[6/2/25] D65 - Committee of the Whole Meeting

001Perfect. That sounded good. We got the time is 4:32 p.m. Monday, June 2nd. This is the committee of the whole meeting for district 65. Um, I'll do roll call. Anderson here. Pinkard here. Opike here. Wymer here. Wilkins here. Salem here. Hernandez here. Almano going once, going twice. All right. Next, this 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 Padawadami, Ojiway, and Ottawa. This land also served as an important meeting place for Miami, Ho Chunk, the Monamin, Inoka, Sack, Box, Peoria, Arapjo, Cheyenne, and other tribal nations. This land has long been a 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

002travel 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 colon col col colonialism through genocide and open warfare. And the region that is now Illinois and Chicago land is 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 peoples of Africa and their enslaved descendants. Despite Illinois eventually prohibiting slavery, slavery was an accepted practice before and after statethood. The vestigages of slavery remained throughout the United 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

003of African descent and indigenous peoples people have been replicated to exclude and harm people from many intersecting marginalized identities in the United States. religious, minoritized, disabled, and LGBTQ plus identified peoples, BIPAC, and people of color at large. These patterns demonstrate that the pursuit to end state sanctioned violence against BIPO 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 and their belief that we must be caretakers of the lands and waters for the livelihood of future generations. We encourage everyone to continue to expand their knowledge and reduce their harm through awareness of local mutual aid models for

004survival and through engagement with online and local resources such as the Chicago American Indian Community Collaborative and the Shorefront Legacy Center. Members of the public are welcome and invited to address the board during open public meetings. Speakers are discouraged from using the public comment period to heir specific concerns about staff staff members being mindful that the public comment period is not a suitable form for factf finding 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 the members of the board

005is by emailing schoolboard district 65.net. Great. Today we have I'll call out the first four. Lisa Weiss, Alyssa Tran, Alyssa Zurel, and Alicia Warttowski. I'm seating my time to Alyssa Tran. Hi, I'm Alyssa Tran. I am a sixth grade middle school or I'm sorry, sixth grade special education math teacher at Chute Middle School. Um, I am also a sixth grade team lead. Um, I am here today along with another district 65 teacher to tell you about an organization called Foundation 65 that's making a positive impact on students in our district. So, we need to hear more success stories from our district and this is one of them. So, Foundation 65 is a grassroots organization in Evston that fills in gaps meeting the needs of teachers and their students with a quick turnaround. Foundation 65 invest

006in programs that promote perspective taking and belonging especially for BIPO kids. Last year, I wouldn't have called myself a leader, even though I had the word lead in my job title. This year, while advancing my leadership with Foundation 65, I've had the honor of helping Aubrey Chang, another Chute educator, build the Chute Wolfpack for girls at Chute Middle School with the help of a Foundation 65 grant. Miss Chang had been in Foundation 65's educator leadership program the year before, which um she was inspired to apply for a grant from Foundation 65 to create this cohort of middle school girls of color who had the potential to be leaders but didn't see it in themselves. It would be called the Chute Wolfpack and was inspired by um an Olympic gold medalist Abby Wombck's book Wolfpack. And

007it's about her belief that we are stronger when we work as a team. Miss Chang and I partnered with educators to identify incoming sixth grade girls who could benefit from life skills for success in and out of the classroom. We rented a bus at $500 that we would not normally have been able to afford. And we took 14 girls to a team building event where we introduced them to yoga and journaling and they learned how to pitch tents for the first time. Um it was really fantastic. Um we remember watching the girls sitting inside their tents in awe. They were so proud of what they had accomplished. Um, we also were able to get the girls swag and snacks and journals and Wolfpack buttons and hoodies and things like that. Um, because we know that

008all these children have different things that drive them and for middle school girls it is swag and food. Um, we uh I will say we noticed um a change right away with the girls on the bus um to the event. They were quiet. They were on their phones and on the way back they weren't the same girls. They were talking. They had made friends and we had already started to give them a sense of belonging. As a girl growing up in Evston, the Chute Wolfpack is the group that I needed. When I was at Jude, I was bullied. I remember it very well. Um, I was like a lot of the girls in our group now who were very quiet. I did all my work. All my teachers liked me, but not necessarily all the

009students. Um, I didn't have a pack, even though I had great teachers. I didn't know how to stand up for myself or talk to an adult without being afraid. Um, it's nice to be able to give back to these girls something that I did not have. Since we started the Wolfpack, girls in the group come to me and Miss Chang and they ask for help. They understand that um we're in their corner and if they need us that we're going to be there for them. We've seen girls use their voices for the first time in the safety of our meetings and we encourage them to share and build their community. So every Friday we have lunch with them which was inspired by Michelle Obama's Sunday dinners and becoming and we share our highs and lows

010and we get to practice gratitude. Um kids bring what they have learned home and they share highs and lows with their grown-up humans and um in part we also meet with the families of our Wolfpack kids and have our own leadership group with them as well. So all of this came from Wolfpack and we're teaching these kids to be leaders. You don't need to be loud to solve problems or be a leader. And now that we've tested our experiment, we're expanding. So, we're adding another cohort of Wolfpack to um shoot next year. So, we'll have both sixth and seventh grade girls. Um none of this would be possible without the foundation's investment in us. And it's not just about the money. It's the money. The money definitely gave the kids the experience that some of

011them had never had before. Um but it also gave them a sense of dignity, belonging, and hope. I hear from teachers and students in other districts that they don't have a Foundation 65 to provide community connection, support, and enrichment. And Foundation 65 is something special to our district that we're very grateful for. So, thank you for supporting Foundation 65. [Applause] Hello, I'm Melissa Zravel, a kindergarten teacher at Kingsley Elementary. As an Illinois certified elementary education uh educator with a background in theater, I love to weave my drama skills into my teaching. My goal is to foster a strong sense of community and help my students build their creative confidence all while pursuing academic excellence together. I have another success story to share with you thanks to Foundation 65. In 2023, my principal nominated me to

012participate in a leadership program created by the local grassroots nonprofit, Foundation 65, and I had an opportunity to apply for a grant to support learning interventions focused on our BIPO students. I had a big idea. What if we could bring curricular resources to life for our kindergarteners? Kindergarters start the year off in District 65 by exploring the world through their five senses: sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell. We do work through books and group discussions. According to research conducted by the University of Oxford and published in Nature, learning that engages multiple senses simultaneously aids in learning and improves memory performance. Instead of learning about the five senses solely through books and slideshows, our kindergarteners could be having hands-on experiences. These experiences were particularly important for our BIPO students. Due to the digital divide, some of

013the students were left behind with fewer of the tools and resources required to thrive in a remote learning environment during their preschool experience. Many of our students were already at a deficit when they arrived in kindergarten. Also, many times they are experiencing experiencing their sense uh senses, but they aren't necessarily discussing those things with specific vocabulary. So, I thought it was important to cultivate that experience in my classroom to level the playing field. With Foundation 65 support, I was able to research, test, and purchase a range of creative sensory rich tools to enhance my teaching and to meet the needs of my my students. Being passed around to the board are a variety of the things that I purchased as well as um to the uh audience. Please make sure they come back to me.

014I'm going to need them next year. Um there are tactical tactile visual discs for early learners that are made for touching, exploring, and observing. They help foster conversations around a specific shared experience of touch. I bought soft felt versions of three of the books in our kindergarten curriculum. The three Billy Goats Gruff, Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, and three book uh and the three little pigs. Instead of just reading the books, the kids could touch the characters in the book, hold them in their hands, and act out their stories. After this unit, every single kindergarter in my class knew how how to identify character, setting, problem, and resolution in a story. They were even able to compare uh the troll and three billy goats gruff to the wolf in uh three little pigs. The previous year,

015without these me multiensory material, students were not able to achieve these milestones. We got sounds shakers, four season sensory jars, and a smell matching game. In addition to these materials, we also purchased a field trip to Wagner Farm to further help make the learning come to life. The grant was such a success in my classrooms pilot project that we are expanding it to seven additional classrooms. Two additional rooms at Kingsley, both of the kindergartens at Lincolnwood Elementary, two at King Arts, and one at Lincoln. My vision is to build a support group of kindergarten educators meeting quarterly to go over ideas and approaches so that we can effectively bring this curriculum to life. It will impact four schools and eight classrooms. None of this would have been possible without Foundation 65. Thank you so much.

016Hi, good evening. First of all, just a huge thank you to our educators on the last week of school. Everyone that's ever been in a classroom knows that when you're three days out of the end of the school year, to even stand up at the end of the day is a miracle, no less to come here and give public comment. My name is Alicia Warttowski and I'm the executive director of Foundation 65, an independent grassroots organization strengthening public education for kids in Evston. Think of us as as a startup incubator for bold evidence-based ideas that support our teachers and students. As you heard from the voices of Foundation 65 grant recipients, Alyssa Tran and Alyssa Zarabel, there's a lot to celebrate within District 65. I fear that we don't hear enough of those stories. With

017your support, we can hear more. I'm here today to invite you to join us in the Foundation 65 mission to address racialized disparities, creating schools where everyone can experience justice and humanity. Sponsor one of our innovative programs, spread the word, make a donation. I understand it is impossible to ignore the challenges we face in our district, but Foundation 65's goal is to help protect kids from this turbulence. Our kids and educators need our support more than ever. Evston kids grow up with a deeper grasp of racial complexities. Yet, Dr. Dr. Shawn Rearen's research at Stanford shows that Evston has one of the largest of this nation's achievement gaps. We can't stop fighting for a more just community. Foundation 65 is on the front lines to support this essential work, focusing on three essential areas. One

018is learning interventions targeting BIPO kids. Two, projects that strengthen engagement especially for historically marginalized families. And three, programs that foster dignity and advanced empathy and racial consciousness. At Foundation 65, we incubate innovative ideas that can change the trajectory of students education. Take the Black Girl Magic Book Club, a shining star in our district. As District 65 students, Jennifer Tutoleian and Jenna Arseno recall only reading two books with black female protagonists. As teachers, they started this program and now students in seven programs are reading 18 such books in one year with powerful results. And in their own words, I learned that I love to read more than I thought I did. I learned that I'm beautiful and kind and smart. Another example at Dawze, Jackie Petro leads the math accelerated after school program. She identifies kids

019below the 50th percentile in second grade math to stay after school twice a week to do math for fun. And by the end of the year, over 85% are meeting or exceeding predicted growth standards. When we provide grants to teachers, we see results. And finally, at JH in our preschool, Patrina Gregory and Mesa Compost used their grant funds to create a series of events. Research shows that when parents are involved in their children's schooling, students show higher academic achievement, school engagement, and motivation. Within the first year, JH saw family engagement double. These stories show what's possible when we invest in our educators and students. Proof that even amid budget cuts and challenges, innovation and care can change lives. But we can't stop here. The need is urgent. The stakes are high. Together, we can ensure

020that Evston and our schools reflect our highest values, where justice, humanity, and hopes are more than words. They're lived every day in every classroom. So, join us. Go to foundation65.org and give today. Sign up for our newsletter. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram. Sponsor a grant. Let's keep building what's next together. Thank you. The next three speakers we have are Miam, Kendall, Diona Lang, Kristen. Good afternoon. My name is Miriam Kendall and I am here today on behalf of a group of concerned D65 caregivers. ScreenSense Evston advocates for technology reform across many areas including in our schools. We understand that iPads became essential for virtual learning during the pandemic. But now we must revisit the use of technology in the classroom. Today, the ask is very simple. I am optimistic that everyone in our community

021can agree on the very simple idea of screenfree free time. The intentions of these devices was never and should never be to provide entertainment to children during school hours. There is already a board policy that clearly states these devices can only be used for educational purposes and should definitely not be being used for things like video games, Google searching, sports highlights, or let's be honest, much worse. Because despite the original intention of these devices, the reality is the iPads are not being used solely for instructional learning. And the district has absolutely no handle on this whatsoever. We must have a real conversation about the fact that these devices are designed to be addictive. It is a totally unreasonable expectation for students to have the self-control to resist utilizing iPads for non-school work. They are digital

022playgrounds that thousands of engineers and marketing experts have intentionally made irresistible. It is also a totally unreasonable expectation on educators and staff to monitor every piece of content the kids are absorbing. And it is definitely a totally unreasonable expectation on caregivers to somehow find time to review your s your child's school iPad usage on a regular basis. You have set everyone up to fail. The safety concerns are very real. Your security filters fail constantly. You are fighting poorly in a battle you are destined to lose. If it is not possible to actually block sensitive content on on a public school iPad, then that public school should not allow student access to the internet on those individual devices. Period. Removing YouTube is just the beginning of reducing the harm these devices are doing to our students.

023I know we can do better. The socialization implications are very real. How heartbreaking to see students isolated from each other in classrooms with their headphones on, ignoring their friends for the lights, sounds, colors, and excitement of a screen. I know we can do better. The implications on attention span and dopamine release are very real. You are training our kids that if they read a story or even worse, have the iPads read to them that they get stars and prizes. How can real books and their imagination compete? The gamification of learning is the next big discussion we need to have because I know we can do better. This is your responsibility. District 65 is failing the entirety of the community here in a major way. Reduce the dependence on iPads now. This is not something that

024should be at teacher or principal discretion. This is the district's responsibility. Please take it seriously and enforce the policy you have already created. Get the iPads out of the schools for screenfree free time. Thank you. [Applause] My name is Diana Leang. I'm the mom of three at Dwey school board members. I believe each of you has the firm and sincere desire to provide opportunities for educational excellence for all D65 students while creating policies that keep our children safe, healthy, and productive. For that, I sincerely thank you. I commend you on the prudent decision to remove open access to YouTube on student devices. I implore you to continue to adopt tech policies that promote safe and productive educational opportunities and ensure policies align with best practices, curricular goals, and what we know about childhood development. We

025must move slowly and cautiously when introducing technology to developing brains. I propose moving to a lab-based model using devices for curricular assignments for a prescribed time frame. Students should not have open access to iPads or Chromebooks, the internet, online games or apps. They should leave their devices at school unless parents opt to bring them home. Daily screen time limits should be informed by research and carefully followed to ensure students do not exceed time on screens. I urge you to consider removing all non-curricular games and apps to maximize analog learning. Our children need time to develop sustained focused attention and are not able to practice this skill if every time they're reading they hear dings or earn badges on an app instead of reading a physical book. Students should have silent sustained reading practice for 20

026minutes instead of using the Epic app. Students should be practicing math challenges in analog ways that promote engagement and interest, not spending time on Gimkit or Prodigy. Students should be playing together and moving their bodies during free time and recess, not huddled around screens. While YouTube has already been designated for removal, I want to take a moment to recognize the harm that is done when we adopt technology without performing our due diligence. In addition to distracting brain rot videos, preying on students time and fracturing their attention, too often malicious content creators are exposing them to dangerous content. Earlier this year, D65 students could see YouTube channels in which the narrator showed sexually explicit images with text overlay with words too inappropriate to utter here, while a student told stories of how high school teachers, counselors,

027doctors, babysitters, and other adults in his life had sexual relations with him. I share this example to highlight how damaging it can be to put our faith and trust in tech without carefully examining its risks. This experience made me examine more closely the apps and platforms that the district approves for use on student devices and has led me here to advocate for more fine-tuning of our tech policies. Many things will demand our children's time, energy, attention, and creative capacity. Our children need the opportunity to develop the skills to use their time and talents to put something worthwhile into this world. Give our children the chance without the constant pull of tech distractions. Thank you. [Applause] Hello, my name is Kristen Granchchalik and I'm a parent of two soon to be three students in the district.

028Um, this younger one here will be joining his two older siblings at Dwey in the fall. And to be perfectly frank, the way our schools use iPads is the number one reason that I'm ambivalent about that decision to put him into the district. I'm also a psychotherapist and I do have some training in neuroscience. And so I want to pick up a little bit about what some of the other commenters are saying to share what's I see h happening neurologically when kids are constantly specifically using touchscreen devices. These devices are designed to trigger dopamine, the chemical responsible for motivation and learning. When kids rely too heavily on touchscreen tech, their brains adapt to that constant stimulation. They begin to favor immediate gratification over long-term goals. We see this with apps like Gimkit. The pleasure from

029tapping a screen repeatedly isn't just fleeting. It is neurologically numbing. When I asked my fifth grader for an oft repeated quote to include in his teacher's endofear gift, the only suggestion he could come up with was, "Can we play Gimkit? That's how deeply it's embedded and how distracting it is at our school. Any parent here intuitively gets this. Kids walk out of school staring at screens. On the bus, they are glued to devices instead of connecting with friends or, god forbid, just staring out the window. The chronic overstimulation reduces their dopamine sensitivity, meaning they need more and more to feel the same effects. It leads to compulsive use, reduced impulse control, and distractability. So on one hand, we're investing in programs like SEAL to support emotional regulation, but we're simultaneously undermining that work at a

030neurobiological level by allowing so much device use. Screenfree activities, once naturally rewarding, start to feel boring. Again, we all see this. It leads to procrastination, to empathy, to apathy, and a lack of grit. If you remember Psych 101, the rat experiment was given two buttons. One dispensed food and the other cocaine. The rat hits the cocaine button until they die of starvation. That's because the dopamine hit is stronger. That's what we're doing when we ignore how addictive this tech is. This isn't about banning devices. It's about responsible boundaries and the school must start learning by leading by example. I want better for this guy and every student in this district. We have an opportunity to develop brains capable of focus, curiosity, and resilience, but we have to act. Please revise the technology policy to reflect

031this. Thank you. [Applause] The next three speakers we have are Alexis, Lauricella, Clara Pester Pester, and Andrew. Hello everyone. Uh my name is First of all, thank you. Thank you for having us. Thank you for taking your afternoon to be a part of this board and to listen. Um my name is Alexis Laurisella. I am a parent of two students in the district at Washington and I'm here to request some pretty specific changes to the D65 tech policies and practices. I do first want to thank everyone for the improvements that have been made on the YouTube policy. I think that is a solid uh improvement that's happened very recently, a bit too late than it should have, but it's the right decision for our students. We now have decades of research that can demonstrate that

032technology can be an absolutely effective and useful tool for education. However, it is not a tool that should be handed off to students without scaffolding around use, clear expectations, and most importantly, purposeful intent. I'm here today to discuss three current tech policies and advocate for three first key steps. One, only use technology intentionally for clear educational purposes. Therefore, no tech during these free time periods. Conduct a full evaluation and use of the effectiveness of the current apps that are associated with the curriculum. And finally, remove all non-essential apps from these devices. In addition to being a parent, I'm also someone who has spent the last 24 years studying the effective and purposeful use of technology to support learning as well as the consequences of technology on youth and families. I now work on a parental

033control product for a very large tech company and I recognize that this is not a problem that parents can solve at home. Given these devices are provided by the district and they're managed by the district, the district must act now to change these current tech policy use tech policies and practices and to support student learning and healthy growth and development. As we've heard, parents across the district can attest to the hours that their children are spending on devices watching YouTube, searching for random information, playing absolutely non-educational games, and in some instances, as we've heard, sharing and talking about truly inappropriate content during the school day. Moreover, free time, lunch, indoor recess, and using devices to listen to music while working and other situations where students are using their devices are inappropriate uses of technology in

034a school building. These are examples of excessive non-educational tech time occurring within our school day when learning and social emotional development should be the priority. These are key moments for our children to practice their social skills and engage with their peers. The use of technology in these moments is really particularly problematic. The district must ask now act now to change these current tech use policies and practices to support student learning and healthy growth and development. Our students deserve a learning environment that supports their developmental abilities and interest in learning without requiring them to have the unrealistic self-control to monitor their own technology use when it is such a compelling and engaging tool. Thank you for consideration. [Applause] Good afternoon. Excuse me. My name is Clara Presler. I have three children, one of whom is at

035Dwey and two who will be starting in kindergarten this fall. I e I'm going to be brief because I I echo a lot of what has already been said, but I share the concern about the tech use and the curriculum in the school system and I'm so grateful for the efforts that screen sense has been making in Evston and also for the steps that have been taken recently by the school board regarding YouTube. I just have a few things to add. I I share the concern of Kristen who I think our children are the same age and the use of the iPads in kindergarten was the main reason why my husband and I decided only about a week ago to to indeed go forward and and start our children in the kindergarten program um because

