our respective School communities so right now we're centering it we're building it up Boulder Hill and plank communities but it's not exclusive but it's it's it's definitely centered in those and so as we think about I guess you could say spawning various experiences I know that some communities or districts do kind of like a huge par parent University for the whole District which is where we're at right now developmentally I really believe we have to move to smaller based places um do you want to add to it Dr wall and then I'll close out with another no um you know it it is we've talked about the school-based piece and actually in our um te meeting today we were talking about making these stronger connections even with our um hsos and PT and how we filter through our communication and those spaces because the thing is about parent University is that it really needs to be parent L and so um we've had you know an opportunity to have two and each time we we collect more parents along the way um but to Dr katti's point you know we we need we need to be consistent but we also need to figure out ways to bring more people into the space and so we intend to do that by lifting kids right cuz we know if the kids are there then can get the parents to show up so and and if we can get them in the space then there's so many opportunities for them to attain all of these different resources and it's just getting them in those spaces and I think to your point Dr katti I I don't know this just hit me but it was aha moment a lot of times a Boulder Hill Community functions very differently than a wolfes Crossing community so having it be school based feels like you may get get more people to want to join versus but if we don't you can't just you have to build it right so building it from a district level but I really like that idea and I think that will get us to better S success criteria um measuring success of these programs if we get it to be more building based and then I just have the last comment which is one of the things and I'm not going to steal any Thunder but the work that the um superintendent student Advisory Group is committee is doing around the one trusted adult is truly I personally feel groundbreaking and really proud with how they are breaking down different um Avenues of data that are coming into them and Sh and determining what trusted means and how it's um defined and how depending on who you're asking you're going to get a different different definition and I'm so excited for the board and the community to see all the work that they're doing thank you okay done okay I just wanted to close by saying thank you I think it was really helpful you all did an excellent job of linking the work of the audit uh the curriculum audit and all the other learning and also I know that you're really on the front lines of working with Educators uh through our Union partnership to ensure that those voices are really surfacing um as we think to serve our students so thank you for your attention to those details thank you yes thank you all right we're moving on to 7.1 uh Dr katti if he would give his superintendent report all right good evening everyone uh board and Community I'm so proud again of our pride Award winners who are showcased this evening um and all of our dedicated teachers staff and families who work together in our mission to help our students this past week I was moved to email a reflection on our mission um I sent this to the whole community on Friday about our purpose and commitment to focus on what truly matters and to remember that our students our mission is to provide them with the opportuni support and education they need to succeed both our students and staff bring unique backgrounds beliefs and experiences to our community and this diversity in our community all 68 square miles of it is vital to who we are as here in sc308 board policy especially the board policy that was adopted this year regarding rightful presence calls for us to prioritize a posture of learning as a community um board you know this is something I've been thinking about a lot and how learning how we can learn to embrace the opportunities to reflect on challenges that arise and missteps even we must hold ourselves accountable and we are committed to doing those to doing that and using them as a valuable Lon lessons to guide and toward guide us towards Improvement and growth the work is really about upholding our core values of empathy dignity humanization Integrity courtesy and collaboration these are not easy but yet these are goals and ideals that we must commit to and call ourselves in there's a phrase that I love is call each other in and not push ourselves away we've got to call ourselves in and not push away because sometimes that estrangement makes things worse so um these principles guide us as we strive to make sure every student can succeed in the best educational experience they can have here in our district where they feel not only successful in their academic experiences but where they feel safe and heard and valued and for this for this and many of those reasons we are committed to a particip atory strategic planning process which we introduced at the last public forum and we really also want to make sure that as we're thinking about the allocation of our district funds and resources we are using a master facility planning and the research and the support we have to make thoughtful and really fair and Equitable decisions for our our our resources recently we've received a number of inquiries uh via email and in conversation about private and public Ventures to support District improvements I know the board is extremely receptive to thoughtful projects and opportunities to promote solutions to improving our facility needs our systems unfortunately do not have Limitless capacity um so our board and District team are committed to engaging a methodical and coordinated approach to facility and school improvements phase one of our Master facility plan has begun and building evaluations are underway I know we have Mr Queen here who may mention that more importantly we are committed to a collaborative and strategic approach to assure sustained and ever improving results and with that I conclude my remarks this evening board thank you very much 7.2 student board member reports oh yeah I guess we should forgot about this so I guess I don't conclude my remarks because we have so many exciting things happening in this District I want to invite board members to share some of those exciting news that we always take time to uh celebrate and uh to hear multiple voices so I turn it over to the board I will start thank you uh congratulations Togo East Jr Katie mom who won first place in the diving at the ihsa swim and diving competition this past weekend I know and Addie Miller also finished second in the AWD somebody got to tell me what that mean because it doesn't mean all will drive AWD 100 breast stroke uh breast stroke so congratulations to K Katie and 0 for their and the whole ASO Co-op swim and dive team great job uh as the son of a veteran who served in the big red W um it was a it's awesome it's awesome here every year right but veter on Veterans Day but Veterans Day was full celebration again this year uh song dedication to men and women who have served our country and Inspire students every day my personal favorite is a lot of the schools I know they'll play like the the the song or their you know their um their Anthem if you will for the various branches uh and that's pretty awesome to see as well uh and every school celebrates its own way with thank you letters assemblies guest speakers more um I really applaud the district for what they do to celebrate their veterans and we hope you've had the opportunity to enjoy the video which is linked on our website uh get a sneak peek into so many of the um these memorable celebrations and so um while it's great to honor our veterans on Veterans Day should honor them every day thank you congrats to the ASO East girls cross country team and their coaches on their 24th Place finish at the ihsa state finals congratulations also to our All State athletes from OS uh Carson Cooney foot football 8A All State Sydney haym maker volleyball First Team all state Mia yurkovich volleyball second Team all state Ava Flanigan volleyball All State honorable mention congrats to everyone at last month's Illinois art Education Association Association student show that is a mouthful six of our students were named Student Art ambassadors for K12 art curriculum in Illinois congrats Maxa Milano balleros Caitlyn Russell Jenna Allen and Cheyanne Beasley from asigo high school and Shia love and pton lustr from Oe and their Educators and mentors and I apologize if I mispronounced your name we we are always proud to see one of our core values in action in this case we're talking about collaboration um a recent story highlighted the ongoing partnership between Wolf's Crossing Elementary and bednark Junior High bed nar's family and consumer science one class Carri carried out lesson plans in three of Wolf's Crossing kindergarten and first grade classrooms um and Dr wampy I hope you have their names and you'll be hiring them and get the appropriate time um this was a fun real life educational experience for all involved check out the full story at our website oh nice congratulations to the three students congratulations to the three students from oehs and 18 students from OS who signed their National letters of intent this month the student athletes will continue their academic and athletic Journeys at the Collegiate level all [Applause] right and last eight students were named semifinalists and one named commended in the 2024 2025 National Merit Scholarship Corporation program congratulations to these students for your hard work and academic achievement [Applause] okay now we'll have our student board member reports okay during a coalition a diverse group of students came together to support each other recognizing and valuing the differences each group brings student groups contributed Innovation and fresh ideas environmental groups focus on sustainability and where cultural diversity groups emphasize rightful presence and and respect for different cultures and identities by sharing resources collaborating on projects and celebrating each other's unique contributions we aim to build a strong supportive community Through knowledge and mutual respect additionally we discussed how important relationships are between students and our teachers based on the values through axiology trusting each other each other's well- means showing respect kindness and empathy for example for example honesty helps build trust in relationships while kindness can bring others can make others feel valued appreciated empathy allows us to understand and share the feelings of others leading to more supportive and Care caring interactions by practicing these values teens and really anyone can create a positive and meaningful connection with those around them making their Community a better place for everyone we learned of stories within where we come from by koi Gibney young shin and Wilson and how their Journey throughout their lives shaped their identities and impacted how they see the world we were then given Silhouettes created by Miss Sherry Worster that had each of our various identities available so that we could create our own artistic stories this will help cap uh catapult our amplify Event Event where we amplify student voices this year's theme is claiming our space it takes place on March 30 March 13th at iGo high school at 5:30 p.m.

e e e morning turn are we there she is aif FK present Hil here Nolan here papis here vuli here Gorman here any motion second to approve tonight's agenda second aif yes Fulk yes henil yes Nolan yes papis yes Huli yes Gorman yes motion is carried please join us in reciting the pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the repu for stand one nation under God indivisible withy and jusice for all I like to thanks everybody who came out this evening and those watching at home I'm Dr Morgan yes thank you to everybody that's here tonight and for those coming home I just have a couple things I want to restate also I want to um thank the board uh Friday was actually national board of education a day so I wanted to thank you for your service and for all that you give to our we appreciate that this week actually marks the um American Education week so I'd like to thank all of our staff and employees that uh work here at the district um for all of your due diligence we know that it takes a lot of hard work education is definitely not something that that is shifted over time and definitely not the same as it was even a decade ago so uh some major changes have happened so we definitely appreciate and thank all of our our staff members who uh work here in the district and we're thankful for the work that they do all right before we get into the public comment period i' like to share a statement on behalf of the board to address some concerns we've heard from the community about student matters in general uh District 301 and its board members do not comment publicly on matters involving individual students however the district does take all student matters very seriously when a student matter requires the board's input the board discusses it in closed session at its meetings this is out of respect for the privacy of individual students students and their families and due to student record confidentiality laws when we discuss student matters the safety of all of our students and others in our school and Community is our top priority I'll repeat that one sentence I it hit home with me so when we discuss student matters the safety of all of our students and others in our school and Community is our top priority because the board discusses these matters privately in Clos session that leaves the community hearing only one side of the story without all the appropriate context and at times without all the correct information we understand the community may wish to know more about the details of these matters but for legal reasons and to respect the privacy of individual students the board is not in a position to share more specific details about these cases we value your thoughtful consideration and perspective as you hear about student matters in District 301 while we understand that not all details are always able to be shared your engagement and willingness to approach these situations with an open mind are greatly appreciated we'll go into public comment we have quite a few so if you can keep your comments to 3 minutes at Max it would be appreciated we'll have you come up in the order received so first up is Olivia skirmont good evening I am a resident of through one district and I have two sons that graduated many years ago and I'm here to represent Gavin I've never met him but I feel my thoughts need to be expressed to this board I think it's awful that a child that has gotten a sticker to park in a handicap spot is not allowed to he can park anywhere in the state but not at his own school this is flat out breaking the law and I think you should step up and allow him to park in that spot there's 10 open spots at that school think about the fact how what will his memor be of 301 when he looks back in a few years is it going to be great I don't think so you need to think about this and make the right decision this is not the district I remember my kids going to school to many things have changed but you're flat out breaking the law and Jeff I ask you what if this was your son or daughter what would you do would you fight for that spot so please the community is definitely watching do the right thing his mother was here a month ago nothing changed listen to the taxpayers pay attention stop breaking the law and allow him to park in that spot there's no reason not to please pay attention the community is watching thank you thank [Applause] you all right Ken sh good evening my name is Karen shell my husband Mike and I have been a part of District 301 for the last 11 years we have a senior and a sophomore at the high school and an eighth grader at CMS we've been proud members of District 301 and have actively supported numerous areas within our district my husband and I are here tonight because our family is shocked and ashamed by the way the District administration and School Board are handling the parking situation involving Central High School junior Gavin haggy due to a traumatic brain injury from Sports Gavin has a legally obtained temporary Illinois handicap parking placard which gives him the legal right to park in any handicap spot at any time anywhere in the state of Illinois Burlington Central School is not exemp from this legality Gavin does not need the district's permission to park in a handicap spot at CHS the handicapped placard is the permission granted by the state continuing to deny him proper parking is just cruel what Gavin and his family do need from this Administration is to step aside and simply offer kindness compassion Grace and empathy Gavin is a 16-year-old Young man whose High School Journey has been completely uprooted no fault of his own and this Administration is making it significantly worse due to his medical condition he cannot play with his high school soccer team a sport that he has played and loved for 13 years he has not been able to attend many social events that students look forward to and enjoy as they create longlasting fun High School memories he's had to take online and summer courses to keep up with credits needed for graduation which has caused him to miss out on the critical component of traditional in-person learning and let's not forget during all of these changes he's suffering daily from concussion symptoms including but not limited to intense and prolonged headaches and severe sensitivity to sound and light this young man has handled and responded to all of these challenges with maturity resilience and perseverance this Administration has chosen to respond to Gavin brain injury and legal parking protection with continued parking spot denial threats of punishment creation of a disciplinary report for parking violations causing Gavin stress anxiety and embarrassment this district is also forcing the hand of this family to pursue expensive and timeconsuming legal battles to ensure that Gavin's legal rights are protected and upheld as they should the mission of 301 is Engage The Mind Empower all Inspire Excellence influence the world how does the district's conduct towards Gavin achieve any part of our mission simply put it does not the response by this Administration is wrong it's immoral and it is illegal please do the right thing follow the law and treat Gavin haggy and his family with respect and dignity in a way that fulfills this District's Public mission statement doing so will make our community and future 301 families proud to be a part of this District thank [Applause] you thanks Karen next up is uh Debbie fringle good evening I'd like to start by also saying thank you to the board and to the staff for all that you do for the community it's very important and president Gorman I really appreciate the statement that you started with my name is Debbie franel and I'm mom to two District students and honored to be a friend of the Hai family in today's world we often see opposing sides of an issue stick to their position without ever really listening to the point of view of the other I believe it is important to seek to understand why someone maintains that point of view and start with an assumption that everyone is seeking what they believe to be best however I hardpressed to understand how there are opposing sides in the case of Gavin haggy how is there any reason for denying Gavin his legal right to park in a handicap space on the 301 campus he has legally obtained his placard and he has demonstrated good faith in his continuing commitment to excelling at his schoolwork he's being discriminated against and punished during a time that was already hard enough for him and his family that discrimination and Punishment coming from this Administration whose primary goal should be to protect the children in 301 as you stated is an insult not only to Gavin and the Haggen and the hay family but to everyone in the district spending taxpayer dollars to fight against him creates significant badwi for the administration and lack of trust in the district it's seeming to allow ego Pride to win out over doing what is legal required and right it is incumbent upon this board to take measures to stop this Behavior immediately to issue Gavin his parking pass and to take action against the behavior exhibited by the administration thank [Applause] you thanks debie Jean Meyer I may have left the potatoes on the stove I hope my house isn't burnt Jean Meyer resident I hear that our school has enough lawsuits that are possibly going against it at this time but when a student such as this gabin is recovering from a brain injury his doctor statement that he needs to drive to school and has a handicap placard the school I believe is risking a lawsuit and it's going to be the taxpayers that is paying for that so it's not the job of the school to determine what an injured student needs it's between him and his doctor no matter what we think and as to the proposed ta tax ly I say no no wonder our school operating fund can pull off such amazing feats I've always wondered to fund a 20 classroom addition to our high school or fund a new high school's additional needs above and beyond what the referendum would pay before two months ago a school board member in referring to the possibility of a new high school said it would help students meet their dreams Chicago spends $30,000 a student with that idea in mind with some schools not even a single student meets the state standards it has become the American way to pour more and more money into failing things that aren't going to change because of money time to evaluate and look to our past when we were a country of rugged individuals who did not expect the government to raise their children or subsidize them in any way hard work and doing without was the way towards Prosperity my father was born in 1917 a poor Oklahoma Farm Boy often only he said often he only had potatoes to eat and sometimes not even enough potatoes he finished high school in his 30s and had many hours past his Masters when he decided that at least for him his doctor's degree would just be piled higher and deeper so he quit um but he gave me two books that he had collected during his childhood just two um those books lack the shine the color the bells and the whistles of the many many books our young people have today human nature is so perverse it often requires having less and working hard to make a person want to reach the heights having too much is usually not very good for us plentiful food leads to school children throwing away their entire lunch hunger would remedy that I smile remembering my friends much beloved adopted boys from Haiti when they ate my chicken they gnawed the cartilage off the bone and they were in this neat little order with nothing left to eat um and even after they had plenty of food they continue to eat that way so our young people need the bounty to buy homes and have jobs when they get done and every level of government is bankrupting them so I would ask you to consider trying to keep taxes down thank you [Applause] thanks Jean Katy petkovich good evening my name is Katie petkovich and I'm here to address the concerning issue regarding the district's refusal to let Gavin heggy the student who has been provided with a handicap placard in compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act to park at Central High School the district is denying Gavin's right to park in a handicap spot a right that is explicitly protected under federal law Gavin's legal Illinois issued handicap parking Placer allows him to park in any handicap spot in the entire state of Illinois well this with the exception of his own high school which seems pretty ridiculous how does a school district's parking Lottery system outrank an Illinois issued handicap placard the fact that you are IL legally preventing him from parking in a spot that would allow him some Grace and some ease to navigate his injury is unjustifiable the additional fact that 30 new parking passes were just given out last week to Juniors at the high school and that Gavin was not one of the students to receive one is absolutely absurd to me why we would not make this situation right when there was such a simple way to do so is beyond me I am honestly dumbfounded by the fact that you are not working together with the py family in order to ensure that Gavin is supported and given every opportunity to attend school we are in fact talking about a junior in high school who wants to be at school right I think that's so important he wants to be at school he wants to be able to attend his classes to see his peers to have lunch with his friends and to have a high school experience like everyone else if you even knew Gavin you would know he is smart dedicated and a hardworking student who would never break any rules or try to take advantage of the system and if you really knew him you would know how devastated this injury is for him and how he is still actively fighting and trying to attend school when he is physically able and your job is to help him do so the hegy family has done everything in their power to support Gavin and to work with medical professionals to help him heal these same medical professionals have stated that Gavin should not be taking the loud busy and overcrowded bus that will exasperate his symptoms these same medical professionals have stated that Gavin has every right to a legal handicap parking placard and that that is a sa safe way for Gavin to travel to and from school as his symptoms allow the hegy family is not asking for anything outlandish just for their son to be able to drive to his own school and park in a legally provided handicap parking space Gavin's experience where he is being denied his right to use his handicapped parking plaque record demonstrates a failure to uphold the values of diversity equity and inclusion the Ada is not just a guideline it's a federal civil rights law By ignoring it the district is showing that its commitment to inclusion is conditional and subjective your job is to support Gavin to help him heal and to make accommodations in line with his 504 plan to ensure that he has access to his education please do more today than simply listen and Nod your heads please take action to correct the situation and to support Gavin higgy thanks Katie next up Andy dogen good evening everybody I'm speaking tonight in regard to the item on the agenda for a new agreement for Larson and Darby the district's architectural firm I urge you all to vote no to the agreement before you this evening you will hear some other issues about this agreement tonight from some other commenters but I have separate concerns I wish to bring to your attention for nearly the past 20 years individuals connected to this firm have made what now appear to be questionable decisions that have led to questionable outcomes for our district in particular the new addition to Central High School that was designed to be constructed excuse me of loadbearing masonry added months of construction super Vision time in Winter conditions expenses to the project those expenses that come close to paying the salaries of the special education teachers that have been requested by staff and denied by Administration by the way these missteps combined with a new high school referendum proposal that is now soundly been defeated three times indicate to me that it is time for fresh perspectives and ideas from a firm that serves as the district's architect rather than trying to push through this proposal one more time to a community that has clearly said no to it I urge you all to reject this agreement before you this evening and instead issue a request for qualifications for a new architectural firm that can analyze the data provided in the RSP and Associates enrollment forecast lead Community engagement and develop a master plan indicating multiple alternatives for our future facility needs that can be the basis for future referendum projects to address growth so we can all say yes to something to move forward you'll likely find that there are many qualified educational Arch tchs in the area who have an even greater degree of experience in track record of innovation than your present firm you could invite Larson and Derby to submit their qualifications and