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all of you here tonight our mission statement here at center grove is we develop knowledgeable confident and responsive citizens through inspirational and innovative learning opportunities tonight our pledge of allegiance is going to be led by zach alexander a junior here at center grove who recently well now a senior so sorry zach i know the day after zach recently signed up for the marine corps so he will lead our pledge tonight pledge to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you zach and we have a certificate here for you [Applause] not that i'm a little experienced in age but i remember when he was about two years old okay our next order of business is the adoption of the agenda do i have a motion mr president i move that we adopt the agenda as presented thank you mr alexander do i have a second second let's go with joe okay public comments we do not have any this evening oh sorry all those in favor say aye aye all those opposed thank you motion passes 5-0 we do not have any public comments this evening next we'll move on to our consent items and just a reminder these are items that we have all discussed so it can be voted on in all these items can be voted do i have a motion for consent items mr president and i move that we approve the consent agenda as presented thank you mr alexander do i have a second i think thank you mrs counts all those in favor say aye aye all those opposed motion passes 5-0 we'll now move down to our action items 7.1 is to accept a bid for sale of apple equipment dr arkanov thank you mr russell um this evening thank you okay on june 10th 2011 we opened 11 bids for the purchase of surplus apple equipment after a thorough analysis of the bids i am recommending that we accept the bid from total technologies incorporated total technology provided the best and highest bid to purchase the equipment we have about 1700 ipads and 320 units of other apple equipment and the total anticipated amount resulting from this sale will be 288 150 the proceeds from this sale will be used towards future technology purchases sorry catch my breath real quick um we do this annually as you'll recall to keep our students in newer devices we sell back in the third year so that our kids always have a device that's three years old or less thank you thank you mr taylor are there any questions for mr taylor i just i've got one question uh mr taylor i noticed some of the bids in certain light items may have been a little higher um but we're taking the total technology i'm assuming that when they submitted bids and when we asked for them that was kind of an all or nothing you're exactly right we don't we don't want to divide up this equipment also the winning better had the best bid for the ipads which is the highest quantity and so they were probably going to get the business but we did evaluate references and just made sure they were the best did they get last year no last year we did a different company so this will be another new one for us but came very highly recommended well i know this uh this is a lot of work by your group but i also see that it leads to a good result so i applaud you and whoever else was involved in this it's good to see money coming back again yes i appreciate that i'll share that with the team thank you mr taylor where where do you think the total technology takes these instruments they actually are based out of california which is interesting because they have to comply with stricter recycling rules than we'd have in other states and so they'll take them there and process them and then i'm sure they'll be on a ship headed overseas and that's really where they're selling countries but we remove all student data um and all the devices are unlocked at that point okay any other questions is there a reason why we don't i mean i know that it's kind of like an all-or-nothing type thing yeah the state board of accounts requires that we get rid of our surplus equipment in this manner and so in order to do that we'd have to actually bring it to you on an individual basis to declare it surplus and sell it to them so honestly the labor associated just prevents that seeing there's no more questions i entertain a motion mr president i move that we accept the total technology bid and the anticipated amount of 288 150 for the sale of surplus apple equipment thank you mr daniels do i have a second thank you mrs counts all those in favor say hi all those opposed motion passes 5-0 thank you thank you mr taylor 7.2 we accept bids for food service dr arkanov thank you mr russell uh this evening i'm recommending the board accept west indie co-op bids for food service and dr long will provide you with some additional information thank you before i start with the board indulge me and let me introduce jason beck back in the corner jason's been coming to our meetings the last two or three months uh tonight at part of the consent agenda we promoted jason to lieutenant with our center grove police department but i just wanted to recognize jason hidden in the back there now we're really going to make him work hard so so tonight uh we're asking the board to approve the bids from west indie cooperative we belong to a co-op when we purchase our foods they completed their bids on march or may 1st of 2021 for the 2122 school year upon evaluation of the bids the school corporation uh food service department is recommending the bids as presented above if you'll remember last year the state board of accounts asked the board to do this even though we're part of a co-op that they ask each individual boards that are part of the co-op to approve these bids so we're asking the board to approve the bids from the west indie co-op food services thank you dr long are there any questions for dr long seen as there are none do i have a motion mr president thank you mrs counts do i have a second second thank you mr alexander all those in favor say aye aye all those opposed motion passes 5-0 thank you thank you next we have approval for the school meal prices for 2021-2022 school year dr arc thank you mr russell this evening i'm recommending that the board approve the school meal prices for the 21-22 school year and dr long will provide you with additional information thank you hopefully this will be the easiest vote the board ever has to take on any item in front of them because this year all of our students will be receiving free breakfast and lunch for their reimbursable what the the what the federal government considers a reimbursable lunch so there really is no charge for any of our students to eat a basic reimbursable meal but we also are asking the board to approve adult meal prices and they're not changing from last year so an adult a teacher or a visitor would pay 3.25 cents for lunch and two dollars for breakfast so again this is one of those things the state board of accountants asked the board ask us to ask the board to approve these even if there's no change or if they're free so that's why we're here tonight and we recommend approving free lunch and breakfast for everybody except the adults correct me if i'm wrong dr long but we've held the prices flat at least the last we did we you know there's a formula that they use that they make us whether you have to increase the prices but we've been able to hold them pretty flat and you know last year we were able to provide free free breakfast and free lunch too so this is really good and i think there's talk that this may become a permanent thing which would be really good for our kids because then everybody gets to eat no matter no matter what so it yeah it might encourage kids to eat that might not think any other questions for dr long thank you dr long do i have a motion to approve school meal prices mr president i move that we approve the school meal prices for the 2021-2022 school year as presented thank you mr alexander do i have a second second i think amy got to you first thank you mrs counts all those in favor say aye aye all those opposed motion passes 5-0 thank you our next order of business is to reject bids for miscellaneous school improvement projects dr arkhanov thank you mr russell this evening i'm recommending that the board reject bids for the miscellaneous school improvement projects and dr long is going to give you a little more information on that thank you we had worked with engineers to develop a plan to to develop a soccer parking lot down on morgantown road near the emergency operations center due to some design changes for storm water retention that the county asked us to do ended up increasing the price way more than we had budgeted but we tried to also package that with widening pennington road so we can help improve traffic in and out of the campus so needless to say both of those i think that one was a victim of bad timing and the cost of materials the the parking lot was more of a change in design kind of at the last minute that that made both of those go over budget so by law we need the board to reject the bids since we opened open them in public so i'm asking the board tonight to reject all the bids thank you dr long any questions this is not something we usually do no no i know and we're going to regroup and try to work and try to come up with a different way to do this again for next year still two important projects for us to do just don't have the money to do these so we can't we can't accept these bids that's being fiduciarily responsible do i have a bid or a motion do i have a bid for the lowest bid mr president i move that we reject all bids for the miscellaneous school improvement projects thank you mr alexander do i have a second second thank you mr daniels all those in favor say aye aye all those opposed motion passes 5-0 thank you thank you dr long thank you next we will look at approved preschool and lance key service agreements dr arkanov thank you mr russell uh this evening i'm recommending that the board approve the preschool and daycare and latchkey program services agreement and dr gabriel's going to provide you with some additional information yes good evening uh in 2017 we entered into a contract with honey grove to provide for uh preschool day care and also a latchkey program and that was that was done four years ago it's now time for these contracts to be renewed i've been working with adam mcclure with honeygrove and he's here in the audience this evening and he can handle all the difficult questions i'll take the easy ones just just to briefly we have tried to renew these contracts with the minimal changes uh i've had discussions with principals and everybody is very happy with this service uh things have been going very well for us and as you look over the board recommendation you'll see that this includes things like changing the date changing their address updating the the school principles and and uh changing fees to reflect the changes that have occurred over a four-year period the latchkey program is a program that we provide for our students before and after school it's available to grades k through 12 k through eight although very few middle school t students have taken advantage of this and the the preschool day care was originally designed as a program for our to as a benefit for our staff that's provided the the cost is paid by the parents to honey grove although they do open that up for other members of the community uh and that uses our our the prc building as a facility for that so these are as i said mostly uh minor changes and at this time i'd recommend that the board approve these two contracts effective july 1 of this year thank you dr gabriel any questions for dr gabriel i noticed in this contract dr gabriel that the original contract was for four years in the terms of two years is there a reason uh just that um it's two years and then renewable for two years uh i think we just have been kind of taking that approach for most of our contracts like this just to give us an opportunity to review it if we if we feel necessary and the renewal is automatic if it's agreed to by both parties so either of us could say no i don't want an automatic renewal but if we both agree to it then that that would take place this is in line with our other contract yes we've started to do this with our some of our contracts okay thank you any others do you have a motion mr president i move that we approve the preschool excuse me slash daycare and last key program services agreements with let penny grove educational center thank you mr alexander do i have a second thank you mr counts all those in favor say aye aye all those opposed motion passes 5-0 our next whoo did you have any language no that was it our next order of business approved commitment to central nine building project dr arkanov thank you mr russell uh this evening i'm recommending that the board approve the central nine proposed facility project and dr gabriel will provide you with some more additional information yes we had a presentation last month month before from the central line director this is the third time in the last 15 years that they've instituted a project like this and from a financial standpoint we've known about this for about a year and as a result we've built this money into our long-term projections of of the money that's going to be necessary the c9 presented a number of different proposals of which the most expensive was just under a million dollars so we have planned for a million dollars with a payback of of 10 years a level payback of 10 years so from a financial standpoint this is uh it's not going to be a problem and as with the other projects that we've recently uh presented this will not uh cause an increase in the tax rate because of other decreases that are taking place and of course dr or joe hubbard is on the on their board i don't know if you want to make any comments about this project it's uh i think where the first school is going to vote on it i mean it's a great project it's going to create a lot more classrooms for our schools as you guys know like the welding program a lot of our automotive programs fill up really quick so it's uh kind of adds additional classrooms and boost space for those for those kiddos so it allows us to get more kids in and get them out into the world and learn trade so i'm excited do we do we have a sense i mean i know we're probably gonna be the first ones and i think we well kind of came to an agreement last month we're waiting on you to bring this back but yeah the other 11 schools now but we just all we need is eight six six of the eight yeah do we anticipate six of the eight yes we do we do now okay okay there will be futures there will be some future steps in which the board would have to officially approve the financing after they get the aid approval and get their bond counsel receive the bids all of that stuff done this will be brought back again to officially approve the financing and this was built into the budget the department the payments not this year of course but for starting next year yeah right yes it's been it's been anticipated for quite some time any other questions thank you dr gabriel although do i have a motion or we already have to nope do i have a motion i'll be honored to make it mr president i make a motion we approve the commit the commitment to the center central nine building project as presented thank you mr bird do i have a second second thank you mr alexander all those in favor say aye all those opposed great motion passes 5-0 thank you our last order of business under action items authorize additional appropriations hearing and resolutions doctor thank you man this will be a hearing so oh where's my yeah so you'll have some things to say yeah pam can you bring that up here so this evening i'm recommending um that the board approved the additional appropriations and um i'll turn over this uh meeting so the this even this evening's board meeting has been appropriately advertised as additional appropriations hearing and dr gabriel will present some additional information i will turn over this meeting to mr russell to run the hearing thank you dr arkanov this evening's board meeting has been appropriately advertised as a hearing on additional appropriations i will now open this public hearing [Applause] i would like to call on dr gabriel excuse me to provide information about the additional appropriations thank you in order to spend money a school district has to have the money but they also have to have the budget and the legal term for that is the appropriation so this action this evening is to appropriate some of the cash that we have for additional expenses these expenses are being proposed at this time be either because they were approved after the budget was adopted primarily or because they are one-time expenses uh that aren't reoccurring and you you can see a list of what they are um this is this is a summary that follows the format that the state proposes that we use for an additional appropriation in the education fund you can see some money appropriated for salaries some 143 000 for supplies uh primarily textbooks uh and then in this the service category includes a variety of things that are that are primarily one-time expenses the operations fund we're appropriating the money to provide for the stipend that we gave to employees on the 28th of may and under the supply category we have furnishings for the emergency operations center and for the portables at sugar grove and middle school central and again a variety of things under the services category that includes the lease payments for the high school bleachers and again um installation of the portables in middle school central and uh under equipment uh an additional vehicle so this uh these are the items that we are asking the board to approve this evening this is a hearing and after that we would ask the board to approve the appropriate resolution thank you dr gabriel now this is the appropriate time for members of the public to comment on this subject matter on the additional appropriations or the information presented this evening are there members of the public present who would like to comment you can come up to the podium sir sure just uh state your name for us um second state your name first please oh dennis baker thank you none of you guys were principals back 35 years ago were you no oh i'm safe um uh personal services seventy six thousand pay salary and benefits an additional social worker that was added last fall um was that in preparation for an addition of a component to the school as far as see if i say this right um psychology is there a title given to that individual that was here are they just added to a team of people here is that person the salary that they added to that is that person added for a specific entity or are they part of a group of uh psychologists sociologists whoever you guys have to talk to people so that that individ that cost is a total cost that's not just the salary so that's total cost fringe benefits the whole nine yards their insurance and all of that stuff uh that individual is a social worker i'm not sure um would that be mrs hoover um that you could address where that person is at or mr uh taylor which individual that that is i believe it is at one of the one of the elementary is that correct oh okay i'm sorry mid-year extra support counseling social work at the high school okay so it's not an outside individual that is geared towards something that is coming no it's it's it's additional support to the number of school employees cool yeah it's a school employee okay thank you very much thank you thank you any other question any other public comments thank you hi yeah yeah mike can just say your name please hi i'm jay hart i just want i was wondering if if if we could clarify um miss counts a question about the sale of the of the old ipads that's that's something that happens at the state level the state says the school can't open that up for students or for people locally for those bids and i'll be happy to answer that that's a different than this hearing because this hearing is about this topic but we can answer that question okay um just if you could restate it what what exactly was the questioning of this so there was a question and miscounts had a question about about the the resale of the old ipads i believe am i yeah right okay and and it's it sounded like you weren't able to open up that bidding to the stu to the students or to uh correct yes correct and that was that is a decision that's made at the state level state board of accounts yes yes okay yeah absolutely that was it so yeah great thank you thank you so i now close this public hearing are there any board members who have any comments or questions concerning appropriations i got something else um turn on your mic joe so i was going to come tonight and talk to you guys about the crt and sel stuff because that's why you guys are all here what we're still hearing on that oh we're still on appropriations hold on to it okay so are there any board members who have any comments or questions do on the appropriations just chomping at the bit seeing as there are none i am going to close this hearing and okay i now need a motion right yeah that's correct so do i have a motion to authorize additional appropriations yes we approve the resolution authorizing the additional appropriations as presented very well done mr alexander do i have a second thank you mrs counts all those in favor say aye aye all those opposed motion passes five to zero i would like to announce and remind everyone that we will be reconvening the executive meeting in this room after the board meeting is closed so we will need to clear the room at that time we will move on to other business at this time mrs counts do you have anything to say this evening thank you mr hubbard do you have anything to say this evening yes mr president i do um obviously i know why you guys are all here you guys will talk about the crt and seo um i kind of had a big speech prepared um i've kind of cut it down after we just left our executive session um we did talk to the administrators and and the whole team here about this so crt i'll talk about that first i have never been approached by anybody in the school district about wanting to implement anything related to crt never heard those three letters besides any you know besides what i see on the internet and facebook and things like that so um i definitely would oppose anything like that but the the scl role that we just filled last month um after talking to the superintendent at our last executive session he has so generously offered to invite her to the next board meeting is that correct rich so you guys could ask the questions that you would like to ask to that seo because i know there's a lot of questions on that and kind of how that role is filled and you know how that may be a lot of people there's interpretations that roll springboards into maybe some crt things and things like that so um rich is going to make himself available and make that individual available to you guys to answer those kind of questions that you may have i know you guys are all here because you saw this beers and windows presentation that was given to some fifth graders i'm not as i'm just as upset about it as you guys are to be honest with you um i know that you know we need to as parents we need to trust our school corporations and who we uh we need to entrust the schools with our kids and we need to trust them and i know that this might have jeopardized that with some of you guys all i ask is you be patient and let rich and the scl and his team next month talk to you guys and maybe answer any questions or kind of creating fix any doubts you guys may have with center grove maybe we can repair those bridges we do have a lot of wonderful teachers here we really do you know a lot of kids idolize their their teachers and and my personal opinion is i don't think there's really a place in the schools for teachers to really talk about their political beliefs or secular sexual orientations or their religion i don't really think that belongs in schools and if if a teacher if a student knows that of a teacher i really think that that uh that teacher has failed that student in my opinion um you know like i said i understand you guys are upset i know why you're here um personally you know it's one of the five voices on this board i'll pose any curriculum that it tells tells children that tells children they're either at an advantage or disadvantage based on their age or where they're born or their sex or their race i don't agree with any of that um i hear you i hear you're saying no and uh if you guys ask me if you want me to fight for you i will without hesitation and that'll be my voice in that so that's all i got to say thank you mr hubbard [Applause] mr daniels do you have anything on a lighter note golf team thank you mr daniels mr alexander um mr hubbard i don't disagree with anything you just said um the one thing i would encourage everyone to do is to reach out and directly to rich as opposed to taking the social media or whatever other platform i think i think it's only fair to rich and his team that he understands what the concerns are and he hears directly from you i've never known this man to turn down a meeting with any parent and sometimes he meets way too often with the five of us so i would encourage you all to do that meet with rich directly not just necessarily via email thank you mr alexander well a lot of you did send emails and lots of times you don't get the answer you think you should get that happens on a lot of different subjects we have a responsibility to all students here at center grove and we take that responsibility seriously i can tell you every decision we make is always with the kids in mind first now keep in mind we have kids from this point to this point and everything in between and we have to take care of all those kids i would hope you would feel secure that you see five people up here and the administrators who are going to do that sometimes it agrees with what you're thinking sometimes it doesn't that's the way that things work there are no crt plans in the curriculum or in the state i understand it's on facebook i understand it's on all the news channels it's the new buzzword they are talking how it is connected to sel so it is hard to disseminate where is the truth where is it being pushed politically we get that and we're working with that i would like to sit here and tell you that at a hundred percent our staff will never do that but when you have over 400 employees something can happen something did happen okay and we are talking about that but don't take silence as we don't care don't take silence as we're not concerned it takes a little bit to figure all that out you wouldn't want decisions made for you in an overnight manner so bear with us we are here for the best interest in the kids just as you are i have always told parents when i was teaching and i still tell these people whenever i have kids they're my kids i love them like my kids and i discipline them like my kids and that's the way a lot of staff members are they love their kids so let's work together instead of at each other let's work together but we do appreciate you coming here showing your strength showing your support silence is deafening so we do appreciate it yeah maybe but i did want you to know we are concerned and and work with us because working at each other won't get anything done we all know that so let's work together i'm going to turn over dr arkanov now thanks mr russell um i also want to thank everyone for being here this evening i think it's great i would love to see people here more often as you can see these meetings are super exciting and we would we really seriously would love to have parent involvement at this magnitude all the time with that being said we have strategic planning we do that on basically about a three to four year process and we are coming up with the next round so i challenge each and every one of you to reach out to be a part of that process that formulates curriculum that formulates and informs everything we do in this organization every action item you've seen tonight has gone through that process now if you remember if you've been in the district long enough we've had the cg 100 call out where we had 300 parents step up to be a part of that process and they informed strategic planning 2.0 which i have to brag about because when we put that plan together five years ago almost heavy heavy involvement in online learning and we were ahead of the game as if we knew covid was coming and we were ahead by by light years and i have to also brag that we finished this year if you weren't if you were not aware of being the first high school in the state of indiana to be able to offer that simultaneous global campus program so students can get a high school diploma in our district at online at the same time as being in person those are huge things that we were able to do through our strategic planning process that many many parents and impacted we we did much other work as well through that process so you'll be hearing about that and a call out for that this year and that will drive a lot of the work that we do and in particularly into the curriculum we follow state standards do we have people that sometimes maybe go outside their lanes yes we do do we deal with them yes we do do we do it publicly absolutely not that's not appropriate we would never do that but we take care of it and you have to respect that we have an outstanding district and we take care of our people and we take care of our students and we do things by the book so i want you all to know that that we do those things and we take appropriate actions as we see fit and you have elected these folks to do that and they've hired me and i've hired all the people that work for us to take those steps those appropriate steps and to make sure that we do things appropriately legally and respectfully and we will continue to do that but i am so glad you're here i want you here and i want you to be on the lookout for the strategic planning process because there's an opportunity to really get involved and then i want to also just echo scott alexander's uh comments on social media if you want to inform change pick up the phone and call me pam my secretary will make sure i return every voicemail i talk to people i will talk to you on the phone i will sit and visit with you i will bring you in we will sit down and talk and i will get you involved and sometimes i get you involved more than you want to be and i'm eager to do that with all of you yeah amy is actually an example of getting probably involved more than she wants to be so with that i just say i am completely honored to continue to serve this district um we we really just appreciate your support and we'll continue to work hard to do what you expect for our kids and with that i'll just turn it back over to you thank you and with that i will adjourn this meeting
