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there's a small dollar amount in there it's about i think it's 130 138 000 this is a result of a new accounting standard governmental accounting standard which required the district to evaluate its fiduciary funds and uh determine whether they are more appropriately included in the district's funds so this represents what the student activity funds were at the end of last year under the new financial standard those funds were required to be brought into the educational fund so we just make a fund balance showing what those activity funds house at the beginning of the year going forward starting in fiscal 21 all of the revenues and expenditures of the those activity funds will be included in the regular revenues and expenditures of edition all right again this is just where you can look at the changes in fund balance um the following statement is really us more specific to all of the various categories of revenue so if you want more details of where the revenues are that's the the next couple of pages um overall revenues were pretty stable in a cash basis district revenues fluctuate based on collections so timing of things like state aid payments uh grant reimbursements and stuff like that will always impact the district's revenue but um that's basically just giving you an outline of those specific sources revenue and then finally you know after that you're going to look at several pages of budget to actual schedules this is where you'll find detailed line items from the budget and a comparison of those actual expenditures to the budget expenditures and i believe that for all funds except two the actual expenditures were less than the budgeted and one of them was capital projects funds and the other was tort fund um and i know capital projects again kind of fluctuates depending on how projects are completed during the year and then the tort phone there were some changes in the way that accounting was done in the tort fund so again that's probably that variance could be a function of that change um and then the last section of the audit are basically the footnotes and what i like to say is that the footnotes provide additional details that support the numbers or get kind of give explanations uh of the numbers that are contained in the financial statement so it's really important part of the the audit report and i think one one new note that you'll see this year is a note indicating that the district adopted that new governmental accounting standard and it explains the the change in the fiduciary funds including that student activity fund other than that the um the footnotes and and the report are really consistent with what you've seen in previous years uh the other report that's part of the audit that we conduct is the annual financial report for the state board of education you do not have that in front of you that will be filed as soon as the the audit is uh completed um and and finalized and really the only thing i want to mention about that is there is a section in the annual financial report that provides a financial profile of the district and it basically provides a ranking on a scale of zero to four and the the district in the current year um has a profile score of 3.9 out of four and it in other words it's in the highest category of recognition um the only thing the only other thing i want to mention is you know there's a new leasing standard so some of you might hear about you know new governmental standards that are coming out the there is a leasing standard that's going to require entities to report uh it leases all leases on their balance sheet um we don't expect it to have a significant impact here because again your district reports on a cash basis but just in case you hear anything about that wanted you to have a heads up on that and then i think the only other thing is um just knowing that next year you should see an increase in funding from that new round of assert funds i'm sure you have heard about it in planning and things like that but um that's really the only exp uh information that we have to you know expect something a little bit different for next year okay all right so that is it for central any questions awesome thank you thank you dana all right and then i just have really a couple comments about northern kane a little bit smaller report there [Applause] okay um as you are aware i'm sure uh the district is now the administrative district for that uh northern king county regional career and technical education system so the audit went very well we did not identify any issues despite the transition um of the district taking over the duties for the system this year the process for the audit was generally the same as it was for for central uh we evaluated internal controls tested then found nothing that appeared out of the ordinary everything appeared to be designed appropriately and working properly there was no management letter comment at all for uh northern kane uh the opinion that's provided is going to be similar to what you see at central again it's a regulatory basis district so there's an adverse opinion in terms of gaap financial statements but an unmodified opinion on the regulatory basis in other words free from material misstatement and then internal controls appear to be appropriately designed and implemented there was no federal audit for northern kane uh because the federal expenditures are less than 750 000.
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we did exceed 600 total cases last week and we're actually 625 total cases now but since fall break 110 positive test cases so 515 first quarter 110 second quarter and you can see down here just the the graph of the positive cases and right around labor day weekend heading into it and coming out of it is when we had our highest number of cases yellow high school red middle school blue the elementary school and then we have ticked down now we do not have last week's number there that chart did go up a little bit actually about 29 cases from last week so we've been about right here if we tracked that coming out of fall break a change that we made in terms of mitigation strategies was the quarantine protocols and so we did align ourselves very specifically with the department of health which means that in a mask environment and specifically in the classroom on the buses again this comes from the department of health and if we identify closed contacts begins in a mask environment and they remain asymptomatic they can stay in school and so that has made a big difference that's outlined in this flowchart of students who are staffed with coded symptoms on the bottom part of that quarantine guidance for close contacts that has led to this so if we look at the left side with green and red stay at school quarter one quarantine quarter one in terms of closed contacts 92 percent of the kids who we would identify as a close contact in the first quarter then were quarantined second quarter coming out of fall break that changes to 58 and 42 so the majority of our kids now staying in school identified as a close contact with that change in protocols and the 42 percent much of that percentage are kids who have been identified as close contacts maybe at home and so we really don't have any control necessarily of that again the guidance from the department of health is very specific to the classroom and the bus and us being able to make the decision uh to keep them there from a mass situation i think that's the last slide that i have yes so for the math situation i think that question is going to come up to you now often is okay what about masks now and you might see other school corporations are starting to set a date where they will go okay maybe after january 1st so some for us to ponder as we look ahead i think the reason that that is the date being established the governor has mentioned that you know executive orders maybe he's going to slow down on those executive orders if that happens that it does change things a little bit because right now the department of health's guidance on quarantines is linked to the executive order and if you go mass optional and you pay attention to the executive order actually you'd have to use six feet and everybody would go home from a close contact standpoint and so if you do go mass optional and these quarantine protocols stay in effect you actually are sending it goes back to 92 or percent or more that would go go home um but if the governor's executive order doesn't exist anymore then that there's there's a situation that may occur with the quarantine so we'll watch that closely to see what that link is between executive order close contacts quarantine protocols all those kinds of things as we continue to evaluate our circumstances and again as we always do is continue to look at the numbers that we have mentioned a slight uptick last week we hope that was just a kind of a one-off in terms of coming out of fall break and that our numbers will even back out but that graph does indicate that we have been making pretty good progress since since fall break overall so those are a couple things the other topic that would throw out is just you're probably aware of vaccinations being talked about a lot and osha has said that even us public entities are supposed to be doing vaccinations i will only tell you at this point we're trying to pay close attention to what we actually have to do and having conversations with legal counsel and then kelly thompson director of nurse our health services and dr pleak with human resources are attending webinars and paying close attention to what we might actually be required to do from an adult standpoint with vaccinations that information from osha is specific to adults who have not we have not had conversations about vaccinations with any requirements with students but you are aware obviously that all students or at least ages five and to eleven so now all students ages five and up are eligible for vaccination if their parents choose to to have them do that so that's a quick overview of everything that we're kind of pondering and thinking about as we continue to look at numbers and cases and situations but it will be interesting to see the governor during when issuing his last executive order did kind of indicate that maybe that would be changing we'll see if that is indeed the case as we go forward right now the current executive order is through november 30th i believe kelly it's something like that at least into the end of the month so all right questions just an observation that of our peaks during labor day weekend and we are approaching significant holidays that's all i'll say yeah it's kind of interesting that um yeah so maybe maybe there's some data that would be trending in a good direction as we had fall break right and a lot of people going a lot of places and and maybe that little bit last week could be attributed that i don't i don't know but we were typically seeing a couple of weeks after that we would see that increase and as you see labor day weekend is right on top of that yeah that time frame but you're right um we have a lot of a lot of times to get together here coming up we'll see what that what impact that may or not may or may not have right so we'll be glass half full on that one yes good way to look at it okay so next we have the opportunity for public comments the guidelines are listed here and mr grow i'm happy to welcome you back good evening everyone and as always thank you for your year my name is eric grow my family and i reside in district four and you can contact me at ekgrow21 gmail.com all right so mass mandates i'm apparent that while i never would have agreed the right decision was made i could have agreed to the compliance with little to no dissent had the decision been handled properly by all of you collectively but here we are now parents still in the dark on this matter and when it might end so i would pose this question if not now when as uh dr roberts kind of just went over some things to think about you know all children ages five and up now had the chance to be vaccinated the recent vaccine clinic was even promoted through our school channels so what is it specifically what metrics have you guys decided on that will allow us to remove the mask mandate or you know are we kind of just going through it with no plan or you know even as i fear maybe the truth are we just relying on outside entities like a regional hospital to let us know when that decision in one way or another is made for us regardless we should still you should still be able to share with us you know what the end game is either here's a specific metric you know something that could even be overly aggressive that you could let up on later if you decided or you know we don't have a plan mass mandates are indefinite you know just just don't let it go unspoken like talk to us about it like what is the plan like where's where's the finish line at right we should have we should be able to come up with some metrics um for that so we know when you know it's it's it's not a surprise we know when that day is going to come right when we don't have to wait on a board meeting to hear it school board meeting to hear it we will all know where you guys stand um you know and maybe it would be wise to give parents a little more time like maybe a week or two to get their kids vaccinated if they chose but don't make part of your specific metrics be tied to something as arbitrary as like parent procrastination or winter break or something like that i just think that would diminish your authority as a group to do something like that it should be based on something in scientific and black and white [Music] also on this topic what are each of your positions on mandating the vaccine to our children and that's gravely important and shouldn't be unknown to us to surprise us later switching topics my hope is that the process of this board can be reevaluated and updated to be more conducive to parents and constituents involvement and to have a better structure for communication this will prevent future topics from popping up in provocative ways like the mass mandates did for example the new elementary social studies curriculum has been in the works for at least several months most people won't hear about it until next spring in which case it'll be voted on two to four weeks later and you know this kind of has the potential for the same thing so just something to consider and speaking of provocative so miss instagram we've gone out of time and i we don't have curricular issues on our agenda this evening so it was in regard to just general process very very short summary please yeah so the last thing you guys should really look into according to bcschools.org the library catalog there north and east high schools both have a book titled out of darkness by ashley hope perez and the east library has a book titled what girls are made of by elena k arnold and i kind of just found those on a whim i haven't even dug in yet so you know please look into that the gravity of the situation that begs you guys on this is huge get ahead of it you know don't make me stand up here and read excerpts publicly to you because i don't think we should have to get to that point that kind of pressure to get answers again thank you for listening i look forward to engaging in conversation with any and all of you and please let's talk about some of this all right thank you eric is impossible to have a copy of your notes just with the different topics you hit is it possible okay thank you all right mr grows the only gentleman and a person that signed up so we'll go on to the next item on our agenda and it is board commendation so i'll turn to my colleagues yay mr grimes uh just a few here um first off in no particular order uh congratulations to the band uh the sound and spirit of columbus on a very successful season as a combined unit from both north and east congratulations again to not only the north girls and boys cross country teams but all to all the fall student athletes and teams across the schools lots and lots of success in post-season state tournament sectional titles regional semi-state obviously the girls cross country state title lots of conference championships and particularly to to those kids to you know not only the team accomplishments but some of the individual accomplished accomplishments in terms of being recognized all-state and also academic all-state loads of academic all-staters from north and east which is wonderful also i just want to mention mr burnett and all others that have a role in putting together the newsletter the live streaming of endless bcsc events and all the efforts at you know keeping communications out there for the community to to see and hear what's going on in vcsc and then lastly i just mentioned uh dr bozeman and the evaluation committee that reviewed uh the proposals that came in for construction manager as constructor for the upcoming renovations and their time that they took to interview and and sort through and make reference calls and all the legwork that went into that so thank you thank you very much are there others dr bills thank you dr shed i have two one is i was fortunate enough to help volunteer on monday november 1st a senior project and kade kickendahl from columbus east high school did a pollinator project around the pond at columbus east high school where it's mar road and state street and i was happy to help plant 43 bald cypress plantings trees around the pond we had over 30 volunteers and many of them were students and it was finished with all those volunteers in an hour and a little over an hour we had so many volunteers so um i this is i just wanted to i told him i would be mentoring mentioning him at the board meeting so um so that is one commendation congratulations to kade kickendahl and his senior project and we had another pollinator at smith elementary school a project by colby payne and he is a sixth grader he's on the student council and he planted five trees and i think three red bed trees at smith elementary and that and he um so yeah i want to i think it's a great project the pollinators and and the um planting native trees and shrubs and plants so i just wanted to congratulate and give commendations to those two students in our school district thank you great thank you very much all right we shall move on to school board member reports colleagues have had committees since our last meeting mr grimes yeah a few things from the school foundation first off a big a big thank you to executive director susie bruin for her energy enthusiasm and dedication to the school foundation she will be leaving her position as executive director early next month and congratulations to nicole cunningham who will be transitioning in with susie over the next few over the next few weeks we had our brighter futures for all 5k um two days ago unfortunately the turnout was a little bit less than we'd hoped for i think perhaps a lot of people may have went out for lack of a better term due to the weather but uh you know it didn't keep the uh yeah well um and thank you and a lot of thanks to uh susie and angie for uh for securing a lot of community sponsors for that event and so in spite of the fact it was our first annual i think that's one that we will continue and are maybe looking to make it a kick off the school year event next year so we'll trade 28 degrees for possibly 95 and then also the the school foundation will have a presence in the city's festival of lights parade december 4th as well all right we'll look forward to that others i'm not good at wait time sorry i'm sure you all can teach me how to do that better um all right cabinet reports and dr roberts our first reading of some new neola policies yeah so as uh with neola um typically about every six months we get a new set of policies based on case law and indiana code legislative changes federal updates and so forth uh one that's uh in in the kind of in the middle of that so beyond the regular cycle of getting policies is the special look at just participation in meetings through electronic means and so we have four different policies two new ones to add based upon current indiana statute as well as some revisions because of current indiana statute updated new uh to make so this is one uh bylaw zero one six four point five so it the bylaw chapter or reminder for you the very first set of of policies that you have that talk about board governance and and how are you to conduct business what's a quorum all those kinds of things so under that chapter uh this new policy member participation meeting through electronic means of communication is based upon the last legislative session hca 1437 which provided specific conditions for that to occur so you do have some information about how how that bylaw could look um it does the hea-1437 does require you to adopt a policy to address procedures uh that would allow board members to participate in board meetings by electronic communication um so again something for you to do if we think back to a year ago when all of a sudden we were thrust into an environment where nobody was really anywhere and we were conducting meetings we did a series of things whether it be electronic or just met uh in an environment and everybody was was present at the meeting people participating or watching were doing so virtually there were emergency procedures put in place by again the governor at that point in time as that time went on and we got into legislative session it was decided that legislatively we need to have something more long term and that's where he 1437 comes into play leads us to making sure that we are ready for whatever the situation and really these policies the four that you have in front of you are whether it is during an emergency declaration whether it is from the governor of the state or done locally by a local health department official or somebody locally who has that control or it's just a circumstance that creates that situation for for the board and it may be you have an individual who couldn't be at a board meeting tonight and wanted to participate virtually or electronically how would that go and how would you do that and how would you make sure that person could participate and and or vote there are some provisions nhea 1437 that says you can't vote if you're electronically and it's a it's a basically a dollar thing you couldn't vote on a budget for example when mr phillips last month october had you vote on the budget those in attendance could vote on that if you're not in attendance and participating virtually you could vote on other things but not that one that was going to say hey we're going to spend x amount of money in 2022.