compare them against other firms and maybe you would even decide after that process to retain them but at least you will have evaluated your Alternatives and learned what other companies can offer the district the only good thing about the agreement in front of you tonight is that it contains a termination for convenience without cause Clause with no termination fee so if if you approve this agreement tonight and a new board is seated in April that represents the true will of our community that provision for termination very well may be brought forward before the board at that time and tonight I am pleased to announce my candidacy for that board in April again I urge you to reject the agreement before you this evening and issue a request for qualifications for a new architectural firm who will be able to creatively move our district forward with quality Innovative and cost effective facil outcomes for our future so you can return your Collective Focus to what is most important successful outcomes for our students thank you thanks Andy next up michine Walch good evening um I would like to start my comment by acknowledging that the enrollment report has been somewhat restored with more detail details um so thank you for bringing some of that back um unfortunately this month the report that's been changed is the bills payable report we taught the community how to tie back expenses to the budget through GL codes and now the GL codes have been removed from the Bill's payable report after being there for decades we've wasted a total of 9, 36,990 on a referendum that's now failed three times we could have added 40 full-time teachers five sped teachers and elll teachers in every building and still not hit the $9 million Mark and you can't say well that would be a one-time expense because the proposed new high school would have added another 25 to30 million annually to our operating budget we're about to exceed the 5% tax cap for the third year in a row we've spent over $18 million from our operational budget over the last two years on capital projects that should have been funded with referendum funds municipal bonds or District fund surpluses 200 students denied a small engines class without justification nor approval of this board to remove it a journalism class in school newspaper canel for years without so much as a discussion by this board the worst teacher retention rate in Kane County over the past decade that no amount of memor writing can justify and now we're locking horns with a family of one of our own students Gavin haggy a student being denied the ability to park in a handicap spot presumably because we think our parking pass policy supersedes federal law for yet after releasing 30 additional parking passes this past Friday not one was set aside for Gavin to accommodate his needs staying on this path will result in a lawsuit we will not win that will be fought with our tax dollars for a fight we should not be fighting not to mention why are we putting a District student through so much hassle here when we should be rising up to help support him in every way possible if you're willing to do this to Gavin with a federally protected right to park in a handicap spot what else is happening to our students that don't have the cover of the Americans with Disabilities act on a different note tonight you're being asked as Andy mentioned to approve a new contract for lson and Darby the community is still waiting to see the executed $4.2 million phase fee agreement against which Larson and Darby build their work for the new proposed high school they performed the work throughout fiscal year 2023 and were paid with a check dated 9823 the same date the fiscal year 20124 budget was approved in the same meeting where they unveiled their detailed architectural plans for the high school this work was done outside the scope of their Master agreement and an addendum should have been brought before this board and approved by vote prior to any work being performed where is that agreement why was it not discussed in an open board meeting before the public who signed it and when you can't put $4 million in a line item in the budget and Skip these other processes we have everything it takes to be the top school district in Kane County and our inability to achieve that distinction is a direct result of poor leadership a lack of Direction and most importantly no governance by our board that changes effective April 1st 2025 where I am confident our community is going to vote a new board of education in that will bring the change that is so needed here to write this ship my name will be on that ballot as a candidate for seat on our Board of Education and if I am lucky enough to earn the votes from our community I look forward to ushering in a new chapter for our district together with our school community and the community at Large [Applause] thanks M uh next up um Miss martiners good evening my name is grac Martinez and I am here today as a president of District 301 a bilingual educator in District u46 a proud Mexican and some excuse me and someone who intimately understands the struggles and triumphs of both our immigrant community and our teaching Community I once was an undocumented immigrant in this country and my journey has given me a deep understanding of resilience determination and the transformative power of Education I hold a bachelor's degree in Spanish business and translation a master's degree in secondary education with an endorsement in ESL and bilingual and I am currently pursuing my doctorate degree in education with my desertation focusing in the struggles of third culture kids I work in District u46 a district that is often criticized unfairly sometimes by the very board present to me usually by people who don't truly understand the complexities yes u46 has its own set of troubles it is not perfect but what we don't have are the blatant systematic and discriminatory issues that plague our district under its current leadership it is a shame that 301 with all its potential has allowed these inequities to go unchecked as someone who works in education every day I know firsthand the barriers our children's face especially those from immigrant and bilingual families I also clearly understand the challenges our teachers and staff face managing students classroom expectations IEPs 504s deficiencies in our curriculum workload and case loads I understand understand the struggles to meet the expectations of administration while making sure I take care of my students representation matters leadership matters our district deserves leaders who will hold every individual accountable regardless of title we deserve leaders who prioritize transparency integrity and the needs of every student over agendas we deserve leaders who will fight for every student regardless of regardless of race language and socioeconomic background because every student deserve the opportunity to succeed to my fellow community members this is our fight this is our time to demand better for our children it is time to elect leaders who are not afraid to call out wrongdoings who will stand for what is right and who will ensure that our school district reflects a community of Excellence a community that is collaborative where fear has has no place among the students the families the teachers and staff I am announcing my candidacy for District 301 Board of Education because it is painfully clear that this District's leaderships especially under the current superintendent has failed our students especially Gavin and his family I bring to this board my life experience as someone who has walked in the shoes of the very teachers students and families who are too often dismissed in these meetings I am running because I believe in this community and I will not stand by why all children's Futures are compromised by leaderships gracias thank you next up M Larson sor I did want to mention um initially I'm not associated or related to the Larson and Derby group that you guys are talking about so um I've been a resident here it just marked 20 years on Friday that my husband and I moved back in the district we both graduated from Central a few years ago um but we're we're back and we love the district and we've gotten to know a lot of people over the years and the referendum you know that has been on the the ballot the last three times has brought out a lot of conversation from people that I know a lot of people that I don't know and I just really sense that there's a a lack of trust because we built a brand new Fieldhouse added um classrooms changed the comments all this just recently and now all of a sudden it it seems very sudden that it's not going to be enough we've heard that the building was designed that a third floor could be added but there's some push back on that um I personally am very happy that there have been community members here that um or in the area that have done a lot of groundwork on their own to come up with facts that we wouldn't be aware of otherwise and they put a lot of time into it um I I hate to see the us against them that is going on right now I would hope that that would lessen over time but um the community is just really not on board with this new school right on the heels of building a brand new Fieldhouse and um having land in the area my husband and asked um Dr Stern quite a few years ago when they were talking about the the parking issue well what about the land to the West you know that is sitting there he said well that can't be built on it's not suitable and um I don't know if anybody else has been to Florida but you know there's 40 story condos on the beach in Florida so I think there's Engineers that could figure out how to build a parking lot on some low land in King County um so we there just seems to be a a disconnection with what we know what we don't know what we're being told um I don't know if there's a a public site that people can go on and really see this laid out in a very neutral way of you know just the numbers just the facts the people that are involved and and what the processes because you know you hear little bits and pieces here and there and from people you know from um things on social media and it it's hard to get it all really gelled in your mind so um the people I know or and the people I don't know we do love this community and you know we're spread out a lot a lot of us live out in the sticks here a lot of them live in Elgen now so there's they're such a mix of people and that's great you know that's you know I'm from Elgen originally I I grew up in u46 schools and and moved out here when I was in high school so um you know it seems like we have the best of both worlds you know some peace and quiet but all the conveniences of town but um just from my point of view it would um I I really do hope that there can be some resolutions and that the people are heard for what their concerns are and that there's there's just a lack of trust and it's not personally against you know the board as a whole or maybe it is for some people but I don't think anybody wants to go into it with that that you know that they're just going to automatically assume that somebody else is wrong because they don't like the solution that's being offered you know so thank you for your time very much thanks l chrisy hi my name is chrisy and I currently have three children attending schools in the district and a toddler who will be attending in the coming years I came tonight to show my support for Gavin his family and all handicapped people I'm very sensitive to handicap needs and rights as I have a sister-in-law and my mom who are both wheelchair bound when I became aware of this situation through social media I was immediately outraged and so disheartened I do not understand why this student is not being allowed to park in a handicapped spot with his medically necessary obtained handicap placard I'm aware that he was not a student that was given a parking pass through the lottering lottery system but why should that matter a legally obtained handicap tag should supersede that he is not taking away a parking spot from another student who has a pass I can only imagine what this poor student and his family have been going through it is so very disappointing to hear of the people of authority and our district not supporting a student not doing what's best for them not trying to help frankly it makes me concerned for every single student in our district while I do not know Gavin personally what I do know is What's Happening Here is wrong legally ethically and morally please do the right thing something every single parent teaches their children to do do the right thing thank you thanks Christie uh Virginia Romano hi there good evening thanks for letting me speak um I haven't really followed the situation with the student and all that but I don't know from from my perspective he's he's got a legally obtained placard and end of story so um anyway uh the main thing I wanted to talk about was this truth and Taxation um I don't know how you guys can think you can keep giving it to us you know it's just it it just boggles my mind the um the even the county now has been emboldened to um create tax levies that they haven't done for years and even the forest preserve and what there were three well the school referendum there was a library referendum the forest preserve wanted more money from us and then next year in April the County's going to want um a 3/4% new sales tax that's supposedly going for Public Safety but I've got word that it's going elsewhere so anyway um you know one's enough enough and then you you guys are asking for like way more than then you really I I just don't get it you're people's taxes have increased double digits property taxes everything's increased I get it you know even school you know you got expenses too but to actually go above and beyond your you know to have a to have a hearing is kind of a little especially when you've been able to take money from from your coffers to put 20 thou million dollar into an addition and different things like that um and also I hope that you'll listen to the taxpayers the the taxpayers that are west of 47 are pretty fed up with things I don't know if you figured that out but um I know Burlington Township for sure had about an 86% turnout um as 67% of them all voted no for any kind of tax increase they voted a resounding no for the school um so I don't know the definition the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and getting trying to get different results and when will you realize that money doesn't really grow on trees [Applause] thanks thanks for J next up cure grav good evening as Jeff mentioned my name is Cara grait and I've been teaching special educations district for 20 years and I'm one of those Gravely impacted by the fact that the district chose not to hire more sped staff I have the highest class list in my afternoon than I've ever had along with my colleagues we have been speaking to you about hiring new staff for months now and yet it doesn't go on the public agenda but you'll put foas on there and Foya fees do you how insulting that is I understand that someone might be overworked and overwhelmed so you're looking to HRI what about your sped staff what about the students in this District what about your teachers when are we going to do the right thing we appreciate that recently one of your board members came to the workload committee it's something in the contract it has equal representation of the district and teachers and at that meeting they heard firsthand that we have the lowest morale we've had in years we cannot keep sped teachers in here we either burn them out and fire them or they burn out on their own and they quit when are we going to stop this pattern it I cannot tell you how frustrating it is when I was sitting here last month and heard that you had four your fees on the agenda but not sped these are our students in here we're telling you that we cannot meet the needs of these students because we are not properly staffed we need more staff this isn't hard it should be an easy fix you don't have to negotiate this you have the right to post these jobs tomorrow to make sure that the needs of our students are being met and that your teachers aren't overwhelmed and overworked I had student start today I love all my students but I'm only one person within a given confines of what my contract is and I will never be able to do that within that day you guys have got to make you're the board it's your decision to make this right for our students for our teachers and for the community we have to do something we have to change it now thank you thanks Kier Dave uh I'm going to start off just uh by thanking our staff it's American Education uh week um our Educators go above and beyond to meet the needs of our students so I greatly appreciate everything they do um all of us as CA really do appreciate the the commitment that they take on a daily basis so thank you very much um I wasn't planning uh to give a comment on retention this month how however I saw the board packet memo released on Friday uh first thank you for putting on the agenda um this is obviously a really important topic to be discussed um we actually think it should be on the agenda all the time um since it's such a big issue um second to briefly comment on the information and example in the memo all districts have retirees that could impact your retention rate additionally if growth impacts retention rate the same would hold true to districts who are losing enrollment uh like in some districts in the area um all districts follow the same metric for reporting retention and we are consistently the lowest retention rate by far the mental gymnastics need to stop here like we're trying to justify that we're all good but we have so many issues kir has spoken on it so of the community we need to stop this um specifically with retention like we have to stop doing this this game here and ex and make an excuse to justify our low retention rate um we think you as a board can see through this lastly the first step to fixing anything in life is admitting there is a problem we hope the discussion later in this meeting centers around acknowledging retention in this district is not only a concern but a major roadblock to the success of this district from there we can work toward correcting this issue and developing solutions for the betterment of the students staff and Community CA has already offered countless Solutions and will continue to do so but we are always willing to sit down with each and every one of you to collaboratively create a plan of action to resolve this we are here to work with you we hope you're willing to do the same thank [Applause] you thanks Dave uh Julie woo good evening I want to say thank you for your time thank you for volunteering for the positions that you hold um and helping our district be the best that it can be um as mentioned my name is Julie woo I've been living with the within the boundaries of this District since 2014 I'm a parent to a middle schooler in an elementary age child I am also a pediatric occupational therapist with 21 years of experience in both the clinic setting and the school setting in the Elgen area uh awareness inclusion and rights for all of very important to me we have heard the emotional plea as well as factual evidence from Gavin's family and and fellow community members in support of why he has a right to drive to school and Park using his ADA Compliant handicap placard this situation should easily be resolved by looking at objective facts to qualify for a 504 plan a child must have a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activity accommodations that may be suggested may be related to seating time technology curriculum environment instruction presentation other and him being allowed to drive to school use his handicap placard Falls within those guidelines of accommodations I've heard some illusion to safety student safety not being able to discuss the issues regarding to a specific student and while I I certainly understand those boundaries and um it is important to make our community aware of what guidelines and what um what objectives we're looking at in this situation because it's making a lot of people feel very emotional in this pos position um as I've mentioned um this situation should be resolved by looking at the factual evidence to obtain a handicap placard the person with a disability must have a valid Illinois driver's license their physician must certify that they meet the criteria as outlined on the certification form so there his physician has certified that he is safe to drive to school and use the handicap placard our district up on the walls we see are Inspire Excellence influence the world Engage The mind so please Empower Gavin to be the learner that he wants to be thanks Julie move on to action reports any Motion in second to discuss and approve the consent agenda so second included um in the board packet is the revenue expenditure reports um revenues are currently at 35.

5 The Benchmark is 430 it also obviously increases as the number of points you can receive on the test increase and 49.4 was the average over the college K Benchmark same idea with math 4935 480 is The Benchmark and our students average 13 Point 13 and 1 12 points above that benchmark so this is looking at again class of 2025 when they were 11th graders taking the SAT if we were to use the College Board benchmarks okay remember the state benchmarks are higher we know that this is using the College Board data um our average score was 5343 The Benchmark is 480 and um that means that our average is above by 54 points and when you look at what the average grow should be 70.9% of our students met or exceeded that growth out of that group of students at cohort of students for math 535.148 and about 50% of our students a little bit over that men met that Benchmark you notice that the College Board Benchmark and the state Benchmark for math are very very similar we also look at the growth between tests so PSAT 89 to 10 about 87% of our students met that growth so what the expectation is for growth between n9th grade and 10th grade tests 87% met that on average and for math the average was 82.7% and then looking at the 10th grade test so growth between sophomore year testing and junior year testing and they're both at the same time of year by the way so again the average score was 5.5 we saw that before for the evidence-based reading and writing 81% of our students met the expected growth math a little bit lower at 4935 the average being 535 for sat put us about 88% so our students are definitely growing on average certainly there are subgroups that we look at there are certain groups of students that are not necessarily all meeting it but we're looking at over 80% of our students meeting it in uh evidence-based reading and writing and math the expected growth between tests the expected growth is the difference of the College Board Benchmark from the 10th grade PSAT to the 11th grade sat yes but we literally go almost score by score so let's say a student 400 they should grow just I'm making this up now I don't have the concordance tables in front of me but like 450 so then all the 400s did they make 450 if they had 410 what should they be 460 you know and we go not necessarily student by student but range by range if that makes sense what the range should be and determine did they meet or not meet and then that 81% for the evidence-based reading and writing and the 88.1% for math is a number students that met so even though we have just like roughly a little over 50% meeting The Benchmark for math you're saying those students who are falling below benmark are still moving up yes they're still growing at a rate that is expected yes and so the College Board gives for each score what the expected range is and those students are meeting or falling within the range exactly so isn't it just surprising that that's not higher for the score that actually matters the SAT compared to the practice ones the percentage does that does that surprise you even if I think that our students by and large take all three test series I'm not sure I understood the question what am I if I look at the act the percent that met exceeded for the actual sat compared to the pre-tests the percentages are the lowest isn't that right my question is like if that's the test that actually matters yeah just curious yeah but again I think that goes back to what percentage of students have the opportunity and finances to take it multiple times and how many people you know is that the one that you've had tutoring but you know I just M I think there's a lot of external factors that really muddy and it's not necessarily their highest score for some students that might be the first time they take it right exactly for other students it's not it's their second maybe even third time they take it was this it'll be a class that had the opportunity to take that review course that we offered yeah okay and we are offering uh act review as well well we're transitioning obviously to act because the test is changing um but um but during resource it's a little bit different than the class was last year but we will be offering review and we're focusing um much of that review on math which is the area where we seem to need to focus which makes sense based on the scores now again it's a different test so we'll have Baseline data next year that's the challenge of all of this right if if we had been using sat consistently for a decade we'd be able to show you class by class are they making expected growth are we improving that Trend or going the other way like all of those things but by changing the test multiple times and format of the test multiple time it just it makes it really difficult for us to tell you based on standardized test data what does this mean about student performance I mean you could look at the numbers you can see what they are we could try to guess what caused those things to change but it's really hard to use that as an academic measure the state even recognizes that it's when you look at our house and what it's buil out built out of it very small portion of that are these scores right um and by the state changing it to a new test this year that test going digital the following year Illinois has put itself in this same kind of cycle data even without the external factors of what colleges and universities are doing around standardized testing it just it's a really hard way for us to rate ourselves year over-year which is why I commend the board for challenging us to put together our own indicators and measures of things that we value that we can track year over-year to see if we're making growth in the areas that are important to the board any other questions for Gina thanks Gina we we ask questions as we go along all right now we're going to shift gears to talk about uh things that support the learning so that that can happen where we talk about our facilities and planning and capital planning and um one of the things that's important to note is that we've had a lot of conversations to get to this point right now with the information that I'm going to provide uh to you and um had had a lot of different conversations at the building level about what are what are your needs in the building and they've done a really good job of of saying hey here's here are things that we want to tackle that uh they have a ongoing list and this is not everything that's on the list right this is uh things that they've prioritized in looking at as well as um having some conversations uh with specifically with jeree and talking about okay what's our what's our process what what have we gone through what have we done in the past and one of the things that that we're shifting a little bit is that we're obviously presenting possible projects tonight right but then we're going to be looking at the financial projections in January to say how much of that is feasible now now that we know what what our projections are we have a better understanding of what our financial picture looks like what does that look like um in the intermediate we're going to be doing work on Gathering bids that we need to uh so that if we can move forward with the different projects we're able to say okay let's go uh we're ready to we're ready to run with that obviously any bids that uh we need to have approval we'll be bringing to the board uh for for such so that is a a different process than than what we have done in the past um some other things that that we've talked about that are are different um is related to how how we've had this structured we've talked about it as