001you ready just to give you guys an explanation really quick for everyone that's in the audience tonight we have a tax levy hearing first and then we'll go into the regular meeting we will be as brief as possible because we value your time and we appreciate all of you attending tonight um but i did want to let you know just so you're not confused like what's going on okay calling to order the levy hearing for diamond lake school district 76 uh roll call please please rise for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay we now open the floor for public comments on agenda items do we
002have any public comments this evening if you are joining us virtually please feel free to type those directly into the chat box and we will read them into the meeting if you are here in person feel free to stand up and we can take your public comment and i'll just give it a second okay there does not appear to be any public comments so now we will proceed with the levy and i will turn things over to mr rogers all right thank you thank you for everyone showing up for the levy today that was very kind of you this is the biggest audience we've ever had um i'm just gonna very briefly go over the levy process as part of the district's um balloon levy process if we levy over five percent over the prior
003years tax labor required to hold a public hearing um so at the last meeting which was held november 16th we went over the tentative tax levy and there's been no changes since then so we've uh we've received all our estimated revenues expenditures we've calculated all that in we believe we've asked the appropriate levy and as part of the levy process required to post the uh notice in the newspaper for a public hearing no more than 14 but no less than 17 days from the hearing so it went in december 3rd and tonight if the levy is adopted i'll be filing it tomorrow with the county clerk's office so just a reminder the district is held to do the property tax limitation act cpi plus any new property so cpi for this year was 1.4 percent
004and the tax rate plus the equalized assessment value is how the district collects its property tax revenue cpi has been very fluctuating over the last couple years the 1.4 has been a little on the lower end over the last five years this year we're expecting around five percent uh cpi so are on january 12 we'll know the exact cpiu for december and that will be used to collect uh our revenue for the 2022 year so we're going to see drastic changes that's going to be the highest in at least 20 years that we've seen so as equalized assessed value in the district rises it's generally an inverse relationship where individuals tax rates will drop in the district so rising property values help everyone out in terms of tax rate as a reminder the district's primary
005source of revenue 75 percent is devoted to property taxes and so this is the most important slide just really dictates what we are going to be asking for tonight and that's in the blue portion so that is part of the balloon levy process we're asking for more money than we reasonably expect to receive which helps us capture all revenue in the uh that's possible for the district so the yellow portion is what we our best gas levy that we expect to receive so that's what i'm basing all of our future projections on the blue portion is what we'll be requesting from this state sorry from the county and what we do is we'll get a worksheet back that we can kind of divvy up among the funds just to make sure we match my best
006guess projections um this is mostly for the public but i always include some frequently asked questions on how your tax bill might be affected um by the district's tax levy so i won't go through all this but it is attached to the district's website you can kind of see why my property tax bill might rise more than the 1.4 percent cpi that we're asking and it all depends to do with your home values in relation to your neighbors but also how the district's tax rate compares to our neighboring districts so as with everything the the areas that have more commercial property and more um more uh valuation in the area they generally have a lower tax rate which is you'll see that with uh you know kill deer hawthorne areas like that but uh the
007district is uh excellent stewards of our dollars and we always budget appropriately and ask for only the amount of money that we're expected to use during a fiscal year are there any questions so once the special meeting ends once we convene to the regular meeting we'll vote on the tax levy and i'll just be uh there'll be a lot of papers to sign today i need signatures from pretty much everybody and a bunch of documents so i appreciate it great thank you very much mr rogers okay we now open the floor to public comments and petitions on non-agenda items do we have any public comments or petitions on non-agenda items this evening okay it does not look like we do so i will um ask for a motion to adjourn from the tax levy meeting
008okay moving into the next meeting calling to order the combined meeting for diamond lake school district 76 roll call please sure here okay we now open the floor to public comments on agenda items for the combined meeting this evening do we have any public comments public comments okay then we will move on to presentations and we have two fantastic presentations tonight so good evening board of education members the district leadership team and distinguished family and friends of district 76 i was so moved and touched by the emails i read and the phone call that i received last thursday morning from a colleague and a friend and also a parent of an aptakissic junior high school student about how amazing our boys basketball team was at the december 8th game board members as well as the
009district leadership team and public you have access to all the emails that we received in our board packets it's exactly how we hope our students would behave especially when no one is looking the good news is a lot of people were looking and the boys kind selfless and caring actions were witnessed by so many that were in the stands that evening the west oak middle school boys basketball team along with their coach mr steve nolte are here tonight to be recognized and celebrated for demonstrating excellence in character sportsmanship and teamwork their exemplary actions and leadership are examples for all of us to follow at this time i would like to read a letter from dr heather frzeli superintendent of fox lake school and also aptakissic junior high school parent dear dr sharma lewis and district
