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You guys have any questions? I have a couple of questions. Um, first of all, thanks for the sign uh that is now out there that says this is the civic center because um that's a pet peeve of mine when you're something's going up and you're like what is that? So, thank you for putting a sign up. Um, my question, maybe this is for you Ryan more than um the construction guys, but where will the actual turn in to this property to the civic center on US 36? Where exactly is that situated? And then my second question is is there is the partial the temp road that is near cabin coffee that will be that second sort of angular. Is that true? But can you share with me where a person would enter on US 36? >> Yes. So right now if you're entering off US 36 they have put in the main entrance.
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There is more testing that takes place second semester. So we try to balance that out. there's a few more days intentionally or because of the calendar as we look at this. Also keeping in mind uh the uh week of fall break, the uh Wednesday off before Thanksgiving um two weeks at the Christmas break time and with spring break as well being in there um and some different ones throughout the year. So we sent you guys the information for the 27 and 28 calendar. had a couple of comments, questions uh from board members. So, I wanted to to put out and you guys have seen the one that that we are recommending tonight that that our plan is to go forward with, but wanted to bring up some other things just to talk through with you guys. Um have made comments and kind of pointed out on here.
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Do you want to hit the most sensitive setting where you're going to pick up small knives and and other things and you're going to have hundreds or thousands of kids standing outside for hours to get in? Do you want to raise that or adjust that sensitivity where knives will still get through? Maybe a subcompact gun, but you're going to get kids through faster. So, it's your throughput versus the sensitivity. And the vendor is going to tell you and have told me that they will tell you. You have to decide that not them. They will sell you that and you have to decide that. So you have to gauge what are we going and and how's that impact and then the new some some of the new technology fault does false hits. Uh you get false alarms on um musical instrument cases, spiral notebooks. Charlotte Meckllinburgg schools in North Carolina just their board just banned spiral notebooks recently because after spending I believe it was $18 million on weapons detection system they realized that these false those false hits were causing disruptions coming in uh student note uh water bottles eyeglass cases an eyeglass case a Chromebook we have and we have musical instrument cases where kids are coming carrying them over the weapons detection system as if somebody couldn't put something in a large musical instrument case so that didn't false hit.
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Certainly we do have the one makeup day remaining in March or December 12th. I think it was December 12th school. Um so I have that. Um, and then, um, with Mr. Greenley's, uh, retirement, uh, we're going to be announcing a corporation athletic director, uh, position, uh, for that. So, we're going to be doing a little bit of restructuring, uh, with the athletic, uh, department, um, help us structure that, help us offer a little bit of cost savings as we kind of head during these, uh, head into these kind of trying times. Um, just trying to be more efficient as well. Nonetheless, we believe it's a great opportunity and I'm really excited to seek out the next athletic director for Tiger Athletics. That's all I have for this month. So, I was going to say something about Doug and Doug because they were recognized at the basketball.
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Any questions or comments about the consent agenda? Any of the items there? If anyone would like to pull an item voted on separately. Hearing none, we will vote on the consent agenda. That motion passes 6. Move into finance E1 Financial Reports December 2025. We are excited to see Mrs. Babcock here tonight with us. It's all yours. >> Thank you. Thanks for having me. It's nice to be here. It's very nice instead of being virtually. So, um, we have quite a few different items we were going to cover. Um, so first of all, we're going to start with the December month end items. And as you'll see for the education fund closer, >> sorry, I got to get used to it here, but where I need to keep this. So, can you hear me now? >> Yes. >> Okay. All right. So, um, moving on with a December financials, if you like the education fund, you'll see that our revenue came in at 99.96% um, as we anticipated or projected and then we expended 87.7.07% of those expenditures um, as projected and we stayed within our budget.
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Um, and the the we will have the next time we issue bonds again, um, we will get an update on that. And Dr. Smith, correct me if I'm wrong. Um, we went from we're now double A+ and the second rating. >> You were you were A+. A+ to be higher too. So the last Thank you. Um >> so very strong very few school districts in the state of Indiana um or any municipalities for that for that matter have have that rating or certainly any higher. >> So if you could translate that to what that means when we are are are going out and and cashing in our bonds. What does that mean for our taxpayers? >> We pay less interest. >> That's right. which means it's cheaper for them. >> Correct. >> Yeah. >> Correct. >> And board members will be back with you. Uh obviously we are bringing forward to you the McKenzie project and we will have a bond rating this year.