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
okay okay good so uh we have a quorum of the subcommittee and so i'm calling us to order we'll take a roll call attendance um debbie debbie here carrie uh carrie presump and allison present um so we have two oh steven is here in the outer room i'm going to add him yay yay can you hear us stephen i can now thanks um so we have two items uh on our agenda and i sorry i forgot to pull it up ahead of time um i don't remember which order they're in um actually we have three items we also wanted to review our minutes thanks um debbie for sending those along i think sure one of them was name titled june 14th but was actually a duplicate i realized oh i sent them they are exactly the same yeah oh my gosh so we can review um the may 27th tonight okay it's really short so if you haven't had a chance to read it i'm sure you can skim it right now i didn't i read it i didn't have any edits yeah it looks good um i move that we approve our minutes from thursday may 27th is our second second um so uh mcdonald's second by spitzer and we'll roll call um miss pitzer uh sponsor i um mr sullivan solo and i miss westmoreland westmoreland i when mcdonald died the minutes are approved unanimously so we'll look at the june 14th ones at a future meeting um next up if it's okay with folks i thought we could talk quickly about this subcommittee policy since they're it that probably would be super quick um i will share my screen i made that couple edits that came up at our meeting oops i need to move it are you seeing the the oh let me add it it's showing up down here now there we go so we had um my notes had two small um changes to our policy bde subcommittees instead of i'm committing ourselves to doing it at an annual organizational meeting to tweak that to give us a little bit of flexibility there so i just changed that to annually and then the other one was changing character to charge any other edits that we'd like to propose to take back oh i need to change this to three um okay so no other edits and we can take this back to the full committee okay and there were no edits on the other uh policy so did any of any of us have any edits that we wanted to consider for that other bdf i think is what it was called no okay okay great so we'll move on uh to the other policy um that we proposed uh for the vendor diversity and i'm that we have feedback from ms cunningham we do um she likes it except she says she feels it needs to go a step further and require vendors to rather than just sign a statement that they have a commitment to diversity and equity she feels they need to actually answer questions um around diversity and equity she did not suggest what the questions would be and i would think that even if if we do decide to go that route and have them um answer questions that probably wouldn't be part of the policy i assume it would be in policy that they have to um answer these questions and then the questions would be done as um by the superintendent's office or by ms cunningham's office but that was really her only um feedback would it be helpful if i shared my screen to see that okay debbie can you broadcast so so would it be a second item here so in addition to the language contracts shall include a statement affirming the applicant's commitment to cultural diversity that must be signed by the application of applicant or their representative that's sorry it's a bit small on my screen i have a copy here if this is a google doc would you mind putting the link in the chat just so we could look at it in full size on our screen um it's a word doc but let me hurt it i think i can convert it sorry i'm just having trouble or is is it an email i don't think we got it but you know since no not since the first not to be sent out for the last one and for folks if anybody's watching this i will share this with the policy subcommittee and then remove permissions after this meeting so that um we don't continue to deliberate uncommon i think we could make it so we can't even edit it too where we could just view it right good point so i just put the link in the chat i'll change the permissions okay thank you now i can see it so it could be um we could put it as a as another numbered item here right or we could add it as a line in one perhaps we could um perhaps we could make another number point and make what's currently there is number one number two and prior to that have something about people any vendor has to complete um trying to think of how to word it i'm wondering if is this an assessment of their cultural diversity policy i mean i feel like it's almost um is that was that i didn't have an opportunity to act with uh like was she thinking that these questions would be to get at practices would they be getting at the you know trying to actually get to the core like if they have a policy like get to the meat of the policy like i'm just curious about what the questions we're supposed to be assessing oh i'm sorry allison no go ahead i took from what she said at the meeting she attended that she i think that if they have already written a policy that outlines their um commitment to diversity and equity i took it that presenting that policy would be fine but if they don't have a policy she would like for there to be questions that they can answer to demonstrate that they have a commitment to diversity and equity [Music] i think a lot of i would assume that if you're working with a professional organization and attorneys practice something like that they're probably already gonna have a statement of uh their values around diversity and equity i would think that some especially some small companies might not have something like that and i think those are the ones that she would like to see um [Music] doing filling out some questions she didn't say how many questions i would think just maybe a couple um i'm trying to i know we have um diversity uh questions on our applications for people who apply for positions in the district um it's been a very long time since i've actually seen how those are written since i'm not in the hr department but i think she would probably want something along those lines so i i took the liberty of adding a suggestion in here so that it says that um all invitations for bids and contracts shall include a set of questions and require a statement demonstrating and affirming the applicant vendor's commitment to cultural diversity that must be signed by the applicant or their representative maybe it's not require a shall include a set of questions one reason i was thinking it might be a separate bullet is then we could work in something that says if a vendor or organization already has a statement or policy regarding their commitment to diversity and equity that must be submitted in lieu of such a policy they must answer a set of questions um so it's getting kind of long there i'm wondering if it should be a separate bullet ah or we could even have like a one a and one b i could see right right that's a good idea too it's like a bullet assemble it for the questions and it's a bullet for the quality yeah that's a really good idea but the statement shall include we could have like semicolon one a something i mean my computer is very slow i type something and it takes like a couple of seconds before it shows up i wonder if i did it in my document if it was faster [Music] i've hit indent three times now and it's not going uh it's probably because you're doing it as a suggestion instead of a direct edit once the suggestion is accepted it'll probably end it nope so much for my thoughts there huh i wonder why it's not important okay what was your suggestion maybe um i'm trying to remember i i'm sorry i can't read that on the screen i think it would be a set of questions so okay in in in the abs there we go the vendor does not have a cultural diversity policy or statement right um and i would think this if we're going to have this in it would be a and the one you already wrote would be b because what we're going to say is i want to see what you're saying never mind in the absence of a statement or policy so i wonder if it could be something like the vendor will be required to submit their statement of diversity i'm not sure we call it some statement of diversity in the absence of such a statement the vendor will need to answer a that will be required to answer a set of questions assessing the vendor's commitment to cultural diversity that yes that sounds good out of questions assessing the vendor's commitment to cultural diversity and maybe it should be applicant instead of them yeah we can word i mean i feel free to let you edit those types of things um and instead of just saying in the absence of a statement this could be in b it could start out saying the applicant slash vendor shall submit their policy or statement their statement or policy commitment to cultural diversity period in the absence of such a statement or policy the applicant will be required to respond so this this statement in in a is actually that is saying that the district will put will write the statement right and include it in the rfps and that the applicant has to sign that statement to say that they're committed to that so yes doreen didn't feel that that was a strong enough requirement so she wants to see did she did she say she wanted to see a policy and she actually what she said was she thought they should have to answer questions when we first met with her um in our policy subcommittee meeting she had said she thought they needed to answer questions if they didn't have already have a policy got it so maybe you know i'm just wondering it feels like at least my opinion is it feels like if they have already gone to the trouble of developing their policy or statement around diversity and equity that shows that they have such a commitment and i feel that they should be able to submit that as um sorry they should be able to submit that um dory may not agree so i don't know you know at what point we i i don't know at what point we decide how we're going to write it and just turn it over to the full committee [Music] i mean i have one thought which is that if we just make it the applicant will be required to respond to a set of questions assessing the applicant's commitment to cultural diversity then doreen has the liberty to make those questions one submit policy or you know a concrete question about the organization right if we take out the like submission then we could leave it more flexible for hr to determine but i mean i'm assuming we're gonna have to one concern i have is um this i don't know how this is going to be enforced um and i'm one thing i think we're going to have to do is if we decide that if the school committee looks at this and and likes that and i have no problem with asking them to answer questions i just think we need to have an attorney look at it to say whether that's something we can require um i would assume we can do business or choose not to do business with whoever um but can we if folks are coming in at a lower price i feel like that's the other thing i don't i think there's a lot of things that are yeah our hands are tied in a lot of ways um that's my only concern i know i can see exactly what doreen's trying to get to here um but this hasn't been passed by uh mark terry our attorney and the language that was in bullet number one to start with had been passed by doug slaughter and he said that it would fit very well within what we're already doing in some of our in our ifbs invitations for bids and we could expand it to the rfps and other contracts without a problem i don't know about the center questions piece well there there are um yeah nevermind it's gonna there's there's state policies regarding supplier diversity um that we we could adopt that language but that doesn't get at this this is different this is not saying that we're committed to hiring vendors with a diverse staff were talking about their commitment to cultural diversity and this includes individuals correct that was my understanding anyone my understanding from doreen was she would like to see this apply to anyone who is contracted to be a vendor for the school so i don't see this as you know when we say applicants um i don't see that as applicants for say a teaching job right but an applicant to say provide vegetables for our food services department that would include them now i think this is going to be tricky to i mean the question i think really gets to how will we respond if somebody doesn't answer the questions in a way that corresponds with the district's goal i mean i mean that's why the nature of the questions actually matter so say i'm i'm just totally hypothetical but like the supreme court's rulings recently on like in favor of religious liberty around issues right btq plus right so like if our statement and the way we're defining it says that i don't think we're going to get constitutional i'm hoping we won't but i'm just putting out there that i could see some ways in which this could potentially be um tricky i don't but i don't know and that's why i think you're right debbie that would want to look at um getting a second an opinion from the attorney just to to make sure we're not going waiting into territory where we're getting in trouble um so like if we can make this like a strong preference if we can't make it an actual like are there degrees of which we could enforce this would be right follow-up questions with the attorney i do feel like this the way at least be is phrased right now it's not actually saying how they need to respond it just says they have to respond right exactly so it's it and it doesn't actually say how that information will be used or whether it will be is just saying that we're going to have these questions and they have to respond right now the implementation is the tricky thing right right and and i agree we should run this by um mark terry to um sort of get sort of a you know make sure that it's worded in a way that gets up the intent without sort of right adding layers that we can't enforce and honestly mark terry may say he would need to see the questions in order to let us know whether it's something that could be enforced i also feel like there may be members of the school committee who would honestly want to know what those questions are before they vote on whether or not the policy i mean i'm i i fully i yeah i'm full confidence in in um miss kind of him but at the same time you know this will go beyond her tenure right becoming policy so it would be cure i don't i don't know so there's like this balancing act between wanting to give freedom to books and also just well i for instance i one thing i would be concerned about is i wouldn't want someone say who's a local vendor and a small company to feel like oh i don't have much diversity in my staff because i'm small i won't even bother to apply they're not going to take me so somehow i would like to see a way to get at knowing that our vendors share our commitment but not accidentally discouraging vendors who might feel that they either can't answer those questions the way we would want them answered or and i don't mean that as in they can't answer the way we want them answered because they don't agree with it i mean they may feel like oh i don't have enough knowledge about cultural diversity to answer these the way i should i don't know i just have a little bit of concern it does make me wonder if i mean i'm not against how it's written now but i mean one solution to that kind of thing would be having some sort of tiered policy so like if it's a contract above a certain amount or like if there's a certain level of professionalism if you're getting a big contract you know if you're an offender versus if you're you know the person who's retiring to like i don't know a plumber or something for the you know i know we're outsourcing a lot of our right no what do we call it our facilities facilities work yes thank you so so some of those facilities people were contracting with maybe very small like single single person or family level kind of workers and so that may be harder to enforce i don't know that i'm just wondering if we're overthinking this a little bit um probably no because i'm just wondering if we just rephrase a so that it it's it's a little bit more loosely defined as to whether it's a statement that they sign or questions but rather say um rephrase it so that it encompasses a statement or questions but some way like it that it shall include language um to the language that affirms um or what was the word that i had before not um demonstrates language to demonstrate and affirm the applicant's vendor's shared commitment to cultural diversity um that must be signed and completed or signed by the applicant of their representative and just leave it at that because that like or some way to phrase it so that it could be questions or it could be a statement but what we're what we're what we're getting at is is that we're saying that our requests for proposals and invitations to bids have to include a requirement for a demonstrated you know that they demonstrate alignment with our district commitment to cultural diversity how that's in there and how that's implemented doesn't have to necessarily be in the policy as long as we're saying that there has to be a mechanism within this rfp process to measure that [Music] that makes sense so would you be how does that change so is this the wording that shall um do we take out the termination language then or is that i had put the termination language language in thinking that um i guess without some consequence it feels like this is a policy with no teeth but i don't know that's the piece that that may be wonky but like the all invitations for biz requests for proposals and contracts shall include a statement or questions affirming the applicant's vendor's and it must be completed and should i say a statement or um responses to questions affirming instead of just questions responses to questions well this this the way this is worded is that the the statement is our statement we're giving the statement right telling them to sign our statement so write their pledge um so that's why i think it's tricky when we put them together because if you take out and say questions affirming the applicant's commitment that doesn't make sense okay to be responsible two questions um and see the statement that i'm referencing there the statement affirming the applicant's commitment is already in our ifbs so it exists encounters shall require the oops i did not mean yes the applicant [Music] or vendor to demonstrate [Music] air but what if it said to demonstrate in writing their commitment to cultural diversity um whoops i see you know i i understand her i understand dorian's asked for questions that it should be more and i find that a little i'd say it should be either or because i in my mind if we have a statement and we're requiring people to sign and commit themselves to that and and there's a termination clause around that that's pretty pretty serious um and i'm not sure that the questions but i mean it opens up this whole other sort of quite like well what are the questions um right or you know so i wonder if it's like by um it shall require the applicant vendor to demonstrate their commitment to cultural diversity by signing a statement or providing information as requested see the the signing of the statement she didn't feel was enough to me if i were if i were filling out an application to become a vendor for the district it would feel much more serious to me to sign a statement that says if we find that you don't hold these beliefs we're going to terminate your contract right that feels much more serious to me than answering some questions that i can make up any answer i want um i don't know i mean either one you're you're asking them to just respond in writing about their commitment whether it's a question where it's a they have to it or a statement that they have to agree to and sign to assign i mean i guess the difference is one is maybe it's instead of signing a statement it's providing a statement because then yeah write it themselves cultural diversity providing a statement of responding by providing a statement actually here to provide a statement affirming their commitment to cultural [Music] diversity they have to write it themselves um and and provide that [Music] and then what about the language allowing termination so okay i mean do we give them stock language then about the termination language it's not yeah um i think there's already stock language in our ifbs i'll double check that with done does that work that says the all ifbs and rfps and contracts shall require the applicant vendor to provide a statement affirming their commitment to cultural diversity um for contracts shall include language allowing termination of the contract if the applicant is found to be in violation of their agreement the assigned agreement statement sorry yeah so we're really just changing it to have them write the statement instead of us providing it yeah in some ways that allows people who already have a written statement or policy to say we have that here it is and put it in which i think it's good if they've already done that work i feel like they should be able to use that as their their proof right if they have the police policy already on the books it's pretty straightforward right [Music] i think the devil is going to be in in the implementation of this so yeah yeah for sure no i do wonder if well it'll be in the implementation but i could see like potentially somebody coming and saying do you have any guidance on language that you would like to see i i definitely i think that would be a good conversation to have i mean that that would have a positive thing if people engaged in a conversation with the district about their values that's not a bad thing the interesting thing will be if if someone either refuses to provide the statement or provides a statement that i mean i guess they i can't imagine someone providing a statement that would be overtly um racist or offensive but i could be surprised if someone did that but came in as the lowest bid what recourse do we have as a publicly funded organization so i think that's a question for mark terry now well i don't i don't think we can there's i mean the the purchasing um i don't know if it's guidance laws whatever but it says pretty much we have to go with the lowest bid regardless but it doesn't they still have to this is part of their application package but so it's information if we have two equal bids i suppose right right it almost makes me wonder if more what we want is like and i assume we have this debbie i'm kind of looking at you it's like it's it's more about in some ways like obviously we want to engage with vendors who who share the same values but it also sounded from my that initial conversation with doreen it was almost like there was conduct on the part of vendors that was problematic and it's almost like that the actual in practice would like to see a code of conduct on the part of vendors when they're interacting with our with our district and staff i mean right that's probably the wrong term like code of conduct but it's almost like the that might be like if somebody signs this statement and then one of their employees is on our campus and does something that's in violation of the statement well that person was acting as an individual or without where they are you know and it's tricky um you'd hate to i bet companies would be really wary of losing a contract on the part of one individual's bad behavior i don't know like i said it's going to be tricky to implement but if if this is what hr if this means doreen's requirements then i think it would be happy to give her the tools to do what she wants so the question is do you want me to take it back to doreen and talk to her about this discussion or do we want to take it to the full committee and get their input and perhaps invite doreen to speak i feel like we should probably get asked um mark terry to weigh in first okay um because i i wouldn't want if he if he would look at this and say hmm you know and i have some concerns we want to know that when we write to the full committee um because if we're having these questions right now did i freeze you did you are freezing yes we can still hear you just fine though okay yeah everything's frozen up okay nothing's clicking um yes i can okay so i just feel like we should the full committee will ask some of these same questions and so we might as well get them answered ahead of time and then we can use that to guide our further conversation with the committee and with doreen that's a good idea i can send it off to mark tomorrow that would be great so i will send this back um this edit back to you debbie great thank you okay anything looks like we lost our we lost you later she'll be back i bet not back yet i could text her if we needed to we'll give her a minute yeah we were i think we're at the end um oh she's texting me let me ask if there's anything more all right i think maybe we should just wrap up um okay let me do we have to schedule a future meeting i was going to say that's housekeeping so we can do that by email if you guys like okay okay great so i'm gonna um make a motion that we adjourned the policy subcommittee bye second i don't know if is one of us a vice chair i think you know we're just kind of taking it so then i'll just say uh all those in favor don't we have to do a roll call oh says spitzer eye westmoreland sullivan i act all right and i'll email you guys and allison and we'll find another time all right sounds good thank you debbie thank you
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but going into 2021 you can see we've had to use a combination of all of the funds to to maintain and 22 you still have s or money availability um at the end of this fiscal year there won't be any s or ones that's all been spent um you'll have some s or two left and you'll hopefully the application will be um proposed and approved here shortly and you'll start to see us or three money coming in into your budget so that goes to 24. so if you look look at these slides you can see the impact that sr funds are going to have with your mno and your prop 301 and i just wanted to make sure that you know we've got a percentage of increase in our salaries for our certified people coming out of prop we've got you know there's just a lot of moving parts this past year and will be for the next couple of years with using prop 301 and esser's money and and it proves that it looks like you'll be fine for the next few years is there any chance that unspent esther's money will be refunded to either the state or the feds no i'm going to tell julie don't ever send any of her sending it back my my thought would be is if there's any by the time you get to 2024 that's left move salaries in and eat it up because that way at least you'll have a carryover for the coming years you know so but no i would and i think she knows that she's smart enough to know that no you don't ever give the feds back any of their money yeah the other piece though is esther's three goes out to september 24th so you could set up the 24-25 budget with a portion of the bns's monies you would have to pay it out off the first part but but so there's actually an extra year for esther's three i don't think any everybody always realizes just how far out esther's one is 22.
