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Um sadly our attendance in conferences this last week was the lowest it's ever been. Our middle school only averaged a 65% rate for conference attendance. And we have a number of teachers who have been very accommodating and rescheduling and rescheduling and rescheduling with parents and they're still not coming. So um it frustrating to say the least. Absolutely. We would we have an amazing group of volunteers, an amazing group of parents uh who are really engaged, but it is it is difficult to have everyone all the time, right? It's hard. We really try. Uh more gracing the chaos. Uh, how to get kids to write good sentences. How do you expand your sentences? So, they write on their desks with dry erase pens and they wipe right off so they can write on their desks and have certain words that they need to use. Were those the UFly words for that week?
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Move to ratify. Second it. It's been moved and seconded. All in favor say I. I. Opposed. Motion is carried. Let's continue on to Roman numeral 2 ana construction ratification of a cupka lumpsum agreement for the relocation of two portable classrooms to Northwood Elementary School. Dr. Fuentes, please. It is recommended that the board ratify this agreement as stated. Thank you very much. Could I have a motion, please? Move to ratify. Second. It's been moved and seconded. All in favor say I. I. I. Opposed. Motion is carried. is continue to Roman numeral 3. Annayia construction ratification of a cupka lumpsum agreement for the relocation of three portable classrooms to Ruskin Elementary School. Dr. Fuentes, it is recommended that the board ratify this agreement as stated. Thank you very much. Could I have a motion, please? If you have no comments, move to approve. Second that motion to ratify.
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On the con side, it should be noted that there is an anti-ax sentiment. Um, this is, as you saw in the demographics before, it's a conservativeleaning community. The overall notion of taxes, and bear in mind, this was done in February before some of the latest uh economic news. Um, but there is a a tax sensitivity that we need to be mindful of. Uh, 26% strongly agree. those with uh the particularly in the 65 and older and the 50 to 64 have some tax sensibil uh uh sensitivities. 65 and older also have concerns about inflation and high prices. There's certainly some concerns about that. It's not universally held by everyone. It's not an overarching of impact for every portion of the community, but our 65 and older folks are definitely concerned about that. Um 65 and older are also concerned about living on a fixed income.
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Thomas. So on this slide you'll see we gave just the very brief briefest of explanations if you can for special education. So special education refers to a range of services to help students identified with disabilities to learn. The goal of special education is to close the gap in skill deficits through the implementation of specialized instruction and related services. So, we know that our students who identify with disabilities have a learning gap and we're the the goal is to close it. The the real goal of special education is that no student will be special education eventually. So, if we could do it right every single time, our students would all be um uh out of their IEPs at some point in the future because the the gap is closed. And then finally, each one of the plans is tailored to meet the indivi individual needs of the student.
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But it let me just read you this is going if if we did this the right way this could address some of the concerns that have been raised here by Miss Jetty and other members of the board um uh specifically um in regards to the parent teacher advisory committee. This committee assists in the development of student behavior policy and procedure and provides information and recommendations to the board. Its members are parents, guardians, teachers, and may include persons whose expertise or experience is needed. The committee reviews such issues as administering medication in the schools, reciprocal reporting between the district and local law enforcement agencies regarding criminal offenses committed by students, students discipline, disruptive classroom behavior, school bus, excuse me, school bus safety procedures, and the dissemination of student conduct information. I think that these are all issues that the board members have raised as well and had questions about what do we do and right getting the input from the community would be helpful.
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Any discussion? I just wanted to call out that I saw that we have a certified district nurse on staff for next year. And that is very exciting news. Okay, if we could, if there were no other comments, if we could get a roll call for approval. Mindy Hartman, yes. Annne Sanuchi, yes. Stacy Salt, yes. Jason Jansen, yes. Julie Jetty, yes. Darling, yes. That motion is approved. Next we have the agendas items that are requiring discussion and board of approval. First up 8.1 is the approval of the settlement agreement and general release. Dr. White. Sure. So this was discussed um by the board in um closed session. Um and per Illinois law we do have to make that agreement public. Um but um other than that, I don't know if there are any other questions or anything, but um the agreement is part of the public record and we are bringing this out of close session for action this evening.
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Um, our student council and our student athletic council are a significant part of the culture of our building. um they they know that they can come to us, we can have these conversations if they there are things that they need changed. So um that there's sort of this open dialogue and they've often said, "Can we meet with Mich Lawhead?" And we meet with them and we we discuss those things. Um our pep club is um almost entirely studentled. We have sponsors who assist with that, but when you come to one of our pep rallies, it's the the students that are leading the pep rallies. Um and then the unified bowling which you saw earlier. Um so uh the unified bowling is kind of a you know it kind of hits you in the fields right because there is this coming together. Um and we did and we've done uh we just did a state march state walk for them and um and just to see that and to see students give of themselves for other students is uh heartwarming.