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Luna, gave us a full day of planning where we were able to dig in to all of our data. We spent this time identifying the standards that need to be retaught and which students need the retach. Once we identified the standards, we had long conversations about how we are going to teach this again and determined creative ways to reach all of our students. We scheduled out our blind assessments and then began planning daily lessons. In these plans, we created our we created our objectives and daily exit tickets to ensure our students are learning the full standard. Through this collaboration, we plan to identify times to allow to watch each other teach, which allows us to see our plans in action and learn from one another. We also scheduled dates for our leadership team to come model for us. This looks like Mrs. Luna teaching a best practice and Mrs.
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um translating in parent teacher conferences. Um I've also been in the BPAC um committee. Um I volunteer for a lot of the stuff that goes around in our community to help these multilingual multilanguage uh culture um uh students. Um, I want to thank you for taking the time to listen to us and I am very um happy to be here and I hope I can stay here for a bit of a time. Um, I've only been here for a year and 3 months. It seems very long but hopefully it will be very long. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Hello. Um, I'm Julie Whit Vanorney. I am the college and career count uh college and career center um administrative assistant. I live in the area. Um, I actually have two seniors at Downers Grove South who will be graduating this year. I help students in their college um and career and trade schools.
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Yeah. So, congratulations. >> Thank you. >> Okay. 8.4 Dr. Martin. >> All right. So, um, as in our kind of discussions about, um, like our work, we often talk about like what guides it and, um, kind of as we navigate interactions with each other and with the work um, and with the community, we a lot of our board protocols come up. So, um, what we are going to begin doing is reviewing a board protocol every month or so. Um, and it'll give us the opportunity to revisit and reaffirm our role and responsibilities. Um, to make sure we have a shared understanding of the protocol that guides our decisions and to talk through anything that might need clarification or discussion as a board. Um, it's a way for us to stay grounded in our governance and ensure that we're aligned um, as we move forward. And it's also going to provide the community with a look at the guidelines that influence our interactions both with each other and with you all and with um, within the district.
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So, thank you also and congratulations, Mr. Black. And I do have a certificate for each of you that I'm going to come over and give. I just won't have a microphone. I don't know if any of our board members might want to. >> All right. What is the Okay, next up we have public participation. The board and administration welcome your input when recognized by the board president. Members of the public are welcome to supply information for the board's consideration or to express their opinion of district policies. However, public debate between members of the public and the board of education members or the district staff will not be permitted. We ask that individuals speaking before the board identify themselves with full name and address and be brief.
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I just out of curiosity, >> the class size ranges as they are have been that way for quite a long time and they really didn't go into place until after 2010 when we had major uh staffing cuts at that point and very large class sizes where nearly every class was 30 students or above um based on the finances of the district being so dire. Um, and after that, as we kind of came out of that, that's when we went to first we added back all the specials and then we worked on really lowering those class sizes into a more manageable range. I would say we're a little bit on the lower end right now. That's not a bad thing for our kids or for our staff for that matter. But it is it is again just a range. It's just a recommendation. Um, but that I do know that was the genesis of when we started having that class size range was post 2010 when we were rebuilding the district.
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>> So you'll notice that is the entrance that will be the main entrance. They haven't moved the traffic signal yet. INDOT won't let them move the traffic signal until the other road improvements are done. So, like you said, the back entrance is by Cabin Coffee. So, that entrance by Cabin Coffee actually will go away. The light will no longer be there. It will move to the main entrance. Then, the road will be redirected through. They just didn't get the road done before the winter. So, they'll do that in the spring. It's already under contract. So, they'll build that piece. They'll redirect it just kind of like the temporary road is. That's where the new road will actually go. And then where you exit to 36, that's going to become a right in right out. Like the entire middle will be blocked off. You'll no longer be able to turn left where you currently turn off of Main Street.
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I thought it'd be easier for all of you to see kind of the the the complexities or the issues that go along with moving things around. Um and for a later start even of just a week. So in [clears throat] the first one for the 2728 school year again 2627 school year has already been on our website for more than for a year and we're just trying to continue to stay ahead of the game with these uh calendars. As you can see, our recommendation is for uh teachers to report August 9th with students reporting August 11th. Again, this is 2027. um to look at having fall break in a week of fall break in October uh November having that Wednesday, Thursday, Friday for Thanksgiving break with Christmas break then being uh December 20th through the 31st uh and ending the first semester with 84 days.