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uh so i mean across the board we had a very very successful season uh at the sectional we finished uh second uh losing to rosary who ended up getting a team trophy this year they were third we were six in the state this year our highest finished ever we had advanced all four relays 4x1 4x2 4x4 and 4x8 downstate we had a girl in the hundred uh girl in uh the hundred hurdles 300 hurdles who's here today uh brook barkosi we'll talk about her in just a moment we had a long jumper a pole vaulter down and another girl carolina hints who's behind me too at the moment uh she was also a qualifier in the shot and the disc which is amazing so caroline i'm going to have you kind of step forward so you can awkwardly stand here in front of everybody and just to let you know how amazing of a career she had carolina is participates in two events the shot and the disc and she made it downstate in both she finished 14th in the shot and she was second place the state runner up in the disc in fact one of her throws earlier this year was just five feet shy of the 2a state record so to say that she had a tremendous career and will be competing at u of i next year and uh looking to uh throw the disc and also add the hammer as an option as well is just an amazing feat so we wanted to formally recognize carolina and her efforts because she just did an amazing job awesome um we're also going to bring up brooke barkosi i'm going to have you come on up and come closer as well here um what an amazing career uh brooke barkosi had she uh not only uh advanced in she actually ran three events for us down state this year she was on our four by two or four by four relay that ended up finishing fourth in the state so top nine as coach aikens had just mentioned get state medals and score points so she was fourth on our four by four relay and in the hundred hurdles she finished third and all you know i think that that's an amazing feat uh if you ask her she's like i know what i you know i know what i did wrong and why i didn't win it here but that's just the comp that's just the competitive person that she is just always wanting to be the best and in the 300 hurdles uh dominated the field and was the state champ uh by a huge margin in the 300 hurdles amazing race uh just so again congratulations uh brooke and bo and carolina both you guys just tremendous job so um just to kind of wrap things up where we finished as a group our 4x2 relay that was fiona padone lauren dowd paige greenhagel and avery anderson they finished ninth place our four by four was avery anderson lauren dowd kenzie anderson and brooke barkosi they finished fourth brook was third in the hundred hurdles she also was a state champ in the 300 hurdles and uh carolina hints was the state runner-up and again finishing six in the state our highest finish ever and i just can't say enough good things about these kids and um you know they just did some amazing things and i didn't mention that next year brooke is going to be um also competing at grand valley state thank you grand valley state and she's also going to be hurdling and sprinting and uh it just again just a tremendous tremendous job uh by these girls and i thank you for having us here and letting us share a little bit about our track and field world so to watch our girls in 1997 when they got third in state carissa was the 300 meter hurdler that year who won our first state championship in that she's a good friend of mine yes i was fortunate to go down with the family and got to see all of my friends run when i was a junior and the seniors and the juniors where the the powerhouse is that yes it was so much fun to watch in fact carissa uh know some of her other coaches and was texting uh them throughout the year i don't know chris and she's just like this girl brooke is she coming close to my record what's going on here so yeah so the the world knows that you know the track and field world knows what what you did there rook so yeah so thank you again very much congratulations and thank you for coming out tonight there's no public comment so we'll move on to action reports consent agenda need a motion in a second second your expenditure and revenue reports are in your board packet revenues are currently at 56.37 percent compared to 54.82 a year ago expenditures are currently at 67.01 percent compared to 68.61 a year ago this month we received impact fees for 118 463 and 45 cents and that was for 18 new home starts transition fees came in at 18 025 this month and then bill's payable for june it's typical a lot of cleaning up wrapping up the fiscal year starting next year um included in there some bigger ones are the bond payments for interest um some software renewals and then our work comp and property casualty insurance invoices all right pam falk yes ham hill yes nolan yes yes gorman yes next motion second um to discuss and approve the german three textbooks some moves second the last month i bought for the german three textbooks along with a sample of those they've been on display for the 30 days the memo is attached within your board packet any questions that you have for me we're just looking for an approval tonight we can go ahead and purchase those for the program hemphill yes nolan yes yes bulk yes gorman yes you fix a motion second to discuss and approve the depositories so moved second um annually the board has to approve the list of depositories for our school funds for the next fiscal year currently we use old second bank in the illinois funds which is part of the state treasurer's investment pool i also included pma securities on there because they did have all of our bond payments when we or our bond investments when we did that and i just just like to have them on there as a possibility in case they can give me a better interest rate all right nolan yes yes folk yes campfield yes gorman yes next month mark is your mic on [Laughter] i didn't have a mic i thought you guys were sending me a message they can hear you all the way on youtube okay all right next motion second to discuss and approve individuals to serve as treasurer for the district activity funds so moved second another annual agreement or to appoint the activity fund treasures currently pam israelson is for elementary in the middle schools um kylie gard is the athletics admin assistant so she's at the high school and kind of functions as a treasurer there questions all right finner yes folk yes handful yes colin yes gorman yes next motion second i need to appoint the committee chair and an additional member to serve on the audit committee so moved second another annual committee basically um we need um two board members usually serve on here typically the um the auditors will have maybe a five ten minute phone call with at least one board member the audit is scheduled to start the week of august 9th so they're looking like august 9th or 10th for somebody to um take that phone call i can do it again it might be more like 90 seconds so i'm more than happy to pretty much that's fine if you guys are fine sure you can handle all 90.
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esther's three is 23. esther's two is 23 and answers three is 24 but it's september of 24 so you're into the next fiscal year which really helps yeah so you could do summer school you can do some programs in the summer and stuff so um with that being said i don't you know i mean you can talk about what all was presented over the last several months in the budget but i kind of figured we already knew what it was but if you do have questions i'll be more than happy to answer them and to carl's last point part of the part of the reason for the january february march april may you know types of meetings that we've had is so that when you get to this piece really that the cards have already been laid i understand they have because of the state legislature and stuff like that but but when we say we're going to give this amount of a raise we say we're going to cover this much for for health care or we say we're going to add in more days to the teachers contract in in effect those motions and seconds that you guys made in march april and may have effectively driven this whole budget and so that's how that's why we don't spend a lot of time over that because we've spent all the time over it this is really the final icing on the cake so to speak of what the budget looks like but many of the decisions were made long before now because we decided to give raises or give extra days or pay for insurance or whatever the thousands of different decisions that we made questions any questions on that so we'll just move into our i'll call the order then okay at what time all right i'll make a motion to call no i don't need a motion i'm going to call the meeting to order it 3 12.
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i'll do my best okay ready falk yes dan pill yes nolan yes yes gorman yes a nice motion and second i need to discuss and approve the resolution to allow payment of salaries of building and grounds department personnel and utilities to be paid out of the o m fund so moved second go ahead so annually we have to approve this resolution to authorize the salaries for custodians maintenance personnel and utility bills to come out of fund 20 the operations and maintenance fund rather than the education fund in the isb thing these normally come out of the ad fund um but we've always put them into the o m where it makes the most sense so so does it have to start in the headphone can we just budget and then you don't need this it's an annual requirement to allow me to put it there um we've always put it there it's just always in the o m fun but you have to do this resolution every year to do that so every district does this right one of those things that you should shake your head yep uh folk yes hand pill yes nolan yes yes gorman yes next motion second i needed to approve the designation of interest and some of the operating funds to in order to prevent interest monies and these funds from becoming principle so moved second this resolution basically just gives us the flexibility to transfer to other funds when that time comes in the future it kind of sits there but by approving this resolution it allows us in the education fund the o m transportation and working cash to be able to to maneuver um which ones we that might need that money and when the time comes all right folks yes anfield yes nolan yes yes gorman yes uh next we need another uh motion second to discuss and approve any contracts that produce over a thousand dollars of revenue to the district this is another annual approval needed this year no vendors actually made it over a thousand we didn't do any fundraising so because of the pandemic but we just always these are on the report that's in your board packet and these are the people that we typically use in a normal year so we just left them as is so hopefully we can get back to doing some of these fundraisers all right himself yes nolan yes yes well yes gorman yes next to motion second i need to discuss and improve dana fluge and dr mongan to prepare the tentative budget for the 2021-2022 school year so they were hoping there was going to be no more so another annual thing it takes a team effort for administrators admin assistants everybody to help form and get the budget to work the main efforts though are in finance and hr so it makes sense that we be appointed to prepare the tenant of budget all right okay nolan yes penner yes fault yes pamphlet yes gorman yes next motion second are needed to discuss and improve the closing out of two door checking accounts second well this is not an annual thing um this is um we have two checking accounts that are kind of stagnant and not really having any activity in them the impressed elementary checking account typically used for field trips and has a balance of two thousand seven hundred twenty eight dollars and twenty cents and then the employee benefit insurance checking account that i believe was used for cobra payments way before my time it's had it has a balance of sixteen thousand five hundred fifty three dollars and thirteen cents um they're both occurring fees every month in the on the bank statement so it just makes sense to close them out and move them to the ad fund and then all future activity will just flow through that will they refund us any of those fees or um they're not necessarily fees because we have a compensating balance that offsets it so we don't actually see those charges but behind the scenes they do add up and we are looking at them and kind of going through all the accounts and i'm like it's kind of silly so we're going to try to close these two out now and maybe some more in the future but yeah thank you mm-hmm all right okay yes folk yes stan pill yes nolan yes gorman yes to discuss and approve a donation of 500 for the cheer activity account so moved second um we received uh the central high school cheer activity received the donation from an anonymous donor in the amount of five hundred dollars it's going to be used to purchase like cheer apparel and their bows and any other supplies that they need all right folk yes and pill yes nolan yep yes gorman yes and last uh actually i'm a motion second are needed to discuss and improve veterinary science affiliation agreements that will provide clinical opportunities for students as part of an annual process we have a lot of contracts that come forward for you for our vet agreements that we have been working for our externship program today we have seven animal clinics that have signed on one of them being new to us for this coming year which is the spring hill veterinary clinic the other six are current ones that we use this year all right bulk yes cam hill yes nolan yes yes gorman yes we move on to information items um principal testone already used the athletics and activities updates the director pollway's here to give us an update on our summer capital projects good evening it's that exciting time of the year again construction time so we've started off the summer really well even before school got out we were able to complete the project to replace the roof on this section of this building which we didn't do in the previous roofing project so we got that done uh the central middle school gym roof which we um postponed that a couple years ago when we did the cms roof project we were able to get that done that was done within five days that finished up last week we're in the process of working through the central high school window project so that one started ahead of central middle school because we have the abatement to do so they're making good headway the first floor should be pretty much done by the end of this week and they'll be moving up to the second story their plan is to just roll that crew right into central middle school the abatement at cms will be the week of fourth of july so starting july 6th and they're expecting to be done by the 11th so the plan is to have the roofer roll in right behind them as they're taking out windows put the new windows in as i mentioned last time all the abatement will be done from the exterior so there's no reason to lock down the school it'll be plastic everything is boarded up on the inside so everything should work out well there our staff has been working hard to get a jump on summer cleaning with summer school coming next week at pk for our high school middle schoolers we're getting all those rooms completed ahead of time so we could just do some touch-up because we're going to be kind of out of time by the time summer school is over so our crew is working hard to get that done and then we're working through country trail summer school our staff and we'll do it at pk also our staff goes through cleans disinfected all the same processes that we did throughout the school year for all those summer school classrooms to prep them for the next day so our staff's working diligently to do that we got a lot of other odds and enza things some floor tile replacement at the high school various painting throughout the district some door replacements so all those odds and ends of of improvements we do every summer any questions thank you thanks um dr montgomery discuss the microsoft office upgrade so as part of another adoption that we're looking to upgrade is the microsoft office courses that we offer which is word excel and powerpoint i'll go ahead and pass the level 1 and level 2 forward for you we're looking for a 9057-97 approval for the textbook material with that we have a comprehensive e-course worth 500 seats we don't have 500 students signed up for it but it was cheaper to go with 500 seats than it was to go with a lower amount so we're just going for the one that's the cheaper of the two uh 3758 the microsoft bundle three seats for 300 users that's for us to get the credentialing that we're looking to get for industry credentialing uh we did upgrade to certaport which is in alignment with ecc algae community college and the certification that they received for their microsoft office programs and so we're trying to realign that currently our software is outdated and is not up to date so we're looking to update that to the more current and most recent microsoft office program kelly green who is the department chair is requesting this just to make sure that we're getting an alignment with ecc you can see at the bottom of the board packet i do have for you the credentialing option options that we have for our students we have both the associate program or the expert associate means that they get any of the three the word excel powerpoint we don't really work too much with the outlook and expert means that they get any of the two of the three so we do have some students that get two of the three certifications which just gives them the mos expert for them to use within the industry any questions on that this will go on display for 30 days and then come back next month for board approval to go ahead and go forward the purchase the purchase will be made with grant dollars through the careertech education program not with district dollars now does that cost also include a license for the chromebooks no it's we have uh computers that currently will upgrade into the software that we need to have okay this is curriculum rather than okay i thought that same thing when i first read it yeah it's curriculum it's for the courses word in excel okay but then those students will have the chance to use microsoft products yeah we already have that gotcha okay just ironic such a big book for microsoft stuff right all right next we'll move on to the foil freedom of information act we received two foias since our last board meeting the first one came from the chicago regional council of carpenters they were requesting information on any work that was performed by certain subcontractors during fy 19.