036we are so concerned about them uh using the iPads during the day. Our second grader who um I should have said we're new to Evston. This is our first year in district 65. We were so happy and felt so fortunate to have the opportunity to move here because in large part we'd heard such positive things about the school system. Um I have observed in my second grader who had no iPad exposure in school before this year and very almost none at home. Um that as the year has gone on, what he talks about increasingly are the levels he's getting to on the on the iPad, the the coins. I I I don't know what these programs are. I can't really invest in them and engage in what he's actually learning and taking care taking out

037of them without spending more time on the screen. I don't get any feedback from his teacher about what he's learning through these programs. So, it's a very isolated experience and I don't have any way of gauging what he's actually learning versus how much he's learning to progress through the program and how satisfying that is for him. Um my my focus in this effort is to um is getting the iPads out of the K through2 level and then very incremental and intentional exposure as the children go um get older. I agree with the lab-based model so there can be some sort of facility learned but to getting it out of the curriculum as such an integrated part of it. Um I am not an educator. I look to the school to um be tr be uh

038intentional and and conscious about ped pedagogy and what is going to be effective for the children. I'm very concerned that this was done for a mechanical reason during COVID to allow people to continue learning and that then the devices have stayed for other entirely and have and have had entirely other effects meaning it's become so integrated into the to the curriculum. I think we should start from nothing and add it as we under learn to understand what is actually useful. So thank you for your [Applause] time. Hello. Uh my name is Andrew Frink. Um that is my wife Claraara. And I first just want to thank all of you for serving on the school board and being here. and also to the parents and other caregivers and people from our community who have taken the

039time to be here and talk about all of the issues that we care about. Um I very briefly have wanted to have two hats today. One is I am a father as Claraara said um but also I am a scientist. Uh we moved here so that I could start a lab at Northwestern and teach there where I study or my laboratory is dedicated to studying learning. I'm a neuroscience professor and what I'm really interested in and this is a scientific interest and this is not a policy interest is how the brain learns the structure of the world just because it exists in in an organism's environment not because there's anything that's clearly important just because it's there to learn about. And the main mechanism that we think operates in this context is surprise. Basically, we

040take in the world. We learn about how it's built. We learn its structure. And when something is different from what we expected it to be, there was a mention of dopamine earlier. There's a surprise signal that tells us something is happening that I don't understand. And that's the time to really turn on my learning mechanism. And if the main um experience of those kinds of surprise signals are reduced to this very limited format, my concern is that the sort of subtleties that are so important in social interaction or in really any kind of real world learning that we all as humans agree is really crucial to our vitality and life experience are going to be muted. I think the the words that were already said about numbing are really um poignant. And so that's sort

041of my scientific curiosity and also I guess as a father my concern about this specific instance. Um I think there was one more thing I wanted to say which is that we know that the brain is shaped by our experience really throughout our lives but especially when we're young. And one of the most complex aspects of our experience is the social. And if we think about what was discussed at the beginning as really valuable by the Wolfpack um contributors, I thought that was such a beautiful set of ideas and it was all about getting kids to interact with one another and interact with the world around them on their own. And I think we all as sort of people who seek children's thriving can recognize how valuable those kinds of experiences are. So thank you

042very much. That concludes the public comments for today. Okay. Well, I guess we can begin the curriculum and policy committee portion of this meeting. Um and I guess in the interest of time uh for I know that there are um a lot of people interested in the topic around um our technology policy. We can if it's okay we can move that to the first agenda item. All right. Okay. So I know we had some um information in our packet about that. Um, were there any questions about um the changes in information? Um, thank you very much to the administration for the work that you did on restricting YouTube access to children in general. Um, I'm wondering how you think about the process for uh removing tech usage during free time and what needs to happen

043in order for us to do an appropriate evaluation of that. So, if it um so if it works, couple things. One, I did ask Elena Gaser, our director of technology, to put together a little bit of information. Um, and so if we can give her a minute to present that and then come back to your question specifically. Maria, I think you know this discussion is being hooked ultimately to the adoption of the board policy around access to electronic networks. And so what we want to do today, you know, first that policy ultimately governs the way we use technology in the district and it creates a very appropriate frame and set of guidelines for use or a very appropriate frame for use in the district. Below policy, we have procedures and procedures ultimately help the district

044to understand exactly how policy is applied across our schools. And so Elena's going to come up and she's going to discuss essentially our vision for technology, the technology plan that was developed over the last several years that we are in essentially completing year one of implementation and then we'll discuss the steps that we've taken this year to review use and then some summer projects that we're doing in collaboration with the academics team that inform procedures. And I think one of the important things that we have here is that there's a balance of urgency but also moving with informed action. And so in the case of YouTube, what we did is we conducted a pilot. We worked with a school. We set up parameters and that allowed us to discover what worked about banning YouTube and

045what challenges it presented. Because where you know where YouTube has a lot of content that is not educational, it also has a lot of content that is educational. And what we needed to do was figure out how do we access what is good about YouTube while cutting back on the access of things that are not. And as we piloted some things that came up specifically and and rolled out this change, we had concerns raised from some of our specialized programs because they use a lot of the videos for early learning. So from RISE, from STEP, from park specifically, they said like this ban won't work for us because there's some very specific things that we use the YouTube content for in our teaching and learning. So we were able to work out as we got

046that information, we were able to work out an exception. We had world language teachers reach out to us and say like there's content in here that's really important for us around language learning. So that allowed us to go and say well if we're utilizing Google classroom we can identify specific videos and push those out through Google classroom. Similarly we had social workers reach out and say like we have a series of videos that we'll use in calming spaces to support kids in regulation that come from YouTube. So, we were able to say, "Hey, let's work with you to create this playlist and figure out how to get them posted, create a classroom for your the students on your case load so they have access to those types of things." And so, you know, one of

047the things that as we think about change in general is we need to make sure that we are engaging stakeholders and that we're thinking about impacting classrooms. And as things come up, we work on designing solutions. So when we make change, we support our educators to make that change. We can support our students to make that change. And we can make a change that advances interests in the community. And so that gives you a little sense of YouTube. I am going to ask Elena who there she is to come on up and she'll walk through kind of the vision to essentially the technology plan to the actions that we're taking right now. Okay. Elena. Yeah. Thank you. And for those of you who don't know, this is Elena Caserus. She's our director of technology. Um,

048she's been in this role now. We're going entering second year. So, yeah. And came to us originally as over instructional technology. Hi everyone. As Stacy said, I'm Elena Castrez. Um, good afternoon. I am going to speak um today about our technology plan. As a lot of the public comments today and a lot of the feedback that we've been g getting from the community, there is intersection with parts of our technology plan. So, I will speak to that, but I'll also explain some other aspects of our technology plan as we are just finishing year one of that plan. So to ground us today um I'm going to start with our technology vision and mission um in district 65 our philosophy is rooted in the belief that technology is far more than just a tool. It's a

049bridge that supports students and staff to create collaborate and engage in safe digital environments. This philosophy underpins our guiding principles here which are outlined as our core statements as our technology services vision and our instructional technology mission. I will add that our vision our vision and mission are not static. Um they drive continuous change. So I'm going to highlight some of the change that we've seen over the past year. The technology plan, which I'm going to highlight, reflects our commitment to ongoing improvement across district practices, procedures, and processes. I like to call them PPP. As we enhance systems and tools to support creative, collaborative, and safe learning and working environments for all of our students and staff. So, as Stacy Stacy mentioned, um we are in our just completing our first year of our five-year

050technology plan. Our technology plan has four different goals and um it was approved, I believe, in January 2024 of uh by the board. Um all of our technology services team members this year had goals and project projects aligned to this plan. I'm going to review the four goals and then share some highlights of our progress thus far. For our first goal, advancing educational transformation with innovative technology solutions. Highlights from year one include cost savings initiatives. With our district budget uh with our district budget deficit, we focused a lot on our technology spending. Some highlights were negotiating our Rival 5 phone contract, resulting in over $42,000 in annual savings for the next five years. Um, evaluating our printer access and shifting staff to move um to print to our Canon printers using secure print, which will

051help to cut down on our printing costs and also contribute to our sustainability goals. And then we also reviewed a number of technology softwares and made non-renewal decisions. Some larger costs include Zoom non-renewals, the learn platform, and no before. With all of these non-renewals, we're working on communication and professional de development for our staff so that they can be supported using um new platforms for the coming school year. We also work to automate a lot of different data workflows in powers school. Um powers school is our student information system that intersects with a lot of other different technologies. So we reduced manual input and tasks and created different efficiencies with platforms like embrace versatrans talent ed and reporting to ISBY. I'll speak to our next goal now facilities and technology upgrades. Um, highlights from this

052year include an iPad refresh for all of our middle school educators. We replaced all aging staff iPads at middle schools. Some of them had iPads that were six, seven, eight years old. Um, and with the new refresh model, we did something new where we did on-site um, device distribution paired with professional learning. So when staff got their new iPads, they also engaged in a little professional learning during um the workday. We also um completed a mass asset tagging project of district hardware across the district and ingested those records into our new um asset asset management software through incident IQ. This will hugely impact the way that we track, monitor and plan for end of year or end of life life device refresh and recycles. And then also we did our AV systems assessment and upgrades

053across schools. We conducted assessments across all schools and um after collaborating with staff at those sites purchased new AV equipment and are working on implementing those across schools to fill in the gaps um in access between buildings. There was pretty large inequities and what um buildings had access to AV wise. So that's goal one and two. Some great highlights there. Before I go on to goal number three and four, I'm going to just take a brief moment to build some background knowledge on student technology use because goals three and four um speak to student and staff technology use. Um our approach to technology in the classroom is designed to meet both instructional needs and state mandates. One-to-one technology access for all of our students in grades K through eight supports learning in four different ways.

054For students to create, have personalized learning, engage in assessments, and learn. When students create, this might look like when students create on devices, this might look like fifth graders creating um book summaries in Canva or second graders creating video reflections using the Clips app. for personalized learning. This might look like using tools like I Readyy's My Path, which is connected to our um K through5 math curricular resource. Um using diagnostic data to provide targeted targeted math learning opportunities for each student. We also use devices to support a wide range of assessments, formative, diagnostic, statemandated that inform instruction and align with national and state practices. And then finally, our one-to-one device access for all of our students supports engaging in Illinois mandates for computer literacy and internet safety starting in kindergarten. Our students in grades 2,

055three, and five also use their devices to engage in a weekly um computer science special where they're developing foundational skills in computer science. So, I just wanted to build some background there before I speak to goals um three and four around staff and student technology use and learning. Um for our first goal, integrating technology into the curriculum. Some highlights from this year include um our development of our district AI guidelines which were approved by the board in January of 2025. Um we led a working group of staff to co-develop those guidelines which were approved in January. And this work is aligned with a recent additions um suggestions to board policies 6.235 235 um around the use of artificial intelligence. We also implemented the fourmonth pilot at Chute Middle School around um YouTube where we um

056where we blocked YouTube access for students on districts devices at school. Data from this pilot informed a district-wide decision to block open YouTube access for students on their devices both in and outside of school starting on the first day of summer. And then finally, we updated resource resources for computer literacy integration um from a previous summer curriculum project. We had educators develop resources to support the computer literacy mandate around computer literacy. And um we had our district instructional technology committee members um use those resources with their students in class and provide feedback to revise and strengthen them so that they can be used um across grade levels and um content areas. And then finally, our goal four is around expanding professional development around technology for our staff um as well as other um stakeholders in

057our community. So, our instructional technology supervisor on our team um continued to engage staff in instructional technology coaching loops through a plan, act, reflect model. Um, a lot of those one-on-one coaching experiences also opened up to group or team learning opportunities which helped us um increase impact and um broaden learning. And then finally, we continue to offer school school professional learning during the school year um and have a long list of summer learning opportunities this summer using our learning management system, Schooly, where we um create professional learn um asynchronous professional learning opportunities. Um a highlight from this year was a course where educators learned how to use um iPad stands and their iPads to support instruction. um helping them move away from their document cameras which are pricey and often also don't offer flexibility in

058the classroom when teaching with technology. Um this summer we're offering eight asynchronous learning opportunities and a two-day in-person AI institute in August. And as of today, when I just checked, we have nearly 400 participants registered for summer learning. Um so that we're really excited about that. So, we're almost ending year one of our technology plan. Um, but we have a lot of work to do this summer still um to finish up the year. So, I'm going to speak around the goals um to the goals around what's next. So for our first goal um we're working on developing a developing and communicating an incident response plants which was a cyber security um practice that was added by the learning technology center um for schools this year. Um we also have a lot of infrastructure updates. Um

059so we are going to complete installation of upgraded access points um switches and cables across buildings to ensure faster more reliable internet connectivity within our buildings. And then finally we are partnering with buildings and grounds to remove aging Prometheian boards and replace them with whiteboards and classes for the use with our Epson projectors. And then this goal number three will speak to uh many of the things that came up during um the public comments and other um just trends, feedback, comments that we've gotten throughout the year. So goal three for integrating technology into the curriculum. Um we will be partnering with teaching and learning to develop additional procedures and processes around student technology use. One of those is to review all student apps in our mobile device management system um which is JF um to

060determine curricular alignment and scope apps based on grade level and need. We are also going to update our indoor recess guidance to be technology free time. We are going to work on creating a cell phone use policy for middle schools and integrate more opportunities for digital citizenship teaching and learning across grades and content areas. Speaking to goal number four, I kind of spoke to it already, but we have a number of professional learning opportunities um this summer. I will just add that all of our professional learning opportunities are aligned to the ISTY educator the ISTY the the international society for technology and education educator standards. Um so we have a number of those opportunities that we are very excited about and then we are also going to work on developing opportunities for family and communicate

061and community learning opportunities around technology for the coming school year. Awesome. Thank you, Elena. So, just to kind of bring a kind of close on this a little bit, we absolutely do agree that technology needs to be used in intent with intention. The reality is technology is the way all of us do our jobs. Elena's department works across the administrative and student version. We are working hard to create a safe environment for our a safe and productive environment for our students and our staff. As we review our policies and procedures, we really need to make sure and work hard to ensure that it's collaborative, it involves educators and leaders, and that we try things out to assess any unintended impacts across the diverse variety of folks that we work with in the district. And so,

062we're looking forward to working with Dr. SPEST team this summer in order to ensure that we have greater consistency across our schools about how we manage technology during those free choice times during lunch and essentially doing a more standardizing of the cell phone policies across our middle schools. And so we're open for questions. We can pick up where where where you wish. Great. I I will just add one other thing. Um, so Stacy mentioned um spoke a little bit of how we did our YouTube pilot and um I just mentioned ISTY um the International Society for Technology and Education. Isty follows a um designbased rearch research approach to change meaning they pilot frameworks in real world settings gather data on implementation and refine um based on feedback and results. And that's really what we tried

063to model with our YouTube pilot. And so some of these changes coming forward, we might see different pilot opportunities and things like that um in order to make change in the right way. And I'd call out you just your professional development goal and the fact that as we make change, we need to support educators with learning to make the change successful in classrooms because we don't want to change things and leave educators in a position where they've been doing things one way and aren't supported in making a change. So um in updating the indoor recess guidance to be technology free, does that also include free choice time in the classrooms? The collaborative groups this summer are going to be looking at both of those and those are essentially they'll bring forward recommendations by August. Great.

064And I just want to point out that it seems that we're being very intentional about the review of our technology usage in schools. Um but we weren't very we weren't intentional about bringing it in. So we brought it in because of COVID, right? We had some technology usage in schools prior to COVID, but it really became an essential an essential part of learning, especially for those K through 2, three years during CO. Um, and we brought it in really quickly. And I want to see us be researchbased and uh, datadriven on how we decide to use these technology tools and curriculums in our K through three curriculum. Now that we know how damaging this is on children's brains and I think as educators and in an academic setting we tend to do things that are

065very you know measured and researchbased but I'm not seeing us provide that same reflection here in how we're moving out of this onetoone technology setting. So what I want to see us do is follow the science. The science moves faster than academia. Child's brains move faster than academia. The children that were in COVID, I had a kindergarter in COVID. I had a third grader in COVID. My third grader cannot write properly as a result of using devices. He does not read books because of the distraction that these devices have posed. This is a very very dangerous time for us to be piloting things when we know the damage that this is doing every single day. And so I urge us to be swift and use common sense and let's not miss the forest through the

066trees here because our children's brains and their development and their social emotional learning is at stake. Do you w to um so use of technology and um its role in how we learn and teach is an area that I spend like all my time on. Um so I want to first um point out that it is also something that is const as we all know constantly changing because the technology changes when access to innovate and things like that was introduced the district everyone needed you have to have a device because you know we don't have as many things cloud-based so I do want to acknowledge the need to constantly review um I would um I would think one of the things we can think about in our policies is to try to be explicit around

067K2 to, you know, different age bands because what we might do for sixth, seventh, and eighth grade might be different from K2 and 3, uh, 35. And that's something us as board members can work with, um, work with the team to do. Um, also the complexity of different family structures. And so, you know, even in my own family, um, some some of my nieces want their kids only reading a book and others really embrace. Um, so I'm curious how we're thinking about making sure we're talking to all families um and understanding that um there probably isn't one approach to how devices go home that will be um appreciated by all but that doesn't mean that we can't figure out how to support all. Can you speak to and I spent some time on the site

068looking at the different approaches to monitoring uh devices um and I know we have the ability on an iPad to parents to set it up but that also might take you know a lot of time a lot of thought can you speak to our process for making sure every family has a plan around particularly of how devices are going home um and that there's a way of making sure um that they know how to protect the device if you will for access to screen time um in the home. And the last thing I would say is that I really um as we have these conversations at least at the board, it' be really important to have teachers two classroom same policies in one classroom you can have 16 different I'm sorry in one school you

069can have 16 different uses of it because teachers have the control on that. So I think a whole missing piece here is really understanding what are the expectations for teachers in terms of what it is they're supposed to do. Um, and then what are they doing? Because you can have policies, then there's the school leader, then there's the uh program leader. So, how do we bring that into the conversation? Because you can't policy your way or procedure your way to perfect use. We have to have some way of bringing this up, communicating about it, um, and making the changes. But the one that's really important to me I want to talk is understand is the role of how do we make sure if we are sending them home because if we don't send them home

070then that means we have computer laptop carts in every place with chargers and someone's job to put them all in. How are we making sure that parents can control that device and know how to control the device and it's not up to them to figure that out. Um yeah, so the one thing I heard a lot about were um actually it speaks to right here goal number four, expanding professional learning. Um so we do have resources for families and caregivers around um technology access at home. Um we've tried to upgrade um update our district 65 website with some resources and we'll also also be pushing out some more resources this week. Um we have all families and caregivers in the district have the ability to use securely home which allows them to um get reports

071on student technology use with securely home. They can also um put different um kind of time limits or block different websites that they want their students to access on either their iPads or Chromebooks. um for our iPads additionally. So all of our students right now have iPads outside of our fourth graders. Next year um our fourth graders who are entering fifth grade will also have iPads. Um so it'll be K through eight iPads. Um, families have the opportunity to use um, Apple's screen time and downtime to set um, different rules for whatever they feel fit for the summer or during the school year during the weekends and any time outside of the school day. So, if they wanted, they could schedule downtime for the entire summer, 24 hours a day, so that the iPad could

072not be accessed at all. Um, so we're working on updating some resources for families and caregivers and we'll be pushing those out. Um, but like you said, how do we communicate them? Um, that kind of comes back to our um, opportunity there to develop some opportunities for families and community members um to engage in learning about um, instructional technology and technology use. One last question then I'll let What do we default to? Is it the default that the device goes home fully open or is it default that it goes home and it's off from you know I mean that it's built in as a off time. Is there a way to default the setup or does that have to be um so there's not a way to global default. Um right now some of our