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now back to your announcements the library will be closed today from 9 30 a.m until noon all of block four and part of block six parentals will not be available during this time now to brayden rankin with a special announcement hi i'm braden rankin and i'm doing an interview over food shortages and we're about to interview mrs million what is the biggest issue and why we can't get food the biggest issue i think is manufacturers are having labor issues like we talked about before where you know people decide to retire over covid and so a big part of that population is not even available to work on top of lots of different reasons kids being home for school things like that but the biggest thing is supply chain issues so it's not just one thing that does that so you'll see manufacturers trying to have to just scale down their variety of products that they have so k-12 foods are often pushed to the back because they are so regulated and they're so specific in their guidelines things like that and then just getting the food here you know trucking issues transportation getting cars it's kind of a there's not just one thing but for us i think it's because it's so specific um the regulations on the type of food we can buy um what happened to pepsi and kellogg's and how does that affect us okay so on top of supply chain issues and normal pandemic issues you'll see just everyday things that before would happen and they could shift production to another factory and they just don't have that option now so i know kellogg's out of memphis where most of the whole grain is made their factory caught on fire so that put a big halt to production of whole grain cereals and stuff which is what schools ordered and then kellogg's in battle creek they had an employee strike so that was the other issue there and then one of the pepsi cola factories um when the bottling factories had caught fire as well so we get information from our main suppliers on just those types of things that go into just why they can't get products so like even though it's like first part of the year we couldn't get gatorade and you couldn't find it anywhere and now the big thing is we can't find body armor and it's just i think they have to pick and choose and decide what's going to make them the most money and most profitable because they're struggling as well so the yearbook club this year have a great day and be sure to follow us on twitter snapchat and instagram at gchs pirates also be sure to listen to
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uh 98.0 type of deal they were some 3.4 points ahead of south brunswick high and a couple more of that from jp stevens both new jersey bands they kind of capped a wonderful year for the band uh the wednesday before down in new britain they came away with uh us band division five uh mass in new england open and also on the following saturday uh uh which i had talked about also uh at the last meeting on uh and josh had talked about and uh reading came home with the division five uh nezba championship with a 99-6 so it's been a fantastic year for the band they've done wonderful and i'll turn it over to mr flint and the drum majors yeah it was a definitely exciting season for us the hardest thing about this was unpredictability of the season and i just got to commend the students and staff we didn't really know how it would turn out and you know all the people that stuck it out with the program i mean really the dedication's there and it's proof is in the end result but i think the biggest thing take away from the weekend was just the level of entertainment you know we're standing there at the end and you know we knew we had a great performance but to watch the audience stand up and all the students from all the other bands because we were the second last band on for the night and it was a standing ovation with all the other students there too so you know we put on a not just you know a high scoring show but an entertaining production and i felt like the students walked away from it with just you know a sense of accomplishment so um everything that they do is is testament to the program and the history of this and then the parent organization that makes it all come together so it's a lot of work behind the scenes um a lot of hours but the dedication is there and that's why we have that consistent result so it's a really really great year for us [Laughter] um i feel like we kind of got a fresh start for the program this year because i mean we had a new band director and there were a lot of new kids this year so to see it all come together from the very beginning um from the very first day it was just astounding the improvement that everybody made every day and um i was really happy with the last show that we put out and i think we had a really great year so the same thing uh so i'll invite uh maybe we'll start with mr kiley if he wants to say anything on behalf of the administration then i'll invite my fellow committee members to uh to say a few words yeah thanks dr jenkins here we're just so pleased to to be able to recognize the high school marching band and mr flint and all the volunteers and staff and obviously the amazing students who made it all possible and another national championship so it's incredibly impressive and we're proud very proud of you mr oliver thank you madam chair what can i say uh what i i got a chance to watch uh on youtube one of the youtube channels or the facebook channel or the facebook account uh parents different parents that i'm friends with posting uh the videos over at uh that left stadium but seeing it i wish i could have been there in person because i'd love to you know be there and experience what everyone else felt but what an amazing job um you know everyone the students the staff should be really proud of the job that you folks have done especially coming off of you know a very difficult year that we've had and it just goes to show perseverance and you know coming together i always enjoy i'm hearing you um play at the stadium i can hear you from my house which is about a mile and a half away and i can always uh hear when the band's out there so uh congratulations um to everyone miss wayne so um this is our first year with uh my third child but my first one in the band this year and um it's been such a great experience you know and i and i have to say so much of it is you know testament not just to the hard work of the staff but the you know i mentioned this at our last meeting but the leadership of the upperclassmen the seniors you know and i just you know i look at you know two i look at josh and again i think the modeling is just you know from the very first you know band camp that they have and these kids work so hard but the very first you know camp this you know the seniors and the upperclassmen are saying you know we're taking this seriously if we're in the pit we're there first we you know you get there not if it says it starts at six you get there at 5 30.
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so we're going to be a little over on that one i didn't think it was um that large that we needed to take any action uh tonight or in the very near future but it's it's based on that overage is based on the heating season we had in 2018-19 in terms of the number of gallons we use that's of course the last time we were open for for 10 months but so much depends on the weather and how cold it is um so it's just not you you just can't say right now oh but i'd say it's it's on our radar you know we'll we'll have more to save on that as the the winter goes on um so that's uh so prices are starting to creep into our our budget um uh with both of those things uh the second part of the report last month you asked about health insurance and i think it was because when we looked at the end of the year last year we returned to the city of 2.8 million dollars and if i recall most of that a couple million came from health insurance and as we talked it was uh really because when hospitals uh i use the word were overrun with covid uh patients uh for you know four or five months of the year people uh put off going for different surgeries it might have been elective or deferred and and there's been a lot written about that but that's that's why we turned back uh money uh last year so you would ask me how are things going this year so far and we did ask our uh consultant am gallagher uh to look at the claims a much more expert than i would be and so what you'll see in the report um good stuff let me just turn to it it's uh towards the back there's a a long sheet it says stanbury public schools i'll just i can't share the screen but uh what it is uh gallagher put this together and they went back to uh july of 2018 and month by month uh showed our claims as as you know we self-insure for health insurance which means uh we pay the actual claims to come in uh plus uh something to cigna to operate those claims as a cigna plan but it's it's self-insured and you can see um they broke it down the total number of employees that had health insurance um and then what the different claims were medical rx's prescription dental and vision with a total so you can look down you can what i did was i looked at the three comparable months um i looked at uh july august and september of 2018 and uh really in july august september of 2019 those were normal months and compared that if you look at the bottom of the report there's the three most recent months uh there and um i i spoke at length uh with gallagher and said you know how do you interpret this and what yeah i got was an email from them and that's also part of your report you'll see from uh steve scholl is our consultant dated november 4th and i won't go through all of it um but the main point he said was that our claims were running about 1.9 million a month uh he thought that was um as expected kind of his words but at the very bottom of his email he says to us um don't don't put my words don't go spending the money yet because they expect there to be an uptick in elective surgeries and deferred procedures that people have still been putting off they expect that to happen and that would uh raise our our claims and and his words uh time is the only way to see uh this impact maybe to us uh i i pressed him a little bit on you know if he's telling us what the industry experts say uh what is the consensus of when this might start and he just they just don't have a time uh that they're they're saying but they think it will be during uh this plan year so um another thing i i think we should uh watch each month and and um hopefully our next meeting i'll i'll have some more information on that so john can i can i ask a question of course okay so um with the uptick of oil prices and the uptick of the anticipated um elective procedures coming our way are you going to put a moratorium on spending right now uh well i haven't uh talked about that with the superintendent i think it's it's time to consider what choices we have there may be other choices in there one of the things that happens though in a public school budget is a lot of the spending is front loaded meaning teachers want their things before school starts the books are for all year long and materials um so when you do put a freeze on um it generally tends to uh affect the the spring activities a little unevenly you know for example the fall sports are all done uh so if you were to cut back there it would hit your spring sports um a little differently than if you had done it all year so you um those are their strategies that schools use but um you gotta be kind of careful with how you you put them out but we'll we'll be talking about those and and other options that are that are coming along um and we'll see what things um have gone our way uh there are a few uh when it comes to mine you you've heard how how difficult it's been to fill positions yes and to find substitutes so i would expect in those lines there would be some favorable balances and uh as we get closer to the the middle of the year um maybe those can be transferred or well i think we'll have a better picture once we get right after christmas but it's not too early it's a point well taken john john speaking of um not too early and thanks for getting us started um can you speak briefly about the reserves and at what point um does this trigger a conversation with the city about reserves specifically for um you know potential uptick in in claims and requests you know well i think the first one um you know if remember there are a couple different reserves but most of them are related to health insurance right maybe half or more and uh when we talked to david saint-hilaire that's exactly what he was saying is that uh because of this expectation uh they had reserved money just in case so um that i think that's the first place we should turn for help because that that's what it's there for um but i i think that um probably january would be a good time to say and you know um for them to release reserves they're on their balance sheet which means it doesn't have any impact on the city surplus that stays what it is and whatever gets added to it when the audit's finished uh this is in a very different place and would have no impact so that's that's a strategy i think we'll look at very early as well and you know they also have something for uh just general i think it's maybe 500 000 uh what a perfect place to uh get your fuel budget uh overage from uh because uh you know the general uh thinking is fuel prices will come down so i think bar taking from the reserve wouldn't lead to any spike or really wouldn't impact how we budget uh for next year so yeah we'll dust off his memo i think very quickly thank you john yep uh so also in the report uh this month uh we've been promising you and finally we have it uh some of our grants and i think it's on the last page uh we thought uh we talked about this but we said you know why don't we just uh in the report show all the grants uh even though some are the same some are small and um don't have a lot of impact um and clearly the coronavirus relief grants are the name of the game this year but um we said you know for the report um let's let's just put them all out um we can talk about um how we want to do our reporting going on but we just felt um that was the way to go um and um the list of look i'm not real familiar with what you were getting in the past but but i can say that it's noteworthy it has to be noteworthy uh the the big grants that we have uh the virus relief grants and you'll see them right there if you look down um we use an internal number to keep track of things but grant 29 about eight or ten rows down is the yes or two and you can see that's close to six million dollars uh so that's in there as we um we do have some um accounting um record keeping we have to do to uh with that grant and if you look down at grant 37 the sr3 grant because we we didn't have those grants entirely approved and in place um when the school year began and went and certainly when we had to start getting people ready so um some of the new people and some of the people that were earmarked uh into those grants in june uh right now they're either in a different grant or the general fund uh because we we just had to get them into the process and get them going uh but what our software does is and we're in the process of doing that is we we know the people that belong in the uh new grant again the plan we adopted and the new software's is pretty good with that you can just simply locate the person in the in the system uh give them the new code where they belong and not only does it code them going forward but it brings all their history with them so it's it's a pretty easy process to it restates um what what you've done so i think it'll look um much different to you next month meaning um a more of a share of a more normal share of the grant will have been expended because those big grants are primarily for staff as you remember whether it's the brookfield kindergarten or some of the extra teachers at the high school and those things are there they're predominantly staff so you'll you'll see some changes there but those you know two grants here's 13 or 14 million dollars right there you'll see the cares act grant on there that's almost another million so um right away our total grants are up to 52 million dollars typically they've been at least the last few years even with um when the alliance was lower they were uh in the 40 million dollar range or below so you you see that effect there you also see the alliance grant at a higher level i think we talked about that the board meeting it's gone from 14 million up to 17 million and uh if we have our way it's going more higher than that um next year and we're working on making that happen so those are the grants um and although that's uh the end of the the first page of the report i'd also like to uh speak about transportation before we we leave the reports but questions on grants i have a quick question please um i'm just looking at some of these line items john and i'm just um maybe i'm missing something but we're running a negative balance on grants right how is that possible those would be people that were put into the wrong grants when when we knew people were grant funded and we didn't have the grant quite approved well probably the most famous one is our our title one grant um they approve that every year in november and we've had it forever we have teachers that have been on it forever and you know come september they they have to be paid but what the the software does is when it uh the way we've programmed it um before a teacher gets their first check and we're loading them in uh we put a we encumber their salaries it's not a purchase order but if a teacher is earning fifty thousand dollars and uh we get ready to pay them uh you'll see an encumbrance out there so what what you're seeing here in the grants that are overspent it's because people are in the wrong spots and we've taken their their whole salary you kind of get used to it with the state's way they approve things kind of late particularly some of the what we call the entitlement grants um you know how much you're gonna get um you're asking for the same thing and you just but it's time to start school so yeah and you have to you have to wait until the grant actually comes through to catch up yeah it's easier for us to get them in the right fund um if they're in the grant fund or in the school lunch fund or the job wherever they belong it's much easier to correct them later than if you're trying to go between funds there's when you do that there's more journal entries and sometimes you got to write checks [Music] john thank you thank you thank you for clarifying that point and kate i just want to also mention um so as an example because john he used a really good example talking about the title grant um but all of the title grants actually they're not even open until school starts correct so that's title one two three and four as an example um they're not open until school starts and we do have salaries coming out of of of those of those grants in addition to supplies that are typically ordered and then to john's point then we you know they they do their shuffle in the finance department and start you know moving folks back uh to the appropriate areas where they belong i just okay i'd like to add kate if i could to that i i don't want it to seem like that's the only thing going on um it it was quite a startup this year um getting everybody hired through the hiring process it includes fingerprints and background checks and all that i mean you've heard of the number of new people that were hired and just just the vacancies trying to fill them um so it was it was a strain on the the payroll department to get people paid and get them paid the right amount and there were times where we said even if we don't know the accounting uh we'll do that later let's get them in the classroom in front of the kids and we'll we'll sort it out later so it wasn't the kind of startup i think we've had before it's certainly not what we're going to continue with but there's some effects of that when i look at it i see so full disclosure i do want to just look at lion grant number 135 which is education jobs fund it's a twenty thousand dollar grant that's listed there and if you move over to the some of your to date transactions you've got twenty one thousand uh thirty four dollars and eight cents so we only we're only a little bit over which is the 1034 uh uh but i can't imagine maybe i'm missing something it just doesn't make sense to me how that would be a salary based issue there okay i'm sorry line item was it again uh 135 the education jobs fund okay guys i'd like to look into that i can it won't be hard to answer i can email people it's not a lot of money i think you know it's it's more a concern about you know how do we make sure you know for for us to look at this when we've been looking at these budgets you know your explanations certainly help round out how we understand it um but you know if there are discrepancies that are happening beyond that i don't want to you know we're three months into the school year almost already and you know we need to get these things ironed out because we we're going into budget season we need to be able to prepare that with with uh a clear perspective of what's happening what money is coming in and what money is going out of the district and what money we've set aside to do certain things um so you know you know i can certainly appreciate the the the task before you is substantial but i do want to just make sure that we tidy that up because um you know those are those are questions i have even as a taxpayer yeah in the city so thank you thank you um transportation okay um so we were asked um i don't know was that the board meeting itself or or it was one of the it was the finance meeting yeah john it was our last finance meeting and it was a it was a question number one about um is our contract with sta ending soon um and i had informed the committee um that we had actually just extended our contract with sta um however it it did come at us at a savings um and so i thought it would be appropriate at this meeting since this is where the question was asked um if we can just kind of review those savings and and kind of the details of the contract you know and i i when i looked at it uh closely um i'm not sure they they were paying it i shouldn't say it's on film but i'm not sure they were paying as close attention as they could because i'll explain in a second um so uh last year last spring uh the sta contract had one more year to run it would have been uh this year suspect that was the fifth year about five year and is as is pretty typical of school buzz companies rather than uh face a competitive bid situation where they have all this investment of vehicles and capital and people uh they hate to lose that if they can avoid it so it's it's almost common that towards the end of their contracts they'll come in and make an offer uh to extend and that's what happened and but their and their offer was kind of typical too they said um instead of uh going into our fifth year with a 3.5 price increase let's rip up the contract and let's start a new one and we'll give you what they call a zero percent increase will hold the the prices flat for a year and that's it's always pretty attractive to school boards especially when they're facing a tough budget and this is one of their biggest line items so we did that and then there was a three and a half percent escalator put on the remaining years which is you know not far from inflation really so here's a pretty good deal uh for the foreign foreign computers below but i'm going to share it now the letter okay um so but here's here's um even a little percent like that on a big contract with us yeah this is uh and it's it's normal um when these contracts get uh changed it's done in a letter format both sides sign and and away you go so um but the zero percent increase um our price per bus per day is 386 dollars sounds like a lot but if we had put a three and a half percent increase on that instead of the zero that would have been 13.
