[9/8/25] D65 - Committee of the Whole

001I know that I'm all good with no nuts and cookies. I can't hold the trunk in my hand. >> Oh my gosh. Okay, I'll go ahead and take roll call. It's today's Monday, September 8th, 2025. This is the committee of the whole meeting. The time is 5:02 p.m. Roll call. Anderson >> here. >> Salem >> here. >> Wilkins >> here. Pinker Oakdike >> here. >> Wymer >> here. >> Hernandez >> here. Next item up on the agenda is the land acknowledgement. We take time to acknowledge that the land we meet on is the traditional homelands of the council of three fires. The Pawatami, Ojiu, and Arawa. This land also served as an important meeting place for Miami, Pochunk, the Monomony, Inoka, Sack, Fox, Poria, Arapjo, Cheyenne, and other tribal nations. This land has long been

002a center for indigenous people to gather, trade, and maintain kinship ties. Located at the intersection of several great waterways, the region has become the site of travel and prosperity. We acknowledge Evston and John Evans are tied to the massacre of the Arapjo and Cheyenne for railroads and westward expansion upon which John Evans developed his wealth and founded Evston. This land was violently taken under settler colonialism through genocide and open warfare and the region that is now Illinois and Chicago land still home to thousands of native people who are actively struggling for sovereignty, self-determination and justice. The genocidal acts of settler colonialism extended to people pe people of Africa and their enslaved descendants. Despite Illinois eventually prohibiting slavery, slavery was an accepted practice before and after statethood. The vestigages of slavery remain through the throughout the

003United States and directly affect the descendants of enslaved peoples, rich and heterogeneous communities who helped define the African diaspora. The genocidal patterns of violence against peoples of African descent and indigenous people have been replicated to exclude and harm people from many intersecting marginalized identities in the United States, religious, minoritized, disabled, and LGBTQ identified peoples, black and indigenous people of color, and people of color at large. These patterns demonstrate that the pursuit and state action violence against BIPAC is a daily struggle for liberation from continued social, political, and economic anti-black racism and oppression. Today we acknowledge that we are living, breathing, loving, grieving, laughing, and sharing space on unseated territory. May we learn to honor the historical and contemporary presence and power of the people in their belief that we must be caretakers of the lands

004and waters for the livelihood of future generations. Uh the next item up on our agenda is public comments. Members of the public are welcomed and invited to address the board during open public meetings. Speakers are discouraged from using the public comment period to air specific concerns about staff members being mindful that the public comment period is not a suitable form for factf finding and or resolution of disputes. Rather, we encourage members of the public who have concerns about specific district employees to follow district communication guidelines found in the student handbook. Please remember to state your name and that you have three minutes to address the board. Also note that it is not customary for the board to respond to public comments. The best way to correspond with members of the board is by emailing schoolboard

005district5.net. And with that, do we have any >> Yes, we have uh two comments. Um, one from Lindsay White and Christy Norick. you can come up to B. >> Sorry, I wrote down notes because I'm I'm nervous to do this, but I thought it was important to say what I'm going to say. So, I'm Lindsay White. I am on the Oakton PTA. I have two elementary kids at Oakton, and I have one actually in this building who will go to Oakton next year. Um, I wanted to take a couple minutes tonight to say that I don't think it's possible that we would overvalue equity in the school closure conversation. I know no decisions have been made, but I thought it was important to come tonight and say it. Um, this is not said in an

006effort to save any one particular school over another. I'm not coming here and begging you not to close my school. Um, everyone is going to say that their school is the best school and the most important school. I think it's Okay, I'm going to go back to my notes. Um, okay. Um, uh, in order to do the least harm to the most vulnerable members of the community, um, that should be what we, um, would seek to do. Um, I consider what we choose to do here in the school closure conversation as a practice in living the values that we as a community in Evston would like to uphold, the things that we say are important to us as a community in Evston, Illinois. Um, everyone who everyone loves their neighborhood school. No one wants to

007see their school closed. However, there are members of this community in Evston who will be disproportionately disproportionately affected if their neighborhood school were to close. Um, those in the community who are low-income, those who speak English as a second language, who likely wouldn't want to be here tonight given our current political climate, um, those who have been historically marginalized. Those are the neighbors and families that we need to think about lifting up in this process. Um we need to remember and insist that we are all in this as a shared community and it is our collective responsibility to take care of one another. Um this includes all of our students and families. Uh there are a lot of parents and caregivers who aren't privileged enough to attend a board meeting at 5:00 p.m. on a

008Monday night with no child care. They're working. They don't feel safe being out of their homes. it is just privilege in order to be here sitting here tonight. Um, and I don't want anyone to get left out of the conversation because they're not able to sit in those seats over there tonight. Um, and we need to demand on their behalf that in this school closure plan that we will do the least harm and protect those who are the most vulnerable. Um, I urge the board not to leave these kids behind. Uh the harm that a school closure could bring to a low-income family is unfortunately much greater than what many of us in this room would experience. Um whether they may be here tonight or not, they're an important and valued part of our Evston

009community and we need to think about them and consider them in a meaningful way. Thank you. Hello, my name is Christy Norick and I have three kids at Washington Elementary and I'm concerned because uh there were just a whole slew of new iPads purchased for the school for all the fifth graders, all the first graders, and all the kindergarteners. And as we're so concerned about our budget right now, um I I just really think that it was a missed opportunity to save some money and increase the learning and academics and capacity of our teachers and kids to achieve their greatest potential by getting individual devices for the kindergarteners and first graders. And we already had them, right? It's like these are new ones. So I I would just encourage the board to more carefully look

010at those spending decisions and think not only about how they impact the budget but also how they impact the learning in the classroom. Thank you. >> That concludes a public comment. >> Thank you to our public comment participants. Um we are now board comments. Colleagues, any comments on >> um Mr. Can we approve the agenda for today? >> Oh, yes. Let's approve the agenda. I'm sorry. >> I move that the board approved today's meeting agenda as presented. >> Henderson, >> yes. >> Salem, >> yes. >> Wilkins, >> yes. >> Sinker, >> yes. >> Wymer, >> yes. >> Hernandez, >> yes. >> Thank you. >> Apologies for that. Next is board comments. Right. Well, there's a comment that uh that we formulated here uh having to do with the SDRP process. We want to begin tonight

011by sharing that we understand the gravity of what lies ahead. In the weeks to come, the board will be faced with difficult decisions, including the closing of schools. We felt it was important to offer this statement now so that our community hears directly from us and about how we intend to approach this work. We extend our appreciation to the members of the SDRP committees for the time, expertise, and thoughtful deliberations you have contributed. We look forward to reviewing the scenarios that emerge from your work on September 29th. And we also look forward to receiving Superintendent Turner's perspectives on these scenarios informed by her vision for the district. Together, these inputs will provide the foundation for this board's deliberations. As a board, September 29th marks the point where we begin to take direct responsibility for the

012decisions ahead. The superintendent and her team working with community members have been developing the scenarios and options as those come to us. We want to be transparent to how about how we will approach the work. Our priorities will be as follows. Right sizing our facilities, determining how many schools we need to close or consolidate to reach an efficient utilization rate with walkability, facility condition, equity, and long-term sustainability as guiding principles. two, defining a sustainable operational budget, identifying the level of cost reductions needed each year to ensure the district's long-term financial stability. And three, rebuilding reserves and reinvesting in our buildings, setting a responsible annual amount to restore our fund balance and to address non-life safety capital needs so that we do not repeat past cycles of disinvestment and structural deficits. In the weeks ahead, the

013board will participate in community coffees and other conversations to listen closely to you, our families, staff, and neighbors. We welcome these opportunities to engage as we take in the voices of the committees, the leadership of our superintendent, and the experiences of our community. Our commitment is to do the difficult work we were elected to do, make informed decisions that rise our our district, strengthen financial sustainability, and confirm program and transportation models that provide access to learning opportunities for as many youth as possible. give it away to our curriculum and policy committee. >> Okay, we can start the curriculum and policy port part of the meeting. Uh first on our agenda, we've got the achievement and accountability report. All right. Good evening. >> Thank you. >> Hello. My name is Donna Cross. Uh I'm the executive

014director of research, assessment, accountability, and data, also known as RAD. Um because that is a long title. Um so I'm really glad to be Most of you I know, some of you I don't. So hello and welcome. And I'm here to present our SY25 achievement and accountability report. So before we get started, I do want to give you all an update on our revised reporting structure for this school year. Um so our goal in the RAD department is to provide accurate, relevant, accessible data to all stakeholders to inform decision-m to elevate the impact of policies, curriculum, and instructional framework and lead to continuous improvement. So here's our revised reporting structure. Uh we're starting with the achievement accountability report. This will be an annual report that will provide outcomes from the previous school year aligned to

015the equity journey continuum as well as a strategic plan. So we'll be looking at that today and then that that report will be available on the district website. In addition to that, we will be providing quarterly progress updates which will give quick snapshots of current progress on student academics as well as climate indicators um and snapshots toward our district priority work aligned to the strategic plan. We also are very excited coming soon we we are in the process of developing an interactive data dashboard. Again, one of our goals is to have timely, accessible, transparent data at a regular cadence. Um so this would be dynamic data that's updated regularly that include enrollment um attendance and assessment data so that anyone can access that information at any time and available on our district website. We are

016looking to launch that in the winter. Um, and then we also are looking to launch a strategic plan scorecard that will be a really nice visual representation of our progress of both the implementation and the outcomes of our strategic plan um goals. Um, so that will also be accessible on our district website. Again, making our data transparent and accessible um in many different forms. So, let's jump right in. I'm very excited to um focus on our achievement accountability report today. Um so you do have the account the achievement accountability report and the board packet and um it's already online. Thank you to our communications department. Um and that kind of breaks down it starts with highlights of our students and our educators and our leaders in our community really highlighting in narrative form some of

017the wonderful work that's been going on in district 5 also with wonderful pictures which I think we all love to see. Uh then we'll move into strategic plan and goals and the accountability summary and then you'll see the data overview for learning conditions and student learning which are two parts of the equity journey continuum. Um followed by the student learning scorecard. So this uh puts our two big assessments our NWA map and our A data um broken down by the different subcategories. Uh then rounding out the report is the elevating educators which is the third indicator of the equity journey continuum and finally technical notes in the appendix. Uh the presentation today is going to follow a similar um cadence. We're going to start with student learning goals and headlines and then move into the

018data overview. We'll then go into learning conditions goals and headlines. Then look into the learning conditions data. And then we'll end with elevating educators, student learning. So here are student learning goals uh set by our five-year strategic plan. You can see we have some NWA MAP goals as well as Illinois assessment of readiness, also known as AR goals. Some of the headlines and again we're going to get into some of this data. Um, we have seen an increase in the percent of students meeting and exceeding college readiness benchmarks aligned to the SAT in both language arts and in math. That is for fifth and eighth fifth through eighth grade only. So, I'll show that when we get there. We've also seen an increase in the percent of students who met or exceeded expectations on I

019and language arts and in math. Um, there is an asterk there because the data we have right now is preliminary. We won't get the final results for another week or two. Once those final results are in, we'll add any addendum that's needed. Um, we did see a decrease in the percent of students meeting and exceeding expected growth targets in language arts and in math on end map there. So, first looking at the meeting college readiness benchmarks for SAT. So, for language arts, we have a goal of 80% of our students and right now we're just kind of making gradual progress in that area. When we look at the students making that college readiness benchmarks for SAT and math, we've actually met that goal of 50% of our students. We're at 51% right now. Um so

020this is the meeting college readiness benchmarks is for fifth and eighth grade only. Essentially what um NWA MAP did um along with SAT is they they did a linking study between a MAP RIT score toward what a student would possibly predicted to score on the SAT. um that that basically like a benchmark of of what they would apply for. So that that would be a 480 in reading and a 530 um in math. Um one of our next goals is that percent at or below the 25th percentile. Um we have kept fairly steady in this, not seeing much progress either way. So the the next one is percent meeting expected growth and this is spring to spring. Um students are only uh taken in this if they have a spring score from the previous year

021and a spring score of this year. So that's who's included. So it is a a matched model. Um so you have uh language arts we saw our goal 75% we saw a slight decline and now we're starting to see a gradual increase back up. Um and then in math we are seeing a more significant decline in the percent of students making that expected growth from spring to spring. So now we're going to move into AR. Um so this is the percent met or exceeded expectations on AR. This is the original cut scores and performance levels. Um so for language arts we had a goal of 55% of our students. As of this spring with the preliminary scores we have met that goal was 54.6. So rounded would be 55% of our students. Um we saw

022a pretty significant increase from our baseline year of SY22. In math um we are making very gradual progress uh toward the percent meeting or exceeding expectations but we are currently not on track to meet that goal. Um so that is in progress and again those final results will be available to us in the next week or two. So over this summer um you're like what original to new over this summer uh Illinois State Board of Education um has done a lot of work on um revising uh the categories uh for the IR as well as um doing a little bit of of revision for the cut scores. So coming from a five scale, they're now going to four categories um with uh proficient and above proficient kind of equating to that meter exceeded. Um so

023with the preliminary data, we were able to um do a little bit of alignment with those new cut scores and these would be the percent of our students who are both proficient or above proficient um in language arts and math with the new cut score levels. So we're at 64.1% for language arts, 52.7% in math. Once those are final, we will then publish the full report. Learning conditions. Here are learning conditions goals and headlines. Um so our attendance has continued uh this upper trend. Um going getting very very close at 95% attendance rating. Um the percent of students with level three, four and five incidents is down to 7.5% from 10% from our baseline year. And the percent of level three, four, and five incidents is up to 24% but the total number of incidents

024is down about 45% and the total number of level three, four and five incidents is down about 41%. Um so when you decrease that overall denominator, that percentage is going to go up. Um and when we look at the data, it'll be a little clearer there. Um and we do have a decrease in the total number of suspensions. However, there still is some disproportionality in our subgroups. So, average daily attendance, we have just seen a a steady increase in our average daily attendance. Um last year, our overall district score was 93.7%. Um, we have several schools that are very very we're very very close to meeting that 95% average day attendance goal in the SY25 school year and Orington actually exceeded that for the school year. It's really great to see a lot of those

025schools really increasing that attendance. So level three, four, and five incidents. So what this data is showing us is the percent of students who have a level three, four and five compared to the total number of level three, four and five. Um so we level the behavior according to the behavior continuum. What that allows us to do is one as we're collecting data understanding the intensity of the behavior that's happening especially if it's repeated and allows us to connect students with the appropriate supports. Um level ones and level twos are mostly classroom managed behaviors. Um examples like you know out of their seat or an inappropriate use of electronic device like they have their phone out when it should be put away. Um those are kind of level one and level two. Those are managed

026by the classroom um educator and and those are more minor. As you get to level three, four and five, those are more major. Um those are typically admin managed behavior. So an an administrator is the one who is going to step in in majority of those behaviors. So example could be like fighting things like that. So again our purpose is not just to collect data for data sake or do you have a wrap sheet on a child instead it is for us to connect those appropriate supports whether it be uh through a face liaison or social worker or counselor or having a mentor in the building. So yes, so we do see a decrease overall of just the number of three, four and five and a decrease of the percentage of those incidents being three,

027fours and fives. Um and then this is the percent of the level three, four and five incidents compared to the total number of behavior incidents. So we have this goal of decreasing the percent of 3, four and five. Um however when we've had such a drastic decrease in the total number of incidents it did you know did make that percentage go up but I am very happy to see 1,200 compared to 2100 34 and5s and 5,488 total compared to 10,000. Um so I'm still seeing this as some positive movement toward our goal for behavior. Um and then finally this is in school and out of school suspensions. Um so you'll see uh the type the number that we have but just by the type of those suspensions and then the total number of students. So

028some of our students did receive more than one of those. Um and then again you can see the racial breakdown um students with IEP breakdown and the free reduced lunch status breakdown of students who have at least one out of school suspension. So these are this is based on this of the students who have an out of school suspension. This is the percent 70% of of those students are black. 47% have an IEP and 82% are free reduced lunch. Overall our district has a very low out of school suspension numbers. Um however this this disproportionality still exists. And finally, elevating educators. Um, so I did want to uh bring to your attention the the five essential scores. Um, some of our headlines. We've really seen some improvements in effective leaders and collaborative teachers as well

029as involved families. Um, we did see a decrease in supportive environment and ambitious instruction has remained the same. Um the reason uh the two on the left are grayed out, it's because beginning in the spring of 2025, um the five essential survey scores were reccalibrated after 11 years. Um and so those results for SY 24 and SY25 have been recalibrated, but they are not going to go back and recalibrate all the rest of them. So you really can't compare, unfortunately, four years ago to now. Um, I did want you to see at least where those scores were. Um, but we can only compare back those two years and there is the full five essentials report in the appendix of this that uh Cindy Gonzalez has created. I did want to pull out, especially since we're

030talking about elevating our educators in the five essentials, the two measures that that improved were collaborative teachers and effective leaders. These are the two teacher um respondent areas. Um and so you could compare across those two years. And so what you're seeing in these the graph are basically the meta-indicators, those smaller subcategories underneath um those measures. So looking at quality professional development and school commitment, collective responsibility, teacher teacher trust and collaborative practices. And then under effective leaders, program coherence, teacher influence, teacher principal trust, and instructional leadership. So, we've seen improvement in all of those areas, which is great to see. Um, and then one other thing I really wanted to highlight, um, over the summer, so this summer when people are off, over 450 educators and staff, um, took part in eight courses that somewhere

031between 1 to 10 hour courses, um, that was provided by our instructional technology team, um, on on all different types of digital literacy, AI, uh, digital citizenship, computer literacy, effective use of classroom, iPads, tools and all those fun things in instructional technology. Over 450 education staff took part in at least one of those courses um which is again over the summer when they are off taking on those continuous learning responsibilities and really trying to elevate their practices using technology. So I'm really proud of that work and I think that's it. So thank you. >> Thank you. There is some really good stuff in there. um really happy to see the things around just attendance going up, some of the growth that we've made um you know the decline in behavior incidents. So um glad to

032see all that and thank you for explaining uh the data around like our environment. I was wondering why those numbers went down which explained it's more of a data issue than than something that's actually happening. Um I've got to say if you haven't read it my favorite part is the our student section. I really enjoyed that part. So, anyone who uh hasn't had a chance, it's great hearing about all of the things that our students are doing and leading in the district. Um, I've just got a few questions. Um, so like I saw that there there it looks like there are gains in map growth for language and maybe we're not doing what we want to do for math math growth. Can you talk a little bit and and some of this might come in

033other presentations, but if someone can just touch on it a little bit um what do we sort of think is driving the growth from um the language in particular? Do we think that curriculum changes have anything to do with that? Would love to hear a little bit about >> Okay. >> But don't don't leave them. >> I'll just I'll stay here. >> Okay. Don't leave. more curricular deep dive into that aspect. >> Great. Great. Good evening. >> Um, in the last couple of years, we've move made some changes in our literacy approach. Um, we haven't just adopted new curricular materials, but we also have adopted practices. and our practices have leaned more into the science of reading and lifting up the systematic approach of of learning foundational skills with Hegardy Geodess and foundations. And so

034um the impact of that over time we also have lifted up like um progress monitoring for our third through eighth graders meaning we are following their fluency and um approaching the science of reading that way for older readers. And then we've also had some strategic ways of placing in complex text across all the grades kindergarten through 8th grade um that are grade level and all students have access to it um even our diverse learners. >> Oh, that's great. Okay, good. Um yeah, that's so fundamental. So, I'm glad to see um improvement in that area. Um and then on the math side, can can you just talk a little bit about like what we're doing there or thinking about doing there to hopefully see more progress? Yeah, sure. Um, so a couple of things that happened.