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thank you carla thanks carla maybe we should all right i need the ocean to adopt the agenda i move to adopt the agenda i'll be right on it second step all in favor aye aye aye aye motion carries five to zero can i just say i love it when you're all here and we don't have any call-ins because that was that was uh pulling teeth there okay superintendent report given that we drew a long board retreat i don't believe there's anything more i have to say excellent let's make a note of this day [Laughter] okay does any governing board members have anything that they would like to share okay i'll share it under 75.
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the list of the subcontractors is in the board packet uh mdc wall coverings elgin locking key patriot door solutions prime construction herbs glass and mirror and stalker sports floor we were able to respond with the information that they asked for and then the second point came from mandy dorman an attorney with dorman bell llp out of texas and um they were requesting a list of the school district's full-time employees first middle and last names their tunnel and position their work email address and date of higher building location uh we did consult with our legal counsel on that one and we were able to respond to that voya as well all right uh we need a motion second to adjourn from open session and go new executive i'll make the motion i'll second that yes yes yes yes yes i'll do a quick five minute break six four i'm gonna make copies
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all right public comments none look at us just getting through this um action no uh consent agenda none so then we will move right into one which is discussion consideration the proposed budget um which was just quit correct so um any questions on that like motion oh what yeah so my question is um is it the motion to publish the approved budget plus now i am publishing here okay right but but you're you're approving the proposed budget okay then in july approve the budget for 2223.
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with your approval she will then post it and do all the necessary steps the question was because it was just worded a little yeah i don't think maybe word a little oddly no it should be yeah no it should be motion to approve the post budget right okay to make that motion yes okay i moved to approve the budget that was just presented in the hearing for the fiscal year 2021-22 district expenditure budget as presented all in favor aye aye aye motion carry zero okay discussion and consideration for selection of board member for communication foundation this is part of uh what happens uh this meeting every single year uh there's some the of the uh board that sits on the educational foundation goes to the meetings so you need to prove someone has to step up say i'd love to do it we move forward with it as a general rule today we have a quarterly meeting usually lunchtime meeting lasts give or take an hour were a couple things that popped up last year as we tried to reconstitute it so we had a couple extra meetings that that would be there but on a general year you would go ahead and just meet once a quarter use lunch and then we would um you know there may be the occasional which you guys are already at you know like the although we did excellence awards in here at the board meeting on a normal year it would be at the cpac time so that person would be there uh anyway probably but if not for sure they had to be there representing the board so minimal but we need someone to who is our current shelly shelley meetings we didn't have any meetings yes we did [Laughter] you were invited i don't know where like how was i supposed to be i don't know we'll have to double check yeah i didn't know we had meetings would you like to do it again because kobe diver didn't get anything i said it was packed no no i'm feel bad now because i didn't have any would you like to tell me yeah i'll do it somebody has tell me when the meetings are all right so i move to approve shelly hargis as the governing board selection for the education foundation committee member second okay motion carries five to zero okay all right 7.3 let's see here 7.3 discussion and consideration approval of the ig clemson unified school district maricopa community colleges and dual enrollment yes this is an agreement with maricopa community colleges for our athletic i can't think of the let me see if i can see it brought up it's the athletic training course cac doesn't offer it so they offer it through chandler gilbert and it just got missed when becca brought all the the last ones at the last meeting so i'm just approval for the second year it's probably right now quite frankly our strongest dual enrollment uh class that we have we have quite a number of kids that are taking it so it's a very very positive program so i recommend approval what is it athletic training it's the athletic training but yeah somewhere in here sports medicine yeah okay any questions on that no no we did the pinal county one before right yes and this is we this one we had to get permission from cac mcc so all right i moved to approve the iga between book homes and maricopa community college for dual roman as presented well a second all in favor aye aye motion carries five to zero seven point four discussion consideration or approval of 122 district organizational development plan and district gold that was just that was just that earlier and it's just i'm trying to formalize it because i think it's critical for the community for the uh staff and for the leadership to stand where we're moving so uh with your approval and we'll continue to move forward based on the plan that i presented goals being the adjusted goals that in line the priority map with with hashtag four goals with the minor adjustments questions steve yeah so but approving these doesn't mean you can't change them though right because it's okay to yeah no and what i would suggest though more than anything else for this year quite frankly with all the things that are going on kind of what you guys were saying i think on conversations this morning you can probably fit just about anything we're doing uh mark showed the data from essers and there was an area for other where people wrote in comments and then reading it across the board all the stuff that everybody's asking so we'll be able to fit just about everything under there but you're right if there was something that came up we'd be able to make it all right perfect all right then any other questions all right to approve the new district organizational development plan and 2021 2022 district goals added second all in favor aye aye aye motion carries five to zero okay seven point five discussion consideration the approval of the a to use asp superintendent evaluation format so this is what uh mr dunn talked about earlier with asba as a being part of a pilot program uh we'll go ahead and evaluate me using uh the online program that they'll use it'll be very very similar in format in terms of process as to what the board use tells the difference would be obviously would apply to agendas for i mean uh evaluation pieces from the board um they would provide training for both the board and myself on the instrument look at the the six areas or the six domains it's pretty much uh i can't think of the new acronym but it used to be the slick standards which was the leadership standards they're pretty much aligned with the leadership standards um uh like normal so i didn't say anything way out of whack we'll see how many questions there are and those kind of things but the domains themselves and the standards to be totally honest we'll be looking at the administrative evaluation instrument this year and there's a chance we'll find these exact same domains uh the big key question will be is there 10 questions or there are 568 000 questions have you had that at all yes so um julie's gotten a number of people who uh julie bacon from asba has gotten enough people who are interested in being tests for this so there are two informations that are being held one next monday and one next wednesday and if you want information on how to set up for these um send me an email and i'll get you the link for it uh and the information will be forthcoming in one of the information sessions so right now i have nothing so when you say training how what how does that come through what are they is that through these information sessions well they're supposed no no no no no no right yeah i'm gonna guess based on what i'm saying bob if you get anything forwarded because we're i'm out of town next week at the at the conference in nashville but what i'm planning based on on what it will be is is if you're in the pilot program this is going to be an overview of what you need to do to do it and then there'll be much more specific training that would say okay either they're going to come out since we're in the valley there's a chain out if you're in a rural area they might do it zoom and they would just say okay guys uh here's here's what we mean by when we sustain one is leadership and district culture here are the standards that they're going to be the superintendents to be judged against what we mean by standard 1a or standard 2a or standard whatever and they'll just go through that so that that when you that's and you click where the rating is you have an understanding and idea of what what they think this should be about probably talk a little bit i don't know what the levels are but they'll more than likely be four levels you know highly effective effective in effect or some iteration of that there'll probably be some of that type of situation want to get it have a better feel but that's what i think the training will be to make sure that you all understand they're not going to do that next week and then they're going to come back out and say okay guys this is what the instrument really means questions concerns i'm sure they have a whole presentation on it but that's what that will be and we'll have to determine when they're going to do that and how they're going to do that next week is just an affirmations session yep yeah okay presentation are we required to be there well i've signed up for the wednesday session okay so i feel like i'm speaking so i'd be happy to tell you or if you'd like to sign up for one of the sessions send me an email and i'll send out the information i'll send me the link you're an excellent uh spearhead did you ask her like how many questions were on this i did not i don't know i was waiting for the information session just a request if there's like a lot of questions don't get burned out because it's my evaluation kind of get to the end if we don't like it can't we just use the one we make well what i'm thinking well i think we're gonna do this for the first year but i think i mean once we get our like map and stuff done i think that if i know these ones they're going to be like we need to do it on this and we'd i just well before we get there let's at least yes like see what they have and maybe we can okay we'll see all right so do we need we need to approve that that way we're just all on the same page for us okay so i move that we approve the use of the asba intended evaluation form for 2021 2022 as presented all in favor aye aye aye aye aye you can you can say no if you don't want to no i i i i recognize that uh all right i haven't had the best attitude about did i recognize that but um but bob i i support bob and he he teared us for this so we'll let's do it we'll help him out all right okay so motion carries five to zero even if you say no it's still four to one right i know i know we're still doing it i'm trying i'm trying for unity was it wasn't my like moan right before i said yeah i was like enough of a indicator so um information discussion items none um information item none so we're going to go to request for future agenda item mr ray yes we have yours on the next yes thank you yep and we've tabled it so that you would be here so i you better be here so i'll be here okay so our next one i know that chad has um some that he would like to so why don't you go ahead chad we'll figure this out okay oh you want to see it well did you yeah it would just be you just need to give us direction for what it is and then and then there won't be discussion because it's this is going to be future agenda items and then we can i wanted to uh if we could just address the the um uh liquidation fees not that we have them not whether we should have them or just uh just to kind of look at the policy itself to see how if we can find a way that maybe we can be a little more uh that there's a possibility to be a little more subjective and not feel so strapped and bound apply that to every single situation minus very few exceptions so maybe we could be a little more um open to that anyways are you looking for for all those throughout the district are you just focusing on certain ones that's a good question i did i think all of the board support just to give a little more leeway open and just so everybody's real clear based on the uh recommendation item for a vote mr ray's the one on the novels is just a discussion item because we're explaining what's going on but because of the request and the way the request is coming through there will have to be a vote or another motion second and so just know that coming through i'll work it up and i'll i'll make sure that uh mr mccloud and myself work on it so it reflects what he wants but just given what he's asking um uh it will be more than just a discussion item um all right okay so that will be an agenda item for would next time can we do it next on the 14th yes okay all right dude i thought i had a couple you have another one yeah um and we'll see how this one the other one um the other one had as reference to the disciplinary to discipline and it kind of came up in our discussions today about uh you know teachers the the on the on the survey about feeling supported or with the discipline program and then i think uh doc brought up that there's some changes in the that this data are coming as far as maybe some statutes or limitations as far as what can or can't be done with students disciplinary wise and so i was hoping that i felt like that was something maybe we ought to look at and discuss and make sure that we have policies that are strong enough uh to our administrators and teachers uh to be able to do what they need to do in order to make sure that there's discipline in the classrooms and that we we can make sure that there's no disruptions in the classroom and so that we just make sure that our policies are strong enough to support the teachers and the administrators and so this one will just be a discussion item there's not going to be action on it um but we'll i'll give you an overview of the disability system and what we do in the district um it's all public knowledge it's within the uh within the policy but but i'll let you know but as a board we don't approve those things no no no you don't again you will the only place that you'll approve it you will get this like i said earlier today there will be whether it's regulation you want to don't approve the regulation but i have to share with you or it's actual uh changes uh once asba kicks it out to us and again generally probably they might move a little faster because it it impacts kids lots of districts are starting the end of july they will put out their their process for couple the board but no if you're not aware uh the way any new policies are written is there's a thing called cosa council of schools and so in essence when the laws come down the cosa gets together and writes policy they share it amongst themselves get to a consensus that that the majority of the uh attorneys school attorneys feel that the going to go out to the school districts is is sound uh they will still tell you please consult with your attorney if there's a real question about it and then that's what gets approved so that will come again impact on kids it may come quicker but worst case it's going to be mid-august anyway and we'll or you know get it on board meeting there's a chance they may run it as a a single uh agenda uh you know first in the reading and a second reading that they're going to recommend everybody just approves it as a first reading so but we'll we'll know in the next so what's going on with that well there may be policies that are you know there may be certain things that the state issues down but each school district has their own policies related to but i'll go into that experiment so otherwise we're going to get into the agenda item at the board meeting and tell you all that all that stuff i mean to say that we don't have a say in what the disciplinary policies are it doesn't make sense there but there is a degree of truth to what what she said what ms hargis said so let me set up the whole thing i'll explain it to you and try to explain to you some of the pieces there is latitude so you're right so not latitude so it's it's a murky area that that is confusing at best and in addition to the policies and regulations we have some of that described in our student handbooks right so what's what's described in student handbook is the line to the policies and that's a lot of questions yes and you're going to yes yes but again as a discussion not as an agenda item but as a discussion item not as a voting discussion okay so if as a result of that discussion we identify an area where we do have latitude we could put it on a future agenda item for a vote i would i would suggest as of right now knowing where this conversation would go that you probably already have the latitude to do what you're describing in a specific situation um but that's what we have to have a discussion the laws are specific in some areas and more broad and others um so you might have it already but again we'll have that discussion and i'll be able to tell you whether there's latitude or not perfect okay did you want to do your or do you want to bring up and decide if it's something that we can that we need to put on or or how that gets addressed right yeah i mean he can well the the third area that i was hoping that we as a board could discuss was just to take a look at uh for example so when we say that that our principals for example are on a year-round contract and the contract says they work you know their contract is for 262 days um just i just wanted about that because in part part of what we need to i think we should look at is you know part of in addressing we've already kind of started as far as maybe giving principals a few more days off um trying to address the issue that principal and the principal salaries and the teacher salaries are getting closer together and there's not as much of a gap there i just think it would be something that we could look at to to to just address and see what's what it's at if when all said and done i mean on the one hand we you know do we do we say our principals in our district for example work as many days as they do this is just one example but if many days they do because we have an assumption that they have to work that many days in order to justify paying them a higher salary i think their position their job in itself justifies a higher salary already so do they work 40 more days or 50 more days than the teachers do in order to justify that salary or is there a way that we look at that same with the district personnel i've just i just spent a lot of time in other districts and there's a lot of places where schools get paid just the same we're better than our principals and they don't have to work days they're not required to work as many days as our principals do and so i'm just wondering if that's something we could look at that might be a little bone torment so you're looking more toward the administrators and not to change anything with the teachers no like to maybe administrators and district personnel okay would be my thought to just address that again we'll share an overview of that it won't be an agenda item uh there may be some stuff coming up here in the near future that may i didn't make part of this conversation uh but we can at least start the conversation didn't mean to cut you off no we had to discuss some of that though right like with numbers of days off correct yes yes we did there was actual motion to add five more days to okay not just administer five to administration two down to the classified staff okay i just wanted to look at that a little further okay anybody else have any future agenda items that they would like to thing i brought up during the previous session about student achievement oh okay you want some sort of student to ch but okay all right i mean there the ames data is going to be out and it would be i mean there's a lot of data that we can look at right yeah no that that's probably what we'll look at we just left till we had a chance i think the the high school aims data just came out uh over the weekend and so we haven't had a chance to take a look at it so we will put something together and i'll be on the agenda okay all right we'll put this down all right anything else all right i'll make a motion to adjust at 3 55 second wait 35 okay [Laughter] yeah we have to sit here um second i did okay um hi okay 3 35. um
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uh the new jersey open public meetings law was enacted to ensure the right of the book to have advanced notice of and to attend the meetings of public bodies each time any business affecting their interest is discussed and acted upon in accordance with the provisions of this act and the board of education policy 0-162 the board of education and the of the borough bound book has caused notice of this meeting to be posted in the board office and at the bound brook high school and mailed her fast to the courier [Music] board of news and any person who has requested individual notice and paid the required fee i pledge your commitment 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 all right i just wanted to start to uh this meaning addressing a couple of concerns um just give me a second we're going to move the executive session um to the beginning of the meeting right after president's comments because there's things that we need to discuss prior to the meeting and then we will go into uh public comments a couple of things uh let's see where do i begin all right i know that uh over the last couple of months we have been asked many questions in board meetings and i just wanted to uh read to you what is proper protocol for public participation because i think even within the board sometimes we have a disagreement on what our role is sitting here so i'm just going to read from you the new jersey uh school boards association has concerned public participation comments from citizens generally go through the chair at the board meetings usually the board president boards use the public comment period as an opportunity to listen to citizens concerns but not to debate issues or enter into a question and answer session or cross-examination between the public and individual members be aware that not all issues brought before the board meeting will be resolved boards may respond to public comment by seeking additional information or by delegating the authority to investigate the issue to the superintendent or his or her designation while public education could be an emotional issue and understandably so the board will strive to maintain a certain level of decorum after meetings many meetings are reported to tell by which is what we are doing there so um i think it's fair to say that you know when there are questions that are simple enough to answer um we certainly don't mind answering those types of questions but when there are questions that concern you know real legitimate thought we need that time to have that thought and we are not going to just respond off the top of our heads um i think it's something that we need to discuss and it's it's that's that's our right to do so and i wouldn't want to give an answer that is incorrect because we didn't have time to talk about it um there are times when we are asked questions uh concerning personnel or student issues or things that where any discussion of those issues would identify either a particular employee and that doesn't include dr gallagher as well or a particular student the answer to that is we can't talk about it it is it is in our ethics to not discuss any student issues or personnel issues um i know someone was asking about uh someone had contacted the board members via email that's fine uh as long as you expect that you're gonna follow the same rules that we would adding which is we will take in the information the only way you're gonna get an answer is through me uh and the only answer i can give you really is design one of the board of ten is that if there's anything that the board has currently acted upon i can direct you to that information of what was acted upon but i cannot give you information about things that have not either been discussed as a board or acted upon because i am i don't have the right to give my opinion i am one of ten so uh it's not because we don't and then giving us a chance to talk as a board and discuss it and act upon it appropriately um as far as a couple of questions that were i am going to address them ahead of time someone had asked about the hangover research for faculty and staff though most of it is completed not every faculty member that was supposed to be part of that research has and that is what we are waiting for um someone uh you know they asked about the step and i didn't want to ask the board um as far as trying to move for uh the process of getting the next superintendent i mean i'm going to recommend that we just use new jersey school boards because that's the most economical right um things just happen and we can do that by if if we agree on that tonight we can start that process immediately in which case then we can have donald trump to let them know that we're in in search of a superintendent and then they will contact us as far as what we you know what the time frame is and what what we need to go for is everyone okay with using new school boards yes okay so dr gallagher if you could reach out to them uh concerning that search um another thing that has been coming up uh someone asked about uh the superintendent doing work while on a leave and we did reach out to the lawyer at that point to just clarify questions so i will uh let you know that doc that mr merriman did get back to us uh concerning that and basically uh when you're out on a medical leave that probably there is to protect the employee from retaliation or expectations of administrators or someone expecting you to do work while you're on your lead um it is there also so that if you are on leave that you can't come to the district so that there's something to happen while you're here that you know that you're here and that you shouldn't that doesn't apply to the superintendent he is the employer he's the one at the top right and there are certain things that dr gallagher i am only dr gallagher could do he has to come in to sign uh as far as tenure we said that before uh dr gallagher at the end of his year he is writing to tenure we're going to talk about that but as far as there is a difference between saying something on social media and putting it into writing with the human resources department actual you know identifiable you know charges and this board's not coming back to emails in that capacity unsigned undocumented [Music] those things are concerned all right we are going to go into executive at the beginnings like i said there are things that we need to discuss that need to be acted upon prior to uh continuing the meeting and we are going into executive under the following