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can i get any motion motion second second mr ben any questions comments concerns just one question were there any other individuals who wrote in the interest of occupying the open seat no that was not thank you with that can i get a what i'm doing wrong here we go don't get used to this yet um yes miss morris yes mr thompson absolutely mr vandalia yes mr zucker yes peter's mother's funeral um obviously she had uh another week to see him she had to attend because she could not be here um mr samantha absent mr thomasella here this is vanilla here mrs here miss defazio was sick i spoke to her today as well and then mr junizi here excellent motion captures okay president's comments yeah really quickly um i know that we uh very quickly moved through the administrator's contract a couple weeks ago i'm obviously not on the negotiations team but i want to see if you guys have any updates now i just want to thank the administrators for an excellent very smooth uh contract negotiating appreciate that i'm glad we got that you know taken care of and uh mr paxton any update are you guys ready to start negotiating yet i talked to miss uh many times regarding this all right is that a yes or no every week it's the same day so you guys still are not ready [Music] probably two months ago we started asking to meet with the teachers okay all right so for me i have a number of things um so before i get started with the students of the month um i just like to report out a couple quick things first of all our enrollment currently is at 1983 students in the district i believe the high school is now up to 691 uh for this year so we are definitely at the high school getting up to a very high number getting very very tight and high school but obviously we're also getting very tight throughout the district which brings me to the very bad news so we did our bid for the cafeteria at lafayette um obviously you know we've had internal discussions we started out at 1.8 million we then reconfigured and figured with the inflation and everything and the supply chains went up to about 2.5 to 2.6 for this project unfortunately the low bid for this project came in at 3.8 million dollars the second bid was 3.85 million dollars and then from there goes into the fours fives and sixes [Music] for those who don't know the plan was to basically paint cash on this uh cafeteria edition unfortunately we're not going to be able to do that at this time we don't have the extra 1.2 1.3 million dollars so um we're gonna have to have a happy projection of all the numbers here that the state provided us when we went through the application process we are going to top out uh in 23 24 which is only two years away at 2138 students uh students above where we're at currently um we get that many students we're in real trouble we don't have those students so again um we're gonna have to have some sort of discussion uh moving forward about how to do that obviously um again um i was at mrs peters who is a long time staff member here she's an art teacher here in the high school her mother had passed away so i was at the call today [Music] so i just want to make sure everybody knows that uh captain peters is in our thoughts and prayers the last item i have is um again we didn't have any any committee meetings so we haven't had any time to really talk about this but i want to put this out to the board for consideration as we move forward we're going to talk about this over the next month or so is uh our one pickup truck the great pickup truck that we have that's about 10 or 11 years old um starting to fail transmission issues air conditioning heating issues things like that um it's starting to really cost us some money in terms of trying to keep it on the road now may be a good time to replace that before winter season so you want to put that out there to you guys for consideration um at this point yes are the trucks the ones that you use that they connect plows to yes yeah and unfortunately the pickups um again we have the f-450s which are much better for planetary solving we're talking about smaller pickups the the the 250s um while they're okay for plowing the transmissions takes a tremendous beating with the stop [Music] they were talking about three thousand dollar bills we just said no at that point especially on a ten-year-old 11-year-old truck i don't see pouring that kind of money into that old vehicle if it's worth it or not so again at this point in time you know i think we have the funds to buy and pick up so i'm just kind of putting it out there for you guys to give me any extra enough you can do that later okay at this time we will do students of the month we'll start with dr congratulations to patients james and anthony [Applause] [Music] [Applause] uh said you're gonna fill in for mrs clark in lafayette as well no i have her jam i'm sorry i don't have her certificates for student of the month i'm doing their gem award okay well then i'll be back let's [Applause] the other student of the month is sophia grace [Applause] moving on we will go to smalley school okay good evening everyone our first candidate is marily reyes mejia [Applause] [Music] [Applause] our next recipient is kiewell tolentino given this [Applause] our next cabinet is and andrea obando ferreira [Applause] [Music] oh all right first up we have allison suspect [Applause] and secondly for seven three we have lady miranda mengele [Applause] mr smith good evening um it's an honor to present our crusader citizens of the month this evening um dennis aries [Applause] next we have adele and alex cardona randall gonzalez mandinero [Applause] and last but certainly not least sophia ugadi [Applause] [Music] [Applause] foreign miss rita this month's john recipient miss rita's dedication going above and beyond her students has won their hearts his street is dependable and is always willing to help her student arrival dismissal bus duty the students are grateful to have her on at their sides to start another school day there is no better place for a school to see in the morning apparently they love her energy and her dedication and helping her children and students how she plays with them on the playground helping them go up and down the slides and monkey bars close the world without having her be part of our team for devotion and passion and inspiring once again thank you congratulations [Applause] over the past couple of years i've had the program for watching mysteries not only mature as an educator but growing to being one of the leaders in my third grade level histories has remained positive for instructional stressful situations because we consistently advocate for the needs of our students she makes it a point to come talk to me often discussing ideas concerns and observations her willingness to not only lead but involve others in the conversation plays a major role in building a team like environment at lafayette mrs thank you for all you do for lafayette and our students we appreciate you and for smalling schools is one of our arts teachers and specialist teachers at smalley school her passion to support students in the fine arts is magnificent her lessons are always thought out developed and presented in a manner in which children will have fun but also learn this okay be painted one of our murals in the music room and this is a process of working with your students for a huge collage to be displayed in one of our hallways this occasion goes out of her way to help smelly school in any way possible whether it be filling in for a class helping parents to classrooms for current teacher conferences or to see professional development such as getting to know the new visual arts and performing standards our students will be painting and writing something time for our outside classroom section called kindness rocks she has volunteered for welcoming school bus and serves on the alberta classroom committee has helped plan for the small league olympics and as well as field day swallowing schools the leverage of the month is mr king [Applause] [Music] community middle school we have the freebie [Music] the community middle school is proud to recognize catherine horvath vivoya as this month's representative gem award recipient mr broy is in her fourth year teaching art at cms however this school year in addition to her responsibilities as an art teacher she almost daily to fill in as a substitute teacher in practically every academic subject although this is not part of mr boya's primary job description her present in the classroom has been vital to maintaining consistency and continuity of programming when colleagues are absent as an art teacher mr bryan nurtures students creativity using a variety of media mr broy instills a deep appreciation for art history and supports students creative endeavors in the past years she has served as an advisor to the national junior arts honor society and accompanied students to events such as teen arts festival this year ms sabria is also serving as a co-advisor to the cms yearbook committee on behalf of the community middle school teaching staff i'd like to thank catherine zabroya for her contributions and efforts in making cms a great place to learn and grow [Applause] thank you [Applause] evening once again this year's recipient of the gem award for this month's recipient of the general word is miss lopo this rita lopa inspires her students with an enthusiasm for the spanish language and a love of teaching the content associated with world languages in addition this lopa has a sharp and progressive vision of teaching spanish and of teaching and learning in general by implementing dynamic lessons and driving instruction furthermore ms lopa regularly demonstrates her strong caring self her continued efforts for success are evident and extend beyond the realm of the classroom this is evident through her role as a world language teacher as well as the moderator of the spanish club in addition this loca goes above the average calling keeping our students safe recently there was an incident in the functional life skills room where ms lopez was able to de-escalate a situation with the student because of the report she had built with the student during the summer with the esy program additionally there was recently another incident in which a student entered this locust class uninvited to confront another student in her room not only did the slope but keep the students safe but she kept the other student in check until administration arrive to the room despite these issues miss lopez continues to keep a positive attitude and wants to do what's best for our students she epitomizes a selfless attitude and a natural willingness to be kind and help others for these reasons and among others this local was selected as the gem for bbhs for the month of november [Applause] the gem award winner for the school district is miss deborah paulson miss paulson is the student assistance counselor for the district she's in her third year here mr paulson has made a tremendous impact on the social and emotional well-being of our students she's very knowledgeable on the best ways to help students and she takes the initiative to suggest develop and implement programs that benefit the wellness of students here are some of the programs that miss carlson has even led or has helped out with for our students red ribbon week which is the largest drug prevention campaign in the united states this initiative in the district was highlighted by videos read in both english and spanish so all of our students during morning announcements by our own principals and teachers the scripts for the videos were prepared by miss paulson we have 13 principals and teachers read the english language videos and 12 more teachers and staff members read the same videos in spanish miss paulson utilized the district's greatest resource our teachers principals and staff to deliver their message of drug prevention in addition miss paulson has worked to implement other programs such as high tops and sos signs of suicide for the benefit of the wellness of our student she was a leader in the implementation of the district's mental health surveys which started last year for all students in the district and continues this school year she started the pride club at the high school she brought in an expert in vaping to talk to staff on what vaping is and what it can uh and what they should look for and the same vaping expert was at back to school night to talk to our parents ms paulson also created a vaping bulletin board for students to view during the pandemic mrs claussen collaborated with her fellow counselors and the school and the social workers to create the district counseling link on the on the website which shows uh resources related to the pandemic finally ms faulson has implemented sexual assault programming into the district again for the benefit of our students this falsehood programs go way beyond his job description which by the way she assisted me and updated also she is bilingual she successfully communicates with all of our parents and guardians she's a great colleague to staff and she's proven that she has the best students uh the best interests of the students that's at heart congratulations [Applause] i'm driving by the car [Applause] [Music] thank you [Music] um [Music] all okay so right now um obscene is mr vavalair mr thomas very good any other questions yes [Music] approval of district and high school personnel very good i have a couple questions sure so on number 6.6 is there any um yes i'm sorry probably for my next question um 610 is that uh really for a novice teacher is not an experienced right now if you move districts yeah it's more like a buddy program and very friendly [Music] okay maybe a point of clarification so in the subject of six tenets of member first teacher in the body text it actually has novice teacher as the header so i just want to confirm which state worked for that one i believe it's a novice teacher yeah 425 and my last question is for 612 through are there any processes or procedures for identifying which staff members attend conferences and if so how so you do have a mechanism to track and then you have to just remember this is not going to be any typical year for conferences because for a year nobody went anywhere [Music] yes and we are down to seven point one sorry we have no internet so i gotta flip pages at the same time so result that superintendent recommends for approval resolutions is outlined in personnel resolutions and elementary schools that is 7.2 7.9 uh for 7.3 do we have or do we get any kind of an assessment from a building principal or supervisor for that individual um actually that has to go through hr and she does handle those things so she you can get an assessment from her after she has done her okay yes this is [Music] elliot discussion just happy to see the robotics is actually going out again we're doing some robotic stuff yes and i would anticipate some requests for some additional funding from robotics um at this point i know they need new items they actually [Music] but we are expanding our robotics program down to three through six it's a small as well so i know where to make some some items there because that's gonna be the lego league yeah that's also you know we'll have to provide a few things for that so you know is the science teachers from the middle school they're still gonna be in charge well they're gonna be in charge of the middle school probiotics but then we're going to have some different advisors for the lower uh upper elevator that's that's exciting this is great stuff yeah and you know what we've had such tremendous success with our robotics program over the last 17 years i've been here and and beyonce yeah yes so we need to continue everything that we're doing in that realm and the nice part is you know a lot of our minority kids have done really really well through that coming through the program as well as coming uh stipends for the uh people that are gonna be running threesome three through six well you have to be voluntary to my policy for two years to adopt that so again we'll have to get it running for two years okay okay the number program is going to be open to all students in those grades three through six correct then i mean it's going to be five and six items this year um we have our first meeting with three of the students just to talk about going forward i really met with mr uh right he said houston always called houston uh we talked about some of the materials that we're going to use um the students are high school students are going to help out our fifth and sixth grade students uh just get a role on it so that was a meeting with the advisors now the meeting was just with me and the uh the coach uh right yeah so yeah so my question's really more about the availability to students so all students in grades five and six we're going to be open to five and six we're going to see how many students want to participate and be part of it then we'll break it down either by monthly or weekly we're gonna see how it is and mix up the fifth and sixth together so great thank you for the person who's going to be running your program will they be going to this with the robotics team he already met with uh mr houston he is going to try to get there but we already discussed working together um but he wants to learn and he wants to take it over so yeah i mean just a little tip if anyone's never been to a robotics competition it is one of the coolest things you'll ever experience so it's you know it's really a fabulous thing to see just one first question so each of the items are noted as having no cost but that transportation would be provided by the school district does that imply that the transportation costs will be covered some other way or that would be absorbable so there is an incremental cost there's just not a cost for the program thank you any other comments questions seeing uh mr bail yes miss mars yes mrs tomsela yes this is just a general observation within 9.2 there were a few committees that were mentioned uh one which is the bc i'm just wondering if those are active committees and if so they are active they are definitely active meetings and committees that need a business picture overseas is there any opportunity for us to see who actually is participating in the committee i believe it's open to anybody any of them any parent or anything in the district kind of thing but um actually and those are just posted meetings um administrators again again gosh it's all followed [Music] can i get emotion question motionless battling second second second discussion of topics [Music] yes [Music] uh 12.9 [Music] two things 12.11 that's awesome that's a great donation and the manville bus route this is what you told us about yes the manville bus route is you know we're utilizing our extra buffs and our extra bus driver to run a a route for the kids yeah they're reimbursing us on a monthly basis thank you you're welcome i'd just like to thank acklin for their donation so we just don't want to have this time of year again that is kudos you know we try to do our best to take care of our families okay see no other questions [Music] yes there's more yes this is natalie yeah yes [Music] um is there any new business or other man before the board yeah all right so seeing none we are moving on to open to the public for any items um oh come on someone has something come on someone come up and say something see none of that everyone hiv approval and review of faithful cases resulted in report of education uh that reported the approval of resolutions is outlined in the approval of high school that's 7.27 yes miss morris yes this is tom selleck this is alejandra yes mrs yes and mrs motion parents [Music] we are up to 18.1 resolved the member board of education approves the resolutions as outlined in approval of hiv cases elementary school and that is 8.2 and 8.3 can i get emotion motion i just have one question on this was there any repeat uh offenders in the uh elementary that would be great thank you you're welcome mr bail yes miss morris yes this is all right motion to adjourn and i need a motion first by mrs moore's second by mr bale paul in favor everybody have a great night
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We also, in the afternoon, we also have art, P.E., music and some library time. We also have reading groups in the afternoons. During center time, we get a chance to, the aide and I, have a chance to call students back individually or in small groups to reinforce concepts taught earlier that week or even that day. We also can help students who need a challenge. We can bring them back as well and give them just a little extra challenge, little extra push.
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So we're not teaching them Spanish. We're teaching them *in* Spanish. In kindergarten, we do a lot of activities and conversations that allow the students to show language and social skills. So pretty much the whole time that they're in the Spanish class, they're listening to it, first of all, in Spanish, all the content, all the speaking, all the listening, everything they watch, everything they hear, it's in Spanish. And then also is we use a lot of TPR. So again, you know, like "levantate" like stand up, "ponte línea", so we use a lot of TPR. We also use a lot of videos. We use a lot of pictures and we do a lot of modeling. So that's one of the ways that students are acquiring the Spanish because they see it, they hear it. And then usually the last step in our program is speaking it. So usually in kindergarten, you might not hear the students speak a lot just because they're taking it all in and they're listening to it and they're acquiring all the Spanish that I'm speaking.
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The theater class, they work a lot on puppetry and creating characters and controlling their voices is important in the theater room when they are using all of their little puppets that they make. The music room incorporates instruments along with singing. And there are a variety of dance genres that are taught within the dance program. We're hoping that in the near future, we can go back to performing at the Madison Center for Performing Arts up on that big stage where we put together our shows and everybody collaborates to create a performance for all of the students to be involved in. I have worked at Madison Rose Lane for 17 years now, and it is an amazing place to be, one of my favorite things about Rose Lane is how many people are lifers here. We come, we stay and we grow. We've got siblings and all the grade levels.
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So we hope to see your student here at Madison Simis. Hi, I'm Jamie Monroe. I teach kindergarten at Madison Simis. I have so many reasons why I love teaching kindergarten at Simis. We are a school that focuses on the whole child with our IB learner profiles. Kids learn how to be open minded and how to be inquirers and ask questions, how to be accepting of others and everyone's differences and what makes us all unique and how we can learn to respect one another. In addition to that, we have a lot of observation based learning, inquiry based learning. A lot of hands on they're able to explore through different experiences that we provide and reach their own conclusions and dive deeper into their learning process. So we really do grow critical thinkers and we really strive for that extra rigor and that higher level thinking. So we always want to challenge those kiddos to not just stop there, but what comes next.