035One was we did curriculum adoption backtoback in the past few years. So our teachers have been through that process too quickly. Um, and they've finally landed. It's taken them a couple of years to get new materials under their belt as you understand that there's a learning curve with that. Um, so that's one thing. Another thing is that by the time kids hit third grade, fourth and fifth, the content ramps up pretty quickly in terms of fractions, decimals, and percents. And the content is a lot to be planning with for teachers. They're generalists in K5. So, we're doing more work with that. Um, that said, one of the things some of the things that we're trying to do differently this year is first of all, schools are focusing goals for their school work plan with math

036as well, which has not been the past practice. So they have a math goal in there which is going to help us focus on math as well and not just literacy in the K5 space. Um and then with I Ready now being our diagnostic and everything we are able to align our instruction and planning and professional learning with that data and target and have focused practice and intervention that is all aligned to one system. And if you're familiar with those materials, they also have individualized pathways for kids. So we're starting to use that more. So, we're really focusing in on that and helping our educators plan with that. We do think that'll help. Um, and then last but not least, um, building thinking classroom practices. We're promoting that to get more ownership and for kids

037to do the thinking and talking as opposed to a traditional classroom where it is teaching by telling. So, some of these are in play right now and the focus has ramped up on that this year and that's going to help us move forward with the math goals. Yeah. >> Got it. That's great. You know, I'm a big fan of building thinking classrooms. So, I love it whenever we hear that being incorporated. Okay. Um, that's great. Any questions for them before I because I have another >> I have a question about the disproportionality in the behavior scores and >> sure the disproportionality in the suspension for black students students that are under IEPs and free and reduced lunch. And I notice in the report that there are strategies mentioned, studentbased strategies that are mentioned to help

038uh make some improvement in those areas. But what about the other side of the the equation? What are some of the strategies that staff and teachers will be? >> You have Brian right behind you. There you go, Brian. Go ahead, Brian. >> Good evening. So, a couple of the things that we're doing in the buildings this year that we've done over the last year and a half, deescalation trainings for buildings. So, for instance, I facilitated a deescalation training for Walker Elementary staff. Um, and what that really just focuses on is a staff's communication style and being aware of what your communication style is with the students um, that are in your care, but also recognizing your personal biases that might come into play when you are trying to deescalate a certain behavior. Um, what we're

039also trying to do is, as I looked at the behavior referral data from last year, just noticed that sixth graders were among the highest. And so that just says that sixth graders were transitioning having a rough time transitioning into the middle school. And so this year face leaison are doing six week groups uh trimester groups lunch groups and then they'll be doing 7 through uh weeks 7 through 12 they'll be connecting with the students that are in their lunch groups um individually but really trying to get students to connect first and then when we start talking about tier two tier three then you're getting that level of support. Right. So, first when students enter a building, they have to have, especially in a new environment, they have to have somebody that they can connect with.

040And that's going to lay the foundation for what their school experience is going to look like for the remainder of the year, especially when you're coming into a new building. So, making sure that there's a connection piece. Also, making sure that we are uh aligned throughout buildings in terms of everybody knowing what the tier level of supports are. So, face lesson is at tier one, counselors at tier two, and social workers at tier three. So just making sure that everybody is understanding what everybody's job and what everybody's work is when it comes to getting the support and the connection that our students need. >> Is there some kind of transition plan for students that are suspended for when they come back into the building? Yes. >> And how are how are the families how are

041the parents or guardians or caregivers involved in that? >> Yeah. So when it comes to out of school or in school suspension, um there is a re-entry meeting that needs to be held. It's mandatory that that is held. And so all the building leaders know this. Um and when it comes to an in school or out of school suspension, uh I am the gatekeeper, right? And so they need to contact me and request and we will discuss, you know, what the history of that student has been, what interventions have been put in place in the past or this school year. Um, and then we will communicate that to the to the family. But when we communicate the out of school, when the building leader communicates that to the to the family, the out of school

042or in school suspension, they're also communicating that a re-entry meeting needs to be held. And so what that re-entry meeting is is to look at in the meantime, what they need to be doing is placing some strategies, getting some strategies into place so we don't have this occur again. But then looking at what components do we need to to have in place, what let's review behavior. Let's review the the the severity of harm if it may have caused harm in the classroom or in the building. Um what impact your behavior may have had on your family, on yourself. So just really not just having a re-entry meeting to say, "Hey, here you are. Let's get back to the classroom. What did you do wrong?" But just really taking an in-depth look in terms of what

043can you do next in order to prevent the same thing from happening. >> Thank you. >> Followup um question one, just is there a difference? I see gender isn't here. Is there any is it like 50/50 in terms of gender in terms of suspensions >> or do we know? >> So black males. >> Okay. Okay. >> Eyes. >> Okay. And then >> suspensions. >> So now looking the opposite. Um so I agree with you Pat. You know that's problematic. Um but you also your numbers have gone down a lot. And so can you say something? Is there is this a relationship between face? How would you imag what what happened to make the overall numbers go down in terms of you know relationships with students? So I think a couple things. One I think people

044are getting people students got settled back into school right after COVID. And so everybody had to relearn including staff had to relearn school and relearn how to communicate with each other right cuz you were out of school. People were out of school for a year and a half. I mean socially that that's a that's a big hit. So I think everybody had to get to that point. But then I think what we're doing as a district is we're being intentional about establishing that relationship from the time you walk into the building to the time you walk through the halls into the classroom. Right? So all the teachers are connecting with their students are standing out in front of the hall, standing out in the hallways. Good morning. How are you doing? Um you have face

045there. You have social workers there, building leaders there, custodians check. I mean everybody's doing their part to connect with a student in the building. And so when you have a greater sense of belonging within the building, then you're going to see a decrease in certain behaviors and or if those behaviors do take place, then students know that they can reach out to certain people. They have trusted adults in the building that they can talk to and that makes a huge difference. >> And along those lines, I think Dr. Plaza is here. I don't >> Yeah. I also think that Dr. Plaza can speak to the character strong, the purposeful people. I mean the very very intentional SEAL curriculum that's been rolled out of districts. >> And just want to echo too the the focus really

046this year is is intentional focus around the first 20 days of school and how we intentionally do that and set that up for this particular school year. I think all of the things that, you know, Brian has talked about is the stuff that we've done literally the past couple of years and I feel like it's getting routine and systematic, but this year we just want to focus on making sure those first 20 days as we're weeding in the instructional pieces. We're being thoughtful about how to create the systems, the routines, the procedures, so kids know what is expected and the relationships are being formed between adults and kids and kids with kids if that makes any kids with kids. Yeah. Um if that makes any sense. >> I think to that point too, uh character

047strong and purposeful people, which is our tier one program, uh purposeful people is prek through five. character strong is six through eight. All of our classrooms teach that once a week. Uh and it's about direct instruction of social emotional learning, but also a lot of opportunities for kids to learn how to interact with each other in expected ways. Uh with support and redirection within the program and from their teacher. And so it really helps them understand like this is how we do school. We all show up the same way. Respect means the same thing in a kindergarten classroom as it does in an eighth grade classroom. The definition does not change. Uh, and so it provides a lot more consistency. Last year was the first year that we rolled it in all in out in

048all of our classrooms. And so we did a couple tweaks this summer and helped bring more people on board with that. And so it's back in all pre-K through 8th grade classrooms again. >> Yeah. And I just want to echo this is the this second week of school, the third week. >> Third week. >> Uh, the third week of school. And so the second week of school um I had the opportunity to uh join um for academic learning walks with the uh teacher and learning team. And so uh we had the opportunity to visit two schools. We visited um spent half a day at shoot and we spent the other half of the day at dolls. And I think to see character strong in action in our middle school in a middle school SLA class

049where the teacher was teaching students Spanish full the entire time in the class and they engage in the character strong curriculum. I mean just to walk into that environment it was very calm. teacher was doing a really really great job and kids were really engaged and really receptive to the curriculum. And so essentially that's what we're trying to create with this focus around the first 20 days of school because it will pay dividends if we focus on it now. It'll carry us through how those things are sustained and established over time. So just wanted to echo that as well. And these these folks were part of the walk. So we had a good time last week. >> Great. And just real quick, I think the other piece that goes back to your question is we

050did a um Dr. Plaza and I did a a webinar on the behavior response continuum for institute day and so all staff got that webinar. All staff had the heard the same language. So that makes a a big difference when we're talking about guidance and everybody using the same language and and where do we start and how do we address uh maladaptive behaviors in our classrooms. So, thank you. >> Thank you. >> Any more questions or um I just want to say it's helpful for me to hear how this is the math in particular is being tied to the school work plans. Um to see the the the strategy there. That's really helpful to know. Uh the other bit um I just wanted to give a shout out for um the attention to the accessibility

051of our data and the transparency um and the options you've got. They're exciting. Um and >> go back to like the third slide. I think you the third slide. >> Yeah. >> The plan. >> Um so that our you know anyone in the district or outside of the district should be able to log in and get very accessible up-to-date information. This is this is great. So looking forward to this. Just add one uh quick question. I know you're you're switching to the new uh you're switching away from MAP this year to the new um testing. I think it's called STAR. Is that right? >> Yeah. Uh Renaissance Star for literacy and I ready for math. >> Okay. How how do you anticipate or are you going to just switch the scores or are you going

052to do a conversion so we can track it over time? >> Great question. I had my notes but got sick. Um yay. So we are going to do both ways essentially. Um so our our five-year strategic plan was written with uh NWA MAP and the five levels of IR. So when we do our achievement accountability report we've b there's linking studies out there between those assessments. So we can link those assessments. We've also done our own internal linking study to ensure that our student data is going to continue to match those national norms linking studies. So essentially, we're going to uh norm for the achievement accountability report. Um and then for the quarterly progress update, we're going to show you our new data like what it looks like in STAR and norm those uh those

053the new norm the map data, the historical map data to our new assessment. So you'll see you'll still be able to see longitudinal data of where students were and where they are now um normed on the same scales. Um, so we'll be doing it both ways until our the strategic plan is done and then we can move into making goals toward our new our new assessment systems. But all of those could be linked with very good confidence. >> Thank you. >> Love, go ahead. >> So something that gives me a a sense of urgency around SDRP is that um we're we're handling major things all at once. Um, and I'm aware this is the 2425 accountability report. I'm wondering if you can just talk about the impact of right. So SDRP1, SDRP2 unfolding while we're

054we were doing all of this. Dr. Turner, I wonder if you can just speak to and to me it to me it just we got to get this right. We got to get this done so we can put all of our focus on this. So I'm just curious if you can speak to the impact. >> Yeah. What's the question again? Say it again. Well, that this all unfolded in 2425 in which we were going through SDRP1, SDRP 2, which involved major changes to uh um for instance staff um and um significant impact. So, I'm just curious if you can speak to we made some progress uh especially in the meet or exceeding language arts. We've got room to grow. Um just want to honor that this happened. Yeah. uh while all of that was unfolding

055as well as it's a reminder to me as a board member we got to get this right for the future so we can be focused. >> Yeah. And I think I mean thank you for bringing that up and I think you know at the end of the day our focus here as a district we we keep our our foot on the post on how we're moving academic outcomes for students. And so we never despite all of the things that's going on we still keep that at the forefront. Hence why we have um specific teams and departments to really support that work. And so um I mean what what I can say specifically last year was you know it was going into year two of our ELA uh curriculum and and we heightened up the professional

056learning that we provided for ELA. Um we stayed the course and kind of slowed down a little bit and kind of repeated some of the same professional learning opportunities. um schools were able to really hone in and zero in on where they wanted where where they wanted to focus in terms of content specific whether they wanted to set goals aligned to ELA or they wanted to set goals aligned to math and I think that's representative in the data that you see because the schools that did that the data you you see where the focus overall for us as a district where it went up and I think everybody pretty much focused on ELA as as the guiding factor. To the to the earlier point, this we we did switch out the math curriculum. We chose

057a curriculum during COVID um that worked for us during COVID. We came back that curriculum and math didn't work. We started to go through a process and then we adopted another curriculum. Right? So that's going to take some time for us to catch up. But I'm confident um that I Ready is really going to get us there because they get they have more frequent opportunities to progress monitor. uh they come with comprehension checks and they come with all sorts of other pieces added to the curriculum that gives teachers a more frequent dipstick of how students are progressing along as they are teaching standards versus us just waiting to the end for the NW or not to the end but doing the the benchmarks when we give the NWA um assessments and those kind of things.

058And so, um, I mean, I'll be very honest. I our our teaching and learning team, you know, have been resilient. Like, educators have been in classrooms teaching as the the teaching and learning department has continued to go in and support. We ramped up building the capacity of school leaders because I think that was a huge uh piece for us. And so, we're we're not taking our foot foot off the post with that. That's still a priority for us. Um it's a priority for me amongst all of the things. My priority is ensuring that I devote my time and can get into schools and actually see it with my team. And really this year it's really a focus around just the calibration uh piece and us all making sure that what we're seeing we're in alignment

059with what we're seeing. We can name that. We got instructional framework strategies to tie back to that. But then we are able to give school school teams very concrete uh strategies and support of how to continue to move the needle on instruction. And so it's a school system. All the pieces move and we got to move move with all the pieces. And so for us um it's it's going to just continue to remain a focus for us. Can um so the math for black students at 12 16 15 what is the state average for black students? Do we know >> for AR? >> Yeah, I'm looking at I guess this is I'm looking at the >> CB college readiness benchmark. >> Yeah. >> Uh which is a but and this is under ACT, right? >>

060Yeah. >> ACT. Okay. For the ACT or the SAT? >> ACT. ACT. >> I don't know if I have to jump ahead, but I can get that for you. We would have to follow up on that. >> Okay. So, sorry I shouldn't have asked it that way, but really just um in some sense wanting to you know call that out in a way what can be a whole community effort to um you know to understand that and and wrap our hands around that and try to figure out um it's not just schools but ways in which we all could um tackle that and try to um make sure it's being addressed. Can you say something? Just trying to understand the distinction between that but then where there's the uh meeting expected growth in math the

061numbers are higher is can you say is there anything with the relationship between that and the >> so we we've increased the percentage of students that are meeting that college readiness benchmark which is more of a proficiency lane there. Um >> so there we go. Um so that's actually improved um in in math and fairly gradual improvement in language arts but that's actually where we have seen you know significant improvement again that's that's a that's a high bar um for the ACT I think it's the 68th to 71st percentile is around that it kind of changes by grade level so it's around that range and uh for SAT I believe it's the 63rd to 71st of like that that's a higher that's a high bar where we're seeing a A a decrease is our students

062meeting expected growth from spring to spring, which essentially is once a student takes that assessment in the spring, they are then compared to their grade level peers and they are given based on their uh you know their test scores, their grade level, the weeks of instruction, all that fun stuff. They are given a this is what your your growth is going to be or or typical growth would be for a student in that grade level in that peer. And that's the place where we're actually going down even though our proficiency is going up. Um it we did we were allowed to go in through like grade levels. This includes any student and for math that's K8 well one through eight because kindergarten wouldn't have a spring score. Language arts is only going to be um

063third or sorry fourth through eighth because they take math fluency up until second. Um but as we started to look at the grade levels really the upper grades are staying in that higher 60th 60% um we do have a few grade levels that we need to focus our attention on. >> I I also think if Sonia and Regina both wouldn't come up because we actually had this conversation today about the importance of exceeding benchmarks if you guys are still here. I think just the way you we we were discussing it this this afternoon kind of what the importance is of exceeding benchmarks especially in math that data point. >> So remember we talked about exceeding expected growth like what is the importance of exceeding expected growth? We talked about that today >> like we talked

064about a lot. So, so what we talked about today is the fact that if you consistently meet a benchmark, >> but let's say you meet the benchmark in third grade, you meet the benchmark in fourth grade, it could be by the time you get to fifth grade because you haven't exceeded any of these benchmarks, you're no longer meeting the benchmark in fifth grade. So that goal need you moving towards exceeding it. So in essence, you can continue to to be progress. >> It came back to you. >> Yeah, it came back. It came back to us. We needed >> we really we had the conversation when we were talking about the canary in the cave. Um when students stop making their expected growth, it really is an indicator of us looking at um intervention possibilities,

065getting in there and monitoring their progress and then also giving opportunity for that win time, giving them what is needed at those moments that are um already allocated and within their instructional minutes. Um and so that's pretty much in a >> nutshell. Yeah. And I think making so that's that's a really good point because the win time for those that don't know is it's the what I need time. So it's really the intervention time. It's a very very critical critical time because you're meeting the you're zoning in for the individual needs of the kid and where that kid is at academically in reading, math or whatever it is. And that time has to then be used to figure out how to provide either extra enrichment or remediation to get kids to either meet the standard

066or exceed it. Right? And so just making sure that that we're intentional with that time is going to be extremely extremely uh important because it is what is going to get us to really move the needle on even further with kids making um or really exceeding their expected growth. Well, this this is why I appreciate again the shift into more diagnostic approaches to what what you said earlier was again that you as a teacher, right? You want to be able to uh put in the dipstick into the engine to see h how the engine's running and and uh and what a metaphor, right? But for our students, we we want to be as educators, we want to make sure that we have enough opportunities to see whether the light bulb moments are happening for all

067of our kids, not just a few, right? um because that that happens. Um and we don't check up on it and and I I I've never believed again I'm not a fan of MAP. Never been never been a really big fan of it. Uh and definitely not for the you know statewide standardized testing because it just it's a moment in time, right? And it doesn't really tell the whole story of how a student has grown. So the move towards tools like I Ready and and STAR which again will align us to the high school because again we've gotten the complaints about you know from the high school say hey well our your kids aren't ready and we have the remedial courses >> these I hope and and I think they we will uh be will

068allow us to be able to ensure that u educators have enough of a the tools to be able to meet students where they're at academically provide them interventions resources so by the time they leave us they will be on level as much as possible. >> Yeah. So the alignment piece is really important that you're bringing up. Um I think that was one of the challenges with MAP and trying to coordinate it with I Ready >> because our tools are aligned with what they show up as an I Ready. And we've got something called stretch goals. Um for kids who are below grade level, it's not important to it's important to meet the typical growth but it's really important to meet the stretch goal which is a higher bar. So teachers are beginning to understand that

069and and with the wind time and other things, they're trying to map it out so they can have more time on those goals. And their research says in two years in a row, if our kids meet the stretch goals, they will bridge the gap of one year's worth of um grade level content. So that is what we're really trying to work towards um to make growth happen. Yeah. >> Yeah. Which is why I Ready is such a strong, like you said, tool. It's both norm reference, so it's comparing kids to their peers, but it's also criterion referenced. So, it is comparing students to grade level expectations. That is huge because I can give you a percentile all day in math, but that does not necessarily tell you if they're on above, below grade level. I

070Ready does that. Um, and so yes, you'll have typical growth, which is like what a typical kid gets in a year. But then a stretch growth, it's a multi-year goal for our students who are below grade level. so that if they are meeting those stretch growths in two years, they are closer to being on grade level after those two years. So that's that's really really important in our work to think about this in multi-year steps and knowing where students are in relation to their grade level expectations. So that's why I was such a strong assessment tool to use. Um because our goals are we want our students on or above grade level by the time they leave here. Um so that's that's really that's really important um piece of the puzzle for why this tool

071was selected >> and that's why I ready is the tier one resource that is used that is the that is what all the kids should be able to access at that grade level >> when comes in because wherever there are gaps and holes that's preventing the kid from being able to access grade level curriculum then that's when I come back and I fill the gaps with what they need so that I can get them closer to being able to access and meet and exceed the grade level content that we put in. And so it's it's a learning curve. I I I I'll be very transparent in saying like um it's it's new territory. It's new territory for and what I mean by that when I say new territory, it's we're we're talking um common core

072is is is different. It's it's aligned to the common core stand. Those are very rigorous assessments. Those are very rigorous grade level standards is is what I meant to say that kids have to be able to access. And so really understanding the standards is key and it requires it's a it's a it's a lot of work because you have to really know what is this grade at this particular grade level. What is it that a kid has to know and be able to demonstrate? And I think spending time on that and really diving into the standards and really being intentional around the time that's spent during our PC's will help to create those spaces to build build that muscle for for our educators and other support staff that support students. But I mean, we're making