one two four seven eight do i have to read them all no say one question okay so we're going under um all right your president's talent yep okay first of all um first off of service to the um um i wish him well in the future um it's a great job for us i'd like to thank all the retirees that are retiring this year for their service to the district and all their footage so they can get their speaker moms for hugs to come in and talk about an inclusive environment so i'd like to thank stacy and at this point in time i had a presentation for the c2 uh in person construction continuity plan of service so i'm going to go right through this um before i do understand that this is uh required by the state and each uh area was limited to about a thousand characters um [Music] um as well as filtration and things like that um we did buy um electric static sprayers um too but i think we have about six now um [Music] um [Music] will do this year is investigate hiring consult counseling group or environmental issues for the district just have an outside agency make sure that we're following all the best practices for environmental issues containing we went through that all this year again we had our kiosks at the beginning of the building we had our foreign [Music] um so i'm pretty sure that probably it happened sometime while i was out hopefully we have our students that are also same thing each year is moving forward um there's some plans to continue to do what we did this past year for a couple of environmental issues obviously with the lifting of the pandemic and some of the in-person requirements coming up um we're gonna do our best to make sure everybody is comfortable coming back into the building with their iep's and making sure everybody's healthy safe at this point in time we are home to public comment on this uh [Music] and obviously any heavily um [Music] um what how are we going to handle uh you know because you're talking about accommodations uh what if there are combinations that are not because we don't we're assuming that we're not going to have a virtual component to that how do we handle uh accommodating different you know students that may require not coming back and how does that well again i think the government has been clear that he expects everybody to be coming back so really um however if we have students that need certain kind of leads and then there's quarantining hats since if there's not a virtual component once again how do you deal with a two week hiatus to quantity both for faculty as well as students well again i think those are questions i think it's what uh eight to ten days now there's different um [Music] uh [Music] current teachers like we have the technology that teaches to record what they're doing right like the smart look like they have so couldn't we just record in case there's a student out we could record yeah but if the student's out it would be the teachers out as well [Music] um does anyone else on the board have any questions yeah really quick um just i i i don't really know how well this works um how set in stone is this from now i mean things have been changing so quickly just i'm more specifically thinking about wearing a mask because i know some districts in our area are saying they're kind of optional they're not going to require them so how they begin how rapidly can that change [Applause] well i guess i'm saying if another district in our area is saying they're not going to wear masks where's the governor on this is he saying he can be it's optional at this point however again as we've gone through this pandemic and i don't blame anybody and i don't blame anybody for everybody and it's been a very um you know pandemic and a lot of different things that popped up that nobody really anticipated [Music] you know there was one thing that i said that you know i think the state could have done a little bit better for job is a little bit more coordinated the governor's health department and you know the department of education so we can get more timely information so we can act a little bit sooner than we did as you all know we got information about the last second it's like hey tomorrow you're doing x it's like really you're telling us today it really doesn't lend us any real time to you know get notifications out and do things like that and get people aware of where this is coming from and what's going on is there anyone else on the board that has any questions okay just a sticky name victoria giada what is this um so just continuing on that point i don't think there's a silence um just continuing on that point so you say that the currently it's optional so what is the plan for september if it continues as optional again from our standpoint i would come back to the board and over the summer and i would ask them what would their preference be we require everybody to wear masks or should be allowed to be people who are un who are vaccinated do not need to wear masks unvaccinated people would have to wear masks i think the bigger concern really is the lower grades you know i think there's a lot there that we need to discuss and probably at some point we'll probably reconvene our road back committee at some point over the summer to discuss some of the intricacies of the mass and a few other items and that was what we feel is best for our particular population okay and my other question is about lunch i don't see anything on the plan about how you're going to accommodate the lunches right now we can accommodate lunch with everybody except for high school um so we've already put plans in place to make sure that we can feed all of our kids with social distance requirements that we have with divisors so we have enough tables with the exception of the high school um high school is a little bit of a different outline to talk to mr smith about this we have a couple different options on the table um some of which i didn't talk to the board and unfortunately i have been able to do that but we're going to talk to the board pretty quickly through committees make some decisions on that for the high school and then come up with whether we're going to have a second every one site of some kind or some other alternatives for lunches here at the high school but the requirement working out full day so we have to figure it out so what are the plans for the other schools right now they can accommodate as is so so like lunch in the lunchroom or lunch in their classrooms we have enough space to do physical distancing with providers our normal lunch schedule at every building except for the high schools next year okay thank you okay all right at this point we are now yeah we're so happy with that all right so there's no committee reports i need a motion all right so uh can i get a motion for the approval of minutes from six seven uh can i get a motion question can i get a second yes can i get a motion mr to 6 30 21 that needs to be changed to 22.
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oh get up i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands under god indivisible with liberty and justice welcome everybody uh do i have a sheet i'll just do it on the back of this okay uh before we start i just wanted to acknowledge to our slim crowd that this is the first time we're streaming live and on the on youtube and it'll be recorded on our website as well so to anybody watching if we have any hiccups it's our first time we're uh we're we're doing pretty good here but jamie holmes the person to complain okay you need her extension not about um so do we need to pull the board yes we need to see who's here you ready okay steve no dave here gary here faye here and good nice to know you're here and hina no no okay great so we are five five here and two absent okay okay um okay so the first order of business is uh any correspondence no there's no correspondence today and are there any visitor statements are there any visitor statements i'm sorry are there any visitors statements yes this is your time slot to help you could do a stand and tell us your name and what village you're from sure right there is fine you can stand right there i will let me just pull this off for a moment [Music] so my name is dale mclean uh i live in lincolnshire i've been a resident and homeowner for almost 20 years in lincolnshire dale can can i remind you that it's a three-minute uh time slot for this and uh go ahead and give it okay um so i'll jump right i thank you to the board for letting me talk i'll jump right to the point uh i give you a quick background i've worked in corporate america for over 30 years decided to give back and i worked for two educational institutions i had the pleasure of working at two institutions for my last two assignments and as chief financial officer so i'm very familiar with school operations i'm very familiar with corporate governance didn't kids didn't go here but it's a great school okay so first um i i've got three points uh first the tax record the whole reason i'm here is i started a project to understand why taxes are so high school taxes and the tax records that are posted online by the county clerk in lake county go back 15 years what i found is the equalized assessed value 15 years ago is excluding construction is actually higher than it is today so the equalized assessed value has only gone up 3.9 percent in 15 years and that's all from new construction the stevenson taxes have gone up 45 so that's that what that means is that's stevenson taxes have gone up 10 times faster than homeowner appreciation so that's one i think a reasonable person would maybe conclude that higher taxes is a reason contributing to the reason that property values have stayed flat this year they might be a little bit higher because there's an imbalance of homeownership but essentially home values have stayed flat taxes have gone up exponentially i shared i met i was at the facilities committee meeting and i what i requested from them is before they approve the next capital spending they at least assess the board assesses what the impact will be on homeowners if the impact is that there's another 15 years of no appreciation that's not a sustainable model that and i think if you went to the voters either referendum or otherwise and ask them if they wanted 15 more years of flat appreciation or maybe a new school into our track i think for me i would vote for having a chance at appreciation because that he hasn't gone up in 15 years so second the illinois state of illinois has essentially delegated taxing authority to the school boards that's a tremendous responsibility but it also comes with true but it's a tremendous um that's tremendous power that's delegated but it also comes with tremendous responsibility what i found is between 2006 and 2018 the school board this board approved budgets that generated 10 million dollars a year in surplus 10 for over 10 million dollars a year in surplus for 13 consecutive years that averaged 9.7 million and so what happened is that accumulated to the tune of 144 million dollars at the end of june of 2018 and cash in investments in 2018 was virtually the same amount of um 143 million in the higher education world that surplus would be the equivalent of an unrestricted endowment so said differently or stevenson board has effectively authorized the building of a 100 million dollar endowment based on taxpayers funding [Music] i believe a prudent person would wonder what the trans trustees were thinking third and lastly the stevenson high school discloses along with other schools the base pay of each and every teacher and administrator it includes some benefits but not the pension benefit the pension benefit is paid by the state and last year 2020 the total amount reported by the state paid or expensed incurred on behalf of stevenson high school was 33.9 million dollars to give you an idea what that represents that's 57 of the entire salary budget for stevenson high school so what that means is there's a huge benefit paid to employees upon retirement that really should be factored in when you look at competitiveness of salaries if that's not already done i would suggest to the board that you ask the administrators to provide that information and if you have any i also suggest that prior to the next salary negotiation that you look at the total compensation which which is how corporate america does it fails can i make a suggestion yeah we're already over twice the twice the time i'm sorry how about you give dr tuanel a call and i'd like to sit in on a meeting with you and we could go we can go over it in detail with with no time constraint that would be terrific i would love that while we just do that and hopefully we can get you the answers you're looking for because from where i sit uh those are fair questions and uh i think you're entitled to the answers yeah this is good this isn't the right place to do it yeah no and i'm not looking for answers i don't know but let's get you what you want if you can call dr cuadel i'll make myself available and uh we could do it together that's terrific that's exactly right okay that was that's perfect that's it we'll include sean obviously um sure we are we just have a little you know interesting couple of weeks with the end of june beginning of july so i totally understand mid july just not just to manage expectations yeah i think that's perfect okay thank you for thank you for your comments yeah yeah because i'm my whole goal and i'll believe is i don't want another 15 years of okay let's do it the right way no appreciation let's do it the right way sure thank you okay any other comments no going once no okay thank you all right thank you thanks dale okay thank you um okay student activities report we have no student activity ben's not here today right okay so new business all right dr twaddle all right take it away well thank you um we have a handful of items under our curriculum instruction and assessment report and mark is here um to chime in but the first item is the approval of the 2022 student guidebook we presented this to you last month as a first reading and if you recall most of the changes are wordsmithing from last year so tonight we're recommending that the board approve the student guidebook for the 2021-2022 school year as presented so moved unless everybody has a comment comments questions okay okay voice folk all in favor aye aye opposed hi we have no names a little slow on that eye amy okay that's amy right all right the second item we have is approval of our summer curriculum proposals this year these are particularly important as we address some of the challenges that the covid year is presented you know i know that a lot of our teacher teams are looking at curriculum enhancements and changes that would address some of the learning loss that may or may not have occurred over the course of the last 15 months with all that said um the total cost of these proposals mark sean is still in line with previous years um and just so that you know all of these proposals go through the individual curriculum directors uh for their first round of approvals and then they go to mark for a second round of approvals and then shawn chimes in to make sure that we're still kind of in line on budget so we're presenting to you tonight the 2021 summer curriculum project for the proposals as presented okay this is a poll vote we need a motion david can i get a motion am i allowed to make a motion no no so moved second any discussion this is a proposal for the summer of i assume the summer school already started is this coming a little bit late so these are changes for next school year so these are projects that teachers are going to be doing during the summer months when they're not teaching this isn't summer school so these are this is um summer work i guess you would call it of teachers preparing for next year okay thank you any other questions just a quick question eric what in general what do these costs represent hours okay yes yep based nine hours got it and they're capped yeah you can't you know teacher a can't you know have 3 000 hours worth of summer curriculum right so there there's a cap and and we try to approve most of these if not all of these mark are approved for teacher teams rather than teacher individuals so you know we we prioritize the work of teacher teams and their collaborative work thanks yep anybody else madam secretary certainly uh faye yes yes or no yes yes yes david yes aye gary hi amy hi all right here is five to nothing amy can you hear okay this is uh yeah i can hear you okay thank you um big mom all right next item is approval of the final 2020 2021 school calendar this is really more just administrative for isbe essentially what we're doing is verifying that the calendar we originally submitted did we actually do any alterations we did not yeah ironically enough we didn't do any alterations even with all of the covid um pieces so the calendar we're submitting now is the one that we submitted at the beginning of the year we're presenting it to you tonight to approve the final 2021 school calendar as presented can i have a motion move don't move second mr second amy was the second any discussion madam secretary please certainly gary all right david hi me uh i oh dear faye hi amy amy aye aye aye aye aye yeah five to nothing all right and then the last piece uh that mark and i have is approval of our board policy updates you'll notice that we get these fairly regularly um uh from press remember we have the subscription with press where they just kind of send us the updates um some of which we had we include um i'd say most of which we don't um this month these are mostly wordsmithing and administrative theories codes yeah codes and things like that so notes footnotes things like that so there is um very little to nothing in here that is substantial but we just want to make sure that we continue to dot our eyes and cross our t's and make sure that our board policy is updated with everything that press publishes so tonight we're asking the board to adopt the policy updates contained in the press plus issue 105 as presented may i have a motion oh it's a voiceover i still need emotions yeah okay can we have a motion so move thank you second second thanks amy thanks sam you know i got a question here uh back in the day i was on a group that went over this you had us you had me going over that one summer yep those were some big books and they are still i mean they were big there's a lot of stuff in there everything is online now it's all online now it's all online but do we ever review it then yes yes in its bigness well part of the reason we did that then was that that it hadn't been reviewed in about seven years so now we carefully mostly keeps up with it every month that was a big deal we spent like four or five weeks sessions going through that stuff yeah so yeah now we we updated we carol is constantly going through the board policy updates and so far the last i'd say 18 months or so have been pretty insignificant like not a lot of big policy changes mostly just wordsmithing to make sure that we're updating the codes correctly yeah yeah all right so voice a voice vote okay all in favor hi hi hi thanks amy opposed okay that's five to nothing okay and then um you'll see your usual usual allotment of personnel items that are to be included in the consent agenda um we will not need an executive session following the meeting tonight and that takes us to the business section um sean and the first item is the adoption of the 2021-22 budget and we need to establish a public hearing is that correct that is correct so we have to come out of this session first or just go to go to a parallel correct all right so uh i need to make her basically i'm following any discussion i'm recommending that the board of education open the public hearing on the proposed 2021-22 district 125 budget do we need a motion yep so moved second so sean before the board votes on that do you just want to give your of course highlights here yeah so this is um you know something that we had talked about previously at our our main board hearing sorry may board meeting um where we of course set the this agenda our revenues um are in line with the cpi for that particular year so there is an increase of 2.44 and i think the reason that it's over cpi is because of um the federal monies that we're going to be receiving from our covid from the various covadex um that they call it sr so if you remember we had three different waves of that so all together we have about seven hundred thousand dollars in in federal revenue that we normally don't have and then on the expenditure side we are expecting a decrease of 6.35 when we include our construction costs and annual summer maintenance and remodeling however if we do uh look at you know removing those costs our simple operating expenditure costs are up 2.62 um and the cpi just to keep everybody in the mind or keep everybody refreshed is that the cpi for the expenditures was 1.4 so we have two different cpi's because of uh revenues are always a year and a half years so um so we are staying in line with the cost of living um we were doing our remember most of our costs are in fact our employment costs well we still need to open a public hearing right so you have to have a vote so uh we have been moved we have discussed no we nobody moved i thought oh i didn't hear yes i'm sorry yeah okay so can we have a vote please for opening a public hearing it's a voicemail mm-hmm all in favor aye hi thanks amy so now i suppose you have to ask for public comments correct dale anybody you're the only public here no i don't know my only comment would be just a suggestion to look at the tax revenue it looks like there was some deferred tax revenue that wasn't collected probably because in the last assessment probably because of bankruptcies in foreclosure so i'm thinking that revenue will be delayed no we um actually abated a million dollars back to taxpayers in this particular tax levy uh it was even probably more substantial than that i would just look at it just picture and we can talk to you sure thank you anybody else okay can i have a uh motion to close the public here so moved second thanks amy all in favor hi hi hi okay that was a short public hearing uh okay so now we move into this that's fine and pull the board yep okay gary all right david hi jay hi amy hi okay me hi uh carries five to nothing okay um that takes us to our next item which is approval of the uh 2021 to 2026 board faculty agreement um these are conversations that have been ongoing um and uh i think we you know worked with uh the board and the administrative team and our faculty members and the association worked really hard to um identify both um a financial agreement but also an agreement regarding um kind of working conditions here on campus and i think for the most part people feel pretty good about where we ended up and so thank you to jason and janessa who are here tonight representing the faculty association um and uh the faculty voted on the tentative agreement in early june um and and close to 90 percent approval overwhelming over i will say that i don't know i don't remember the exact i don't know exactly what i'm talking about either but it was overwhelming support so tonight the board of education is asked to approve the 2021-2026 board faculty agreement and the accompanying mou as presented you read it right so second second thank you uh any question any questions i have a question is where's jason you said jason was here yeah i can't tell behind that uh he said thanks okay okay um can we have a vote please we have anything we want amy hey yeah hi okay and we have a series of approvals that typically come during the summer um including approval of the 2021 administrative and non-union salary pool so tonight it's recommended that the board approve the 2021 2022 administrative salaries and salary pool at 6 million three hundred ninety nine thousand six hundred fifteen dollars in the end staff salaries and salary pool uh for two million eight hundred fifty eight thousand seven hundred nineteen dollars and forty two cents need a motion yep elmo thanks amy so i got a second over here so this is all as discussed and all is discussed yep okay uh any other comments can we pull the board please madam secretary certainly amy hey hi thank you hey hi gary hi david hi curious five okay and then one more item and then we'll turn it over to sean tonight we're also asking the board to renew our agreement with rebound fitness um trish and sean uh and a host of others have continued to work with greg and evaluate the work that rebound fitness has been doing on campus for the athletic training and the strength and conditioning work and i would say to suggest that we are pleased is an understatement greg and his team are absolutely amazing and we're excited to be presenting um our renewal agreement with rebound fitness tonight so following discussion it's recommended that the board approve the renewal agreement with rebound fitness for one year at a cost not to exceed uh 133 750 dollars can i have a motion don't move thank you second thanks gary discussion adam secretary good faye hi moons hi david hi gary hi amy amy hi thank you here is five to nothing okay and sean the seal cutting bid yep um every year um we look to shield coat on all of the various asphalt on our property mostly the parking lots in the fitness trail um several years ago we entered into a bid with district 96 to share services from a particular company uh this year was no different we did go out to bid we received two bidders um patriot pavement and new line paving um the lowest bidder was in fact new line paving so i'm following any discussion it is recommended that the board of education approve an agreement with new line paving services to provide seal coding services at a cost not to exceed 160 210 um can i have a motion please okay i guess thank you second thank you gary what's the 161 897 uh that is from patriot pavement that's what you're giving us for two bits the two bits correct who have we ever used before uh we've used new line they won our contract for the last five years oh really yeah they'll renew now for another five years it's nice that they're that close correct patriot painting of them [Laughter] they're calling any other discussion so is the only difference the price difference correct yeah so we make sure when we send out our bid specs that the um type of sealant that they're using is consistent same thickness um in same compounds to ensure that it's a level playing field and we're not getting a thinner or cheaper sealant to put on our um on our asphalt so yeah make sure the painting of the lines and all that stuff is all consistent do we steal code everything every year or is it like a rotation um no because of the um abuse that our parking lots um and the stevenson drive take um we do it every year unless uh there is a year where we're possibly rebuilding a parking lot um it just keeps the extends the useful life of our parking lots and our asphalt so that um you know we can delay um any major repairs for the future because we're maintaining them annually so thank you as nate correct is it odd that these numbers are so close no okay it's a very this this particular industry is very tight okay all right anybody else madam secretary please all right no i'm sorry no i'm sorry this is a three-year cost and then we have two one-year renewals if we'd like so the annual cost is around fifty thousand actually the first year it's um under 50 and then it goes to 55 the following two years anybody else adam secretary please certainly gary hi dave hi amy amy hi faye hi me if the curious tribe did nothing if i could if i made this really quick here yeah fade the reason we spread the three-year cost on there is because that's the actual spend that the district is approving because it's a three-year contract that's why i have to put the whole 160.