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some of the things that the students said about this and i think you all know but we have about a thousand of these comments about our staff members so he's always output size making classroom a community the security guards are true legends they were able to connect with us and they kept us under control so that's good stuff he teaches like miyagi i met so many shs staff who really care about student well-beings they were very understandings of understanding of the situations when our personal and academic lives merged together they were really welcoming and made it worthwhile coming to school during the pandemic she was always super happy i noticed something about the faculty at shs i've never had a teacher i did not like and then i'm very very happy extremely satisfied they're amazing people they made me feel as if i belonged here they saw potential that even i myself did not recognize so again just the teachers even during a pandemic really making their classrooms a community and connecting with connecting with the students so some other interesting information first of all this is from our one year survey so down here in the and this is um 2021 91 of our one-year survey uh recipient or um respondents had completed ap classes and 87 percent of those received credit when they went to college so those are very high numbers we have some other just interesting information about that one in five year survey so this is 99 of the students in the one-year follow-up survey attended college after stevenson and 97 of the five-year follow-ups uh attended college in the five-year follow-up 91 percent completed in undergraduate degree in five years and then of those students 88 of them finished a bachelor's degree in four years or less and i think we've spoken about this before that has more to do with the ap credit that they go in with as well as socioeconomic status that they can afford to pay for four years of school but that's an extremely high number and i think the board has asked before how does this compare to other schools and um nobody gets this information quite frankly so there's a there's usually a six-year graduation rate because the four-year graduation rate is so low also the one-year follow-up 96 of those students so this is the class of 2020 felt as well or better academically prepared than their peers 95 of those college freshmen report a college gpa of 3.0 or both so they're doing very well here and then when they're going to college they're continuing that some information on the college majors so many times we have seen that our one-year respondents have said that they are going for multiple majors and by the time they're five year that multiple majors falls off the list and this year actually we had multiple majors as they started and then five years later those students were getting bachelor's degrees in more than one major and then we've got business and health sciences and then the health sciences falls off a little bit and engineering coming up strong for the five year some more five-year information um so the big change here is this is the the highest amount of working the percentage of working alumni after five years at 74 and then the still attending school either finishing their undergraduate degree or continuing on with graduate school and then only one percent of them looking for work and then one percent of them doing something else and then this is just reflections on stevenson this is from the one-year survey what would they change and this is numbers these aren't percentages so 16 of them would have gotten more involved in clubs and activities 12 would have worried less about grades another 12 would have had more fun and nine would have world that worried less about taking ap classes so you can see that they were they were more i just would have had more fun at stevenson and then nothing they loved it and then the five-year pretty much the same thing so get more involved have more fun and hang out with my friends take more electives that interest me less academic stress and pressure and then 15 of them would have changed nothing and then what were the best aspects of shs so always number one is teachers and staff and then friends clubs and sports so now we just want to tell you about what's going on it's in student services at this time we are a ramp school so we have a little plaque that we were presented with at the american school counseling association and here dr frost i will give that to you thank you welcome so what does ramp mean ramp is recognized american school counseling association model program it requires an evaluation of our divisions programs and resources to ensure that we're meeting the needs of students and families it's an application that we put through in 2019 and it was about 175 pages long that we had to tell them all about the um all about the programs that we have here just a fun fact we were the largest school counseling staff that has ever received the ramp um recognition but we were recognized in 2020 and then the whole world shut down right so that's okay um but then what does ramp mean that the school counseling program is based on data informed decision making delivered to all students developmentally appropriate we're focusing on all student needs for post-secondary readiness and success closing achievement and opportunity gaps and then really improve student achievement attendance and discipline so that is our ramp status we have that for five years and then we get to re-ramp right that's right yes so we get to re-ramp after that congratulations seriously you know a number of us were involved in some of those meetings early on and it does seem like a long time ago like that covered years like seven dog years or whatever that is just so long ago but i know that was a lot of work and we're really grateful for it hopefully the process you know was valuable to you as you know a reflective opportunity and i know you guys have made a lot of really great growth so i didn't want to let that go without thank you just congratulations it's well deserved and so thank you good work maybe if the board members wanted to like keep the plaque for a month in each one of their houses they could right on instagram like i know the admin team wants to as well so you know different holiday celebrations everybody yeah right like the stanley cup yeah yeah thank you very much congratulations um so what were our pandemic lessons and i sort of say this like we're out of it but we're not really but the things we learned from our hybrid year first of all the calendly sign up for students so we have continued to do that so any student can email us get our in our signatures we have a link to calendly and they can have direct access to our calendars to make appointments to see us that also that information is on our website so they can do that we continue to have remote and virtual meetings for families through the ccc any school meetings we have 504 meetings that we have and really we're hoping that this increases access to our programming to families who might not have child care or transportation or other things to make it that make it difficult to come to some of those meetings so we are continuing to do that as the students have found social media is a great way to get the word out about our programming um we have a very active student services instagram page now it's very exciting i'm on so many reels or stories or whatever um we are recording our presentations for students and families to see and then all of these things really um rely on an amazing communications team so jamie is really our bff [Music] she is amazing just trying to figure out how we can communicate with the with the community with our students with their families and to get the word out so one of the things we we did a little differently because and it's great because jamie's able to see things she's like this really doesn't make any sense can we tighten this up a little bit like yeah as a matter of fact we absolutely can so one of the things that we did was the let's talk about your future night so it was it's our home our no homework night but we are now using it really to kick off course selection so that's sort of how we're selling it we do it every year in october students and families are encouraged to talk to each other about their goals but then really talk to them about their goals so that it informs course selection and we have guiding questions on the website and um this is this is the data from our survey who participated and did it have a uh did it inform their course selection and you can see that if they participate it does inform their course election so we need more students to participate and we're hoping that we're doing some things this year and in years to come to do that so the changes we did we put lataef is what we call it on the website as the beginning of course selection so the experience is more cohesive instead of making it a game we just gave some guiding questions to families if they had uh if they were having a problem sort of getting that communication started we did do social media posts leading up to the event and then the counselors were really a physical presence in the common areas of the that day to just remind the students so here we are with students we asked them to write down the name of a class that they were excited about taking in the future and then we gave them some welch's fruit snacks because that seems to be the thing to give the kids these days um so that's all of us with the class they're deciding that they're excited to take in the future so that was fun just getting out and seeing the kiddos and then we've got our wellness and mental health focus so again we we gave pulse surveys to students and i believe you talked about this at the um at the summer retreat but about 11 000 pulse surveys were given over the school year last year 662 students responded that they were having more concerns than usual and then social workers and counselors followed up with these students but then how are we moving that into the school year where students are here and we're able to see them we really are having this focus first of all we are utilizing social media and we're having the students help us utilize social media so we're partnering with these student groups and more to just get the word out about mental health and wellness our first um our first big fall event was the street fest wellness week and there and it was super hot that day but we had a lot of students we had a lot of students show up it was with peer helpers and then we had things that were happening after school so really wanting to have that mental health focus happening um just to start the year off and then as we continue on through the years we are going to have the comfort dogs coming in again that should be fun our end of the semester de-stress activities and then we're partnering with uh people from the admin team and faculty to incorporate wellness lessons within the classroom so we're trying to get there with very structured and targeted things to students in classrooms to really get that well that mental health and wellness focus in there and that's it that's all i got for you anybody have any questions yes scary how are the counselors managing to keep up with all this stuff and how are you keeping your eye on them to make sure that they're okay because it seems like you have so many great programs in their presence you know throughout the school and all these in the survey responses it's just so much activity and i'm sure you're getting a lot of input from students who are reaching out for health more than usual how are the counselors dealing with that yeah i'll take that gary um thank you first of all for acknowledging that it really has been um you know we've we've been working hard in student services because i think we've seen as would we would anticipate that students have struggled to readjust some students have struggled to readjust to the school year one of the things that i'm proud of in terms of how we've thought differently about our work in student services is we've really leaned on our core counselors and we've created teams to kind of help counselors have other folks within our division to rely on so we have pods we call them um our three pods within student services where the counselors have their six colleagues and they are sharing some of the work um working together to get through some of the things that they need to manage and being able to collaborate and really rely on on one another i think um some of the other things that we've done too is just try to like the good counselors we are acknowledge that it's been a tough year and try to create some spaces where we can just be honest about that and help support each other as colleagues through um through you know what has been a challenging fall and lastly i would share we're really um stepping up our data collection so every student now swipes into the office uh to see their counselor social worker psychologist or dean so we have more comprehensive data than we've ever had before about the workload and students that each counselor social worker and psych is seeing and so we plan to look at that we've actually already started doing that but really plan to look at that data to help us understand how we can better support counselors and to help us kind of get a sense of um of the patterns and how we may need to adjust um accordingly i don't know sarah or patty if there's anything else that was great yeah of course thank you for the question yes yeah let me ask it a different way sure yeah i think um i i think you know this year so it's truly it's it's a little bit hard to give a comprehensive sense of how students are adjusting back i will tell you you know some some numbers that um that we need to be mindful of is our risk assessment so the follow-ups that we have to do when students share concerns around you know self-harm or harm to others are up quite a bit you know and it's a third of the way into the school year but that's something that we're we're struggling with our hospitalizations are increased for students so i think it is we are seeing student needs evolving and increased this year and um we are having to work you know to to meet the needs of of students and to think about how work is assigned within our division to to meet the needs of kids i think you might to that because you know we're seeing that increased need i think every school is so that kind of um ties into the community resources that are tapped into and maybe the lack thereof of availability so we're seeing higher wait lists in the community yeah so to kind of counterbalance that i think our amazing folks in student services are supporting kids um even more on different levels that maybe they would have received supports outside in the community before so yeah that comes to us yeah so the other question i have is uh i'm not really clear on your answer if your blade's too full or not but is your plate too full yeah i think our plate is really our plate is still high it's full um our plate is full yeah i think you know what i would like to say is i think um i think our plate is full and i think we we need to continue to kind of look at um the data that we're gathering from a from a year-long standpoint and and really analyze it i i almost feel and i'm truly not trying to be um evasive i'm really not i just feel like we we need a little bit of a bigger picture of where things are at um we're currently in a dangerous real quick we're currently doing a time study and so that that's what they're referring to looking back over the pandemics though how badly did we get hurt from the from the in terms of the impact on students yeah i think um i think sarah alluded to a significant impact and that is the community resources and the hospital programs and things like that that used to exist a lot more to meet the more intensive needs of students they are quite full and taxed themselves so families as they should are looking to us to um sort of fill that gap and so we are um having to really be um we're having to kind of evolve and shift to be able to maybe meet that need that previously quite honestly we would have relied heavily on um the community to be able to support you know because we are not as as you all probably know that is not the role of really a student services division we we are not um intensive we don't do intensive counseling we support kids so they can access their education so it is putting a strain on us and as sarah said this is across the this is literally a national issue yeah it's not a stevenson unique thing but it's it's a national issue that um that is um that's new for us that we're kind of really having to evolve to figure out how to address that it's concern stuff yeah yeah thank you thank you so just follow along that do you see where students are coming out of that gradually sure yeah and it i think i would and thank you faye for that question i think what i would say and please jump in i feel like i'm down there oh you're doing i always do um it's really hard to generalize the student experience this year so i think we have seen some students they can't wait to be back and they are loving all the things and they are so excited and eager to be uh to be kind of experiencing in-person school so that is is absolutely an experience that lives out there and i'm that's wonderful um and then we are also seeing some students who are struggling um and we're not seeing it get better at this point yet then we also see um a group of students who dealt with the transition and it's a success story we are working to help those students kind of work through some of their their challenges and be successfully integrated back into the class so again i wish it was a i wish it was a tidier we have a messy um you know it's kind of um a messy job that we do that it's hard to kind of um to answer in a succinct way sometimes so i think there's lots of different experiences of lots of different students if that that helps and i think to add to that so i know patty on one of the slides was mentioning the partnerships with student programs and student clubs i'm blessed to be one of the sponsors of peer helpers so really one of the shining lights i think for myself and the pandemic i think all of us in student services is seeing our students even step up in terms of kind of social awareness mental health supports and it's like pure helpers for example does a variety of awareness weeks throughout the school to talk about different initiatives we just had the lgbtqia plus awareness week mental health awareness weeks so our students are really stepping up as well to work with us as sst members in order to help support these really important initiatives and cause and create awareness in order to support their community which is amazing to see i agree i think another piece too um to to piggyback on that is so you know in the nine years that i've done this job we have seen students become much more comfortable with talking about mental health and acknowledging the struggles they're having and advocating for their peers you know wanting to make sure their friends are are supported and that is amazing and wonderful and i'm so i'm really as always are they the new generation will help um will help save the world right so that's a wonderful thing um and it also means that we need to be prepared to help the students as they are more comfortable coming to us saying hey look i really need your help right now i'm struggling or my friend is struggling um so i think that's a great problem to have right like we made it so that they are comfortable seeing us yep so they're comfortable seeing us and they're coming to see us yeah yeah so my question was you could sort of hit on it but you know in terms of one of the big changes that i've certainly seen in the communication piece is that it's student focused a lot with the you know peer helpers and all that do you see that as being sort of your next the next bridge the next is that really where the focus is going to go in terms of helping students help i'm not talking about crisis management or risk you know but just really kind of continuing to grow the students helping each other is that that's kind of the future yeah i mean that's certainly um how i look at it as always our students i think they have an ability to impact each other in a way that we never will as adults and we saw that on that 129 degree day in august when we were all at mental health street mental our wellness street fest um that was a really powerful event where we were seeing our student leaders in their very best light helping to you know recruit um community providers yoga people all these different sorts of um wellness initiatives and to really spread the word to encourage their uh their friends to come and i think ted i don't think i'm speaking out of term but ted shared that was one of the best attended street fests in recent memory so um what a cool collaboration um what a truly cool organic student-led experience and i think we're looking for ways to um to have more of that to truly help the students help us help them well and i remember from the survey diving into the questions a little deeper that often the top answer for where to get assistance was from their friends that was very consistent and it was a specifically academic tutoring sets but um clearly that is where they feel comfortable and want to go so i like that direction yeah absolutely and i loved what you said too this idea that um not necessarily for like these crazy situations right so i think part of our work is so important to um help educate students on when to ask for help and what are certain situations like our signs of suicide program that we facilitate in freshman and junior programs um you know some of these things are beyond what we would want a teenager to be dealing with supporting their friend necessarily completely through and that's where trained professionals come into play so i love what you said there because i think that's so important in terms of our work and educating and supporting our students and i think normalizing you know everyone feels anxiety everybody i think is right bringing that into a realm of that's not a crisis that's that's just a feeling sometimes how do we manage that i think is a really key piece to their overall well-being yeah that they should be able to hopefully help support each other with yeah absolutely thank you all yeah we sincerely appreciate your support thank you thank you we love getting the report thank you so much all right see you next year [Applause] and thank you for being there for all of our students here and we do all appreciate that that you were there for them sarah francis are you happy in your new role i am thank you guys yes thank you please we're happy in her number all yeah sitting okay um and uh we're also excited to have tony rival here tonight uh to join us and share our student achievement report again last year with covet and all the challenges and difficulties these are two presentations we didn't get a chance to share last year so we're excited uh to have tony rival our assistant principal for teaching and learning here to share our 2021 student achievement report so thank you tony for being here i just smiled at everybody but i yeah yeah we saw it all right good good um how's everybody doing good thank you all right so this is our annual student achievement report that i do every year last year was on zoom glad to be back in person sharing this information my office has been hard at work putting this together to give you a good glimpse of what we've been doing this and how we've been performing this last year uh i added this in uh just before this just to make sure that we could follow along when you guys look at this in pdf form here's the contents and the slides that they pertain to we're going to start out with sat now again this report connects to our school goals and how we're doing in relation to those and the sat we were able to give the sat but we were not able to give the psat 10 due to covets so there were still some shortfalls in our data some some holes that will hopefully this year will be able to fill but it is a little bit short still the first slide uh that uh i want to show here is our mean scores and how we compare to the state and uh and nation as well so if you look just how to read this we've got our two subtests our reading and writing at the top and math and then we've got our benchmarks illinois benchmark college board benchmark and those cut scores there then we've got a history of our students performance all the way back to 2017 to and then the last two rows are how we compare to the state and how we compare nationally in 2021.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
[Music] thank you i'm sorry about that [Music] good evening ladies and gentlemen of the board my name is carl miller and i am a 23 year old lifelong resident of district 99 and the reason i'm here tonight is uh to ask you to drop the mask mandate for the district at this juncture uh there is no scientific or data-driven justification for a policy to force masks on students who by and large are not threatened by this virus and to a great extent are are not even vectors of the virus to others around them so i would just say you know i think that the the upside of masks is you know dubious at best and that there's demonstrable downsides like hypercapnia when students are breathing in their own carbon dioxide and also just the the inability to communicate facial expressions are important for kids they're important for adults um but i think but i think it's important uh that we just cut out the face diaper because at this point it's just become political it's become a cult and it isn't scientific anymore so i'm just asking you all to have i'm asking you all to have to have courage i know it's not easy in this environment i know the governor sometimes thinks he's a dictator but many school districts are standing up and having courage in allowing for children and parents to have freedom you know the fact we're debating now whether we can breathe free air i just think is says quite a bit says quite a bit about where we've where we've come to i'm asking you all to have courage and i thank you for your attention this evening yeah thank you the next speaker is mary lomanski [Applause] can you hear me okay yeah actually we can hear you okay hi i'm mary lemanski my son is a freshman here at north barron frederick von steuben a prussian military man hired by george washington to whip the continental army into shape during the darkest days of the revolutionary war is known for his bravery and the discipline and the grit he brought to the american troops historians also think he was homosexual and served as an openly gay man in the military at a time when sex between men was punished as a crime though his name is little known among americans today writes eric tricky as for smithsonian every u.s soldier is indebted to von steuben he created america's professional army i wonder what he would have thought of bill clinton's don't ask don't tell we have all heard of the underground railroad downers grove itself played a role in the underground railroad we often hear how white people would help and harbor black people to safety but we never ever learn the genius way in which black people community communicated the way to point to the where the meet-up point was and when they had to hide their communication so they did it right out in the open the slaves would often sing in the fields as they worked these work songs and field haulers were used to communicate many things but one was being one where the underground railroad was to meet these field hollers were the precursors to the call and response of the american spirituals and gospel music and to the blues the blues formed the basis of jazz rock and roll r b funk and even hip hop and who can even stand country unless it is laced with blues to me as a professional musician singer songwriter and composer american music is black music because it certainly would not be the same without their influence unfortunately that beautiful music was born from pain and suffering and denial of freedom real denial of freedom not asking you to consider the public health and having you wear a piece of cloth on your mouth the most patriotic person i ever knew was my father who served for four years in the united states military and he went he went when the korean war he just voluntarily went when they were drafting people and he taught me that you don't need to wear american flag you need to do what is right for your country and right now that's wearing a mask [Applause] next up is julia hansen julia hanson let's keep it down let's be respectful because if there's threatening threatening language or booing i'm going to adjourn you know [Music] okay hi everyone i'm julie hanson a junior at dgn and an editor for the dj and omega yesterday i read the graphic novel slash autobiography genderqueer by maya kobe kobe abuses e m air pronouns i know that's like really weird confusing um but they're pronouns i had heard of but never actually used in this coming-of-age novel kobe was assigned female at birth and realizes he doesn't have any urge to be completely masculine or feminine as a cisgender and straight woman i could not relate to kobe in that way and parts of this book were uncomfortable to read but i was expecting that the books in our library are intended to entertain and educate students which for me was accomplished in reading genderqueer nothing about this book was new to me just like nearly every other high school student at dgn i have a cell phone where i'm showing new ideas every day parents i can guarantee your teenagers have seen it all when it whether it is in our phones or discussed among friends nothing is censored somehow among all this corruption i'm still straight and have not fallen victim to homosexual content on my cell phone i know us high school students are not impressionable in the way it is often believed and genderqueer is not a grooming tool for sexual predators we have already been stripped of our innocence completely and one copy of a book in our library makes no difference to that after all most kids have never checked out a book from our library yeah it is okay to dislike or disagree with genderqueer the ideas discussed in level in the novel are weird and foreign so conflict is inevitable but it's not okay to diminish the accessibility of new ideas to students someone who picks up this book will either feel like they finally felt been understood or as i did they will learn to put themselves in other shoes as a high school student i ask that we lead with an open mind and keep them keep the line of different perspectives open also nobody has to read it so i'm writing an opinion article on the book so if anyone wants to talk to me after this feel free to approach me and give me your opinion [Applause] bruce beckman [Music] yeah the next person that should be in line is hillary denk you guys should put a picture of the picture up there so everyone sees what everyone's talking about mr beckman yes hi my name is bruce beckman i'm a resident of downers grove and i just so happen