073progress and it and it's coming along and the intentional work, but we started with making sure we build the instructional capacity of our leaders to be able to lead that work alongside their sit teams so that they can make >> good use of what is happening during that teacher collaboration time in the PLC's because all of it runs together to be able to, you know, get the get the outcomes that that we want to achieve. And it's all students, not just students below grade level. It's also students who are on grade level. How are we making sure that they're meeting their growth goals as well? Because that's that's when you get that stagnant growth of like, I'm on grade level. I'm on grade level. I'm on grade level. Just this is it >> versus >>

074how to keep pushing. >> I'm going to keep pushing and keep pushing. Keep pushing to go deeper into that grade level instruction. >> I want to keep us moving if there are no other questions. And I actually think some of my next questions for the next part relate to this too. you all might not want to go too far. There were some FYI items and one of the things that um I really appreciated seeing um was the programs and curriculum overview and I don't want to get too much into the details because I know you and your team are managing all of that. Um, but I do want to sort of if you could just talk a little bit about how you think about curriculum, choosing curriculum and how curriculum is sort of making sure

075we have consistency across our schools. I'd love to understand just the process and philosophy behind that a little bit more. Oh yeah. Okay. >> These are our two friends for the day. >> Okay. Sure. Um we have a a five-step um curriculum adoption process that starts off with us um working with our content specific committee to review the current curriculum that we have. Um even before that just noting that the board you all have established a timeline of how long of which particular content area is up for reflection analysis and adoption. Um so that um just in our basic system and our policies that um no particular cont content areas are adopted at a one at a time process so that we do not overwhelm our educators. Um but once that process uh begins we

076work with the committee. The committee then has to um do a proposal towards CAC our curriculum advisory committee and and the committee then says yay or nay if the process should move forward. If the process does move forward, then the again that content particular committee um begins the process of looking for materials that align with the already predetermined um curricular review material tool. Our tool um embeds our um the culturally responsive um indicators that we need to be embedded in all of our curricular resources um and lifting up the equity processes that we also value and practices. Um and so um so we use that tool to begin to and look at the particular materials um that we identify. It can take that those two steps can take over can take the entire school year

077for us to get through. Um and then to typically by the end of the year, spring is when you finally get a chance to go back to CAC and say what the results of the feedback from the educators who participated um on the review, what it came out to be. And then KAG then again provides indicator indication of if it should move forward to um us going into either a pilot or an adoption process. >> Got it. And that that I mean that sounds like a really robust process and you know in that way curriculum is selected for all of our schools. So you know unless it's a pilot it's sort of like that's what we're rolling out for everybody who's in that grade. Okay. >> Yes. So the pilot gives you a chance to

078do like a just like that a pilot >> but this this the decision is made districtwide and it's also aligned with the debt contract. >> Okay the the >> content committees and the curriculum advisory committee are all part of the debt contract. So this is contractual. And so all of that is aligned and then after that we can go into that >> right but even before that this Regina was talking about a year. So we go to CAC in spring get permission to get started the next year and we do PD for this group that is actually looking at materials because they come from across the district and they need to understand how to use these tools and use them well with the materials that align to our philosophy and and our goals and what

079we want to achieve. Right? So it takes a year. The last time I did math, the teachers came out on a Saturday for several Saturdays to do it because it is very intensive. And that was kudos to our educators who do that. So then we do have to go to our content committees. If it is math, we go to the K5 and 6A, keep them informed, science, so on and so forth. They also get to vote along the way. We give them feedback and then we go back to CAC and CAC gets to vote. So this is all contractual like Dr. SP said and we have to go through all of that steps and maybe by the spring our teachers get a chance to implement pilot like we narrow it down to one or two

080and they want to try it and they come back and there's another round of which one do we really want to put forth once that's done great yay we have a new set of materials we're not done the first year is really hard you have to lift it you have to educate everybody all at once get them the support they need and the professional learning and coaching and get them to implement and give feedback and also collect feedback from them along the way to see what is missing, what is great. No material u addresses everything for every school district and every student. So there are some really good things. So we got to think about the other pieces and that leads into summer curriculum project. So it takes two years for us to wrap our

081head around to see what we have and how we implement it really really well. Um and we learned at least in math from the fast and furious way during the pandemic that we are not doing that. We want to do it um we want to be kind to our educators and we also want to do it right. Um so we do right by our students who are experiencing it. >> I think the last the last part u for professional learning then lines up with our building leaders. um building leaders need to um get in on that professional learning as well so they are aware of what they are seeing when they see in instruction in that particular content area because um especially in our last um few adoptions. We have again lifted different practices that

082maybe have not been that um building leaders may not be aware of when they are when they're looking at it. We all know that the um building leaders are using the Danielson in order to evaluate educators and oftent times um they may not know when why a teacher's making a choice that they're making based off of the instruction and so it's important for us also to include them in on the professional learning which again provides is another segment of learning within our system and then we also cannot um leave out our pair of professionals who have to figure out um where they sit in the role in the classroom as we are um a part of this new resource adoption. >> It's great that there's such a Oh, go ahead. >> I just want to

083add that in all these committee me meetings, we really do try to u make sure that all um educators are included in the process. And so we are making sure that there's e um educators or twe or IEES um educators as well. So it's a it's a a broad mix of everyone in the community. Yeah, I'm glad that there's such a thorough process and that you know like not just for selecting the curriculum but then also in the implementation because we all know that's sometimes where things fall apart. So, it's good to see that. Um, and then the other thing I was happy about was just how like thoughtful and the fact that you've got a process to make sure we've got like culturally relevant materials incorporated into this as well. Um, I don't know

084if you could talk a little bit more about that and how you use the scorecard and other resources. >> Um, so like we said before, our curricular resource u materials tool includes the indicators from the CRC tool. So we um embed that in our in our our screener process. um in referencing to our like I can give for example for wood and wisdom um as well as for study sync they are both um resources that have diverse authors diverse text and um across a range of experiences um and perspectives. Um we also have curated um list of books for our volume of reading where educators as well as providers as well as myself where we have created um book lists for students to be able to um look at that helps to bring up and

085lift up other voices within the context of the subjects that they're studying. Um so we have it from that perspective as well as from the materials that we've adopted. Can you speak? Can you um go ahead >> I just want to call out the fact that that with the the curricular curricular culturally responsive curriculum scorecard. >> It isn't just dump jumping in on it. That's what Sonia is discussing in terms of even before they get to this. The teams that are moving into examining curriculum need professional learning in order to enter into this process. So it's not just professional learning on the back end. It's before this is even started. Who's going to be on this committ? And then how do we provide professional learning for this committee so they can enter into this process

086with fidelity? >> Got it. Okay. >> Can you speak to the uh on the culturally responsive um from the standpoint of a kid in a class? What is um how are they experiencing what is you know everyone's reading something then there's my individual ability where we have ready and things like that that might you know customize for me but then from affinity groups or you know if I'm trying to understand the cultural background. So can you talk about how all that is woven together and experienced from the from a kids perspective? So although all of the resources are curated to help build up we're basically building up a knowledge set we so if we take for example that we are all learning about the heart then yes there are going to be topics that are

087definitely um topical based and focused that way but then there are also biographical pieces that has a wide range of um of people that they will read about and there are people of color who work inside of the our cardiology world of cardiology. So those particular books are included in the volume of reading set the challenge and I guess the thing that you're you're lifting up is the students are self- selecting within that set and so they do have access however they are self- selecting. Um, but we also note that I will also note that librarians do a really phenomenal job of doing book talks and lifting up these voices and students have a tendency to lean towards many of the things that the um librarians lift up. Can >> I just ask a real

088quick question? What year did we adopt I Ready? >> 2022 23. >> Okay. I have some questions about the first part of this memo around foster programming. >> Yes. >> Hi, Dr. McCoy. Um, it notes in here there'll be two strands of TUI and then two strands of monolingual instruction. Is that are those two monolingual instructions? Is that going to be general education? >> Uh to this date? Yes. >> Okay. Um I'm curious. Um so we there's the the amplifying black voices study from 2022. It had roughly almost 400 participants uh 175 roughly from the fifth ward. There was strong interest in steam and ACC. I'm curious how that's informing your decision about the programming at Foster. So, I'll speak to the first part and then I'll let Principal Raquel add any additional pieces. Um,

089so one of the things we're doing right now is actually reaching out to members of the community. So, we have the foster forums that are coming up because we really want to hear directly from the parents that will have children at Foster. We are aware of the survey that was conducted by Amplifying Black Voices that had some really beautiful information in it. But we also noted in asking additional questions that a lot of those families um no longer have students within district 65 or who will not be at Foster. And so we want to really speak to those families who are planning to enroll their students there so we can see how we can couple that information together to create a program that will serve them and what they're looking for. But I'll let Principal

090Baquel also add additional information. Can I be poor because I just want to make sure I'm I'm um understanding what we're saying. A survey that was in like spent a lot of time taking place across the entire city and had a large percentage of African-Americans responding to that survey. Are we saying that we're sort of nullifying what's there to to to focus just on the So, does every school then say we only do what our parents in that school want to do? So, I'm I'm a little concerned actually. I'll just say that about um if it appears like we're saying we're nullifying the amplified voice. I don't think you are. So, I just wanted to bring that up because that's how >> I am not saying we're nullifying it. I am saying we want to

091make sure that we supplement the information with our updated information for students who will be at Foster. >> So, let me chime in here. I I think what essentially what we're saying is we will leverage the amplified black voices survey in addition to the sessions where we're asking families to come in and all of those things will be taken into consideration. >> So it it will be taken into consideration. We're we're not knocking one versus the other. Um I think to your point um Andrew of asking of the this idea of having ACC and having steam at this particular school. Uh there was a me meeting today with um some members of the uh community, some African-American people of the community who we did get a better understanding of what the asks were. My team

092is then charged um to take that feedback and we're going to come back. One of the things that was suggested is potentially uh leveraging um the reference term was a task force of members uh to be part of that and those that will be taken into consideration. Um we we don't have an answer beyond that for right now. But we met with with the community today. Board leadership was part of that call. um our commitment is to hear all of the things and try as best to um understand and see how it all fits in. Um, I think additionally what I I I add to that in the planning for the school and for the educators is having taught in ACC and and having had to teach off of the district curriculum actually where the

093curriculum resources were actually the same as my gened partners. um understanding how we coherently infuse the professional learning instructional frameworks that guides how we leverage children's identities in front of us to use the same curriculum uh to speak to them. Uh so I'm not only thinking about um what the what the curriculum is going to be. I'm also thinking about how we shape the interview process to select who the educators are going to be and how we shape professional learning uh to um to empower them to meet the needs of diverse students. I think one of the things that also sometimes is not lifted up because when people hear African centered curriculum um they think that it's a classroom only filled with African-American children and at least from when I taught in it there were

094also Caucasian children multi-racial children and and other children besides African-American children within the program whose identities also have to be affirmed. >> Can I ask one other question? We've had some living legends come before us as a board. People who just spent decades and, you know, blood, sweat, and tear making foster school happen. If they wish to get, who would they talk to to be part of this ongoing conversation? Uh because this is not really a board decision, right? This is a um this is an operational matter. So, how uh how could they best spend their energy and get connected to this process? Yeah, I think the same way that um the rest of the the people who did that we met with today, they reached out to me. So, in this case, Henry Wilkins

095was who requested the meeting. I met with him. I met with him and about three other about maybe three other people that were on that call. >> We heard, we listened. I think the ask collectively is for people to be at the table when decisions as we're planning stuff out. And again, we're running things multi- we're running multiple things here all at the same time. We're running STP. We got to think about what the transition and to ensure that we do right by the children um at Betsy Rose as that school is is is slated to um close at the end of this year. We're opening up and transitioning for foster. We got to continue the academic program here at the school. So, we're running a whole lot of things simultaneous. And so our commitment

096and what I heard today on the call was, "Hey, can some can you have some of us, you know, some some folks at the table when we get to that piece and start working all those kinks out?" The plan is to have some folks uh involved in that process. >> Um, >> and I believe in um in in one of the memos about foster school, um you spoke about how you're thinking about putting together a plan to get engagement and input from the community. So, I don't know if now is the right time, but I'd love to hear more about just your preliminary thoughts on that process. >> One of the things that I was u promoting was foster school forums, which would give me an opportunity to actually um hear from parents who have

097children that are the that are the age >> uh to enroll uh to hear um what their concerns may be. uh what are their questions uh um so that I can begin to get a sense of what is the parent community um and to encourage them to declare their intent to enroll early um so that the district can begin to estimate get some estim estimations on um um there's a you know there's a connection between staffing and enrollment uh to but um but also to begin to have um a set of families of of whom I I I call them the founding for us to school families. Um that we can begin to uh also draw as stakeholders to begin to form core uh talks about the missions and the core value that we have

098people that we know are going their children are going to be there as we move forward as we move forward in the planning >> question. No, go ahead. And uh and then future down on the line is conversations with uh alumni to help us to um to keep a pulse on the historical you know the historical contribution that the historical contribution of the neighborhood is included especially in the inaugural year and moving forward as we shape traditions etc so forth um around the school. I would also I I would lastly I would also like to add that there's a complexity that is added of of of having to make sure that you do that and to make sure that you simultaneously I don't want to forget the the the Latino community as well with the

099bilingual program that also has to be interwoven so that the school itself feels like a co cohesive hole. Um, so I I think I bring all of that um experience and and the Betsy Rhodess experience and really trying to drive those curriculum so that when those teams eventually uh come together, those teaching teams, grade level teams, etc. so forth, um that they're working forward to serve the needs of all kids. >> Yeah, I feel like that's really important to, you know, just start planning and having those forums now, not just to get input, but also to do that community building that you're talking about. Um, and I I see that like as being a really important part, and I know we've been talking about it for a while, like not just the construction of the

100school, but bringing the community together. So, I'm glad to see that plans are are starting to be made to have those conversations. >> And one other piece, too, is since Principal Raquel came on, what we haven't had the opportunity to do is connect her with the group that was a part of the SAP 3 work at the end of the school year. So, that'll also be a space where we'll be making a bridge. >> That's great. So, speaking of uh community engagement, especially of our Latino and Latina community in the face of the current political environment that we're in, how are we going to reach that community with fidelity or what are the plans for that? >> I think some of it requires u being flexible. I think it's definitely facilitated by the fact that

101I do speak Spanish. Um, I do think for me some some of my communications have had to be on the phone. Some of them have had to be where families who've had concerns have come and visited me in my office for those particular for those particular concerns. Um, and some of them have been more in traditional some of them have been more in traditional meetings. Um um so I I think I I think I h I have to be open to to to have meetings sometimes at days that's more convenient for them have child care provided. Um, so it's it's it's it's knowing what voices are not being represented at every every meeting that you have and uh and also being um able to leverage the teachers to to to to keep in communication with

102their families because sometimes points of views are bubbled up to me by other people in the school community that those families have close connections with. So, you know, they may not reach out to me directly, >> um, but I hear of them and being present at, uh, arrival, dismissal, those those type of things allows for those opportunities of engagement to take place. >> So, I want to go back to um the the structure of this document says we are for sure going to have two TW strands. the demographics of the school right now are um does anyone know what the perception is of percent black, percent Hispanic, percent white that we might assume right now who would be in the school? >> We do have that. I just don't have it in front of me,

103but we can get that to you. >> And I I think in my head I think it's probably 50 around 50% black, 30% Hispanic and white. So I just um for so many years kids in this community particularly black kids in this community have been everywhere and schools have not there hasn't been able to be the focus on education for them. have no love no problem with twe. But in a school with four tracks and if the majority of kids in that school or 50% are black and we're saying we have two TW tracks and we're not willing necessarily to commit to a track that is designed for African-American kids. It feels like it's a building maybe, but it's not necessarily school. And I believe phenomenal teachers can teach anyone. I'm not saying that. But

104there is something um unique about this place in this moment in this time um that has been calling out for it. And I just am channeling the community here and saying that we need to be very explicit and the reason might be no, right? But with that discussion and communication of that people need to feel heard. Um and as I've said before is the the feel of foster and also I'll say this last thing is that because of be with the twe then that means with that demographics those other classrooms are going to be highly African-American because of the makeup. And so I just want to um make sure that we're holding that and I know and I'm not implying we're not but holding the importance of um making sure that as the school opens

105everyone walking in the kids in Twe that are being you know being embraced but also the African-American kids are walking in and feeling that this place is different from the other places that they've been and this is the first time that we have the opportunity to do that. So, I'mma hold us to that um constantly and want to make sure we're we're building towards a school that represents all. Go ahead. >> So, when we say at this time it's two strands twe and two strands monolingual gened, it's because that's been the only decision that's been clearly and from the moment the school was set to be built, put in place. So it's the one decision with regards to that that has been communicated and so we stick to that for now until any other decisions

106come forth. And so to say otherwise even though I know we know that the community wants us to be like this is what it is until that is a decision that is made that's not something that we can promise because we would then be continuing to further harm until we make sure we do it fully and fully right. And so as Dr. The Turner always says, um, always get it right. And I'm about to say it wrong. >> So as we must, right? As fast as we can, but as we must. I rather make sure we do it right. Like we we have learned from a lot of our mistakes and doing things too fast and missing the voices at the table. And so I want to reiterate, it's not to nullify the voices that

107have been gathered and amplified. Um, but instead it's to continue gathering. And as a researcher, right, we got to make sure we're getting all that triangulation of data and information at the table so we can make sure we set the school up so that it is solid and beautiful for our kids when they walk in. So >> the last thing, but if we're asking people to register for a school, then in some sense you want to know what the school is to register for. So if I'm thinking of I'm going to go to King Arts, if I'm going to go here, I need to um understand uh what here what here is. But I'm done with that. And essentially I I think essentially the the ask is is to consider adding some strands of ACC

108to this particular school is what the ask is. >> The ask is to because ACC is a thing. Um, and I know there's been a um a question about STEM. The ask is to work together and create what needs to be done at Foster that reflects the um that is um reflects the kids there. So it could be a combination of ACC combined with STEM, but it needs to have some of the same principles that you've talked about about how the the principles of ACC in the um um in the in the community, but the content could be STEM, could be math. We see the math issues thinking about math games. How do we own math for this particular population in a way that is uh culturally relevant? So, I'm not saying let's just take

109ACC from Oakton and plop it into um plop it into Foster, but I think we, you know, you never have these opportunities to create something like this. You can you change you creating culture as much as is better than trying to change it. And so, I just really want us to embrace this opportunity um and um do it. So, I'm not saying ACC, I'm not saying STEM is not my decision to make. would love to work with you on it, but um um something that is definitely culturally rooted. >> I I I do think I do understand the ask and I do think as the former coach of Oakton that coached at Oakton for many many years. ACC is one strand at Oakton. There's black children in all three of the programs and all that

110I've ever done actually attends to the needs of those children regardless of what program they are in. Um so whatever we end up calling the program in my school the needs of the children whether they're black, brown, purple or yellow will be attended to. And that's what I've done from since I've been in district 65. Thank you very much. >> Say would and also just want to say this. This is not adversarial. I mean the beauty of creating things is we have conversations about it. So I this is I hope no one reason this is me being adversarial. It's just me asking questions and trying to figure out how we can uh how we can do this together. Thank you. And I think you know like from the time that we decided on this school

111we knew that we had you know we had to have time to plan this out right you know it's not something where we can decide how we're going to set up the culture of a school how we're going to decide what programs and what you know materials are in a school overnight. Um, and so I think, you know, to me this is one of the first steps and I'd love to see more, you know, for for you to come back and I know it's planned for you to come back and sort of update us on progress to sort of see how that's progressing because this is a process, right? And I think like one of the first steps to any process, and maybe it's because I work in research, but one of the first steps

112to any process is to hear from the stakeholders and the people who will be impacted and the people who have been involved. Um, so I'm hoping and it seems like we're going down the right track in terms of making sure we get that input and feedback so we can shape and make decisions on these sorts of things. To that end, can could we get uh could the board be presented at some point um what reasonable with the schedule for when these decisions and what the decisions are that need to be made so that we can get some regular reporting on the progress. Um as this is a very important thing for our community, for our school, and for our district. Um just so that we can all follow along and that it's transparent to the