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so you just remember like one really strong good evening we're gonna call to order let's start with roll call okay mike darrenport here mr espinoza chris christopher espinoza here thank you cheryl fuller here jenny hagstrom here terry pappasich here joanna vazquez drexler and nancy kubica here we have cornless stand for the pledge thank of the you states of america and to the republic which stands for one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay good evening we're going to do our um just so you know we're going to have our agenda a little out of order today because we have some time we need to set aside for a prolonged closed session so we're going to have after the approval of the minutes we're going to have our first reception of visitors which is uh opportunities to talk about anything on which the board will vote and then we're going to follow up with the second reception of visitors where the person where you can talk about anything both are limited to 30 minutes um each person is limited first to three and we're going to ask you to please abide by that let's start out with um oh and then the other thing i just wanted to mention is that our next meeting which is july 12th 12th thank you july 12th is going to be entirely closed session uh just so people are aware we will although we will open an open session and close no we won't we'll go we're going to go directly because we'll take actions because we're going to be working on some personnel matters so it's going to be entirely uh closed session okay that said sorry i'm just slow uh we need a motion to approve the minutes from the may 17 2021 business meeting the june 2nd 2021 workshop meeting and the june 2nd 2021 closed meeting so moved terry and joanna thank you trey pavich aye george vasquez drexler mike davenport aye christopher espinosa aye shirelle fuller aye jenny hegstrom aye and nancy kufka aye the minutes are approved okay we're going to move on to the first reception of visitors this meeting agenda includes two opportunities for comments from the audience this first reception of visitors is intended for audience members to address the board about any agenda item on which we are going to vote the second reception of visitors is intended for audience members to address the board on any topic pertaining to community high school district 99 comments are going to be limited to three minutes and we're going to ask you to stay to three minutes to provide all visitors an equal opportunity to address the board if you need more time you can address uh submit your thoughts in writing to the board secretary mrs nydek we're asking when you address the board you need to come up to the microphone state your full name proceedings are being taped recorded for the purpose of producing accurate meeting minutes and they are being sent out live and then eyes president reserve the right to modify these protocols if circumstances warrant we appreciate your observation of these protocols so who would like to address the board on anything we're voting on tonight hi my name is carrie swenson um and i'm speaking right now specifically on your 21 22 district return to in-person instruction plan that was listed in the agenda and i noticed a few things i'm not one to write out a whole speech and read from a piece of paper i like to speak to each one of you and look at you while i'm saying it there are two items that need to be looked at more as a board and as an admin in that return to learn plan one is it specifically states that vaccinated and unvaccinated children will be treated differently in some sort of words like that um we already have enough problems with bullying with so many other behaviors in a high school situation we don't need to add more there should be no separate discrimination or segregation from vaccinated or unvaccinated kids i have a vaccinated kid i have an unvaccinated kid i would not expect them to be treated any differently in a public school setting at all in turn in in light of that there's also a 14 day or 10 day quarantine if you're a close contact of somebody that's positive only for unvaccinated kids not kids that had it already not kids that may show immunity whatever with no remote instruction available so basically in your return to learn plan you're going to send kids home for a two-week period due to possible close contact i would like to see the data from last semester how many of the close contacts actually ended up positive after that disruption in learning for two weeks with no classroom instruction with no remote learning with no access to anything last year when we when students wanted to stay home because they were fearful and they didn't want to come to school you provided a whole new curriculum for them now you're saying this year the kids that weren't vaccinated whether a medical reason a personal reason whatever reason they had it already are going to be held to where they just sit there and read a book in their room smoke pot all day there's no plan for those kids to be sent home if they're unvaccinated for education they have lost enough i've been up here enough almost every other meeting and now they're going to be penalized so i'm not exactly i don't want to hear it comes from idph because we're seeing schools all over the state realizing that it's just a mandate or it's not it's just a guideline it's not a mandate you all need to be responsible for these kids learning the next thing we're going to do is put the gold star on their head and create divisiveness do you know in middle school eighth grade you want to know the conversations about this what it's regarding you're a trumpster because you don't want to get your thing you're just a sheep your parents are stupid that's what's happening to the incoming freshmen about vaccines this type of segregation based off of vaccine status is going to be divisive cruel and it's not okay and i have kids on both sides of the fence with this it is not okay to have that in your plan for the fall to specifically state they're going to be treated differently and sent home as a close contact last point what if the person that's a close contact is a vaccinator student i would think that you know how you're going to handle that because a vaccinated student's a positive so we all think that the vaccine is a pathway to normalcy if a vaccinated person is positive is an unvaccinated person still going to have to stay home for two weeks i would think at least when you're out of time okay and i will note for anybody else in the audience this is not an action item so you got rolling so it's a report from the superintendent but it's not an action it says recommendations too so maybe that should have been clarified the action items are listed up here on the screen so you can see that from there yeah i know i i just you got going so i looked back up and the next one let me come back oh the next one you've already exhausted your 33 minutes on this top thank you anybody else wishing to address the board and anything we're voting on tonight hello my name is don declan resident of downers grove i came to talk about the critical race theory being possibly being taught in our schools sir that's not an action item on tonight's agenda you need to wait for the next reason you need to wait for the next reception of visitors regarding topics not on okay all right thank you is there anybody else who wants to is there anybody else who wants don't don't sit down sir is there anybody else who wants to speak to the board about anything being voted on tonight tonight the items being action that is being taken on are on the screen right now so that includes personnel reports financial pages the school calendar property liability insurance renewals employer contributions to 457 b's 403 b retirement plan adoption resolution of nomination of membership to the downers grove plan commission approval to of the isb consolidated district plan approval of request qualifications for the strategic plan approval of food service program of the of bid for bulk purchasing of cmg supplies award of bid for copy paper approval to hold the july 12 2021 board meeting entirely in closed session and action on a uniform grievance complaint so this first reception of visitors would be for any comments regarding those topics then we will move into the next reception of visitors which is limited to 30 minutes for any topic pertaining to the board so right now anybody who would like to address any of those items can come forward hi i'm a resident of downers grove my name is chick breiner i just as you went through that said you're going to hold all your meetings for 2021 in closed door no for july 12 2021.
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we are live so hello and welcome i want to make sure um i'm saying your name as you'd like it to be said would you like me to call you dr pope or sonia which one is okay for you anyway it could be called okay so just because this is a conversation between you and i and we have um it looks like three viewers i'm just gonna call you sonia um just to continue the threat so thank you for joining the amherst pelham regional schools and the fort river community today for an opportunity to um talk about who you are and why you are the best person for our position so the staff and caregivers were given an opportunity to submit some questions for you and um in addition to the questions that they submitted you may also hear some from when you interviewed with us early uh last week i believe it was right last week right so you'll have an hour to answer 14 questions i threw in two more at the end so you know that's that that'll go by really quickly and if there's enough time and there's any questions submitted in the chat then i'll ask those questions too so are you ready for question number one go for it all right so sonya please tell us about yourself what roles responsibilities or experiences and licenses you may hold that helped you to prepare to be the next principal of fort river elementary school absolutely so i go way back um starting as a kindergarten teacher um which was one of the most powerful jobs that one can have in the field of education after the becoming a teacher in teaching kindergarten then first fifth grade middle school i went into becoming a guidance counselor um i wanted to link the needs of the students into counseling and i went that route um i did um my certification in guidance counselor as well and um then i work helping kids with social emotional needs um and then i was offered the position to work as the school principal for the holy community charter school in which i have been there for 16 years now is a love is is passion is dedication um it's making a difference um it's going home every day with the notion that you have touched somebody's life um that day and that you had made a difference in somebody's family um and that you know that they know that you care and that that for me has been the most powerful uh feeling in this profession um and so prior to that i did a program called upper bound which is a federal trio program in which i help i will say hundreds and hundreds of students achieve college been able to be the very first ones in their families to go on to college but not only get them to the step of going to college but to really make sure that they actually finish their four or fifth year because the vast majority of the first generation would take five years to finish college and so i was there even though it was not required i was there because i wanted to make sure that they will come back with that degree and to build up into what i do now many of those students are actually staff members in the school that i am directing so that family unit and that belief in that every child can succeed is coming back to our building and uh is making a difference in other little ones well thank you that is important and a great accomplishment on your behalf our school district holds many important values and initiatives including social justice project-based learning and arts integration it says the practical implementation of these can be challenging due to limited time and scheduling requirements so as principal how would you advocate for these initial initiatives and in your decision making and negotiating around scheduling and logistics that is quite the challenge and i have to say that that's one that i advocate for um in my current job i have a period that i call student life and so it's a period that other schools might call advising um that my called um leadership um but for me it's a period where i actually meet the students for who they are um what do they have a passion for and uh we developed that in different many ways and then we expand with after-school programs with the volunteers that will come and continue to help the kids so i have things as creative as kids who wanted to learn more about journalism um things um as baking because now you know we relay the baking with the mathematical skills and we built from there kids who love drama but as we are developing a drama a play for the school we actually learning how to write the reading comprehension behind that um and then negotiating about what kind of arguments do we want to bring in the drama um we have done things like jeopardy with again lots of vocabulary that they need to learn for their academics and so i have incorporated that into the school schedule i don't call it necessary uh recess um students that needs to go out and spend the energy there we'll spend the energy there but during that time we will have all of this going on at the same time to give an opportunity to others who wants to explore other areas and so that's how i have incorporated that into a very busy schedule as we know the department of vet gave us 180 days um then we have 160 plus strands that we must cover uh to be able to have the kids um at the level that they need to be at and also at the great um span that they need to be at but you have to be creative and i'm a firm believer that um if you meet the students and their desires and where they are they are happier and the learning happens a lot faster because they feel that they have a voice that they have something to look up for um and something that is making them become a leader in the school and this is something that i have done in a k-8 school it doesn't have to be a high school or middle school so in my kda school we do this um and we have plenty of leaders that are now able to help with the kind of of clubs that we do that will bring this other creativity into life well thank you so you know hearing what you're talking about how do you motivate and encourage your staff and can you please give specific examples of things you've done in the past yeah my leadership skill is one of being a servant um i believe in getting to know my staff members and to also know what are the type of things that make them feel valued it and make them feel that they are making a difference in the student's life and so that is something that if chosen i will definitely spend some time right away and getting to know the staff and getting to know um what are the things that they appreciate that they like to do um what are some of the areas that they feel that as a team uh we can work on an improvement um you know i'm always on the floor um i'm always talking to them i'm always in a lunch room i'm always everywhere around the school to ensure that i'm always on open door policy but i'm always right there at your reach because i also know that teachers have pac schedules and so a minute or two conversation um makes a big difference and they know that i am there for them and they know that i'm there to to listen to whatever it's um happening uh to them now let's talk about parents so can you talk about the role that you think parents guardians caregivers should play in the school and specify some of the best practices that you have used to help encourage that for me parents are the fours and no one knows the kids better than they do and they will be the ones who will be able to help me uh create a very strong and successful path for the children um they are my partners and my philosophy as a principal is that i am their best advocate it should never be that an advocate from outside should come to intervene between myself or this staff at the school i feel that if that happens i'm not doing my job um i feel that i have the tools to be able to work with the parents um and again to celebrate what is working well and uh to look at things that they feel that should be improved um very open to my parents um be you know open doors for them as well so i think that this is a powerful triangle is how i describe it the best where the child is on the top of that base of that triangle and that base is sustained by the parents and us as the school and if the three of us stay together that child will never slide on we'll always be successful thank you and so the next question knowing that there is a pandemic and students and staff are just returning to in-person instruction what is your vision for a fully thriving school committee a school committed to equity social justice and the social emotional well-being of students and staff absolutely so commissioner has already told us that we're going back and we're going back to normancy and we're going back with no mask um and so many schools will take some local decisions um which i will be eager to see what the main district um will do for our schools and amherst um but we also know like you said that um we have to be well equipped to receive the students um and for example for me i started on april 5th um and i had about 80 percent of the students coming back in person and i had another 20 that stay remote due to health constraints um in other family um but i do know that and i had experience with the ones that came on april 5th that we have a lot of social emotional work to do in the summer the plan was to continue to oh the plan is to continue to uh work with our counselors uh work with our families many of the students are in depression after losing family members after losing parents uh the grandparents our caregivers um going through the trauma that this pandemic left in our lives um and so you need to know that you must take care of that component before you can take care of anything else if we do not work in our social emotional and health needs and our mental health needs um we're not moving forward so that's the number one priority which will require for us to have a very solid plan um with guidance counselors with whoever is in their school setting to work with students equipped the teachers prior to opening the doors to the students for that full enormous year that commissioner expects us to have um and so every hand has to be in the deck and everyone has to roll the sleeves and work very hard to meet the students where they are there cannot be no judgment we just have to work with them and meet them where they are their needs are the priority and again without that they would not be successful academically thank you so this next question is going to be very familiar to you because this is one of the questions that you heard during the interview and it says at fort river we consider all groups to be critical stakeholders in our school how would you get input from groups that have not felt included in school decisions in the past absolutely so it's inclusion um i come from 36 years of experience working with a low-income uh community with a very well-diverse community um members um that have come from other school settings where they feel that they did not have a voice um and they have found a voice in our school setting um i'm the type of person that will meet in big groups i will meet in small groups i will meet individually i will meet the parent where they are um some parents um and even some teachers are more timid or they have not had the experience where they have felt well respected or valued um where they feel that their opinions um might not be accepted by others and so they intimidated to give you their opinions so i meet everyone where they are i can do again the large group the small groups and the individual meetings to ensure that i'm including everyone um because that's important i think that um even when i don't touch one family then i'm not doing my job it is important that i meet everyone um and that once more you know they they feel valued they feel respected they feel that we are one family and they feel that they are part of the process um and so i think that that is when you create that strong school culture it's when you build a strong family that is able to to talk about things that happen in a positive productive manner instead of pointing fingers if you will um and so at that school culture that it's important that's the environment that i have created across the years that i have been serving as school principal nice so tell us about your ideal discipline policy and how would you develop such a policy sure discipline is something that i always look in a positive way um i before i talk about child's discipline i need to know the child and i need to know where the child is coming from and i need to know what is not allowing that child to be in the classroom or to not get into discipline issues um after that then i can talk about discipline but i am the person that reverse negative behaviors into positive um and so how do i do that again i look at the child as a whole there's something in that child that is going to shine that is going to come up that he has an interest him or her as an interested and you just have to hold on to that and you have to build on that and i bet you for anything because i have seen it for this many years how that negative behavior switch into something positive because i have made a child part of the school and part of something that he or she is looking forward to come to every day at school and so now it's my partner it's the teacher's partner and um is a student leader and others sees like oh this used to happen with with my friend but now he or she is doing this um and so those are the things that i promote and discipline um i i don't believe on you know suspending for example that is the very last resource um i will work with that kiddo until i can no more and obviously we have to be realistic um sometimes we do have to do it um and it's a merit uh depending on the situation but i work hard to be proactive and not reactive and so i can just help to modify behaviors before they come an issue where we actually have to suspend and so that's the grassroots that i do when i'm learning the new community and when i arrived at my place back in 2006 boy did i confront issues i scratched my head and i said oh lord what did i get into but you know it took few months for me to really look at the kids and meet with this i was meeting with kids all the time um and they developed that respect for me and they developed that trust in me they knew that i was not there to judge them to criticize them to suspend them or to do anything i was there to help and so that's how i was able to reverse negative behaviors into positive ones thank you for that so can you tell us about a time when you had to make a decision that you knew would be unpopular what steps did you make uh did you take prior to making the decision and how did you handle the pushback if any yep um every principle goes through that um i think um that one of my unpopular decision was um when i had to work with my board of trustees and we had to expand the academic day um and so you know then we went from that a to uh 245 was no longer an option we were going to work from 8 to 4 30.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