01076 board of education members as a parent and an educator i am compelled to write to celebrate the grit and grace of your seventh grade boys basketball team my son plays on the seventh grade team for aptakissic junior high school and i've had the privilege of seeing both games where our team has played yours and have been impressed at both outings in the first game this season the boys showed grit through the game playing incredibly hard with true tenacity regardless of the score i complimented the coach specifically because truly the boys played so hard in the second game which took place last week the boys demonstrate demonstrated the same grid but added to it a grace that is rarely seen seen among adults let alone 12 and 13 year olds our team manager got up
011to suit up and play in his game something he has aspired to do all season our boys were certainly excited about this and the bleachers were packed with his friends and family when he came in we knew our boys would get him the ball and make sure he had the opportunities to shine what we did not expect was the grace your boys showed and likewise make his magical event for our player make this a magical event for our player they clearly knew something was up and backed off so he had plenty of opportunities to shoot they also never put pressure on him to steal the ball which they could have easily done given their tenacity our player even scored a basket by the end of the fourth quarter it was very clear that by the
012whole crowd regardless of the team that you supported was touched by what happened as evidenced by the cheering from everyone for our student i ventured to guess that this will be a memory that lasts for our students and his families for excuse me our student and his family forever additionally i believe no one in that gym will ever forget the spirit and sportsmanship that were all felt your students made this happen and i'm so glad they are being celebrated tonight i know you pride yourself on creating diamonds and i certainly attest to seeing diamonds in action this week with sincere appreciation dr heather ferzelli superintendent of schools and now i'd like to introduce mr peter cunningham principal of west oak middle school to say a few words thank you dr sharma lewis i say this
013and all sincerity and and i mean this in a very good way that the actions by our boys do not surprise uh any of us because uh we have seen from their time in diamond lake all the way through um and it's a reflection of the parents values the communities and the teachers that these uh young men are men of kindness and understand the importance of service to others in sportsmanship i received a number of emails really the next day from a number of parents that were very touched by what our boys had done and i don't even know if our boys realized it they were just doing what they felt was right i actually in the process of sharing the story this evening the pto learned that there was another the many of these
014places around that team that at the the soccer team did something very similar earlier in the season i didn't even know about it where they saw a parent in need outside and ended up helping them carry tons of items they just do this there's a there's a book um that dr sharma lewis asked us all to read my first year was hired and there's a quote in there that i had to put on my wall where actually dr sherman lewis sparkled it and put it on my wall that says that academic achievement means nothing if our students do not become caring more loving people and while our students are high achieving we're proud of them and they grow they are caring and loving people and that is the highest compliment we can give our students
015so we applaud them and um i'm going to welcome actually steve nolte at this time to recognize some of them individually because he's the coach so come on coach hi there uh i'm steve nolte i'm the coach for seventh grade basketball team um i was thinking about this week this is my i've coached high school coach middle school this is my 26th season coaching and out of the 26 seasons i've seen a lot of good acts of kindness but nothing like this and i give these kids a ton of credit because all season long what i try to preach to them and still to them it's the same stuff that our teachers try to do every day and that's that we work hard we're gritty we fight no matter the situation we're in often times
016we have kids that are battling through adversity daily and these kids they fight day and day and day in our games sometimes they're kind of lopsided but we always battle we battle every minute of every game um and it was really cool and really special during this game even those were fighting and battling every second during that that they were able to step back and they were able to realize the situation and that's the second thing that i think we all try to instill them here at diamond lake is that we want them to be good people and care about others around them and their community and sometimes that means giving up something for yourself for those around you so i definitely give kudos to those guys we finished up our season last night unfortunately
017losing to uh at the kisik and and also our other game against woodlawn but um they they fought hard all season long i'm proud of these guys we should be proud of them as a school uh as a community parents should be proud of them their teachers would be proud of them i'm proud of all of you boys uh we have a good amount of them here tonight i would like to call each of them up uh if i can here where are we going okay um so i'm kind of i'm just seeing who's here and saying some names so i have uh jerry ortega come on come on down as i say your name guys uh kevin jimenez kevin jimenez esteban gonzalez lucas brophy brendan cardona tommy scheifele i have back there what do
018i got oh i got james crenshaw i have celso cabrera who's our team manager um sebastian cabrera and our our big our big man who uh is always fighting hard for us uh gautam serash [Applause] i didn't forget anybody did i awesome hey guys great job this season great job working hard i know you guys are continuing to work hard in the classroom and in any other athletics that you guys are a part of you know i'm always here to help you for anything that you need um but congratulations i think this is a great um opportunity for you guys to be recognized in front of the board of education here tonight seventh grade basketball team we are so proud of you guys thank you so much for shining on like bright diamonds and demonstrating