113public where we are and um what the process is. >> Yes. So the um in the past for Foster it's been the construction updates along with the SAP updates. The SAP piece has now been removed to be the updates for the transition planning. And so when we have the committee of the whole meetings is when we'll do our regular updates to the board. >> Okay. Community >> the curriculum piece will be embedded in that. >> Yes. >> Great. >> Yeah. >> Thank you. >> And I just have to plug our foster forms because If we want to hear from our community and we want to be able to make sure our stakeholder voice is at the table, >> we need to be able to have them at the table. So, first foster forum is on

114September 24th with principal and our foster team um to one hear their thoughts and ideas and what they would like to see at Foster as a school and then also to look at the intent to enroll form. So, and I just want to thank you for all of that and I just want to ensure that as we engage in the foster forums, right, that we continue to work with those organizations like the folks who were responsible with Amplify and we mentioned this to to you all and Henry that the hope is that we we will be engaging with them. You invited them as well like hey make sure that you you come out and bring the folks that you you you um engaged before. >> Um but also looking at folks organizations like FAM Yeah,

115>> our friends over at Evston Cradle to career, right? They do the advocates for action who will do who will go door to door. Kofi Kofi does too stuff. So, please please utilize um organizations that that are doing some of this really really great work that can are willing to do outreach for us. So, that way uh we we leave no stone unturned, right, when we in regards to community engagement. So, I thank you for all the work that you all are doing. And in thinking about like that connection from that SAP work to this piece of the work, the SAP committee when we were going through that transition process prior to principal Raquel coming on board were able to name like three big buckets of work and one was how we one create the

116foster community. This is a component of that. The other piece is making sure that we engage the community and also the additional resources available. So, a lot of those organizations you just named and then the curricular and instructional part. And so, those three pieces, trust, even though it's not in your face updates, we have a lot of pieces. School started two weeks ago. We've been trying to make sure that we get that good, but the foster work is still happening. And so, as we come back each month, we'll have the updates along the way for that. And it's not adversarial. We know it's passionate. We want to make sure that the school is good and that everybody is good and that Foster is successful as it opens. So we we all got the same heart

117as we're doing this work. So thank you. Thank you. >> Okay. Unless there are any other questions on the FYI items, we can move finance. I have a question. >> Um, I just had one question on the technology instruction update. Uh, >> okay. >> Yeah, that FYI item. I was asking if anybody had any other questions, but yeah, go ahead. If >> y um, my question, uh, I had two questions. um the apps that are available by grade level, can we post those on the website or make them accessible? >> Yes. So, essentially we engage with the learn platform right now and on our district website there is access to see what is populated in learn. We're in the process of updating that and so we can that essentially we will most likely update that

118but also replace it with an active spreadsheet which is that scope document. Um we are part of STRP costsaving measures moving away from Lauren platform. So that will be an Excel spreadsheet and coming soon. >> Okay. Thank you. And then the other question is um if you could just describe the guidance that the administration has provided for principles to share with their staff on the expectations for following the district checked policy. >> That would be a Dr. Smith question. >> Yeah, I have I just I have it all. Um so >> Dr. Beth, can you just mic >> put the mic a little closer to you? >> Yeah, just pulling up the answer to that question. I got it. Sure. I mean, Dr. McCoy, I can do it if you you just want to hang

119tight. But we had direct training. So, a meeting was held with all school leaders to conduct a thorough review of the new procedures. We had a communication and roll out. So, the leaders received a comprehensive tool kit with a clear timeline for sharing the information. They were expected to communicate the policy through multiple channels at key times. So for staff during institute days, for students during the first days of schools, and for parents via school newsletters. To support this roll out, leaders were provided with slide decks for staff, student groups, and a communications kit containing um newsletter bs, blurbs, and visual posters. There was also an implementation and accountability piece. So it was clearly communicated that this was a district-wide procedure. Therefore, all schools were expected to do the following. adhere to it established uh

120expectations, teach the procedures continually, hold both students and staff accountable for implementation and then also in terms of policy alignment. This guidance has also explained how the guidance that we provided to school leaders um explained how these procedures align with the existing frameworks including branching minds, board policy and school code. So if specific leaders are sharing that they need further guidance, we would ask them you refer back to us. >> Okay. And that includes not just the the personal electronic device policy but the free and reduced lunch I'm sorry not free excuse me the free lunch and recess um time. So all the things that are listed in the update that we were given they were given all of that guidance. Yes. So if what I what we would ask is like if people are

121saying I don't understand it then that gives us an opportunity to have school leaders come back to us and we have to say to them >> what don't you understand? How can we help you through this process? But for them to circumvent that, then we're not looking at what systems and structures need to be in place to ensure that there is this being is being rolled out with fidelity. >> Yeah. And part of this conversation is to make sure that that bubbles up here. >> Just a quick question. Um, we've seen the uh memo. Has the does the community know around the decisions that you've made around free time and stuff like that. Just want to call it out because there's always a lot of questions. >> The memo that you're referencing? Yeah. Yeah. It's

122in the board pack. I know it's in the board, but I would, you know, some people are only going to read I mean I want to call it out. A lot of people have been asking y'all about are you going to do it? And so I just want to if you could say a word just about what it is, what is happening with um >> I think in the fast five, right? I think was >> okay. Was there? >> Yeah. So the what I was wondering I can still get that out which is great. Um the fast five >> I didn't understand the question. So >> yeah. No, if it's been Yeah, it's been shared with the public. >> I just want to make sure it was >> Yeah. No, so it's been out to

123parents in the fast five. So that's where I've seen it. I think I imagine it's sent on the website as well. Um but but there is the right the the new tech policy that was explained to families and all that good stuff on on fast. >> Yeah. And all of the communications that we have sent out have broadly spoke to the fact that technology should not be used during recess, lunch, passing periods at any point during the school day. If we need to further clarify that language to make it more clear, we definitely can. But that was issued as part of all of our districtwide communication. >> Additionally, there's signage. I know we were at shoot and there was signage at >> I was about to say it. Yeah. >> All throughout the building. >>

124Yeah. I think you know to the extent that this has been an issue in our community and you guys have all done all this great work and I think we made the commitment to the work the work was done and now we need to sort of amplify that to the community that we were responsive and and did the work. So, in my opinion, uh we it deserves sort of a a a more expressive communication than just one of the fast five um items which really just focused on that personal device because the work on the on the >> Yeah, I think I think school leaders put it in their communication. So, it goes out in individual schools. It's getting blast in other places that you you just don't see. Um but it's it's getting blasted

125at every every school. It's visible in all the schools. We just did academic learning walks and it's there. The message is there. Staff is doing what they need to. Kids are adhering to it. It's It's happening. >> Great work. Great work. It's really just to say great work for y'all doing that. That's all. >> We didn't see a single cell phone at Shoot and it's a middle school. >> It was beautiful. >> Okay. Thank you. Um All right. So now we're going to begin the finance committee portion of this meeting. The STRP3 is first. >> Oh, there she is. >> I believe we're going to be a community effort today on this topic. Um but we do have a uh an agenda um and a hope to get clarity from you as we proceed with

126the last phase of this work. Um so if we want to turn to the next slide, please. >> Oh, do I have the clicker? >> Thank you. >> All right. So, um one, we appreciated the comment earlier tonight on kind of where you're framing this work tonight. That statement was very helpful to me and I think it's really important to reiterate kind of where we're grounding ourselves. So what's uh the first part of what we'll do is again remind people of the why. You know, we're living it, we're feeling it, right? The team is deep in the midst of all of it, but I think it's always really important to keep reminding people what it why we're doing this work. So, we're going to talk about school closures, what are some of the data points

127around what that represents and why we're looking at that uh component as part of our uh strategic deficit reduction planning. Uh we're going to speak about deferred maintenance and where that is and how that fits into our work. And then the last piece of it is as we've uh been working on getting the district back to financial sustainability, um what the projections look like with the updated numbers from where we believe we closed out the year and as we approach this coming year's budget, how that factors into that because the numbers have changed um since February when we uh initially set our points on what we're aiming for. We also have a new board that's in front of us tonight that I think really has done a great job attending our meetings and really grounding

128themselves in understanding the magnitude of the work that's in front of us. And I really uh think this is a really good time for us to come back in front of you. Um many of you have come to our um uh community steering committee meetings. You've asked great questions. You've actively participated in it. We're at the final phases and it's really important for our committees to understand since you're the ultimate decision makers. What are some of the guide uh guard rails and and direction you want as we bring scenarios forward to you? And I really just want to reiterate that we do tell our committee uh and subcommittees continually that this is ultimately your decision where you want community feedback to drive the work. And so we're really trying to find that place where I'm

129not gatekeeping or um stopping good conversations that are taking place. But I also don't want to move forward with scenarios modeling that won't be grounded in something that I think you ultimately will get behind. And so that's ultimately the purpose of tonight. Um so we're go through that. Um we have um a great team that has created our school closure uh scorecards. Um really good information that has come forward with how we're going to assess and use that as we contemplate school closures. And then again board discussion. We really want your feedback tonight. We have very specific questions we want to ask you that we can bring back to our subcommittees as we finalize and bring scenarios to you at the end of September. and then we'll talk about what that timeline is. So, this

130sound like a good approach. >> Okay. So, again, the why behind why we're here. Um, and again, we're doing this because we're intimately knowledgeable about this, but we really want to make sure the community understands why this work is happening. Ultimately, we really want to keep a mindset of what we're doing for our kids, for our community as we approach this work. and that what we do now helps set what that future will look like. And so, um, while we're in financial challenges, we don't want to be knee-jerk. We don't want to, you know, compromise the education system. Great conversations tonight about how you're all very passionate about how you service every student in this district. And so we really do want to make sure as best we can because when we're talking about financial

131reductions, how do we keep our eye on how we best service the students in district 65? So, you know, the biggest portion of the conversation is around, you know, is there an opportunity to become efficient with the buildings that we currently have and and and keep that in mind on how we can provide better services to our kids? How do we do that with ensuring long-term financial sustainability? We do know that there's a lot of repairs and deferred maintenance that are also needing to be um attended to and we do have declining student enrollment and under utilized school. All of that comes forward to how if we're getting back to financial stability, do these pieces fit together and how can we use some of what's in front of us as a way for us to

132um ensure that the district maintains its financial stability in a long-term manner. So the first piece is around finances and and you know we've talked about it but what I really want to draw us to is you know kind of what are the big pieces as we move forward as to what we want focus on and also what is causing some of the underlying issues. We still, and we'll show some um slides on the updated financial projections, really are still looking at 10 to 15 million of further reductions that still need to take place in this district. 10 to 15 million. The biggest reason for um the financial predicament that we're in is expenses outpace revenue by 2.3%. And some of that does lie in the fact that when we have underutilized facilities and we're,

133you know, maintaining and and having to do all our work around that, that causes some inefficiencies with how we manage the finances in this school district. All of those words are up there. Lots of good information. These are slides we've consistently showed, but ultimately we still have to make some significant reductions in the district because our expenses continue to outpace our revenue. Facilities. Ultimately, one of the biggest challenges with the facilities is we've got $188 million of deferred revenue. Now when we look at that number, it it was very well compiled uh by the district architect. It is out to 2040. So it isn't work that's deferred and is well overdue. It's work that needs to get done. You can't neglect it. The worst you when you don't stay on top of your deferred maintenance,

134couple things happen. It gets more costly to repair it. and two, you at risk failing buildings that you can't keep open to run school for your students. So, that's a number that we're going to continue to monitor and and and and talk about later tonight, which is we can't keep kicking that down the road. We've got to figure it out. But, we do have 18 school buildings, eight square miles, and a declining enrollment. And as a reminder, all of your facilities are poor or very poor. The last piece that we want to talk about is occupancy. Prior to opening foster school, your occupancy rate is 65%. Once you open up foster school, you'll be at 58% occupancy based upon demographer numbers. And we're in the process of make evalidating what this year's enrollment is. We're

135probably two to three weeks out from that, but we were at 65% when we came forward in in the springtime. When we opened foster school, our schools will be about 50% of what occupancy rates exist based upon the capacity of the schools in comparison to the students you have. All of this comes forward to help drive as we, you know, as Dr. Turner expressed early, how are we managing all these very complex needs within this district and also making sure that when we have the resources that were provided that we use them in an efficient, effective and best way for our students. So to highlight, we still probably got to cut 10 to 15 million. We want you to help guide that conversation tonight with us as we show you the updated financial projections. Again,

136what's at the heart of that is expenses continue to outpace revenue. We have 18 school buildings. We have 58% occupancy and we have $188 million in deferred maintenance that we really got to talk about. Here's some good news, right? Because that's pretty heavy. Um, this was the slide that we presented before the board approved the 13.2 2 million in deficit reduction. And if nothing took place if nothing was taking place this spring, by the end of FY27, you would have spent all any money that you had in the bank. Your board policy is is you should have about 90 days cash on hand. FY25, 26, 27, 28 would all be below that policy. And by the end of FY28, you would be at $36 million of money that you didn't have that you spent. Here

137is the good news. Um, so we don't change 21,223 24, but what we're estimating is where we thought we'd be at 13.6 million deficit for FY25 for our operating funds. I don't put in bonded interest. I don't put in capital projects. Good news is we came in just about $400,000 and almost broke even. So re that means revenues were under expenses by about $400,000. You did adopt the $13.2 2 million. And I know Tamara's still working on the budget, but we're looking at what would have been a $16.7 million deficit for this coming year because the board adopted the reductions. We're at about $3.1 million of of of deficit. Good news is you'll end this year um with 94 days cash on hand. So, you will adopt a budget that you'll be compliant with 90

138days cash on hand. But if we don't do anything, we continue to erode your fund balances. You see it coming down. The good news is if if we do nothing, we won't run out of money until FY30, but you're still ramping down pretty quickly and eating into your fund balances, which is not a good thing as a school district. So, I'm going to stop there and I promise you we're going to get to talking with you. We're just trying to lay the stage. Stacy's going to walk you through some of the conversations around the her team's work around the school scorecards and how they've been evaluating if we get to a place of closing schools, what that will look like. >> All right. Thank you, Susan. >> All right. So this evening, we're going to

139take a little time to essentially walk you through sample school scorecards, both baseline and scenario specific, in order to kind of help prepare you for what essentially a scenario packet could look like for the September 29th board meeting. So essentially kind of help you understand the goals and the purpose of the two different kinds of scorecards. um in you know the opportunity to always ground ourselves in where we have come from to where we are going. As you know in the spring the facilities subcommittee worked pretty hard to really identify a total of five categories with criteria inside those categories. We have equity, geography, building functionality and then within financial impact we have both the cost and essentially the building income categories. And so these were developed. We took them out to community engagement in

140June. We did some refining around the calculations. We also narrowed our definition for equity in the um demographic impact. And essentially our job in August and September was to take this and begin to draft out both baseline scorecards and then develop sen use those baseline scorecards to begin to model scenarios that we can bring forward to you for the September 29th. And as a reminder, essentially with these five categories, we had assigned weights. And all of this will be illustrated as we kind of move into a sample scorecard. So essentially the first slide here is a baseline scorecard and these are in draft version. We're still we actually have a draft of our income potential reports in. We'll be finalizing those and then those will lock the baseline scorecard. So you will receive the final

141baseline scorecards with the se September 29th board packet. Essentially this process we took the categories and criteria we have mapped that to data the sub the facility subcommittee had the opportunity to look at the data help us identify the data sources that we're using but essentially we have consistent categories and criteria and data that we are using to roll up into normalized scores. Now the normalization decision is really to allow those scores to be relative to other schools data. Um and you can see in the scorecard we'll use building functionality with the number one as an example there. Our building functionality essentially has three categories in our baseline scorecard. It's the degree at which there is ADA compliance, whether there is gym and cafeteria separation and the number of teaching stations. And in the case

142of the scorecard, we use this range of one to five. One is to indicate least impactful to close, and that's relative to the other schools all the way up to five being most impactful to close. And I'll use the example of ADA compliance. Um, our sample school here has a five. Most impactful to close would indicate that that school is fully ADA accessible already. so doesn't require the additional spending and retrofitting to make that building ADA accessible. And so it's in order to understand the scorecards, you have to hold the kind of what's the desired state to the kind of least desired state. Um if we look at gym and cafeteria separation, um it has a one which would be considered least impactful to close. So that is a school that does not have a

143separate gym and lunchroom separation. Therefore limiting some of our programming options, things along those lines. Okay. So the overall score for this particular school is a 3.5. We take the criteria scores, we roll it up to a category score, and then we multiply it by the weights which are at the bottom. All right? And each of our our current what we're bringing forward are the 10 elementaryaries in addition to King Arts. We did run this at a point for park. But we have moved to this place of thinking about park as a program as opposed to an individual building because it is such an outlier in regards to the number of students it serves, the faculty to staff ratios, the demands or needs of that specific building. So we're holding that. We're still considering park

144in the process but holding it out of the scorecards and thinking about it through more like program placement. Okay. Um actually I'll hold back one thing. So the use of the baseline scorecard essentially allows us to see from a holistic point on the scorecard which are the schools that using this criteria would be considered least impactful to close. So it begins to inform where we model our scenarios. What schools do we want to start with? Because it's a big task to start to think about running things for lots of. So it allows us to look at those draft scorecards and say, okay, where do we want to start to model? And we begin to develop scenarios. This is where the scenario specific scorecards come into play. And again, these are draft and will be finalized

145by when we bring things forward for the September 29th board meeting. Our commitment is to bring forward some options for single school closures, two school closures, three school closures and a four school closure. Also to talk about essentially what would be a zero school closure financial model. So in the case of the one through fours essentially we use our baseline scorecard to begin to say what combinations do we want to model. We create sing this happens to be a scenario scorecard for a single school. A couple things and the bolding didn't work out really well on that TV, but the ones that ultimately kind of flex more with the scenarios are equity and geography. Geography has gone from having one indicator school proximity to four because we are capturing walkability hazards and transportation specific to

146the scenario. So in the case here of school A, school A has been closed. We take a look at all of the students impacted and we determine how many are beyond our walkability threshold, how many would have to cross a hazard to get to a newly assigned school, how many would require busing transportation, and we're using the I do or the ISBY definition of 1.5 miles for those numbers. And those criteria are all spelled out in what we propose what we've brought to you in June. So we build a scenario specific scorecard and also the who is impacted and the total students changing schools does change because it could be that there's a bit of a domino effect with a shift that if we're closing multiple schools in a scenario. It could be that a

147school that is not closing is still having their attendance boundaries adjusted and that creates more students impacted. So this scorecard captures the impact of the scenario. This happens to be a one school scorecard. When we run two schools, we have a combined scenario scorecard. So if we have school A and school B in a two school closure, then it is one scorecard and it essentially scores our scenario. And what that allows our committee to do is to take a look essentially at the relative scores of a scenario to say which ones do we want to look at or analyze more deeply. All right, >> clarifying question there. In that sense, where it says sample school A, if this was the number two, it would list both of the names of the schools and then it

148would still be one column for the total score or would each school have a score? >> That is it's a combined it's a scorecard for the scenario and it could include anywhere from one to four schools and it would name the schools that are included in that scenario specific scorecard. Correct. >> All right. So in this case we're using that same method for calculate the process for developing the scorecards but we're looking at the scenario dependent data when we so we update the scorecard combine scores the use is it helps us to understand the impact of the scenario. By no means are we saying there is no impact but it is about the fact that we have to understand the relative impact of schools for school or schools closing and essentially these we're working on

149developing as we process the scenarios and then the team is also evaluating like we have the scorecards they go deeper into the data and build out what they do they see as being the strengths or the challenges in the scenario and how do they score that overall scenario and It's using this that we will ultimately be able to bring forward some scenarios for the school board. So that is a run through of the scorecards and I'm going to pass back to Susan. So Stacy clarification um >> when you have the um if it's the multiple if it's the multiple schools on the transportation then is figuring out as best as we can what the cost would be for. So when we run a scenario if it impacts if there are so essentially we take a