to be a former member of this board many many many years ago i i i'm here to share a historical perspective and sometimes as a current board member you said that's just what i need as a historical perspective but in fact as board president i ran into a very similar situation and we did have a have a condition where there was a book called the bluest eye and there were members of the community who did object to that book it wasn't a very good book we all on the board we all read the book to get a feel for what it is it had a sexual operator but what i found the irony of it is the more controversial we became the more students pick checked out the book to read it because one of our practices was if nobody read the book it circulated off of the library shelves so as well-meaning as these individuals might be here they may be working against their own interests so i highly recommend you keep the book there you exercise the constitutional rights and let it move forward thank you hillary dank is up and after hillary is laura hoist [Music] hi i am a resident of donner's grove i grew up here and my children went to district 99 schools i want to first thank the school board for their incredible service to our community as volunteer leaders you have been under enormous stress and strain and i thank you so much for your service i also want to ask a question why is diversity equity inclusion so controversial aren't we all opposed to discrimination on the basis of race religion sexual orientation and gender identity shouldn't books that express that information to our children shouldn't they be included as part of our public education diversity inclusion improve teaching and learning people learn and enrich their abilities to think critically and creatively as they engage in conversations across difference especially when all learners abilities and attributes are embraced these activities can help personal development improve social skills build self-confidence develop teamwork and support independence for both the disabled and non-disabled in our children this is another part of inclusion that we don't talk nearly enough about there are five great benefits in teaching diversity in education they better prepare our students for a global economy build confidence later in life promote empathy and reduce prejudice improve student achievement and foster creativity i applaud all of you in your good work and the teachers work the principles work the superintendents and continuing to support diversity inclusion and equity thank you after miss voice tabitha irvin will follow laura hoist i'd like to request that the wgn microphone be removed the next speaker is tabitha irvin [Music] following tabitha irving will be i'm sorry i still can't read your handwriting we'll be the next person that i didn't recognize earlier so tabitha's up next that was like the third one so hey what's good hello can you all hear me speak a little get a little closer to the microphone there you go tabitha okay um sorry could you restart the timer then [Music] go ahead tabitha thank you okay um so my name is tabitha and i am a junior at downers grove north and please know that while i do have my own political identity i will not allow my beliefs to dictate the contents of this speech because i think that animosity and backlash honestly does nothing but feed the fire so while being a donor's growth taxpayer does entitle you to voice your opinion it does not guarantee that you have a comprehensive understanding of what occurs during each school day at dgn or dgs in fact apart from teachers and some administrators students are the only people fully immersed in the school experience for 35 hours a week with the highly controversial nature of america's current political atmosphere the debate found in downers grove is understandable you should all be able to voice your perspective on issues such as critical race theory sex education and coven 19 mitigation protocols and there are many platforms where you can do this school board meetings are not one of them the sole purpose of board meetings is to improve the student experience and who better to advocate for the student experience than the students themselves at the october 18th board meeting of which i attended the intended topic of discussion was the proposed hybrid schedule however it was not discussed by the community at all but rather lee but rather eagerly and immediately abandoned for political crossfire that night and still tonight do you know what i'm eager for i'm eager to discuss issues that directly impact me and my peers every day issues like the proposed schedule which will go into effect my senior year of high school a schedule that has elicited a large number of complaints from various members of the school of the student body and a schedule that will impact every moment of each school day having two student board representatives is a great step in the right direction and jaden scarlett are doing an amazing job but no two students can possibly represent the needs and wants of nearly a 5 000 person student body i hope that we can begin to discuss what really matters perspective thank you so the the visitor whose name i couldn't pronounce or read at the beginning that's who we i can't remember who we decided that was would be who's up and then after that would be jim devitt [Music] okay do i need to tap it okay you're good uh good evening and thank you for hearing me out um as an owner and a practitioner of a healthcare practice for nearly 30 years my focus every morning when i got up was what is the best focus for me today to have an outcome that is good for my patient you run an institution that where much of a childhood occurs in schools and as for our d99 schools i hope we can all agree that the focus should always be the child under your care how do i personally evaluate that this is actually the case here students here are deserving of an honest and accurate education that gives them the freedom to pursue their dreams young people can handle hard truths sometimes better than we do as i can see tonight allow them the freedom to learn from others actions and decisions no matter how painful history is a great teacher preparing each young person with a toolkit which does include accurate and truthful info along with critical thinking skills gives them their new freedom to be the best they can be regardless of where the student lives these skills then enables them to learn from the past the good the bad the ugly all of what we've heard tonight so that they can avoid making past making the same mistakes by learning from the past this leads to more successful life outcomes makes our community and our state and our country stronger not doing this will literally your student body i don't know if i'll get through all this but i'm going to do as much as i can i know for myself after my sister was in a terrible head-on car accident it was a horrible experience but i did learn from that to wear a seat belt don't drive on icy snow blown roads at 2 am in the morning and the painful incident that i experienced it's helped me make better decisions i started wearing your time has expired i started wearing a seat belt jim david you're up thank you after jim devitt is linda shrons [Applause] [Music] good evening my name is jim devitt and a lot of what we're talking about tonight [Music] there's a lot of rhetoric going around and and some of the other people who spoke in the past have used sources such as tic tac for their talks so what i did was i went to the book illinois criminal code right here this is the law in the state of illinois let me read from it harmful material a person who with knowledge that a person is a child that is a person under 18 years of age or who fails to exercise reasonable care and ascertaining the true age of a child knowingly distributes or sends to or causes to be sent to or exhibits to or offers to distribute or exhibit any harmful material to a child guilty of a misdemeanor material is harmful if to the average person applying contemporary standards its predominant appeal take it as a whole is the puritan interest that is a shameful or morbid interest in nudity sex excretion which goes substantially beyond customary limits of candor and description or representation of such manners and the material the redeeming social importance of which is substantially less than its period appeal distribution of harmful material in violation of this section is a class a misdemeanor a second or subsequent offense is a class 4 felony nothing in this section shall prohibit any public library or any higher or any library operative and credit institution of higher educational education from circulating material provided such circulation as an aid in legitimate or scientific educational purpose we have some signs up here pages from that book tell me how these pictures are educational in any purpose this is pornography plain and simple and it does not belong in our schools [Applause] next up is linda schwarz followed by lauren parrott linda shawn's followed by lauren pearette my son didn't like that okay let's have quiet for our next speaker please thank you hi linda schranz i'm a 35-year resident of donners grove my daughter went through these hallowed halls and it's kind of fun to be back here looking at the auditorium again we've been through some really trying times these last two years we've all had to make decisions and take actions that we never anticipated we would be in the position of taking and throughout the pandemic the need for leadership has never been more clear and so therefore i'm here tonight to thank the board of education for the leadership that they have demonstrated in spite of the unknown difficulties you are facing you guys have selflessly put yourself in front line and not rewarded by fame or fortune in fact many times impugned for your decision-making but throughout this last two years one fact is very very clear to me and that is that the in your leadership the safety well-being and education of the community's children have been your top priority and so it's a lot it's really easy to you know come up here and complain about your grievances and this and that and the other thing a lot of times when people are happy with the way things are going they don't bother to come up here and say anything because you know why should they everything's going well but i want you to know that there are many people in the community who are aware of the pressure that's being born upon you and we are very supportive of the board of education and its actions and i thank you very much for your service thank you [Applause] warren carrick is next followed by jim jill bartlemy hello board members parents students district 99 taxpayers and people who don't live in the school district my name is lauren i'm 17 and i'm a senior up until last week i didn't know the book genderqueer existed that's how little the teachers and staff members of dgn encourage students to read it the only way a student would know about it is if they found out about it on their own thought it was something they'd be interested in and checked it out this isn't being forced upon your kids but it gives kids who would be interested in this story a choice to read it i also have a question handmaid's tale angela's ashes and it are all books in the school library handmaid's tale has a graphic sex scene between a man and a woman angela's ashes includes multiple graphic scenes that deal with masturbation and it a wildly popular book amongst the school includes a graphic sex scene between a fifth grade girl and five of her male friends but why are these books not being censored let's not present getting rid of gender queers censoring our children from sex it's homophobia it's an outward protest of media for queer students it's telling kids that who they are is wrong every day my parents tell me to listen to all sides of the story and consider all viewpoints before making a decision if we censor this book where does the censorship end as high school students we should have the materials to educate ourselves on all topics ideas and ways of life that way we can have a society of people who can understand different viewpoints and can come to compromises with each other genderqueer has some ideas that some people may not agree with but does that mean we should be banned that we should ban it yes how is it different than donald trump's twitter ban if we rob students of all information we'll have a society of people who hate each other and can't come to his decision thank you so much for listening and considering mine a student's ideas thank you [Applause] jill bartlemy is next followed by kylie spahn jill bartlemie followed by kylie spahn [Music] oh hello my name is still bernami and i just found out i'm part of antifa anyway first of all i just want to thank each and every one of you for everything that you have put up with this year especially and the past years i am a mother of a student who just recently graduated last year and of a student who will be coming in a couple years because of this i the thought of banning books is very concerning to me especially when it's coming from the freedom fighting group [Music] please [Music] please continue please continue students have a choice whether or not to check out the books in the material materials at a library as parents it's our job to make sure they follow our wishes it's called parenting so if you don't want your child to take a book out of a library perhaps you should have a conversation with your children excuse me i'm just trying to interrupt you thank you nancy one more outburst seriously one more out first and we will adjourn into closed session let the speakers speak no matter what side they represent she has one minute on her time or just restarted gina my apologies for interrupting that's fine i support the students they have spoken today and they continue to speak and i give you mad props for being here today they know what's best for them they know what they can figure out that's what high school is for they come here this is that part of their time of their life between being a kid and becoming an adult when they leave here they are expected to become an adult they sure as heck can figure out what books they can read and cannot read and it's not for us to decide what is accessible to them just because we find it inappropriate and if you really fear that your children are going to read something and figure something about themselves then that speaks more about you than it does about the book [Applause] kylie spahn followed by marcelo charveaux [Music] good evening kylie spahn district 99 parent firstly i would like to thank the board administrators and teachers for all their hard work and dedication to our students you're doing a tremendous job and i appreciate all that you are doing secondly i would like to address the board regarding the national trend to ban lgbtq books in high school libraries our own district is facing such a challenge from a small group of people who want to ban l g b t q books such as genderqueer beyond magenta and fun home this group is targeting and marginalizing our pride community they are not calling for the banning of graphic novel novels that depict hetro sex they are solely targeting books that represent the pride community the role of public schools is to educate everyone regardless of race color sexual identity socioeconomic status and disability banning books and resources that represent a minority group of students is destructive to the trust these students have in their teachers and denigrates the qualifications and experiences of our professional school librarians thirdly students have the intellectual freedom to choose which books they want to read no one is forcing students to read lgbtq books in high school we expect students to be an adult and make adult decisions from driving a car and getting a job to make being life-changing college and career decisions yet we have a small group of parents who believe that students are childlike when it comes to selecting literature additionally what may be inappropriate or uncomfortable to one student may be a valuable resource for another student banning books that represent a minority population is taking that choice and intellectual freedom away from all finally i would like to encourage the board to require any parent who wants to challenge these books in our libraries to follow policy and go through a reconsideration process and to refuse to act merely upon someone's complaint at a school board meeting thank you [Applause] [Music] my name is marcella durdrick cheray for the past 22 years i've been involved with numerous organizations at the national state and local levels each advocating tirelessly for health freedom and personal choice when it comes to medical decisions the fact that these types of organizations are even necessary in a free society should be appalling to each and every one of you today there are two diametrically opposed perceptions of reality existing at the same time one is influenced by media government and pharmaceutical fear-based propaganda it's group think cult-like behavior and it's jeopardizing our liberties by those who can't comprehend the impact of their short-sighted decisions it's abnormal to think that wearing a mask is required to stay alive the other is driven by rational thought experience observation and intuition this segment of the population are willing to die to preserve and protect our freedom so that we may each live as we see fit i stand by my previous statement that covid this manufactured crisis threatens our way of life more than it ever will our health masks are subjugation and submission those of you on the board have had plenty of opportunity to do the right thing to allow parents to make medical choices for their children but you've sold your souls to push a heinous agenda and those of you in the audience who refuse to see past your fear are all too willing to surrender your rights for some illusion of safety as a first generation american whose family actually lived through fascism socialism and communism i perhaps understand better than most that freedom is never to be taken for granted i share this as a cautionary tale tyranny is real and it's taken root you cannot comply your way out of it your blind obedience and your abject servitude will not serve any of us well marianne vazquez followed by leslie sadou sadowsky and terry up there [Music] hi i'm marianne vazquez signed from downers grove the discussion tonight is essentially about book censorship which is the suppression of ideas words and images that some people find offensive to them in some way everyone has their own thoughts as to what they consider appropriate for themselves and their children and that is the right and part of freedom as americans however others may have contrary thoughts and they aren't entitled to the same freedom to choose what is right for themselves and their family certain individuals based on their own personal situation they find this book helpful under the book that is under question can be helpful and instructive they should not be denied access based on the feelings of others who have no idea what these people are going through i suspect the children of these parents opposing these books likely have no inclination to check these books out of the bible the parents are truly concerned we'll give you 30 seconds please do not interfere with the speakers please refrain the kids are watching why can't you see it isolating your children from the world and opposing beliefs is getting more and more difficult but the larger problem is how we were being divided in this country into opposing camps and media and the internet is poisoning us against one another thank you [Applause] please respect the speaker's personal space the next speaker will be sean piazza thank you for allowing us to speak i'm leslie sadowsky fugit a downers grove resident with a kindergartner at fairmount who will eventually go to downers grove south i also volunteer with organizations who engage local teens i want to speak to encourage the board to continue with its dei efforts and expand its lgbtq plus resources lgbtq plus youth are more than twice as likely to report experiencing persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness that their than their heterosexual peers high school students who identify as lgbtq plus are more than four times as likely to have attempted suicide compared to their heterosexual peers and forty percent of transgender adults have attempted suicide in their lifetime compared to five percent of the general us population it is estimated that lgbtq youth and young adults have a 120 percent higher risk of experiencing homelessness often the result of family rejection or discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation as you can see this is literally a matter of life and death having talked with local teens i'm sad to say that bullying and lack of support is still an issue in our community so i ask that you not only continue to stock the library with resources but also please make sure there's training for all staff not just teachers to ensure that students are not misgendered and dead names are not used please ensure there are ample non-gendered bathrooms and locker rooms especially given that we have just renovated it isn't that hard to accept human beings for who they are let's make sure that we as adults are setting the example let's work hard to use preferred names pronouns and set consequences for those adults and students who do not comply with this basic act of humanity at the 99 schools we need to show our lgbtq plus youth that we love and welcome them for who they are and that we recognize that they contribute meaningfully to the rich diversity of our community so thank you and i'm happy to talk with anyone further to ensure equity for this whole community thank you for what you do sean piazza followed by terry newsome [Applause] please bring your mascot please bring your mask up all right a young providence kept the kid full scholarship for football u of i a senior quarterback star quarterback at glenbrook north high school a young woman at hinzell south an oswego high school student these all have committed suicide within the last four months even more alarming cdc recently asked young adults that they had thoughts about killing themselves in the past 30 days one out of four said yes dupage counties reported a 23 percent rise in suicides compared to last year even though suicide rates have fallen globally they have climbed every year in united states since 1999 increasingly 55 percent in the past two decades yet the funding for suicide becomes far behind with the other causes of death even before the pandemic suicide was a second leading cause of death um sorry among young kids young high school kids should have my best friend first time um i asked myself why are so many kids thinking about suicide and unfortunately committing suicide i believe the big part to blame is unwarranted and never-ending lockdowns the children last year lost a year of schooling and social interaction they needed to interact with each other not with the phone or computer screen this is essential to their mental development and it is crucial all we've heard for last 18 months was about the virus the vaccine and the mass we have been beaten down our throats 74 million children 18 and younger in this country have died of the virus yet every day in this country 170 children commit suicide have you heard about that i don't think so because you can't make a profit of children dying but you can make millions of profits on mass and vaccines the focus should be on the children and only them if we stop playing the political game maybe we'll be able to stop somebody's suicide before they happen go back to teaching math science and history helping our children to be children sir your time has expired thank you next step is after mr newsome is emily hernandez hey uh you and your friends are trying to convince us that genderqueer a child pornographic sketchbook is acceptable in our schools under the pretense of inclusion and comedy additionally you say it's okay because it's not a signed reading it's only in the library none of this justifies offering our children pornography what you're doing to our children the name of politics is criminal instead of wasting our time our money dr a our children with crt equity and disgusting pornographic material you should focus our tax dollars on our children's education teach them reading writing and arithmetic gender queer which is supposed to be a book about coming out if that's all this book was focused on parents wouldn't have an issue with it the problem is as described by the author it's a much needed useful touchable guide this is liberal code for teaching children how to perform oral sex anal sex wear strap-on dildos these graphic images are totally unacceptable regardless of their gender or sexuality let me be clear parents don't have an issue with books that help children cope with being gay or how to come out no matter what your liberal clown friends say such a book is called the times i knew i was gay is also in donners grove south these books are empowering children to navigate their sexuality without using graphic child pornography i'd like to understand why this board believes graphic pornographic sketches showing young girls wearing strap-on dildo while other girl performs oral sex is necessary for our children or why young boys tasting bubble gum flavored condom before mounting each other before anal sex is beneficial or a sketch of a young girl after fingering herself talks about tasting her vagina slime that's shown in one of these sketches dripping off her fingers how do these images help children cope with their sexuality i suggest d99 removes this pornographic material immediately or at minimum you allow us parents to opt out of this garbage it's not your right to decide if our minor children should have access to pornography any every one of you should resign in disgrace you're a danger to our children in d-99 [Applause] we still have several speakers and we had up and down time please allow us to continue with the meeting or we'll have to end it all right we had uh some delays during reception of visitors with people coming up and back we've hit the end of the allotted time i recommend that we extend it to 8 30 to just make up for that lost time that we had between speakers so the next speaker is emily hernandez followed by curtis tate good evening my name is emily hernandez i'm a senior here at downers grove north high school today i would like to give my support to the board i believe that any policy or change brought about into our education is done with our best interest in mind critical race theory and diversity and equity training are topics that have now been made controversial when they should have never become political i realize that now both critical race theory which is not taught at our schools and diversity and equity training which is implemented are not the same thing but they do go hand in hand that is why education is absolutely necessary in history classes we learn about a great country's history and we completely understand the importance of it however to be fully educated we need to understand the full spectrum of how our society is undeniably founded on racism accepting this and realizing that we have the power to take action in order to create an exclusive and equitable community through empathy and allyship students are able to take initiative and make our school culture what it is we myself included are involved in clubs and organizations that promote and encourage diversity equity and exclusivity in order to create a welcoming and accepting environment for all which district 99 has been able to do thus far it is necessary to understand that everyone comes from all different walks of life diversity and equity is important so we could provide additional resources to those who need it doing so isn't discriminatory or playing favorites it is being aware that not everyone has the same privilege as you do restricting students from these resources would be detrimental and ultimately create an environment in which these students would not thrive in all the students that you see here tonight we we are concerned students and that is not a political statement we will not be intimidated there furthermore we will not spread lies or disinformation about those who oppose us for it is not in our interest to slander those who disagree with us we always have and will continue to fight for our education no lies or political activists will change our perspective whether you agree or disagree with us we hope you will be open to hearing what we have to say thank you for your time curtis tate followed by david rose [Applause] good evening i just want to thank the board i want to like to thank the administration as well my name is curtis tate i have two students who have came through donors grove already time to go north i have one current student here who's a junior and i have one coming in the next two years my my my daughter is at west point academy she came through these halls she walked through these halls and she experienced a lot of different things through these halls what i'm scared about what i'm hearing now and as a graduate of 1996 of donners grove south and moving to this area in is the removal of equity i've heard tonight people talking who are not from this area does not understand the area when i went to school here back in 1996 and throughout i experienced a lot of things that were from hate i saw bad things happen to me in school in school all the time and i have people make comments all the time but the one thing i learned before living in donna's grove is we overcame as thomas grove people we were the ones that made the decisions we were the ones who made the changes here in this district and we all worked together it wasn't perfect it's still not perfect but it has to be the influences of the parents the students and the people who live in this area it is not people from the outside who wants to use a political agenda now whatever you believe in that's what you believe in i get it but if you don't live here and you've never experienced being here why are you here we have to ask ourselves those questions the one thing that i will applaud is these young students because we can tell already from the education they're receiving right now how eloquently they're speaking on topics and doing the research of what's going on in our society these kids know what they need and i just make sure i heard a young lady ask for more student input on the school board and i would encourage the school board to sit down with the students and and have an opportunity for the student to show you the issues they're seeing thank you your time has expired thank you we have time for one more speaker david rose david rose [Music] so david are you choosing not to speak okay next would be colleen piercy will be our final speaker colleen's down here david hamm i'd say at this point we only have four slips left so we'll just call up the rest of them no david ham [Music] robin [Music] cedar bread good evening i taught at the other school for 35 years retired now 11.