019such true character sportsmanship teamwork and leadership on behalf of district 76 and mr nolte thank you for leading such a great team thank you all right and thank you parents for coming mr hanson's going to take a quick picture thank you i think that was our first ever standing ovation but it was very well deserved so i think that was awesome one more round of applause how about that right they walk out all right and to keep the celebrations going we are going to uh finish off our presentations tonight with our diamond award winner and i'm going to ask mrs carmichael to come up and share who and why she nominated for a diamond award this month this is carmichael thank you hi i'm mrs carmichael and i'm tony and so um as team leader
020i wanted to um give a diamond award i'm going to try and be like right not emotional but it's too late um um aaron aaron grubb is going to earn this diamond award and i just want to say that um as i've been here i have been so supported by dr sharma lewis i have been supported by the board of education and i've been supported by our administration and as a first-year teacher i just want to tell you that aaron grubb has been a shining light and everything that exhibits the diamond award is is shined on by aaron aaron has taken an 8th grade curriculum that has been taught by a veteran teacher and she has completely changed it for the better and is rising to the expectations that we require of our eighth grade
021team so i am so thankful for her she makes an immediate impact on all of our students she made an immediate impact with our team i am so thankful that you have been hired by the district to be on our team we're so blessed to have you and i'm thanking you and i wanted to give you this diamond award because you are shining light and i think you're going to be an amazing teacher as you gain more strategies and i'm going to be here to support you as long as i can from here and beyond and i just want to thank you so much erin [Applause] and that concludes our presentations for this evening thank you i'm sorry congratulations thank you mr nolte too so it was nice to end our last meeting of the
022year on such like a posit or to start it on such a positive note and now we will move on to the exciting part of the meeting that is the business agenda first up on the business agenda for this evening is the omnibus vote agenda items under the omnibus photogender are considered routine and or non-controversial and will be approved by one motion if anyone board member staff administrator or citizen wishes to have a separate vote on any item or items that item or items will be pulled from the omnibus vote agenda and voted on separately be it resolved that the diamond lake 76 board of education accepts and approves omnibus vote agenda items a through e as listed may i have a motion to approve please yes okay that motion carries now we will move
023on to adopting the tax levy so may i have a motion to approve the adoption of the truth and taxation resolution the 2021 tax levy and the following amounts for which the total is 15 million 449 073 the education fund 11 million 700 000 the o m fund 1 million 500 000 the transportation fund seven hundred and fifty thousand the working cash fund eighty five thousand the imrf fund three hundred thousand the social security fund three hundred thousand the fire prevention and safety fund fifteen hundred the tort immunity fund 45 000 the special education fund 750 000 and the cdl imrf fund which is 17 573. um the resolution for the working cash oh no we went through all this okay and so may i have a motion to approve yes okay and that motion
024carries as well um be it resolve that the diamond lake 76 board of education accepts and approves the amended 2021-2022 board of education meeting calendar to reflect the following the january 2022 meeting date is changed from january 11 2022 to january 18 2022 to accommodate the approval of the district bill schedule and the june 2022 meeting dates are amended to one meeting on june 21st 2022 the june 7th meeting 2022 has been canceled may i have a motion to approve please yes okay moving on be it resolve the diamond lake school district 76 board of education accepts and approves the 2022 2023 school calendar as presented by the district leadership team may i have a motion to approve please yes that motion is approved moving on to personnel be it resolve the diamond like 76
025board of education accepts and approves the personnel items as depicted on the agenda we have five new hires one leave of absence two resignations and one retirement may have a motion to approve please yes okay and then the final personnel item be it resolve the dime like 76 board of education accepts and approves the resignation agreement with tara linga as presented may have a motion to approve please yes okay that motion carries as well um the following the final item on our business agenda this evening is the first reading of the press policies for press 108 um we will be voting on these at our january meeting does anyone have any items they would like to discuss this evening or any questions we can also have discussion before we vote on them in january okay
026then that concludes our business agenda for this evening moving on to board discussion do you any items reward discussion okay um oh actually i do uh one thing i wanted to bring up for board discussion was from the um triple i conference mrs bayless and i attended a session on um dei and during that session it was very interesting to hear kind of the training that was offered by um isb for boards to learn more about diversity equity and inclusion and i thought that might be something our board would want to pursue or look into pursuing for the next you know starting sometime in january so i just wanted to see if we had interest in that and i could reach out to them to see if we could set up some kind of training
027the presentation that they did was a high school district that has three different high schools that were um you know relatively different and they were talking about the different strategies they employed at each building and they really talked about a lot about making sure that with all the decisions their board was making that you know equity and inclusion were really at the forefront and i thought that that was you know it really resonated with me i thought that that was something very important um and that is something i think everyone can always learn more about and try to do better at and so i just thought i would bring that to the board and if it looks like everyone is interested then we can pursue that next year next calendar year okay um we had