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Yeah. So I appreciate that. It's a tough job. I totally get it. Um so thank you. Thank you very much and congratulations to all of the winners of awards and and to the teachers who are working with them and the parents who are supporting them. So, okay, anybody else in here before I move to any online comments? Uh Jim, I have a question actually. Um you mentioned that the school bus revolving expenditures for 2025 is going to be around a million dollars uh when it's typically around $300,000. Do you know why that is? And um yeah, if so what I do so last year during the budget process uh we had um we've accumulated num a number of dollars over course of say 10 years uh through um the bus revolving account. So we would typically just use 300,000 from year to year to year.
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But I I just can't think that that actually is sound fiscal practice. And I don't actually think that it would be possible to have your tax receipts and your tax expenditures happen all at the same time. The timeline of how things happen just doesn't work that way. I also am thinking about, you know, the question of it for a school committee. We love all of our kids right now and we love all of our future kids just as much. Even the ones we don't have yet, the ones we hope to have, the ones we plan to have in the future. And it is our job to plan for them right now. Even if they're not the students who sit at our tables with us or who are getting the awards or lighting up our fourth grades, you know, we are planning for the fourth grades five years from now.
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There's I don't know. My kids are walking around singing a song about safety. There's songs, games, all the things. So, thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Okay. uh chairman's report. Uh mostly my stuff has to do with facilities. Uh the facilities is going to have a special meeting next Wednesday. We got the uh the uh stair stuff back from uh Silver Petraelli. We have a bunch of questions on it. Um and so we're going to have a special meeting next Wednesday at 9:00 with the facilities committee 9:00 via Zoom and uh we'll report back to the uh to the board. On the same token, we did get uh you know, we we've had the problem with the uh pipe in the uh septic system with part of the tank being in the school and everything else. You don't want to talk about that now?
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We are obligated to follow the CIA rules and certainly in the policy uh forum we can bring that back up if you want to make reference to those. I think um I would feel more confident in our policy. Um and I'd have to look specifically at the not the footnotes that are on each of the policies if there's any current reference under grading to our to the CIA rules because they could change them from time to time. So you don't I would not recommend spelling them out but making a reference to them a reference to the current policy the CIA. What I would recommend is that we bring that up as an agenda item on our next Thank you. I feel much more comfortable about that. and move on now to our action item. Al would do action item A. Denver High School 2025 graduation day.
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So, uh, they're using their Ufly words and it has to make sense. One of my favorites is up here in this upper leftand corner. He says, "Uh, I clean my tree a lot. I read my feet. I read my feet when they grow. May I smell your feet on my own?" It's a solid sentence. It is a solid sentence. It's just weird. Um, I fly. What is I fly? You fly. Oh, you fly. You fly. Yes. What is that? Uh it is a it's a phonics based program teaching kids um we use district we use a district science of reading the the train that we all did last year before it began. It's pretty amazing to see kids and and see what they're doing with it. They really are getting it when they're sounding out their words. You can you can hear them going oh it's down to kindergarten.
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It's been moved and seconded. All in favor say I. I. Opposed. Motion is carried. Let's continue on to numeral number four that is IT management corporation inc. Request to you CMAS contracts number 3-23-02-1028 number 3-23- 01-10 09 number 3-18-70-0019Q and number three-8-70-0019R for the purchase of equipment, supplies, and installation services for the public address PA system replacement at Majestic Way, Somerdale, and Dincy Park Elementary Schools. Dr. Fuentes, it is recommended the board approve this agreement as stated. Move to approve the agreement. Second, it's been moved and seconded. All in favor say I. I. Oppose. Motion is carried. Let's continue on to Roman numeral 5. Sierra School Equipment, Inc. request to use the Arban Union School District piggyback contract number 2023-24-012 for the purchase of storage, shelving, and installation in the classroom pod areas at Brookree Majestic Way and Summerdale Elementary School. Dr. Fuentes, it is recommended that the board approve the Sierra School equipment agreement as stated.