capital uh in the totality what we're talking about is both facility and capital planning so facility improvements so I'm going to go and break this down um by building and uh different areas so when we talk about facility maintenance and improvements at each building we're looking at those five things in the building budget that is going to go towards improvements and maintenance uh in total between both buildings it's just over $252,000 and the funding source tried to lay that out for each of these things so you understand where that's coming from uh we're looking at the fiscal year 26 budget is where that funding source is going to come from this is nothing new uh what we did was we had this in our Capital list where really this is a purchase service or repairs type of things that's not really capital in looking at it but we want to make sure and include that when we look at the numbers because that's what you guys have seen for a good number of years then when we move on um and we'll talk specifically about capital projects um we do have two drivered vehicles that we need to replace uh we have already gone through and secured some quotes for these we think that 60,000 is going to be that ballpark um currently right now we're looking at our uh sourcewell has some Cooperative purchasing uh incentives there and so we're looking at that Avenue as well as some fleet pricing so we've we've submitted um an application to get Fleet pricing we're waiting to hear back on that and then we'll be able to see what those prices look like uh once we have that but that is definitely something we have two older driver head vehicles that we're um that we need to replace we've been uh having a lot of repairs and even yet this year uh we continue to have those so we'll be uh planning for that and again that's going to come from the fiscal year 26 Budget moving on to specifically at North the total estimated for these projects is uh just over $35,000 again this would come from the fiscal year 26 budget and these are the different things that they have identified that say hey these are the things the projects the bigger ticket prices that that we want to go and that we want to tackle I want to specifically talk about the garage rooftop uh replacement that's something that has been needing to be addressed for some time but we are also uh going to submit as we're going to talk about next uh the school uh maintenance Grant from ISB so 50,000 of that um will be if you will come off of that it will apply to that so our cost in that project would be $125,000 so um that's that's a grant that we're going to apply for and we'll apply for it every year that we can that is uh it's a pretty straightforward application process and as long as the state has those funds available we're going to go after those go after those funds where is that at what is where is that the garage it's um by the tennis courts yes right right next to the tennis field building to the side okay yep yep and and we're working with white on that on that project um they're they've helped with the the different application uh aspects and the the age and and what needs to be done uh with that specific rooftop replacement so then when we move to South uh we have uh $250,000 is what we're looking at for these three projects again fiscal year 26 budget um these are more furniture flooring uh specifics when you're looking at Aesthetics and and functionality those divider walls much like what we did in here um they they are not working as well uh this will provide a lot more flexibility in those in those spaces as well moving on this is something that we talked about last year um and we actually had uh in our conversation um we had an estimated cost of $600,000 when we actually again working through those um The Cooperative purchasing agreements uh I worked and got three different bids um for these these different projects when I got the first one I was like wait a minute that's I I knew it was going to be I thought it was going to be higher but I didn't think it would be this much higher but that is that's the number uh when we look at it so we're we're confident in that um so we if you remember working uh cash Bond proceeds for athletic improvements we had $600,000 uh set aside for this work you can see that it's at least double that uh you can notice the range because there are that is for to have the floor uh and the surface look exactly like it does right now um but also there are variances in whether you can go over top of it or whether you have to start from scratch and and take it off in demo so you can see there's a a range of of prices that are there so what we are doing this is not in uh when we look at that number it is very off from what we had and what we were planning so what we're looking at doing is uh pushing this back delaying it to Summer of 26 uh and then utilizing our fiscal year 27 budget numbers for that knowing that we need to budget for and plan for uh plan for that project is it going to be okay to do that well we can make it we can make it work for a another year is there any repairs that you can do in the meantime or there's nothing else that we need to to do at this point because isn't it basically pitted is it is what its problem is it it is old it's 20 they're 20 to 25 years old um so yes they are they are BN and and 04 I believe because my daughter there you go yeah there you go um it is it is not we don't feel like it's a a safety hazard in in looking at well that's what I was more concerned about no but it it definitely um it it needs to be addressed and and one of the things I'll I'll say that from um the other the other work if you if we go back to the the beginning one of the things that we had um in this was you can see Fieldhouse painting so we are going to do some work in those spaces to get ready for that so we have Fieldhouse painting that we're going to do in both of those spaces as well as you'll you'll see we're going to work on some lighting uh projects as well so then moving on one of the things that we are uh we are looking at doing um one of the charges that that we heard loud and clear last year was how can we save on our electricity what does that look like so we've been doing a lot of work in and um investigating that to see some options uh so we had um we had some different work done by we work with nania energy um and they did some estimations on some solar work um at both you can see at both the ASC and at t99 part of our challenges are in our buildings we've had the roofs looked at and structurally um we can't just use our our rooftops um so we look to say okay where can we use them um we have a newer roof here um as you know we just had a new addition put on at t99 as well as we replaced the other roof if you remember so we looked at that we have uh both of those projects come in at those figures you can also see that we would have some rebates from ComEd uh totaling just over $47,000 and then that following year we would see some federal investment tax credit uh at just under $187,000 those have paybacks of five and six years so when you look at that um they that is they are 100% um there's no additional electricity or delivery charges that would go in and out of these buildings um so they would be 100% sufficient with the uh with the array that would be placed on top of the roofs um as well as we would have some additional incentives that I've I've noted there we also looked at some different LED uh lighting our pool at North is in dire needs of of getting new Lighting in there uh the bulbs that are are in there and as we go through and and we go to replace them um they they don't make those and as we're going through it is precarious to even get a light bulb changed uh the way that the deck is laid out and where the lights are placed um we need we need to have those lights uh lights replaced and then you can see at both schools um Fieldhouse LED lighting and Stadium LED lighting are things that we're looking at as potential projects uh in total you're looking at just over a million dollars for that um we are working on we have not received yet but a study on that lighting and seeing what the the payback is in those areas that those are large consumption areas uh that the lights are on a lot and so we expect that that the turn uh turnaround and payback is going to be pretty quick on those on those spaces so you'll notice the funding source we shifted gears here this is from the fire prevention and safety funds that's from fund 90 we have funds currently in in fund 90 that we can utilize uh for this project as well as I'm going to talk about Paving uh next and so that is something again that we're working with white on uh in the process that we need to go through um Jer was talking with some colleagues and this is something that is um out there as a as an availability we we studied it we had lots of conversations and this is something that we want to tackle and try and go after as uh something to get these Pro these types of projects um done so that is something that we would utilize white and they would have uh paperwork that they would have to fill out and and we would get submitted additionally in the same vein uh we have some Paving work that needs to be done uh pavers in the in the actual stadium and the Gated area as well as the walkway that's between uh the stadium and the other turfield uh those need to be addressed uh there's some safety concerns there as well as our B bus parking lot uh needs to be milled and resurfaced at South as well as the seal coating thank you seal coating the uh visitor parking lot so we're looking at those things this is a different uh process that you have to do uh we do have to if we go after this path we do have to have a public hearing so we're investigating this further um and if we do that that would be something that we would want want to bring to the December 16th board meeting for a hearing uh to be able to move forward at least to work on these projects and see what that looks like um again remember anytime that we go out for bid we can always deny them we can say you know what we thought we were looking at these as potential it's not something that we are uh going to be taking on but this is these are two Avenues uh that we feel strongly that this would provide us with a great opportunity of the fund 90 do we have money in that fund yes how much do we have in there I'll defer to jury on that around 1.5 million okay so that would cover um not everything but it'll cover a majority we believe it would cover it all it would it would cover these two things those those energy conservation and the paving okay all right yep sorry just why why does Paving require a public meeting it it is something that they that's in isb's uh rules that that's something that you need to do for any of the other areas there's other things that you can use fun 90 funds for but for pavings specifically um I I not exactly sure the exact why but that's what they have in their rules so when we look at the overall of of all of the different uh areas that we we talked about those are the totals um in some for the different areas um one of the things I I laid out a timeline of of what this uh this kind of looks like so right now obviously uh presenting to you guys we're still investigating and solidifying that the funding to pay for these uh projects um we're going to continue to uh go through and prepare any Associated bids that we would need to um and get those going and bring those if that is something after we look at the financial projections in in January we say yes this is something that we can afford and that we can do and we would bring those to the board for approval you can see I also noted on there the December 16th uh public hearing and this uh school code is is stated there um in January is where we would submit that recommended work statement to is and that's what what white would help us uh with doing and then we would uh bring forward and and look at all of the different projects uh and make decisions based off off of our financial projections you can see last month if you remember we presented on the 10-year Health Life Safety um we can wait and delay that and that's what we're planning on doing so we'll look at bringing that back in April if that time frame changes based off of what we what we learn it's not going to be any earlier than that but we may be able to delay it a little bit more we we feel very confident that April is gives us plenty of time to get that paperwork submitted and get that approved uh so that we can move forward with those projects um as well any questions about um any of the different projects or the the funding Travis can you go back one slot I can so I just want to highlight for the board the work that Travis and jury have done to try to get as many of the board's goals accomplished to take care of as many safety projects as we can and to uh work on long-term paybacks on some of these electrical items uh that you know we'll pay year over-year after they're in place and to find a way to fit it into our budget without you know having an impact on our taxpayers um it's been a lot of research and creative working and and looking at a variety of different just budgets and purchasing options for us to get to this point and to bring this plan so uh a lot of time and effort by Travis and jury to get to this point very good work thank you thank you thank you J all right all right I need your magic finger again all right Travis mentioned the school maintenance project Grant application we I know every year I've been here we do this I don't know how long Jer we've done it for a very long time I'll turn it over to Jer to give you the highlights sure um as Travis mentioned we identified the project of the garage at North the roof I should say um um on the garage at North High to have it replaced and so um this Grant application requires board approval first before we can actually submit it just so that ISB knows that the board has committed at least $50,000 to the project so that's all this is it's just a formality just to seek board approval for us to submit the application and go forward with that project sounds good action item this evening any questions for questions pretty straightforward it is all right the next one is Drees as well uh tonight this is a typical we in November we bring the tentative tax levy to the board to review and then we'll come back in December and seek final approval to submit the request to the county in December um right now we have tentative figures on on the uh eav property values um in our area the assessors range it from 8 to 9% increase on eav for existing property new construction right now we don't have all three of the Assessor's new construction figures we have two of the three and it's around 31,000 or 3 31 million right now um but we went ahead and just um increase it up to 50 million just so that we aren't leaving anything on the table um do you have a slide in there showing the proposed extension I do not okay I think it's in the board packet it's in the board packet so as you can just see on this slide that the overall increase uh in the extension is 4.24% that includes The Debt Service it's a small decrease in debt service for next year um so we're under the 5% marking where if we had it at 5% or higher we would have to have a hearing uh we do not anticipated to be over 5% at all uh last year new construction came in at about a half of percent that's kind of what we are predicting for again this year so we'll be well below 5 per.

uh with that I think that concludes our agenda can I get a motion to adjourn so moved second Chris moves Ken seconds all in favor I I all we are adjourned thank you very much thank you all thank you all for your service

does anybody have any questions would you like to discuss any parts of the proposed Levy I think we kind of rehashed all of this out previously so it's not one of the most exciting well and this is like the first installment of the lovey talk as remember right yeah this is like the opening for a and eventually the county will tell us how much we get this is the the guess and check model that the state of Illinois uses yes go high go go high because eventually it'll come in at the correct number yeah we'll bring it back in December and then finally we'll bring it back in April for the final figures all right uh this one is for the board um prepared a couple of slides uh for the resolutions Constitutional Amendment that Ken will represent you at this week at the uh joint conference so every year we have uh the delegate assembly at the um joint conference and obviously it'll be this Saturday uh every district will have a representative and I'm honored to be our representative again which should be awesome and basically we adopt different position statements that reflect the issues which are most pertinent um in the Board of Education around the state as you can see you go to the next slide as you can see um there are six different resolutions which are being recommended to be adopted the first one dual language Prov Ides additional flexibility and allows alternative qualifications such as a seal of Biol Literacy for students to meet the World Language graduation requirement so if you're already fluent in two languages you may be able to opt out of having to take a course so make that easier the other one ebf authorized charter school funding is um uh funding based method where each school district is um basically analyze according to what their needs are so as it is currently the charter schools don't necess have not in the past necessarily been given an equitable portion of the funding and this will make it more equal so that their unique needs can be assessed and taken into the consideration tax Tiff accountability allows that the tax bodies most impacted by tiffs in the specific communities have a voice in approval of the tis you have anything to say about tis oh no I I think most it depends upon the municipality but many are supported uh because it's good for the local communities and economy and then um at the end the those properties that that increment comes back on as new construction and so we're able to capture those funds okay cool cool then fourth face law centralized Agency for EHR review which is the employment history review it streamlines the process and allows for accurate completion of the reviews and a centralized database uh so it's just improving the processes Health Care coverage provides a central Management Service will which will allow more health insurance options for employees while decreasing the cost for school district as we know across the state the resources that some school districts are less than others so this gives them uh more options to sure that all the employees have you know good options to get good coverage and then last polling p is uh if um right now like our high school was closed for the election day and we did have polling here but if your school is not affected by the election day polling and polling is not there and the students are ured to be safe we're it would be a lot o the school district to make the decision whether they honor that as an official designated state holiday or not so it'll be interesting um there also you you know quite a bit about the um election of the officials I didn't I thought you did I ASB yeah oh yeah yeah with those yeah yeah um so they'll have the election on the officials as well I guess yeah which they do every year so and then there there're always interesting um uh potential things that come up which are you know may be not advised to approve one of them which I bring to your attention is a cell phone usage and one of the um districts is recommended that there be a state mandated cell phone policy so the recommendation of of the committee is not to do that and allow that to be um you know customized to each district so so it should be an interesting time and that is about it you got anything else to add Hank it just be if any of the board members felt like uh Ken should go against the ISB resolutions Committee in so these are the ones that they're recommending that are adopted so giving Ken direction if you feel any differently than what the resolution committee recommends here and then the next group are the ones that the resolutions committee is recommending you do not adopt so the the default always is to go in and support the resolutions committee they've spent a lot of time looking into these and making these recommendations to you however on occasion local school boards feel differently than the resolutions committee does so if you feel any differently on these it would be your opportunity to kind of do a straw poll and direct Ken differently than what the resolutions committee is recommended so does the number two the charter school one take funding then away from there are a lot of charter schools in Illinois like no it's not taking funding away it's just making sure that they receive an equ equitable consideration for it yeah but don't you think that that is part of it is they're only giving a certain percentage to Charter Schools where are they going to get that money from money that they give to Public Schools I've got kind of a problem with that yeah I'm not a fan of that I mean I really do I I think public schools are sometimes are having a hard enough time meeting their their own uh needs and I'm not sure p uh charter schools are where we really need to put money Terry I I I would just have you read the the resolution I haven't I so because I'm not sure that that's a proper representation of the resolution oh okay all right well because there is a current funding formula for charter schools and what this is recommending that it would be done is it just go to the evidence-based funding model which is what everyone else is on um that their structure would mirror what our structure exactly so I don't I don't think it's necessarily pulling funds away from our other public school districts okay all right that's fine then I'm and then you have you have the packet that we received I think two board meetings which goes into it probably I just I'm sorry I didn't read it that's okay that's all right we all have busy lives and also remember this isn't any policy changes going to happen this is what your Professional Organization as the school board will work towards accomplishing like this is not state law this is just what is your organization interested in pursuing cool all right so that's the do adopt the Do Not adopt list good that's good uh and anything that the board has reviewed that you'd like Ken to go in opposition of what the resolutions committee has recommended no all right okay that's it for that so uh if you have other individual things you can always talk to can in advance of him going in Saturday morning and voting um Freedom of Information request as always we have received them we respond to them they are listed on our website and can be found just by searching fo you on our website all right consent agenda before the board votes on the consent agenda is there any agenda item a board member would like to pull out of the consent agenda for further discussion hearing none uh can I get a motion for the Board of Education to approve the consent agenda as presented which includes a Personnel report appointment certified leave of absence certified appointment ointment classified B Personnel report retirement certified resignation classified C October Financial Pages d student trip e resolution of statement of completion for health Life Safety Amendment amendment number nine and F acceptance of donation District 99 Education Foundation so moved so I go Chris moves and Ken seconds thank you Chris Espinosa hi Ken Dawson hi cherelle Fuller hi Jenny hagstrom hi Terry pavich hi Cara Caston hi and Don rener hi motion carries a huge thank foundation in that batch of Grant approvals there is a total of $1,970 in Grant approvals for about 10 different projects across uh a so South north and t99 so thank you to the app Foundation yeah thank you on to uh recommendation for Action uh can I get a motion for the Board of Education to approve the school maintenance project Grant application as presented so moved second Terry moves Charelle second thank you Terry pavich I Charelle Fuller I Jenny hagstrom I Cara Caston I Ken Dawson I Chris Espinosa I I motion carries Item B can I get a motion from the Board of Education to approve the tentative 2024 tax levy in the amount of2 12,600 or I'm sorry 112 mil 67,341 as presented so moved second Terry moves Chris Su thank you very much Terry pavage hi Chris Espinosa hi Char Fuller hi Denny hagstrom hi Cara Caston hi Ken Dawson hi and Don Runner hi motion carries Hank any old or new business none Julie for second of visitors are there any slips no sir thank you um Jenny do you have anything to report on lend I do um we had a meeting on October 25th um Bill Foster was a guest at that meeting um and he spoke about some of the federal issues that were impacting school districts um specifically the possibility of eliminating the US Department of Education and um why he thought that was a bad idea um he wanted to note that we use federal funds to effect change um some of that dates back to the Civil Rights era and that the Department of Education is still to some extent the enforcer of the Civil Rights Act in education settings uh they also provide a lot of special education funding um representative Foster also tries to advocate for schools near National laborator districts including like argon and firmalab areas there can be Financial stress that is placed on schools and school districts in those areas um due to different appropriation measures uh so Federal funding can assist with those schools infrastructure improvements as well as all School infrastructure improvements even smaller things like air conditioning um which can help to attract teachers um to a certain Community or district and uh improve productivity both students and teachers um so he you know just wanted to reiterate also that federal funds promote initiatives for safe schools and anti-bullying and mental health initiatives uh stem funding for girls and under representative minorities and AI um and then we kind of shifted into the regular meeting uh we discussed some Title One and title 3 funds and bus driver qualifications um there's been I guess kind of a kind of a trend of school districts supporting bus drivers and getting their CDL licenses for employment to you know work for the schools and then one result is that districts are seeing those employees leave for other jobs where they can use those CDL licenses um for example city bus drivers or other things so there was talk of exploring kind of a school bus driver specific license um so that schools wouldn't be paying for people to get their CDL licenses and then leave the district for other employment um and then we discuss the upcoming breakfast which will be Saturday at the conference um that will be kind of that will take the place of the November meeting and there's no December meeting so we will resume in January of 2025 thank you Jenny Chris any update on it sasset not for my end I think our next meeting is uh somewhere in January yeah and we're really working on facility studies for sassin yeah because the will be the focus of that conversation I believe Terry any update from uh Foundation no we're meeting Wednesday okay can all skip you CU I think we got an update from you and we're all looking forward to the uh conference this weekend great networking opportunity for all of us and lots of workshops and panels and hopefully we'll bring even more best practices back to our district yes um Charelle any update from the downers grow plan commission I did not make the November 4th meeting however they do there's two new planning Commissioners RL and Lincoln who been welcomed to the commission and then um I'll follow up with um any information from the pet on November 4 okay thank you for the public uh the next upcoming board meetings I'm sorry Hank did you want to we're recommending canceling the December 2nd uh board meeting like uh the agenda items that we have for December we can sufficiently cover those on the December 16th meeting and we know four board members and for the public that December 2nd meeting is the Monday night following the Thanksgiving recess um so we feel like it just better in everybody's world to skip that one uh I think we had one agenda item that was non-pressing we'll just move that to the 16th and have one meeting in December that's fine okay so then the next uh board meeting will be the December 16th 2024 regular business meeting here at the ASC at 6:30 p.m.