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Um so how does that change your culture? What sensitivity do you end up with security theater perception of increased safety? And then the last thing that we're seeing is that with the new technology and with those dependencies on the settings in Udica, New York, a kid student got a 7in blade through an AI weapons detection system and stabbed a kid in the hallway. And this time in January of last year in Nashville, um they had the AI cam overlays on the camera system and a student pulled out a gun in the cafeteria and shot and killed another student and the system didn't pick it up. Now the vendors and and explanation on the side was well it was person wasn't at the right appropriate paraphrase. They get the appropriate space and time and maybe you needed more I but the thing still occurred. So to sum up that though ju just to give you a sample of the fidelity of implementation questions and issues you'd have to consider in a sentence school safety is not a plugandplay.
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Can't say enough about either one of them and the time they put in for Greencastle. Doug Hudson's been here forever and he does so much beyond just the class that he does. I've seen him at speaking engagements all over the state and everything. So, he does a wonderful job and everybody knows that Doug's dreaming is a Hall of Famer. So, looking forward to the uh shoes that'll fill that position and they're going to have to be big shoes. So, looking forward to that. >> Yeah. Another real neat thing with that is the awards are plent. Okay. Uh, moving on. Any old business? >> No old business. >> On to new business. We have a purple request for the second reading of the 2027 2028 academic school calendar. >> Yeah. So, it's been a couple months in between first reading and second reading part because I wanted to ensure that I got good feedback from our buildings.
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So, that is great. Um, you will see that we did have a transfer there from our education fund to our operations fund. it was a little less than what we anticipated originally in doing during the budget. When we do that in the budget, we allow for us to do up to a certain amount. It doesn't necessarily mean that we will automatically transfer that unless it's necessary. Um the goal is to keep both of those funds, the education fund and the operations fund healthy. In order to do so, then we take a snapshot of that and then decide on what how much we really need to transfer over. And in this case, we did not transfer over the full amount that we anticipated spending. Um, as you can see though, we did go down in our overall cash balance here. Um, as you'll see there's like 1.7 uh ne to the negative in a deficit there.
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So we cross our fingers Mr. Miles and his team polishes up everything. But we want a very good bond rating as we go back out renovations for that important building. >> Okay. Thank you for those questions. board. Any other questions or comments? Okay, we'll stick with Mr. Miles and move on to 3.3 financial update. Thank you, Madam President. Uh at this time, I share the January 26th month end financials uh for both our general fund and our transportation funds as we do each month. And uh both are in a favorable position right now. Again, we're just just out of the starting blocks here for with one month under our belt for 26. Um, and you can see in front of you uh that revenues uh both for we'll just start with the general fund here. Um total revenues just slightly ahead of expectations and and expenditures just slightly below uh putting our ending balance uh just a little ahead of where we thought we might be at this time of the year.
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Bowers, our TLS, whisper coaches to us about the effective practice and then we reflect and plan how we can put this into our tier one instruction. Miss Adam will now talk about how we are putting this into action. All right. Now we are dashing into ASA in math. One of the creative ways we have tried to ensure all of our students master the grade level essential standards is by using our library once a week as an intentional personalized intervention time. We group students based on what they need for each standard. Regardless of who their math teacher is, we share the responsibility of reteing to help each student grow by differentiating to meet each student's needs. This time also allows Miss Schneider to put her expertise into place to pull small groups ensuring we are meeting students IEP goals. This intervention time is for all seventh and eighth graders, including our algebra students, to ensure they are mastering the eighth grade standards as well as on their all of their algebra content.
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My office is packed every single day with students coming in asking questions. I love it. Um I am very proud to be part of an administrative assistant um team with Katie. We lead monthly meetings with administrative assistants in Downers Grove South and we train them on anything from technology and ways to improve our jobs. And um Friday we have countywide and I was um very honored. I'm going to be hosting uh a like a little training for anybody for administrative assistance at Downer's Grove South. So, South and North can come over and get some training. So, I'm honored to be a part of that and thank you once again for all of you um and being part of our community. >> Thank you. >> All right, I think we got everybody right. Thank you all for coming out this evening. Once again, you're welcome to stick around for the whole meeting or uh for whatever amount of time you would like.
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So, um I guess with that, if there are any questions from other board members, go right ahead. >> So, how are we how are we going to do this? Are we just going to >> just down the list? Excellent. >> And there's you know, I I probably should do this, but were we thinking about doing like one section at a time or one? >> Yeah. >> Anybody figure that out >> because that would take >> I think it would probably depend on the section. [laughter] >> I think there are some are a little meteor than others. Yeah. But yeah. >> Yeah, we can all we can talk about that uh >> at our meetings. Yeah. >> Um no, I like the idea and it's um educates the public as well. You know, a lot of times people, you know, come say to me, I need to do this, you know, like I need to implement something.
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