073students are going home with different rules. So there's a lot of differentiation already happening. Um some educators may have worked with families and caregivers to set up certain rules. Some students need access to their technology 24/7 in order to access communication apps. So, it's really hard to push out a global kind of policy or block because there's so many different needs that our students have and family preferences. Yeah. So, I I just want to jump in here and again I agree with the limiting especially for K2 uh technology, right? I I think it's it's developmentally the issue is is a larger issue, a social issue in regards to how we've designed education, right? Uh in regards to accountability, right? right? Our kids need to know how to take a test, the you know the the

074yearly test and that starts you know second grade you start teaching kids okay well here's the test that's coming for you for the the state test uh which I I AR right because as you know by law we have to report uh and we we have to be accountable for student progress so in and of itself that is again I I don't agree with it and I know the state board is looking at uh revising at least testing outcomes and what have you and just re looking at and examining just the over testing that happens because that also sets us up as a school system and school systems across the country to have to provide the technology in order for to prepare our kids to test right to keep track. So, I just want to

075put that out there that that that that that our our school system and the way our American the American education school system currently runs in regards to us being accountable to the community in regards to keeping track of academic outcomes uh is forcing us to, you know, utilize technology. So, we kind of don't have a workware work around that yet. Um but I totally agree around again just making sure that we have to limit as much as possible the the the uh technology use in the early grades just for the simple fact that uh again kids should be playing and and playing is learning. uh there was the beautiful example that hap you know that was shared from foundation 65 here around again creating tactile uh opportunities at the kindergarten level right for kids to

076experience reading right so there's different ways to access the the the material besides just technology right having a t having you know tactile things that you can touch uh and colors and all of that so so and I really wish I had some of our our deck colleagues here because again ultimately it's about our our educators having clear communication with our parents, right? Uh and and and and saying so when I think about where where can parents learn about how to uh what what the protocol is around how we utilize technology? Well, it's in our in our u at the beginning of the year when we do our curriculum nights or our open or open school nights. Uh that that is an opportunity for us. So once you you all develop the team develops these

077uh learning opportunities for family community um and you prepare our teachers on on how to what to do and what not to do then that's the place where that has to happen right uh at the beginning of the year and then a reminder in the middle of the year and a reminder at the end of the year in regards to okay here's how how our our technology policy and our protocols are right um and again what's very unique and I and I appreciate um Stacy sharing this is But again, we have our kiddos who in Park who actually are dependent on uh technology, right, to communicate, to be able to learn. Um, and there's multilingual students who again, you know, utilize it and education utilize as a means to get them to uh again learn

078two languages. Uh, I used it the other day, actually yesterday, to fix my uh my washer. My washer, you know, was was on the fritz and I was about to spend about $500. And again, there are useful things and there there's useful ways to utilize the technology, but it shouldn't be the only tool that we use to educate kids, right? And and I think and I hope that that our our teacher prep schools are teaching that to to to to our educators, right? Uh as we get them because I think as a society, we're starting to move towards starting to rely too much and I think we're already too far gone to be honest uh on technology, right? I mean, let's be very honest. I mean I'm I'm looking forward to I appreciate that the

079amendment around the the AI policy and I want to eventually want us to dig into okay so what does the AI mean uh in regards to how we should educators should be utilizing how our students should be utilizing it uh because it is going to be something that it's already replacing uh people and human interaction uh so so what what can we do to make sure that we again have that balance because at the end of the day it it's about the balance that we have to strike. strike in regards to ensuring that our children keep their humanity and are able to socialize like they should. Um, and at the same time ensuring that they're learning um the academic content that's going to move them ahead as as they grow older and develop in our

080community. So again, it it it's a balance. It's it's a tough one. Uh but it shouldn't be tough to to be able to again, particularly for the non-instructional time, let's just not have, you know, technology during non-instructional time. Like I remember when I was a kid, we would play a game called Seven Up, right? Uh so and if you're old enough, some some folks might be giggling, but you know, you you would uh again, it was a game you play as a classroom. It's we would build community and and a kid would get up and they would say, "Heads down, thumbs up. Time to play seven up." And everybody put would put their heads down. And the one kid that got picked would have to put people's thumbs down. Then you would have to get

081up, you know, he would sit down. Okay, get up. guess we want you to guess who you whoever got picked, you need to guess who picked you, right? It's like stuff like that, you know, that to build community within classrooms. Uh taking the kids out, you know, especially now that it's warm, right? Uh I know I I love that teachers are now having field days and there's and the year celebrations. I mean, that that is what we really got to try to maintain. Uh and what I'm hearing from parents and from community members uh and I think all of us frankly right um is to is to create have these spaces that we can interact have conversations dialogue with one another because that's what makes us human. So again it it's a balance. Uh it's

082it's tough but again there there's some places where it's not shouldn't be so tough and particularly around our non-instructional time as well as for our K2 kids. Yeah, it's definitely complicated and I think like you're using the right word balance, right? Because it's about finding a balance. I mean to me at the end of the day technology is a tool and it's about like how we learn to use it. Um I'll say I appreciate like the thought and the intention that's been put into our current policy and and changes that we're making and just what our overall strategy and roadmap um will be going forward. Um because you know I do think it's important to be intentional and I can see that sort of um knowledge and the research being brought into it. So I

083appreciate that. Um, you know, as a parent it's tough because like on one hand I definitely have concerns about like my own kids now and even when they were younger and their technology use but on the other hand like I definitely see that you need to understand technology in our society um because it is a tool and because it's so prevalent and because you know even from a job preparation perspective uh being able to understand certain elements technology early is important. Like even on the citizenship side, I think like looking at that last bullet point there, I think it's really important for us to be able to integrate those opportunities for digital citizenship because students even at an early age need to understand some of the things around safety and you know if you're talking

084about AI understand like the right way to use it and what some of the drawbacks are. So I think those things are important to work into the technology plan as well. Um so yeah I think like it's just important because you know it is complicated right even the way and I do a lot of research on this as well but like even the way um you know a student is responding to social media is different from you know how they might respond to video games or instructional material. So, it's not all one-sizefitit all when you look at the impact of technology usage. And so, appreciate sort of how you're staying at the forefront and making sure that we look at those standards and look at it from an educational perspective and what best practices are

085and how those are changing as technology changes and as we learn more. Um, so I guess like just for all of our for all of our knowledge as well, um, it would be helpful to understand more about like h how are you sort of keeping up with like the latest trends, the latest um, research in the area. I know you mentioned some of it here, but we'll love to understand even for our own understanding so we can get smarter on the topic as well. Um I guess that's a hard hard question to answer. Um I mean our team our technology team um has done has well over the past two years our technology team has decreased by about 30%. So all of our technology ser or the majority of our technology services team members have

086um either new or reimagined roles and I will just say they've done an amazing time uh job upskilling and learning new roles and continuously learning um having less hands in the pot to support the everchanging um role of technology. And so all of the members of our team engage in professional learning whether it be at different conferences or listening to podcasts or being part of different um networking groups. Um, as an education, as educators, our team and our instructional technology team really um leans on as that is um a well researched um non nonprofit organization. Um examples of research research sources from them come from learning science research from universities like Harvard, Stanford, University of Michigan. Um various reports. So the edtech evidence exchange digital promise a lot of our technology plan was based off

087of the n the 2024 national um education technology plan um which we don't have a 2025 one yet. Um and then um ISTY's edge surge research arm. So just really learning from those different um whether it be research articles um async professional learning opportunities that's kind of from an instructional technology lens what we focus on um as it's evolving. Um they've added a bunch of resources on computational thinking on artificial intelligence. So, while we can't do it all, we're trying to um rely on some of the um wellresourced well research resources that we have available for free. Um, Common Sense Media is another, um, resource that we, um, lean on a lot as well. Um, and use many, many of their resources to support, um, curricular opportunities in computer science, in library, media classes, and

088will be using a lot of their resources um, to support staff and student learning and use opportunities around AI. Um, so yeah, kind of hard to answer, but I hope those are at least some examples that show how we're trying to continuously evolve in this pretty um expansive area. A quick just a quick clarification. Um, so in some sense, your office is responsible for sort of going out there doing the here's the best of what's out there, what might make sense. How does what is the role of the of the teaching and learning to sort of say now in literacy and K2 here's here's the 10 things you might have said might make sense possible but how does that taking of that and figuring out where it fits into the into the um into the

089curriculum particularly in bands take place how is that done Stacey might want to say something I have just two things to add we are um working on our partnerships to collaborate and integrate more ISTY standards across content areas. Um, one of the groups that we um work with a lot is our district instructional technology committee. So that's a group of educators um that we meet a committee that we meet monthly with that continuously um try stuff out, go back to their classrooms with things, bring back data and evidence. So, that's a really great group that we've done a number of um different pilots with throughout um the years. And then Stacy, I don't know what you wanted to add. Sure. I let me know and I'm going to speak just to the curricular side of

090things a little bit. Um essentially the teaching and learning team looks at curricular resources at the tier one level, which means materials for all kids, and that might be like the I Ready instructional resource and the I Ready workbooks. And then they'll look at whether instructional technology is supportive of in tier two or tier three, small group work or individualized. Um when we talk about tier one resources, essentially all of our tier one resources have a paperbased version be it workbooks across the district. Educators in some cases as students get older have an opportunity to decide between the workbooks or the digital platform. So tier one resources have paperbased versions across the board for our adopted tier one instructional materials. I'm speaking on behalf of Dr. Sput today. And then when we get down into

091tier two and tier three, the directors essentially will look at whether there are additional resources that would be supportive of group or individual learning. Now, using I Ready as an example, I Ready has a core instructional resource and then it has an individualized pathway and the educator can use that digital platform in a couple different ways. It can have kids go and do additional practice on their current unit of study or it can have students moving through the areas of study that they need, be it acceleration or essentially accessing and learning skills that are from previous grade levels. Um so it is a way that when we're moving through beyond the instructional time into individual work time that students can access learning that meets their individual needs. Okay. On the literacy side of things um

092in some cases more of what's there will be a blend of digital books and that may be supportive of students who um may be working through literacy challenges of their own and it's allowing them to access content. We also do use audio books in middle school while students are holding the physical text. And these might be students that have dyslexia or delayed reading and that allows them to be able to access content while reinforcing the the kind of association of words to text. And so there are different ways, but I think I'm going to borrow Sergio's word here like the key becomes balance and the key becomes intentional use. And you know Elena pointed to we still have professional development up there. It's the ways that we provide supports and the department directors do say

093like hey in the block these would be the windows of times where you can be using these tools and there is a degree of teacher decisionmaking and in some cases teachers need support to be able to figure out how best to use that time and that is where we intersect with can I think probably better intersect with instructional coaches and that's also where our school leaders are important. I just have two other questions. Do we have the ability to monitor individual time or collective time spent on the devices as a whole or and spent an individual programs? Not really. So the way that that would probably be done is through our mobile device management system which is JF. So that's the system that pushes out updates that push pushes out apps based on scope that

094can push out commands if a a student loses an iPad and it needs to put it be put in loss mode. Um this is an education specific tool. There is not a tool there that collects on screen time from all devices from all students. At the individual level, we could look at um similar if someone has like an iPhone or an iPad, what screen time usage is um by the for the individual student. Um but that would require um um like what we say touching glass, so one of our um tech services team members to actually look at the student device. So we don't have the ability to get reports on that with our current um MDM. And the only additional thing to that is, you know, we tried to report on some of this

095during the pandemic and Apple frankly makes it a little bit difficult. We do have some data in through Clevver about the most used applications. We're able to see which applications are being used and kind of to the volume extent, but not an individual level. So, is there an opportunity for us to revisit iPad usage in general and use an a device that would better help us monitor and manage screen time for students? and then potentially get rid of the touchscreen aspect of it that's you know creating that psychological or neurological um harm. Yeah, the you know I that's certainly something that that we could look at in time all of our purching decisions are made and then there's a learning transition again from one device to the other but I do hear that question. Mhm.

096And then my next question is what do what needs to happen for devices to be kept at school uh by default. So I understand there's opport there's there's instances where people may need them to do homework or that there's you know family reasons that they should be coming home although I wouldn't advocate for families to be using um districts devices for non um school activity. what what needs to happen for us to be able to default to keeping devices at school. So I you know I would say in general you so a couple things I think we on the district side have some concerns about that possibility. Um and there are a few reasons behind those concerns. Um I think first I'll start with just the straight up pragmatic side of things which is also

097some is that in the decision building in a process of beginning of day and end of day of who has brought their devices in does everybody have their devices are you know it creates a management issue at the beginning of the day and the end of the day. It would also require for us to essentially purchase charging carts for every classroom in the district. And charging carts, depending on the type you buy, is anywhere from $300 to $800. It would also require for us to really purchase additional chargers because the thing that would get lost in the middle of that would be chargers and be like, "Oh, I brought my device, but I forgot the charger. The charger is not in the cart." So there becomes oddly a lot of management that goes into the

098device storage and making sure that that essentially wait a minute are you a kid that took it home are you a kid that doesn't take it home so it puts a burden on the organization for teachers at the beginning of the end of the day and it does create a financial start I think a place that moves beyond the pragmatic is I think we also worry that that creates some othering across students within our community because there are students whether it's around students with IEPs, EELs, low income that do need and rely on that well they rely on that device. I won't use word but they rely on that device at home or students that are not necessarily a grade level may have more individualized practice and then we create some of the othering of

099well who are the kids that have to take their devices home and who are the kids that don't have to take their devices home. So I think we do worry about what it kind of sets up in our schools about who's it a messaging of othering. I'll stop there. So I think budgetary systems and structures and time that lead to teacher management and then this possibility of othering for students are things that come up for us as a concern in that particular area. The last one which is you know in the age of climate change less and less of an issue is we also kind of need them at home if we're going to do a a remote learning day but that doesn't happen very often at this point and we have decisions to make

100there. Yeah. So I have a few questions here. Um I appreciate though the effort to balance common sense uh with the attention to the diverse needs of our students which you just articulated. Uh Stacy, thank you. Um, so you mentioned there'll be a proposal for screenfree free free time I believe and you said that'll be in August. Will that be in time for the school year? Yes. So the academics team is pulling together a team that will essentially be building out essentially procedures related to that and they have their second kind of set of leader meetings in early August. So the deliverable on that is August 1st so that they have an opportunity to engage for the team to roll that out to the broader leadership across schools and so yes that would be before

101school. Okay. And then this first point up here about reviewing student apps in mobile devices. Can you just bring that down to uh accessible level for me? Uh are we talking about removing all non-essential pedagog pedagogically non-essential apps from devices? What what are we talking about with that first one? Um, so this is, as I was kind of explaining before, we have our mobile device management system, JF, and that is used by organizations to manage a bunch of iOS devices. And so, um, this year we worked on scoping all academic apps and tools and sharing those resources. I'm sorry. All um apps that support directly curriculum resources. So for example, I Ready, Zoom, um learning a toz apps that are used on the day-to-day by educators that support the curriculum and have to be accessed

102at different grade levels. So, we worked on those scope guidelines both for students and staff and shared that with educators so that they know if they're a new kinder teacher in district 65, what apps do my kids have access to? What apps do we have to use to support math reading? Um, so that's what we've already done. Um, and then this year we've also removed all apps um that are in our system but not pushed out to um devices. Um, so these could have been one-off apps that were used to support a student with a particular communication need or whatever it might be over the years. Um, we had over 500 apps in our mobile device management system and so that has whittleled down quite a bit. And so we're going to work with the

103academics department to then look at some of the supplementary um apps that are used for things like practice, for enrichment, for um interventions that um kind of like Stacy was speaking to that maybe are tier 2 or tier three that not all students need access to. Um so we will scope those as well um by grade level um for students and then remove a number of apps that are not related so or that are not related to the curriculum either in a tier one two or three manner. So this probably means that we are going to be removing a lot of apps from student iPads. I think just as a point of clar and feel free to correct me, but just so we're clear on some things, district 65 maintains its own app store. The

104district the student iPads do not access the broader app store and every app that's in there has been requested by an educator at some point and in a sense we need to do some spring cleaning. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And is that a regular process? I mean um a yearly process um or it can be I guess I haven't been here long enough to speak to that. Um this first year we started the process this past year with um the app scope for curricular to tools and so um it's a process in the works and something that we can hopefully make a cons a consistent procedure to come back to because with technology and evolving though there will be new apps and tools that get requested and so we will have to vet to see um

105if they align with the specific curriculum and if it's a tool that the academics department would suggest. Do we have a a vision? So, if I'm a teacher here or a parent, do I have a a vision, which we do have it, so I'm not saying we don't, about how much time I expect my kid to be using a device for reading math um in the school day. I mean maybe it's what being clear about in K2 so that that's stated is clear even for a teacher I understand if I'm doing something more than that because I feel like part of it is just a um not all being on the same page about expectations then at that point you know schools and principles have the you know some um discretion on what's taking place

106in their school but how can we all make sure we're talking about the same thing understanding these are the apps this is the expectation and of course parents are going to have different views of what should be there or what shouldn't be there. But I think in some sense maybe it's just um part of the communication of it. But we also need to acknowledge you're in year one of five year like we just we're a lot of things happened in co that we had to do. We came out of that and then it's like okay now it's the first year of saying okay here's the beginning of life after. And so how there's some grace to me that needs to be given. Um, but how do we make sure that in two years we're not

107having the same conversation that we have sort of walked back some of this and and families feel like they have a voice and understanding what's going on. But I will end with this as someone who again does spend a lot of time. Um, I'm sure if we weren't engaging technology in this in the ways that we need to, our ETHS colleagues would not be happy that we're sending kids they're not prepared to take advantage of the richness of what's available in the science and the tools that are in there. So, there has to be some balance um and just getting some clarity across the the grade bands. What's for 68 should not be for what's uh for what's K2. Some families want all kinds of devices in their households and some don't. And we need

108to be able to support both, not just those who are the most who are the most um and this is not it said in a disrespectful. I'm not saying that, but how to make sure we're supporting all voices because there's differential levels of needs and supports. That makes a really good point, Nicole. And I'm wondering if we do, you know, one of the things that I've noticed being in school buildings recently is how quiet it is. Um, and I know that from a behavioral standpoint, you know, children are occupied by screens. They're quiet. They're they're captured by that. And so they're not, you know, causing trouble with their neighbor and they're not, you know, doing things that they shouldn't be doing. But that creates an unrealistic expectation in the classroom and limits that social development

109and interaction. And I'm I'm wondering to the extent that teachers now have become accustomed to that quiet and accustomed to that order in a way that they may have been more tolerant before of those things. I mean, I'm just saying when I walked into a classroom of fifth graders, they all had their headset on and they're looking at their iPad and nobody's talking to each other. Yeah. I would actually say, and Dr. Turner can sound in here too. You know, when we talk about our the instructional framework in district 65 and we think about the work that's being done around building thinking classrooms, there's actually been a very specific focus on discourse because I do think a part of what you bring up, Maria, is correct. Like Maria, we have to spend a little more

110intention in teaching kids about discourse. But you know if I were to lean into the building thinking classrooms work that is all about essentially collective whiteboards groups of small groups of students working collectively on solving problems explaining in their thinking and as you know the math department as they were working through Desmos that's a a screenbased curriculum that also now has a paperbased option but the department over the last couple years has been really intentional about when do you use the screen when don't you and what is studentto student discourse in that process and so I think your observation is a real yet potential and possibility but I do think there's been a lot of intentional work in the departments about building discourse practices and I think to your degree like you know we would

111go back to morning meetings and just like thinking about morning meetings and structures and building on those discussion routines in your content areas Dr. Yeah. And I I would just caution us with this one time snapshot making assumptions of what's happening, right? Um teaching and learning is happening. As I stated before, I do learning walks every month and I haven't walked into classrooms where, you know, every classroom is quiet in there. I've walked into classrooms where I see educators actively engaging students in teaching and learning in many of our places around standards aligned grade level instruction. And so, yeah, it I can't really elaborate on that because one snapshot doesn't give me a full picture of what the quality of teaching and learning looks like across this district. So, yeah, I think you answered it

112as as best we could, Stacy. So, thank you for that. Thank you. I just want to speak to uh like the enforcement of some of these policies. Like I think the policies in general, I think we're I think we're trending in the right direction. I do it sounds like there can be balance but for example uh I think there's going to be a lot of uh enforcement falling on educators pair professionals recess supervisors um and like the last one for example we have a lot of turnover there so how are we going to I don't need an answer now but are we thinking about how we're going to stay consistent how we're going to make sure folks who are coming into our schools know the rules because kind of to Maria's point sometimes it is

113easier if if a kid's bugging you about it and sub, you don't you know, go ahead, go on your iPad. I I just need you being quiet. So, like, how are we going to be consistent and enforce those things um across the district? And then are there going to be exceptions for our students that do rely on iPads for communication, you know, other things. So, I just I just want to make sure we're thinking about those things as we talk about enforcement. Um, and then the last piece is just uh kind of on the same lines. You know, a lot of educators like a lot of those like those of us who went to teacher school 15 to 20 years ago didn't learn how to teach on technology. So, I know we have like you

114got goal four up there, Elena, and that's amazing. But I think again just the more the better. Like the more access that our teachers have to how to incorporate things like digital citizenship and some of the other things you talked about I think really really need to be intentional. So, um that's all. Can I have just uh two more observations? I think this speaks to what Omar just mentioned is uh you all are experts at this but I just hope smartphones are I'm sorry smart watches are being considered here too because it's like that workaround that fuzzy area um where I know even at the just anecdotal personal experience right that's a workaround even at the elementary level um so hopefully you all are considering that um and then I'm curious about why we started

115the policy at 623 with policy 6235 about network access um just to to name that we have the policy 7345, which is really only two sentences that broadly speak about the role of educational technology for the board. We have very limited board policy knowing that network access only speaks to a portion of the concerns that are raised by the community. Um, so questions emerge out of this. Um, it's the board's job to make sure that we're using technology to support our educational mission. And then a lot of that in in the policy, the second sentence is we trust the superintendent to ensure that that happens. I don't know all the time if we do. So, so I guess my questions out of this would be is um back to something that Maria already mentioned is

116you know how do we gather data if we don't have district-wide data for instance about digital technology use? How can we assess that as a board? Um um does the superintendent need do would more policy help from the board level um just to raise it? We're not working with much policy when it comes to some of the other issues outside of network access. That's on us, right? I mean, I think we might need to ex I'm sorry. Sorry about that. I think we I think there's a conversation. This has been a good conversation. I think we need to have a conversation and also look some other places for best practices to see how policies around technology are changing and growing over time. Right? In the last 10 years, that's a very different thing. Um also

117talked to our some of our other partners. I mean we're because we're also moving to a high school district here. So what should be the connection there? I think there's some learning that um that's on us as board members to understand what we want to say around policy with respect to um um technology. Again given so much has changed so much had to change for co now we have to roll it back in terms of what what we need to be doing now. Okay. You know, one of the things I wanted to jump on and you know, I remember the presentation uh that our math department did around the the uh what is it? Plan, act, reflect, right? And that is intentional grouping of students during class time, right? Uh to to problem solve, right?