I know the swim they they can relate 5:00 a.m. 6 days a week since June you know training crazy workouts you know and it's just um it's just the uh manifestation of hard work basically and obviously they're talented but they do work hard and I don't people don't realize how hard it is to win a state championship whatever level you are it's so hard um but our girls dominated they were winning meets by like invitationals by 100 points um the only loss they had was to nyatt out of Colorado and they were ranked eighth in the nation and that was at a meet on that toga Sticks golf course in williamsfield and power and um they were second that's the highest finish any Arizona school has ever finished so pretty pretty impressive then the guys were ranked eighth uh before the season started and didn't get a lot of attention you know they kind of ignored uh little bit of Instagram uh nastiness that we ignored but um you know it just fueled the fire and at State Mountain View who we get along with great guys and the great coaching uh they were beating us at the beginning of the Season by 30 then 20 and then we got to sectionals and it was eight points and so we're like okay well you know you know State meets the time to do it well our guys beat Mountain View by 38 points now Hamilton won but our boys beat you know H by Mountain View with quite a few points so it was pretty special and with the when cross country you one through five score sixth and seventh are like displacers so our boys one through five the Gap was 32 seconds that's really close so the closer you are to your number one Runner the better you're going to score the better you're going to be the girls was a minute five which is still very good and um the girls average 605 pace for all seven girls and the boys average 5 minutes and 19 seconds per mile and the course at state is very hilly and we run hilly courses we don't get ranked very well because I run coach Hall and I we go to these courses that are hilly because It prepares us for State because that's our goal and so you know we get kind of go under the radar we try and uh but anyway it's been it's been incredible uh the last few years at Highland if you would have told me after Co we'd be winning state championship I would said you're crazy but it's happened and it's just because these kids they're dedicated and they just give it their all so appreciate appreciate you guys thank you coach uh any predictions for next year I'm retiring so I don't know but coach Hall sticking around and her and I work together she coaches the girls and I coach the guys but we work together and she's going to hang on we got got some people in the wings we're talking to that will be a good fit for her and their kids and U so we're working on them well well I I asked that question to see if he would actually say that out loud that he's retiring my wife's in the back on you're reti you're going to I was I wasn't I I'm not here to wreck a marriage that's for sure buddy well and and it's important that we recognize everything that you've done how many years well 27 at Highland 36 total so give him a hand coach it is an honor to to honor you honor your your student athletes we know that when it comes to Athletics it it just doesn't take Superior athletes it takes Superior coaching and we just want to thank you guys for putting forth all the effort and you guys for definitely making your coaches look good right this is what it's about this is what team is about this is what uh making uh good decisions in your life is all about and this is what it leads to so just on behalf of myself the governing board and the rest of Gilbert Public Schools congratulations to you congratulations to our boys and girls and we look forward to seeing you back up here next year give them one more hand thank you if you guys want to shake hands that'd be great just kind of turn [Applause] and there you go to Tennessee for mons I appreciate you [Music] man set up and we'll we'll uh form in around you can we all fit Nock they're pretty [Laughter] narrow that's what I look like and I three no no no I'm going to stand by jail I'm going to stand by jail yeah we're good we're good no I've got it I've got it yeah I tried to you guys are we good ladies and gentlemen Highland High cross [Applause] country governing board members that concludes my recognitions for this evening thank you you guys don't have to stay here just somebody said someone's buying ice cream over here I don't know who it was well thank you so much and congratulations again great work to those students and their coaches Dr McCord um now it's the superintendent report 4.01 yes thank you Miss Woods governing board members uh just some announcements here um a huge thank you to the Gilbert Public School Community for passing our override and authorizing the sale of pieces of property owned by Gilbert public schools and a huge thank you to our pack for and other community members who took the time to educate the community about all the great things that occur in Gilbert public schools and how we are excellent caretakers of our taxpayers money we're blessed to live in a community that truly values public education also congratulations to Blake Robison Shaina Murray and Jesse Brainard for being elected to the governing board for Gilbert Public Schools the Maricopa County Superintendent will swear in each board member before our first meeting and their first meeting starts the beginning of January we look forward to working with you as we serve the students staff and community of GPS hey guess what this Saturday is the Gilbert Days parade and if you know me you know I love a good parade and our job is to make sure that we have all 39 of our schools repres presented in this and we will have that and three of our marching bands will be there uh a big thank you to GCA they are the ones uh constructing the float this year and the theme for this year is decades and so each section of our students and our schools will be dressed up in some specific decade and I hear the float is going to be phenomenal so thank you to them if you're looking for a good time and you want to watch uh 39 of our schools March down the street um come on Saturday I don't know if you know but the parade started over 40 years ago as a celebration of the paving of Gilbert Road and so thank goodness it's still paved today but again come on out and celebrate last Wednesday we had uh celebrated individuals who have made a difference in the lives of those associated with Gilbert public schools and in our community at the annual community excellence awards this year's recipients were for the Walter J Dei educator of the year for elementary Harry Webb of Ashlin Ranch and the Walter J Dei secondary educator of the year went to Mr Austin McIntosh from Camp overie the Sharon or support staff of the Year award went to Mr Troy seamster in our warehouse and the Sheila U jetti volunteer of the year went to miss China jet Tina Jud from mosquit elementary Tina puts on fabulous plays and does countless hours of volunteerism over at mosquite and so uh we wanted to make sure we honored all of them we are very thankful for them and all they do for Gilbert public schools and our students and lastly next week is Thanksgiving and it's an excellent time to reflect on the family and friends who make our lives complete we're blessed to live work and learn in a community like Gilbert and East Mesa our students families teachers support staff and administrators form a cohesive bond that is better for our community and I hope everyone realizes how lucky we are are I know I do and I sincerely hope everyone eats a little too much takes an extra nap and let's go of things that bug you and celebrate the great things that this life has to offer I hope everyone has a safe and enjoyable Thanksgiving and Miss Woods that concludes my report for this evening thank you Dr McCord we appreciate that oh one last thing oh yes sorry ladies stand up you too so we have some representatives from our superintendent student Senate Leila Josie and Holly Fox they are part of our uh superintendent Senate and they are phenomenal from Gilbert High School correct uh please give them a hand and thank them for being here thank you [Applause] guys thank you Dr McCord that will take us to request to speak to the governing board and we have two requests here tonight I will read the admonition request to speak to the governing board pursuant to ARS 38-43 1.02 the governing board may make an open call to the public during a public meeting subject to reasonable time place and manner restrictions to allow individuals to address the public body on any issue within the jurisdiction of the public body after an open call to the public individual board members May respond to criticism made by those who have addressed the governing board may ask staff to review a matter or may ask that a matter be put on a future agenda however members of the governing board shall only discuss or take legal action on the issues raised during an open call to the public if the matters are properly noticed for discussion and legal action during an open call the governing board requests that speakers refrain from voicing complaints against School Personnel or anyone connected to the district as it may impact due process rights please contact the office of talent management if you have specific concerns about any individual employee and we have Bridget Vega first thank you for coming tonight to speak to us you have 3 minutes oh pardon me so you're Are You Bridget yeah okay Bridget okay thanks Bethany is gonna speak she was she ended up parking and did make it okay great we'll start with You Bridget you'll have three minutes um and you'll see a timer go off on these things to let you know thank you teen violence in schools is a critical issue that affects student safety the well-being of a child but it also impacts their ability to learn in a safe environment it can manifest in various forms including bullying physical fights drug or alcohol abuse suicidal ideation and more severe incidents like shootings as children are looking for a place of belonging being seen and heard addressing this problem requires a multifaceted programs schools we need you to implement the programs that can promote conflict resolution social emotional learning and anti-bullying and drug abuse initiatives these programs can help the students develop better interpersonal skills and reduce aggression also mental health support is important it can help provide not only resources but identify the at risk students and offer them support clear policies are needed to be enforced not only on violence but bullying along with consistent enforcement it can create and adopt a safer environment for the children schools must engage with Community Town leadership and Community Advocates it's important to engage the parents and the community in order to Foster again a safer environment around the students safety measures we're asking that those be enforced not just physical but also surveillance systems and controlled access to school buildings as they can help deter violence but with the guns on the campuses has increased as well as in as well as current threats adding metal metal detectors is necessary education and awareness must happen by raising awareness about the consequences of violence and promoting a culture of respect transparency of what is going on not only in our communities but within our schools it again will help adopt a safer environment for the children if you see something say something do something taking this effective collaboration amongst Educators parents and law enforcement it is essential to creating a safer environment and nurturing atmosphere for all the students to learn in a productive environment vers in fear or in survival mode I would also like to provide a copy of C usd's uh random drug testing program for drug abuse and alcohol abuse as we see many many students are using the Vapes on campus social media plays a major role in this um as well as kids are just looking again for a place of belonging and it's sad that the validation is coming from a heart on social media so we must take the prevention approach and again fostering and adopting a safe environment for the children so this mostly does talk about um how the students in C USD is mostly athletes but we would like to see this across especially for the at risk kids because we see a lot of kids using the alcohols and drugs thank you so much we appreciate that thanks Dr mord Thank You Bridget next we will have Chrissa Arnold and you'll have three minutes thank you good evening thank you for your time so I want to address the whole social media issue I don't know if you guys are aware but your kids on your high school campuses are being allowed to use social media and their phones in the classroom I know that that policy was implemented at the beginning of the year um I've seen multiple videos from students students have actually um directly told me that teachers have given them permission to use them in the classroom as long as they get them put away prior to an admin walking into the room so just so you guys are aware um and I say that because you guys had another incident on Mosk yesterday I was here four weeks ago talking about the gun incident um and the that was on the campus and then you guys had another threat had a threat against multiple students yesterday just to continue to come in as I have shared before in what happened with my daughter's situation these kids are escalating our boys are not doing well they are mentally not doing well and it is getting more and more violent and as a school district we are asking you to start implementing direct policies and having your admin and your teachers enforce these policies because if kids are not like being told like if they're not having consequences for the boundaries that they are given they will ignore them and they will continue to do their own things over the weekend a teen boy was stabbed and killed in auki they were from rival schools in that area this is the kind of behavior that we are repeatedly seeing the boy that died was only 15 years old I hope that sinks in because this is the reality of what is going on in our community and it needs to be taken seriously or we are going to see more and more kids die thank you thank you very much and finally we have Bethany Brenton Bethany if you'll come to the podium and you'll have three minutes as well thank you thank you hi um this is my first time coming to a Schoolboard meeting um I was here a few weeks ago and I'm here today um as a parent I have a child that attends mosqu high school and it's been really scary uh the last not just the last few weeks but those have been worse um it's scary sending your kid to school now and I grew up in Mesa I went to Mountain View um I remember when Kino Junior High got metal detectors and thinking maybe it was kind of silly or just that needed in that area um my thoughts on metal detectors have completely changed in the last few years I used to not think they were necessary and now I would love to see them in there um I just don't want to get these texts and emails anymore um they're just really scary and it seems like the next one is always a little bit worse um I voted yes on the school funding prop and I would like the school board to air mark some of those funds for the metal detectors I just found out recently that Mesa put in metal detectors all their high schools and I would love to see Gilbert do that for our kids as well um so we can feel safe sending our kids there and my child she talks about these things and it's it's scary for them too that's all thank you thank you very much we appreciate I just want to let you know um we have had um we've had a company come in and do a demonstration for us and we're actively looking at metal detectors for our high schools that makes me feel so so just so you know moving in that direction thank you thank you so much thank you to those who have come to speak to us tonight and also those who sent in online comments on the public online comment periods we appreciate your input and your time that will conclude our request to speak to the governing board tonight that will take us to our reports and we'll have our 6.01 monthly financial report for month ended October 31st 2024 Dr McCord thank you Miss Woods governing board members I will turn this over to Miss Bonnie Betts our associate superintend Atta of Business Services good evening governing board members Mrs wood Dr McCord um this is a fairly short report this evening uh this reflects activity through October 31st 20 2024 um so uh as usual we always share our district operating funds of course there is activity going on in in maintenance and operations as well as um unrestricted Capital but our available balance is staying roughly the same um you'll see that there's a little a little bit more um available balance in unrestricted Capital due to uh an encumbrance of P purchase order encumbrance that was a little bit less than expected so there was an un encumbrance that occurred but you will see um this activity uh stay pretty much the same through the remainder of the year uh one other note um however in unrestricted Capital due to the passage of the override we did uh release the um same amount of unrestricted capital allocations to our schools that they received last year so to date we had only allocated out half of what they received last year so we just allocated out the remainder so we are expecting to see some more activity in unrestricted Capital uh for the next 3 or four months um under the federal grants we just always share this because you can see that our available balance is negative um on the other Federal projects again this is associated with the fact that in our adopted budget we did not anticipate additional revenues when we receive those additional revenues we are able to spend those um but this will be cleared up when we uh bring the revised budget to you the first meeting in February our Enterprise funds as you know you've approved the annual financial report on October 15th and so we've now reflected our beginning balances our beginning cash balances on the Enterprise funds uh that represent the same information that was shared on the annual financial report the beginning balance for nutrition services increased by a little bit over a million dollars and Community School beginning balance increased by a little bit over a 100,000 so you'll see that the AA available balances increased by about those same amounts um providing additional resources for those Enterprises to spend through the remainder of this year and then other funds this is the same sit situation again we're showing beginning balances so these are cash balances uh joint technical education fund did see a lot of um purchase orders being unencumbered so that increased their available beginning balance advanced placement summer Institute also increased slightly um a note about the employee benefit trust it did decrease slightly we did have a payment um basically a repayment of bunnies to the Arizona State Retirement that we were not due of about a half million dollar so therefore the um beginning balance decreased by that about that same amount and then finally our school-based funds um we don't spend a lot of time usually on the school based funds but as is true for the for the other grids that I just shared with you the beginning balances have all changed due to the results of the annual financial report and at this point in time if there are no questions I am through with my report thank you board members are there any questions thank you Miss fetz we really appreciate that thank you that will take us to our consent agenda items 7.01 board members is there a motion for the approval of consent agenda items so moved thank you m paage it's been moved is there second second thank you Miss humph it's been moved and seconded that we approve the consent agenda items as as list all those in favor please vote by saying I I any oppose with nay thank you that passes 30 that will take us to our action items tonight we'll begin with 8.01 2025 2026 course description books for high schools and Junior highs Dr McCord thank you Miss Woods governing board members tonight we bring to you um something we bring to you annually and that is your approval of the course description book um this is something that has uh is a long process uh but a very good process and a lot of people and a lot of stakeholders are involved in this process uh I'd like to turn this over to um Miss Cox Dr Cox to uh our uh director of secondary CIA and she will kind of go over the highlights the changes for both uh high school and Junior High is that correct correct all right Christa good evening governing board Dr McCord we uh right now on the screen you'll just see the cover of the book since it's uh hundreds of pages uh that's what will be presented but I'll just verbally go through some of those summaries uh you'll be able to see um as shared with you the documents have a red strikeout for anything that we were proposing be removed and anything that we are looking to add is reflected in Blue uh print and then um rather than kind of go page by page I'm just going to go ahead and summarize all of the changes within the categories that they apply so to start with the high school book uh organizationally the last few years we have spent quite a bit of time uh making sure that it is currently up toate with uh if it's current statutes or District Vision uh opportunities for all students and so um we've we've done a lot of work and we're really proud of where it's at but it does take uh annual review as Dr McCord had mentioned so we have multiple course description book committee meetings those are comprised of Administrators uh counselors our classified um and certified Master schedulers we have representation from every one of our schools but prior to even engaging in the committee work uh all of our staff are able to make recommendations to their campus lead and then all of those recommendations get brought to the committee so all of our teachers have an opportunity to make recommendations or suggestions and uh we also at the table include our counselors as well so we're we're really pleased uh with the group that comes together uh the expertise and the knowledge that the the group and committee are made of um allows us to produce high quality work for our students and families so within the high school committee um I'll start with that group The organizational changes include reor or I'm sorry reorganizing each section uh to make sure that they flow uh in a meaningful way historically we used to organize by the code but that didn't necessarily put things in alphabetical order by the section and so it might have made sense for the technical person but when we talk about our students and our parents the course code really doesn't mean much to them so we wanted to make sure that within each section uh it's an alphabetical order and make sense to them we also tried to when I mentioned that we align things to our our district uh Improvement plan and our goals if we are saying that we want to encourage all students into the more rigorous pathway we want to make sure that that's what we're putting Forefront and at the beginning of a section as opposed to maybe the easier option we want them to see the more rigorous option and then weigh their options from there with that uh our honors definition we worked together this has been something that has been worked on over the last several years and I think is Revis visited often we've done a lot of work K12 with accelerated schools our giftedness uh gifted programs uh at our Junior High with the GTC and so we wanted to make sure that our honors description was the same no matter what school you go to and that all of the descriptions if it be a prere a course description um or even um additional criteria that it all matched the same description of Honor so you'll see that there's little strikeouts and tweaking in the verbiage when it comes to a lot of your advanced placement your honors and this is true in the Junior High book as well so a lot of uh intentional work done there to make sure that it's in alignment we also when looking at honors and uh Advanced opportunities there were several dual enrollment classes that cgcc which is the college that we um have our largest IGA with we weren't necessarily offering or even putting it in our book that it could be offered because either a campus hasn't proposed it and so we wanted to make sure that there are more opportunities written in the book so that if we do hire a teacher or if a campus does want to provide that opportunity that we're not stuck waiting a year or two for it to be proposed so we did add several which I'll get into in a moment to make sure that they're just in there to be proactive and uh have those opportunities ready for our students we added uh verbage our special education department we noticed in the beginning of the book we had little sections that called out different groups of students if that be the Honors that I just spoke of we revamped the description that outlines what our CTE students look like and so the proposal from our special education department was to have a section that outlined kind of our student services for them and uh again CTE introduction you're going to notice that with a lot of our groups that we made it a point to just be more robust and uh explain a little bit more in detail uh sometimes I think we tend to as educ ators think things make sense cuz it's our world all of the time so we did seek parent and student feedback to make sure that the verbiage that we're using within our book really speaks to our community because that's what the book is for ultimately it's not I mean it is for us it helps us do our job but more importantly it helps our students know of all the opportunities that are there for them throughout the entire book one of The the bigger changes that you can note is that the terminology and accuracy uh we made sure in the past we felt like there was a lot of changes with programs or alignment and this was a a fun year because we were able to look at course descriptions that maybe haven't been revamped in several years so there were some that when we read them were like man that hasn't maybe been true for several years now and so we want our book to truly reflect what we know is happening in there and sometimes that's program changes or college board changes something and so we really tried to be extremely thorough with that and uh make an most of those are more minor changes or maybe a little sentence here and there so uh you'll notice those changes throughout there was also when I talk about the section changes uh one of the changes that you'll notice is that our summer reading in the back of the high school book there's been a section summer reading has been uh around for forever and in our AP classes historically there has been a required AP reading and then when students uh start the school year there's graded assignments what we found over the last several years uh truly postco was that and even with a lot of school choice and open enrollment is if students didn't know about that assignment if they knew about it going into summer they did great they came back they were ready uh but a lot of our students that um joined us after uh the end of the school year maybe in the middle of the summer the start of the year were not prepared for those assignments so our teachers have actually gone away from mandating those assignments and making it more uh exposure and then more thematic and so what we found was that having those listed out was no longer in alignment with the accuracy of what is happening so you'll notice that there is a little paragraph that kind of explains that in the book because ultimately the the purpose of Summer re reading is to expose our students to more literature and just get them reading and loving to read and so a lot of our AP students are doing that already so we are deferring them to where they can find recommended lists from college board and or um where they can find good books to read that are going to help um them do better on their AP exams Dr Cox can we ask a questions okay I meant to ask this earlier too so so where are the lists of approved reading books then going to be so for summer reading specifically and just for the coursework was that just the summer reading ones that we Chang that's just summer reading so all of the approved novels are still listed in that same section to make sure that there okay thank you and thank you I apologize if that was confusing um in addition uh the I'm going to talk about class fees we only have a couple that I'll get to in just a moment but I was excited to share that for junior high and high school our technology fees have all been reduced so Mr costano had uh worked with the company and shared that with me so you'll see that the expense to our our families has uh declined which was nice all right so those are some of the organizational and larger changes that I didn't feel like I needed to hit on every single time you see them um I'm going to move into the new courses and again I'm going to go through them more in uh themes as opposed to every individual one and then each section if there's any questions please uh don't hesitate to ask so the first one in new courses is we are really pleased to announce the addition of an entire CTE program called digital animation this digital animation is a threeyear program that will be offered at multiple high schools and will count towards CTE credit completers and they can get certification through that as well in our uh CTE we also added a new culinary 2 grilling and outdoor cooking course so in year two of culinary uh right now it's like your traditional restaurant style and so uh Highland High has requested this their facilities now can accommodate this and they were looking at being strategic to capture more students and keeping them as