150look at the impacted students and say of those how many will be beyond 1.5 miles from the school and it is a total count. >> Okay. >> Another question uh just for community members. These will be visible by the community right? >> They will be. So the school baseline scorecards will be made once we finalize them as will be made available within board packet when we bring forward scenarios and then the scenario specific scorecards for the scenarios that we bring forward will have those scenario scorecards. I just wanted to ask we are doing a a multivariate very complex analysis here um and in my mind I'm thinking about this and we sort of laid it out in the statement in sort of three parts right one we have a utilization problem we have too many

151many buildings and not enough students two we have a fin a long-term financial sustainability problem. And then three, and maybe there's a little bit of overlap there, but we have um you know, a structural deficit and we have a fund balance problem. Um, and so when I'm thinking about this process, even if we had a balanced budget and a $40 million fund balance, we would need to talk about consolidating our buildings because we aren't able to serve our children, our students correctly or or as well as we could potentially because we're at 58% capacity um or will be in in the beginning of next school year. Is there a recommended utilization rate that we should be targeting? >> So utilization rate. So when we did the master facility assessment a few years ago essentially elementaryaries

152we were modeling towards 90%. Middle schools they modeled towards 80% and that's because of the departmentalized nature of a middle school. And magnets they kept around that 80% as well. Well, they they had it at 75, but I think that's one that we've wanted to look at a little bit more deeply because our magnet is K8. So, with our modeling, we've really landed that between the 80 and 90. >> Okay. And so, um, considering that we have, you know, you're talking about scenarios with zero, one, two, three, four, and then multiple scenarios within each of those. Um, I'm curious to hear from our colleagues here what our thoughts are on on helping the group kind of focus in based on a recommended utilization rate. So, we do have questions that we do want to take

153you through around each. >> Yeah, you did a great job. Right. So, so we have broken it up into the three categories, right? Because we really, you know, right? And I don't know if this was >> before we continue, does anyone have any other questions on the scorec card they want to ask before we move on? I don't have a question about the scorecard, but if you could go back and give further explanation about the 58% occupancy rate with the opening of Foster School. Does that assume that there would be no school closures with that? >> That assumes Bessie Roads closes and Foster opens, but Foster has a significantly higher capacity than Bessie Roads. >> But that would Does that include any other school closures besides Bessie Roads? No. Okay. I just want to make

154sure. >> Great question. >> Just one wrinkle to throw out for us as we're trying to riceize the district, not just for now, but for maybe 10 years from now, 20 years from now. Um, it's not apples and oranges, but if you take the what would be a 90% occupancy rate in our demography study and then stretch it out over seven years based on projections of enrollment, 90% becomes roughly 83%. So that's one of the challenges just to flag for us is that 90 may feel high but it's not going to be 90 for long if we can trust our demography report. So just something for us to keep in mind. >> Okay. >> All right. So our hope tonight was exactly this. We want to prompt you some questions around each one of what

155we consider the buckets, right? Or how we need to approach the work um in stages. So, for us tonight, one of the things we do want to get clarity, and we're going to push you a little bit. I can do that as the consultant that doesn't work here full-time. But we really want to get clear on, you know, where are we living with the number of school closures should we bring to you in our scenarios 0 to four and and we'd love again when I think that that's really important too is these are recorded meetings and this really is important for your community here. Exactly. some of already some of the things you've teed up, right, which is getting clear on we're going to be at 58%. Our enrollment is going to continue to decline.

156Therefore, even if we're kind of tight right now, we are to a point that our enrollment is going to continue to drop and we can model all of that out for you. But we do need to know are we, you know, four's off the table because you heard the work that Stacy's doing. that's very complex and timeconuming and we're great very grateful for our partner Northwestern that's helping us with this um and you know obviously zero we can model and show you because what we want to show is what's how deep are the cuts going to have to go if we don't close any schools but I guess our first um straw poll is do we want that full range are is anything off the table um so are we good with zero to four

157>> can I ask a I mean how so the question to me is to get to 90% um utilization. How many you might do that with four school closures or you might be able to do it with three. So I guess it's back to you know is do you do you know do you have you already modeled what that is for us because I can say four but I I mean what is the relation necessarily going to love my answer on this one because if you're factoring in things like walkability and transportation and things like that if I was just told 90% is what matters I could give tell you exactly what you would need for 90% but then that might throw busing through the roof. it might throw walkability out the window, things along

158those lines. And so, um, I will say that, um, we ran some very high level four school closures and capacities do push, you know, it's very difficult to get it to balance out in the 90s. things push up into the hundreds and you've gota, you know, >> so there s if we want to get there, we could probably get there, but it might be with some significant sacrifices around transportation or walkability or other things. >> I just want to call out that what we're talking about here doesn't include Bessie roads. >> That is correct. >> I don't have a number. I know that this is probably not the answer you want, but the way I'm thinking about how we get to the number is two things. You know, it's always been about the budget and

159the impact on students. So from a budget perspective, I'm comfortable looking at scenarios where we close the structural deficit or we feel like we can do things o make other cuts within the district and still close the structural deficit without having a significantly negative impact on students. And then from the student side, I am interested in looking at options that, you know, make sure that we're not having a detrimental impact on them. So that to me includes things like walkability, that includes things, you know, um, like utilization, making sure, you know, we have facilities that are adequate at all of the schools. So that's not a number, but to me, those are the two criteria we need to be looking at when we think about what the number is. So, I'm struggling with this a

160little bit because part of it is footprint, the 58% occupancy, and then part of it financial and so kind of the carts before the horse here. Um, which I know we're going to get to soon, so I'm not it's not that's not critique, but it's just part one of the factors of weighing in on this. And, um, >> I mean, I I guess I'll just pull the band-aid off for me personally as far as looking at occupancy. I want to see 90%. I want to see us in that range or slightly above if possible. Um, and then, you know, we'll talk about the financial ranges, but I think we need to do everything we can right now to ensure that our finances are sustainable. Um, not just closing and having a balanced budget, but that

161we're actually caring for all of our responsibilities. That's going to put the number at, you know, the middle range or higher. at which point I I I just don't see us I it I I think we're in the three to four school conversation. Um and I'd love to be wrong. That's there's no um you know but I just >> one thing >> I'd like to just piggyback on that because um we have two major projects before us. I mean, we are talking about school closures, but we still have to deal with this. What was determined that was 2017, it was $188 million. >> And I know that we're going to talk about a new survey. Um, and those buildings have to get fixed. That's that's not an option. That's that's not optional. >> And that

162has to be part of the budget considerations. and I'm going to be on the board for four years or whatever and I don't want to leave here and leave a red line on that budget which is what I saw as like >> that's to me is um we have to do the hard work now um because we've already taken so many brave steps towards this. I don't want us to lose steam and lose the courage to get it done. >> Um, another thing we have to always consider is revenues and what's happening out there in the big rightwide world. Um, we're all being very optimistic about our revenues and making sure that we're going to have them, but every day is a different story out there in the world. So that's something that we have

163to take into consideration. So in my view, I want to I want to go for the most impact at this moment while we have the impetus to do it. Um because we've done a lot of community conversations. We've built a foundation of understanding for the community for what's going to happen. Um, I think the community starting to learn that it's not just an Evston problem. It's u it's a global problem. I don't know if it's global, but it's in, you know, in these United States. It's not it's not just happening here. So, um, in terms of number of school closures, um, in order to rightsize the district and give attention to the the renovations and improvement of the buildings because it's not gonna it's not going to benefit us if we don't do both. >>

164It's not an A or a B for me. It's both. So, >> can I talk a little bit about the renovation part of it? Because I sort of um I sort of use the analogy of personal finance here, right? So, you know, our structural deficit that we're spending more than we're bringing in every year, right? So that means like you know personal finance side every month you're tapping in the savings to pay your bills which you know it's not a great thing. Um but then you know to me the facilities is more okay now the roof has a leak or you need a new roof. So, I'm okay with, you know, I I am okay with us not being able to out of our, you know, our regular monthly or yearly budget if you're thinking

165about it for personal finance, not being able to cover that roof if there are other options out there that we can look into. If there's a way to get additional money, if there's a way to get, you know, whatever that is. But what I'm not okay with is the structural deficit. So, I just think that like it's important to make that distinction because we have to figure out how to cover um those, you know, deferred maintenance costs and the building costs. But I think like I can think about that in a different framework than covering the structural deficit. Um which is why I think you know I I don't I don't have a number but that's just the way I'm thinking about it. Can you had mentioned Susan that the 188 million in capital improvements

166goes through 2040. >> What is the total number between now and like either 2030 or 2032? So like a 5 to sevenyear horizon. >> Sure. So I believe if I remember correctly and again in that scenario we've indexed it for inflation because the study was done in 2022. I'm think it's between 160 and 170 million dollars even for um what would be through 2030. That number I had I'll look it up just to ver validate but I'm pretty sure it's pretty close to that. And that does take out Bessie roads. So while the 188 million was a number in 2022, it includes all the renovations for inclusive of Bessie roads. But if we take those projects out to 2030, not 2040 because the 188 million Oh yeah. >> goes to 20 240, it's about $160

167million for what is needing projects that need to get done through 2030. >> So there was only $20 millionish for the decade 2030 to 2040. No, when we in it goes up to probably closer to $300 million because we're going to have to index every year after that. So that's the compounding of what the value of it will be when it needs to get done. >> Okay. >> The 188 million is over to 2040. >> Okay. >> So just to be clear, you're asking us now what number we're comfortable with or or multiple numbers. >> Are you uncomfortable with zero to four? I mean, I'd like to not see zero or one. I mean, I'm thinking two, three, and four. I think it might be misleading to do zero or one and get people excited.

168And we don't like we don't want to mislead anybody. So, but I also don't think it's prudent to only do three or four. So, I would like to see two, three, and four. And do we have I mean in that um since we're sort of zones three zones uh three different school zones is there some way of just you know this zone must have you know is there you know some minimum um >> by zones do you mean like >> I mean like middle school every middle school you know there's a middle school and then feeder patterns yeah so you know in some sense each feeder pattern has to be whole in a in a way of looking at it >> would that be part >> so I I don't believe that we've approached the

169work from that perspective because it really has been based upon the criteria portion of it and which ultimately because of walkability has essence to it that would cover that portion of it but it really is we've been really trying to stay true to independently how it works related to the criteria that got established >> but in the but when you're going through your scenario so I can see in each individual school but in some sense you're you're looking at a scenario and Like I'm not imagining there's going to be a scenario with three schools in one in one area. >> So in that sense um yeah you know >> looking at three to four but understanding that each school each each feeder pattern >> still remain. >> Yeah. Need to Yes. So from an equity

170standpoint each feeder p pattern has a level of equity that we need to make sure that we're uh achieving. So I'd be so something to build on on like I'd be curious a little bit about how you define equity in that situation, but I think the scorecard will speak to kind of like based upon the criteria we put out there, what's that baseline level. We use that to begin to inform what to model with. And then when we begin to model, what we are watching for is like we have to consider occupancy. you have to consider things like adjacencies because that then begins to impact your occupancy and your walkability and all of those things. And so, you know, that is, I think, where the scenario specific scorecards come out because if a scenario is

171going to elevate like the number of kids impacted by the change or if it's going to elevate the number of kids that have to be bust, things along those lines, it's going to basically say, hey, this scenario is not aligned well with the values that you have defined. And that scorecard says, hey, here's where you begin. But some scenarios don't work because of adjacencies, because of inter relationships, things like that. And that's why we have a group kind of going through these and saying like looking at that boundary that actually doesn't really line up with the way that this goes. Additionally, the memo in June did talk about the fact that some of the recommendations were like, we're going to work to try to honor those feeder patterns, but as we, you know, we're working

172to honor them and as we get to higher numbers of school closures to make it work, some of those things have to come off the table. >> Is it possible to hit 90% occupancy with two schools? >> Is it possible to get 90% occupancy with two schools? Not from what we saw. >> Is it possible to get >> an average of 90% occupancy? Is that what you're saying? >> AC districtwide occupancy. >> Yeah. If you close two schools, you will not have all your schools at 90% occupancy. >> Will they be on average at 80? >> The I can give you So, we've been looking at the mins and the maxes and the ranges. Um I don't even think you're quite to 80, but I don't want to go on record in that. If that's

173a request that the board wants to see, we can say, "Hey, for the two schools closures, here's your average occupancy rate for the ones we've run." >> I think the occupancy is important and the scorecards are important, but to your earlier point, I want to see how it all fits together, right? Because I don't think decision just driven off numbers and percentages. I really think we need to see like what the experience is for students, what it means for families, see how everything fits together, how it impacts our budget. Um, so I'm, you know, I think I'm where you are, Omar. I'm I'm It doesn't feel realistic to say zero or one. Um, but I think that we should at least consider two because I want to see how the pieces fit together before coming.

174>> So, can I ask for because I I think we're saying sort of two I want to actually get us on two different things. One is you're saying um Andrew rightsize the district. So regardless of what it's going to cost for anything else, what are the number of schools, we're going to go for the 80 85 90%. And then I think I hear you saying it's the budget. So we might right size might be four, but we're going to do three because the budget only we can get away with three. So I think those are two separate >> I think and the student experience, >> right? And so I think we're I think we're I think there's two I just want to call that out because I think there's two two different right sides separate

175the separate the finance from what we need to do for the plant and figure out what that is. Um and with that Stacy the only thing about the two I want to make sure is that if we're saying two and we would try to get to the right um capacity then that makes me think you're going to have to go to bigger schools to you know for two schools to hit that then you're not going to it's not going to be your small schools are going to do that. So I just want to make sure we're not >> we don't you know >> so if you if it's a two school model we can't get to 80% occupancy if we if we model potentially the the smallest schools >> I would imagine. I mean but

176I mean y'all been doing you've been steeped in that. >> Yeah. So just to make but that'll all play out and that's part of the conversations as you bring them forward. We can understand >> you'll have options. I think I think you know somebody just brought it up a second ago with the student experience piece like there are a lot of different things that you need to weigh in your decision. 90% becomes an optimal occupancy. But when we bring forward scenarios and say, "Hey, these are the occupancy rates of the schools, this might be a 90%, but that's what that means in regards to the number of schools, travel, distance, student experience. You know, all of it needs to get weighed to ultimately try to make the best decision for the district." Um, I did

177just do a quick average. this happens to be two smaller schools that would potentially be modeled and like you know that netted us out at 69%. >> One thing I you know there you know it's but you're starting at 58 >> you know so >> one thing I want to point out is that when we think about right sizing our district the transportation costs are significant and increasing. And so one of the things that has been a challenge for us, and I know we're going to switch out of here in a minute, is um is that our transportation costs have been exceeding, you know, I don't know exactly what the year-over-year increase is, but it's been fairly high except for the last year when we did a lot of work to rightsize that. So if

178all of a sudden we're we're closing four schools for example and we're increasing the amount of busing that's required that then becomes uh you know 2 to 5% increase in cost year over year um to just keep that in mind as we're weighing all these different options. Yeah. And if we if we close the schools, we still have to maintain them. So there's still I mean there will be savings from closing the school but there'll be a cost to maintain the building. >> I think we'll have a we'll have some scenarios over what we're going to do with the buildings. >> Part of part of the conversation will be is what's the are we going to keep them? What's the value of them? Does it make sense? Right? Because I will tell you you know

179there's different thoughts on that, right? if if you know capacity, but I can tell you in most districts that have gone through this scenario, they sat on those schools for 20 years and finally get rid of them and they didn't. They never invested back into them over time. So, I think that's going to be another decision you're going to have to make, which is what do you decide to do if you close these schools? And that'll be part of our conversation because ultimately, um, you've got some prime real estate here in Evston. the property is probably worth quite a bit just in and it of itself in some of these locations. And so maybe you can could get decent money for that. That could help offset your deferred maintenance and help bring down the overall

180cost of how we might get money for that and sell that property and use it to reduce and put it towards your facilities. >> Yeah. And we do have um a draft version of the property assessments that we went out for. Those are going to be finalized. So those will be be become they will become available before the end of the month. >> Stacy, what is the um if we if we assume park in this and so park as moving so you might be closing the school but you're not you're reusing the school and then does does it have any impact? >> You say closing the school you mean the building? >> Yes. If you're closing part the building but you're moving you're moving to Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. >> No no no no. where um

181does that >> we do have a we have a deep commitment to parks program. Yeah. >> I think another piece that's important to understand which is information that you know we've gotten fairly recently is that park in order to be able to to get funding from the state of Illinois as a therapeutic school needs to be in a standalone building and so we would not be able to take park and potentially do like a building split. Park at a point did split part of Washington. Um, so merging that into like a dual use building isn't feasible and to while still qualifying as a therapeutic for state of Illinois money. And so with park essentially like a decision needs to be, you know, the decisions that we're contemplating and thinking about is like do you do

182the renovations and the improvements on that building over time in the summers and get Park in Park School to the kind of shape that it should be in? Or do you if you do close a building, do you renovate that building ultimately move parks program to a different building once that renovation has been complete and then decide what you want to do with an empty park school building on main >> and tried to use as many buildings and programs. >> Yeah. and and Maria, the number for um 2022 to 2030 is just under $160 million if if what what's currently scheduled to be done and then index for inflation. >> Okay. Thank you. >> So, it looks like we said three, four, and two like are we on the two, but are we sticking with

183modeling the two? >> Two to four. >> Did we? Yeah. >> Two to four. >> Okay. All right. Then the other >> one last thing. Is it multiple? Was it multiple scenarios for it's not a scenario? >> No, multiple. >> Yeah. >> Our assumption was that we would bring forward two scenarios in each whatever in those categories for consideration. And I think you've got to hold both like we'll be naming scenarios. And so we will physically be talking about schools going a lot wider than that >> increases even more of the kind of anxiety and hardship of these conversations. >> Do you feel comfortable with what we the two do you feel comfortable what we just said or do you have any any advice on that? >> I think that's f you know that is

184where we were going. I think it'll you know that's where we're going so that we hear what the board wants and we'll bring those forward. >> Okay. So we're locked in on two to two to four schools in our scenarios >> I think realistically for you. >> Yeah I you know we will still model I think zero and bring forward one because that's work that we have done and so we have it and so you know we'll bring those forward. It sounds like the group really wants to focus on the two to four and so we'll make sure that those packets are solid and ready to go. >> Okay. >> All right. the other portion of tonight and this has come up in the finance committee and again we told them that we would bring

185this back to the board. Um in June when we did the presentation and the update on the SDP it was uh communicated at that time that we would not be considering middle school closures or magnet school closures and so um right now the the facilities committee has not been working on that. Um right now if we do bring those forward um they will take and extend our timeline for um the September 29th um analysis that would be brought forward. We're believing we'd probably need one additional board meeting to do probably middle schools because the committee will have to come back together and we'll have to have some modeling done and then it would also be whichever one they chose to do first is going to delay some of our timeline if we are to do

186that. Um I will tell you what has been discussed and brought forward to specifically in the finance committee is a conversation around grade level configurations um which would be uh K6 through 78 um recommendation uh for why uh middle school closures would be brought forward. Now um the programs committee is going to be reviewing the impact of going to a different grade level configuration lensure curriculum um transitions for kids experience that's provided at a sixth grade level and an elementary school versus what they're provided in a middle school setting. And so there will be a discussion with the programs committee around that um because there will be very different education that takes place if sixth graders are getting their education in an elementary setting. Um the other portion of it again is there's going to

187be issues potentially with lensure and the qualifications and again um very difficult and challenging to run a sixth grade current program that we're running in a middle school in an elementary school. So I'm only saying that that that's part of the complexity right now that we're going to run into because it's this work has not been done. Um, so we want to get clarity on are we good? Because when we talk about four school closings, it currently with what we've just described to you is four elementary school closings. No other schools and as we just talked about with Parki Park, right, we look at how do we continue to provide that program maybe in a different location, but we still will provide that program. Um, so it is our question to you. Are you good

