We've w we've witnessed firsthand the loss of valuable educators driven away not by a lack of dedication, but by a lack of support. This isn't just a district problem. It's a community crisis. The data paints a vivid picture. Our successful $750,000 grant awarded in the winter of 2024 wasn't just a win. It was a lifeline, allowing us to launch a pilot program for our employees of three birthtoree classrooms that immediately filled to capacity, proving the desperate need. Our community survey echoed this urgency. From 349 community respondents, 58 of them reported a collective loss of 158 work days in a single month due to child care issues. Additionally, 120 out of the 349 community respondents anticipate needing child care within the next two years. Families are driving 50 miles to find highquality birthtoree child care, highlighting the stark reality of Jefferson County's child care desert. Brighter Futures of Indiana identifies 1,119 children under six in our county who may be in need of care.
Awesome. And and Jim, this is probably more a question for you. Uh given that it's a joint trip, uh I assume we'll want to, you know, cross Corey with with the chaperones and and people that are involved in from both schools. Yeah. As I said, the department head over there is questionable. Yeah. Just sort of for those who are listening, it's my wife. Uh right. And we'll each have to take our own votes, but at least in Mayor they've taken this trip before, so they're a little bit more familiar with the trip than we are, but it sounds wonderful. We've got all the details and uh we're happy to know that um you're mindful of the the cost and how to talk with the students. And so there are no more questions. I'll take a motion. Move to approve the out ofstate travel proposal for the trip to Quebec, Canada of February 6 to the 9th of 2026 as presented.
Um, I guess if we're not planning with students education in mind, but only cost savings, I can probably solve all your problems right now. The cheapest option, just fill the auditorium with a thousand kids, give them a Chromebook, hire four or five of us to supervise. We'd save millions. Your budget crisis would be over. Kids won't learn much. But right now, it does not feel like that's our main concern. Nearly done, if that's the timer. We've put a tremendous amount of time and resources into this process of reconfiguration. Please stay the course. No magical reshuffleling of people and buildings is going to solve a budget crisis. But restarting this process, what it will do is create uncertainty and anxiety and flight. Parents won't keep their children in a district that sees those kids mainly as a financial problem to solve and not as developing humans to educate.
That's the big thing. And that's why I joked about roasted carrots because boiled carrots, the kids wouldn't touch them, but you roast them and they caramelize them and they'll eat them like candy, right? And if you roast the broccoli, it won't smell so bad. Yeah. Roast the broccoli. They give lots of opinions. Put some garlic in it. But do the kids have a good time doing that? Yeah, they do. There was a student that we had who's gone on to the middle school and his one goal was to get the alle cart back and to get ice cream because all of his older siblings had had the opportunity to have ice cream and then we hadn't brought it back after co and so his one goal that's what he wanted his legacy to be for his time that he spent we we we do have the ice cream back as an alocart so that he learned something very valuable because it is a learning experience.
Um the for example 20 of them are for that library lab where we do AP computer science. Um that's also where the monitors are going because for some reason that group has slightly older monitors so they need the correct connections. Yeah, that's so the monitors that we're using now will be recycled in in house. We have a we have a recycling uh I think we use up cycle. They take our old devices and they also take anything with a hard drive and give us a certificate of destruction so it doesn't just go into the ether. We know what happens to it. Um other piece to that Andrew is um also it will impact our cyber ah our cyber insurance. Yes. Because it's cyber risk. Do all VHS students get laptops or they have Chromebooks. Chromebooks. Yeah. In fact, what we did some of the Chrome boxes?
Seconded by Julie. Any question concerning the minutes or the committee meeting? Seeing none, all in favor of the motion, could I hear? I oppose. Opposed. I'm sorry. I forget. Motion. So care. Move on down. Do we have anybody anyone from our educational staff? Our student representative from ACE, we welcome you. Good evening board of ed members, cabinet and community members. Thank you for allowing me to Could you put your mic so we can hear you? It's not me. Can you hear me? There we go. Okay. Good evening board of ed members, cabinet, and community members. Thank you for allowing me to represent and speak on behalf of the alternative center for excellence. The first issue, not issue, the first thing I'd like to go over is that Melissa Laskkey in the ACE journalism class would like to invite you all to check out our first articles of the school year in the alternative times.