completers in CTE and we find that uh sometimes when they drop off after that year one we thought that offering a a grilling and outdoor cooking class would capture an audience that uh is unique and we hope that maybe it will even be a magnet to to draw some students in for that in addition to uh the CTE classes that I Rec I shared we do have two new IB classes that are being added to the growth of Gilbert High School in the world those are IB psychology and an IB film class in the world of uh advanced placement we worked really hard the last few years to add all college board AP classes into our coursebook so that what we are offering uh is comprehensive of all of those classes so to date all of the AP classes that are offered through college board are in our course catalog we are proposing to add the two newest ones that have just been added to college board which are the AP African-American studies and AP business principles um and then in addition to that you'll see that there are several uh essential classes which just a reminder from a couple of years ago these are the special education version of these classes so a lot of them are science and social studies a couple of years ago we did a lot of work with the English and math components we wanted to see how they went we had to remove uh special education and sped codes from the titles um and they've they've been really well done and so we wanted to make sure that we match that in our other core areas for our special education students so that they're being exposed to the same curriculum and standards and not something different uh just because they're in a special education classroom Dr cuck yes a question about the so you said all the AP college board classes are in the coursebook are they actually offered or we just have the potential to offer them if we can find a teacher for it uh um not all of them are offered but I will say that the more we've been intentional to add them our schools have been doing a phenomenal job with using AP potential data which comes from us uh being uh proactive with providing the PSAT nmsqt exam which the board has approved and we have paid for all 10th graders to take that that gives us data that we actually just received this past week and it highlights which AP sections and classes could be capitalized on a campus so for example mosquite High School to year uh last year looked at that data and it showed that there were 189 students that showed potential for AP research at the time they were not an AP Capstone school so they couldn't offer it uh margarite Brown is a rock star and she emailed me that night and was like can I apply for this and the deadline was like 24 hours from then I said let's do it and they got accepted so this current year they have placed over I want to say it's like um 70 something students for their first year with adding that so using that AP potential and having the courses in the book were able to capitalize on offering them but there are a handful that have not made and we track that data um we're not we don't want to force it uh when it organically happens on a campus and there's decisions that they have to make within their schedule but they're at least there if they have a group that's what I thought you were saying I just wanted to make sure that's what I was understanding absolutely thank you so much so that is all the new courses in the change in course credit you'll notice that there are several within the um CTE area we are adding a weighted option to some of our engineering and biomed programs those are extremely rigorous classes we are going to keep the unweighted option because we don't want to intimidate students in not wanting to try the class but if students want a weighted option for that and knowing how rigorous those pathways are for engineering and biomed we wanted to provide an opportunity that if they do some additional lessons through the pltw curriculum that they can then um earn that weighted credit toward their GPA in addition there were um I mentioned it earlier and I won't go into too much unless if you guys want to hear more several classes that we added in that could be offered for dual enrollment that we historically have maybe only offered for AP or haven't and that was with looking through the Community College coursebook to see where we had some alignment so similar to the AP conversation if we get a certified teacher and they have students that have that request they then can now offer it that way and work with the Community College going on to the grade level changes the two changes here we have a couple within our CTE program with the engineering the eligibility requirement from the program kind of dictates when we have to make adjustments so there were a couple that we were given to change there and then the other two changes are to eliminate restrictions for some of our grade levels so for example the engineering designing and development we want to allow for more grade levels to take advantage of that class so opening up more more doors for students to be able to take advantage of these amazing opportunities the next up is the change in course descriptions uh the the first that I would like to talk about is within our science our physics and our earth science class those are two that we are changing descriptions to align to our state standards the science standards through the state are different than any of our core areas we kind of pick and choose they fall so we've worked really hard to have a biochem physics pathway what we have found is a majority of our students have been successful and have done a great job but if a student ends up taking a different science if it doesn't have those standards of the physics or of the chem technically they could be missing some standards and so we we questioned that we did a deep dive and what we found was that our earth science needed to become more of a robust science class so we have increased the rigor the title is now going to be Earth and space science because it's including some of those space standards and it's going to be a more rigorous uh class for the students so that they can if they take that in lie of the camer the physics we know that we are graduating them uh ready to go on to uh what whatever their future holds for them there are several changes to our AP math classes and those are just description changes in alignment with college board and then we when I said that we were were excited to kind of nerd out over some of the descriptions there's several that are within CTE that we just took the time to read make sure that it's truly still accurate to the students um some of them we questioned like if they weren't uh maybe written well like are we inadvertently maybe not selling it to the students knowing what really happens in the classroom so we took the time to do that and then our reading lab class in the junior high and high school book it used to be truly more of a lab where people came in and could be used more of as in intervention we have Rewritten that description to be more standards aligned for students who are minimally proficient in reading so it is more uh true to the reading standards as it is to more of a vague Open Lab moving on we have several course name changes uh they are all in our world language classes we got feedback from the NCAA that our classes that did not have honors on the title were not recognized through the NCAA and so we wanted to be in compliance with that ironically only some of our campuses got that feedback and others were told it was fine so we decided to make the change districtwide so that none of our students get to college and feel like their classes maybe don't count toward what we needed to and uh we were able to get that approved through NCAA as well districtwide change in prerequisites ultimately what we have done is we uh made sure that they are all um set up to allow for vertical alignment and that the class that is required of it is more accurate to that class so for example in math we have AP pre-cal and so the prere prior was a more rigorous class when in reality they just need Algebra 2 so again we just want to make sure that we're not making the prere more difficult because we feel a certain way that if a student really does complete the standards of say Algebra 2 we know that they can be successful they've proven that before and you'll see that there's a few in there for like reasons and then moving on to the change in fees you'll notice that uh these are um all new fees they're not adjustments to fees so the first one is our technical theater program uh over the years they are our only performing arts class that we haven't historically had fees associated with and with the um change in our economy and the cost increasing our Performing Arts teachers really felt that this was an area that they we should be assessing a feed to our students so it's very minimal and it's in alignment with the rest of the performing arts classes and then the two other fees you'll see in there are for the grilling and cooking class and the digital animation program so two new programs in classes and then um with that I mentioned the technology fees are going down yes that's all the fees and then the final uh changes for our high school book that I want to share is just courses to be eliminated so each year one of the things that we have focused on the last few years is our book starts to get very long and cumbersome and we started looking at data so each year we look at the data and if a class hasn't made for three or more years we have a conversation about it and so we are proposing to remove several classes that uh the numbers support that they're not being used but we also talk through so for example um if there's an AP class we kind of decide that's in alignment with our vision we want to keep it um some of them come from a change in requirement so for example our Junior Roc program their Commander sent us updates and so there are classes that we're no longer allowed to offer so all of the classes that are being recommended to be removed Are all uh out of date with a program and or no longer in use in Gilbert Public Schools so for the high school that summarizes all of the changes am I good to move to Junior High or are there any questions for high school I had two questions for high school so when we offer these college board um AP classes um do we get the curriculum through college board when we offer the class or how do we get that curriculum yeah we um they give a recommendation of curriculum and we purchase from the list that they give and and um in addition we they have uh AP classrooms where there's additional resources uh supplemental pieces and things like that so ultimately they're they're recommending the curriculum and then we choose from the list and purchase that from our department okay thank you and then my other question um I just want to say that Dr Cox and I were on the phone for a long time going all over all my questions and I really appreciated it um one that I forgot to ask was about the English language Learners and I noticed that we're um giving them different classes with different types of vocabulary like science learning and so forth is this to help them to keep on track for graduation with their um learning and the standards yes everything within our e part of the course book has not changed all of that is the same those were all changed last year and it is all directly attached to uh what the state requires ultimately to answer um what I believe your question is is with those other core areas that yes those can count toward graduation requirements the state has gone back and forth with the definition of what counts for English but for the others they do count in those core areas okay thank you you're very welcome um just one or maybe a couple questions first of all can adults take the outdoor grilling culinary that sounds amazing um I just had a question about the AP courses that you put into the book that aren't necessarily going to be offered if you do have a couple of students that sign up for that do the counselors work with them to seamlessly get them moved over to a different course that might feel somewhat of the same requirement absolutely and one of the things that Marcy Miss Taylor has put into place is that uh we kind of oversee parts of the scheduling process with our high schools so several years ago what uh Miss Taylor has had us do is we bring our requests in so the students request classes and before they can even move students out like if they only have five for a class and they're like we know we can't make that happen on our campus all of the registration APS now share their data and we then make decisions on okay there might only be five at your campus but maybe there's five at each campus who's willing to host it and then how do we get those students there sometimes that's through our distance learning sometimes that's through accommodating the students schedule if they're upper classmen to to uh or be transported we have come up with very unique ways to accommodate those types of things and what we have found is that um once that interest starts if we can make that happen even for five students on a campus those programs actually take off and after a couple of years they're sustaining them on their campus on their own or it becomes where they're offered at maybe two campuses okay thank you you're very welcome all right moving on to Junior High I am going to skip through on some of the organizational changes that I know um I already hit on some of those are true for the junior high so I'm going to go a little bit quicker uh please don't hesitate to interrupt if you have questions so again a lot of reorganization one of the things that I will say is a little different with the junior high course book is with the committee um historically the process looked very different for our Junior High book so we had a few um master schedulers that there were three of them that kind of ran all things for the junior high and they would make recommendations and so with counselors principles would sign off but we didn't really ever have meetings or an actual committee it was just make the proposals and then they got presented to the board what we found what I have found is The more I've learned about uh the Junior High book is that when you do it that way you don't ever really have anyone cleaning it up so there's stuff that has been really outdated that needed to be looked at and the organization of it started to not make as much sense so we started with a very clear Vision uh and this came from our counselors and our m schedulers we we would not be where we are this has been 2 years in the making last year if you remember when I shared uh I thought I'd be able to accomplish a lot more and we spent like eight hours for multiple days and realized that this is like a two to threee plan and just have to make small improvements but um the group that came together this year we started with the thought that we want our Junior High course book to support and align to what is happening at our high schools so if it doesn't then we might really love a class and really be attached to something but if it's not in alignment to what's happening in our bigger vision of a district and leading to success at the high school then it probably doesn't need to be there and I thought that was going to be more difficult but the more we dove in and held each other to that it it went seamless and I think it was really neat to see everybody kind of consistently on that same page it's not something I've necessarily seen um in a in a while so we started with reorganizing the sections everything I had said earlier about redefining Honors that was true 7 through 12 uh we spent a lot of time there's a page that's been added on supporting the career in college Pathways 712 that was a page that was in the high school book that somebody just had the idea like really if they don't start having those conversations in junior high they're probably a little bit late their nth and 10th grade year so uh our College and Career um coordinator and our new counseling coordinator uh worked on that with our CTE Department to make sure that it truly aligned and that we had all of that mapped out for our families we added the special education verbiage there as well um updated all the terminology and accuracy to be more concise throughout as well uh this book did not have an introduction to the book and we thought that that was an important thing so there's a a paragraph at the very start that just explains what the book is for um let's see are when you get to the elective part of the book there was a lot of conversation and we had to come up with a system for the naming schemes so um if there are minis which are quarter long classes Duos which are your semester classes and year-long classes we wanted all the titles to be uniformed so if there is a mini or a duo or a year-long class and it is just that's the only class and there's no program to it you just do the one and there's nothing else then it's just the title of the class if there is a mini or a Duo um for example use a language class we're going to call it introduction to Spanish because we know then there's a Spanish one and a Spanish 2 so whenever there's a program what happened was we had classes that had very similar titles but it wasn't really clear that it was like a program or kind of a a sequence of classes so you'll notice that that was changed throughout um the book as well and so those are the the overall summary of organizational changes and I'm going to go ahead now and get into the other category stories so the first one is the new courses so the new courses that are being added to the Junior High book include a robotics class currently there's been an advanced robotics that is offered at one campus and other campuses were wanting to add it but didn't feel that their students were maybe to that advanced level so now we'll have a Robotics and an advanced robotics looking at adding an aerospace science class which actually supports and feeds right into the Aerospace program at the high schools uh it is a high school class but they don't earn high school credit for it um we are adding you'll notice that we're removing I'm going to talk about it in a moment the world exploration class historically we had created this class with the uh best intentions that hey they can get a sampling of all the different world languages what we have found when we were monitoring and checking in with teachers is that teachers always seem to gravitate to the content of the language that they feel more comfortable with so really if the teacher has a background in Spanish they were leading leaning toward teaching more Spanish and then trying their best to like expose to French and maybe so what we the feedback in the um suggestion was just to allow for those introductions to the languages that they know that their campus is offering uh it allows it to be more authentic as much as we loved the idea of kind of a sampling of languages uh it wasn't being done consistently um and therefore we had students that maybe were getting one exposure and opportunity at one campus and at another they weren't getting really exposed so we wanted to make sure that there was consistency there for our students if they switched around from schools so at this point you'll have an introduction to Spanish German and French um they're adding a 3D art class to add just some additional art classes and then you'll notice French was in the Junior High book at one point French 1 and two we removed it last year because it hadn't made in four years but now that we've had a push to really promote the high school level languages at the junior highs um Desert Ridge Junior they're working with the high school right there and they want to move forward with bringing that back and French was a one of the languages that we felt was um enrollment was declining a little bit so we just absolutely loved the idea and we are also adding German 1 and two with the junior high level as well there's a campus that is entertaining wants to see how many students they get signed up for it um I think that covers the new classes so a lot of CTE World Language and Fine Arts is the best way to summarize those uh moving on to the change in course description we you'll notice everything that I was saying about uniforming the title so year one year two and intro uh we we had a couple meetings with uh all of our music um and Performing Arts teachers at the Junior High um and high school to make sure that we got feedback and then uh worked with different groups to just make sure that they were aware of the why usually when you talk about changing classes people take it really personal and in their area and their program it sometimes even their justification does make sense but when you look at it from the big picture of all of Gilbert public schools and when parents are looking at this to make things more uniform it makes it more userfriendly and there hasn't been a group that we have changed at this point that we haven't talked with and I feel truly like even if they maybe don't 100% agree they're like we get we get what you're trying to do so we feel like we've done our due diligence there um and now again we did half last year and now we feel we've gotten them all this year year so we're we're kind of happy there and then uh reading lab I discussed how that was changing but one of the things I do want to share with the reading class is that we are also proposing that for our seventh grade students that if they are minimally proficient in reading that they in lie of taking the required PE class that they take a reading class that that's required and if they still want to take PE as their elective absolutely we would encourage that but what we're finding is that our seventh and eth grade students reading scores um are declining and not where we want them to not declining I shouldn't say declining they're not where we want them to be and so at some point we have to take a different approach and and do something to see what we can do to support that we just recently celebrated a lot of amazing School letter grade data and uh Mr berer had um disaggregated the data and came across the fact that our sixth grade ELA reading data is among the highest like in the East Valley and I would even say um within the state and so at the seventh and eighth grade when we see that there's that dip in the data we we have to do something about it and so uh we're working with um a group of people that have a heavy background in reading and um targeting some of those students and so that that's what we think will help we've done a lot of research on that and uh look forward to kind of monitoring that and hoping that that improves our students reading skills and then the last page on here uh includes all of the classes to be removed and the justification how we chose to remove those is exactly the same as the high school so if you are curious about any of those I can speak to them but I don't know that I need to kind of go one by one on those so that concludes the junior high summary may I answer some questions for you guys yes I'll start I on the reading um I'm wondering would that be would that be something where if at the end of a semester they had shown a significant Improvement or something that then they could take PE or a different elective the second semester or is that going to be programmed basically for the whole year right now uh the idea is to program it for the year uh because when I say that we're targeting students that have extremely low reading skills uh we're talking students that unfortunately um are at high risk and their reading skills are showing at a third and fourth grade reading level so um we believe that they need the year of that support however we have a lot of really great diagnostic tools now that if we were to show that a student sometimes there is significant uh Improvement and if we can show that those skills and those gaps lesson in a semester then I think we'd be entertained but I want to make sure that it's supported by data and that the Diagnostics and that the tools that evaluate those reading skills that the student really is ready because we want to be able to capture that and close that Gap in Junior High um before they get school and what what teachers are we thinking like what certification will those teachers have that will teach that yeah we just had a conversation about this so we really want to have uh certified reading Specialists run each of those sections similar to what our elementaries do our elementaries do a really great job with this and it's something that um at secondary it kind of drops off and uh and it shouldn't so we're we're Marcy in her principal meeting just last week we were having conversations with otm and the principles just to start talking about um maybe you have a teacher that has that certification or that you feel would be a good fit um and we're going to have to get going in that direction just to make sure if we if we put them in that I'm I hope that it's I know it will be but just really deliberate and pointed at those skills that are so critical and there may be people at the elementary level that want to come up with reading certifications okay and we I know that that one is uh probably a bigger conversation as well and Marcy and Jared I don't know if you guys want to add to that but um there's been a lot of work and conversations behind the scenes and we have a little I was just telling Mr Ryan we have a little task force uh where we are including our elementary people to try to help lead that because they in my opinion are more of the experts because it's what they were trained to do a lot of our secondary people that wasn't a part of their schooling and they get intimidated by that and so to Dr McCord's Point um it might be advantageous to bring in find right people important to make that a successful class if require that then it needs to be successful and I think what you find out is over time a lot of elementary teachers move up to the junior high rarely do you see high school moving down to the junior high so the odds of somebody having one of those certifications is probably higher at the junior high absolutely that's good any further questions no was that yeah go ahead that was a lot of work and thank you for all of that well I mean looking through that catalog was like okay I know I didn't really enjoy it as a child but all day learning and and getting to take classes I hope our kids appreciate it because it's a a very special time in your life adulting is not as fun as going to school I'll just tell you that all the Thanks goes to the committee they they put in a lot of hours uh I know it's a lot to summarize and go down the list so if there are any questions that come even after this uh don't hesitate to reach out but I just appreciate the board's support so thank you thank you thank you thank you all right board members um this is an action item so I would like to call for a motion to approve 2025 26 course description books for high schools and Junior highs is there a motion so moved thank you Miss humre is there a second second thank you is there any further discussion no okay I I hope parents will take time to read it to to help their kids see the possibilities and really there is a lot there yeah and I I think you worked really hard to make sure that it's concise and in a place where we can off where they can see all that's offered and have those possibilities so yeah and those will be on the on the website that's where you can access them so okay seeing no further discussion I'll call for the vote all those in favor of approving the 2025 26 course description books for high schools and Junior highs please vote by saying I I any oppose with nay thank you that passes 30 we'll now move to 8.02 rate increase to Community Education and preschool programming 2025 2026 Dr McCord thank you Miss Woods governing board members um if you remember at our last work study uh the director of Community Education Mr Rod Houston and the director of early learning Don koberstein presented to you about their programs as well as uh potential rate increases and we said we'd bring those to you tonight those rate increases are uh contained there within boarddocs and they are available if you have any questions let's start with a motion and then during discussion we can ask any questions that we have if that's okay board members is there a motion for 8.02 rate increase to Community Education and preschool programming 2526 so moved thank you Mrs Paige is there second second thank you Miss humre and now for any discussion or questions um I did have one question just about um I think it was the um prechool and then they're going to go to vik and I had a question about the Staffing for that because that will be a bigger range of students in vik than we've had previously with having those preschool kids there so is there someone that wants to talk about that um so one of the things that that we've SE in the past we've had the building blocks where they have stay for an extended low cost it was throwing our number that's why weed to separate it out to keep that that way to keep the the numbers where they need to be so when you drop from a six-year-old down it goes from 1 to 20 to 1 to 13 and then 1 to 12 so that's why we've kind of separated them um is so that we can make sure that we're meeting those and we know who's coming when as opposed to well you can sign up for this but you don't have to tell us you're going to show up and then we're we're Staffing and we don't have those numbers okay all right thank you if I can if I can add to that as well um you'll notice that in the mornings we will be picking up the kiddos at 7:45 while other students go out to the playground our building block students will be picked up by the building block staff and that's for their safety um the other thing is at the end of the day when the rest of the campus would release at 255 p.m.