118Kind of what we're trying to do here. You know, we we're gathered as a group uh and and trying to pro solve a problem here collectively and with the help of the community. Um, so really I think me even measuring that, you know, like how do how often and that's what I'd like to know as a parent like you know if I if I when I go during report card pickup day okay so how's my kid inter you know one of the first things I ask is how's my kid interacting um with you and the rest of the class right like like just and and and and what opportunities are there to be able to you know kids h having opportunities in spaces to collectively problem solve so that they they're all advancing in regards

119to the content that they they need to be learning in school. So may you and and we have I mean I know we have measurements around social and emotional learning, how kids feel at school, culture, climate and all that good stuff. We put all that into place to kind of help us try to measure all of that to get the data from that right data around that. But how you know so so I go back to you know again as we're moving from we're decentralizing uh the control of schools right uh and and really ensuring that our school buildings are the places where um a lot of our dec educational decisions and policy decisions and culture climate decisions are happening. Um, how do we ensure that again families in the community know what the technology

120protocols are, right? Very explicit. What how what how do what do educators know and how are they supported? Uh, and then providing those opportunities to touch base in regards to technology use, right? So again, h how can we just be explicit along along those three things is that frequency and revisiting and reflecting. It's like planning, act, and reflect. I'm going back to what our our math department is is developing, right? But when it comes to regards to technology at the at the building and community level that surrounds that particular school building, right? Knowing that that again there's diverse needs and then being explicit about that because again our our our students have different needs and for some the adaptive learning technology does really help and it really is making you know helping them change their

121outcomes. Um so again it's it's it's it's it's being how can we be explicit about our technology use as much as possible and ensuring that we have these touch points with our families all throughout the year year to year Adams we'll build them up. So, so just to wrap up, I think um you make a really good point about the policy piece and I think you know one of the things that we hear from technology companies a lot is that they're going to police themselves which we know that hasn't worked. Um and I think that we're doing a lot of good work here to kind of just tease out what's important. Um you know keeping in mind the science that we have. I think one of the things that we um that I would like

122to see us come back with is what are the options um for us to potentially measure figure out how to measure the amount of time that students are spending on their iPads totally and then how much time are they spending in each of the uh curriculum apps and taking the net of that we will know how much time that they are spending on non-curricular activities. So, I know that it's hard and we don't have the capability right now, but I would like for us to consider putting that into our work plan over the next several years. Um, hopefully Apple will help us um come up with something or others. I mean, I'm sure there's a lot of universities that would want to help in that, but Apple won't that are nearby that could help us.

123Um, and then the other thing uh I would I would ask us to do is uh you know I guess from a financial uh perspective, let's just investigate what the cost of um those carts might be and just figure out if that's something we want to spend our money on because we're spending our money on a lot of iPads. One in fact at my house that was left out in the rain because it was home. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Elena. Thank you, Elena. Okay, so we're going to go all the way back to the beginning to the committee review document. Were there any questions about that document? Nothing. I just want I just had one question about the standardbased grading. Uh um were you um just wanted to understand what parent groups were

124getting involved in that because I know uh we were sort of looking at that policy. Good evening everyone. I'm Regina um director of humanities. I'm Sonia Krishnan, the current math content facilitator, soon to be steam director. Your question, my question was about I know that you all are getting parents involved as a part of the um stakeholder engagement with standard based grading. So just wanted to understand like like what parent groups or how you were sort of getting feedback from parents on that. Um we re-engaged the um SBG parent advisory committee. Um they had been working with David Wattowski off and on through this whole process. Um and we engaged with them online on Zoom via Zoom and they've been part of this process giving feedback all along through the year. So with the changes

125we're suggesting now, we went back to the same group to get their input to see how they feel about the difference between what they used to and what they might see. That's great. um in any and and and from a schoolboard perspective, do you know when sort of those recommendations will come to us? Sure. Um we have been just so you know, we've been working with different stakeholders and we just finished all of those groups with a parent group last week and also our um union executive board. So we're in the process of as you know this is the last week of school and we're in the middle of all that. But we're in the process of um synthesizing all of that and taking all their recommendations and we had some very good suggestions from

126educators from our kiddos in seventh grade and and parents as well. Um so we're going to make those changes and but we need to talk to our technology department. That's our next step because power school piece is there that we need to figure out how these changes will show up in that and we have to play with that and make sure it works. So, we're shooting for midsummer to come to you all with something that is more or less finished to give you an update as to what it will look like. Got it. Great. That's fantastic. Other questions? Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. So, then we'll move on to the next agenda item, the policy review, the press plus 118 updates. Any questions on those? We had quite a bit this quite

127a bit this month there. Um can you just as those you've been on the board just say a little bit about so these are the uniform policies that we then just adopt in some sense these are at the state level. Yeah. Do you want to chime in? Thank you. Um so we work with the Illinois Association of School Boards and they have a cycle which we um uh subscribe to where they have a group of attorneys and legalize that review policies in a five-year cycle as well as when there are updates to the Illinois school code or uh laws across um the nation and local laws. Um, so the language is updated in policies that are affected. They're presented via their memo press. So we reference it. Um, and right now we're on press 118.

128Um, so the policies that are being presented today just have basic updates to language that are either legally required so that our policies are compliant and up to date. It's also a reminder for the district. Some policies are on a five-year cycle where, you know, they're not affected by any pol uh policies or law changes, but just a reminder for the district to um review and ensure that our procedures are in line with policies. So are these I mean so if we disagreed with let's say five um 1.125 employee technology use do we do we like what does it mean to disagree with one of these or do we have to adopt these and sorry asking it's just a first time question the policies are already adopted okay so what are being proposed are amendments

129so it might be a couple of words being struck from the policy it may be a few words being adopted so That's part of press. Okay. Usually we're in line with press because there isn't um too much deviation unless it's customized for our district. If we have a district philosophy that's not in line with um you know the standard policy, that's where we might um differentiate. Policies can also be brought to the board outside of press to be considered if there is something that you did, you know, that the board would like to consider. Okay. But for the most part, we sort of approve these and correct be it's real it's a it's a it's uncommon to really change these and if there are if there are changes say for instance you want to make

130some changes then what we do is take that feedback take it back to our legal counsel our legal counsel will review make sure that it aligns to Illinois school code and anything else and what the changes are are reasonable beneficial and acceptable and if that's the case then they'll give us the correction on the language. We will correct the language based off of the feedback that the board wants to go and then it'll come back for for board approval. Okay. Just want to get that on the record. Right. Right. That was that was my question. Uh Title N is an example of that. that. So when I reached out to forensic um you know they advised that they wanted to give some recommendations to the PL um to the press plus recommendation and so they

131wanted us to hold on that until they could provide um some tweaking of the language and then uh we can follow up. Okay. Thank you. And and I should I want to just add to that today is discussion around the policy. So even to Tiffany's example, she consulted with Franic. Francis said, "Hey, look, we got some recommended updates as our as the district's legal counsel to this particular policy." She's going to work with them. She's going to come back, present that to the board, and then you will have a chance to review that, and then it will go for for board approval, if that that makes any sense. And that's how the cycle go. It it nothing goes for approval first and it's your first time. You'll discuss it, talk about what want what you

132want changed on that policy, and then it will go through a cycle of revising if that's what you want to do, and then go through the cycle of approval. I have a question about uh 480, which is the capitalization threshold. I believe it was shifted from 5,000 to 10,000. Um, can you speak to that, Tamara? Um the capitalization threshold in 480 is being changed I believe from 5,000 to $10,000. Right. So that was um the recommendation from press and it's in the best interest of the district to go with that recommendation. Um our auditors will use that capitalization threshold as well. So that will apply to our um depreciation schedules and things of that nature. Okay. Thank you. Um and I have another more general question. related to policy. It encompasses a number of the

133ones before us. Um but it's board policy 2240. Um which is words importing gender and we have in number of these policies we have the binaries and it's pride month and we know that here in district 65 we have non-binary folk, we have queer folk. Um and so I'm just wondering um can we amend this language to be inclusive? Um, would we have to consult with council um to change it from his to her to something that's more inclusive? I I would recommend that we do just because of the state of where we're in right now and count legal counsel has been very involved with us on making sure that everything with us legally follows what the district wants to uphold in terms of our values, but it also follows legally what the district would

134be up against. And so my recommendation would be yes, if you have some changes you want to that, we need to run that by forensic is what I'm proposing. And then I'll also mention that policy 2240 was established by IASB as sort of like the umbrella policy. So that all policies in the district would conform to general neut uh neutrality language. Um the reason why it's been a slow process is you can imagine that the number of policies we have to go through each policy and update it. Um that's why it has not happened across but it's a very good reminder that as we review policies in each press cycle we can intentionally update the language on our part as the district. Great. Great. So then the next step Yeah. because I we found a

135number of instances already exist in the policy. So the next step would be to take that to council. Yes. Okay, that's great. Yeah, I'm happy to hear about the Title N like looking at that too, just to make sure, you know, we we just have to make sure we're creating a welcoming space for everyone regardless of gender identity. So I think it's uh important that we take a further look at that one as well. when you when you all review these policies and the changes to these policies, do you have a custom or a habit of if there's any financial implication to the adjustment of the policy that you call that out separately? So like compliance with the policy would require us to I'm not sure you know hire another person or do something. Do

136we have a custom to ask your question again? So when we review the policies, is there a customer or is there ever a need to um is there a financial implication to a change in the in a policy? So for example, if a policy were to say something like, you know, now we have to I'm trying like the like the the financial one, the accounting and audited one going from 5,000 to 10,000. Well, that's more of a just like we're going to look at the the amount that a capital expense is, but like if a policy would require us to hire a person or to uh employ a new system or to do something to be able to comply with the policy, does that ever happen? I don't I don't know if I've ever seen

137a policy that requires us to employ. Maybe I'm missing and I'm not the expert of all the District 65 policies, but I've never heard of that. I've heard of a policy being a policy and then the procedures are what's attached to the policy. So if we create the policy and the procedures that we're attaching to that policy requires additional personnel, it's going to come through the procedure aspect. It's not going to come through the policy aspect. I've never seen that in in my tenure here in the district or in my career. So I'm not I can't question. That's a great call. I think that's actually what I'm asking about. So, are any of the changes in the policies would require us to amend our procedures that would have a financial impact downstream? It it could

138be, but because we're not looking at all of the procedures attached to these policies, it could. Got it. Right. So, I can't I can't really say that. Yeah. We don't we won't know until we get in in the work of it. Okay. Okay. If that makes any sense. But you might imagine. But what what I will say is because I have been completely transparent with this school board, the previous school board and this community, any changes financially to something will be communicated um to to folks. And so that piece you will have the awareness and understanding of if there's going to be some financial implication to as a result of a policy change. In this case, let's use technology, right? you've just stated, hey, don't really care how much it costs for carts. Get them,

139right? But when we get to that point, we'll give you the price tag for it. If that's something because that's within the board's right to say what they want to do with that, then if it's we want the district to purchase, this board will make that decision. But the financial cost, you will be fully aware of the financial cost if it has any implications. Thank you. Okay. Anything else on this one before we move? Uh Adila is there a is there a set schedule for which policies are reviewed in which cycle? No. Um no. Okay. Fiveyear cycle has a fiveyear cycle and I'm not I can reach out and get what the cycle is for those policies but really it's as a as needed and um also I think it's also you know there's also

140not a set cycle. They try to get four uh presses out a year, so on a quarterly basis, but sometimes there's some changes and shifts in laws that just require either more time for them to review or an urgency to get another issue out. Okay. Yeah. And sometimes to to Adila's point with the quarterly cycle, sometimes it's a few policies and then sometimes it's a lot. Lot lot. You know what I mean? So like it's not is this a lot or a little? Okay. Like how to understand is this a lot? Okay. I'm like I'm like whoa. Just sometimes issues impact more policy, right? And so how do we so we have these and then we can agree on them, right? But then it if they're a policy, they must impact someone's action or day

141of of how they work. How how do we make sure that this gets memorialized? Memorialized in a way. Yeah. Like if Yeah. So that's why when certain policies and example when it was the title n grievance policy that's attached to Tiffany so she could easily come in boom okay Tamara knew accountant audits she knew it she came in boom Stacy knew technology she came in boom Terrence no transport these policies are attached to cabinet department leaders who own the work who own the workings of these depart these policies and will say what's working for us based off of what we're trying to enact operationally with the district And so that's how that cycle works in terms of what's coming up or what need to be changed because it's either the policy is is hindering us

142or causing us some challenges and we need to get in alignment with it or the policy is working for us and and and really I'll be very transparent in most cases with a lot of our policies. I I let me let me say it to you like this. we've been doing a when I reference we do practices in district 65 and there aren't systems processes and structures that's because we most of the time we have not been following policy right so now that we follow policy and when we say to people does it align to the policy this team then have to operationalize it with the actual procedures that go with the policy so then that has to be communicated to people in terms of how we're creating the system the processing process and the

143structures so I like how you're in that sense policy then goes to systems policies of PR. I'm not going to ever say it right. I'm trying to say it that way. But making sure that it trickles down and so everyone understands it's almost the accountability of like, oh, this is what we say. No technology use in in uh free time, but then there's technology use and free time. So how to make sure you know the policies have a way of being communicated in a way that teachers and folks can understand and such that if we have to come back to it we can say at least you know like like I tell at least you've been told the board owns the policy aspect of this district my lane my team's lane is the operationalizing it

144with the actual procedures that go with it which then are the systems the processes and the structure But this I think this is where we're on the tech, right? We're like policyy's good and maybe even the procedures are good, but the ability to understand the implementation of it. How do we how can we work together to understand how policies are being implemented? And I will say that tech, you know, Apple, I think that's a unique one that's a by a company who chooses to make it hard to do it. But I think that's where the rub is. How do we make sure that the policies we have some way of understanding the implementation which I do a good job of so I'm not implying you on even with the technology one like you know back

145to Maria's original question is like does policy ever get ch you know like is policy ever set where it becomes a financial implication. Yeah. Because right now if we saying we don't want touchcreens and all of that this district is an Apple district right. So that means you saying toss out apple and bring that's a whole another right that's why Elena we just got out of a contract fiasco because we was entangled in multiple leasing contract fiascos and we just are finally getting this under control and to say that we're going to do that just know yeah it's going to come with a financial implication on the district and if if that's something again you're the governing body of the district so if that's something that the board wants to this particular leadership has no

146problem in asking what it is that the board want wants us to do, but it will come with a financial implication. I think my team was just nice about it, but um and Stacy gave I'm sure the the number she gave was quite lower than what the S. So I've seen Elena bring forth, they're they're pretty pretty costly in terms of carts and all the things that go go with this. So I'll just say I feel like implementation is probably the hardest part of everything. just because it touches so many people and just having people understand. So like all of these things have implications, financial implica implications, time implications and I think like for us as we think about the policy, we should just keep in mind the implementation that comes with it because that'll

147have a big impact on whether or not something is successful or has the impact we're expecting it to have. Yeah. And I I think with that implementation, I'll I'll end with this. I think also figuring out what's most important. Yeah. What is urgent, what's an emergency, and then what's important. Yeah. Right. And with that comes prioritization. Right. And so I think once we narrow that down, my team can we can stay the course and do, but when when you have all the things are pants on fire, it's it's really hard to figure out how to prioritize what's most important because everything is important. Yeah. That makes any sense. So, just want to name that. So, while we're kind of being onboarded asking clarifying questions as new board members, so with this issue of inclusive language,

148Andrew, can you talk more into the Sorry, I have a cold. I'm sorry. I will project um um with the issue of inclusive language, you will take those policies, speak with council, the the administration will take that and then bring them back. So, I just need to know which polic which one was that you were referring to so we know which one. number of them. I may not even caught all of them. It's an email through. Yeah, you go through and then if there's something specific you want with that policy change, I think that's where you just need to be be a little bit clearer with us on the part because you have been looking at them line by line. So, you could tell us what you want changed and then that's what Adala will

149present to our legal counsel. Thank you. Great. Picking up speed. Yes. Wait, wait, did you speak too soon? No, I was about to say according to whose calculator, but okay. Okay. Uh, the next agenda item is the transportation policy. And I believe we got a presentation for this one. Yeah. Okay. All right. We coming up after that one. Um, it's nice to kind of piggyback off it though because one of the things that Dr. I think talk about is something that we're actually um going to walk the board through and it's the step-by-step process of changing a policy and you guys being able to be the the deciding factor after we've done all the research, the input um talked to the lawyers, talked to um school leaders, talked to um administration leaders and came up

150with options. So, we're explaining to you guys our options. have Chris K up from the RAD department, Mr. Gota up from the transportation department. Like I say, they've been doing a lot of work these past couple months. One of the things that we're really trying to do is work on our forward thinking when it comes to what we're about to um encompass in SDRP3. Like we understand that that's going to be a big overhaul. And one of the things people are going to constantly ask is how much is it going to cost? How much is this going to cost? How much is that going to cost? Right now, our policy is a little outdated. Um, we made some decisions back in whenever and um the we have some school code that's come out and what