188with us delaying some of our recommendations if there is a desire to bring middle school closures and potential magnet school closures? Not for sure, but as an option that would be brought forward to you. We need to know is that something you want to do? But understand it will change our timeline for the September 29th date of of what we'll be able to present to you because that will change what the work of this committee needs to do and it will take more time. >> I mean on the middle school question, can you just speak to why do we have middle schools now? Like why do we have six through eight in terms of what the different experience is for a student, you know, who might be sixth grade in a can >> I don't

189want to disregard that question but that's what the program committee should be do like I don't want to take their work right so I think I guess I'm cautious of having us have this discussion if we have these committees who should be having that discussion >> well I think input from the committee but like these are experts in education so I like to hear from just the educational perspective >> I think middle school isn't a program though >> so it's not something that is being considered by other program committee specifically the magna programs I don't know I don't know if they're considering that >> so so middle school 6th through 8th grade is exactly what Susan said it's a great configuration um and I mean the research says you know kids in a middle school

190setting and and and I'll even go on record and having this conversation with the superintendent of 202 him and I have talked about how he can tell the difference between our kids who have been in a true middle school program versus our children who come from a K8 because the kids from who come from a middle school, a middle school operates like a high school. So kids are much more prepared and ready to ease into that transition when they go into into high school. And the it's it's research out there that says a middle school configuration and typical middle school configurations is sixth, seventh, and eighth grade is the configuration that you know helps with the development of of children at at that particular age. >> Yeah. I mean from the standpoint of um if

191we think about the city they're going into one of the largest high schools in the country, right? And being prepared for that. Um but the other point is my understanding our middle schools are are crowded, right? So what would it mean to close them? I mean which >> so so if we keep with the current grade level configuration it's near impossible. Now the part that we did discuss with the finance committee as you get a new architect on board as we look at how we're going to prioritize projects. Is there a way to maybe look at your existing structures maybe do an addition to one of them? I can't answer that. I'm not an architect. That wouldn't need to be done this year, but it could be evaluated at a future date. If we go

192with a K6, 78 grade level configuration, push our se sixth graders down to elementary, that's a totally different way in utilization of our elementary schools. So, so um >> so is that is that model being considered coming out of the is the decision to try to explore six 78 is that coming from a goal to try to not close K5 schools or is it a conceptual conversation that was having around how our schools are structured? some members that brought forward that as an idea of a way to get at a middle school. The deferred maintenance on the middle schools is a much bigger number. I'm going to trust that there's financial components because it's truly being driven. I will tell you the the facilities committee did take it off the table and did not because

193of the capacity numbers feel that that was in the best interest of the district. We've been very deliberate which is I did not want the finance people to be involved with that conversation. So we can keep that in its very regimented evaluation process as the facil finance committee is trying to come up with 12 15 10 whatever the number is right that becomes pretty daunting right so when they're looking at just trying to solve the math equation right it it becomes attractive to do it but it could drastically change what we do in the district and again what's in the best interest. So, we're going to bring forward and have the programs committee spend their next meeting around the potential grade level con configurations because if there was a desire to move in that direction,

194all the work that Stacy's done to date is vastly different. >> If you do go ahead, >> so just so you know, I mean there are uh curricular implications because right now in a K5 model, we have a K5 curriculum. You move into a middle school curriculum, it's it's based on content area. It's vastly different. You also have lenture things. You have to have a middle school endorsement in order to teach at middle school. So in a K5, you don't have to have that endorsement. Also, contract planning is different for K5 than it is for middle school. Physical education is different for K5 than it is for middle school. So that's literally the tip of the iceberg. >> So you don't just put sixth grade in an elementary school building and call sixth grade elementary

195school. So, it requires a whole whole different configuration. Okay. And then the other thing I wanted to point out with a middle school closure is that we currently have very limited busing for our middle school students. So, >> shoot is busing. >> If we're if we're talking about closing a middle school, then that again >> to a K5 building, then you got to take into consideration transportation. >> That's right. >> So, I mean, for me, a middle schools are off the table. >> Okay. It would drastically change the educational experience for those sixth graders. >> Yeah. >> Right. >> And I think one of my colleagues on the board asked me a really profound question. Are we considering this because of money or are we considering this because it's educationally best for the students. >>

196Um and what I'm hearing is there's no compelling case that that's educationally best for the students is being articulated right here. The the only research that I saw on this that was out there is there's some loose research about sixth graders still living in the elementary experience for the transition. So there's some research that says sometimes it's good to hold them back but again educationally vastly different. They say though then waiting till seventh grade. Though on the flip side is you're waiting too long for them to transition to prepare them for a large high school that they would be going into to help them prepare for changing grades, right? Changing classrooms, having a locker. So, so I would say I don't want to say that there aren't any research that says it there's some positive,

197but I would say for us you would be changing what your kids are learning, what curriculum, and how they're being exposed to. And I really like Dr. Turner's conversation, which is ultimately those students got to prepare to go to a very large high school that giving them three years of that is probably in their best interest, but that's me probably anecdotally and being a mom wanting to protect some kids. >> Right. So, we're not saying in our district we need to make a shift to ensure the success of our students in addition to the logistical complications. I don't support the consideration. >> Does anyone support considering a middle school? I would say only if I would like to see the first set of recommendations and then based on that if we think we need to

198see something different. Does that you you understand what I'm saying? Like if we see the recommendations without middle schools and for some reason we're not convinced or we think four is too many, maybe we revisit. >> Okay, >> that's what I that's the only thing I would say about middle schools. Now, I will say um not talking about middle schools, but I would love to see us talk about K2 and 35 clusters as a possibility if we're closing multiple schools in uh in areas. >> I also want to point out that, you know, Bessie Roads is K through 8, King Arts is K through eight. So, we do have models that have that middle school in it. Um but I do think I agree with you, Omar, that if we want to extend to that

199scenario, >> the difference there is their K8. So, have a K5 and a 68. >> So, they still get the middle school experience. They're still switching courses. >> And you still have a set of middle school teachers and you still have curriculum planning. Great point. >> And prep time and it's separate K86 different. >> Thank you. Yep. Great point. >> Correct. I >> And and I and I do like the conversation which is what we tried to explore with the finance committee. If we're not deep enough with the savings that we're going to get from three, two, four elementary schools, we may be a year out, which says, okay, do we need to consolidate some of our middle schools or go down by one, whatever that might be. But, you know, the problem is is

200right, we're going to transition kids, right, which we want to try to avoid potentially multiple times because this will take over multiple years to get that piece done. But, you know, I think, you know, the reality is is we're nothing's always going to be pretty, but we'll do our best to be conscious of what are the parameters and guidelines of how we protect our students. >> To me, that's like Nicole's question like comes if we have to consider if we see the scenarios and we're not convinced, we might have to consider other like that, maybe more K8. So, that's why I think that's a bigger discussion that I don't think we should have until we've seen. >> Okay. Okay. Perfect. So, so, um, I think it's, you know, at this point, I think we, Am

201I hearing that we're the K6, seven, eight model is not something we want to contemplate? >> Not yet. >> Okay. Okay. And then, um, then fine. And then we'll table a middle school closing. And again, I've got some ideas around how we do that, but it doesn't undermine what we the work that's been done to date. Um and then the last piece is should we be considering the magnet school closure in in in one of our scenarios and again that was discussed in June and it was taken off the table. Very unique program that's run there as well as a really good conversation that there are some specialized programs for our students at most risk and need in that building. What I will tell you as your consultant, um, I've seen where districts determined to

202do that piece of it and make the decision that we're just going to put kids in buildings versus making sure we have facilities that support our kids because we're going to make the numbers work. and and and I would only caution us for our most vulnerable students that if we needed to um put them and move those kids to a school and that was a choice, I would spend time and energy to make sure that the facilities we're moving them into are renovated in a way that best supports those kids that are moving into that school as well as the receiver students because the that building was could potentially um not be equipped to make sure that they've got a playground that doesn't run out to an area that's dangerous for those kids that potentially

203are runners. Um doorways that need to be maybe a little bit more secure. Um so I my only concern is for us looking at a magnet school closure that that one does have some implication when we think about the students it serves. >> So to me the I think there's a couple of things to think about magnet school. U one is the um you could keep the building as a school and not have it as a magnet school. It can be a neighborhood school which wouldn't affect the rise. Um I think um >> but if if it's not K8, it would >> K it has to be K8. Okay. You could So I think there's the building >> and how does the building fit within in our ecosystem and what we're doing. And then there's

204also King Arts as a magnet program. I think in um so many conversations we had in in running the question of King Arts, I think it has to be considered. But I don't think it's fair to the community to not consider what happens if King Arts the magnet program is not there. You could explore magnet schools and middlegrades. I mean, so I I just think it's fair. That does not mean anyone listening to me saying that I believe that King Arts should be closed, but I just think from a if we're talking about every other K every other building, I think it's only fair um to consider it. And also because historically part of the reason to have the MA King Arts magnet is because you had Fifth Ward, Bessie Rose and King Arts because

205of the busing. And so now what you're not busing, I do think there's a moment to now look to say what makes sense here uh in terms of uh uh what we're doing. But it's phenomenal school. It's the only magnet school that gets a lot of credit. I'm open to it being considered, but I would just argue that we're not considering that all other schools be closed because middle schools are not on the table. The other thing is it just I want we can't reiterate enough that RI like a lot of folks do talk about closing King Arts who don't know that RISE exists and RISE is a K8 program and serves some of our most vulnerable kids in this district. And so where will like that is a very important program that is housed

206at King Arts and is part of the King Arts community. So like closing the magnet programming in King Arts is essentially disrupting Rise too. So again, like I'm biased as that's where my daughter goes, but um I'm very open to it being discussed, but RISE has to be a big part of that as well and we can't just say, well, send all the kids to their neighborhood schools. Let me just piggyback on uh what Omar said because I actually worked in that school with those students and I know what a major disruption that would be in terms of access to their education and the need to have an accessible building. That playground was specifically built to be an adaptive playground for those students. And having the opportunity to have um experiences with typically developing peers

207from K through 8 is also an important part of that building. So that's to me that's a reason not to consider that for closure because you'd have to disrupt K through8 students in the rise program and we would have to find a suitable replacement for them to receive their education. So if we can consider the two to four without disrupting that I would be in favor of that. >> I I'd also you know again we we also are planning a a an audit on our u specialized service programs. So again, I'm open to the discussion, but again, I'm I'm I'm really interested in protecting our most marginalized students uh and the programs that serve them. So I think I need to see both, right? Like so then what what what are they going to be

208the outcomes in regards to what we how our from the audit, but really, you know, what what is the impact that Sun is having, right? And and and we've got experienced folks here who are sharing it makes an incredible impact. Um it is a best practice model. Um, so again, again, I'm open to it, but again, it's about, so it's it's we're talking about magnets as a program, but the specific subprogram that's on there, which which is uh RISE, I think that's something that needs to be protected. So, >> can I ask uh do we know the capacity utilization of our RISE program today? Is it at 100% capacity, 50% capacity, meaning >> I don't think >> do we know that? >> So, RISE will adjust, you know, if a student's indicates that they need

209rise, we do have room to be able to move kids into those classrooms at this point. And there's enough space within that building that if we had to open a new classroom, we would. So my understanding of RISE is that we have not hit an outer wall capacity. It's really driven by a student's IEP and their need to be serviced by that program. >> Okay. >> Yeah. And I would like to conserve that capacity because that will limit outplacement of students as well. Yeah. >> So on your scorec card, Stacy, I would assume that King Arts would be it would it would it would never be Yeah. It would have a low score. So it would never So part of what I'm I'm saying is I just want everyone to be a know why we

210didn't do this because it was we did the work to consider it and it comes out as no, it shouldn't happen. As opposed to, oh, they just didn't look at that school and saved it over there. So just you know in this sense as we're saying it's going to come out as no you wouldn't close that school because of the equity and all those things it would it just wouldn't happen. >> I I I would also be open to the same thing we said about middle schools if we get to a situation where we're not happy with the scenarios maybe then it's worth looking at >> and and what I would say right now is we've just got to move forward with this because we will not hit the deadlines and the timeline. So I

211think at this point it sounds like we've got to leave them in the mix. We will come back with the revised timeline as to potential scenarios that we'll bring these in later on because we'll need time to model that piece of all that. Um, but we won't have them on September 29th. >> No, I'm saying something else, Susan. I'm saying create the scorecard. I'm not necessarily saying you have to include it in the but don't leave it out there like you didn't. We don't understand why it has a low score. I'm not saying give me a scenario. >> What I hear is like let the score card tell the story for King Arts. And if the scorecard says that hey it's not a strong model it would not be a model. >> Okay. >> So

212>> but from there then so >> this may be this may be an obvious question but so what we're saying not only is within all the current categories of the scorecard we suspect that King Arts would rank uh high impact to close. Um but additionally there would be financial costs to relo. So will those financial costs be included in the score because there's no is there a place to include that >> there is so there is not a place to consider financial cost for moving programs and we do have step we have rise >> you know um and so and we have tweet and you know so there will be some need to move some programs um I would say there's cost in moving a program but I think in this case that you're talking

213you know you have dollars to move a program, but then you also have culture and climate and you know how you build a school that embraces inclusion in the same way. You know, in this case, yes, we could certainly look at playgrounds, things like that. But right now, we're not we do not have like program costs built into the scenarios. We will look at transportation costs, I believe. >> Okay, that's helpful. Thank you. >> So, just to bring closure, we will do a scorecard for the magnet school. We at this point then we'll see where that plays out. Assuming that doesn't reach the level of it being even on the docket. You wouldn't build that into your timeline as a model. >> That's correct. >> Okay. Okay. All right. I think we've covered everything on

214facilities. Is there anything else you want to share with us about your thoughts about facilities? All right. So, the next one is really talking about the deferred maintenance, right? because once we know what schools we're closing that impacts what we are going to consider for um what is the deferred maintenance. So one of the things as we're looking kind of what's this long range financial sustainability we want to know and Marie I think you tipped your hand on it what's the time frame of what projects we really should be considering right now as we look to develop kind of this long range financial sustainability plan. Um, and I'm just going to kind of, you know, probably package all of these together because I think the discussion isn't individualized, but I want to call them out

215individually. You know, what's, you know, our decision about how we fund deferred maintenance? Should we be considering a capital bond referendum? Should we be looking at life safety bonds? And if we aren't prioritizing that, then we really need to start zeroing in on, right, how deep are we going to go with this existing budget to get at what projects you want us to prioritize, right? Because I I think the one thing if there's any consistency for everybody is we can't keep kicking this down the road. It's just getting more expensive every day. So I I guess I'm just going to open it up for all of you. You know, what are we looking at? Are we looking through 2030 right now as we look to bring forward a number that says this is we're going

216to stake our where we got to make reductions for us for the next go around here and then you know are we going to demonstrate financial responsibility and oversight of the district's finances and we're going to stretch this as far as we can to demonstrate that piece and maybe there's another discussion down the road which is okay if there's still 150 100 million of deferred maintenance maybe we another conversation, but we really want to settle on let's get at least caught up through 2030 or some date thereof. I I also just want to make the board aware just so everyone knows we are going undergoing a process uh to develop a master facilities plan that includes a life safety analysis that that in the 2022 wasn't included that life safety wasn't included. So that should

217be um that should be completed in the beginning of February. So we'll have we'll have at least we'll know what the number is for life safety versus non-life safety um at that time. And just to reiterate for those watching the life safety um the the board is able to issue bonds uh for life safety work without uh a public referendum vote. Um, a capital bond referendum, however, would require um a vote or an any other referendum would require a vote. >> But normally, I mean, just do you normally not do it? I mean, is the preference to go do a referendum as opposed to just, you know, doing a life safety? I mean, do you only do the life safety because you believe you can't get the referendum? It's a lever for certain districts to

218utilize in a way that if they don't feel they're going to have the support in their community. Um, in our conversations with your financial advisor, the issue becomes for full transparency sake, much of what would be on that list would be the things your parents and families would get behind. So, right, so it's a but it is a lever to the school board. You have to have hearings. It has to be done transparently, right? you still have to ask, but it will increase people's tax bills without asking them on on a vote. So, I think it's just where do you live as a board? And again, if you get too far down this, you know, what do you do to preserve your buildings? So, uh, just for me just conceptually, I want to distinguish between

219deferred maintenance, that's maintenance that we've already said, we're pushing it off, >> and then there's right now every year ongoing maintenance. Um, I'm going to be fairly uncomfortable going to the public asking for additional funding if we haven't already set aside in our budget ongoing capital expenses to ensure that we are no longer deferring maintenance and we're taking care of current maintenance needs. um which as I understand and and I I suspect this will be shaped based on scenarios of school closures, but the number I've heard is for a district our side is 7 to10 million. Is that right? So, um I think we have a much more compelling case to rebuild trust in our community if we've built that in right now into our measure of whether or not we're sustainable. Um, and then

220we're asking help us clean up the this already deferred kind of maintenance mess, but we aren't going to keep creating that mess. We're not going to double dip and come back and ask for more. So, that's what I'm looking for is whatever number we're targeting to make sure that it includes an appropriate number of ongoing maintenance expenses, capital expenses. Yeah. >> So, that was three. Is that the that must answer the three? >> I'm trying to separate I'm trying to separate deferred maintenance from which is we already have this lump sum >> and then we have ongoing maintenance right now that we are either going to take care of or defer and I think to we have to separate those so that we we have clarity about what we're doing. And when is the timeline

221because I know there's a timeline around um referendum for this year, but I I'm sure we're not going to try to do that. Okay. So, it's really um life safety bonds or >> Susan, don't you want to do that? >> Let's go all in. Let's go all in, Susan. Come on. >> Yeah. Yeah. So, so, so here's we're again conversations, right? I are we still in the process of demonstrating trust in the community and trying to fix our own internal house before we ask anybody to help us with what we need to do. I'm at this point based upon my initial conversations you can hire a firm that could touch you know take the temperature in your community. I believe that there's a part that you probably aren't in the position to ask the taxpayers

222in this spring to go out for a referendum. Right. I I I would just be very cautious about that piece of it that I don't know that that's prudent. The piece becomes though is if we're going to address what I believe Andrew thinks is very important, we're going to go deep in this budget and it is going to hurt. It is going to change what we offer and what we provide as an educational experience to these kids. And so there's a piece which is probably an art to all of this which is what are we doing that's responsible but doesn't totally what you do for your students here. Right. And that that's going to be the art of all this. Right. So so ultimately how we plan to approach this. Right. What schools do we

223get to that we're talking about closing? What does that do to occupancy? Can I just ask in in the last two cycles of SDRP and I think for budgets going back from what I can remember we've done about a million dollars per year in capital expenses right that's been our kind of run rate on capital improvements >> of 1 million2500 >> like going back right like forever >> since 2017 >> 2017 okay so to go from 1 million to 7 million, let's just say. Um, do we have the internal personnel to be able to manage that level of increase in expenditures? >> So, part of doing the health life safety master facility assessment and working with a potential architectural firm to do that establishes a new architectural relationship. We've been working with another firm this

224year as well. And so, when you take on project like that, you need to engage with architect to support the process. And so I do feel pretty confident that we will have the relationships in place to take on the scope of that work and we've got the internal capacity to help identify it and manage the details locally >> and and you're working on right the building the new school right so you're already putting some people in right that that work transfers >> I guess one one of the things I would call out is I was having some conversations with some colleagues on in the Wheeling school district who's just gone through a lot of capital um expenditures and repairs and budgets. I hope that we're um getting on that. I know we're getting on that

225track. And one of the things that um my colleague there mentioned was they had built the internal capacity to do like the electrical and plumbing and those kinds of things and it ended up saving them a significant amount of money. And so in as we're thinking about building this into the budget, I would recommend that we go gradually and we think and then we think about what are the internal capacities that we should build knowing that we are going to sustain this level of capital projects for the foreseeable future. >> I think kind of want to speak to that on two levels. Um we do have a maintenance team in house. They do some incredible work. >> Yeah. A lot of their time though is working across an incredible range and variety of equipment from,