there is a virtual team mental health parent presentation and we also have a board meeting that evening here in the governing board room and I would be a miss right now if I didn't say happy birthday to the board president Michelle Anderson we can either sing or clap which [Laughter] [Applause] one happy birthday thank you it's great to be 35 okay all right thank you everyone next is the request to speak if we could go ahead and play the video we value input from our constituents this time on our agenda has been set aside for anyone from the audience who wishes to address the board those that wish to speak should have filled out speaker cards which are due prior to the start of our meeting members of the board may not discuss comment or take action on matters raised that are not specifically identified on the agenda therefore pursuant to ARS 38-4 31.0 1i action taken as a result of public comment will be limited to directing staff to study the matter responding to any criticism or scheduling the matter for further consideration and decision at a later date also we ask that audience members practice proper public meeting decorum refraining from either negative or positive responses including clapping or verbal outbursts to ensure fairness to All Points of View those that refuse to follow these rules may be asked to leave in accordance with policy bedh public participation at board meetings if considered necessary the governing board president shall set a time limit on the length of the comment period in order to ensure that each individual has an opportunity to address the board the president may also set a time limit for individual speakers thank you for your cooperation okay first up we have Kathleen Richards just kidding good evening governing board and members of our husd Administration thank you for the opportunity to speak I wanted to take a moment to address with the failure of the override continuance to give a very public shout out to all of our specials teachers I know over the last several weeks many have asked me if I knew what would be coming down the pike should the override continuance not pass many of them have served our community and students long enough to remember the last time an overy did not pass and are very worried for the future it breaks my heart that the community was so sharply divided and by such a small margin the majority leaned into believing the lie that districts should be able to do more with less the reality we will now face is that our families will still bear the brunt of financial gas gaps Supply needs fees and more instead of Distributing the needs across the community over time we will be faced with cuts and increases and that is truly disappointing since it was very clearly avoidable I want to encourage our whole Community as we head into the holiday season to think beyond the obvious value of our general education teachers and be sure to acknowledge the small group of teachers that are guaranteed to work with every single student on an elementary campus these amazing humans provide incredible outlets for our students support the general education lessons that are being taught in classrooms and our schools would not be the same without them I know the board will have some very difficult decisions to be made in the coming months the decisions that get made should value the whole of education and not become too exclusively pigeon hold in the Reading Writing and arithmetic that some choose to hyperfocus on every day our teachers are doing more with less and it is deeply disappointing that we could not come together as a community to at least continue a level of support that we have already committed to giving over the last several years I hope all teachers understand but tonight especially our specials and electives teachers that despite what it may seem both from the Das and our community they are in fact very valued they are appreciated and their impact is felt in our homes and our families every day in the growth that we see in our children we would not be the same without them and we will continue to support them as best we can thank you next is Mindy brocker hi thank you guys I am a parent in this District who has committed myself to trying to make a difference in some small way sometimes it's to use my voice this tends to challenge people and I will continue to challenge people who I believe are acting in an unethical manner one thing that I will continue to speak up about is book challenges there will even there will even be some here today coded on the agenda as ratify payroll and expense vouchers there is a small group of people who have a larger political agenda who will try to insist that they are protecting the children but in fact they're trying to control and remove parent choices using the board but these challenges are ultimately are homophobic and racist at their core allow me to explain in May of this year I was in a bit of a heated exchange with a Facebook account by the name of Tim Lee when I continue to insist that as a parent I am fully capable of deciding if a book is appropriate via permission slip Andor syllabus and I would in fact prefer to be given Broad and challenging literature choices for my children allowing me to parent them as I see fit Tim Lee saw it fit to post the following and I quote Mindy brocker I am not afraid to address this issue directly your actions demonstrate a serious lack of ethical standard it is alarming that you have influenced your child to question their gender identity this raises significant concerns about your mental health and unfortunately your child is suffering as a result I'll be honest I was floored who would talk about my child in such a way who would have the audacity to imply poor ethics to queerness or mental illness to gender identity and what pray tell does this have to do with literature it was only the last couple of months that I learned that it is a Higgly unified board member who is the person behind Tim Lee which made me wonder is this member really willing to as she quoted under her Alias address this issue directly well what she does I want to make it very clear being queer is no more a matter of Ethics than is being a brunette questioning or living in a different gender identity does not make you mentally ill mothers of such Brave and amazing children are not mentally ill nor are they special I'm just a mom who like many of you out there will give every last bit of everything she's got to make sure that her children are happy healthy and loved I want to take a moment before this board to thank teachers at Higley un that stand up tall to defend and protect our students and their educator colleagues no shame to those who cannot this is your livelihood we're talking about but for those of you who do in a million different ways big and small I see you and I treasure you I end this with a call to action to those listening especially those parents who hold so much power it's hard to stand up it's difficult to be vocal against those who are so awful finding pleasure in harming the marginalized but silence is compliance if you see something that isn't okay send an email reach out to a struggling family check on a teacher let your voice be heard finally to the board member be yourself Embrace Transparency stop hiding behind fake and nameless accounts if you want to argue with disparage and harass parents of Higley students at least summon a fraction of The Bravery of this trans community that you hate and say it with your full chest thank [Music] you next is Barbara Summers good evening um tonight I must voice my deep disappointment and frustration regarding the actions of a school board member who has chosen to hide behind a false online profile this profile has been used to Target community members and hardworking staff criticize the district unjustly and attack candidates who have stepped forward to serve our community this individual has taken it upon themselves to spread misin information and engage in attacks that go beyond criticism and become personal and damaging furthermore it's deeply alarming that they have been working alongside others with the intention of Legally challenging Educators aiming to dismantle the support system that our students rely on every day these actions are not only un unprofessional but deeply concerning these actions undermine the core values of our district our board members are entrusted with the responsibility to act with integrity transparency and respect for the very people they are supposed to serve when one of our own chooses to manipulate information and act in secrecy they erode the trust we place in our leaders and set a damaging example for our students the repercussions of this Behavior are significant this misuse of power and influence not only distracts from our mission but also sends a harmful message to our students that they may be targeted for standing up or speaking out that their educators are under attack and that those in positions of leadership may choose to operate dishonestly rather than openly for the community's best interest this behavior is absolutely unacceptable our students deserve a safe and supportive environment and our teachers and staff deserve the freedom to do their jobs without fear of legal threats or Anonymous harassment I urge this board to take a firm stand against these actions let us commit to upholding transparency integrity and respect in all that we do if any member of this board canot meet these standards then it is time to reconsider their place on this board thank you for your attention to this serious issue I hope we can move forward with renewed dedication to the values that Define our district thank you next is Heather balsh good evening everyone it's a true privilege to be here tonight to talk about something that's new near and dear to my heart the importance of preschool and the powerful bonds that we build with children and their families from a young age preschool is more than just a place where children learn their ABCs and how to count to 10 it's where they start to build trust confidence and a sense of belonging it's where they take their first steps in socializing with others learning to share developing empathy and in some cases speaking their first words and it's not just about the children it's about families too by creating strong relationships with parents and caregivers we form a support system that helps children Thrive both at school and at home we can connect with the children early on we're not just shaping their academic Journey but helping them grow into curious kind and resilient individuals when we build these bonds with families we make sure that every child has the support that they need to succeed after all it truly takes a village and preschool is where it all begins thank you for being a part of this incredible journey you're going to hear some exciting information about our program later this evening and I just want to um encourage us all to continue to Foster these great relationships with our youngest uh students thanks okay moving on to the ENT agenda uh president Anderson yes um is it possible for me to ask admin to look into some of the things at least that were presented in terms of like status or how we can contact to get information that was expressed tonight from public comments board member Wade can you be a little more specific for me please well I mean there were statements made about behaviors that seem to counter our current policies so I'm just trying to understand what is and isn't so if we could you know follow up with that Madam president miss W the request for uh the administration to review the issues been made thank you president Anderson I'd like to address um a few of the things that were said um to come here and and act like you guys in the community aren't creating chaos is absurd because those of you that spoke are creating chaos in the community and you are part of the organization of sending having a Community member send me a sexually explicit book with a bundle of rope to the district office as a threat you guys are part of a text group that's called shoman Ava AVH Haters Club so don't come here and act like you guys are are doing some good when you guys are creating the chaos that's all I'm going to say thank you I motion to approve the consent to J items 5.1 to 5.13 Second seconded by Mrs Wade all those in favor i i Sor oh hi oh motion carries four to zero that's okay and with that I'd like to thank everyone that has made gifts made donations have contributed to the school district as stated in one of our um oh it is excuse me for not knowing the exact number uh 5 0 I want to thank everybody that has contributed to the district uh moving on to information items 6.1 the 2023 2024 a to F letter grades with uh Mr birkshire good evening president Anderson members of the board uh I'm excited to share our district and site letter grades tonight we have much to celebrate with these at each of our sites and my goal tonight is to share those grades as well as individual celebrations for our sites additionally I'll be showing how our district compares to neighboring districts as well as how our sites performed compared to charter schools within our boundaries our Focus tonight is on our strategic anchor one teaching and learning and Student Success specifically we are focused on indicator 1.5 which is supporting a collaborative culture using data and research-based practices oops so we are an a-rated School uh District um so that is our first celebration of the night um and I think is deserving of Applause Mr Len [Applause] Heiser District letter grades are calculated uh by adding the number of a schools multiplying by four then the number of B schools multiplying by three then dividing by the total number of schools similar to a GPA uh so our district score was a 3.71 out of 4.0 um 34% of leas in the state of Arizona earned an A so we're part of a a rare group uh the top third of the state 45% earned B's 177% C's 3% D's and less than 1% earned an F as a district um last year we were at a 3.86 that was uh due to us having 12 A's and 2 B's and you'll see on the next slide uh this year we had one school that was a c which lowered our our letter grade percentage just by a little bit um here you have our comparison to our neighboring districts um when letter grades were first released in 2017 Higley had six A's and seven B's uh we continued to improve prior to the pandemic uh with 12 a and 1B in 2019 there was a 2-year Hiatus on letter grades due to covid when letter grades returned in 20122 um we have improved from 8 A's and 5 BS to where you see us today uh where we have 11 of our sites that are an a uh two of our sites are a b and then one s's a c um want to point out that virtualems because we're going to be talking about hva probably a little bit later virtualy Chandler and Gilbert are both bees masik and kirne have shuttered their aois so they no longer have the virtual Schools Queen Creek is their soul C and then Scottsdale's D is their Virtual Academy as well some highlights uh we want to congratulate corado Elementary they earned the maximum growth score of 30 points or 50 points and they also had the top percentage earned in the district for K8 schools uh williamsfield improved their overall percentage by approximately six points Bridges earned the maximum proficiency score uh for the third year in a row uh that's a total of 30 points and and that's actually capped so they Pro they earn more than that it just shows up as just 30 um bonus points four of our sites earn the maximum of Five Points in the bonus points category for a site proficiency and sped enrollment those were Centennial chapparel Cortina and power ranch uh continuous Improvement we had five sites that have improved their overall percentage earned every year over the last three years those were chapparel Coronado Cortina power ranch and saucan and then chronic absenteeism we had eight sites see a continu decrease of chronic absenteeism over the last two years in the K8 model and those are Centennial kolie Coronado Cortina Gateway HTA Santan and San moving into our site letter grades uh we're going to start with our K8 schools the K8 model uh before I talk about the the percentages I want to remind you that a school's letter grade is kind of like a students grade um it's a collection of evidence um and and not based on a single Factor the State Board of Education when they first adopted the letter grades in 2017 were trying very hard to reflect the overall nature of a school um and what the state expects out of a public school which can be difficult to do when much of what a school does for students can't be numerically Quantified um what you see here in the models is their best effort to take those components for which we have solid numbers and represent them in the final calculation for a letter grade so for K8 schools 30% of a score is based on student proficiency on aasa 50% is based on student growth from prior State assessment performance to aasa this past spring as compared to like peer students 10% is based on El proficiency and growth and 10% is based on acceleration Readiness measures which include subgroup Improvement chronic absenteeism Improvement special education inclusion and improving performance in e8th grade math and third grade e there's also the possibility of bonus points with science providing up to 3% and special education up to 2% additional points for a school those bonus points are added in after the overall percentage score is calculated um and and gives our final score for each site additionally something to keep in mind is that in order to qualify for points in any area we have to have an endc count or a minimum number of students at 10 uh so for some of these categories especially El we don't have 10 El students that are full academic students um full Academic Year students at those sites so their overall calculation is out of 90 rather than out of 100 points so moving into our sites uh we're going to go alphabetically Bridges earned an a with 95.4 s points um they did not have the minimum Inc count of 10 fael students so you'll see that they just have the three categories which totals up to 90 um and then they take those point the the points that they've earned divide that by 90 that gives a percentage and then they add the bonus points on to that um I want to emphasize here that Bridges had that perfect proficiency score of 30 out of 30 they also had the highest AI passing rate for our students at 67 66% of their kids passing the acsi test in fifth grade Centennial Elementary earned an a with 91.8 six points they had enough El students so they have that El category in this in this case um centeno one of their celebrations is they've improved the math proficiency of their low social socioeconomic students every year for over the last three years so they've done a lot of good work with those students chapparel earned an a with 91.26 points uh they had 13 out of 18 English Learners that improved their proficiency level on a Zella which far exceeded the Statewide um average so that's very impressive the work that they've done with their eel students at chapparel kolie earned a b at 76.2 Four Points uh one of their celebrations is working with their special education students they have improved their sped proficiency from the previous year in both Ela and math and so they're doing a lot of good work with their special education students Cor earned an a with 9711 points as I've said that's the highest percentage in the district and and again celebration that they earned a 50 out of 50 on the growth score as well that's a huge CA earned an a with 92.5 Four Points uh Cora is right there behind Bridges that's their biggest competition they had the second highest proficiency score in the district right behind Bri Bridges so I actually met with their Administration today and they gun in for Bridges Gateway Point earn to be with 80.1 Point uh one of the impressive things that Gateway Point has done is they have improved the math Proficiency in six out of seven of the eligible subgroups that they have on their campus that means that those subgroups had 10 or more kids in that group um over the uh the previous year uh so that can be very difficult to uh because you have a lot of variability in those subgroups especially when we get down to there might be 12 one year that sixth grade group had five of them then they they leave and it's a different group of kids so that's very impressive that the the work that they're doing with their subgroups especially in math Higley trditional Academy earned an a with 9.97 point seven points uh one of their celebrations is with a specific subgroup uh they're African-American subgroup they have improved in both Ela and math every year over the last three years uh which is very impressive power ranch earned an a with 9.87 points um they as well improved their sped Proficiency in both Ela and math over the prior year so so again a lot of good work happening with that that specific subgroup Santan Elementary earned an a with 92.7 n points uh their growth score has improved every year over the last three years so they're doing a lot of great work in pushing kids and and really helping them to achieve and move even if that doesn't necessarily reflect in that proficiency area and then finally in our K8 model San earned an a with 85.3 s um one of their impressive Feats is you get points for improving the number of kids highly proficient in math 8th grade and decreasing the the percentage of kids that are minimally proficient in e8th grade math and they have done that every year over the last two years moving into our 9912 model um 30% of the schools letter grade in 9th through 12th grade is based on proficiency on the ACT and what the state identifies as being proficient uh 20% is based on student growth percentiles between act and Aspire and the ACT this is a change from last year um so they've had a little bit of a challenge with AC when we came back from covid act became the state test for 11th grade nth graders got act aspired so this was the first year that we actually had data on students that took ACT Aspire in 9th grade and then took act in 11th grade um so that growth score is looking at same peers and how much growth they made between ACT Aspire and act last year they were looking at subgroup improvement from the prior year so um in proficiency uh graduation rate and dropout rate so the scores are a little bit different this year related to growth because we're measuring different things um whoops let me go back um El proficiency and growth is also uh 10% and then School's graduation rate is 20% and then CCRI which is the College and Career Readiness index is 20% for 9 through 12 they received bonus points for a side performance up to three uh points sped enrollment up to two points and ACT Aspire participation up to three U points so starting with Higley High School they earned an a with 91.66% of a traditional 912 schools in the state they're actually in the top 9% but 10% usually is where we we like to go Williams Field High School earned an a with 97.77% increase of almost six six% is to be celebrated um that increase is primarily due to what happened with their growth score um in the prior year because it was calculated different they had 12 points out of 20 for for the growth this year you can see they have 18.04 points and now we get to Higley Virtual Academy uh HBA is a hybrid School meaning that last year it served students in grades 7 through 12 um so they get scores on the K8 side and they also get scores on the 912 side but they only receive scores if they have the the right number of students so when you're looking at what you see here the K8 side you see a zero out of 10 on the acceleration Readiness they only had 8 students that qualified for scores on proficiency and growth um and at pretty much everything else which means those categories they don't get points for the only category that they actually had enough students to receive points for was for chronic absenteeism which is worth two points out of that total of 10 and you have to approve that chronic absenteeism with virtualems we track that absenteeism very different than we do with normal stud students it's based on ours participating um it it gets really messy um but they didn't qualify for that so about 177% of their overall score is based on that one little piece the other side 912 uh we had enough students this year to qualify for most of those categories we had 15 9th through 12th graders that were full-time full Academic Year students at the Virtual Academy remember the Inc count is 10 so I had 15 this year last year um we had let's see 22 3rd through e8th grade students at hbaa that's where we got all of our points last year and one of the reasons why HBA was an a last year was because they received a a lot of points on that side we only had nine 11th graders last year and so we really didn't qualify for any points on the 9th or 12th grade side a lot of variability with virtualems because you have small numbers of students and those small numbers of students can change wildly from year to year uh so it's really hard to to maintain scores or predict scores with virtualems and you as I pointed out earlier Scottsdale's Virtual Academy was a d this year last year they didn't have enough students to even qualify for a letter grade so uh it's hard um but um there are a lot lot of Firsts for HBA this year so they had this is our first year with proficiency score on act this is our first year with a growth score on from ACT Aspire to act last year they had enough students to look at gra fouryear graduation rate this year we have four and fiveyear graduation rate so they they qualify for more points in the graduation rate side and then they improve their CCRI U score as well again this is another challenge for virtualems because half of the calcul for cc you have college readiness indicators and then you have career Readiness indicators which a lot of those are CTE courses and our Virtual Academy doesn't really offer any CTE courses so the only points that those kids could get were if they were enrolled in one of our brick and mortar schools in a CTE course and then moved into HBA uh later on so again HBA is hard uh to to Really qualify for for points moving on uh K8 Charter comparisons so these are charter schools that are within our boundaries as a district um the dark vertical line on the right uh marks the division between A and B scores that second one on the left marks the division between B and everything else underneath that um you'll see that there are some sites that I identify as K8 because they're hybrid schools they actually serve K12 so what I've done is taken out the K8 side shown you what their K8 side score would be on the next slide you'll see their 912 side so uh some examples of those are ala um North and then the let's see here Learning Foundation and Benjamin Franklin that they serve more than just a 912 population so they get points on this side as well and then here we have our 9912 Charter comparisons again some of uh a lot of our charter schools within our boundaries serve students in more than just 912 they're usually 712 or K12 configurations ASU Prep I just want to point out very specialized stem school students are encouraged to pay tuition to receive credits at ASU from coursework taken at ASU Prep they're not really a comprehensive High School like we have uh at williamsfield and Higley they don't have have um Athletics they don't have other comprehensive programs like we do uh so it's not necessarily an apples to oranges comparison so as you can see we have a lot to celebrate in Higley uh this is a testament to our site and District leadership our teaching and support staff our families and ultimately our students at each and every one of our sites I'm proud of that I've had the honor to share these with you tonight and I'm excited that the work we have done and continue to do for student learning is something that we can celebrate and recognize each year and with that any questions president Anderson I don't have a question so much as I just for those who aren't necessarily a part of this to be an a school or even a b school and maintain that grade is really difficult to do it is so very easy to drop and it is hard to stay the same and even harder to continue to grow growth and as we look around obviously all of us involved in education are like yes mhm this is true um but I just don't think that maybe necessarily parents and our community members are always aware of just how those numbers come down and how difficult of a feat that is so to all of our schools you know Well Done um yes I Echo what Miss Wade said that um this is amazing um one question because I'm just being a little bit competitive and so it's just a little um on the 9 through2 Charter comparisons with American with uh ala 9 through2 and Higley are we exactly the same or they it's my own clarify that for me so um you have a comparison the 9 through 12 Charter comparison chart yep right there and so nope that's not it uh yeah it is it is okay and so is it exactly the same it just it looks the same and so you want to know why we're not above it yes oh um I want to know why we're not above it are we exactly the same their score was slightly better than ours okay fine uh I I don't know the exact number off the top of my head but it is from score to score so uh they were just a little bit that's my own is um congratulations to Coronado amazing um as well in their growth um I also want to make sure um there was a question by a board member on funding and I just want to make sure that everybody knows that this has nothing to do with funding because I think if someone on the board was confused about that maybe the public was confused about that this has nothing to do with funding and so I just want to make sure that's clear especially since um override there's yeah the override and then there's issues with making sure we know we're funding comes from so there's any questions on that that's it thank you great job president Anderson um do was this grading system always like this the letter grades as they are currently constituted were adopted by the State Board of Education in 2017 prior to that they used a system um oh boy I trying to remember the words that they use it was a very different kind of system uh they were you you were an excelling School you were a um and and the calculations that they were using were very different than what we're using now so so you can't really compare what happened prior to 2017 to what we're using now yeah I just the fact that like an a is from 84 to 100 um when like we you know for our kids we grade them 90 to 100 as an A so it's weird that they would create this grading system that is not even equivalent on on how we would grade our students I'm happy to address that so in 2017 when the board adopted the letter grades um the uh State Department of Education and the technical advisory committee which are a bunch of nerds that are really they they look at numbers and and can dive in they're called psychometrician they brought to the board multiple models of what it would look like one of those models and they do this every year still one of those models is a 90 80 70 60 um and uh the model that was ultimately adopted was a standard deviation model so so they basically looked to see what percentage of schools would fall in trying to get kind of a bell curve to start out with but the goal has been since that time time to keep the cut scores the same so that the goal posts aren't moving every year because if we use a standard deviation model then basically every year you have the same percentage of a but that cut score that you're trying to achieve will change every year um one of the things they find with the 90 80 7060 um and even with the current makeup is that schools in high sces areas tend to score in the A and B level schools that are Title One tend to score in that CBC level a and so the the standard deviation model had and and emphasis on growth and some of those bonus points were all put in place to try to even out and and ensure that schools that are doing good work but just don't have the same advantages as other schools are recognized and rewarded for for where they are thank you for that and then if you can just explain so the overall proficiency rate