Three of those students have been in the country for less than two years. And if you're familiar with fifth grade math, it's all words. It is very dense about problem solving, about situational uh use of the mathematics. I've seen that those same skills transfer over into the reading that they've done because our reading broke is also pretty good. You can tell our you also Mr. also had some of the highest reading growth in the district. Actually, his median was 255% growth for his 90%. Um, but that's the point I'm trying to make. I've done this for 13 years, 14 years, something like that. Feels like an eternity. Um, but I had and I have seen good numbers. I have not seen numbers like that. I have never seen numbers like that. And yes, some of it is the art curriculum as you pointed to McKenzie being able to do targeted instruction.
Is the total the school, the whole school? And then some of these kids don't test because they're not going to be doing the CAS score. Is that 580 out of 83 kids that could have tested? I believe that's the number of third through 8th grade students total total in the district. So they could have tested but they didn't test or didn't finish the test or what you had just explained to him. Correct. Yeah, that's a lot of kids. I mean that's like 200 over 200. See the math problems around here. I better not take the test. Yeah. And like that I noticed that also. So that's like a deeper dive into the Right. So we I can look into that and drill down and see okay like what's going on and is it something that we can do something about. Yeah. Because if you look at that, you know, over 200 kids, if they then take the cast, that's going to throw this whole thing off either positively or it could go negatively, right?
I've also attended teaching American history incl um developments and book talks including two this last weekend. One was on the Barbar Pirates. The other was on Jim Crow laws. So I am constantly finding relevant and applicable professional development as I believe every teacher in this district does that we can you utilize and use and bring lesson plans into our classroom on our own. So we do not need the we have nine times throughout the year of professional development on Thursdays. The additional two days are not necessary and I think our time could be better used to prepare for the coming year. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you miss. Our next speaker is Rose Wood. Okay. All right. Thank you. I'm um Rosewood with SDC Lane View four or five and standing is the other SDC team that's at the different sites and our what we are wanting to bring to attention is that our case loads and workloads have changed and have increased.
I'll ask them each to say a few words, say their name, um say some words. Uh we're going to have these on display here in the district office, in the school office. I don't know about you, but I want to keep one in the district office all year. So, where's our our Miss Guthrie? uh leave us at least one year and so uh but uh this is this is uh your pride your excellence nine I want everyone to hear this nine months they practice nine months put their heart and soul and their mind and and and their gut and their desire and we could learn a lot from them as I was listening to your comments right now. I think we all as adults can learn uh specifically they did a great job. But Miss Vanola, can you show the video and then I'm going to ask our team [Music] the truth.
Thank you guys. So, we're going to go ahead and move on to 6.1 public comments. So, we have one. We have one call the public, but we'll play that video first. Yeah, we're going to play a quick video. It's our maiden voyage. The viewpoints of citizens throughout the district and considers the responsible presentation of these viewpoints vital to the efficient operation of the district. Members of the governing board may not discuss items not on the agenda and will be limited to directing staff to study the matter for further consideration and possible decision at a later date. The board therefore establishes the following procedures to receive input from citizens of the district. Any individual desiring to address the board shall complete a form and give this form to the superintendent prior to the start of the board meeting. The board president will keep each speaker to a 3minut time limit.
Harmon later on saying that we're actually taking on a very aggressive full set of projects over the next two or three years to use this 43 million and I'm going to be asking them can we actually spend it and meet it. So in preparation Mr. Armen. Um, and it's so you don't have to answer it now. Later on whenever we come to the the the real one about voting for permission. Um, but it's really nice also that we're staying at 79 cents. Um, I would like to see it a little bit lower so we have a little bit of buff buffer, but I see you've got 5% interest rate for out outgoing years. At the moment that seems pretty high and pretty comfortable. Um, but we did promise I like to say what I'll do and do what I say and we promise no rate increase for the community and that's the 79.
May I have a motion to approve the following 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5 7.6 7.7 7.8 7.9 and 7.10. So moved. Second. Any discussion? Uh yes. Um, just a second here. The I just wanted to point out that if you are looking at the policy for 110, uh, there are where you're seeing the green, there are two sections there highlighted and when it goes into the manual, it's only going to be one. They're going to that you see that last sentence repeated twice. um that's going to appear in the policy manual as only one sentence in case you were wondering. And um I just also wanted to note that the policy title also changed for 222. So how I don't think we have to amend it. I just wanted to let everyone know that if you're seeing that you're not seeing things. It's just it's going to be in there one time.