226you know, 30, you know, we have a steam boiler in the warehouse all the way to like ones that we want to replace before the the winter hits. >> And so they're spending so much time bandating things, it's hard to get them into the like ongoing maintenance, repair, things along those lines. And so so much of what sits in this next 10-year window is replacing boilers, chillers, taking care of roofs, doing tuck pointing, like getting the buildings to be in a place that a maintenance team can then continue to maintain and secure because that range of equipment isn't so incredibly diverse. Like we have a unit that continues to go out at one of our schools that it's so old, we can't buy the parts. We have to have them made. Well, I mean, I

227guess to just to to to Andrew's point though, I think what he's talking about is let's make sure we're able to do the maintenance on an on an annual basis and fund that >> building both. And so, if we can start replacing some of the old stuff, we open up some of their capacity to be doing the other work. >> Okay. And so, but many of those things and I >> and we are in favor of growing that team, too. I'd be trouble if I didn't say. Yeah. Nothing. I know Omar has a lot of has has a lot of expertise, but I I'm sure it could use some help. Um, so then that would some of those projects though what I'm hearing you say sound like life safety things >> there. So some of

228the work absolutely will be health life safety. Some of it will not you know. Yes. Okay. I think we'll >> when we get this combined master facility health life safety assessment. I think we'll have a pretty nice list of health life safety items. And then it's about bundling the work and trying to find ways to do it in the most strategic manner. you know, it might make sense to knock off particular schools or, you know, and so there and depending on decisions around school closures, things along those lines, like potentially if you can work for more than just the window of the summer, you can get a lot more done because you're, you know, your costs are less, you can spread out your work, those types of things. So some districts will leverage like a

229swing school if they need know they need to do a lot of work in a building and that might mean kids spend a year someplace else in a different building and then come back into a fully renovated building >> The entire school. So is that something that we might see in our scenarios >> that so understand that we're going to we need to walk into conversations about potential school closures. If we decide to close schools, then there are conversations that follow about what do you want to do with those buildings and those properties and there are options there that potentially could help with some of your renovations if there was a commitment to doing a larger term renovation. And that you're not jamming everything into 8 to 10 weeks of summer, which is the most

230expensive time to do the work. >> So, I thought I'd seen a model or some worksheet or something that would grade us up, say by 28. We might be up to like 7 million for maintenance. I just I thought I saw something that would, you know, level us up. My concern is just uh credibility >> and uh and financial discipline. >> Sure. both things that we don't have the best track record with on um in the district. Um so if we're going to if we're going to grade, you know, if we're going to slowly ramp this up over say three years, there's we we've got to be credible in that. Um it's we've got to stick with it. Um again, thinking of with integrity going and asking the community, you know, we need a lump

231sum of money to deal with the deferred maintenance. I just think that'll be really crucial. Can we do it like this then? So say there's 4 million um 3 million 5 million 7 million and each of those 2 million come with something else that we're taking off. So I'm sure the next slide is going to be around >> it'll all come together and we do have the the spreadsheet to model this as well too to kind of show you what what the number will ultimately be. >> Well, we're going to be more than one million being set aside. So we're looking >> well and I will tell you in the numbers tonight I have set aside two million. I I didn't know what the number is, but right now there is two million every year

232with what the piggy bank picture was. So, right now I've got in those projections, you saw $2 million of annual deferred maintenance. >> There's also a $6 million gap in the construction funding for Foster that we'll need to take out of our operating expenses um in the next fiscal year. >> It's already and it's in your projection. >> FY27. Yeah, FY27 there'll be a trace. >> So, and so that presents some constriction >> constriction, but also a natural ramping up. If we have to set aside 6,000 for foster uh sorry, 6 million, uh that 6 million the next year could be designated for capital expenses. >> That is coming out of working cash. So, you're using your savings account to pay for that. >> All right. So, yeah, it' be nice, but that's not how

233it's working. >> Okay. >> All right. So, so hold that thought. A nice range would be great. We'll show you what it does to our numbers that gets to ultimately these are still that 10 15 million 8 10 15 million. All right. So, so those are um where we are right now. We will continue to model different things. Um and you can tell us no that you don't want a life safety, you don't want a capital bond. Um I believe that will be coming forward to you from the finance committee as levers to potentially do that. So that it still would be something to consider, but you would have to decide whether or not you want to move forward with that. >> And is the time frame based off of what we get from the

234I mean they're going to tell us the state of where everything is and what needs to happen. >> Yeah. So part part of my biggest challenge right now is if we had that other document in place and we don't right because we're working this team's working as feverishly as they can. Um you probably are still a little bit off. Part of the other re reckoning is you don't have that document. All right. So the last piece is factoring the structural deficit and the items above. What is the amount range that we would should be targeting in our model and then we want you to talk about that reduction. So Adila, would you mind putting up that um spreadsheet that I had provided you earlier? All right. Probably make it a little bit bigger. >> It's

235125. >> All right. One more. Can we go to 159? >> It's I don't think it fits is becomes the Well, no, it does. Good. Yay. >> One more. >> All right. Okay. >> One more, please. Can you make it one more fall off the screen? >> You You won't see all of it if you do it. >> We can. We can if you want. Right now, the problem is you're just not going to see how this factors through. So, the Actually, do me a favor. Scroll down >> or can you just email it to us? >> Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. and we we'll do it afterwards. So anyway, so I think the first piece I'm looking for feedback on is, you know, what are we comfortable with for right now? So if you look at

236line six fund balance transfer, that's the $2 million that's going out of operating funds to the capital project fund. So, starting in FY28, 29, and 30, and there's 2 million already built into 27 because um we alluded to that there's that's 8 million, but that's just $6 million out of working cash to pay off Foster. So, it's $2 million a year for capital projects moving forward. If we do not believe that number is sufficient, then I need to know what range we're talking about. What's the lowest we'd be willing to go with? and because then I can tell you what the overall operating fund reductions will be that we will need if we're looking to pay for um the capital facility deferred maintenance out of existing uh district dollars. >> Is that what you're saying?

237I don't think that's what he's saying. That's not what he's saying. >> I'm saying we're taking care of our ongoing current maintenance needs and surely there'll be some overlap. Uh um but um and then once we've established that discipline, then we can go seek the extra funding with credibility to deal with deferred maintenance. I think >> so. So I just would note like with 2 million, we're still 5 million off from what our experts in the room are saying is 7 to 10 million a district should be spending on deferred maintenance. We would be effectively kicking the can down the road here where eventually we're going to have to find five more million dollars. Um, I'm just uncomfortable with that. Very uncomfortable with that. >> I think I want to get the numbers, you know,

238to where we are, you know, like being responsible to your point, but at the same time, it's really hard to come up with a number without knowing the impact on students. So you need like I feel like I need to have some sort of understanding for what does that really mean to students because you know like people don't want us to be irresponsible fiscally but they don't also don't want class sizes with you know 30 hits. So I think we we have to take into account like what that really means for students and obviously we won't have all of the details but some sort of understanding for how far we can cut before we really start to hurt the experience of students. I >> I actually just want to call out one of the things

239that that I recognized when I was on a tour of foster school and how beautiful and bright and you know new that that building is going to be. And if you've ever experienced, you know, changing the carpet in a room or painting the walls and then you realize how how bad the carpet is and you change the furniture, I think what we're going to see is that the student experience that we're delivering in our buildings that are falling down or, you know, rotting out is really subpar for our students. And so I think one of the things to consider there might be, you know, what does the experience look like and how do we invest in not only that maintenance but modernizing learning spaces and things like that? >> Are we actually what we're what

240I feel like we're saying is we can't go for a referendum now but we're going to do what we need to do prove responsibility to in one year or two years go for a referendum. So what is the amount of money we need to set aside for these next two years to get us to what needs to happen, what we need to take away there. And then we come back to this conversation about referendum or life safety, but we're in a different uh space with the community. So how do we think about this year, next year, what that number needs to be to handle what it, you know, Stacy, what it really needs to handle for those two years to give us time. And if we don't get it, then we're in a whole different

241conversation about life safety and we're >> redoing some other stuff in the budget at that point in time, too. >> And in our conversation with Stacy was help us start prioritizing what are those critical projects her and Omar are working she and Omar are working on that number. So So we definitely will tell you as well too kind of what are those things that they really feel need to get done, right? And what isn't going to get done. So, so I I'm looking for the same thing here, which is right now there's two million, $6 million, 27, 28, 29, you know, 30 years to 8 million. That four years 8 million. We can do a range that says we're just going to do the 2 million. We can go up to 7 million. And then

242what you'll see on the other side is when we when we then want to get back to 90 days of cash on hand that we're not if that's our threshold for what we're trying to aim for then we need to cut this much further out of our budget and this is where it's going to come from school closures savings from that and then what other additional reductions we're going to have to make in this budget. >> So we're talking about what's the number in FY28? Yes. >> Are we are we including also FY27? >> You won't. The problem is you already would have need to design those all of that. I think you really want to work with your architect, right, and identify what are the most critical projects right now. >> And so you

243you're probably already a little bit behind with what projects you would do next summer, but we really want to be able to by summer of 2028. >> Okay. So it's FY28 and beyond. So yeah, >> and it would be summer of 28 that you would be doing these projects >> or potentially during the year to to Stacy's point. >> Yep. Yep. Right. If you're closing it, that's a good point. Yes. >> And this worksheet assumes what for our reductions. >> Nothing at this point. I want to drop the figure in for what we're hoping to and then we'll come back to say okay now if we decided and I'll just model it 3 million so we get to 5 million it adjusts oh >> yeah and hang on so then this means that we would

244need to I think this was5 >> which would still not be sustainable just to be clear >> but it's also If we if we do a referendum, then you'd have better build. I mean, so part of the amount we need to put aside, do we need to put aside more now because we got old buildings. If we were to go and spend, you know, get a referendum and spend and whatever million on buildings, would are you still putting aside 8 million? I mean, >> I had asked previously, what should a district our size be spending on ongoing capital expenses? I would I would love the number to be different. It's included. I mean, they didn't the the the master facilities plan that we currently have includes maintenance. It's not only deferred maintenance, right? >> So,

245so, so the piece that's not on we putting a million dollars every year is not sufficient. >> Right. Right. When you go through, if you did all 2040, that would include all of the maintenance that would need to be taken. It would be woven in to a if you took all that out for a bond referendum that would take care of all your deferred maintenance and any future maintenance through 2040. >> So it includes like you know the boiler that that was installed in 2020 needs to be replaced in 2040. >> So it's both. >> Would we have just kicked the can down the road to 2040 though as far as actually disciplining ourselves budget wise? So I think the one piece you want to think about here is you do have DUB, right? So

246that where you can borrow money for capital projects. Your DEB has been tied up till 2035, >> which means that should have probably been part of your ongoing maintenance because you're getting money from your taxpayers to pay for capital projects. Yeah. >> So, so I think that that could potentially be something that we could bring the financial advisor back to show you how that fits into this as well too. And Tamara, I don't know if you want to speak up at all. I see you. Am I missing anything or you're happy I'm standing here? >> I don't. Yeah. >> So, can I just re ask the question though? What >> for a district our size like really open to an expert opinion, >> right? apart from forget our deferred maintenance. We act that's fixed maybe

247or something or just take it out of the picture for a moment. >> What should we be spending so we're no longer deferring maintenance? >> Um and >> open to any number. I just would like a clear specific number >> and we should be targeting that number so that we're being responsible and sustainable. >> You got it. And I think it's it's a combination because right now you don't have DUB available to you because it's tied up through 2035, right? And we are in 2025. So I think there's a number that we definitely need right now and I think we need to model it. And then I think we have to talk about once that lever becomes available to you again, how does that fit into this financial equation? I think though more than two

248million is still something you should be aiming for. So, right now, let me just take you through how I want you all to dialogue with where we're aiming for. So, right now, I've added three million to get us to $5 million of deferred money available for deferred maintenance for capital projects. >> So, it was two and you added So, it's five. >> It's five, right? Because two is built in there, it takes it down to five. We're going to take five money, five million out of operating funds and we're going to put it in capital projects. Stacy and Omar are gonna figure out what those projects are, how far it will stretch us. >> If we do that, then between the three million that we're transferring out, we still would need about $15.5 million of

249further reductions that we're going to need to make to the operating funds in order to by FY30, still be at 90 days cash on hand. >> And what does 15 million do to our schools? We will give you a list. Right? So, so, right? So, ultimately what we will do is build a bucket of four school closures. What does that save us? Right? Then where do we need to go next to then what what gets eliminated? And again, we've already eliminated $20 million. >> So, the the the school closures would be a part of the 15 million. >> Yes. >> Okay. Yes. >> So once we >> quantify that eight that's all right four is two 8 million. So you still have 7 million >> in that situation. >> So what do you need from

250us? Because I I mean I without knowing impact I it's really hard to say a number. Are you looking for a range? >> Yes. A range again for this one too >> because then they're going to go and then the next thing is let's look and see how you get how you get to >> how I get to the total amount of $15.5 million. Right. Some of it will be school closure savings. Some Right. >> You make everybody. >> So, can I ask So, you've got the three million in deferred maintenance on the blue the little blue pocket on the on the right hand side for me. >> Um, >> and then it says under that that financial sustainability, but we've already troubled that that that's not quite sustainable if we're adding three million to

251deal with ongoing capital expenses. >> Total amount that those two combined get to that we'd have to bring forward $15.5 million of reductions. So 12.5 is just getting us to zero to a balanced budget or I guess I'm just trying to understand where the 12 >> the 125 makes sure that by the time you get to FY30 you're still at 90 days cash on hand. >> Yeah. >> Now what I would tell you if you're doing the analysis we're good with don't ignore 27 because we've made the commitment that we're sending $6 million of of birking cash to cover foster. But if you look at that FY28, we're at $6.9 million. That revenues are over expenditures. We're taking 5 million of that out. So therefore, we're at a net positive of 1.9 million. 5.6 in

252FY29, 5 million that's going out. We're still at a positive. We're putting money in the bank. By the time we get to FY30, $5 million, we now start to spend down your fund balance again. But we're at 90 days still in compliance with your board policy of of um 90 days cash on hand. >> And that's us coming up with um >> 15.5 million. >> And so if we were 3 million, that would be So then we're at 12. would just >> right if you wanted to say just do one $3 million in total. >> Yeah. Yeah. I'm just >> Yeah. >> So add one instead of looking at me like what >> do this is one I'm gonna >> Yeah. >> I mean the blue box. >> No, I can't do it there because

253it doesn't work that way. >> All right. one million and then >> yeah that's not >> I think like the saying exact numbers is difficult or even range I think if we can come up with some principles for you to go back and and figure out what those numbers are at the end of the day it's about like what the dollars are doing for us so you know like one principle would be that we make sure we're going to have 90 days cash. Another principle like that might be one end of the range. The other end of the range might be, you know, let's let's see what would happen if we did put in enough money every year to make sure we were taking care of maintenance. Maybe that's an easier way to think through

254like how we structure this because I think the numbers themselves are a little hard to follow. But if we can agree as a board just like what is it that we want to do for us that might be easier to get there >> as we go out. I think the piece I'm hearing from you Maya is are we good with just making sure that what we're moving towards is making sure we're in compliance with our fund balance policy of 90 days. >> Are are we good with that is where we're going to position ourselves? I think that might be one end of the range. >> That's the low end, right? >> Okay. >> Would that have to be the minimum? Because we have to maintain our financial stability. >> But isn't there a component of

255fund balance in aggregate that affects like we need to have a certain amount of fund balance in aggregate in order to maintain our bond rating? >> They're going to continue to monitor and watch you and show discipline as a as a school district and fund balance as a part of it. More importantly, they're more concerned about you continuing to erode your fund balances. >> Okay. So, in this scenario, so not to continue eroding our fund balances should be another component, >> right? >> Yeah. Right. >> Yeah. I agree with that. >> Yes. >> You know, we love your uh >> as the expert in the room. >> Besides Susan. >> Yeah. But I haven't been part of those conversations. So, I'm not even I've been part of in other districts but not here. So, what

256has the the bond rating agency's been having you land on as it relates to making sure that the district is financially sustainable in their eyes? >> The focus for um the bond rating calls that I've been on has been the deficit spending and stopping deficit spending, stopping the erosion of fund balance. That's where the focus has been on the last two calls that I've been on. >> So, definitely have to get out of that structure. So balanced budget, 90 days cash on hand. That's what we're talking about. >> Yeah. >> So can I just ask practically so that we're not we don't want to do too much here, right? We don't want to harm impact on create impact on students. We don't want to >> that way. >> What was that? >> They're talking about

257you went that way when you said 7 million. >> Well, we have to have honest conversations. We've we've not been we have been passing off the bill to future generations. It has to stop now. We agree with you. And I'll just be clear like I love the idea of starting from student impact. I I grew up in a a you know working poor family like um you make do. You know what you got and you make do. And so that's what I'm wanting is some clarity about what do we got? And so I I know we've got a such a short timeline right here of >> um but when can we get an expert opinion? >> Um and I I trust you cameras. I mean, I'll just put my cards out there, right? What is

258our responsible target so we're not deferring maintenance in the future knowing there's complexity that we've we've 2035 we've got that issue. So, >> I mean, it's an asset value percentage, correct? I mean, there's a formula. >> So, this is what I would recommend as we are getting ready to engage with a new architect. I would have them give us that number. Um just so we're getting an industry number and not necessarily >> what my opinion is or school as a school business official. >> I think it should be exactly >> and before we get that number can we then still decide that our fund balance will be a priority. >> It has to be like how much over that >> and I would say that probably Bob would be helpful too. You know what? So,

259so I think the other port portion of this Andrew is because we did have this conversation because we do have the financial adviser coming out on Wednesday. There is a conversation which is again financial responsibility with DEB as an option for your school district has where you potentially borrow money to invest in your facilities for 10 years and you you know what that number is. You don't want to stretch it or 20 or 30 years. So there's that's why I'm saying there's a little bit of a layer of complexity because when that comes in those become dollars that are available to the tune of five or six or seven million dollars as well too. So right so how does Right. So with so so that part I that's why I'm telling you I think it's

260probably a little bit of both architect as well as where does that become an option for you because you don't have to eat into your operating funds to fund deferred maintenance. We're just locked up right now. >> Right. And my concern is that we we like um um Pat you mentioned >> I was going to call you Dr. Pat um mentioned is like this is a moment where there's clear community consensus that we have to address this and my concern is that we punt >> um like so many boards before us did with the structural deficits and we end up back with um um you know in this situation where we're looking at very hard decisions. So that's >> y >> and the only thing I would caution right is that when we're the reason

261why we haven't done it till this point is because we've been spending it on you know student experience and things like that and so I mean we've done a lot of cutting over the last couple years obviously um in administrative costs and and cons you know we're about to do a whole another round of that but we have saved we have saved the student experience as much as possible. Um, but you're right, we have kicked that can down the road. And so, you know, whatever that amount comes out to be, we should model that and see what the effects are on what the number is because if it if it turns out it's $25 million, I think we we know that that's probably not possible, >> right? Because at some point you don't even have

262that as a lover, right? You can't go that deep. >> We need teachers. >> Right. Right. So, so what I think I've heard, I think we've got enough information tonight for us to have our marching orders to be clear with the committees because that was part of what we wanted to do. We can model different levels of what that could be, but understanding how deep we're going to have to go if we have a, you know, depending upon what the number is. Um, and I think those are the tough decisions that'll be in front of you as we move forward. >> So, let me ask one question about that next piece which is for the um finance committee, right? I mean, in some sense, finance committee is thinking about um I mean, the SDRP finance

263committee is thinking about um referendums and things like that, but if we're saying we need to cut 8 million bucks, that's the sheet that you went through. Um and to me, I'm c um you could look at a sheet, but it's also very much understanding the the the the soul of the of the work. And so, I'm curious to Dr. Turner and Dr. spec like you know that process if we're saying hey we have to cut um 8 million more how to is that something that just the finance the SDP they do that or is that a internal >> you know what I mean because that's an interesting >> so so our structure is facilities determines and has done an evaluation on the facilities programs evaluating how they can support that work finance is going

264to be providing that the internal steering committee which is district staff then compiles that information in what they believe is the best interest of how it all comes together. So that it will be internally and that gets brought forward to you. We're trying to honor the community trust and community engagement that we've participated in because it's as we said I think and we said this in June, right? It's the tension of all of it, right? Because everybody's got their own passion for what needs to get done here and all of it's got to come together. And it's really similar to the process we did for SDR phase 2 >> because when it gets to the nuts and bolts in terms of what the impacts are, that's something that we got to do the logistical grapple.