151we're trying to do is forward thinking to some of the issues and and some of the things that might happen with SDRP. So, we're trying to amend our policy, change it a little bit to where it fits school code, it fit into SDRP3 phase three. um regardless of what you decide to do, we're able to um give you better financial um information on decisions before you make them. And that we're also transparent with all our stakeholders because right now we have so many policies and so many things in place. It's hard for anybody, even in the transportation department, to say, "Well, okay, this means this and that means that and this means this." Because it was just so many things going on. So, we're just trying to bring everything up to speed, have one nice

152clean policy where all stakeholders can understand, and then we can go from there. But without further ado, I'll turn it over to Chris and Lou. Welcome everybody. Welcome us. Um, I guess we can just uh start the presentation. I You have the clicker. Lou, are we clicking? Oh, yeah. We don't have the clicker, do we? I think we got it up here. Maybe. Oh, he has it. That's it. You want it? But it's not working. Is it on? Flip this side. Oh, there it is. Oh, man. Was that you a dealer? All right. I don't know. Okay. I don't know how it happened, but it happened. Uh, so we thought we'd take this opportunity before we get to the policy to kind of talk about what we've already been doing over the last couple of

153years in regards to the deficit and stuff like that. So, let me interject real quick just I want to before you start l he he's going to they're going to go into this slide but you all have been asking I I think you know as I've spent time in full transparency with board members I think there's still the misconception that we're still hung on some of coming off COVID and the the financial numbers and it's a lack of information in terms of what the financial cost is and how the district has saved saved money over time. And so this this particular slide, they're going to walk you through that, but I I wanted to be transparent and responsive to the feedback that I've heard in spending time with board members. So, thank you. Yeah. This

154is for this year. And as you can just see the the the final number, uh we're going to be about $1.1 million in savings. And that's in addition to last year, which was also a million dollars in savings. So, and a lot of this is due to drivers coming online. Um uh just help from the entire team um uh of our um special services department, our McKenna Vinto department, obviously Tamara, uh Crystal, everybody kind of pitching in to see how we can as far as also consolidating routes uh testing times to see okay we can get one less route here. So been doing a lot of that work um and you can see the numbers pretty much speak for themselves. If the sped if you see bright lift sped and special education uh that again

155was when we had we were able to shift um students from the cabs and the minivans back into the buses. So even so the the initial budget say in special education 832 the variance was under 419 but obviously was all part of the same sped budget uh but we were able to get bus drivers instead of cabs and that's the differences in those numbers there. Um everything else is pretty self-explanatory. the savings on um I'll just add the savings on McKini Vento and I don't think Lori is in the room but that really so for a very long time people lived in McKini Vento what that meant is if they came into the district identified as a McKini Vento student there was not a system in place to assess if they were able to move

156out of Mckin Vento Vento status. So what we found was some families had been out of Mckini Vento status because but because then nobody like inquire do the background on it. They were just enjoying the services, right? And so that's just an example of some of the things that have this this team has really been thoughtful about collaborating across other teams in the district and really trying to get to the root cause and seeing how we can reduce some savings here. So want to just just name that um transparently as well services department too. Clarifying question just on McKenna Vento if I because it's how many if I as your point if I come in kindergarten um and I'm can I go all the way to 8th grade of Mckenni Vento? Well if if you're

157in if you stay in McKenna Vento status we legally can't change that. If that's your status that's your status. But if I if I'm in if I live outside of Evston and I move out for for reasons then I can stay in the Yeah. I can stay. Okay. Okay. Is there a discussion though that happens after a period of time? I remember reading. So there's very specific criteria that a family need to meet to qualify for Mckin Vento and then there is a required window of time that that is then reassessed. So part of Lor's role is she follows up with families after a specified window of time to determine whether their particular status has changed. Um the district also does for those families frequently provide additional supports and really try to find ways to

158create more sta you know to ensure those families to support those families in accessing more stable housing. Okay. Perfect. Okay. And just to say one more thing about the the teams collaborating, the special service department as well as the McKenna Bento students because a lot of times when we were talking about reimbursement later, if a student was categorized as McKenna Bento but also a special services candidate, we were able to use all the department teams to categorize him accordingly so we get best. So again, the whole team has just been really amazing and for the last couple years and since co we've really seen some um some amazing savings in in in addition to the prek savings too. So prior to our uh JH early childhood was kind of managing their own transportation and then

159we moved that transportation over management of that under why they were doing that I don't know but we moved the transportation under the transportation department was able to reconfigure and then were able to eliminate buses um I think we streamlined down the the company companies we use because we we have two primary bus companies, we use positive positive connections and encompass transportation. So that helps. So those are just some things that over time um we've collaborated across teams to really be thoughtful about where we can get the cost savings um and where we can put better systems um and processes in place. So just wanted to name that in addition to a finalized contract that we was able to get um in the beginning of this year um to help stabilize us for the next

160four years. So that way once again that helps us with prediction of cost because we didn't have one like during the co time and it was just a year by year and we just you know have to do what we had to do. But at this point after we the board finalized um the last contract we're pretty much set for the next four years. Okay. Can I ask more questions on that? Like start with the letter. I just have one little question. I'm sorry. I really appreciate this. I asked for you to do this so I really appreciate you doing it. It's helpful and I think it's helpful for the community to see your hard work and the amount of money that's being saved here. I really appreciate it. Um, can you just talk a

161little bit uh and maybe this is a Tamara question, but are are any of the line items that we're seeing here reimbursed expense or is this all our budget expense? So, oops. What you're seeing are just the expenditures, not any of the revenues. So, much of that is reimburseable. what we get back nets to about it depends on um what category but overall it nets to about a 30 35% reimbursement on those expenditures and those are specifically for the special education or the bright lift sped line items for special education and uh basically everything up there except for the McKenna Vento that's a different reimbursement but is there any reimbursement for like twe language language for bilingual that would fall under the gen general education. Thank you. Okay, you can go ahead. We'll get into

162the policy aspect. Ask the question. Now, as we transition to the policy part, we still don't know. I have no idea. Somebody clicked the first time. There we go. As as we start transition, I got it now. As we start transitioning into the policy aspect, we we do want to remind the board that um the options can go into effect this this upcoming school year, the next school year. Some options can go into effect this upcoming school year. Some can go into the next school year. Some can go right in now. You can grandfather kids in. So those options are up to you. Um what we're doing is just showing you all the options, but when they go into effect is totally on your timeline. Um like Dr. Turner discussed earlier, you guys set the

163policy, we put the procedures in place. So once you just tell us exactly what it is you want, when you want it, then at that point we start building out the procedures to make that happen. Yeah. Thank you. So first we're really just kind of going to go through um what legal has advised us. Uh we reached out to legal back in January and they gave us direction uh on their interpretation of school code of who uh the students that we are required to transport versus the students that we may provide transportation to. We're not legally required to, but it's optional. So uh number one is any student that lives more than 1.5 miles away from their assigned school. we are pretty much required to transport them unless we certify with ISBY that adequate safe

164public transportation is available to them. Uh number two, uh are students attending a charter school? And this is kind of a vague area of the school code and it really kind of ties into our magnet school transportation. And this is legal's interpretation that ISBY is kind of unclear if this charter language would cover magnet schools, but it could based on the plain language of that particular statute, it could be argued as such. And that's just kind of something to to keep in mind that now that um King Arts is an official magnet school, we may be required to provide them with transportation. And then uh of course we have three that we cannot touch are the students with disabilities. So they have transportation required as part of their IEP. Um students experiencing homelessness that those

165are the McKin Vento students and then students that are are in foster care. So these are the students that we per school code are legally required to provide transportation to. Can clarification how do we determine has you know having lived in Chicago which I know they must have determined that they have public transportation. How do how are we defining um we have adequate public transportation here? Do we view that there's any public transportation in here that would we actually don't determine that we send it off we send off and the state will approve like if this is u adequate transportation or not so do we have or any of our do we have no we've never applied for it but the high school has applied for it and that's the main reason they don't have

166trans okay so we believe that they will approve it if you guys that's why we put it on there as an option because since it has passed through the high school. We do believe that it will pass for us as well. So, is there specific criteria for evaluating that that the state uses? Um, I'm not I'm not really sure. I can get I can try to figure that out. Be helpful to see that. Yeah. Just before we move on and again I know the state legislator met over the weekend to finalize budget uh for the year and uh of course the funding for transportation fell through. So as we think about these options uh you know we we stand to lose quite a few actually almost all our routes is what I'm reading uh our

167our pace routes and all that. I mean it's yeah um I mean there's things that could be done. Maybe they can do a special session is what I was hearing in the news as I was on my way here. But just to keep in mind, keep you aware, keep it on your radar as we look at these options. Yeah, that's tough. And then uh legal also provided us uh with the uh criteria for optional transportation. Uh we are not legally required to provide transportation in these situations, but it is optional under school code. Uh the big one being hazard transportation. So our current policies and most school districts do establish hazard transportation that if you reside less than 1.5 miles from your school, so we're not legally required to provide transportation for you. If you

168cross an ID do approved hazard, so something that the Illinois Department of Transportation determines as as a hazardous intersection, we can provide them optional free transportation and we do get reimbursed from the the state for for those students. Um, any student that lives less than 1.5 miles from their assigned school, we could charge them a fee. It is optional, but we are not required to transport them. These would be the students that are less than 1.5 and do not cross a hazard. Students is attending school sponsored activities. We can charge a fee but not required to provide them transportation. Private school students, uh, students attending summer school and then students in other districts. We're not really going to touch our policies don't really touch any of the last few points there. It's really just kind

169of the the the first two. Uh, point one and point two. We we do have some transportation though for like middle school sports and things like that, right? That's for Yeah. athletics and we have like the band buses, but that's really more for after school um D65 activities. Oh, right. Oh, okay. Okay. That's the bucket. Got um No, go ahead. I'll continue. So, this is this is our main our main policy is 4110. Um and that is basically what we're trying to get center around this and to be clear again so forward looking into the SDRP3 and you can go with yeah so now we're actually going to kind of get into the meat of our transportation policies and really kind of seek direction from from the board on how we should uh proceed next

170and uh revise the policy send it to legal to red line and and bring it back to to you guys. So this is really the first sentence of our transportation policy that uh we shall provide free transportation to elementary students in grades K5. Uh school code uh that we talked about earlier uh requires K12 transportation to be free for anybody that's greater than 1.5 unless the school district has certified that adequate safe public transportation is available. Uh you could see the response there from from legal. Um so it's probably we could probably operate under the assumption that at some point in time uh when this policy was adopted in 2010 that they did certify that adequate safe public transportation was available. That's why 68 is strike from there. Uh but we're just kind of reviewing

171that piece of it and we um can kind of talk about it further. But any additional route that we add, so if we did say that you wanted to expand it to grade six and eight transportation, it would be approximately $80,000 per additional route that that we would add to those middle schools. Uh Luke can kind of And that cost Yeah, that cost too is um if you have 10 students on a bus or if you have 50 students on a bus, right? It's it's per route cost in terms of the bus company. Um so right now again is why we're trying to clean up some of the policy. We are um providing um gened middle school students that are west of McCormack and that go to shoot. Um so uh depending on what your

172decision would be either Haven and Nicholls would be adding routes or chute would be eliminating routes. It would be possible to say that we're going to maintain those routes west of McCormack but not offer routes for the rest of the sixth through 8th. Right. To totally correct. So at this point now now what it does once again it it it causes a little confusion when you start closing reconsolidating moving things. But um as the board you're you can say whatever it is you want and once again you create the policy and then we create the procedures doing but it's not a clean streamline at that point. Obviously I'm sure you have this and I I'm apologize for not asking uh for this before but at some point over the next several weeks do we know

173how many students ride each of the bus routes by school? So, like how many middle school students would be affected if you know? Yeah. Yeah. It's approximately 200. Around 200 right now that are riding for shoot. And how many are within 1.5 miles, but it's the hazard, right? It's just like I live right across the street, but it's McCormack, you know, for the ones going to shoot, I'm sure, Walker kids. How much of it is about the hazard versus it's the 1.5 miles? They'd all be 1.5 miles. Okay. It's all 1.5. You You're asking, let me make sure I understand the question you're asking. Are you asking do we know how many students are on the bus because of hazard? Yeah. Yes. We can tell you exactly how many are on the bus because of

174hazard. We can tell you how many are on a bus that are 1.5 or less than 1.5. So like any question that you ask we you know within three business days we can kind of get that answer to you. Y um also understand that now and some of the decisions don't affect financially now but will affect financially later. What do you mean by that? So cuz like right now an example would be let's just say we may have a bus that's half filled. So we can create a hazard here and because we can put kids on the bus because the bus is half filled. But just knowing that creating that, I can't tell you what'll happen two years from now because now the bus may be filled with regular students because we closed the building

175and now we have to add another route to that because of the decision. So that's why it says like we're trying to make it as clean as possible. So when we do start making these decisions for STRP3 and and we're asked the question that Dr. Finger is asking like, hey, what happens if we do this? What happens if we do that? We're able to do it. Are there any restrictions in our in our bus contracts related to like minimum number of routes or maximum number of students or anything like that? So, if we decided to say we're going to cut our routes in half, let's just say our cost would be in half per route cost. Yeah. Tech Well, it won't be cut in half, but yes. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Technically, you can we can

176have two routes if we if if you know you decided to do that. Um, you can have you can add 10 more routes if you decide to do that. So, as far as the number of routes, that's not in the contract. It's just how much each route costs and the cost of double routes versus single routes. And do we not do middle do we have buses or routes where middle school kids and elementary school kids are on the same or do we keep K5 separate from 68? Because you know, you think of shoot and they're right in the line, right? So, if they're No, they're separate. They're separate. They're separate. They're separate. Yeah. But the different start times. Yeah, the there's different start times. Um and obviously the different age you know students as well

177and the uh and uh how crowded each route is. It may not be able to accompany a merged route. Are are there any stipulations on the um minimum or maximum amount of time that a student is on the bus and how does that affect their bus route? There there isn't a a mandated time. Okay. But we try our best to keep the kids on the bus less than an hour. That is our goal. Um well, technically less than 50 minutes, but we we got a couple routes in the 50 minute to hour range, maybe about four. Um but um we definitely try our best to keep them under the hour because you know you just you just look at it as an adult. Like you're in traffic for an hour, you get to school, you're

178angry, you're upset, you're mad. So we try to do it as efficiently as possible. Do you guys also monitor the utilization of the bus routes? So like we have the kids that are eligible to take the bus, but then we have the kids that actually take the bus. Do we monitor that difference? We're always keeping track of uh who's riding. Um, so the rider numbers are accurate to who's riding obviously without if some student doesn't ride as much in the morning, but they're still part of the route. Um, we're constantly keeping that data clean in versus trans to make sure that excuse me uh that it's just not filled with every every eligible rider because then oh well now the numbers are too big. We have to add a route. know we definitely monitor um

179the number of students that are writing and have there been a lot of requests from Haven and Nicholls is there like a request from Havens and Nichols parents for is this something we're saying let's add it because well it's a policy we have to be in line with policy correct since we're trying to clean the policy up um this is why we're making this an option because like you say, we can keep it as it is. Um, that's actually one of the options. So, but we just want to make sure you have all the information available to make an informed decision. That's actually But this is actually an important point part I hear you saying it's we have to clean it up because are we abiding by policy? If we're if we're busing shoot middle

180school kids because it's 1.5 miles and it's not a hazard, but we're not busing Nicholls kids and they're more than one. Is that what you're saying that we need to clean up or you saying? Can we literally have a policy that buses to shoot kids and doesn't bust to hate Haven kids if we know that we're not abiding by policy? Understand what I'm saying? That's I I get what you're saying. And so the the way I'm trying to phrase it is let's not make a policy for today and let's make a policy for we're talking about the immediate future which is roughly a year and a half. Um so right now we have a policy for today that is just all over the place and we're trying to once again place because we're trying to

181do exactly what you articulated. We trying to do this for this one and we trying to do this one for this one and we trying to do we're trying to create a policy right that essentially is within what the Illinois school code says that will still be able to be used correct and put the board in a good position to make the difficult decisions if in the event schools have to be closed because now there's a universal policy that no matter how many schools you have or how many schools you don't the polic policy is the policy which says that we're going to transport kids who live outside the 1.5 mile radius or they live on the hazardous routes. That's what totally correct the policy is. Like a great example is I'm not sure why

182the decision was made for Walker students to go to shoot like Walker seemed closer to me to Haven than than shoot. Um, so let's just say for feeder p pattern purposes because it may be feeder pattern pattern feeder pattern purposes for attendance like I mean it's for enrollment. It may be better to do it that way for enrollment. Not really sure but let's just say enrollment dropped and now you want to send them back. Well now shooters is allocated four buses. So now you still have this problem. So once again, we're just trying to clean it up so in the future whenever decisions are made. It's transparent because the community totally understands our policy is up. They know they can Google it itself and say, "Hey, I'm 1.5 miles. I'm not 1.5 miles." They totally

183understand. Um they know if their kid go to sixth grade, they do have transportation. They go to sixth grade, they don't have transportation. So they they they it's more transparent because that's like I say, one of the arguments of our community is we're not as transparent. So now instead of like force feeding information, we can tell them the policy can be posted and they can do their own research on their own. One thing I'd like to understand is if and how much transportation is a barrier to attendance like I don't know if anything has ever been done to understand that. And yeah, so I did look into that uh somewhat recently. I looked at students that were late late to first period and student and their ADA, their average daily attendance to see if there

184was any statistical difference between the students that are riding the bus versus those that are not riding the bus. And there were some limitations that I ran into um when I tried to create the control group uh with propensity score matching. So, I did look at the students race, race, ethnicity, their grade level, because of course younger kids, even if they're less than 1.5, it's harder to get a kindergartener to school than it is an eighth grader to school. So, matching on uh race, ethnicity, grade level, gender, the school that they go to, and the walk distance that they would have to go to for school. And that's really where the challenge came in with the walk distance was that if you're more than 1.5, you're already getting free transportation. So to find kids that

185are more than 1.5 that are not taking transportation, it essentially took our our treatment group of the riders and d and we lost about a third of the students that we were unable to find a comparable match for. But with those comparable matches that we did find uh the p values were all greater than 05. So there was no statistical significance that would suggest that students that ride the bus show up late more to first period than others. And then same thing with ADA. I also looked at student outcomes as well on I AR and again there was no difference but I am exploring other options to to look into it further to try and get the treatment size uh uh the number of students that we're looking at that ride the bus up a

186little bit higher to to kind of get a better understanding of how it works. But at an initial glance there does not appear to be any difference between students that ride the bus and students that do not. Gotcha. Yeah, that would be really helpful to see. And then I think like on top of that like if there for for students who currently ride the bus if there are if there would be hardships and you know difficulties getting to school if that if it was no longer available especially for the you know for like the younger groups. Um, I think the other thing that we can't see now because we haven't been through SDRP to your point is like what the cost implications really are for these policies in the future. And to me, that's like

187the big decision point. That along obviously with state student safety and attendance and all of those sorts of things, but to just really understand what policy we should have, I feel like we need to have all of that information in hand to be able to make those decisions. Has there been any communication with the 200 uh shoot families that live west of McCormack about that? About potentially losing their transportation? No. No. No. Not. And I do want to correct myself. Um I'm not 100% sure if ETHs actually file for adequate transportation only because they're a township school and they may not have to. So let me just they're just they're one location. We have correct. Yeah. Right. So, it may not. So, I'd rather just just correct myself on that. Yeah. Well, that coupled with

188what you were saying about transportation the the access might change. It sounds like it is going to change. So, that would have a big impact on things as well. But I do think to the point of just having principles, the principles are the principles and the policies and they apply. We will then understand as we change this, we'll understand the ramifications of the cost if we put something in place as opposed to having them both in flux at the same at the same time. It sounds like something we would need like a lot of input from the community on because this has a you know this has an impact on a lot of things. If you think about parents getting to work, if you think about attendance, you know, like people who have cars versus

189people who don't have cars, I think there could be a lot of implications for this one. So, I definitely want to get input um before we made too many decisions on this. Input from families. Did we do a survey? Did we do a survey? No, do the survey. Okay. We're at the beginning of a proc, right? We're not okay. Just discussion. We're not making a decision now. But I think I think I paused them because I didn't want to go too far without hearing this part before we start engaging stakeholders. So that's why I was like I couldn't remember. And as we and as we progress further through this, you'll you really see in the decisions that you that you have, they really all affect each other. I mean the the the hazard routes, the