okay so now we are in we're doing a live broadcast and it doesn't seem like it's any different from the conversation we were having prior so that's why i was saying it's going to be a comforting conversation because it's just me and you right you know just pay attention here and and when um you have an hour to answer the questions that we're going to ask and um if you start to go too quickly or take too long i might try to move it along or slow it down a little bit just to remind you that you know it'll be good to just take your time and make sure that everyone hears how fabulous a person you are right and all thank you so much i want to thank you um for joining us the amherst pelham regional schools and the fort river community today for our first of three forums the staff and caregivers were given an opportunity to submit questions that they would like to have answered by you in addition to the questions committed submitted by the community there are a few questions that would um that you heard before when you interviewed right so if there's enough time we will ask any questions that are submitted via the chat feature are you ready i'm ready okay so of course you know the community have not seen you they were not part of the interviews and so this is your opportunity to let the community know about you what roles what responsibilities experiences and licenses you may hold that have helped you prepare to be the next principal of fort river elementary school excellent well thank you so much doreen for inviting me to be part of the forum and for the community at large for allowing me to be part of their time to have them know me a little bit better my name is denis pagambega i was born and raised in puerto rico i am multilingual and multicultural and i'm very proud of my culture as to who i am and where i came from that was foundational as i understood as an adult the importance of being proud of who i am i when i was very young my mom relocated to new york city so we lived in the south bronx for a couple of years and we didn't know any english uh therefore the schools were really important and pivotal in our development of learning the language not learning the culture that we were not used to or known because again in puerto rico the culture is very different and so it was important and i still remember to this day who those teachers were we lived there for three years but mommy was very clear my mom was a single mother and she was very clear in terms of learning the language learning english but also maintaining the spanish so we were bilingual um so those teachers were vital in my development they gave me and i still love dictionaries because i would get vocabulary words to look them up and that's how i learned libraries also were extremely important i'll go to the library in the school every friday get a book to read and bring bring it back on monday so that was really important i also participated in summer school and after school and i always say the story i didn't know it was a title three kid or title one but i learned how to eat bologna sandwiches and peanut butter sandwiches and learn arts and crafts and again that also helps to be my emotional uh well-being so i am a proponent of summer school and after school programs because again those were foundational uh for me we relocated back to puerto rico and i graduated from high school and always wanted to come to the united states to do my higher education and i had to take all sorts of exams you know the toefl the sats the college board all those tests because again my first language is spanish so i came um and the story that i would say is always circled you know the highest they always ask you know what is the highest grade that you want to achieve and at the time i was a 16 year old i knew that i wanted to have a doctorate i didn't know how or when or what that looked like but i circled that and i came to the united states my first year transitioning to a different again culture very different from what i had been used to my mother brought me to indiana took the airplane back the next day so i was left alone in an environment that i wasn't accustomed to but i enjoyed that experience for a year however i had a very heavy accent not knowing how to pronounce certain words i remember asking a professor a question and his response to me was why don't you go back to where you came from and i remember that i i was like in shock not knowing how to respond to that knowing that my mother had always you know and hearing still you know education education education and that i would always have had to follow my dreams um i called my mother and said i don't want to stay here any longer she said no you're staying on you're finishing the year and then you can transfer if you wish so i did transfer i completed my bachelor's and then i completed my master's and i still remember in the back of my head i wanted my doctorate um so i have two children and i went back to school i was my kids were in middle school when i got my doctorate and i always say you know dreams are important if you feel that that's what you aspire to and i believe in opportunities opening the doors of opportunities i'm breaking down barriers i believe in justice right i know what um being told that you don't belong here but yet having my mother say you belong everywhere so it's opening door for of opportunities for everyone and i became an educator i'm passionate about what i do i'm always listening to families and understanding the needs and i think the voices of individuals is very important i've worked at every level of the educational system with the federal government the state in puerto rico the state department of education i relocated to massachusetts 14 years ago i was recruited to work in a district here in massachusetts in the western part of the state and i've been here ever since and i do hold certain licenses that i can share um i did take my mtel so i also understand um the challenges with having you know uh testing in the second language that you don't really master that well so it's about you know developing plans uh and opportunities for not only the students but also the families and also the community at large the teachers and administrators that are every level to come together to have a better understanding what education looks like and what it you know curriculum social justice and the justice in the curriculum and i always say that um children especially at a young age they develop a sense of who they are of who they are and developing that they develop the sense of gender the race and i think that's important in being respectful of um cultures languages religions genders because i'm one of those people and i'm very open and honest and always looking for opportunities to improve the life of children i believe in education i believe teachers matter a lot because i believe that teachers are the change agents and the change occurs in the classroom and there has to be a balance between what the students need to see themselves in the curriculum right in terms of is there a balance between what is taught in school what's happening in the community at home i'm a single mother myself so i know this understand fully the challenges and the opportunities that we can do this alone we need networks of people who support us and fully understand the needs of all of our kids not only academically but mentally social and socially and emotionally and i believe in you know programs that um allow the students to have breakfast in the classroom uh lunches and are open in the summer i work very closely with federal programming to ensure that all those programs were in place because those are important schools are safe havens to our kids well thank you for that i feel like you've answered almost all the questions that are on my list i'm still going to ask okay sure so question number two says our district holds many important values and initiatives including social justice project-based learning and arts integration the practical implementation of these can be challenging due to limited time and scheduling requirements as principal how would you act as an advocate for these initiatives in your decision making and negotiating around scheduling and logistics i think that's really important again uh teachers and the students need to see that for instance the arts we learn to read through the arts right as we're reading we can children like to draw that's as a story storytelling so i think that's important to be able to look at the scheduling in the classroom or in the school and have the ability to negotiate those things again the integration of the arts into the curriculum is important again i lived it i know how that helped me emotionally even though at the time and i didn't know that but doing things the arts and crafts and art and the library they'll play an important role in the development of children and i think that's important to learn early on because again kids love to learn you know the brain i see it as an organ that expands so the more knowledge that you provide and they see themselves in the books the arts giving them the ability to see that these are there are no barriers they have the ability to to do the work and teachers need to also have the tools to be able to do this and i like to communicate and hear what the concerns are of the adults and then making it possible looking for solutions together so that we can understand that it's about the kids okay so how would you encourage and motivate your staff and can you give us some specific examples of how you've done that sure i think it starts with showing respect um many of us are not used to even just a good morning how are you having an understanding of where the teachers are so that they are in a place in the school that they can bring the supports uh and then to to be in tune with the needs of the children i think that i my philosophy is that i uh lead by example and respect is number one and um it's always i never look at the deficits but seeing where we are in the process and how do we build together those plans that will enrich the lives not only of the students but also the community the teachers and the staff and everyone is important at the school from the person from the janitor to the clerks to the administrative us everyone is important and i think they also should have a voice in terms of the school needs to reflect the community and they should reflect the kids and it should reflect the needs and the desires and the abilities and i think that we can come to consensus when we have an understanding as to being honest having honest conversations about what needs to happen so how do you encourage and um sorry uh can you outline the role that you think parents guardians caregivers should play in the school and specify some best practices that you have used to help encourage that certainly i think that's important again i saw it in my mother single mother i'm a single mother myself i have a daughter who's a single mother so those are we want to be involved and i still have yet to meet a family member who doesn't want better for the kids that could be a mother or father an uncle or grandmother or an aunt um so i think that we need to encourage them to come to the school schools are should be again centers of the community where the families should feel always should feel welcome i think welcoming families i've also as part of the work that i previously have done is going to the communities where the families are sometimes families don't have transportation sometimes you know there's certain barriers so how do we break down those barriers to how the families understand that they matter again um we want to be involved in our child's education and we want to have a voice i mean you also need to understand what is taught and i think that again that communication when i welcome the ability to and i always say i go where people invite me i welcome i've been to churches to community centers again uh locations that it's accessible to families for them to understand that doors should always be open to them and they have a voice in the process okay great so here's another one knowing that there's a pandemic and students and staff are just returning to in-person instruction what is your vision for a fully thriving school committed to equity social justice and the social emotional well-being of students and staff i think that's important i think that um this past year has taught us many things and one of the things that kids are resilient and kids can learn in many different ways and so the we need to look at now the capacity that we have as adults also to teach it's a teaching and learning process of students and how do we use the technology that the kids have learned because that's an important tool again we're in the 21st century and we've continued to talk about removing the barriers on our technology and also it's assistive technology for some of our children we need the support um so i think that technology has played an important role and we need to see how is it that we did not we were not able to get to those students what were those barriers because that's part of justice right and by the way i see uh education as a civil rights matter so i'm very much in tune with what the challenges were to uh for some of our families and i also know that the brit program is at the school and i'm thrilled to hear that because all of us were impacted by covet young you know the kids and the adults so how do we work together to ensure that those programs are in place um to have a better understanding of the needs all the students and how does that impact their learning and to be able to reduce the anxiety that our kids have felt this past year and to bring them to the school again it's about what is it that we need to do a bit different it is no longer the traditional way that you know traditions are done with so how is it that we incorporate some of those lessons learned or best practices and move forward this next question is similar to one that you heard during the interview yes and it says at fort river we consider all groups to be critical stakeholders in our schools how would you get input from groups that have not felt included in school decisions in the past i would like to identify who those groups are and what happens and correct that and i think it's important that all individuals again the school community families are important whoever is involved in the school needs to be part of that fabric right the development this helps our youth develop it helps our staff and i think the more we have an understanding of what those barriers were we need to break down barriers again i think we need to have a better understanding of what happened what kept them from being involved and then improve on on that can you specify like how you would improve on the communication is it a language communication is it a barrier is it location uh barrier is it again i i'm a single mother and i like family members to be involved and to be able to come to the school or do we need to go to the home where is it that we need to go to to have a better understanding of what the needs are and why is it they felt excluded because that's again part of social justice what happened that you felt that you were not that should you couldn't be involved and how do we support you how do we support those members to become part of the school community involved in the school because that matters so please tell us about a time when you have to make a decision that you knew would be unpopular what steps did you take prior to making this decision and how did you handle the pushback if there was any i think that adults sometimes have miscon misconceptions about decisions that have to be made because again it's part of you know if you continue doing the same thing you get the same results but then when you look at data when you see what's happened or what hasn't happened you need to take a deep dive with those individuals to have them understand why those decisions and as a principal why those decisions have to be made what are the implications of not doing it again it's having a dialogue in terms of um why those decisions have to be made and it's not about one person but it's about the collective is it good for the kids and i think they need to understand that we all have a mission and it's about educating kids and it should not be personal it's about breaking down again the fact that we could not communicate and understand that it needs to happen for the betterment of the kids and the community and what did i do well sometimes you know making those decisions you know do i need to bring it to a higher level so that others understand that it's not because and i tend to think that we need to stop saying because they you know the superintendent said so because the state said so but it's because why is it that we need to do it to ensure that it's impacting has it is having positive impacts in the lives of children and their families so anything that's good for the kids and good for the family members i would certainly push back also because you have to have us you know you have to believe that those decisions are going to improve the lives of the kids so i'm going to pause at this point just to see if you want to take a sip of some water or please let me know if you need clarification on any other um [Music] things okay the next question says please give examples preferably two to three of how you will connect with elementary aged children at fort river to develop meaningful relationships with all of our students please demonstrate your knowledge of engagement with this age group of students when responding certainly i um i think it's important to again show respect kids are very intuitive they they know when you are being honest with them and caring i think three things that really matter in the lives of children caring the culture and the curriculum and there's always one person in the school who will change a student's life around and i want to be that person there's always someone that the students um have a connection to um and i think that when kids see the adults in a reflection of themselves someone that looks like them they have a better understanding that that's where they belong um i have a granddaughter and i would say my kids also or my lab um a lot of things that we learn in school you learn in practice again it's about being respectful being caring and loving and showing respect and i think again the um kids understand that when they are meant to feel important and loved and wanted kids again i you know would say good morning to the kids welcome the kids be out there in the front of the face not in a in an office kids need to see who we are kids need to know our names kids need to we need to be a reflection of the adults that matter in their lives aside you know from the family members which are important but i think when the kids get to know who i am they will understand that i am authentic and there for them because i care and understand i don't want to understand their needs and being able to celebrate the wonderful things that they are doing this next question is about restorative practices and it asks can you give specific examples of action steps you have taken to implement restorative practices in your previous roles and if you have not implemented restorative practices how would you go about implementing it at fort river i think it's important again to understand the culture of the school and where we have been and what has happened in the school to make sure that we correct those mistakes micro regret aggressions i would say um not everyone is understanding of what that looks like but again it's about social you know again it's respect social justice um the values it's bringing people together so that they understand that these are practices that are should be taught early on in school so that the kids can grow up again respecting and they have this sense of who they are and what does it mean so it has to start with me are those practices so this is another question that may seem familiar with to you it says at fort river we have three district-wide programs caminantes our dual language english spanish program aims a specialized program for students who have high functioning autism spectrum disorder building blocks a specialized therapeutic program for students with emotional disabilities who who need specific social emotional and behavioral supports could you please discuss your experience with each of these populations and your experience working with specialized program students i'll start with coming on this i oversold the ell or the title three program in my previous district um important to align um the resources not only the financial but the teachers curriculum uh tutoring uh the community meetings that needed to happen to bring the group of families together who were dll families i'm currently doing mental health i am coordinating services identifying what the diagnosis is for the youth or which are and then coordinating services for the youth and the families um important to understand and having differentiated instruction for the groups of kids that we um we have in front of us but it's something that we need to do because again like i said earlier it's um education is a civil rights issue for me and i think that it's important to uh to have the correct staff the proper staff to work with the needs of the students and the environments also have to be welcoming for all students so that they are again if they are in an environment where there is a lot of anxiety they need to come to a school where it's calm for them to be able to get the services not only academically but also social emotionally as well and the staff is important so you also have the aims program yes yes and you mentioned that that's a high functioning uh group of our students right because we let's make the inaccurate assumptions about students ability to learn and i think that once we have an iep we have identified the proper instructional practices for those for the students including the building block students that were able to address their academic needs and the kids are able to succeed the same with the building blocks and i know i heard that there is a brib program which again i'm thrilled to hear that that social emotional supports are being addressed in the school and you need to provide you need to have those entities who have the expertise to give us the professional development and the supports the wraparound services what i call them uh to support all students and would you like to expand on your experience working with specialized program students sure i again as part of my previous work in in the school districts and the states i advocated for programming that catered to the needs of the particular population of students and i remember having to work with the alternate assessments and also alternate achievement standards to be able to uh to have the teachers understand and administrators that kids can uh can do the work can achieve to high standards and we i think that we all need to understand that it's high achievement for all students incorporating all the the population of students that you mentioned and again it has to be differentiate instruction with the support in place to be able to have students on build the capacity their academic learning to move forward okay great and here's another question that you may be familiar with it says caminantes is the dual language program at fort river how will you support the mission families staff and curriculum of this program and serve as an ambassador of the program in the larger community certainly again as an ell student myself i think those problems are important to embrace again the culture the languages to be able to provide the supports for the students who are learning uh english as a second language and also have the staff i'm advocating for all students i worked with the federal government on the legislation um for ell because in puerto rico limited spanish proficiency and the federal government didn't understand so there are certain things that we have to learn to negotiate at every level again it's about communication it's about um advocating again because i'm one of those kids and i know how important again i i am the ambassador to el caminantes uh and all other programs because again i am part of those wonderful programs that helped me to get to where i am today and what thoughts or ideas do you have for bringing a sense of joy compassion love and unity into fort river at the student level the staff level and for the whole school again i think like i said earlier everything starts with me and it's about leading by example people need everyone needs to feel respected everyone feels that they belong so it starts with the students the staff everyone that works in the building they're part of a learning community and everyone should be able to come and feel safe at the school and again it needs to be a welcoming environment for everyone being respected the values that socially the gender identity all those things that do matter because it's about equity what is your ideal discipline policy and how would you develop such a policy it certainly would not include suspending students if you're talking about disciplining students not that that is not the way to discipline anyone i think that again having i can give you an example um in a district that i worked in uh the students were having a lot of difficulty and they wanted to be suspended so i called the family in something that they felt that they had never no one had ever asked them to come in to have a conversation to understand what was happening and i spoke to the youth as well and i still do this in my jobs uh and this particular job as well to have the voice of the youth in the process to understand what is happening and we developed a plan actually what i called it is um an agreement that the youth we were able to incorporate those things that the youth needed the support systems in place to have a better understanding what was happening in the youth uh indicated that you know he would stay in school um because we needed to understand that he didn't feel safe so we need to have a clear understanding why is it that there are um the issues are occurring the discipline but i think that having spaces for students within the school