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recently one of those children called oswego home a student in our very own district one suicide death is too many and ten is alarming and in my opinion should be declared as an emergency the bullying from this district with this nonsensual excuse me non-sensical rules social media pressures cyber bullying and other student bullying must be addressed before one more child becomes a victim i ask you to turn to each other and answer this question when will the emotional and mental health of our students start to be a priority when will this board take accountable actions and demand changes to a better to better addressing bullying please look at that photo one more time and understand that that picture tells a story characteristics of these actions must be identified and resolved our children deserve your help thank you may please have that back when you're done thank you tom the ninja tom naneke i'm going to read really fast because it's exactly three minutes good evening crt being taught to our children is a huge issue and an area of concern in our community and around the country parents are being called [Music] to thousands of school districts including here but don't worry i am told in my response to the foia that i filed currently are we are using this vendor for their bank of questions to design our own surveys there has been no teacher or student use of this product and i have to wonder if the word yet is missing from this response because who will ultimately be asked the questions in the surveys that you develop from the bank of panorama's questions that answer to me is obvious our students and our staff the district committed to a contract for a cost of fourteen thousand three hundred dollars per year so nothing to see here sounds like the june newsletter that was sent out to the community telling the parents there was nothing to worry about the parents that were questioning if crt was being taught seem confused and everything is okay now wrong i think it's becoming clearer and clearer each day that steps are being taken to introduce critical race theory into the language of all subjects being taught adam andrewski of forbes magazine wrote an interesting story on october 12th about panorama education and their ties to the attorney general and to the true intent of what they are selling to school district here are three direct quotes from that story the first quote critical race theory usually teaches that america its supporters and her institutions are inherently racist and discriminatory and that race is used as a social construct to oppress and exploit people of color the second quote from the story while the company doesn't use the term critical race theory on its website ezra nomani of parents defending education an anti-crt parent group at the forefront of recent protests claims that panorama education is using data collection as a pretext for school officials to push controversial ideas about race identity and sexuality and the final quote from the story panorama sells surveys to scroll districts across the country that focus on the local social and emotional climate these surveys are then used as justification for new curriculum from other providers that some parents call critical race theory and find objectionable let's quickly go back to my foyer response from the district currently we are using this vendor for their bank of questions to design our own surveys huh surveys saying crt is not a class in our curriculum is a true statement but it is becoming harder and harder for me and other parents to believe that crt is not being interwoven into every class being taught a recent foia uncovered books titled anti-racist baby white fragility stamped racism anti-racist racism and you are being added to several of our elementary school libraries we have much larger issues with the mental health of our children than wrecking their minds with these gross untrue aspects of critical race theory let's not waste more time filling their heads and instead teaching them how to read write do math proficiently and learn the real history of our nation and the rest of the world thank you thank you ariane ammakur can you hear me um i was going to talk about something else but literally none of that matters anymore i would just like to say that i went to law school and in law schools are the only places in this country where critical race theory is being taught and it is an optional class and i believe 90 to 95 percent of law schools in this country where it is taught that students take a different perspective on the laws and histories of this country to look at america through the lens of the narrative of race as the gentleman over there mentioned crt or critical race theory is not being taught in schools and it is not being taught to children as they try to read write and do math proficiently but let's assume it was let's assume that in this country in elements [Music] and black neighbors what is wrong with teaching our kids to acknowledge the horrific history that black people and brown people and pretty much any other person who is not a straight white man in this country has gone through and what is wrong with acknowledging that and acknowledging there are steps every one of us can take to heal those scars to become one nation indivisible i don't just like to say that the ridiculous narrative around crt in this country has poisoned the public debate and it is hurting people like me it is hurting people like my parents it is hurting people like attorney general merrick garland whose grandparents were holocaust survivors please for the love of god we can debate about what our children are learning absolutely that is important but i never thought i as an immigrant would live in a country where kindness is a wedge issue that's all i want to say thank you isabel gershon hi my name is isabelle and i am a student uh at oe i am a freshman and i'm here to speak um for culturally responsive teaching again as we stated critical race theory is not being taught in k-12 schools because it is a law subject so i don't see why i would bring that up i am coming to you as an lgbtq plus and jewish student as a district and i'm going to tell you we've there is homophobia and anti-semitism in these schools i'm not blaming any individual members but i'll i'll speak about a specific example i had a friend in history class and when they were reading about the holocaust every time she said jew a student yelled dirty over it this is what students are facing and i feel like it is ridiculous to say that adding kindness and adding a perspective of empathy to education is going to harm us we are in need of help we are in need of support and we need to start teaching our kids our students to have more empathy and to look at every story with the victim in mind i would especially like to um address a certain thing i've seen in the community where people are comparing math mandates to the hall cost and i feel like this is another example of how culturally responsive teaching could really help our district because currently there are adults who are who were not who were sadly not educated enough on the holocaust because they weren't taught with the lens of empathy that they believe that the murder of of 10 million people based off of their race their ethnicity their religion and their sexuality is the same as having to wear a piece of cloth over your face i understand if it's not comfortable i don't love wearing one but i think it's ridiculous that we are fighting over math mandates and saying things like this when when our students are suffering from all this discrimination when we're fighting about if pronouns are are acceptable to bring up when it's just figure speech and i know i'm kind of ranting and i apologize for that but i would just like to address that students are hurting right now and focusing on just some you know talking national talking points from parents who don't who are not even in the schools is hurting all of us jennifer stamp hi my name is jennifer stamp and i have a child in district 308 when the u.s supreme court desegregated schools in brown versus board of education they recognized the importance of public education for all races on equal terms they noted explicitly in the decision that public education is not only important to a democratic society but it is quote the foundation of good citizenship there is a lot of talk about patriotism these days but we rarely hear about good citizenship good citizenship isn't decided by skin tone sexual orientation or parental choice in the legal sense it's decided by the u.s constitution and in daily life good citizenship rests in how we treat each other it calls for us to form a more perfect union public schools are for students from all walks of life they teach our nation's values not the values of individual parents it's never been a parent's choice to dictate the values of our nation i challenge anyone who opposes crt to accurately define discuss it and explain how it's being taught to a kindergartner i could have saved myself a hundred thousand dollars in law school debt if that were possible but it's simply being used as a euphemism euphemism for civil rights and the civil war and to not teach those things if public schools remove certain parts of history they will necessarily have to omit portions of the constitution as well as ignore the sacrifices of our citizens and soldiers throughout history there would be no meaningful way to discuss the civil war or civil rights without discussing our constitution i am told that white children may feel uncomfortable in these discussions i imagine children of color feel very uncomfortable in these discussions and if parents want to be involved this is where parental involvement can ease the discomfort of their child and help them with that emotional upset instead we see parental involvement in the form of political theater and intimidation tactics if people want to call themselves mama bears or patriots sit your child down and teach them about our nation's history teach them about the constitution that would be the patriotic thing to do sit your child down and talk to them when they're having an emotional problem that would be the mama bear thing to do you can do it in a way that gives your child comfort rather than engaging in fear tactics and terrorizing a community i hope that they would do it in a way that helps perfect our union and if you do that i'll root for you i'll work with you i apologize but your time is up thank you thank you that was all uh 6.1 we are ready for board member comments okay um i have several this evening first i want to thank dr sparlin and the administration's recognition of the school board and the work that we do and really recognize my fellow board members i just want to say that this is one of the hardest jobs it's one of the hardest jobs i have ever done in my life and i've gone through grad school and had a doc have a doctorate in all a lot of things and i've worked with kids in trauma and this is one of the hardest jobs i've ever had to do and extremely heart wrenching and people don't recognize that and i'm i'm guess i'm just letting you know and letting all my board members up here know that that we're together and i appreciate all of you even even when we don't agree right because that happens but this is a very hard position to have a love and passion for our students and for wanting everyone to get a good education and to honestly always be a target of criticism no matter what choice you make that being said um regarding the vacancy that will occur um i know nice segway right i know good job but uh but people also need to know the reality of what they're getting into um and there's lots of rewarding things as well but it is challenging but i am going to say that the process for filling the vacancy will likely not occur until january we will have 60 days to fill the vacancy once mrs croner is no longer a resident of our district at that time we will make applications available online and you should receive emails to know when that process has started the board will be interviewing a select number of applicants and then we'll choose from from those interviewed applicants one thing to be aware of is that we need to select someone who is in the oswego congressional township since that is where mrs croner is from and in order to represent those constituents if you do have any questions or if you would like to get on a list to be notified when the applications are ready you can email ursula for that or if you have questions you're certainly welcome to email myself and the last thing i just wanted to say because this is our our last meeting before thanksgiving and hanukkah i did just want to wish everyone a a happy thanksgiving and a happy hanukkah um i just wanted to say that i try every meeting to send out a note of gratitude to who different constituents in the district and i have done so with our teachers and our bus drivers and our tas this week i would really just like to talk about our home and school associations across the district they provide a very important service to each of our schools regardless of what they're called home in school home and what what have you i'm very grateful to them for all that they continue to do they fill in gaps where the district is short whether it comes to technology or services for our students parties you name it and i'm very grateful to all of the those home and school organizations across our district and what they do for our communities so thank you to them would anyone like to speak okay thank you okay so um board committee reports we have the finance committee yes um this is an interesting one simply because the topics that we're going to discuss are two of the presentations that are happening so um i will defer to those topics and i'll add my comments in during those sessions for for this for that committee um and the same really for uh colton and anya they're going to give a report later so i would let it come from them and then i'll chime in at that time and i'll just add for finance and facilities that we did have a lot of conversation regardless of we're not going to go over the presentations but we had a lot of conversations surrounding wanting to make sure that we communicated well what it is is the narrative behind the numbers because the numbers can get a little bit intense um and the spreadsheet's long but at the end of the day there's a story and that story is how we educate and so wanting to make sure that's communicated i think was the the main thing that came out of this that we just want to understand where our money goes thank you um and the teaching and learning committee you want to go or you want me to go ahead okay um similar to financing facilities we had presentation that we will be seeing here tonight um by faith and had some great discussion regarding that and a lot of good questions were asked and you will see you know we've got some work to do but it was great to be able to discuss that in the committee prior to this meeting and for them to be able to see it and add some input and help guide faith and make some suggestions so i will also you know hold back on my comments in particular regarding the presentation until we actually have that as a public body tonight so yes thank you dr mourinho and good evening board i'd like to start off with some congratulations this evening congratulations to the ohs boys cross country team and finishing fifth in the state also congratulations to audra soderland on finishing 15th in the state cross country as well congratulations to the girls swim and dive on winning the sectionals and finishing fourth in the state tournament this weekend the team was only two points away from tying for second place uh the 200 freestyle relay of chloe diner katie grisik lauren wiley and karine geist took first and were state champions for this race so congratulations to them and all the girls swim and dive very nice showing this year i'd also like to congratula congratulate all the student athletes who signed national letters of intent for college last for next year we had around 25 students between our two high schools who last wednesday signed their national letters of intent and last week was also national psychology week and we which is celebrated every year november 8th through the 12th and this year's theme was let's get in gear and gear was the acronym provided to make a challenge to g grow both personally professionally it encourages to e engage in best practices and a advocate for children's access to mental health and learning supports they are implies resilience and renewal despite the challenges of the past so i think all of our 308 psychologists are very good examples of that and i'd like to thank them for their service to district 308.
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i want to say they are in the high 500s you know at any point if to funding change that would be something that would have to be looked at but currently that's not been the case uh same same deal with the basic financial statements assets liabilities and fund balance in the case of this entity uh the entire fund balance is reserved because those funds are to be used for state and federal grant programs so no unreserved fund balance there and the total net increase in fund balance is approximately 358 000 which you'll be able to see on the statement of revenues expenditures change in fund balance and that's that's um you know generally again we're talking about cash basis entity so any kind of increase or decrease in fund balance is a function of you know any funding effort new funding opportunities but again based on timing of cash collections so that's basically it and then uh happy to report total expenses spend expenses there were less than budgeted amounts so and that was it that's a much smaller report so any questions on that okay thank you very much okay thank you [Applause] consent agenda second okay [Music] reports are in your board packet revenues are currently at 33.58 compared to 41.70 a year ago expenditures are at 26.04 compared to 27.43 a year ago um this month we received two months worth of impact fees so september impact fees came in for fifty six thousand eight hundred and thirteen dollars and sixty two cents for 10 home starts october impact fees came in at 113 970 dollars and 16 cents for 16 home starts transition fees came in at four thousand one hundred ninety dollars and four cents bills payable are typical for the month of november for both um northern kane and central this month there is a bond payment totaling 5.94 million in there and that's that's the exception um kathy naughton just uh reported our audit reports and i'll give a couple more highlights uh and the next action items and then also tonight we're gonna do a levy presentation for our tentative levy um we're requesting 47.765 million for our levy we only anticipate getting about 47 million oh 84.