190crossing guards, the the KA buzzing. I mean, so as you as you know, we're looking for guidance. They really all are kind of intermingled. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Go to the next one. Go Lou. Okay. Yeah. Sorry. I'm the one moving it forward. That's that's different usually. Uh did we finish? Okay. So, we we went through the K3. Go ahead and go through the EL. Yeah. So now uh like our multilingual students are the next part of policy uh in policy that that first sentence that you see up there that that's our current policy language that essentially says that if you're e enrolled in bilingual education not at your attendance area school you're going to get free transportation and uh we're just trying to look for for you guys to help us give us direction to

191kind of clean that policy up a little bit because uh we also have policy 4112 that's our magnet school transportation. So that applies to ACC students, our TWE students, anybody enrolled at King Arts and Roads as well. They follow a separate transportation policy that if you're more than 1.5, you can pay uh to receive transportation. So, we essentially have one policy that says if you're uh a TWWS student, so you're enrolled in twe Spanish, you're a native Spanish speaker. One policy says you're going to be charged a fee under the magnet policy, but under our regular general policy, it says you're going to get it for free. So, that's kind of really what we're looking to to to accomplish here is just trying to clean up some of those uh those contradictions that that we're

192seeing uh in policy. I said the 4110 is our main transportation policy. So, back to the EL1. Um, the if I if I have if I can go to a program at my local school, then it's a question about would I choose to go someplace else? Would I be provided uh transportation? Permissive transfers do not receive transportation. But now, if it's an administrative transfer because there's um there's not space here, this then we do have to provide. It's only for I could be in tweet program, but it's only the person who's in there for EL for the distinction. Yeah. Yeah. So, this policy applies to any multilingual student that that is EL, not necessarily students that are enrolled in the in the tweet program. Uh all of our schools do, I believe, have a TPI

193program and offer EL services, but not every building offers the like tweet the tweet program. So, one of the differences we're talking about here is we can decide as a board that we're not going to offer transportation for magnet programs, paid or unpaid. And right now, we have two situations. In one case, they could be a feebased system and one and they would be a non-feebased system. Right? So, that's one of the things that we're looking to decide. Well, if you look at the magnet the if you look at the the attendance boundaries of the magnet schools before I just before the new boundaries were made. Well, well, there were pri there was priority boundaries and priority boundaries were written for fifth ward families to be able to have priority for Betsy Rose and for

194um um King Arts in some sense with the return. At least that's my read of them because they clearly carve out the fifth ward. Um with the return of um with the return of opening of foster then I'm curious I think there's a conversation about um busing for magnet schools when understanding I'm curious whether part of the busing for magnet schools was also to give an option you know to make sure that people had transportation. So I do think that's an uh I don't know if anyone on here is understands the history of when that was created but I look at it and say oh to me the magnet if I choose to go to a magnet school you know well I won't give you my opinion about it but I just want to say

195that I do think I'm curious if a reason for the busing for magnet schools had to do with the options for also a carve out for part of the second ward around King Arts but yeah in the options that are provided uh you can decide that magnet schools follow the same criteria as as every other student. But again, those are some of the options that you'll have to weigh out. Yeah. Yeah. That if you're more than 1.5, you know, regardless of the school you're going, we'll give you free transportation. Less than 1.5, you have to walk unless you cross the house or the board can make those decisions. Adila, can you go to the next slide, please? It's not working. Thank you. You want to take after school programs? Sure. Oh, sorry. Yeah. Okay. So

196again, so the after school uh programs, school board of any school district may provide transportation service to any nonprofit organization for recreational, cultural, educational, and public service programs operated by the organization for the benefit of its members. Transportation shall be provided to nonprofit organization during times when the vehicles used are not needed for the transportation of students between school and their homes. So currently we are providing um transportation to after school providers like Family Focus, the YMCA, um uh Fleetwood, uh not that's Yeah. Uh Kinder Care sometimes. I mean um the prek we definitely take to many other um daycarees uh around there. Um how many bus routes is that total? it it really isn't because it's it's it becomes part of a route, right? It's not like, oh, here's the route that goes here.

197So, again, how this kind of stuff is all kind of together. So, if you decided just a hypothetical, so if you decided we're going to keep the the hazard routes, right, at the you know, something that would uh on the way to the YMCA, then they would probably ride because it would be it would be deemed a hazard and that wouldn't necessarily add any routes. Now, if it if it the bus became too crowded, then you may have to, but there is no dedicated route to go to these places. They are right. it it is just another stop. Okay. Okay. And so where our issue comes with that is um let's just say we got two first graders at the same school. Um the whatever after school program is less than 1.5 miles. We're neighbors

198um and we live right by whatever after school program. Your kid gets a ride for free and mine has to walk. So that's where you you're having those issues come into effect because you're getting a free ride now which is point4 miles away because you're going to an after school provider and my first grader has to be picked up and it's right across the street from the same location, right? Because you may be not eligible because your home is close to the school. You may not be eligible in the morning, but since you're going in the afternoon to the YMCA, you're eligible to get a ride to the YMCA. But the person that lives close to the school has to walk. Is this a dis is this a policy? I mean, is district 65 unique?

199We don't know if we're unique in this, but are we expected to pay for transportation to after school or is this our choice as a district to take into consideration where you want to be dropped off after school as opposed to returning you to your home? This is our choice as a district. So, we're choosing to do that. We're choosing to be accommodating. But some of the programs, like some of the buses that go to the Y after school aren't necessarily on an established route, and I just know because I know kids from North Evston that go there, but they wouldn't they wouldn't be going to the school that they're going to, you know, they wouldn't be bust past the Y anyway. So are like for example, right, like my niece and nephew would go

200to the Y, but they go to Kingsley. They normally walk. There would be no bus routes from kids at Kingsley going to the YMCA, right? No, we do. So, that would be an extra stop. There would be a stop. A stop. We don't create a route. There's not a dedicated route. Oh, you add a stop. We add a stop. Oh, you add a stop. Yes. Okay. Okay. There's more. I got nothing over here. Question four. Go. Next slide. Is not working. Okay, I'll give it a try. Okay, so uh this is the polic. Regarding magnet school transportation, we kind of addressed it earlier when we were talking about twe, but it essentially says that if you're more than 1.5, you can pay for for transportation. Um, I kind of already explained about the charter school

201thing early on, what legal said uh could be a reasonable interpretation of of that particular school code, that statute. Um, and that we would probably if they're on or along an existing route, we'd probably need to provide them transportation if they're more than 1.5 miles away. So we would not necessarily be able to charge them a fee. So kind of no matter what this policy is going to to need to change and whether the decision is to just completely resend the policy, have one policy and just address all transportation there, we could go that route or you can uh uh redline this policy and and revise it. But that's kind of the the information. Adila, can you go to the next slide, please? Uh one more. Thank you. Uh okay. So hazard transportation as we

202briefly talked about um this would be students that are closer than 1.5 miles but in our case across the street like Ridge McCormick Green Bay um some of these that would um constitute a a serious safety hazard and no public transportation uh is available. So currently we are providing hazard transportation and as again that we'll start talking about here. Oh great next slide. uh again to see how everything is kind of intermingled, right? So as if you has here our ID dot hazards are the larger uh circles. Okay. So those are I do approved intersections. Um the um solid lines are our versat hazards and that is how we are transporting students in the hazard route. Uh so like again McCormick Ridge uh is up there, you have Gross Point up uh to the uh

203northwest. Um and then the the tiny dots are where we have crossing guards. And so one thing to to to think about is IDAT approves actual intersections, right? Just specific intersections. So, if you wanted Ridge to be a uh Ridge Avenue to stay a a hazard route, we pretty much would have to go and apply for each one of those intersections on Ridge. And then there is a calculation dependent on width of street, um number of cars, whether or not there's a stoplight, whether or not there's a crossing guard, um that fit into the calculation to that would deem it a hazard or not. Do you want to elaborate on that at all? Uh yeah, sure. So, uh just kind of some general information. The the last time that the uh that we submitted ID

204do or hazards to ID do for approval was about 2018. So, we're you know almost we're coming up on 10 years that we haven't really uh re re-evaluated that yet. So, that's really kind of what we're proposing that like on a yearly basis that we review our ID do hazards, we submit them to to ID do for approval and they get the final say. they either approve it or they don't and then that would determine hazard transportation where it kind of gets inter intermingled is with crossing guards. So when there's a crossing guard at an intersection, so like McCormack for example, pretty much every major intersection on McCormack has a crossing guard station there. When we did the rough calculations a few months ago with the crossing guards there, McCormack would not be considered an

205IDA hazard. They would not approve it because it's below the threshold. So that's kind of where this balance needs to come in. If we keep the the crossing guard station there, submit for ID dot, it most likely won't be approved. And that means everybody that crosses McCormack would no longer get hazard transportation if they're they're less than 1.5. So that's kind of like the balance that we're that we need to strike. We can re-evaluate crossing guards at any time um as part of the the contract with the with the city of Evston. Uh we are in a cross sharing agreement with the city of Evston, but by uh FY2728 school year, we will have the full cost of crossing guards at uh they estimate a 5% increase each year. It's going to be about uh

206730,000 that we would be covering the full cost for 50 crossing guards. We don't need to keep all 50 crossing guards, but that's kind of the the the conversation. Emerson isn't a hazard on this map. I'm sorry. Is is Emerson a hazard on this map? We need to look closer. It's not. But once the school goes once the school goes up, then don't go Emerson. The kids are going to cross Emerson. Between church and Emerson, they're going to cross. No, over by McCormack. It is. No, by Emerson. So Emerson between Ridge and McCormack. That little purple square. There's a dot there. Oh, here at uh Church and Dodge. Nope. So, right now there isn't a a hazardous line, but there will be once foster school opens. We would need to submit it and I do

207would have to approve that. It's not a decision that we can make. We just submit the findings based on traffic volume, uh the intersection, if it's traffic controlled intersection, stuff like that, the width of the street will be and then you tally it up and it's either more than 12 points or less than 12 points and it's just kind of a line there. Yeah, that's actually an important one as we model for um foster school. as someone who lives in the purple area on this side of church the you know using crossing guards as opposed to busting all these kids from here over there if you if this stays a hazard. Yeah. I mean yeah since it's been 10 years since the last I do evaluation um and traffic patterns have increased do you expect

208more dots? Uh it's very possible um depending um some will be eliminated. I know some were approved in about 1985 and one of them, for example, is a crossing at a railroad section that no longer exists. So, so it's just going to be part of the process to re-evaluate everything. It's really if things are going to shift, it's really going to be dependent on where crossing guards are stationed that will determine if the intersection becomes a hazard or not, like McCormick for example. Please understand that nine nine times out of 10, not 100, but nine out of 10, there's a guard there, it's not hazardous. Mhm. Add that. That makes sense. So that every you understand how the map works, right? With the with how the district versus the transhazard are and all the the

209points. Excellent. So yeah, you can see everything is kind of affecting everything else. So it's you make a decision, it'll affect all. Go ahead. Can you go to the next slide, please? Uh one more please. Um I guess this is so that's crossing guards what we were just talking about pretty much already talked about it. That's kind of like our cautionary agreement with the city of Evston like I said about 730,000 will be responsible for the full cost next year and is were they just paying it were they just paying it because they wanted to pay I mean is there a are we obl I mean they used to pay it then we said we'll pay it or were they just paying it for us because they were being nice? We have a contract with

210them until FY until July 1st, 2027. Um, so that would be the 2728 school year and we have a c uh like a sharing agreement with them that will increase that the district 65 bears more of the cost until uh July 1st, 2027, then we are 100% responsible. It's been a multi-year process. So So to kind of answer your question, at one point the city paid 100% for years. Um I'm figuring um at that time um they start coming up with some type of financial hardship I'm guessing. Not sure. Say yes. And yeah, they sat down with our um um with our negotiators at the time and this is the contract that came up. So it was a five-year phase phase in process. This was their way of saying we will work with you guys

211at the time of we're going to phase this in for five years. So the first year was like 10% then 25% until eventually you'll go to paying 100% of these costs. Is there a policy like I can't imagine the city just said we just want to pay for transportation. Is there any where in policies state policies does it dictate who's responsible for the safety of the roads and kids crossing crossings? I'm just saying like is that negotiable? Is it can we go back to the uh Okay. So, like you said, our contract with the crossing guards is you could decide to place or remove crossing guards from anywhere. I think what we're asking is, right, like there's there's kids crossing with crossing guards that that aren't part of district 65. There's kids crossing in the

212summer where there's no crossing guards. Like, the safety of the roads is the responsibility of the m municipality or the state, not necessarily the school district. And so there was a an alternative arrangement struck between the municipality and the school district that was different from decades and decades and decades prior. And I think Nicole's question is around like why did that this was during this was during um during COVID and then the city decided we're not going to provide cross for whatever reason. Not sure why they made that decision. I'm I'm not sure, but that's a decision that they came up with and this was the agreement that everybody that sat down at the table at the time agreed with that it would transition over the cost will transition over to us. So, this can

213get discussed at city school leaison meeting. So, that that's kind of where that where I remember that conversation occurring. So, again, it is negotiable. We could go back to the table. I've mentioned it to them before and they're like, "Well, we already made an agreement." And I'm like, well, it's we're having a a financially hard time. So, again, it'd be great for you to be a great partner. And um they're like, okay, well, we'll think about it. And well, I guess it's about whether there being a I just somewhere there should be something that states whose responsibility it is. We're as a district, we're from my understanding, and they can let me know, we're not mandated to have crossing guards. We're not obligated to have crossing. No, we're not obligated to have crossing guards. That's

214not that's not a from my understanding. I'll go back and look at it again, but from my understanding, we're not obligated to have crossing guards. Um, so if we decided that we wouldn't have any I'm not saying that's the safest thing in the world, but I'm just saying if we if that was the decision of the board, then there's nothing that I've seen and we'll go back we'll put that down as one of our questions to go and see, but there's nothing that I've seen that says you have to have crossing guards. I think we'll have to take a really hard look at all of this and figure out like what makes sense. Um, knowing the safe student safety obviously is, you know, number one importance, but we'll have to take a look to see

215what makes sense. So, yeah, I would like to see comps comparables for all of these. Like again, I appreciate a couple you say, well, you know, what are other school districts doing? So, so it' be really great. What what are other other, you know, municipalities in partnership with uh school districts, you know, what what what are they doing? Um and then that way we have if we can make a case if we see other school districts collaborating with their city or municipal governments and say, "Hey, city of Evston, our friends over WKE are doing this. They're they're doing this over, you know." So, yeah. I mean, let's try to build a case. Okay. So, yeah. So, there's no other questions. That's kind of We got a I think we got one more slide. Oh, I

216think it's just next. Oh, yeah. Some of the next steps, but again, so as uh Mr. what it was saying. It's really about as we're going into SDRP3 being forwardlooking to regardless of whatever decisions are made um that we have a a policy that will be able to be nimble and and or just adapt to whatever decisions you guys come up with. And as you can see just going through this how convoluted, confusing, who does what, you can see how difficult it is for us to articulate, let alone the community to understand when they enroll their kid in our school district. Yeah, that makes sense. I think the one other thing I would look at is as we're considering options is just like the feasibility of actually making things happen like things like crossing guard

217attendance, getting bus drivers. because I know we largely solved a lot of the bus driver, you know, shortage situation, but just making sure we're thinking about those sorts of things, too. Um, as we're evaluating the policy, but yeah, there's a lot to figure out. The last thing I think is partnerships, particularly in the after school. If we say we could say we're not providing transportation after school, but how do we then partner with you know work with the parks in the Y and places so that they are prepared for whatever our choice might be so we're not springing it on them. Yeah. So that's why we saying the time frame you can put it in you can make the policy today and have the time frame start the 27 28 school year and so that

218way that gives an entire year for people to u start working on their budgets and plans of of of how it's going to affect them. It sounds like it would be good to have some sort of timeline. Like I would love to see just the decisions made after we follow after we finished up SDRP and we sort of know what our you know what our schools are going to look like because I think I don't know how you do those projections without understanding that. Um but like is and then what resources do we need in order to make the assessment like you know do we need help with it? It's it's something we can do internally. It's seems like a lot of number crunching. You know maybe we can but let's think about that so

219we at least have a plan um for what we do so we don't leave our partners you know we leave our partners time to figure things out and parents time to figure things out if there are major changes. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. So, in light of time, I'm going to make some changes to the agenda. Um, we can go to the next agenda item, but then I think we're going to skip over the, um, organizational structure and save that for next time. Um, but the next item on the agenda is the board of education meeting agenda review. So, we just had some changes there. Policy 22 200, types of board of education meetings, and policy 2220, the board of education meeting procedures. They're being recommended to update language to line with

220board agreements on the time the board is able to review the meeting agenda prior to its posting. Any questions or comments about that one? Yeah, I think um there have been some crossarss. I'd send in um a proposal for 70 uh three business days. So be depending on how you count it' be what 24 business hours uh you know 72 hours of business days. So we would get materials by Thursday night. Um wait Thursday morning. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so, uh, I realize there's tension between giving staff and admin enough time to pull this together. We need to have this fairly close to the meeting. Um, there's also really important, as is in our recent memory in the district that we need to have time to go over these materials thoroughly and we can be looking

221at two or 300 pages of materials possibly. So, um, Friday night at 5:00 pm, um, isn't enough for me. I I want more time. Um, so I don't know if we can meet in the middle somewhere. Um, but I'd be curious to hear everyone else's perspective on on this timing. I also think it's important because if we have questions about the material, then we can submit those questions earlier and we won't it may shorten the meeting time. So there might be some there might be some I said might. You said my You did. You did. I did. Um, so that that's that's how I'm approaching it is to so that I have time to I mean and looking at the decisions that we're going to be faced with very shortly. They're going to it's going

222to change the structure of the school district for years to come. And I want to make those decisions very intentionally and with all of my questions answered because uh us seven board members live in this community and we will be facing questions from our constituents about what's happening. So I I and I want to be sure that I have the right information and can speak clearly about what it is that's happening to the district. So that will just that would that would help me be better prepared for the meeting and for the public. I'm curious um just as the board members that have been up here, right, because I'm I'm digesting all these things from essentially a dead stop. So, I'm getting the cadence. I'm reading through the board packets from before and kind of

223following the threads. Um, and I agree. I think more time. I'm finding myself like I'm a marinator, right? Like I read something and then I think about it and then I have some questions and then I think about it again. And so having a little more time is helpful. Um, I'm wondering how you guys feel about it having been I mean, yeah, I would love to have it earlier. I think it's just more like how possible is it? That's the thing like obviously the more time we have the better. It's just like the realities on your side. I know that you know there's some things you have to pull together and sometimes things change last minute or things come up and we're like oh we need to talk about this but um you know I

224think that's more the consideration. Yeah, I I agree again. I would love to have it sooner, but again, given that we have reduced the size of the administration and their capacity and then just the urgency of all the things that have to happen all at once, it's difficult and and what I want to try to do is extend grace to the administrative team because again now they are they've been more we cut more than half of them. So I can again I would I would trust me I've we previous iterations of the board we've all asked for this we all asked for it and and we've and and the teams have tried and then this isn't the only administration but you know they they've they've strived to try to do it and it it would

225it'll happen and then it just for some reason or another because so many things are going on in such a large unit district like ours uh that it ends up just becoming to where we're at and that's we get it on Fridays at 5:00 p.m. because the teams h are having to or there might be a board a question from one of us. Okay, well I need more clarification and that kind of stops you know stops up the the process and they have to go back to the drawing board and can discuss it as a team and say okay we got we got a we got two or three board members asking about this. So again that we I would love to have it. I would trust me like all of you but I also

226want us to be very mindful of the um the capacity that that that the current team has or or or now the lack of and the bandwidth as well because it's just it's it's already a lot going on. So I I I I'm I'm for changing the language but but but being flexible about it. Uh yeah. Question. Do we have to do we get a we get a board update on the same or you you you do a board update at the same time we're also doing the board book. All of that is at the same time. So on the week of a board meeting or on this week we also get a board update too, right? The weekly updates. Yeah, weekly update. So, I'm I'm curious if there's a way to on those to