is uh what what was that score the percentage for proficiency it the it is 30% at um not per school but like just overall for the district was it like 5 District proficiency that doesn't get reflected in the the the district letter grade the district letter grade what they decided to do at the State Board was just do an average of all of the scores uh of the the letter grades of school sites I can certainly bring that uh through status send you what our proficiency level was for for ELA and math for for the district as a whole that' be great I just don't know it off the top of my head great thank you and um along with the graduation rate um the new graduation rate because I think the last one was like 96% our graduation rate really hasn't changed so that's the reason why when you see both pigley high and williamsfield they're getting 20 out of 20 um 10 of that is for improving graduation rate you get that 10 points automatically if you maintain a graduation rate of over 90% so so 10 of those we get automatically the other side is four five six and seven year graduation rates and basically they take your rate and multiply it by a a a multiplier so so they're weighted four years is weighted higher than sevene and we exceed the 10 points in that side as well uh which is why we're getting the 20 out of 20 basically we go from 96 95 96 to 98 .99 by the seven-year graduation rate so our kids that may need a few more years we do graduate them um before and and help them move on excuse me and how does the like just to understand the math behind like proficiency rates compared to graduation rates is the graduation rate does that not count in the proficiency rate no okay proficiency is based purely on your scores on aasa or act a and so um there's a lot of work done at the state level when those tests were introduced so um originally with a merit um there was uh meeting at the state level I got to participate in this where we basically looked at the assessment and identified what the cut would be for a just barely proficient student and we went item through item and said would this item be where would this fall that kind of thing and at the very end again people that are much more mathy than me were able to put together this is what a score would be for a proficient student what a score would be for highly proficient and then the last part of that is they threw those numbers up and as a committee as a whole we looked to ensure that there was consistency from third to Fourth to fifth to sixth to seventh to e8th grade and at that time it was 10th grade as well because we had a merit they did the same thing with act in ela and math um and again I was lucky I was able to sit in the room participate in that process um lots of good dialogue about what proficiency looks like because act we're using that as as a Statewide test typically it's a college readiness assessment as a state we're using it as a College and Career Readiness test so our cut scores for proficiency are lower than what that Benchmark score you typically see what act is because we want to ensure that a student that's proficient it's not necessarily about college it's also about career a and so lots of dialogue around that those cut scores um so proficiency seat encompasses those graduation rate is separate got thank you so much you're welcome thank you that um I think for at least for here you've hit the nerd status and you're pretty mathy so I appreciate you and all the information you provide and it's great to ask questions and get really detailed and um good information that a lot of us aren't familiar with um I don't have a question um I just I just wanted to address one of the questions that was brought forward um how can parents and community members contribute to supporting these goals and improving our school performance and the response was parents and educat Educators should communicate on a regular basis and all that but is there I mean if just right now like as a teacher I mean there's things I'd say hey you know how can we get them involved more um I think this district is pretty great with the opportunities and um seeing all the posts online there's a lot of um after school and fun things that go on in the schools but um with the grades we're doing great but if there's anything else if this would be a great time to say like how could we how could we involve our community and parents um and I don't want to put you on the spot you don't have to say anything but if this was a time this be great to hear it um but before that I just wanted to say before I forget I just want to thank the students I want to thank the parents I want to thank the staff I want to thank I want to thank Community um this this is one big group this is everybody working together and it's a great job I in terms of parents I think um every site has communicated with parents about their their their letter grade status and and and those celebrations that H that that come with that um it the the the work that our teachers are doing on a daily basis and and the learning that we're engaging students in um all of the communication that happens around all of that and the support that families have for our staff in that learning process those are all huge um a and it's hard to quantify one single thing um because there's a lot that goes into these um we were at a site today where they were asking what's that what's that Magic Bullet and the reality is there's no magic bullet uh it takes a lot of work and hard effort from everybody involved um so it's that communication and partnership between parents and and schools I think that's that's imperative so president Anderson um members of the board I think we have such great PTO and site councils and that's a great way for you know parents to get involved the community to get involved and know what the needs of the school you know is and all of our higgle helps initiatives that we're doing that that brings that brings the community in plus our business partner breakfast and yeah we absolutely want people to be involved and I think a lot of schools um bring in parents to help do like stem day you know where they teach about their profession that's an awesome example and we could come up with a whole bunch more but that's one thing about Higley our parents are involved and they care definitely wonderful thank you anybody else okay thank you Mr birkshire thank you very much all right we're going on to 6.2 the 2025 2026 course guide with Mr Len Heiser president Anderson members of the board tonight tonight we're going to talk about the course guide proposal this is our information item uh we'll talk about the changes made to our course guides and then we will U move forward and be able to answer any questions that you have so within your board pack we had the presentation but you also had Redline copies of the the draft of the course guide so that you could see the red line is what we're getting rid of the blue is what we're adding and so hopefully you had an opportunity to go through that because tonight I'm going to touch on some of the different changes that were made and uh that we are proposing to move forward so this timeline and process started right when we get back from the start of school we start August 6th where we put together our um timeline so that we we follow these different steps as you can see listed up there we review our current courses and information with our ed services Team Ed Services team is the district instructional coaches and other directors involved in the ed services department we review it we also ask for proposals from sites anything that they want to change or add they work through their instructional coaches and bring It Forward we do a final review we did that on October 29th where we went through all the different proposals that uh teachers Andor the district had proposed to changing courses adding courses deleting courses or changing general information um tonight we're bringing the information item to you because what's really important is that action item on December 10th we have to approve the course guides for the next uh next year on December 10th seems a little early but it's not because we start registration in Janu January and we start that process of um students selecting their courses in our secondary schools that allow us to then determine Staffing allocations and where we're going to put it to meet the needs of our students like to give a shout out to the different people that were involved in this process um basically what you have up there is a list of our directors and assistant directors within the district office our instructional coaches each site is represented by their principal uh as well as their assistant principal and their lead counselor and so each piece had a different uh part throughout the entire process but when we came together for the uh final review on October 29th everybody was in the room as we made determinations about the proposals that were moving forward so we'll jump right into the high school honestly the most of our most of our changes come at the high school level that's by far the biggest book and has the most different things that happened so I want to highlight a couple of the proposed changes to our general information Pages those are the pages before the actual course descriptions are listed out uh we updated the language about the act in our testing section we wanted to be specific so that if parents looked at it they knew that the Act was our mandatory state test for 11th graders and that ninth graders are required to take the ACT Aspire test as you just heard we're measured on the growth between their nth grade and their 11th grade so we need them to take the test in both so that we can determine our growth uh we are proposing removing the husd service learning honor for excellence seal and an initial thought would be wow this is crazy why are we removing it well we haven't had anyone apply in the last four years for this seal um there is another seal through the uh State of Arizona it's the Civics literacy steal seal and and part of the Civics literacy is a really huge component about Service Learning and so what we want to do is direct students who have that service learning to the Civics literacy seal and that's something provided through the state and it's not a Higgly local one uh we changed the format for the diploma seals to direct families to our website so here's what happened in the past we would list all the requirements for each one of the seals in our course guide which we approve in December to then get published basically in January for the next year then the state would change the requirements and so by the time you looked at the requirements that were in there by the time we got to the end of the year they were different than what was in our course guide so by dir and by giving a description of what the seal is and then directing to our website we can constantly keep that updated in case the state turns around and changes the requirements for the seals and so it kind of condensed that section A little bit it still gives a description for what the seal is but it refers us so that in casee the state changes any of those requirements we can keep it up to dat and it's not out of date within our course guide one of the things that we really focused on this year was uh trying to give parents an opportunity to understand all of the different and dual enrollment opportunities we have I'll be honest we shine in this opportunity we're really good at providing dual enrollment opportunities compared to our peers uh around us our districts and so to really emphasize that when you took a look at the course guide you saw we had three pages of a giant spreadsheet that showed at each High School which courses we offered for duel and then what course and what educational partner and how many credit hours they got now it's all contingent within dual enrollment if a teacher leaves and we can't find a dual enrollment certified teacher to come in and replace them we can't offer it that year but we did want to give the parents an opportunity to understand there are so many different dual enrollment courses not just in our core academics but through our CTE as well we really wanted to highlight that uh this year within the sections and so when you take a look I think there's four almost four pages the list all of these different courses some of the courses you have to complete both first and second semester to get dual enrollment some of them are just semester by semester so that you can get dual enrollment maybe three credit hours first semester and then three credit hours second semester our major partners are Chandler Gilbert MCC and SEC and finally there was attendance information that we listed within the general guide the consensus was this is also in our handbook and so we wanted to make sure that the messaging stays the same about attendance and really attendance other than audit status which we left in attendance does not have an effect on the course guide and so we're removing it this time and we're going to focus and have people look at our husd handbook and that's where you'll see attendance information about students required attendance so those were the changes that we're bringing forth on the general information so when we looked at updating course descriptions Andor prerequisites I listed out the courses and you were able to find them within the uh course guide with the red and blue lines uh looking through it so these are the courses that we've changed either course description many times teachers send us course description changes because they're like hey the curriculum has changed we need to update this what we have in there might have been what was in there 12 years ago we need to update it for what's currently being taught in the class and so when you see those the course description changes were for honors aerospace engineering honors electrical and computer engineering AP Computer Science principles AP Computer Science a beginning Ceramics intermediate Ceramics Advanced Ceramics AP human geography and American Arizona history all of those we just updated the course description so when someone reads it it more accurately aligns with what's being taught in the course Roc is a unique program where they basically teach one class per year and they just alternate between four classes so someone who's in there for four years gets four different classes and so we just update the schedule so we move it over one and take the one that was last year and it goes four years from now and that's when it'll be part so that's the update that you saw there um honors bioscience one in order for a student to get uh science credit for bioscience they have to complete the sequence meaning they needed to finish bioscience one and bioscience 2 we had previously listed you could get a science credit for honors bioscience one that was incorrect and so we removed that from there so they have to complete to get through honors bioscience to to get a science credit for that course and then finally when you take a look at Algebra 2 and pre-calculus what we did is we changed the grade level on those and the reason we did that is that Algebra 2 typically um we removed 9th grade from there because if they're in nth grade and they're in Algebra 2 they're really in honors Algebra 2 not on level Algebra 2 and so same thing with pre-calculus we remov the ninth and 10th grade because if they're in pre-calculus and 10th grade they're an honors pre-calculus not on level pre-calculus and so we wanted to clarify that for our students AP World History we added ninth graders to make sure ninth graders have that option to move into AP World uh we'd been making exceptions for that because if kids are really talented in that area move forward we just formalize that okay so when it gets to additions or deletions this is something that'll be new being added to our program and I'm excited about three of the new courses that we're adding this year first one with our CTE exercise and wellness one and two this Falls underneath Sports Medicine what this program does and think about CTE and we talk about career Readiness right now now in sports medicine the path that we have a student who goes through that typically then to go right into the workplace they have to go to college and get a degree to become an athletic trainer and then where we see the career aspect is after they've finished college going into that uh field with the exercise uh and wellness program it allows them to get a certificate where they can be a personal trainer and they could immediately go into the workforce so think about personal trainers at gyms or even people private doing personal trainers there is a certificate for that we' have developed a program where these students can work on that skill while in high school and like many of our CTE programs get a certificate and be immediately employable once they have that certificate and so when we talk about that school to work pipeline that pipeline doesn't wait them for four years for them to get through college they could go immediately into that and I Know It Williams Field they have really tried and worked hard to develop that underneath the sports medicine and we'd like to offer that opportunity to allow our kids to work on that certificate uh higgle Hy proposed a unified dance class if you're not familiar with a unified program and our best pries program we know it's a wonderful uh way that our our partners and their peers get to work together and our best buddies is a great program we currently have unified PE the ask was can we have Unified Dance because really those students would be in unified PE for four years if they wanted to could we give them a different opportunity and we would like to allow them to have a different opportunity opportunity to go into a beginning dance class um for our students with special needs and their positive peers to be involved in the Unified Dance so they'll give them two options instead of one um we had a business Chinese one at Williams Field the goal of next year would be to bring business Chinese to this course is an extension after AP Chinese 4 where we have students who've gone through perhaps our DLI program and have gone through kie and have gone through williamsfield and now we're looking for an additional class as a junior and then we would come back next year and look to add one as a senior and so that's one of the programs that um you know our instructional uh specialist Rebecca Rodriguez have been working for and they worked and found some uh curriculum that will allow us to continue to push those kids uh within high school for our DLI Mandarin students and then finally we had a course in there called World Language ta so it's been in the book ever since I've been in here and no one has ever signed up for it because we haven't used okay I think originally what I was told is back in the day you had someone who was really good at a World Language and they wanted to go help maybe they were in AP Spanish 4 they would become a TA in Spanish one and really we have not used this program so we just want to delete it since we're not having that be a part of what's happening so here here's where we have some fee changes that we want to talk to you about because I think this is an area of uh concern where we need to make sure that we have appropriate funding to meet the needs of our programs as you know costs for everything has increased and we have not changed uh these fees uh for many many years matter of fact our athletic fee is Prem me and I'm on year five and so we're looking to help um support the athletic programs uh and more by increasing our athletic fee from $150 to $200 per Sport with a maximum of $800 per family per site um included within or additionally we have allowed family passes for students who are attending our games uh and families to buy this annual family pass where they could buy the pass and they can get into any game all year it's up to four members in the immediate family it was $135 but we've raised ticket prices but we never raised this and so the equivalency in order again to help us uh recoup the cost of running our events and our games we're asking to increase that to $200 for the single season family pass that's $100 that would be like I just picked football and I only wanted to go to football because maybe my kid picked football so the family were able to buy a pass there and so that's you'll see the increase from $60 to $100 uh parking permits we B we know that there's a lot of things that happen within parking and for us to have the ability to do improvements and or support things parking related we're looking to increase that from 80 to $100 for the year instrument rentals has always been a tough one because you asked to talk to someone where we rent the instruments and if it comes back damaged the 125 and even the 150 is probably not going to cover the cost but it it's going to cost to repair the instrument and so through the rental program this helps us be able to support but we do have to supplement if we need to repair equipment that's been returned and the final fee change that I'd like to look at addresses students who uh take the esas and then want to take a class from us okay and we currently don't have anyone in the district doing it but other districts do and I put in some interesting wording in there um basically an Esa let's say it's $7,000 right now if a student wanted to take one of our courses we provide six courses to kids we will charge them one sixth of the cost of the esa because that's what it should be uh the reason I put it at that is we don't know if esas are going to stay consistent and so if an Esa let's say all of a sudden now they get to have $10,000 a year well once the of it would be one six of the courses that they would take if they were part of our school and therefore that would be what would we would ask for them typically where our peers have found this out as athletes they want to participate they want to come in and do weights typically weights is a class practices after school for them to be able to be on campus during a uh class time they have to pay for the class now to participate in athletics that's the same as the athletic fee that we have currently we don't have anyone doing that within our district okay but if the need arises this is what we would do and we would have it in our course guide to be able to charge those fees so when you take a look at uh those were the high school proposed changes when we looked at the middle school changes um much smaller uh options and looking at what's happening in the middle school because it's a much smaller uh course guide um what we're looking to do is we updated Ceramics drawing and painting names into and descriptions to 2D art and 3D art because it more represented when it says Ceramics they're really creating 3D and there's a lot of different mediums that they use and so we wanted to be descriptive of the mediums that they are using so they proposed 2D and 3D art and we agreed with that we updated applied technology and robotic names and descriptions because current we had Advanced applied technology and Robotics and we had it for a year but yet that was the second year the first year we had them split to appli technology and Robotics and not combined and we're asking to combine them so it's a year-long program and so the first level would be the applied technology and Robotics the second level would be the advanced applied Robotics and Tech and uh Tech applied technology and Robotics the third uh description was for our elas courses currently our elas courses are being taught as a block and so that means the kids are in the same class for two hours and then they have two teachers for two hours to to look at numbers and the the commitment financially of doing that uh that's a really heavy commitment to be supporting that because really you're looking at taking the number of kids in that class because there's two teachers for the course load you would cut it in half so if they had 40 kids in the class really our ratio is 20 to1 they have 35 kids in the class our ratio is 17.5 to1 and so what we felt like when we T discussed this with the uh Middle School administrators is in order for us to maximize FTE if we do not block pocket meaning one period they would have the social studies one period they would have the English it would help us recoup FTE that we could continue to use to lower class sizes everywhere else and so we're looking to change that instead of being a blocked program it will now be still a concurrent enrolled program teachers will work together but they won't have two teachers in the classroom for two hours and that's the changes that would come through for elas when we go through to hva and here's one that there was a question right away like how why are we no longer going to offer the Middle School um it goes back to numbers and being fiscally responsible right now we have 11 students in our Middle School online and we're it costs more than the money that we get in order to be able to service those students um it is the number of full-time online has continued to steadily decline the further we have gotten away from covid in fact currently right now we have no ninth graders that are 100% online the largest class that we do have at the high school level is our seniors we have 28 seniors but if we have zero freshmen as that starts to matriculate up it's going to become smaller and smaller for uh online and so our goal right now is to remove the Middle School from it and so we will continue to offer the high school online we are exploring options right now of what does it look like if we took hva and it became a program and not a school and with that we we would still offer online classes because we have 730 kids who take at least one online course through us that's a lot that's meeting a need for those kids and those families however you just heard that how letter grades fluctuate so much so if there's an opportunity through us through the instructional time model where we can have kids be a instead of a full-time online hva kid a full-time Higley kid and we could still offer them online or a full-time Williams Field we can still offer the courses online but it would be a program and not a separate School we're exploring that option and we'll bring it back to the board with more information as we get closer to that time uh in order to declare if we're going to keep the hoi or not oh sorry aoi not hoi so I threw a whole lot of words and stuff in there and I know you guys have got some questions for me so um once again this is our this is our information item tonight love to answer your questions but when we come back on December 10th that's really when we do have that action item because we need to be ready for our enrollment and registration process that happens in January got Anderson um for the um High School course guide the Multicultural um course um and obviously this this course has been um you know an issue uh recently um due to the books and just going reading through the um description of the course guide where does this is this description coming from the college or um do we have the ability to change the description the reason why I ask is because um I think it would just as as an informed consent ahead of time um to include in there uh you know it talks about literature comes from authors of both genders and all ethnicities um but I think it would be great to be able to add that you know explicit content including you know books related to graphic sex sodomy rape beastiality critical race Theory um just so parents know this information ahead of time um so that they can then make a decision of signing up for the course instead of not knowing this and then signing up for the course and then after the fact when the you know they find out what books are on the syllabus then they're possibly you know trying to either move out of the class or now they're having to deal with parental consent forms and the kids are being sent out of class so I think it's important to be able to add that to the to the description um so that parents are notified ahead of time so that they can make a decision of not picking that class um if they oppose to such material um another um oh gosh sorry I lost my notes um I'll have to come back to it oh um the I discussed this last year um for our um special ed um Community skills communication skills um the fact that uh we utilize Castle um I I personally oppose anything related to Castle just based on um just their Concepts um that they use I I don't agree with um and so I don't know if there's any other form of you know when when we have kiddos that need need any type of social emotional um assistance um that first it's individualized and not implemented across the board um and that it's done with parental consent um obviously if there's IEPs involved um and 504s that would be included if um if the student requires that type of service um but I don't know if there's another type that we can utilize other than Castle um and then for the fees you said they haven't changed since when uh I don't know exactly when it was adopted when I talked to my athletic Recs I want I want to say it was uh prior I'm 2020 so it's prior to me okay and then the the fees are the same for Middle School the Middle School we've looked at the how we're budgeting for the Middle School and talking to the principles we wanted to keep that one the same for this year and then we'll evaluate as we go forward and perhaps look for increasing it next year but no the fees for like a for an athletic team at middle school is not $200 okay yeah and less that Middle School sports are only only a quarter right high schools are much much longer right yeah and then just to watch the games I don't remember ever paying to go to watch games for Middle School no we don't for Middle School charge so that when you look at the family passes and things like that that's only for the high school that's where we only charge ENT thank you um and then um for the instruments how often are the instruments rented versus um students bringing their own I I don't have that answer but I can ask and see what our number is and give that to you status I don't know how many okay thank you um and then I just want to say you know I I appreciate um being able to allow um Esa students to participate in our sports that's definitely you know form of revenue for the district um but also uh you know being able to uh help these kiddos out to participate in any type of sporting events um or you know Sports um so I I do um appreciate that we're allowing them to do so so thank you president Anderson um I have a question so you had mentioned on the preal course and I believe Algebra 2 I only put pre-cal you said that they're now I guess they've always been honors courses but they weren't listed as that or now they're honors course we have both we have l pre-cal and we have honors pre-cal okay prior to this for on level pre-cal it it said it was optional for 10th 11th and 12th graders but in reality if you're a 10th grader who's gotten to the pre-cal level you're in that honors track and you're at honors pre-cal and so we just wanted to make sure that parents understood or and students understood that when you get to the regular pre-calculus that's typically our Juniors and our seniors who take pre-cal okay so they were already weighted this same as far as honors like they were already getting that honors there are there is an honors class and I'm only addressing the onlevel courses and I'm just removing those bottom two ninth grade for Algebra 2 and 10th grade for pre-calculus so if you're a typical onlevel student who comes in you take Algebra 1 then you take uh geometry Algebra 2 and pre-calculus that's a typical like the most standard math four-year math track that we have okay and so what the teachers asked for is is why would we say that as a nth grader you could take just onlevel algebra 2 if you're a nth grader and you're that advanced in math you're going to be taking the honors algebra too the grade okay thanks I just Chang thank you for clarifying I just think I was not clear on that um I have it's kind of a strange question but you maybe it's stupid I don't know but dual teachers you dual language certified teacher I mean dual enrollment excuse me teacher