028no freedom of information requests under notices and communications we have as usual the board meeting calendar and we also have um a governing board summary from c doll john did you attend that last cdl meeting i didn't know if there's anything you wanted to add oh i did i did uh i don't think there's there's too much to report the the first focus was on uh new agreements with the um with the teachers union and with the uh union representing the other uh staff members almost somewhat similar uh to to what we've done here relative to how we would address folks who would need to take off time due to covid okay then there were there were some other presentations as well but it's all in there it's on summary okay great thank you um
029then we will move on to public comments and petitions on non-agenda items as we have lost our audience we will look online to see if we have any public comments and again those could be typed into the chat box if we have them this evening i am not seeing any no okay um then we will move on to others and i'm going to call on mr hoffman again to talk um the stevenson high school district reached out to all of the feeder schools about um an energy commission for vernon township and mr hoffman was kind enough to attend that meeting last week um and i i just was gonna give you an opportunity to to kind of catch us up sure it was interesting uh like you said stevenson put it together but um the
030reason they put it together is that vernon township has come out to establish an energy resiliency commission and essentially it's about um the idea is that if different governmental and groups get together and we all work on it together um there there would be a better chance of us getting federal funding um for for energy initiatives and energy saving and green initiatives particularly with the buildback better money's coming down and uh and really what they're trying to put together is a what they call the voluntary non-binding co-op group and the first step would be to have some group come in and conduct an energy audit and the the participants in this commission would be not only the school districts that touch vernon township it wouldn't necessarily it wouldn't even be limited though to school districts
031for example anything that we would do could be expanded across our district it wouldn't be limited just within the borders of vernon township it would they're just trying to um to create a very loose barrier but sort of anybody who's affiliated in any way could join in including for example uh mandalay mondeline high school if they wanted to and such um uh and yeah and it's so it's made up of not just the school districts but the towns so vernon hills and buffalo grove and lincolnshire and and uh long grove to start and the idea is that uh a group would come in to conduct an energy audit and to see what opportunities there would be to uh to improve sort of our energy efficiency and and the work that we're doing and the type
032of stuff that could be covered through grants and um they were talking about a consulting company named verity which in in conjunction with the university of illinois uh could come in and perform such an audit it doesn't have to be them it can be another organization that conducts the audit um what verigy had offered was to conduct this energy audit at any of the groups that wanted it and uh the co all the costs for this initial audit would be covered by vernon township and uh and then from there they would provide their findings and ostensibly there should be opportunities everywhere for people to take advantage of to take advantage of energy efficiencies an example is that if you want to put on solar panels there's a significant upfront investment in infrastructure so is that
033the type of thing that could be covered by a government grant it doesn't have to be solar panels right it could be anything that's just an example and uh and interestingly this this group verity would also uh would also help write the grants at no charge at least that's the way it seems like on the purge on the surface any decision that we any decisions would be made on you know by each school district and each um in each governmental body and uh the hope is that there will be efficiencies in purchasing and and in obtaining grants if everybody worked together so uh the idea is that it would be cost neutral in the short term and there would be savings over the long term but it's all about reducing carbon footprint reducing energy costs
034so that was the first meeting just really to introduce the topic there was a follow-up meeting on sunday um that i i did not attend that steve frost who's going to be the re he's the president of the of the stevenson school district board of education and he's representing the school districts on this commission and there was a meeting on sunday evening with i guess the entire commission to introduce them to to the concept and it sounds like there's going to be a follow-up meeting later on this week yes that would involve the school districts again so um that's really everything that happened uh last week great thank you thank you for that um there's a follow-up meeting on thursday and mr rogers is going to um attend on behalf of the district and essentially
035they're just talking they're going to be talking about um using virgie and whether or not people want to proceed it sounds like that many of the districts already have kind of partners that would be similar to verity and i think they're going to try to hash that out and then meet with fergie just to hear from them so um mr rogers said he will keep us informed going forward it sounds like this is a very positive thing um [Music] and so thank you mr hoffman for attending that and you know i think we look forward to hearing more information does anyone have any questions or any other others this evening no okay um then before we adjourn to executive session i just wanted to thank everyone for the first kind of half of the school
036year for all of your contributions they are greatly appreciated we hope that you have a relaxing vacation you have a very happy and healthy new year and get to enjoy some time with your families and with that i would like a motion to adjourn to executive session for the appointment employment compensation discipline performance or dismissal of specific employees of the district or the legal counsel for the district including hearing testimony on a complaint launched against an employee or against legal counsel for the district to determine its validity we have a motion to adjourn please yes