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uh and that's something that certainly sticks out to them and the folks with no kids at home. You can see it's fixed income and concerns about overall spending are not a big deal with the folks that do happen to have kids at home under the age of 18. And then we also measured that the fact that you know more than half of the districts in in the students in the area attend to choose one of the local charter schools instead of attending a district public school. We should not increase our local taxes to fund a district that does not even serve half our kids. We test that not because I believe it's a valid criticism. I just want to be clear about that. But we test it because it's said. We have to test the opponents and what they say about things, not what we hope for them to say.
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Dr. Dr. Thomas, is it possible that a student can be both special education and gifted? Yes. So, we have several students in the district that uh are in that exact category. So, they may have struggles in one area. Um maybe they are struggling mightily in math, but they are extremely gifted in language arts. Or they're struggling with functional skills, but academically they're gifted across the board. So there are a number of uh areas like that that students can be exceptional. Okay. I think it before you go on I think it would help at least for me all the different I would I there's so many different categories of what is special education or what what the a student can get an IEP for and the different ways that we're helping students in addressing their different needs. So it's not just some of it is academic, some of it is behavioral.
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So we are going to so we're going to table this for right now until we into the legal. Right. Exactly. I think there's more question maybe. Right. I would have questions about what that would look like and everything. Right. Of course. I think your microphone's dying out. So skip 2150 because that was tabled. um board involvement in legislative issues is 2152. Uh my recommendation and this is okay this is also specific to D26 and it was removed from the policy manual. My suggestion would be to keep as a guide for board legislative involvement. Um I believe it's needed and it's not addressed in other board policies. Um, this is a guide for how the board is to more or less behave or conduct or focus our um any kind of legislative priorities and that would go along with 212E. This is a very political charged um policy and I think it should we are supposed to be a nonpartisan board and I kind of think that this opens up um for way too bringing way too much politics into the board.
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Okay. May I have a motion to approve the settlement agreement and general release as presented? So moved. Second. Any discussion? Hearing none, we can take a vote, please. Ann Sanuchi. Yes. Stacy Salt, no. Julie Jetty, yes. Darling, yes. Mindy Hartman, yes. Jason Jansik, no. Okay, that motion is approved. Next up, 8.2, we have the approval of the staffing and intervention plan for 2025 2026. Dr. White. Sure. So, just briefly, let me get to There we go. Um, one of the um the items that Mrs. Potter, I know she's not here this evening. Um, wanted to review is if you look at the, um, staffing plan attachment, slide 29, um, we did combine all of the, um, recommendations that are that make up this year's staffing plan that include the general staffing plan as well as the um, I'm sorry, I said 20 I said 29.
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Our goals as we move forward um are so the district has been doing um several initiatives over the last couple of years. We're doing focusing on MTSS, we're focusing on PLC's, uh we're focusing on the TBRRI. Um, and each of these elements kind of work together to um, build sort of again that culture that we're wanting in our classrooms. And we want MC, we think MCHS is the place to be. And we want the students and the parents to feel that way, too. On the academic side, um, our goal, one of our goals is to reduce the failure rates in core courses by 10%. um the the mad rush at the end of the senior year to complete some courses or to duplicate English classes because courses are being failed. Um we want to hit that sooner than later and we want to incorporate that um in into our MTSS which we'll talk about more here in a little bit.
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Uh but last year we looked at our budget and said how are we going to balance this? and we had some excess funds in there, so we utilized those. Uh, that's what made it the million dollars. Um, this year going back to 300,000. We easily could have used another, not easily, I mean meaning to balance the budget. A million dollars to pull out of there. We didn't have that same amount of funds to do that, but we had that last year. We had the ability to do that without asking the community to pay for more. But yeah, it's a lot. buses are probably 78 to $80,000 per and that doesn't include any uh athletic transportation. That's just their daily runs. So, it's pretty expensive and we we have very few. So, when we have opportunities to have transportation companies bid, meaning to go out and say, "Hey, we will take uh Ashlin as their roots." uh we typically get this many um to say it's um interesting out there in the transportation world would be an understatement.
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You know, the ones who might be in AEL hopefully or the ones who are coming into EEL. And so I don't think that it is prudent for us to completely drain any reserves we have now and shortch change those future kids. I just I don't see that that is going to be a solid move for us especially if we know or we can suspect or we are even being counseledled by other members of our own committee that the future years are going to be worse than they are even right now. And so it is prudent for us, I think, to continue to have some funds available to us to lessen the damage um as it gets thrown at us. So that's that's sort of how I'm how I'm viewing that particular practice. Thank you. Anyone else who hasn't spoken yet? I'll speak um or ask I guess because we just as a reminder to members um we're actually not deliberating about the budget tonight.
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