certified teachers you mentioned if a teacher leaves and someone doesn't come back if it's the middle of the semester and say a teacher leaves do those kids then not get credit for that class we we work with the institution okay and what we can do to make sure unfortunately sometimes the answer is yes they can't do it if we can't find a sub that can come in and help qualify that sometimes we have additional other members of the department that might help pick that up and help support them through the duel and we work with our partner we want to provide that opportunity for the kids as much as possible so then would they I I don't know that this happens very often I guess I'm just trying to clarify then would they lose that money than they paid for the dual enrollment too uh I I I don't answer I can't answer that we haven't had that in a okay okay um and when I talk about them leaving I'm more talking about the end of the year so if we had gone no I know I know that just occurred to me when you said they were leaving I get that it's the end of the year I just thought oh what if we lose a teacher do the kids lose out on the dual enrollment that was my question um I love that you added the UniFi dance and um the um business language Chinese sounds like are great to me too um and updated and the esa fees that we charging for that so um I think that that's all I have I had another question but I'll wait until after Miss Wade answer a question uh president Anderson uh could you clarify for me just to make sure I'm understanding I mean it has been quite a minute since I've had to write a description for a course that I teach for an updated course guide um the information that we would put in there for our classes would be an overview of the classes less specific and part of that reason is kind of on what uh board member Schultz brought up in that sometimes we have different teachers teach it from year to year and so this way we don't have to continue to update the course guide if there are specific things that still meet the course so for example some of our dual enrollment electives or our AP electives are decided by other things and as the teacher I get to decide which of these books or which of these things I'm going to be using and so I would assume that as we progress and we look at some of the the courses that we have in there we keep them as not necessarily overwhelmingly specific the idea I'm trying to address is essentially board member of Van Hook's concern so I can understand when we go through on the 10th what works best for us the idea of of being super specific in a course guide is not usually what we do because it's overview a lot of times if there is a student who has those questions or parents who have those questions because of the way we sign up for kids and all of that and they have time A lot of the time it's the parents who then can contact counseling or the teachers to get the kind of information that Miss Van Hook was concerned about specifically is that am I correct in understanding our goal and how we write the course guide for that we try to keep it a kind of a 10,000 foot view yes so that we have some uh opportuni so they understand the general themes I mean we're distilling it down to two or three sentences what's going on there and then as we get into the class I think that any time that we have a parent or someone who wants to know what the syllabus of the class that they're signing up for absolutely work with the counselor so that you have that opportunity to see that thank you president Anderson um obviously there's parents who read the basic uh description and didn't realize that there would be sexually explicit books assigned to their kids so adding some something in there to say that that is that is a possibility because otherwise how is a parent supposed to know to be able to go ask that question um they're just every parent's just going to have to call and go hey is there sexually explicit stuff in here no um so as as information ahead of time to let them know that this could be a possibility um one teacher might choose books that don't contain this information and another teacher can obviously you know that's where we're at um so it it wouldn't hurt to let parents know ahead of time so that they can decide whether they're going to sign their child up for this class or not um the other uh concern I had is um I know currently there's at least a couple students that are in this class um who have no other option to they've taken all the English classes they could possibly take so this is the only class that they're able to take in order to graduate um and we do have some flexibility there and for each one of those people that came forward we did provide options and there was a choice for the two and some one decided to stay in and one decided to not and one of the things I think I skipped on there is when we looked at Pathways and things like that we haded sub verbage to say pathways are suggestions they're not mandatory and they're not required and so if what we do is we try to help parents who probably I look at course guides a lot parents probably don't look at course guides a lot right and so what's easiest for them to understand some sequencing and possible things but we have always have opportunities to change to different Pathways or to different courses and they can work with their um counselors to be able to do that so when parents are signing their kids up for for classes what is sent to them are they receiving a course guide or there to the course guide and this year we're actually really working hard to do online registration so we'll be sending things out to the parents and the kids where they uh through the Synergy and through the parent view and the student view they can go in and select their courses from there um we're working through the process of either one or two things would happen so that parents get that oversight to know what their kids have signed up for one is there's a way that we can lock it through uh parent view and so the parents then can have access and say hey here's the courses yes I agree with that they click a button and it locks it in and that's their course request the other way is we can do an audit where we do a mail merge where it's kind of old school we would get a print out and kind of the old parent signature at the bottom hey here's what You' signed up for take it home get your parent to sign up so that they understand what you're signing up for and then come back and we can have that documentation so there's two different ways we want to make sure that parents are communicated with about what the courses their students are signing up for our course guides are on on our um on our website we'll put them up there as soon as as soon as we get the approval for next year here and to put it up there and then those links will be included when the communication goes out of our registration okay yeah I just I I would like to for parents to be able to have informed consent ahead of time um that's all I'm asking and then we avoid um any future issues that we've recently been been dealing with thank you president Anderson um something to at least remind the community of and I think considering the fact the way we had uh board me meetings this past August uh about this specific course in general parents get informed consent so for parents if you are concerned when you hear this information which I think is is fair and is valid because we all have what is good for our home and what we feel is best at the start of your kids uh semester for all of these books that there could be or even topics that have this we give out parental consent and we updated this summer those specific parental consent forms with more detail Ed information so these things are here they're part of our practice and it's part of the reason that this book became an issue in general because we had as we've expressed some parents who were not necessarily thrilled about it and those parents decided for those kids what was best whether that is to go to a different class that was an option or stay there I I I hear your concerns I also think it is important for parents to take responsibility of what their role is with some of that we are asking so very much of our staff and our schools with respect to information and if we put too much information then we're guilty of well I just had there was too much and I didn't know either way there is going to be that opportunity so steps we take as a districtwide practice is that should there be a Content area that is something that might have an issue for individuals that info is sent home to parents so they can make that informed consent so it is there it happens I recognize it's not necessarily in the manner with which board member Van Hook would like at this this current moment but I do think it is important for our community to recognize that that does exist um as a teacher who had to collect those papers I am so grateful that we're moving that to online just you know a delight so for all of those teachers who had to spend forever trying to make sure kids brought those papers home with that lovely signature uh the online option also as a parent who is ADHD the online option sounds fantastic so thanks for that President Anderson um I have a question so you talked about the hva program or changing it to a program is that something um for the year after next that you're thinking about I mean I know you don't have a crystal ball or anything but I'm just wondering we would actually look at implementing it for next year okay and and please understand we're exploring this option and we have not made that decision yet but the option would be we're still providing the opportunities for our students were not have no change in service absolutely it would just be that instead of being an hva kid if you lived in williamsfield boundaries you'd be a williamsfield kid you would graduate at williamsfield so we wouldn't have a separate graduation or we wouldn't have a separate anything like that and so when you look at testing State Testing and you have these small numbers those online full-time online students would be then included within the entire high school and for either of them and so now we're talking maybe we only have 10 kids well five might be williamsfield kids five might be higgle High kids and now they get included in those counts and we don't have to worry about hey we don't have enough kids to even qualify to be able to earn the points to be able to move forward and that's why you've seen two of the districts you mentioned two of the districts already went away from their aois and have supported it differently through their local schools and so that's what we're trying to make sure that we have all of our ducks in a row before we come back formally to you to say this is how we'd like to move no that sounds great to me especially as we're facing different decisions with funding right now that we need to look at so um sounds like a great use of funds and thank you um regarding the uh additional language uh for the class just to be a little more um informative I I am listen to both sides and I think that they there's great information brought um could we not I understand being proactive and informing parents and Guardians prior to signing up for the class and I understand we don't want to sit there and spell it out and do we need to be explicit in the language that we use no but could we put something in there to say this may require a um permission or permission slip or whatever what is the word is it a permission slip consent God consent form for some of the material that will be brought forward for reading can we not just put an aster or any just a quick line we don't have to be detailed of what they may be reading but can we just say hey this there may be material that would require a you know as I'm processing this now I I think we have permission slips that are required in a lot of classes and but when we get into the dual enrollment aspect and in the understanding that people are taking college level courses that might contain college level material that might require then permission slips then perhaps the line goes in with the dual enrollment part says if you're taking a dual enrollment class please understand that these are college courses and they might that's just what I'm thinking about so I I I just don't understand the putting the stop on just informing parents you know that that that's my thing teaching science classes teaching biology what I had in biology back in my day is not the same no it's not we don't dissect anymore what's up with that right frogs right and so um there when I hasn't been brought up now but I mean we cover topics that are hot topics there are things that are being concerned that hit with you know some religious concerns and um you know parents just don't know what's in the class they just assume it's what they experience so I I don't see a problem with just adding a line to just say hey so I'm just saying that I I I would support just a small little bit of language it doesn't have to be explicit and if you do it for other classes or these ENT forms are involved in other classes is it it's also because of mature content in books yeah we have some of our AP courses and and you'll look at our approved list when you look at our novel list that lists any of the novels that are being used that will require uh prior parental consent and I know AP when you look at our AP English courses they have some of those that AP says hey you need to be able to do this these are the books that we're using and we'll give consent for that as well and there's no language for those at all it's just it's just known that they're going to be correct home okay all right um I'll stop at that point but my questions were regarding the fees the proposed fee changes um can you hit on some of the topics for some of the areas where the fees are changing what exactly is increasing on this end to cause the increase for the families on their end like what what is pushing those increases uh yeah so when you're looking at the athletic fee uh increase I think the cost of running Athletic program whether it's equipment whether it's Transportation those things whether it's how we can uh support our uh workers game workers and different things all of those things tie in together um specifically to looking at the increased fees the amount that we supplement and do uh through uh Transportation or through you know we split this fee up and the coaches can turn around and buy equipment from it the cost of equipment has increased tremendously than since 2020 no less even longer than that and so then where do those additional fees from come from we supplement and we support Athletics through District more District budgets and I know when we're talking budgets and we're talking money in districts I don't want ever want to step on Mr Moore's toes talking about that but I know that we're getting into situations where perhaps our M and our Capital budgets are are not going to be as big as they used to be because we know we did not pass an override or a bond yeah I just wanted to ask to put it out in public for parents that are listening because question oh it's going up a lot of money everything else is going up I I want them to have understanding but also um it just I'll lead to my next question are there any is there any assistance for families that can't afford these fee changes because I don't want kids to miss out on opportunities anytime we have a family now or with that has an issue yes there is a process where they work through the bookstore and they work through the principal where we can wave fees absolutely we look at students and famil situation ations I know students on free and reduced lunch as they go through we provide addition uh additional supports for them as well and and that gets a little tricky because we don't turn around and add the amount into the P to the bucket we just don't include it at all and so um but yes there are opportunities for families who are struggling we don't ever want money to be the reason why they don't want to participate in one of our programs excellent I just want to make sure that that got out there for for the public thank you president Anderson not to beat a dead horse um just a final comment is um the the current um state of the consent form is after the fact and I'm just asking that it be ahead of time um so then we're not worried about transferring classes and and all that stuff that's all thank you president and Anderson I just want to add any course at any time that um apparent objects or wants an alternate assignment book whatever we work to accommodate that and even we even have some younger kids getting parental permission for novels or whatever so I'm just sitting here thinking it is a global practice to ensure you know if parents want something else done we work to accommodate um so I think we can discuss as ed services and what that looks like an update and status or whatever so because I assume parents all know that and they may not you know so they know they love Higley I know that yeah I and I know that you you try you all try to accommodate everyone so I appreciate that anybody else for this no thank you Mr ler I appreciate it all right we're going to move on to I need new glasses thank you 6.3 the Community Schools update with Mr Armstrong president Anderson members of the board tonight we are highlighting our uh ecdc program as well as our community programs and I'm going to ask Miss Amy coaches and Marsha Hoster go ahead and come up to the podium uh they're going to highlight their wonderful preschool program that is absolutely amazing and the the efforts of these two wonderful administrators is really going in deep to their programs this year and I want to thank them so you're going to have you're going to hear highlights and you're also going to uh hear a proposal for uh a fee proposal for the upcoming school year as well so I'm going to go ahead and turn over to Mrs coaches and Mrs hofstead thank you so much good evening board members administrators staff and Families my name is Amy coaches I'm the director very proud director of The Early Child de Development Centers this is Marsha hoffstead she's our assistant director let me Begin by first reading our mission statement our certified Early Childhood Educators and staff Inspire curiosity build solving skills self-esteem and Foster a love for Learning and our young children within a nurturing and play based environment we're excited to share a little bit about our preschool program and the incredible work that our staff does daily at the heart of what we do is our commitment to nurturing young students our certified early early childhood staff are passionate about inspiring curiosity among those students We Believe believe that building self-esteem fostering a love for learning are just as important as their academic skills that's why we create a supportive play-based environment where children feel safe valued and they're very eager to learn it's truly a joy to watch our students Thrive and develop in such a positive engaging atmosphere we're proud of the foundation we're building for their future success and it's all thanks to the dedication of our our amazing Community our families and our staff I'm going to share a little bit about our unique program offerings as you can see up on the screen our Mandarin program our Mandarin program is located at our kolie campus students in the program receive Mandarin for part of the day and English the other part of the day this program feeds into our Mandarin program at Coronado we we have our Spanish dual language program that's located at our San campus students in the program receive Spanish for part of the day and English for the other part of the day and this will feed into our Spanish Immersion program at SanTan Elementary we have our think program our highly gifted Academy this is located at our San campus this program will feed into our bridges Elementary School this program provides personalized instruction to actively engage exceptional Learners in an Innovative thinking environment that Fosters creative thinking talk a little about a little bit about our conscious discipline we have the incredible opportunity to provide workshops to not only our staff but to our families within the district so we have those here at the board uh office quite often conscious discipline was created and developed by Dr Becky Bailey it's a social emotional program that teaches children how to regulate manage their emotions in order to make safe and healthy choices you can think about it as discipline not as something that you're doing to children but something you develop within them the goal is to teach students how to respond instead of reacting to situations throughout our day within the school another piece that I wanted to speak about is our um a First Things First Quality first program uh quality first is a program that helps providers throughout the state improve the quality of their programs they provide coaching for our staff professional development they support us financially through scholarships for our students materials that they provide for us and then we have an opportunity for assessors to come on our both of our sites and really give feedback and provide feedback to us as directors as well as to our staff regarding our classroom environment as well as our staff interactions with students daily we have our CTE Early Childhood programs this is both at kie and saucan this incredible program provides opportunities for high school students both from Higley and williamsfield to spend time with our incredible staff at our campuses they engage in Hands-On experiences with students and staff to develop skills to prepare them to enter Early Childhood in that career we have our Middle School Tas uh that is currently at San middle school students are able to take electives they get to walk right next door which is really great and share time with our students and our staff and this opportunity also helps them to develop uh skills for career in the future in early childhood education a little bit about our special education services and our on-site evaluations we're extremely lucky we have an incredible team students can be referred by staff and families with concerns with students with developmental delays eligible students then can receive Services through our case managers speech pathologists occupational therapists and physical therapists I get the opportunity to speak about ecd DC through the years over 10,000 students have gone through both kie and saucan uh since the beginning in 2013 over 2,100 special needs students have attended both of our campuses historically with our attention of students enrolled in our husc kindergarden over 76% of our students a little bit about our brilliant Beginnings in our Kinder prep uh those full day and am classes that they have the highest enrollment historically for us a little bit about our BB program brilliant beginnings and our Kinder prep our brilliant beginning program is for students that are aged threes threes and fours focuses on social emotional friendships relationships taking turns caring and sharing uh early exposure to words and phrases Beginning Sounds counting to 10 number recognition and name recognition our Kinder prep program students that are four and fivey olds focuses on preparing students for kindergarten hopefully continue on in Higgly science through investigation letters letter sounds uh left to right writing and reading identifying numbers to 10 handwriting exposure for uppercase and lowercase letters and an exposure to word families site words and Counting above 10 starting those um addition skills as well he's trying to go through almost there all right so for ecdc So currently uh right now we have 530 tuition students between our kie and San campuses 169 of those are our special education students so that's a total of 699 students and still counting because we add them daily um as they turn three our staffing involves uh 33 certified incredible certified staff 61 classified staff um again an incredible evaluation team 14 uh preschool and eval team that includes our speech our OT our PT and our VI so we're extremely extremely lucky thank you for allowing us the opportunity to share a little bit about our program yeah so as you as you can see up here um this is our our Kinder prep full day comparison to our our neighboring districts uh currently every one of us has certified teachers within our classrooms uh the monthly tuition currently is 750 and you can see it's 5 days a week 7 hours a day um moving into the new school year we are asking and this proposal is coming tonight as an information item and then we will be asking for consent come December in our next meeting we're going to be asking to increase our full day uh Kinder prep program to $800 from the 750 Gilbert and Queen Creek will also be looking at an increase for the upcoming school year as well and so we'll keep us right around where our our true neighboring districts are our Kinder prep half day that is up as well uh Chandler does not have a halfday program but our our District Gilbert public and Queen Creek unified all have half days very they're identical um for the upcoming school year we are also asking that we increase tuition from 400 to 450 um a lot of these increases are being asked in terms of completely having the program running sustain sustainably if that makes sense we want to ensure that we can continue to offer the outstanding program they are offering as well as potentially offering new ideas into the program um currently we do need assistance with that and this rate increase will go ahead and and help us there that is our ecdc program do you guys have any questions president Anderson I have a question um right now Queen Creek shows currently oh I'm sorry yes 805 is there not a reason why we don't make it the same across the board I mean I know that we've had in the past we used to um have a deficit as far as the preschool program Gres now we're even correct we're almost barely if not Mr MO not to put you on the spot I'm sorry Mr President M uh the presale program is operating in uh in the BL so they are okay yeah um when I first got on board yeah they were in a deficit um part of the reason we kept all the staff on during covid when we weren't having kids so it it was a intentional decision but we've worked our way out of that and then handing it over to Amy and their team they've continued that Trend um a part of these fees are to help continue to push this um preschool program forward and then to miss man Hook's point previously when I presented the AFR to help supplement the district um potentially with some of the revenues to help offset some District expenses or um put that money back into the program so thank you so I guess is there that we a reason why we wouldn't make it the same or I know with Queen Creek being at 805 right now what are they going to ask for if we're asking for 800 we don't know that but are you asking we're answering this are you asking why we just don't keep it even compared to everyone else mhm I don't I don't have an answer for that um okay I think for us it's individually it's an individual base it's for our district and I think that with what we want to do we're going to get there and I know I don't know the dollar amount but I know that we're still going to they're going to go higher than we are and or should go higher than we are and so we'll still be relatively low compared to others perfect I love this program I think it's a great program and all the different offerings that that we have and both my girls went through it lots of years ago or several years ago um so thank you very much president Anderson the 169 um specialed students so they don't pay a tuition so that so that is correct there are I don't know if sha could help this aspect as well but so there are students that are um gened students do pay the tuition our special education there are portions if not all that is covered so they do not pay that tuition and who covers that board member Van Hook we are required by law to provide special education free of charge to our preschool families so they are not charged a tuition for our families that choose to go into some of our other programs above and beyond the services that we offer in the preschool we are respons responsible to play that tuition as well so for example if I have a student that is going into a jna classroom to receive their services because that's the least restrictive we will pick up the portion of the tuition in which they're receiving their services once the family chooses to keep the student in there for a longer period of time the family is then responsible for the additional portion got thank you and then uh are we concerned at all that um enrollment from 12200 will go down due to the increase no actually our goal since both Marsha and I have been here is to increase enrollment so we have big ideas and big plans that we're hoping to implement okay yeah that that number that we have with what we're offering at our at our preschools is drastically different than surrounding programs um we're going to be still with that 800 $ increase and that 450 increase there are programs around us that are charging $1,300 a month and they don't have certified teachers teaching them academics as well and so what their program is offering and and what Marsha and Amy have planned is to continue to focus in on the the whole child um as every preschool does but really start identifying their teachers are asking for more academic components and what they have is just unbelievable we're going to be significantly lower than other other organizations surrounding us thank you I I have one one question you mentioned that San had um uh the Tas I know that kie used to have the Tas is that not happening anymore so that's in process we're hoping what what did it why did it go away my understanding is when covid happened um they had just went away and so we've actually been speaking with the counselor about potentially bringing that back in the future okay perfect it's an incredible opportunity for those yes absolutely it's a great program and and just to Echo what Mr Armstrong said we do offer so much more than surrounding preschools and the kids are able to excel I've seen it firsthand and how how well they can be ready for kindergart through your program so and all the amazing teachers um that are molding those little kids Minds so thank you I do before Amy and Marsha leave I would like to let them tell you quality first came down did their assessment and if you would like to share what you guys received for this for this sure um so both of our schools are going through the process we just finished at saan but our coie school um we learned last yesterday actually that we have rece received our three star rating um so for this year so we're really excited about that so it's a big [Applause] celebration that quality first is is not a easy task for our teachers or administrators it is very rigorous and very intentional per se and that's that's great so Kudos and those pres School teachers might be a little bit of overachievers so but they do an incredible job we're very proud all right and that concludes ecdc so thank you very much thank you all so much all right I'mma ask Miss Kim Ohan to come on up she's gonna highlight Community Education and some of the things that she has planned or that they've done this year and she has planned moving into next school year are you going to control the clicker okay no I'm not ready go back good evening president Anderson members of the board and cabinet members thank you for your continuous support and leadership in our district I'm Kimberly Ohanian your community assistant director and this presentation is to inform the board and community members on a short update on our programming so kids club is an all-inclusive a of school program dedicated providing a nurturing environment where children can Thrive physically socially and academically our program offers a wide array of activities designed to engage and Inspire children of all ages kids club is offered at the higgle elementary schools and our preschools our operating hours cater to the needs of our busy families with mornings starting at 6:30 a.m.