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so there are pieces in there as to what can be voted on or what not and so that's outlined so you have again 164.5 is participating participation meetings 164.6 is meetings during that declared disaster emergency so different circumstances different provisions 64.4 is one that was already in place that's been revised to comply to comply with new laws the new law and then 67.1 is also currently in place and also being revised to line up with 0.5 and 0.6 which are new policies for you so you have those policies in your packet they are marked up in terms of what makes sense but but they are basically a recitation of law it's hga1437 here's what you can and can't do and then we are messing with that that's that's what we're recommending that you put into your policy or bylaws and just follow hga 1437 that gives you the ability to participate via electronic communication either when subject or not to an emergency government order thank you for that summary um and we've had the details to read in our packets are there particular questions individuals have of dr roberts our leadership in general yes mr stenner thank you dr shedd well i guess the first question is kind of general in those places where there are options are you looking for direction from us give me a specific example and i'll tell you no no no that's okay because it i don't think on your one in particular mr center i don't think it printed out and i'm looking at um maybe yes so i'm looking at and that's why specifically four five yes so if 164.5 member participation in meetings through electronic means of communication there are two options that could be considered but we stayed specific to the law these were additional things that you could add in terms if you wanted to set the number of board members who may participate in any particular way whether in person or virtually or if you wanted to put the total number of meetings in a calendar year that may be conducted a certain way that's not law that would be an option for you to choose so those are crossed out i'm just staying with a specific law so no other no other changes to that in that same section of the the policy draft um and you you touched on this point i just wanted to make sure i'm on what is it page two of two in that one six four dot five section okay say one and on page two of two there's a paragraph that starts out board members may not participate and the way i read that is if if the board has on its agenda a final action for adopting a budget or making a resolution regarding personnel that even participation in the meeting by electronic means is not allowed not just not just voting on that issue yeah because i think the legal intent was to allow participation until it came time for the vote but it does work that way so it's something for us to look at between uh first reading and second so just for everybody's sake the the list of items under there are from statute where board members may not participate in a board meeting by electronic communication if the board is attempting to take final action too and all the listing of things is to spend money adopt a final budget make reduction personnel initiate a referendum establish or increase the fee establish your increase of penalty use the board's power of in this case eminent domain or establish rates over into a tax so those situations kind of around money saying can't really good point there mr senator we'll clarify that legally as to what that what that means versus vote thank you are there other questions as we work on this draft so reminder in each of these is just getting it in front of you tonight to have a chance to look at ask questions that you have and then we consider we can consider adoption at the next next meeting okay thank you you're welcome dr hack to offer us a update on love chapel you're good dr heck i think she was just wanting to get this in front of you to make sure and get the information so you see what love chapel is and does and our student involvement in that so pretty pretty big deal in terms of how we are involved in love chaplains delivering food yes i think the big thing is the biggest part of the top over 500 food packages each week so thank you yes thank you and just a good reminder of all the community responsibilities we take on for the good of our community and our students and families it is now time for requests of approval of the list that we received from dr roberts yeah so a relatively small list comparatively over the last many meetings but a through e are things that are typically on there so starting off with minutes of any meetings that we've had since our last meeting we had the board meeting on october 25th and we had a strategic planning session we looked at our next five-year strategic plan we also have you also have a list of supplemental contracts in your packet field trips from professional aid school fundraisers as well as claims and payroll so get a set of claims dated today there's about 2.1 million dollars in a set of claims pre-run claims that are dated october 26 through november to the 12th those totaled about 6.8 million dollars we had payroll of about 5.6 million that covered two different payrolls the one from october the 22nd covered september 27 to october 8th that was normal except we did have the fall c stipends that's from our extracurriculars the the collective bargaining agreement but also only had a one-week pay for less than full-time support staff because of fall break and then november 5th just a week or so ago i covered the work days of october 11th through the 22nd and it was a normal payroll nothing new on that um we're asking them the two additional things besides a through e that we have this time and it was referenced earlier i think by mr center about the construction manager or one of you guys mr graham somebody yeah mr grimes permission to approve construction manager as constructor for a multi-school project it is our first time delving into that way of approaching our renovation so we appreciate all the work that's been done with that um the uh various vendors who put in a bid for that have been reviewed and we would like to approve that and you have that information in your packet additionally mr phillips says in front of you the 2022 tax anticipation warrant resolution that's an annual thing that we look for heading into the new year as we wonder when we might get our different tax draws and we wish to be prepared for that so those are the two extra items that we have very good thank you so first i'll entertain a motion for approval of 4 a through g as they're presented to us thank you mr bryant is there a second second thank you dr bills are there particular questions about any of these particularly the two newbies that we have on here yes thank you you're welcome i i did have a question on the uh is it maxwell is that the name of the firm that um so tonight assuming that the vote is positive we're kind of approving the selection of this company but there's yet to be a contract drawn up and i'm curious for a lot of things like this often the the state of indiana has approved forms for contracts i know that there are forms that architects use for their contracts this being relatively new are there those kinds of forms available to us yes and most of those costs we know ahead of time um our process is to bring to you um your permission to approve maxwell for that um cmc they're actually here with us tonight and uh as part of the decision that our group has made to bring that recommendation to you is was their submission of fees and and et cetera profit margin that sort of thing so we have that information and as i said we'll bring that to you as a contract next next board meeting in december okay thank you appreciate the help and thanks to the folks from maxwell for working with us i appreciate that question mr senator so approval of maxwell tonight is at construction um construction manager as constructor he used to say that that terminology and then we'll finalize that contract and bring you all the details uh for approval at the december december meeting all right any other questions okay thank you dr boson so hearing none i'll ask those who approve for a through g as they've been presented to us if you'd signify by saying i i those opposed all right those were approved unanimously dr roberts thank you dr please it's your turn i request approval of the human resource recommendations as presented this evening all right thank you i'll entertain a motion for approval of those recommendations as they were presented to us so moved thank you mr grimes is there a second okay thank you mr bryant are there any particular questions we have of dr pleek how's our how's it looking as far as hiring teachers assistants are we uh have everybody hired settle down you're always currently hiring and looking for amazing employees who want to make the difference in lives of children each and every day please go to www.bcschools.org to apply a script in front of her there or something and or she says it often enough we're making progress right we are yes all right thank you for your that hard work i mean it is a tough market right now all right the motion is presented all of those who are in favor of the human resources recommendations as presented to us if you'd signify by saying i those opposed all right we've passed them unanimously thank you dr pleek and as we always come to an end of meeting offer the opportunity for individuals to provide their input or comments i won't change my order so i'll go to mr grimes okay first off thanks to mr grow for being here this evening and sharing his thoughts and any other community members that may be here is listening thanks to mr yates and his fellow staff members and their presentation on all good things going on in early childhood education thanks to mayor lenip and the city of columbus for their continued support of pcsc and lastly i think it's worth mentioning again congratulations uh to the columbus north cross country teams and and to reece for his in you know their team accomplishments his amazing individual accomplishment and um you know i think that the columbus north cross country program is i'm not sure too many people necessarily realize how widely looked up to and what a model program that is for the state it is um you know it's a it's a program that largely was started with coach weinheimer in the early mid 80s and it has continued to blossom and grow and is obviously under um you know great leadership of coach fisher and coach sluter and lots and lots of places across the state that are that are very jealous of the program that they've built the last gosh nearly you know 35 40 years it's it's really pretty amazing right thank you very very much mr stenner i'd like to echo all of the thanks that came in the comments that mr grimes made i'd also like to i'm aware of several of the remembrances and programs that helped remind us all of the value that veterans have added to our country and i appreciate the fact that bcsc provides students with the opportunities for those kinds of programs and remembrances i want to thank all of the students and teachers and staff and volunteers that are helping with that important work of love chapel and i was up there that day that that was uh pretty amazing so those are my comments my input thank you wonderful thank you dr bill well i'll ditto mr grimes and mr stenner and ad i want to shout out to the teachers who do work with the students on the senior projects and on these activities and projects around our community and shout out to the community members who help the students with their senior projects so it's an important part of our culture here at bcsc that students leave and have contributed something to our community through senior projects it's a i think it's a great opportunity so wonderful thank you mr bryant i want to thank mr yanks and his crew for doing such a great job i think we will see a lot of changes in our attitude as far as our kids is concerned as they continue to grow then i want to thank the veterans for being given their service to this country and our community very good thank you i don't know what i could add except i do appreciate i appreciate having marilyn appear and his reminder and care that it is truly a partnership of this school corporation and the entire columbus community to take care of our students and we are clearly taking care of a great number of families i see the numbers from love chapel and i'm so grateful that we do it but it i have to say it makes me sad that we have to and i think it's important that we remind ourselves of the importance of all the great work that we do that's not just in classrooms and on athletic fields and at music centers yes i'm very proud of us so we have one more school board meeting in the year of 2021 it will be on december 13th we will be here in the terrace room we look forward to another very productive meeting and conversation yeah i had some real quick yes you may sorry i just thinking of the job that our kids are doing seeing the uh sounded spirit of columbus here recognizing columbus noise cross country team tonight we have drama productions as well and so columbus is this weekend that's why i had to squeeze it in right now it has footloose so if you're looking for something to do on friday night or saturday night or sunday afternoon the columbus seas trauma production of footloose will occur so they'll do an outstanding job i am sure i'm sure they will thank you very much for that reminder all right you know where to see us in december so thank you very much and i'll adjourn this meeting you
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and that modeling and the life lessons that that you know carries through it's just it's just an incredible you know it's incredible to see it it's been an incredible journey um this year and i you know i i said to the parents i i said you know we get there you know we're down in newport and i said how can they how can this be better next year i mean how how can they do this again next year it was just i thought this show i you know i don't have the the comparison of the show i thought was just outstanding just a gorgeous show and the experience of being there with the parents and the community that you know has been established i think again through this history and the dedication to be part of that and met life i mean you know you to be there is it's it's something and to see that feeling i remember there's a gentleman at newport not that whose mouth was dropped and he had come three hours earlier he had another child in a different band or a grandchild and he came specifically to see dartmouth because we were early and he just again the kids from other bands they're just amazed because in it and because you're amazing this is an amazing program so thank you thank you for that i think one of the things that and i don't know if the students realize it and josh you can chime in if if you do if you can is when our students are warming up in that there are students from other band band directors from other bands that are just what i mean i kind of said to somebody you know last week i mean this the you know the percussion is warming up and all they're doing is and there are people just in our because of the way we're doing it or playing the scales or the flags just were and the amount of people that you know will come over and they're like i want my students to watch you guys because when you're on you know we're not going to be able to be here in that type of deal and that's what our students our student musicians have been able to bring type of deal i don't know if josh has anything because he was there too would you like to add something josh uh sure i just think the marching band is a testament to like the community not only in the band or dartmouth high school but in dartmouth as a whole and i think it's really great year after year that we can come come out successful after all the dedication and hard work we've put into it for the community and the school i think that we owe that all to our staff and all the parent volunteers that help out everyone who has a part in it because they're the ones year after year that come back and help out every year that make this program as successful that as it is so i just like to thank all of us the parents volunteers and the staff that we have at dartmouth high for helping us and putting together a great program every year thanks and i'll just add you know i don't live near by the stadium but i live across the water from the band so i hear the hard work every day in the summer starting in the summer every night and sometimes at night i'll say are they still practicing right so i know how hard you all work i hear it all the time and it's a it's a real testament to show our kids how hard work pays off as miss waite was was saying and it's a real impressive achievement this year and across many years and we're we're all very proud of you so congratulations and thank you very much [Applause] so um we get to move on more to more fun and um pleasant things to talk about this evening the next item on our agenda is um recognition of our own mr john nunes for masc which is the massachusetts association of school committee's lifetime achievement award i'm going to turn it over to mr kiley first who has a few words to say on behalf of the administration and we'll go from there so this is is my 11th year working with mr nunes uh here in dartmouth and it's certainly a pleasure to have a school committee member who's so committed to the community and has done so much for dartmouth and is so involved in every bit of our success so it's it's certainly an honor and we're lucky to have him work with us as administrators here in dartmouth for sure i'll turn it over to mr oliver thank you mr kiley so you know i've been speaking with uh dr jenkins the chair of the of the committee and also this is my ninth going on my ninth year of being on the school committee and getting to know john and attending i've had the opportunity on several occasions to attend the mass association the school committee their fall um conference along with the mass superintendents it's a joint conference down the cape and that's when i first kind of started learning about many years ago about the lifetime achievement award and um thinking about that i said you know what i know of someone that um you know is very very deserving of the lifetime achievement award so in in conversations with dr giff and our superintendent of schools as well as with dr jenkins our chairperson i felt it was appropriate that the the school committee take action to recognize mr nunes for all of his accomplishments so after some conversations back and forth and helping uh dr jenkins as well as dr gifford coming up with some of the uh all some all of the many many things that mr nunes does or has done for the past 31 years we are very happy to nominate him for this award and i can't think of anyone more deserving than john nunes for his time that that he's put on the committee i have i have learned an awful lot from you john um i know you don't like people talking about you but uh i can see you already blushing um but i i've learned an awful lot um from your time from my time being on here working with you and some while we always don't agree which is perfectly okay i can i always resp i always respect your your position and that's something to be said about um about you and the um you know everything that you've done so at this time um i i'll turn it over to uh we're very happy to welcome and have um mr james uh hardy from the mass association of school committee so jim good evening everyone good evening um i've been with marc for almost 26 years now so john's got me beat in a few years but i've had opportunities to interact with him a few times over that 26 years and my guess is that and those of you who know him better can probably attest to the fact that he's going to try to no big deal no big deal he's going to try to downplay it and take himself out of being the center of attention but unfortunately john this is kind of a big deal this isn't a award that's just given out because people want awards to put on their walls so i thought it'd be important to kind of read the criteria for this award so you can just see how significant it really is guidelines for lifetime achievement award a lifetime achievement is a designation established to honor individuals who through their service to their community and their local school committee have exhibited the best characteristics of public service lifetime achievement shall be limited to a present or former school committee member who must have a minimum of 10 years of elective service in the community or non-elective service to a public education as a volunteer member of the public school faculty or benefactor of public schools including not less than two terms on the school committee i think you met that part this designation is not dependent on the nominees participation in masc programs or its activities the nomination is dependent upon the the nominee's commitment to community above and be above and inclusive of school activities candidates for lifetime achievement may not nominate themselves so that's important too so i'm just going to read some of the things that were in the nomination letter that we received and all nominations go to our board of directors our board of directors is made up of school committee members duly elected across the state it is both an honor and pleasure to nominate mr john l nunes of the dartmouth school committee for consideration to the masc board of directors for the lifetime achievement award john has been a member of the dartmouth school committee for 31 years wow during his time in the committee he he has been chairperson many times and served on several subcommittees most recently he was part of the negotiating team during the pandemic this was a considerable time commitment last year as we met with the union numerous times john is also a dartmouth john who was also a dartmouth alumnus is a considerable asset to the community because of his institutional knowledge of the dartmouth school system and school committee members of the school committee continuously look to him for procedural guidance in past history while mr nunes is a team player when he takes a position on a topic he makes himself clear on his beliefs in rationale he does his homework before each meeting and is always educated on agenda topics well that in itself would not get you lifetime achievement award that would get you an all-state school committee award it's this next part that kicked it into this category in addition to his role in the committee mr nunes volunteers whenever the opportunity presents itself he has a long-standing history of spending his off hours assisting our nationally recognized marching band and music program the five consecutive time national championship 10 time overall marching band every year he spends countless hours at gillette stadium working a concession stand for the marching band in addition to making himself available for practices rehearsals trips and indoor percussion shows he is also the announcer at home football games and has been the master of ceremonies at many events he continues to be an active member in our high school theater program in addition he has served on the negotiation subcommittee policy subcommittee budget subcommittee dartmouth school music association dartmouth high school theater company dartmouth high home football game announcer distributive education clubs of america judge extensive volunteer work that mr nunes does for the dartmouth schools he is all he's he is also actively engaged in a variety of other service work in dartmouth and the surrounding communities such as volunteering to support the feast of the blessed sacrament in new bedford for all the reasons presented i ask for your consideration to recognize mr john l nunes mr nunes by unanimous vote of the board of directors it's my honor to present to you oops this plaque designating you as a recipient of the lifetime achievement award from the massachusetts association of school committees i'd like to read it to you presented to john nunes in recognition of your many years of service as a strong advocate for children and your unselfish contributions to the dartmouth public schools presented by the massachusetts association of school committees 2021 thank you jim thank you john [Applause] oh boy thank you jim it's good to see you again it's been a while and by the way when we're doing those seminars and you talk about somebody clicking a pen yeah i still do that type of deal i stand here very humble and my irish is kicking again and honored to receive it i've kidded with people then that's there must have been no one else available and that's how i got it you know if you go back and you look at the old westin's or amos and andy and that type of deal and they'd sit there and say i need a volunteer you know anybody wants to volunteer take one step forward and everybody steps back and you're left i think that's what happened here i'd like to thank all my family members that are here tonight for their support especially my wonderful wife who puts up with me going out to all the meetings i go to and everything else i'd also like to thank all the different committee members that have had been fortunate enough to work with the past 31 years i also chris and shannon and dr gifford and everyone who worked on that one one wonderful letter kind of blown away by it finally i'd like to thank the voters of that town of dartmouth who have been kind enough over the years to keep me in this position i'm not sure why but i must be doing something right and hopefully in april of 2022 you'll continue to that practice and give me your support again thank you very much everyone to my family to my loving wife thank you [Applause] [Music] [Applause] so i just want to say really briefly um you know what we don't always agree i always appreciate mr newton's that i know that you have my back um i would also if we had a title of school committee historian i would give you that title um because i deeply appreciate the the deep historical knowledge about this committee and the the processes for how we operate it's you've always been a sort of a mentor to all of us and i think we all very much appreciate this this is a well-deserved award so congratulations miss wait would you like to say horde and again i i think it's clear certainly to parents the community that that you're always in this for the students you know and again and i can speak to the the mentoring just from the last two meetings when i needed him to sit next and talk about procedures so again i experienced that but i you know i you're the heart and soul i think in so many ways of this of this town you know it's hard to go too many places where we don't hear your voice that's a great thing and i and i know um you know we're gonna about to lead into the student representative report but i know that um you know josh has something that he would like to give you on you know on part of the students and the band as well so if that's okay go ahead okay yes please yeah so i know you guys have said some things about mr news but just from the marching perspective um mr newton does a lot of behind the scenes stuff that you wouldn't know or see if you just looked at it at the band as a whole um he goes above and beyond to help our band and we would not be successful without his help so i have a little something on behalf of the band i think you should open it now mr i think you should open it oh my god now we're really embarrassing him you know hello [Laughter] all right and i believe uh mr kylie might have a little something for you too i think that's my uh maybe that's my show shirt next year john we have a little a little something for you there we have a cake unfortunately because of covid we're not going to all eat the cake so you get to take it home with your nice [Applause] so i have to ask about the cake does the cake need to be refrigerated or is the cake okay i think it can make it i think it depends how how many uh i was wondering how many comments there are because i don't i know your family supports you but we they don't have to support you by sitting through the rest of the school committee meeting they can go home and have cake without you um mr nunes would you like a picture with your family very briefly with uh with your plaque before uh okay i think we'd like to share that on social media too hmm with your eyes okay don't eat it all before he gets home yes all right back to work no rest for the weary all right so the next item on our agenda uh is our student representative report and house has already had a couple times the opportunities to contribute but we're looking forward to hearing more from you josh go right ahead thank you dr jenkins good evening everyone i am joshua moniz and i'm a senior at dartmouth high school i would like to give you an update on what is going on at dartmouth high all of our fall teams have wrapped up their very successful fall seasons our girls volleyball team made it to the elite eight and lost a competitive matchup versus the number one ranked westboro high school team on friday evening our cross country team also wrapped up their successful season with several runners competing in the division one cross country championship meet on saturday at the wrentham developmental center this season many of our runners set personal records as they improved throughout the season we had two of our esports teams qualify for the playoffs after successful fall seasons led by mr ghia and mr bosworth both teams qualified as being in the top 16 in the state out of more than 50 teams competing statewide playoffs started this afternoon so we will find out how the team is made out tomorrow spirit week kicked off today with pick your cause day participation was strong with several different causes being displayed throughout the school one of the most popular being breast cancer awareness other causes included mental health awareness pancreatic cancer awareness and many more i particularly love this themed day one that i've experienced for the first time this year during this year's spirit week at dhs because i was able to support multiple sclerosis by wearing orange spirit week continues tomorrow with college day the key club is leading a campus cleanup as a community service project this thursday november 18th from 2 15 to 3 30 pm all students are welcome to attend seniors can order their yearbooks as well as their caps and gowns and diplomas information was included in the dhs community update and was also shared during advisory last week the senior superlative homecoming dance was postponed to its rain date saturday november 20th from 7 to 10 pm our robotics team is hosting their first scrimmage on november 21st from 12 p.m to 4 pm teams from other areas will compete at dhs to simulate a competition environment before their first competition later in the year that concludes my update on dhs today is the final meeting that i'll be serving as a student representative i've greatly enjoyed giving these updates each time and meeting with all of you i would like to thank all of you for your time and having me as the representative thank you does anybody have any questions or comments for josh just you know i've had the privilege of knowing josh for a long time you know with the band and that and i just want to you know seriously say thank you very much for being here you've brought us a lot of information and much appreciated and best of uh luck as you finish out your senior year and go on to bigger and better things thank you mr dance thank you anyone else mr oliver it's been a pleasure josh and um i wish you the best of luck you've you present yourself extremely well at these meetings and you always share a lot of great information with us so i wish you the best of luck in all your future endeavors and it's been a pleasure to have you here at the meetings thank you thank you josh again thank you so much i can't wait to see you know what the next few months are going to unfold for you it's kind of an exciting journey it's been you know i'm sure your mom will share so um but i i think you're going to do just great so you know again we're all really proud that you're a graduate of dartmouth high so thank you thank you yeah best of luck josh we've appreciated your updates and we appreciated having you here so good luck and with that you are welcome to go if you would like as always or you're welcome to stay it's up to you thank you all have a great day thank you thank you all right so the next item on our agenda is public comment we've allotted 10 minutes for anyone to speak about any of the items that are on our agenda for this evening if you'd like to speak about an agenda item i welcome you to step up to the microphone share your name and please keep your comments brief thank you hi everyone i'm sure you all know me i'm uh i'm christian govis silvera i was last year's class president graduating class of 2021.