227not on the to not do a weekly update on the on the same week that we're having to do cuz like cuz I'm looking at both of them like which one maybe there's a way to in some sense to reduce some of that. So, one way I think we could solve this is via the board retreat because I think what a drive what drives how we respond is what is based on what the board asks us, right? So, so what you're getting is what the previous board received and is what was requested. I think at the board the upcoming board retreat, you all have experienced the cadence of and the frequency of the things and how my team communicates. If trust and believe with a reduction of staff, if you you you might say we

228don't want you to do the 369 memo, we don't want you to do the committee review, we just want you to send. Trust me, my team would love to hear that, right? So like let's prioritize I think around what is it this board wants to focus on because right now we're focusing on what we've been focusing on all the entire year and the guidance that we were given and the direction that we were given from the board. And if that is not what this current board wants then we can I can pivot because my team is ready to pivot because honestly we're tired. Um, and so we're we're we're more than willing to do that to be very honest. Can you can you give us a recommendation? So again, I know the proposal is on

229here to do 72 hours. So and you know the capacity of your team and then of course we this is a board that has a lot of questions now because we have newer members. So if you could maybe provide us a recommendation regards Okay. So then what what would be uh the median the happy median if you will to to try to get we meet tomorrow as a cabinet team so it'll be something that we'll follow follow back up I think we hear what the board is asking we'll talk right I'll be transparent and saying what could come out that conversation is me saying transparently to my team okay y'all no more this right I don't know what that is yet because we need to look at all of the things And I need to

230hear what's the best cadence because I also feel like in getting the weekly board updates that we provide you, you aren't getting to it and then the questions are coming and it's like well we answered that question and in the weekly board update. So if that's not working for you all like we we totally get it. I know it's concerns about the strategic plan and the frequency and the KPIs and how we're monitoring all the things. We just need direction um and what you want so that we we know how to move because right now it it's it's a lot. Yes. Um we have a um the restructured board uh I'm sorry the restructured cabinet has plans to meet to do calendaring really which is a heavy lift for us um with the reduction in

231staff. We got to divide and conquer on all the things and we have that plan for June 17th to really talk that through map that out. look at all of the things that the community and the board wants us to do and say what can we reasonably do and who who can do what, right? And so this is all factored into this will be factored into that conversation as well because we want to be forward thinking. If we know stuff is coming up then it gives us a better cadence on how to prepare and it doesn't feel like we are planning or creating agendas with the scope that was approved months ago. but it's it's in alignment with with what it is that the board wants. So, I think it's just a lot of different

232pieces that have to be factored into it. But I think it's something that we can attempt. I think we tried to attempt this time around write a dealer in the frequency. We sent stuff earlier this time. I believe we tried. We tried. We've tried we've tried before in different iterations of this board. Yeah. It's a common request always from our newest board members. We we really do try to to honor at least 48 72 hours and it it and it we we will get it sometimes but then it kind of it all dep again it's a rare it's it's like always in flux it seems and uh it's a very fluid situation at times. Yeah. And and I want to name too when we created the board calendar the last when we when the board

233approved it SDP phase three wasn't on the table. Yeah. Since then we've added the committee meetings cuz Yeah. Say it again. I'm sorry. Phase two was not on the table. Right. Phase three. Thank you. Thank you for bringing me back into reality. Was not on the table until That is true. And so we had grandiose plans and we've still been trying to keep with those plans yet accommodating with all of the extra committee work and all of the stuff that has gone into to the work now. And so we got some reconfiguring to do um and just some re thinking through how how stuff is going to operate with with the leaner team because yeah, it's going to look different. And I think the one thing is um I know to the we get the

234so I do want to say we get the materials and we do ask questions and important for folks watching this u um the administration does a really good job of giving us feedback to questions we ask along the way and I think one thing that might be different with this board and we're still going to ask the questions in public in some sense is trying to bring them you know to make sure people know that we're asking um and so that's maybe something as we do the um agendas because they're we're taking things longer because we're asking questions that some of them you've answered already but it feels like an important question because you did a great job Terrence and asking some of the questions we asked in transportation but they seem like to just

235say yeah we've seen it you've answered it and not talk about it seems a little so we'll learn about that and have to talk through that what do we want to do as a board so you're not feeling like you're answering them in email and then we're turning around and asking you something similar because that's probably taking up a lot the time. But I know for me, I'm going to ask some things in public, even if you've already answered it, because I feel like it needs to be part of the record. And how do we sort of do that in a way that also doesn't keep us here forever? Yeah. So, an answer to the 72 hours, we'll talk about it in the board retreat. Yes. Because it's tied to the board, it's really tied

236to the board agreement. Yeah. Okay. All right. So, we already covered technology. So, now we can uh move to the next item, which is the deck district 65 side letter, the early release schedule. Um, all right. I would like to ask Thank y'all. I would like to ask Jerry Michael and Heather Schaefer to come on up because this is a joint presentation. And I just want to publicly thank uh those that don't know, Jerry is retiring. He's leaving us. But as Tiffany likes to call him, her partner in crime, a partner in partnership. Yes. Keep you here on this last one, these last meetings. Yes. And and Heather is the they Heather is part of the deck executive team. And so, um, one of the things that we also heard the board is like we

237we're shifting to a lot of the joint committee and, um, meetings and how can we have the representation. We'll just have to be thoughtful, I think, moving forward because the days are long. Yeah. For them. Um, it's long for educators and I it's long for us, our team, right? And so maybe thinking about how to configure that next time where we can get them ahead to present as well as our good friend from PMA. So thank you for being with us. Um but we'll figure it out. But we I'll turn it over to the irony the irony of the this is an early Well done Jerry. Well done. All right, so we can go on to the next slide. Um, so Heather, Jerry, Chris Robinson, who's the principal of Oakton and myself led this joint

238committee. Um, and essentially reaching back a little bit into the history of District 65 during the contract negotiations that led to our 2019 2024 collective bargaining agreement, Deck and District 65 administration began having a conversation about the possibility of moving to an early release professional learning model. We had a side letter that came out of that was part of that contract. We had a subgroup of people that were working jointly, deck and the administration to try to get an early release model that would work. Um, essentially they the group wasn't able to figure out the secret sauce to get it to work. And that group came to an end right as we slid into a pandemic. And so we entered into bargaining again last year about 15 months or so ago at this point I

239think. Um and the subject of early release professional learning came up again. Um a working committee of folks that were engaged in bargaining began meeting separate of our official bargaining meetings to essentially develop a model for early release. And our charge was to say like can you come up with something that could make this work? and we got to essentially this idea what we think of as the secret sauce which is a 40minute early release on Mondays that managed to get us to a certain set of criteria. So if you could slide to the next slide uh parameters that we were really holding core to our design was one we needed to make sure that we were holding on the number of instructional days that um are in our existing calendar and are required by

240school code. Essentially an instructional day to be counted must have 300 minutes. Currently the average we submit to North Cook is 340 minutes and that is actually the minutes in our K5 because that's where the largest number of our students are. But as you know we have different instructional minutes for magnet K5 Middle School as well as Park and Rice. So that's the the number that we submit that qualifies for North Cook. We also wanted to make sure that if we made a shift in our early release to a early release professional learning model that essentially there wouldn't be any significant change in the overall student contact time. All right. So when we talk about student contact we wanted to make sure that come to the end of the year we hadn't significantly short changed

241students in the amount of time that they had in front of their teachers. And this model actually leaves us in a place where we have slightly more student contact time. And then we also wanted to make sure that parameter-wise that we weren't increasing any of the time that teachers already work beyond the the bell. And so our existing model has half day early release on seven months and then or well essentially seven months and then we have two teacher institute days and Thursday staff meetings. Those Thursday staff meetings are twice a month once a month on the months we have conferences. So essentially we went in, we went modeled this and we pulled the side committee, a new side committee together and said, "Hey, these are the parameters and we want you guys to really

242kind of kick the tires on this thing and find out if it works across five different really six different school models. So we had essentially members from deck representing all campuses, members from administration. We broke into teams, a team for elementary, a team for magnet, team for middle, a team for park and rice combination that kind of broke off a little bit and then early childhood and essentially said thinking about contra deck contract, thinking about the physical limitations in our building, schools with cafe gyms, thinking about the impact with students with IEPs and contact minutes as well as team time for special educators, and then thinking about outside community partners and afterchool care. Does this would we recommend moving forward on this model? Handing over. Next slide, I believe. Oh, so this is me, Gerald.

243All right, here we go. Um, I just want to give you a little context because uh there's uh a number of new faces on the board that I haven't met before. So, one one of the calling cards that I would say that that that I'm bringing to this is instructional leadership. as a principal at Willard for 12 years and a uh the coach at at shoot for the last three and that was our goal in approaching this. So even though this is the technical piece of this, it really was thinking about professional learning and making it meaningful and and and making that time um as powerful as possible. So, what we've got here is is just a layout of what it looks like before the bill. Uh what what it looks like um the current

244proposal, what we're doing now, and what we are going to what we're proposing with the early release. Um as Stacy mentioned, it's replacing those Wednesday half days and the after school Thursday meetings that happen twice a month. And this would be weekly. So it's part of a professional learning time that educators experience. Um part of it would be covered during the school day with that that early release and then the other half the other portion of it would be um just a slight extension. So you can see the the times there as they compare across the the four different models um where we have a a meeting start time. the the faculty meeting starts at 3:10 in elementary as opposed to 350 220 at the magnet 240 at the middle. That builds in the 15

245minutes that we need to get buses and kids picked up. But overall, if you want to go to the next one, that that's that's the technical piece of what it looks like. But overall what we're trying to to look at is we had this current model that had around that had 3600 minutes and the early release model gives us more minutes just it's a slight increase but it's it's it's it's also focus time um on a weekly basis and a little bit a little bit shorter um extension of the of the workday. So what you have as the current model is you have with those faculty meetings and the half days there's there's 1,200 total minutes and faculty meetings and all 1,200 of those minutes extend the day for teachers in the new one it's

246it's a total time of 2300 total minutes but only 1 extend the day so there's less post dismissing time we eliminated the half day PDS and one of the reasons was thinking about the elementary schools and how they they're really struggling to find good time during the day for those PLC's to meet which is one of the key drivers in academic improvement um is having teacher teams work together to solve challenging academic problems looking at your data and looking closely at your instruction. So by moving this by this this this early release model on Mondays really helps give us um dedicated time for those PLC's especially at the elementary buildings where we had all we had often struggled to find time where people can all meet together. Um we shift one of those full so

247both models have four institute days. Um, currently it's two before the school year starts and two during and we're going to shift to having three before the school year starts and then that one during the school year in January. So you it those 31 Mondays that we that we have it gives us again a total increase of time but we're hoping that it's more focused and we're not one of the things that we the feedback we got from educators was those halfday PDs followed by a faculty meeting the next day where um it didn't feel like the time was was being used as well as it could because it extended the day so much for two days in a row. So that's some of the the thought behind all those different models. Can we go

248to the next Oh, can we go to the next slide, please? Yes. Um, so here are the two different models that we came up with. It didn't take long from the group that was meeting to figure out that one size does not fit all for all of our schools. So, um, we figured the consensus around the group was it works best for elementary magnet Middle and Rice to do the early release Monday. And then for the students and families at Park and JH, it turned out that the better plan was a full day release. So it's more consistent for the students, it's more consistent for the families because the half day was not working out very well. So instead of doing every Monday, they would do either four to five Mondays a year. That would

249be a full day off. And then that that during that time that would be aligned with the other Mondays that the rest of the district would have department meetings. So the schools then wouldn't be isolated. they still have contact with their department colleagues. Um, and then for the full day, it just allowed better professional planning for the whole group. So, the PARS and everybody that would be involved in there. There was no busing concerns. There was no um parents not at home or child care concerns for the families. Um, so then we had a bunch of considerations. We tried to come up with as many um issues that might arise as we could. So, we are reaching out to a bunch of the stakeholders, the community groups, as well as looking at the other unions

250within the district to see the impact and followup to see what we can figure out from there. Um, can we go to the next slide? Thank you. Um, we did send out a survey to all staff. Um, we got about 300 responses. Five is I extremely extremely supportive of the plan. One's was not at all supportive. We did find in a lot of the comments that um some people didn't have enough information to really weigh in on which they thought was better. So that makes sense because it was a new concept to a lot of the people especially those who were not in deck but are in the other unions because this was really the first time they'd heard about it. Um so you can see some of the themes that we saw supportive and

251some of the concerns. Um you're going to talk about moving forward. Yeah. I'm talk about it like next year. Okay. Yeah. You want me to jump in? All right. Um, so as we talk about next steps, essentially one, we're bringing this discussion to the school board today because in order to move forward with a change like this, we would need the school board to approve a calendar that's supportive of that in the fall. What we see as our next steps as a collective group essentially is one to continue to work through any of the potential um considerations that we've named. We have already engaged with, you know, one particular concern was access to professional learning for pair of professionals. They are bargaining this summer. We're hoping that we can potentially make some progress on that

252with this model with them. Um, additionally, we have talked to nutrition services and transportation and they're not concerned with that, but we want it with this model, but we want to continue to work out some times. Um, so we know we need to just continue to take the feedback and make sure that things really work. Additionally, this would require potent uh potential with deck to adjust one of the contract times for Monday. And so they're waiting to see how things go for pair professionals and cleaning up the additional, you know, considerations this summer. But you know just speaking for this group it was a really great collaborative experience and I think there's a lot of positive energy moving in this direction and hope for the ability to have um kind of better connected and embedded

253professional learning with greater frequency. So as we talk about going forward communication one we want to think about how we gather more feedback from the community broadly. We've engaged with community partners but we have not gone out to families yet. Two, we want to figure out um how we pending we could get an approved school calendar communication timing for families and ideally that would be with fall conferences so families could see this coming well ahead because we were proposing this for the 2627 school year. Um and then we take that feedback, we continue to tune and make sure that we are fully feasible prior to asking you to vote on a different type of school calendar in the fall. Jerry and Heather, did I miss anything there? No, it it when we were meeting it

254was interesting to see that the group's elementary, middle, magnet and Rice were able to figure out a schedule that was able that shortened the day by 40 minutes. So, they were able to make it work. Surprised chat GPT could help out a lot with that, but it was pretty cool to see um everyone get together and figure it all out. We did learn a bit about the power of AI in the process. Yes. Um I think one thing to note just the the thing that is different here clearly is that we would have two models. JH early childhood has been operating on a different calendar. Um and when we tried to prop apply an early release or a late start, it just when you have two and a half hours of school starting 40 minutes

255late barely gives anybody a reason to leave, let alone bring their kid. So they just ultimately said like this isn't the best thing for us. Um the model that they're proposing is very closely aligned to parks. So that would allow us to have like related service provider meetings on the Mondays that overlap between full days for park and early childhood and the early release Mondays. And so it'll take some strategic planning, but it can allow for districtwide related service meetings so long as we calendar it out and in a very intentional way. And then we would continue to have one full day a year. And so that helps to address some concerns around like CPR training for PE educators, things along those lines. Questions? I'll say I really like this. Um, it sounds I don't

256know anyone who liked the half days except for the kids. That was that was fun that we noticed especially at the middle schools was attendance patterns of many students just would not come home. Yeah, I can I can believe that. Yeah, I think and it was a nightmare at JH switching the morning to the afternoon to the Yeah, that was it was I appreciate this model. Yeah, I think that's great. The one thing I will ask as you're thinking about this is child care for families with that early Monday if there's a drop in option for the early Monday release. I think you know it's easier to take off a day or a half day. Sometimes some people don't have the option to take off an extra hour. So just making sure we're thinking about

257that for families. And that's something that we talked about. We did also reach out to YOU, the YMCA, right at school, school age child care, and all of them basically said that they could adjust their programming to make sure it starts earlier on Monday as long as they have enough advanced notice to plan for and you know, writing school for instance did say like this is something they already do in other districts. That's great. Okay. And so I know that doesn't completely address what you're raising, but that is part of the operation. Questions from the from the teachers on this committee as well. That was something that we came back to multiple times. Yeah. And one of the things that um Stacy and I have been working on is we know it's the last week

258of the school year, but you know, it's important people need to plan ahead. And so we do have a communication that we are working through knowing that this is a public discussion tonight um to share with families and then also being able to issue a somewhat similar survey that was issued to educators just to better understand at a very high level the impact being very clear that there's runway for this change still. But we want to make sure that families are hearing directly from us that this is a possibility for again not next school year but the following school year and just to begin collecting some of that feedback on the impact and what the needs might be the change. I can guarantee tomorrow people are going to start asking questions about this. Absolutely. That's

259why it's already ready to go. Yeah, that's great. Okay, so yes, we're going to skip our last agenda item. Thank you. Thank you, Jared. Thanks for y'all patience. Okay, my turn. Yes. Okay, now we're going to begin the finance committee portion of this meeting. Um, we had two items on the agenda. The SAP 3 update, twe the foster school construction update, and then the third one is the STRP3 update. But in an interest of time, we're going to push the SAP 3 update um and the foster school construct construction update um down the road to the next meeting. And we're going to ask uh Mr. Lewis to do his presentation now. Thank you, sir, for waiting. Is there a pointer or do I just Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Well, thank you for having me

260here tonight to uh present this information to you. And my goal tonight is to give you an overview of how school finance works as it relates to raising funds for capital and then to look at some specific decision points that you may want to take this year. and then looking more forward looking at what decision points that you have down the road for longerterm capital needs. Okay, so to begin with just want to give some background information and to begin so what are municipal bonds? So, school districts issue municipal bonds to fund capital projects similar to corporations and the US federal government who utilize bonds to raise funds to finance uh things that they need to build or construct. A bond is at its simplest level, it's like a loan just like we have is

261for our home mortgages, for car loans. It's a promise to repay your investors principal and interest over time according to a fixed schedule. And we call those principal and interest payments your debt service. Where should I point? There we go. Too far. Okay. So, municipal bonds usually mature between one to 30 years and that uh was actually extended for school districts last year. We used to be limited to 20 years. There was a change in law that gave a final maturity to 30 years. doesn't mean every finance you should utilize all 30 years, but it's nice to have that tool in the toolbox. The bond and interest levy is a specific amount of your property tax levy is set aside to make the payments on your general obligation bonds. So when you look at the

262levy that the district has it, it's a combination of your education fund on M fund, transportation fund. We generally call those your operating fund portion of your levy and then the bond and interest portion is a separate component. Now, when you look at your tax bill, you don't see those components, but what makes up each entity is the operational and the debt component. The word general obligation means there is a separate property tax levy available to make those payments. And uh which is good for you because then it doesn't impact your operations in in the sense of a general obligation bond. It's also good for your investors because they know that there's a separate revenue source available to pay them back. And then uh lastly, municipal securities, general obligation bonds, lease certificates, which we'll talk

263about a little bit later, are almost always issued as being tax exempt. What that means is your investors do not have to pay taxes on the interest you pay them. Thus, they're willing to loan you the funds at a subsidized interest rate, which is about one and a quarter to one half percent lower than it would be without that exception. Okay, so the first two slides were just general terminology as it relates to bonds. On this side, we're focusing in on Illinois school borrowing options. So, these come out of either the Illinois school code or the local government debt reform act. And the Illinois school code provides very specific ways that how you go about accessing funds. Uh we've already talked about the general obligation bonds. There's two types. at a high level. Those authorized

264via referendum which are typically for large building projects and not always in a lot of cases there's new buildings especially in high growth areas. You're you're seeing a lot more referendum questions these days to re rehab and rebuild certain port u buildings of the school district. So it's not just for new buildings, it could be for vast improvements that need to be taken. Then there's non-general obligation bonds which are authorized and sold differently. They're generally for more ongoing needs, not for large capital projects depending upon the district and your ability to borrow on a non-referendum basis. And then lastly, there's other borrowing mechanisms that aren't paid from a separate property tax levy. Those consist of alternate revenue bonds, debt or lease certificates. I've highlighted the lease certificates in blue because you do have a series