Um policy chair Mrs. Potter has done extensive work on this. So I just want to publicly thank her um for her efforts. I know it has been um as one of my past um employers used to say herculean efforts um to um get this done. And so um if it's okay with you, Mrs. Potter, I'll let you kind of navigate um um the conversation. Thank you. Um I guess if everyone's okay with it, we'll just start with the lowest number and move up. Okay. Um policy 110, school district legal status. Um when we adopted the manual, this sentence was left out. And I'm I guess my recommendation would be that we put it back in in its This school district is designated as Kerry Community Consolidated School District 26, Mckenry and Lake counties, Illinois. Here and after, however, the schools will be referred to as Kerry District 26 or as the district.
Um I also wanted to real quick thank uh Mr. Block over at Three Oaks. um they're they've been doing this soaring student where they're bringing attention to students throughout fifth graders as well as other students throughout the school year and I think it's been um very good for the school culture and so I wanted to thank him for bringing that program to Three Oaks. We were there to witness one of the assemblies and um the way that he organizes it, he has a one clap method so that there is not any um undo applause at any point and everyone is celebrated the same. And I think that's important. The strategies I think behind the management of these um types of events, parents probably don't notice as much as maybe some of us who are in education understand the equity piece. But it was really important for me to see how well um how thoughtful the staff was in organizing this and making sure that every student felt very special.
And a recent housing study funded by the Madison Economic Development Commission projects 630 new housing units by 2030, signaling a future surge in young families. However, our elementary schools do not have the space to accommodate any growth in enrollment or additional programs. We are at capacity in our schools as we identified in our 2023 facility study. But amidst these challenges, we see an opportunity. An opportunity to build upon our proven success. Our existing preschool program isn't just good. It's transformative. With students consistently outperforming their peers by 20 to 30 percentage points on key assessments. We have the knowledge, the passion, and the data to create something truly exceptional. We envision an early learning center, a beacon of hope, born from the vacant Eio Muny site, a place currently representing disrepair and a safety concern. This center will be more than just classrooms. It will be an oasis of growth, providing 23 nurturing classroom spaces for children from birth to five.
Second. All in favor? I I have fun. Thank you. Thanks, Alex. Uh, thanks. Next up, we have our um public hearing FY2026 school budget. Um, just before I open the hearing, I'm just uh remind everybody of how uh what the process will be. Mr. Adams is going to fill us in on um the budget process, how we got to this point. I I will can tell you that I'm looking out at the audience and you probably can't see them from home, but all the administrators are here um and they have been working on this really hard all year uh with Mr. Adams and we've had a number of meetings ourselves which Mr. Adams will tell you about. Um then he will present the budget and then I do see that there are a number of people online and in the room that may may want to comment.
Parents want stability. Parents want to know where their kids will go to school next year. Please stay the course. Implement the plan that the entire community has already agreed upon. Thank [Applause] you. Good evening. Pamela Goodwin um taught in this school system at Pioneer Mohawk. I could go on and on about my years of an educator. I want to first say that every year we have a problem with how to fund education. This has been going on since 1971 when I was hired here and it was called a junior a junior high and not a middle school. So, and also through a bunch of my years of education, including classes um with people who are working on their master's degree, teachers would be asked, "You're not teaching the sixth grade anymore. We're going to ask you to teach the third grade." And you have your whole curriculum, you have your whole thing, and then all of a sudden, oh, now we're going to ask you to do this.
It definitely is. He was practically carried out of the cafeteria like he was a hero. Athletic hero. Yeah. But that's great. The kids are smart. They put his picture on the cooler. You got to have a Rudy moment. And that's that was his Rudy moment. He's responsible for getting ice cream back. But he did it in the right way. So they learned hopefully they learned something. We have some students who go so far as to survey grade levels and come with their data to the meetings which I love. And that's that's exactly you know forget reading well you have to know reading writing and arithmetic you know that's one of the things you should be learning also is how to you know get your way without not get your way but how to get your your point across and get a positive result. Yeah they're going to I think that's more than most anything you learn in school.
It's like it's like a Chromebook on steroids. So, for things like these uh desktop stations in the library where they're looking up the card catalog and just searching some basic things. We're replacing those with the Chrome boxes. But, um the library media specialist here, there are a couple of devices that we use for running the Cricut for the maker space and things like that. So we do need a PC there. This PC is is one of the ones that is going to need to be replaced. So we were very careful. They were able to deploy software. So we were able to see the warranty of every device, what device was going to be out. So we made some very careful decisions to say this doesn't have to be replaced with a PC. This can be replaced with a different device. Um the STEM lab for example in at BCS we when we talked to Dory Moore she said one of the things she needs is a is space.