265Nobody else can do that. So >> and this would be program I mean this isn't I mean you don't have I mean that's not just administrative. You're going to it's this is a cut to the core in that sense if we're talking about something like that. >> Yeah. on this next goround with with phase two. We >> we we we cut it to our core, but we didn't impact schools and we didn't impact students, right? Like so the next core is going to have to be that because nothing else is left, >> right? >> Really? >> So we got to be mindful of that. Okay. >> I think you go back to the slide, Jack. >> Sorry. >> Thank you, Susan. >> Yeah. Thank you. So, so I think the piece is I think we've

266talked about what's the basis for making these reductions. We all know what we're here for. I think really great discussion tonight. I think we've got our marching orders on what our next steps are and we really felt it was important for the community, our committees to know that what we're bringing forward is in alignment with what you expect from us and we'll continue to work in that vein. >> Did we change the dates? I know we were having this whole conversation if >> Oh, yeah. Yes. >> Okay. >> Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. Oh, I have the clicker. All right. So this is our timeline. Here's the new dates. So >> yeah, so I can speak to this a little bit. So um as communicated on September 29th, the plan is to bring forth the various scenarios.

267I do want to be very clear because I have heard some misinformation being spread in the community. These are scenarios for consideration. There are no decisions that are being made. We are not bringing forth what schools will close. As we've discussed, it's a range of options. So, we're going to bring those forth on September 29th. Um, we've been very intentionable intentional on how we're planning our stakeholder engagement for the month of October. Um, as we know, it's a very tight and challenging timeline. We also want to be really mindful that the information that we're going to bring forward on September 29th based on our conversation tonight is a lot of information. It's, you know, a whole package that is looking at various combinations of closures and challenges and opportunities and attendance boundaries and all of

268the things. So, we didn't think that it was reasonable to turn around and go out to our stakeholders in our community only a couple days later and say, "What do you think about this? Give us some real feedback on it." Um, additionally, we're up against, you know, several holiday observances as well as parent teacher conferences in the month of October. And we want to be mindful that our families and staff are not choosing between do I attend parent teacher conference or do I come out for this important conversation. Um so we are going to do um September 29th those scenarios will become public. Um as Dr. Beardsley mentioned everything is going to be publicly available on our website for review. Um, additionally, we want to host some sessions as we have to get out in

269the community to different places as well as having an online feedback option knowing that again not everybody's going to be able to come out for one of those sessions. In doing this, we're looking at our um engagement being midocctober, so after parent teacher conference week, allowing stakeholders in the community again a couple weeks to digest and internalize this information. Um to do that though, we are recommending that we push that October board meeting back from October 20th to October 27th. Um it's simply not enough time to turn around in a meaningful way that um engagement that we're looking at doing. Um so if you go to the next slide, so essentially we want to be again as transparent as possible. We don't know, we are still finalizing scenarios. We don't know yet all of the

270buildings and how those are going to all shake out, but we do know that we want to make sure that we host sessions in each of our feeder patterns. Um, additionally continuing to offer a morning option. Um, we will host sessions for our staff as well after school to make sure that staff can come out and weigh in and give their feedback um as well. So these are what we are recommending in terms of the dates that the district will host um opportunities for the community and staff to come out and give feedback um and in time to bring um some refinements or updated scenarios back to the board on October 27th. >> Questions to get everything >> I have a question back to Dr. park end uh that I just didn't slip in before

271we got to this next one. Um so if we have the architect give us recommendation for what we're going to budget Yeah. >> for ongoing maintenance needs capital expense. >> Can we expect that before September 29th? I mean what I mean when are we going to So it just seems like we're kind of um in the dark here a little. >> Well, that's why what we asked Stacy to do or what are the critical projects that they feel need to get done because I Right. We we I mean the architect list that we have is still a very comprehensive list of master deferred projects, right? So we can look at that list and come up with what really should be getting done, >> right? But as far as budgeting and looking projecting out for the

272next five years, uh >> I could drop in what what's deferred through 2027, >> right? And that that number's ugly. T typically you'd see that as a as a dollar per square foot foot value or a percentage of total asset value. Tamar and I can work on and and we can have conversations with the current architect just to get a ballpark for at least for discussion because I think the tension's going to be there which is what what's going to be removed right but I think to your point I believe Andrew what you're asking me for what's that dollar amount >> right based upon something that somebody can give us credibility on >> right and and are we is there any realistic way we can see that prior to >> we will work to have

273something for you we could work with a an architect Maybe even one of the ones that you're working with that you've considered. You good? >> Yes, we've got it. We'll have that. We'll have them present that. >> So, we just um I know it it shows these are the dates for the community ro shows. These are the stakeholder engage engagements led by the district there. Um we we're looking to add some other engagements with community led by the board. Right. or is these all of these? >> No. So, if it's the board's desire to complement um with sessions to gay engage stakeholders or attend different events throughout the community, those will be supplemental. Okay. I think your intention was just to tell the folks, three folks listening at home, that we would have additional 18

274uh that we will, the board wants to make ourselves available to the community in addition to be able to hear feedback outside of school buildings, outside of the administration, so we can also just be uh present in the community for this very difficult discussion. Okay, >> Thank you. Thank you. >> So, we'll see you back on the 29th and appreciate your feedback tonight and with the tough decisions that are ahead of us. So, thank you. >> Thank you. >> Um, and we have a transportation policy, I do hazards, some FYI items here. I know we're starting to run a little bit long, but I think we had some transportation things that we were some questions about that. I don't think Lou is here, but another presentation. No, >> I don't think so. >> You just

275wanted us. >> I'm asking if >> Yeah, I think I think the question on the table is you you got a transportation memo. Do you all what questions do you all have for that? >> Questions on the FYI. >> So, one I think the I do hazards um that's for we're I mean the given that we're thinking about closing schools, >> how do we agree on hazards where they might be different depending on what we're doing with school closures. >> So, the ID do hazards are reviewed and approved each year. >> Okay. >> So, um what exactly? So what the board is looking at right now is just for this year. So once we have any school closures identified at that point then we'll look at those. >> Okay. >> So looking at the ID

276do hazards they seem to be primarily north of Dempster. Is there a reason for that? >> I would um say that that's based on the um I don't know if it's called a scorecard. a score the I do score based on uh how the speed of the street intersections number of lanes of the street etc. So those are how those I do hazards are determined >> because my concern is with Dodge because there are several I do hazards on Dodge north of Dempster but not south of I'm thinking of schools like Washington >> and Daws where there's major hazards for those kids to to cross and get to schools. I was just curious as to how those were not included >> at Dodge as a hazard but not made in Dodge. >> Yeah. >> Because

277you're coming directly from >> that's the busy street. >> So you taking note of that Tam for >> Yep. So we can and these what's presented right now is just for review. would come back for approval at the September 29th meeting. So any changes or updates we can bring forward at that time. >> So the question I'd have about the crossing guards would be so we mentioned only near school property. I think I forget the exact language in this but it was something about near um school property. What does that mean? Are we talking about directly adjacent streets to school property? Oh, you're talking about the crossing guards. Um, crossing guards. >> You're taking note of that, right, Tamara? >> Yes. >> Oh, sorry. Sorry. I'm talking over you. >> So, are we making a

278decision tonight or is this just a >> No, this is discussed decision. You going to make a decision on September 29th. >> Okay. So, it's not that I'm sorry, looking at the doc, >> but this is for your review. Any questions you have, further things you want us to explore, we will get that explored. Lou isn't here present tonight um due to personal issues he have going on. He leads and manage a lot of this and for transportation. >> Tam is filling in the gap for him. Whatever questions you have, we will make sure Luke responds to them. >> Okay. So, what does near schools mean? There's a lot of ambiguity there. >> I have a question. Are all of the intersections near our buildings or like how does an intersection get on the list

279of hazards or is there a rating of intersections you know like would it be a one if you had an intersection right next to a school for example. So if we're talking about where we're staffing crossing guards and things like that or we're looking at evaluating d potential danger how do we do that? So you're looking at like Central Park and Kofax and says that right near school. Is that why? >> Right. Or like um there's many intersections that aren't on that. Like does the city like is there a transportation is there some value some body in the city that would that would evaluate intersections for potential danger. >> That's all I do based. >> Yeah. That's that's what this is, >> right? So we could submit an intersection to I do DOT. there's a

280scoring process. Um, if that intersection has a particular score, then it could be considered hazardous. If not, then it would not meet the ID dot hazard requirements. So, that's part of the conversation that Lou has had um in terms of hazards and saying that we have IDOT approved hazards, right, >> as well as district 65 hazards and what we're calling hazards. ID do may not call them hazards. Those are the routes that we would not receive reimbursement for on our uh annual transportation claim. It doesn't work out to be a ton of money, but we just have to be upfront and transparent about that. Anyone have any questions? >> Okay. Anyone have any questions on the monthly financial report from July of 2025? >> Infant Welfare Society of Evston contract. Um, yeah. I'm try Can

281you um I read this. Can you Is there a Um, what is your pos what is the position on this? >> Dr. Turner, >> what do you mean when you say what is the position >> like like it was sort of it's it's about it seemed like a little >> change. >> Yeah. Or we >> Katrina, do you want to come up and talk? This is this is in relation to Iowa's Um, and so >> should we be paying? So the question is they're asking us to pay for um for funding pay them as if they have 55 kids >> but they might not have 55 kids and so I don't quite under I mean >> so they're passing on it sounds like our grant um where we got the grant from they're going to

282they're going to pay us even if we're below the threshold and so are we going to pass that on? Is that what it is? >> You want to talk about what it is? >> Yes. So we have a contract with the Infant Welfare Society of Evston and in 2023, November 2023, the district received a non-compliance because we were underenrolled and we were responsible for coming for becoming um meeting full enrollment by July uh November of 2024. and we were supposed to meet and maintain that and for another six months until May. So, the district met the requirement, but the Infant Welfare Society of Evston um was underenrolled for that 18-month period. Mhm. >> They would like for the district to continue to pay them at exactly what you said at full funded enrollment when they

283are underenrolled. The district is going to be in jeopardy of losing funds in November of 2025. Um depending on what the Office of Head Start states. Currently the district is not losing any funding. Um but the verbiage in the contract says if the agency is under enrolled um that they would only get payment for their actual enrollment. They want us to >> they want us to backs stop the they want us to >> continue to pay them. They want us to continue to pay them while they are underenrolled. >> Right. This has been a repeated pattern. So if the existing board you this was brought forth, >> the board voted on us maintaining and keeping I was I think we did it for one year >> um for for two years as >> for two

284years. So we got to decide. >> Basically it's no decision cuz I think we decided to keep them for two years and we got to pay. Well, it's two separate things. We decided to keep them for two years. Um, they would like to be paid while I'm sorry, they would like to continue to receive payment from the district as if they're fully enrolled. Um, last year the board declined the request because they continue to be underenrolled. And the reason currently the reason that the district is in the predicament is because IWS is underenrolled, but the district is not underenrolled. So, but >> so they're under a contract. >> They're recipient. >> Yeah. They're subcontracted for us. So, so their their their enrollment counts count towards our accounts which threatens overall funding. Okay. For zero to

285three. >> So again the context is that again we we had met with leadership at at IWSC and they wanted to continue this relationship but we're paying for their under enrollment and of course they cited concerns around staffing um and and u and just just recruitment. So we again I think the agreement was okay well we're going to give you a chance but at the end of the day what we want to do is we want to offramp with them because we really want to maintain zero to3 programs in u here at JH in the district right we don't want a threat we want we don't want to threaten the loss of of zero to three program for our district >> so just can I just ask a question I just want to make sure

286I am understanding this so there's a bucket of at JH were at full enrollment. We're subcontracting to uh to ESWA for the capacity that they have um available to them. They are not enrolling at the capacity that is available to them for whatever reason. And so as a result in November are the the entire funding may be in jeopardy because we're not at full enrollment. >> Yes. >> I have a question. It said that um the funding agency granted us a six-month extension to resolve the full enrollment init um initiative non-compliance. >> Yes. >> The funding agency will not be reducing our funding during this window of time. Therefore, the sub recipient. So, are we getting the waiver or not if we're under a road? >> So, we're not getting a waiver, but the office

287of Head Start does not address funding until November for the district because we are the recipient. So, we will continue to receive funding. However, the contract that the Infant Welfare Society of Evston has with the district is separate from what happens with the Office of Head Start. >> Okay. >> So, the board can make the decision to pay Infant Welfare Society >> through November the full amount. So, will we lose money? I guess like is there a situation where >> we would be paying them even though they're under enrolled, but we wouldn't be getting paid because they're under enroll in November. >> We would know we wouldn't know until November, right? Because we basically what she's saying is is at least let me see if I understand what you're saying. Mhm. >> And come November,

288we will we could potentially lose funding from the office of Head Start with the state of just where things are. >> Correct. >> So that would be a hindrance on us if we move forward and the board said go ahead and pay them right the the the full amount even though they're underenrolled. So just know it's it's a gamble either. It's a gamble either way. you can make the decision and say, you know what, they can't they underenrolled. Just go ahead and let's let's just approve them. But what she's saying is if we do that, just know that we could come back in November of 2025 and say, "Hey, we lost some funding from the office of Head Start, which then would mean we would need to figure out where that those funds would come

289from to make up the difference of what potentially we could get taken away. So then it could still be a a cost on >> this would be the local the local funds then because we will have to pay it through local right Tamara or through our education fund. >> Yes. >> Right. >> Okay. >> Right. >> And that is that point if we do lose funding the district would not be responsible for the contract with IWS if we didn't have the funds to continue >> having that contract with the agency. um in conversation, >> but they still IWSE would still want us to pay regardless of the fact. We wouldn't be responsible, but >> they would probably come and petition because they >> they came out last year. Yeah, we know they're going to come

290back and ask for the funding. So, like either way it go situation, right? Like if I think what I want to make sure is there are children zero to three that need to be cared for in our community. We currently have a Head Start grant in which we're able to care for those kids. >> Um we're at MAC max capacity here at JH. >> We've met Yes, we we are in compliance. >> And then so is we is our >> IWC because we you going to confuse people. We don't even know what it is. We is >> IW is right like IWS. >> IWS. Thank you. That's fine. Um um they have a certain overage of capacity, but we're basically paying them um so that they can >> they don't have an overage of capacity

291under >> under enroll. They have a capacity of of of children. But if we cut their funding now, for example, >> they won't be able to take any additional kids. Um >> we're we're not cut we're not cutting their funding. We're only paying them for the children that they're serving, >> right? >> So why would we be paying them for another 10 kids that they're not serving? >> Well, I guess the question is >> there's a classroom >> that does not sound. >> That doesn't sound >> building maintenance. That's not that >> their capacity is 55. >> Mhm. And approximately >> they're underenrolled right now with how many? >> Maybe about 43 off the top of my head. >> They have 43. >> Yeah. >> So by cutting their funding, we end up in a

292situation where they have to cut a teacher, >> right? Because it would impact >> and they've got to keep cutting. >> We're currently they have a they've had a classroom closed for approximately two plus years. >> Oh. Um and they've h they have the same staffing issue that we have had at the district. Um that's a nationwide problem. With that nationwide problem, the district has been able to maintain. Sometimes that takes the director and assistant director going into the classroom. We have lots of substitutes that we've had to hire, but we've been able to meet the office of head starts requirement. Um the conversation um legal has concerns with um we're meeting compliance but the >> contracted agency is not meeting that same compliance. >> But for if they but for them we wouldn't be

293non-compliant. >> But would they reach the would they reach the compliance if they open back up the classroom? They're still underenrolled with even the elimination of the one classroom. >> Yes, because of the elimination of one classroom and they have tried to hire. They'll get one person and then that person will um >> the same ch staffing issues that we kind of encounter. >> They're in for a little bit in and out. Um so if we reduce the if we uh provide the funding based on enrollment it doesn't mean that students will lose spaces because that class has been closed for historically it's been closed for almost two years. >> Correct. So we we no children are being um taken out of service. >> Okay. Um there I don't have their weight list numbers with

294me right now but um if there were children that are enrolling that may be on the wait list that cannot receive service then previously we've been underenroll well last year was the first year that the board voted was the first time the board voted not to pay them for the 55 to pay them for whatever amount of students that they actually had. >> Yeah. >> Yes. So in 2022 is when the office of head start came back after COVID and told us that um we were responsible for meeting full enrollment again and then we reactivated it in the contract. They came back to us and asked could they have more time to try to fill this classroom. And then the board voted for like two a two-year window of time to allow them for us

295to pay them full for full enrollment even when they were underenrolled. last year for 25 2425 was the first year that we did not um provide them with that request. >> Yeah, I was confused because I thought that like the memo was saying that we were getting a waiver through November. So, they were asking us to basically pass on that waiver through November even if they were under enroll. But you're saying that like we would still have to like we would basically be at a loss because they're under enroll. So, it's not like got the waiver. We were passing it on. >> Are you asking are we losing money? The district is still going to get >> right. >> We're still going to get money, which is why they're asking. They're saying that the district

296is not going to lose any money. >> That's what I'm asking. >> They're saying the district is not going to lose any money. So they would like for us to afford them the opportunity to not >> not be impacted with their funding. That makes sense. >> Yeah. They're asking us to pass on that waiver. >> Right. >> But that's true. But they have a history of not having that class enrolled. So it's not just it's a two-year history. So >> or more. So it's historically been a problem. What's the amount of money that they're asking us to pay extra? >> It depends on how much um how many children they are under enrolled by. Um I give a general estimate in the in the memo, but I can give that information for you. >> I

297saw the total amount. They've on average been enrolled >> maybe 40 to 43 children instead of the 55. >> What is it like? >> How many thousands of dollars would it is there a a dollar amount? >> Yeah, >> I'll have to get that information. I can't decide off the top of my head. >> So, this is this is the discussion opportunity. The vote is not approving anything tonight. you will approve it on September 29th >> to move forward. I think I guess what we just need to kind of know from the board is to Maya's point, we're not losing the district isn't losing any funding. So the board can decide if you want to move forward and approve to continue to pay them at the 43 children versus the 55 students since the district

298is not receiving an impact. That's a board decision. So I think what we just need to know is you know how you all if you want to take go with consensus with that cuz then you it's going to come up for approval when you are voted for it on September 29th. >> Okay. Okay. >> Thank you. >> Everything says decision but for decision. I ask you. >> That's why I'm confused. >> Nothing. You're You're just standing for your own You're just standing for your own self. >> All right. Anybody have any questions on the RFQ for the master health life and safety plan? >> Great process. >> Yeah, I real great process. I thought that was very well done. >> Clear. >> Yeah, it's budgeted. It's necessary. It's timely. >> Strategic. question public service announcement

299before we go. >> Just uh I think we're done, right? Can I >> Yeah. >> Are we done? Are you done? >> Yeah. So, just uh I'm the school board lison on for the 18 people who left their browsers open or forgot to close the window and watching at home. Um I am the school board less on for Lincoln and Daw and I'll be at the PTA meetings on September 15th. Um at DOAW it's 6:00 to 7 and Lincoln is 7 to 8. It's been good to meet your principles, your deck reps, your PTA leaders, and I'll look forward to meeting you. Thank you. >> Okay. Motion to enter close session. I move that the board of education enter close session on September 15th, 2025 at 4 p.m. to discuss self-evaluation practices and procedures or

300ethics in meeting in meeting with a representative of a statewide association of which the public is a member. >> Second. Anderson, >> yes. >> Salem, >> yes. >> Wilkins, >> yes. >> Hinker, >> yes. >> Wymer, >> yes. >> Hernandez, >> yes. >> With no further business, I adjourn this meeting at 9:05 p.m. >> Thank you.