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per bus per day it doesn't sound like much but we have 119 buses on kevin if you can show the other uh page and uh we run them for 180 days and so when you do that math out um it's it's close to 285 000 that uh it's a cost we avoided in the current year budget but my my comment about maybe they weren't looking as closely as everyone thought is you know that um that holds down the base so that 280 000 goes through the life of the contract that they never get that back um i mean it's hard i'm sure when we're selling our budget and the three and a half percent increase it's it's like anything it's probably like you know when you hold your teacher contract down for your people forget pretty quickly but that's a lot of money um to get each year um we can we can send that around uh tomorrow too um the other thing they did there were um ten new buses that we we budgeted for for um the damn the primary center and what they said was in in the letter that they would uh not increase the prices of those for the life of the four or five years you can see it right there in the near kevin's uh cursor um [Music] there the addition of 10 program will will remain at the current price for the duration of uh the contract so so that was pretty good and then uh finally and i don't know the background of this but um they agreed have agreed um to you know they um they pay for the um they hire the bus monitors uh that we have on mostly our special ed buses are smaller buses and um they passed that back to us and but what they said was uh they would for the danbury primary center they would pay the cost to the monitors for the year um you know it's eight people eight or ten making let's say they make i don't know twenty thousand dollars each um that's money too that we we don't have to spend so um i i wish we had had these specifics when we were asked uh what did we save um it took a little while to dig them out but when we did it it looked like a good deal for us so i thought it was important to bring that back tonight thank you john i'm the one who raised the question the last time okay i appreciate your deep dive to give me a very legitimate answer sir yeah i just didn't know what that when you mentioned i knew we saved money but i didn't know how john when you're when we're factoring in these costs for the buses and and you know the fuel or i'm not sure if the contract is structured in a way that we're paying them you know a certain amount uh per per gallon of fuel or whatever or if it's a flat you know a flat amount that they're that they start us with we pay for the fuel we pay independently for that fuel yep so what line item does that appear under is it the one i pointed out under the heating oil i think it's two below that says propane fuel um all the buses are are propane powered right um yeah so we buy it um in combination with the with the city uh they bid it out and we we pay the price we take you know economies of scale we've allotted three hundred and eight thousand dollars for that right so i'm assuming that next column which is reflecting a zero we we have to have used fuel by now right because we've been running school for two and a half months so um there's a uh that well the tank they have a gigantic tank over there um and they've been using what's in what's in the tank which which we purchased last year the or or whenever that the tank went in um it's funny you should mention that because uh my email in the last couple hours from beverly in accounts payable she's was saying um there's a purchase order for me to approve uh for propane i think we've run out or we're about to okay okay um and so i guess then my other question would be about you know the buses and the sta contract i i would assume that that shows up on a light line item as well um and i i would have thought it would have appeared under pupil transportation which is uh um but to date we've only spent 421.50 according to this line item so okay so um very briefly as maybe more information and you want to know um we we got what we thought was our first bill um just the other day and um with our new transportation coordinator we're going over today and i i noticed it was for november you know they built the beginning of the month which is another problem but i said to kelly um hey you know we don't we haven't had september and october when you're over at the terminal today why don't you ask them did they send it or what happened so she she came back and you know sta was recently sold and you know they've done certain things they're not the they're good still a good company but um they do things differently and what we learned was the person who does the billing [Music] in early september went on a paternity leave uh for a month and uh didn't come back was supposedly so they had someone else uh a woman who was brought in was supposed to do the october bill and she said they she moved to florida so they they haven't billed us we haven't been invoiced right john and i were just talking about this so i mean obviously that presents an obstacle on our end because we're sitting here trying to figure out how we're going to squeeze well we we will get we will get the invoices though and we budgeted in those areas and we will uh we can encumber it especially we know how many buses we're running you know what they cost per day these bills look pretty similar month in month out so okay so can you then talk and and i apologize i just need a little bit of clarification because this this information looks different to me than and i know we had it last month as well and i sort of was like not not not fully digesting everything but now in looking at this october report we've got the budget column and then we have the expenditure column the encumbrance column and then the unencumbered balance can you just help me understand and i forgive me because i'm just not a finance person so i just need a little help understanding that because i'm looking at like the people transportation for example and we've got a budgeted amount of you know five million dollars um and of that three and a half almost three and a half is unencumbered right and there's there's also more in the next page um the special ed transportation yeah is a separate line item uh that's because uh the state of connecticut wants it that way at the end of the year we uh it's a different reporting but um of course the budget is what it says in the expenditures those are those are checks that we've written um government accounting is uh cash basis accounting um rather than accrual base you you show your expenditures um in the month that you uh incur them not you don't accrue them and reverse it the next month it's i i don't know why it's that way but our expenditures are not accrued they're actual checks that were written and then um the so the third column the encumbrances um i like to tell people those are those are purchase orders um that we've issued uh that we haven't paid so what we try to do with the encumbrances is show that not only let's say we have a budget of whatever we've spent some of that budget but we've obligated some more of it and so we subtract from those two columns from what we've budgeted first home what we spend second column what we're obligated to spend later and then what's left over is the last one we call it the unencumbered balances where they came up with that name either it's cumbersome um yeah yeah and so um but what makes a little different is um that column of encumbrances isn't just purchase orders uh because we're such a personal services business and most of our budget is salaries we we put aside when we hire someone we set their whole salary for the school year as an obligation so that we know do we have anything left or do are we over because particularly with the teaching lines you know we'll do our budget and maybe we'll know people are retiring or not coming back but it's it may not be until the summer that we find out what step we're going to put people on so there could be some differences there when you you finally do your hiring so that's the four columns and then i just have one more question i promise i'll seed the floor um i just i want to get a sense like for the encumbrances that that you're talking about the pos that you're talking about um obviously if you have a salary rate that that just goes the way it does if you have if we're working with a vendor like sta for example um and we know like we've signed a contract and this is that you know we're spending x number of dollars this school year with them is that taken into consideration in the encumbrance or is it like a a monthly thing i just i'm not clear on that piece um but what i'd like to do and and you'll see this next year and you'll see it as the year goes on is um once our budget's approved um we're allowed to obligate it we we don't have to wait till july one once so everything's in place and you can't wait till july because you won't have your stuff in the classrooms if you wait till july so what i try and do is for the things that we know we're going to have every year like transportation i'll use your example we'll uh prepare a single purchase order uh for probably the entire budget amount if we still think that's a good estimate and then each month we'll reduce that by probably 1 12 or 1 10 whatever it is as we write the checks we reduce the encumbrance by the same amount as it goes down now maybe we'll find like in the case of fuel our budget really should have been a little different we might even change out of conference because what we're we're the the point we try and make as we turn the year into january is we want good data as we said the next set of budgets so it's important to to keep that up but we also and you'll start to see in my reports we're going to try and predict what's going to be left in june if nothing changes like the the 2.8 million we had returned this year yes it was for health insurance you probably could have seen some of that coming and what i'd like to do uh with both the cabinet and the board is saying you know if nothing else changes will our unencumbered balance on june 30th will be 400 000 say and then you as a board can decide with the authority in your operating budget um do you want to um just let that go uh there could be reasons for it or has there is there some need that has come up uh maybe something you had to cut in the following year's budget you say hey let's pre-buy it now since we have so i'll be trying to give you uh their forecasts of what's left and by encumbering as much as i can in encumbering more than we have now uh that's our way that we do it so okay yeah it just it just seems like that that unencumbered column you know certainly if you look at the the end of the report we've got you know almost 29 million dollars unencumbered so the um you know i i if i'd been here i shouldn't say it that way next year in july in august that's when we'll we'll put our encumbrances on and and um it has been a difficult start we've had a lot of a lot of turnover in the finance office and we're just we have our head above water now and we're we're we're swimming and we're going to see some of these things uh come on in time to make those uh forecasts for june 30th excuse me john the school lunch program is that included in uh other purchase services and do we have a breakdown of that budget uh we don't it's it's a a separate fund uh what you're looking at here is uh you're looking at two funds the general fund and the i'll call it the grant fund um the school lunch fund is not in in tonight's report um i i i don't i think it because it's it's what you might call an enterprise fund meaning um it it lives with its receipts it's it's self-funding so they really don't set that budget ahead of time um they have to they have to break even so it just it's not reported the same way i don't know if i'm explaining it but i get the direction you're going to because money comes in also i'm a certain amount of students okay right and and what what we can do though you know it's particularly given uh where we were at the end of the year last year uh with the lack of revenue coming in and the situation that it put us in um you know this there's no reason why we couldn't give an update i don't think it's necessary to really give a monthly update but you know maybe quarterly or kind of bi-annual update at the very least um because as long as the the school year is normal i don't think we're going to have any issues with the type of deficit that we had in the last two years um and i mean i i think if we can show that this year um i think the board will be reasonably pleased that you know we're not going to have you know deficits moving forward and i don't think we can have any issues as long as we have regular school we certainly are on our way right now thank you that's certainly something we can share you know january february and we'll have a pretty good look of what our projections are for the rest of the year absolutely that's kind of the long and the short of the report other other questions has the audit been is is that finished no um we're having a meeting uh tomorrow uh morning you know what's happened uh with audience kind of they're going through a change too the the profession i saw something this weekend uh chairman of uh bryce waterhouse one of that's one of the biggest firms announced that um uh all of all of their auditors could work remotely if they wanted to i thought was kind of startling because what we're seeing is um our auditors are are working remotely more and more they're not not here as much as i i think they should be uh but it's harder to to do um when they're on site uh they you know they're they're with you you know for days and they say hey can i see this and you hand them a binder or something yeah i'd like to know this so you you answer all the questions um quickly it goes much faster um here they're they've asked for same things several times they want them scanned dropped into a portal and we don't have the give and take to talk to them and so they they it's it's slower it's probably a sign of the the way things are going to be um but i i it shouldn't be taking this long um i i think it took a long time last year from what david saint-hilaire tells me but i i had expected it to be faster this year so hey john just to piggyback um kathy uh as john mentioned you know the auditors did come in and they were here for literally less than a week um and we were under the impression we gave what we needed um you know frank uploaded a great deal of amount of stuff prior to us arriving i've uploaded a bunch of stuff you know john has um we are meeting with them tomorrow um virtually of course uh just to iron out anything that's left over but it is taking a lot longer we were hoping to be done by now november they were walking into but um it seems to be like as john mentioned um having the otter as in in the building and kind of you know stopping us and you know having us there for you know six to eight to 20 hours and just pulling reports as much as we can for what they need um you know has kind of extended this audit a little longer i can't even imagine doing it virtually it must be a nightmare and that well whatever i just hope it works well that's all thank you all right i'm good are we done mr russo i am done thank you if there are no other further questions i'll entertain a motion to adjourn so moved i will second that thank you made by kathy seconded by kate good night everyone
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What I most enjoy about the program is just having like the freedom to be able to teach a second language, you know, with, you know, hands on hands on just bringing in real life experiences into our classrooms. Our second signature program here is the REACH program, which is for highly and profoundly gifted students in grades one through four. What we say here at Heights is that you're a Madison Heights student first, then you're either in the Spanish immersion program or you're in the REACH program. And so for REACH, as I said before, grades one, two, three and four. And for those students, this is an excellent program because it provides an opportunity for students to work at their level so that we can meet their academic needs while they get a chance to socialize with age appropriate peers and be able to work together and meet their learning needs, as I said.
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The parents have been here forever. It's just a very family oriented and very close culture here at Rose Lane. Hi, I'm Alicia Patton and I teach kindergarten at Madison Rose Lane. And this is my 10th year in Madison, eighth year teaching kindergarten at Rose Lane. In kindergarten, we focus on the foundational skills academically, to build upon throughout the school year. We lay the foundation for letter name sounds, phonemic awareness, those mathematic skills that build upon as they grow, as children grow throughout the grades first, second and on up. Also in kindergarten, we pull small groups for students if they are struggling with some skills or concepts, and also to help enrich if they are learning at a quicker rate. We want to make sure that we reach all of our students. The community at our school is just amazing. The staff, everybody feels like it's family at Rose Lane and we hope you come and join our family, too.
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So we're asking a lot of questions and we're really excelling their thinking in many different ways.
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