we need to have counselors a social worker the rip program and i think all of us could come together and have an understanding and have plans in place to have a better understanding what the needs of the students are not make the incorrect assumptions i don't believe in suspending students at all i don't know what the uh i'm hoping that that's the policy in the district because that doesn't that goes against learning right uh our case the black and brown kids are the ones who are always suspended so we're always marginalized and i think that we i don't believe in in suspending and i believe in just working with the youth and the family to have a better understanding and improve the outcomes for all kids and then we only have one question that was submitted and after that i'm going to ask you a question that we don't have on this sheet okay so the first one is what is something you have done that you are especially proud of and it does not have to be work related um i've done many things that i feel very proud of i i think again um not allowing the barriers that were presented to me and always told that i didn't belong that i needed didn't need to be there i'm breaking down those barriers and having a sense of self and um being proud we were very poor um still are but you know in terms of kids don't know that i knew that i went to school every day um and there were you know challenges but i never saw myself as being uh not wanted in the school so that created a huge impact for me and again keeping having a goal in life and keeping that dream that eventually i don't know how or when but it will happen and i think encouraging others to do the same so i'm really proud of you know the work that i've done not only personally but professionally because i encourage others um i went to a forum where i was a speaker a couple of years ago and i spoke about just i'm speaking with you about barriers and the opportunities and the it was about women young women came to me and they said you've given me hope to go back to school regardless of the age and there was a particular woman that was from michigan um we met and we said hello and she said oh thank you for uh for your conversation and your honesty because it comes through she went back and she did her master's she sent me a note a couple years later thanking me for encouraging her for continuing her her studies and also have to go back to when i was a sophomore in college i transferred to these coasts and i remember again because of there were challenges as a student that i had and i spoke to a professor and i said is there any way that we can start a tutoring program and they had none other time at in the school of the university so he said oh that's a good idea let's talk some more we went to the dean so we created a tutoring program and i started tutoring an older woman um who you know she gave me the story that you know she had dropped out of school she got her ged but she wanted to go to college she was had four kids she went on to graduate from college and she always thanked me for being there for her tutoring again it's just having an understanding of people's needs and looking for ways in which we can that's who i am okay and so this is a question like i said it wasn't set submitted but i'm just sitting here listening to all that you're saying and you know all that you're sharing with us and i want to hear from you from your heart why should we hire you i will be an asset to the school and the community at large i fit into the fabric of the wonderful work that you are doing and it starts with the leader and i've been following the work that the amherst pelham school district has been doing for a long long time again social justice you're breaking down barriers you're having these conversations um i see the work that you're doing in another uh elementary school so it starts having those conversations and the planning because you have you doreen and your superintendent are very supportive and principals need to be supportive of the work that the teachers want to do because they have the best interest of students at heart and i will be an asset i will be i would love to be part of the community uh to encourage them that it can be done everything is possible again and it's about having these conversations okay well i i see that there are eight viewers that are still here with us um hello everyone and i don't know if there's anything you'd like to say to the viewers before we end in the stream yard well thank you so much for uh participating today and i welcome the opportunity to meet you personally and to uh to have the opportunity to work with all of you uh because there is a vision and that vision and the passion that we have about educating all of our kids not some of the kids i think it's you know one group of students that we can open the doors of opportunity for all of them and i look forward to uh being part of the school community to make the difference and the changes that need to happen okay so i do want to thank you um denise for joining us today and sharing all of your experiences and i'd also like to thank those who are able to take the time to watch us and hopefully they'll share with their colleagues and other families that this video will be available for them to go back and watch and listen again and thank you everyone you have a great evening and and we'll see you again take care thank you so much buena tardes
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i think we need attendance first um i call oh i call i thought i called it maybe never mind continue on pardon me sorry i'll say no to that um miss kenny kenny president excellent lord president with respect to collective bargaining with the apea if an open meeting may have a gentleman effect on the bargaining position of the public body and the chairs of these players i've declared and we have no intention of returning to open is there a lord i the eyes have it thank you very much we will be entering executive session okay
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okay okay we are streaming let me [Music] me all right are we ready to go now jonathan you're on mute so i don't know if i if we are or not give me the thumbs up if we're ready and we're ready to go okay excellent so i'm going to call um this the june 22nd meeting of the dartmouth school committee uh to order um since the last time we met some provisions around open meeting law have changed are you ready to go now jonathan i'm hearing myself twice so i just wanna that's me okay all right um i just wanna i'm gonna read a few things because i want to make sure i'm not really sure under open meeting law right now what i need to say so i'm gonna say a bunch of things and hope we cover our bases um previously we used to need to say that per governor baker's order suspending certain provisions of open meeting law gl 30 c g l c 30 a section 20 the public will not be allowed to physically access this diversity committee meeting members of the public can access the meeting via live stream at www.youtube.com dhstv media the school committee reserves the right to implement additional remote participation procedures and will notify the public of these procedures as soon as possible open meeting law regulations governing remote participation remain in uh in effect but we must also comply with a few provisions as the legislature has updated them first all votes must be taken by roll call and it says at the start of the meeting we must announce the name of members or members who are participating remotely such information must also be recorded in the meeting minutes we are all participating remotely so i will ask dr gifford to just note that all members present were remote in her minutes without having been done because we need to do everything be a roll call thank you i will um do a roll call of all members to ensure that everyone is present i'm going to call people who are not present so we know that they are not here mark hayes ross tebow here uh kelly bloom here lily chamberlain here diane massari here julina pamphile here jada walker elizabeth murphy shelly scott here kathleen amarill and shannon jenkins i am here okay so we have two things on our main items on our agenda for this evening um the first item is the approval of our minutes um we'll do these separately because we'll need to roll call each of them so i will entertain a motion to approve the minutes from the may 4th meeting of the equality and diversity committee do you need a second i need someone to move it first i'll move it thank you shelly all right so shelley moves and can i have a second i'll second it thank you mr tebow all right now i will roll call mr tebow yes uh ms bloom yes here uh lily chamberlain yes uh diane massari here uh julian julian pamphile here hi uh you can say yes or no because we're doing the minutes here um shelly scott yes uh and then i will also vote yes okay so then our second order of business will be i will entertain a motion to approve the minutes of 5 25.
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all right i did want to say i'm sorry uh any other questions or concerns yes yes actually now i have a um i can't talk about personnel resolved superintendent recommended for approval the resolutions as outlined in personnel resolutions under middle and elementary school seven point two to seven point four can i get a motion yeah i have a question about uh 7.3 okay and first of all [Applause] so now this particular person is this her first employment as a school nurse yes and is she coming in at the entrance yes doing something with the nurses um whether it's a separate um pay scale or salary guys and they're just nursing right now it's getting to be a very very difficult position to fill for a number of school districts approves the resolutions as outlined in education resolutions under district in high school 8.2 through 8.5 can i get a motion motion any questions or comments i'm glad to see the donut senior trip tomorrow [Music] um [Applause] the resolutions is outlined in special services resolutions 9.2 i get a motion motion mr tom selling can i get a second second yes as outlined in financial resolutions 10.2 to 10.10 mr thomas ellie any questions or comments um i guess my question was um you know with all these how has uh financially as far as insurance and stuff has it gone up has like what's what's going on all right so it's a little it's a little hard i'll do the best i can again [Music] however our cyber insurance has gone through the roof obviously so that's going to be a little bit of an issue and our property insurance and liability is up a little bit as well healthcare i believe is also not as bad as the uh initiative yeah um and then obviously auto and things like that that's pretty relatively pretty much the same for the bosses vehicles like that any other questions yes with an extension of 10.17 to 10.
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sorry no that's good uh okay so tonight uh we are asking the board to appoint uh hearing officers for hearings convene pursuant to the school code board policies and or administrative procedures uh we have um at least one suspension hearing coming up in the next couple months that um we wanted the board to go through the formal process of appointing um two potential hearing officers for um this is a kind of a routine um requirement for school boards to uh from time to time appoint hearing officers so tonight it is recommended that the board of education appoint attorneys thomas medley and michael dudick to serve as hearing officers for hearings can be pursuant to the school code board policies and or administrative procedures i'll move that i just need a second second second thank you and you know one question that you may or may not have is why wouldn't attorneys just serve as hearing officers um but that is a little inside baseball you want to be sure that um your hearing officers are independent from you know the firms um that may be representing the district uh in cases that come before our hearing officers so we want to make sure that those folks are independent and uh we feel good about both mr melody and dudek and where and where they are where are they attorneys for what firm um i don't know the names of their firms but they're uh it's in some of the materials that carol has but they're not associated with either of those three firms that could use correct correct they're not dependent they're independent of that yeah they're going to use the angular based element and around schwartz and then right oh have they been hearing officers for us before correct oh do we need to pay them yes uh that ends up as an hourly rate that they bill afterwards depending on the cost this is more like you know when there's a suspension of teacher happens student yeah okay yep so it's just something we do from time to time to be sure that you know there's still officially appointed by the board so this is more like having them available correct if the case comes up then they will be the person you got it correct that's it exactly and this is only students not not a place okay only students call me students okay so we vote did we got a voice or a poll i don't see that it's a poll madam secretary if you would i'm happy to let's see well let's start today with uh faye hi moon's eye david hi amy amy hi gary we you know approved that five to nine okay and then shawn you have two first readings for tonight yeah one is um for some uh a piece of cleaning equipment it's a scrubber um that we use it's it's nearing its end of useful life so we will have more information on that for the august board meeting and then as we've mentioned before and previously is that we are going to change or update our accounting methodology we're going to switch from a cash basis to uh a modified accrual basis and we'll finally we'll we'll go over that but really the the two main reasons is there's a change it's recommended by gasby which kind of governs school districts as well as others and moody's is looking to downgrade a school district's rating based on uh the fact that they use a cash basis as opposed to modified accrual so when you say modified accrual how modified are you talking about uh more than most likely it's our tax receipts because we receive early tax receipts um we receive tax receipts in the year prior to that they're getting so you can't accrue capex um you can we probably won't okay we don't want to go to a full accrual method okay okay uh it's not recommended by gasby they want us to be able to keep our expenses and revenues in the same fiscal year and not accrued over multiple years okay okay so that'll be coming both of those will be coming back to the board for approval in august excuse me which brings us to the consent agenda you'll see a number of items there that are fairly routine including the county identification agreement um updating articles of joint agreement with the elc and so thank you for terry for all your work on that consolidated district plan designation of depositories resolution we talked at finance insight facilities around the 2022 campus improvement projects and moving those to design and development and then just wanted to make a note regarding for the last couple summers we haven't been meeting in july um however um we have approved uh uh estimated july 2021 expenditures uh as we've done in the past um and then authorization to engage in conversations regarding the purchase of property uh over on the east side of campus um not contiguous to the property that we just bought but correct into u.s to our district but contiguous to our property and then you'll see um release of executive session minutes and uh executive session audio minutes so all of those items are for consent agenda what about this indemnification agreement didn't we we revisiting that every year we have to do that it's an anger we try to hang you out to try no it's protection for the county okay um when they collect money on our behalf from a developer all right basically so for omissions or errors okay okay we um we need an emotion can we have a motion please don't move thanks amy second fate yeah sure okay madam secretary will anybody have any other questions i don't have any no no okay let's go faye david all right gary hi amy amy hi hi good five to nine okay and then uh finally um just wanted to share with you you may or may not be interested in this um if you need something to put you to sleep tonight uh this is an update from terry engler's firm on the legislative uh session that just finished up in springfield recently there are a number of very interesting and fascinating updates i would say that um in any given year there's not a lot that happens in springfield that would affect us here at stevenson directly on day one however this past year there are a number of them including uh updates on how we do our lockdown drills some suicide prevention legislation how we share student records and um they're making it easier for us to share records with our feeder districts carroll remember that agreement that we had in place um expansion of e-learning programs uh for schools that want to move down that road um and i mean you could just see there is they were very very busy in springfield this uh spring so again if you're interested um this is for you to review um but i wanted to share that with you uh i have also included some important dates for the summer but the third update would just be that summer school is going well as troy and mark shared last month we have a record number of students participating in summer school and well over 2 000 students um so we're pretty excited about that um and i was asked the question the other day about what kind of covid restrictions we have in place uh in the summer i should say mitigations um and we're doing three things primarily sean we're doing the um testing students are wearing masks and we're maintaining social distancing we could have far grown the saliva testing but we are participating in a study with lake county health department in the cdc on social distancing measures and quarantining and so the hope is that through this study that we'll be able to reduce the period of quarantining for students in the fall probably not going to affect us a whole lot but it will have a big impact on our k-5 students potentially k-8 students most of whom may not be vaccinated when school starts in the fall so correct we're participating in that study which means we're doing the saliva sampling in the summer we don't expect to be doing that in the fall and then regarding the fall um you just don't know anything so you know i i'm yeah i'm not in the business of making predictions um i think the two mitigations that have a possibility of being around in the fall would be masking and social distancing we would only do those if required to do so by idph and isb we continue to follow whatever guidance requirements that they issue [Music] but we just don't know if those will be in place yet so um and they are setting the standards the idph and isb continue to set the standards so you know for those students and parents who prefer to and teachers who would prefer to see the mask requirement go away in august that's not a decision that we can make by ourselves that's a decision that the state makes and then we follow soon so i do think we're going to get some updated guidance within the next few weeks once the city of chicago schools close up for the year so sometime in late june early july we'll get some updated guidance but in the meantime we're having a great summer campus is busy um lots of kids here they seem to be enjoying their experience um and things are going fairly well so that is all i have for tonight anybody got anything else thank you all for coming amy thank you for dialing in dale i'm coming i need to make that call okay i really like to be part of that thank you and uh please do all right thanks everybody
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oh just the one meeting okay i misunderstood you i thought it's a fair question no you can't have them all in close session just july 12. okay i'm sorry for the record could you state your name again we missed it chick breiner thank you okay is there anybody else who would like to address the board on anything being voted on tonight okay hearing none we're going to close our first reception of visitors we're going to open our second reception of visitors which is on anything pertaining to district 99 again we're going to ask you to limit it to three minutes and i believe that gentleman was first i'm sorry laura okay in this reception of business thank you 7 10 p.m my name is uh declan don d clean downers grove resident you know we just opened our meeting saying the pledge of allegiance and some of that wording was one nation under god indivisible and critical race theory is nothing but divisible it separates it makes white children think that they are privileged it makes black and brown students think that they are victims it makes america look bad and i think it is just an awful thing that is creeping into our schools and i hope it doesn't happen here when uh when how how does this happen do you vote on this i know there is a possibly a bill in the uh that the governor has not signed making it a law what if he does make it a law how do we stop it sir the reception of visitors is an opportunity for you to address the board there's no dialogue or interaction okay that's all i had to say thank you i'm sorry laura you were next or were you no my name is donald rath i've lived in downers grove for over 50 years so i'm a pretty long residence and i have three generations my family been through the school systems here in downers grove it's a lot of students i would like to read a draft of a letter i'm sending to the district 99 board and right now it's just a draft and after our meeting i'll finish it up and mail it to all the board people and so i'm going to kind of read what i've got here it's addressed to the superintendent and at the subject is critical race theory acronym crt i've been following this controversy and discussions in critical race theory of the national news media state legislatures and local school boards for the last several months and it seems to have created a very strong pushback at school board meetings across the country by parents of school-aged children critical race theory crt refers to an idea that emerged about 40 years ago in academia particularly a harvard law professor the ideas originators argued that race uses virtually every aspect of america's social reality the idea was debatable then and i think it's debatable today it appears to follow a marxist ideology that separates and divides people into separate classes for example the oppressors white supremacists versus the oppressed victims it's a divisive theory that divides people according to the color of their skin let's remember and i do mkl's dream one day we will live in a nation where we will not be judged by the color of our skin by the content of our character pretty profound statement currently six states are enacting or planning restrictions on teaching crt florida has already passed a law banning crt in their schools parents and children in public schools across the country have discovered many administrations have changed the school's curriculum to give priority to racial issues schools are imposing crt views and eliminating a lot of traditional historical accounts the focus of many progressives today are litigate relitigating the horrors of and record of slavery which is divisive and it's hard to understand for me in light of the progress we've made to overcome racial discrimination in this country we need to celebrate to me our progress and also our victories on eliminating discrimination thank you sir your time has expired if you would like to send your comments to me my email address is up there on the on on the board or you can just drop it off or mail it to the district one my last sentence the imposition of controversial ideas such as crt on k-12 students in the curricula should first be run through the democratic process with the elected school board we have to ask you we need to move on everybody is granted three minutes yep okay very good good evening i'm laura hoist i'm i head up the wake up 99 we have the best most generous country in the world we're one nation under god i will fight to protect our freedoms i believe there are two genders male and female separate bathrooms and locker rooms must be provided there is no systemic racism in our community we respect each other we support our police i've asked you about critical race theory and sex education specifically referring to senate bill which is not yet law but is passed through the house and senate being held by the house and could at any moment when governor pritzker finds us busy enjoying our holiday pushing it through that's what we've seen in illinois of late so we are extremely concerned about the mandates in the sex ed bill known as sb 818.
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