265of lease certificates. And then there's capital leases which are smaller lease obligations for technology buses and all those are paid from within your operating funds. You know there's not the separate tax levy to pay them. So those have to be issued with a great deal of caution because they do they are paid from the same pot of money that pays for everything else. And then lastly, there's tax anticipation warrants which are the school district equivalent of a payday loan. and you don't want to be in the situation that you're selling tax anticipation warrants. Next. Okay. So, because you are located in Cook County, which is a tax capped county, your ability to borrow on a non-referum basis, is limited to a concept called the debt service extension base or DUB. For the rest of the

266presentation, I will say DUB. And that was determined in 1994 when tax caps applied to Cook County. The and what it was set to equal is whatever you were levying for in 1994 to make the principal interest payments in that year on just your non-referendum bonds. If you had referendum bonds, I'll say at that time that that did not count. It was only your non-referendum levy. So in 1994 that was 4.8 8 million that was tied to CPI several years later and that so now that amount stands at $7 million per year is what you can levy to make payments on principal and interest on your non-referendum bonds. There is an additional non-refernum option that does not count against the DUIB that we'll talk about a little later in the presentation. Sorry. Uh so this

267is a graphical representation then of your dub. So the red line represents the solid red line represents what it is today and then the dash red line represents what it could be over time as CPI would average one and a half%. The blue bars represent your current payments that you make on your non-referendum bonds. The annual principal and interest levy and levy year 23 is for taxes collected in 24. levy year 24s for taxes collected in 25 so on and so forth. So many of the years you've filled up to the dub you have a little bit of a gap in levy years 25 six and seven which we'll talk about a little bit later in the presentation how you might utilize that. And then you have four years there where uh it's been assumed

268that there'll be some growth to cover those payments. And then you then after that you only have a couple years remaining before you have no long no additional non-referum GEO bonds outstanding. Okay. So now that was the background. Now we're getting into what are some present opportunities that you have to consider in 2025. So at the beginning of this year the district had this calendar year uh the district had authority to issue up to 3.4 4 million of non-referendum bonds payable from within the DEP. And the reason why you had that authority is you completed the the necessary proceedings to create it back in 2023. What were those proceedings? The district conducted a hearing and it also published a notice of intent resolution to issue bonds in an amount up to uh 3,425. and those

269proceedings that you conducted in 23 that created authority that lasts for three years. It does require additional board action to utilize that authority but as far as the communications to the public are concerned those proceedings were completed in 23. Earlier this year, uh, financing was completed to utilize a portion of that 3,425, almost a million dollars worth. And the purpose of that was to make the interest payment due on the lease certificates on July 1st or excuse me, June 1st of 2025. So that payment was just made today. Yeah, today because the payment falls on the weekend and it's made the following business day and it was made from the proceeds of that first bond issue. So there is about $2.3 million remaining then of that authority or well there's a little bit more than

270that remaining of the authority but you could utilize 2.3 million of it to make the December 1st 2025 principal and interest payment on lease certificates and that uh payment was part was made as part of the assumptions when the cuts were made earlier this year for fiscal year 2025 2026. So if the the board did not make the necessary steps to proceed with making those payments, well then uh you would have to pay those that those payments out of your operating funds for fiscal year 2526, which was not uh part of the plan that was adopted earlier this year. Any financing to make that payment would have to close within 90 days of it in order to be designated tax exempt, which is not a problem. It's just a a p, you know, it's a

271it's a constraint that we have to follow because you want to sell it tax exempt to get the lowest rate interest rate possible. So, here is the principal payments of all of your non all of your outstanding bonds and your lease certificates. Part of this presentation and steps that you can take in 2025 uh also uh discuss will al involve the possibility of refinancing the 2014 and bonds at to a lower interest rate. So the purpose of that refinancing would be to generate some debt service savings. And we're going to talk about those two uh issues in a little bit more detail in the subsequent slides. And uh those two financings as well as the the 16 bonds were issued as capital appreciation bonds or cabs. And the reason I point that out is because

272it does create some constraints we have to manage with. And so before I talk about those constraints, I just want to give you a little bit more overview of you know what is a CAB? It's a you may be familiar with the term zero coupon bond. Essentially, what it means is there's no interest paid on these bonds until they come due at maturity. They're very similar, and you're probably used to uh US savings bonds. You go to the bank, you may you may receive those as a gift. Your kids may receive them as a gift from a grandparent. Often times, they're purchased to, you know, to help pay for college education or or other u things that you may have down the road. So if somebody goes to the bank and pays $50 for a

273US savings bond, that mature and at some point down the road that $50 investment will mature to $100, but you never receive an interest payment on them. So this is the equivalent then that that units of government can do uh when you issue bonds for capital projects with this type of interest payment structure. the why they're used and have been used by your district in the past is to manage around that DUIB constraint. If you'd had many years where you couldn't uh fit them into the structure previously in those years a district had sold cabs to fit them into the DUB. Now the the challenge of them you're going to see here in a moment when it when it comes to refinancing them you you'll see in a couple slides here. So specifically about the

2742014 bonds which were issued as CABS, there's about $1.4 million that can be refinanced. The average yield on those uh bonds is 4.8%. Which is above the current market for that range of maturities. Uh the estimated savings are reflected on the next slide and and tax exempt refunding of these canur occur at any time because we're already past the call date. So you'll notice here at the bottom of the yellow column that compares our estimate for the new debt service which wouldn't be locked in until you sold the bonds and what you're currently paying on the old debt service. So just taking the difference of those two columns you get the yellow column. So you can see at the bottom estimated savings of 1.2 million. That looks really good and saving money. Who wants who

275doesn't want to save money, right? the the problem we have with the cabs because the cabs don't have uh interest payments until you get to maturity. It creates some negative savings for the first three years you can see and then you have all that positive savings at the end. Well, we can manage that negative savings through the refinancing because you do have some room in your debt service extension base I showed you earlier. So, we can fit those payments in there. uh the present we always should look at savings that's taken over time on a present value basis and that's what the yellow uh row at the end shows you the net PV benefit is $750,000 uh some of you may be familiar with the present value concept but just in case not all of

276you are at this basic level present value is a dollar today is worth more than a dollar several years from now it's because you can take that dollar today and invest it so if somebody offers you a dollar you rather have it today than 10 years from now because you could earn interest on it at a minimum. So the 2015 bonds have about $7.6 million of creative value and those bonds are not callable to December 1st of 25. So that's a concept I haven't explained yet. Callability. So we're all custom with our home mortgages or car loans. You can pay those off anytime you want. They're immediately callable in in the bond vernacular. Well, with municipal bonds, there's a period of time you have to wait for before you can refinance them or pay them

277off, and that is the call date. So, the call day in the 14 bonds was December 1st of 24. We're past that date, so you can refinance them at any time. The call date, pardon me, on the 15 bonds is December 1st of 25. So, the the tax code says you can refinance within 90 days of that date. So, that's later this year. So that's so we're in that window of opportunity to not only refinance the the 2015 bonds but the 2014 bonds and also to do that financing to pay the December 1st payments on the lease certificates. So the good news is is you can combine all three of these into one single financing which makes it as efficient as possible. Um, so the earliest we can call or close then on a financing

278is September 2nd, which means you could sell the bonds as early as late July, early August. So we're not too far away from when the sale could occur if the board decides to go that direction. So the savings on this one are not as robust and that is because uh two two reasons. Um trying to back up a slide. Oop. Because the average yield is 4.4%. So it's lower than the other financing. I think it's 4.8 something. And it's a smaller financing. It's not as large as the other ones. So you're not refinancing as many bonds. So that one would save 768,000. We're estimating the current market or just under $300,000 present value. It also has the same challenges of managing around those earlier years because these are also cabs. So what are the course

279what's the course of action then for the bond sales? Uh the first set of bullet points we've already completed a $945,000 bond closed ear earlier this year to make that June 1st interest payment on the u on the lease certificates due on June 1st. And then that that was sold in a competitive direct placement. Republic Bank bought that bond. So the next step would be to issue up to $21.5 million of bonds in September. That would be for sale in late July, early August. And that would be for the purposes I've already described. We anticipate that be sold as a public offering where you take competitive bids from an underwriter who would then buy your bonds and resell them to their investor clientele. And that's how the district's gone about doing most of its bond

280sales is through the competitive bid process. Now, the refunding components would be subject to market conditions at that time because unlike your home mortgage where you can just tell that broker, hey, lock that rate in, you can't lock the rate in on a municipal bond until you actually take bids on that, which again wouldn't be until late July, early August. So, we would continue to monitor conditions and keep the administration updated on where those stand. Uh this is what the combined structure would look like um from the refundings and the uh the bonds that have been issued. So you have the 25A bonds which were uh sold uh earlier this year and then you have the 25B bonds which are uh reflected by the uh royal blue bars. Notice how all those fit within the

281DUB other than levier 28. What would happen in levier 28 is if CPI didn't average uh something more than one and a half percent so that dash bar would be higher you would have the opportunity in the future when the 2019 bonds become callable in 28 to refinance that to fit it within the dub or uh if you have payment above the dub and and it happens every once in a while with certain financings you just pay that from some other funds that you might have often times there's some excess test funds and the debt service fund that can make those payments that if they're just if a small amount over the DUP. So what would be the timeline if the if this board chooses to proceed? Uh so we've we're making that presentation tonight.

282The board could approve a parameters resolution to authorize the sale of the bonds. That could be either at your June meeting later this month or the August meeting when you you come back um uh from that meeting in June. And what is a parameters resolution? A parameters resolution is set forth like minimum savings, maximum repayment term, maximum interest rate, and then it names delegates to the board to authorize the sale. You're not giving me permission to sell the bonds. you'd be giving delegates of the board which is typically made up of two administrative officials uh the superintendent and and Tamara and then the board president and board vice president would be authorized to to approve the sale and then we expect that sale to be in August with the closing in September if if you

283decide to proceed with that. So those are the decision that's the decision point you have in 2025 the funding options for future capital projects and this is the presentation uh in substance that we gave to the uh the finance committee a couple weeks ago. And so your available funding sources you have those that are non-borrowing options on the the left hand side and then the borrowing options on the right side. So you can make a fund balance contribution. Uh this is an option for some schools for your district at this time. It is not an option um given the current financial situation. And then you can also uh make payments out of your operating budget. So that would be pay as you go capital and that again is not currently available in any large amounts

284given unless you were to make further expenditure cuts on the operating side which is not ideal at this time given the the amount of cuts cuts that you've already done. So really at this point in time non-borrowing options are not viable for funding future capital needs. So then you have uh referendum bonds then you have life safety bonds. life safety bonds are those bonds as I'm referencing earlier I said I come back to which are another non-referendum option and those are paid from a the a separate property tax levy and then you have non-referendum bonds issued against the debt service extension base we just saw in your current DUB you really don't have the opportunity to borrow on large amounts for capital projects for quite some time at least a decade and those are paid

285from a limited tax levy and then lastly you have alternate bonds bonds, lease and debt certificates which are paid from your operating funds, but only if you were have a limiting in rate increase. You'd have to increase your resources in your operating funds because you don't you wouldn't be able to make payments on further debt certificates or lease certificates without raising your your operating revenues. So, building bonds, what's the opportunity and challenges? So, a building bond, you know, one of the opportunities is it has a a project description of what you would do with it. It's very clear to a voter, even if they knew nothing about it when they walked into the ballot box. There's at least information in the ballot question what you would do with it. Uh larger projects can be addressed

286in a shorter time frame, you know, versus doing pay as you go capital over a long time frame, having the the project costs increase by uh construction cost inflation over time. Even if that were an option to do pay as you go, which for your district it's not, the district has up to five years to issue the bonds after passage. So you do have quite an a window to sell the bonds. You don't have to sell them all at once. And then the voters may like that it is a temporary increase. When the bonds are retired, the ability to levy the tax to pay the bonds goes away with that final payment versus some of these other options which would be in perpetuity. What are the challenges? There's no additional funds provided for operations. So,

287if the district wanted to increase operational resources, a referendum bond's not going to do that for you. And u it is not permanent. So, a future referendum would be necessary for uh needs, additional capital needs down the road. So, what I listed as an opportunity for some that is temporary, it may be challenged for the others. Just depends on your perspective. So this matrix just gives you some rule of thumb calculations of what the impact would to the taxpayer would be varying the amount. So you can see across the top we have a row from 125 million to 200 million and then we vary the term from 20 years to 30 years in 5-year increments. So if you start in that upper left corner $125 million referendum advertised over 20 years would have an annual

288payment around $11 million per year. And for every $100,000 of market value, not EAV, market value for your home, it would be a $79 impact. So if you had a $500,000 home, you multiply that by five to get a rough approximation. We're not taking in into consideration any exceptions from, you know, like the $10,000 homeowners exception, you know, that or exemption that would uh lower the impact. But we wanted to keep it at a simple level by not including any except exemptions in the calculations. And then you have the rest of the matrix for different amounts different terms. So the second option to address capital needs are life safety bonds. Now life safety bonds do not require referendum approval by the voters but they do require approval by ISBY. So your architects would go through

289your buildings which which by the way they're required to do every 10 years. You have to do a life safety survey of each building every 10 years. Some school districts do all the buildings at one time. Others stagger them. You know say every building's 10year anniversary could be coming up at different times. And you don't have to wait for the 10 years to be completed to go through the life safety process on a building if you're trying to raise funds to address capital needs for that building. uh they are not constrained by your DUB which is uh a new change in law a year ago at this time life safety bonds had to fit in the DUB that's no longer the case they do not require direct voter approval but they do require a bond

290hearing let me go back to that first point one more time so if after your architect goes through and submits the reports to ISBY if Isby comes back and gives you $30 million worth of aggregate approvals That's what you can sell in bonds is $30 million. You couldn't sell $60 million. You can only sell that $30 million. Uh which is nice to get that authority to address things like roofs and parking lots and boilers. And in the appendix, we have a whole list of things that could qualify as life safety. Classroom additions, classroom improvements, things like that wouldn't qualify as life safety. So it's limited then to how much of your capital needs you can address using this this uh path. So when you're working with your architects, it's then very important given this change

291in the law to work with them to determine out of all your capital needs which ones are life safety, which ones are not because that may determine whether this is even a viable option. If you know if it's a really small percentage of your overall capital needs, it's probably not worth doing a separate life safety bond. And there's some school of thought when you talk to community engagement firms that it's may not be the best strategy to do your life safety bonds and then go to the community via referendum for everything else because the things that qualify as life safety may be the things that community members may want to vote yes for. So if you take that out the ballot question, you've now maybe taken away the reason why some people may have voted

292yes. So what are the opportunities? It does not require direct voter approval. Uh after approvals are received from the state, the process is fairly straightforward. You just conduct a hearing and approve a resolution to sell the bonds. What are the challenges? No additional funds for operations. Uh they require the life safety approvals and not all capital needs can be met with life safety bonds. So this is a matrix similar to the referendum matrix. Uh, in this one though, I just said $10 million increment and then you can go from there um to different increments of approvals. And then I showed it advertised over 15, 20, and 25 years because generally speaking, life safety improvements may not be as longasting as what you may do from larger referendum bonds. So I show showed this table over

293a shorter time horizon. Third, the voters can approve a higher dub. you already have a pretty high D7 of $7 million and the uh so what you would do is you go to the voters and say for example our Dub is currently 7 million we'd like to increase it to 14 million and then once you have a higher DUB you can issue certain types of bonds under school code and use those bond proceeds to pay for capital projects. Uh now the problem with a DEB bond is they do have um the requirement to go through a petition period and bind a hearing just like you your board did a couple years ago for the the bond authority that you have right now that 2 million plus authority you have remaining. So that's one of the

294challenges when we get to this slide is and so I'm going to start at the bottom, work my way up is the vote, let's say the voters just approved that $14 million DEB. So great, now you have this new DEB, you can issue more non-referendum bonds. Well, now you have to go to those voters and go through a petition period in hearing in order to sell those non-referendum bonds. So your voters just approve the the the higher Dub, but now your voters, what if they submit a successful petition? Now you can't sell the bonds that you just increase this dub to sell. So it it it could be problematic in that way. I can't there's no big no case I'm aware of where that's actually happened. But if you have a pretty active no vote

295that didn't like the fact that this got approved, well now they just re-engage themselves to petition this working cash bond. Uh no additional funds provided for operations. They require much more voter education because the ballot language doesn't include uh any specifics as to what you would use this higher dub for like you would in a building bond referendum. And so it's really hard for voters to understand because the ballot question is just this, hey, what's this DUB concept and you want me to make it larger? they think it and then if they do start to understand, they think they're just giving you a blank check because once you have this higher DUB, you always have this higher DUB. Um, so what's the opportunity? It provides the district with long-term funding mechanism, you know, so as

296the DUB bonds mature, you can reissue them. Um, and then, uh, so the future bonds don't require direct voter approval, but they do require those for that petition period. Uh, so you may end up having to get voter approval. So of of the options available to you, this is my least favorite and it's been seldom utilized and oftentimes it does fail because of that whole blank check concept. So the fourth option a little bit about the tax cap and you know if this is the first time you're hearing about how the function of the tax cap works it you probably will not you're probably going to need to hear it more in the future to get the the nuances down. But the the way that the tax cap works is you know you have all

297these funds that you the education fund on and M fund so on so forth and the tax rates and all those funds add up to something called the limiting rate. Your bonds are outside that limiting rate and when the tax cap law came into effect it says that you cannot increase last year's operating extension by more than CPI or 5% plus an aotment for new property. Let's just ignore the new property for now in the conversation because it's usually the smallest portion of the increase. So if uh if CPI was 3% and your overall reassessment rate was 1% the way the tax cap works is it then raises the limiting rate so you can capture 3%. So that's the uh the left hand side of this chart. your change in EAV is less than CPI

298limiting rate increases so that you can capture that 3% inflationary increase and and then you can decide to put that increase all into the ED fund. You can decide to put it all in the transportation fund but the aggregate all those rates can exceed that higher limiting rate if those two happen to be the same which would be very odd if it did but if it did or if they're very close you're not going to see any change in limiting rate from one year to the next. And then um well should say so what happened on the left hand side of the box when we came out of the great recession when EAV went down every year for like five or six years in a row living rates just started going up everywhere in the

299Chicago metro area and um when the limit when the change in EAV is much higher than the change in CPI the limiting rate goes down so you can only capture CPI or 5%. So if you look at the normal pattern you see in Cook County ignoring the great recession years uh in Cook County you're probably familiar with you have this trianual reassessment every three years you're reassess you see a big pop in your EAVs well in those off years your EAV tends to stay flat or go negative as people are peeling their taxes and some other variables that may come into play. Um so that triannual reassessment pattern then really gets into the timing when you need to potenti if you're going to consider limiting rate as option uh do this this pattern of trying

300a reassessment it really means that you should only go every three years uh and if you're going to go to limiting rate increase because what happens is if you go to that right hand set of boxes if you're in one of your off years and your EV goes down 2% and CPI guys 3% your living rate has to go up then just so you can get that 3% increase. Well, if your limiting rate was already going to go up anyhow and you ask your voters for a higher limiting rate, well, some of that's going to be consumed by what you would have gotten anyhow. In fact, there there's been some cases where some school districts went to referendum. One in particular, I won't name them. They asked for 40 cents and their limiting rate went

301up 40 would have gone up 41 cents just from the operation of the tax cap law. So they the voters passing a referendum, they lost the Senate. So imagine going through all that work and then not getting anything else. Now they did go to General Assembly. General Assembly passed a bill which bailed them out. So what's that? It was extra work. Yeah. Yeah, it's extra work. Well, thankfully general assembly listened to their needs, otherwise they would have been in a um a pickle. And it's not the only case where that's happened. Um so when you think about your trienal reassessment year that is levy year 25 that would be next year which means you be if you want to impact levier 25 the latest you could go to referendum then would be um the spring

302of 26 to impact livier 25 otherwise you're waiting again for three more years. So this is what a sample limiting rate question looks like. And 26 for Can you say that again? The years 26 for 25. Yeah. So levier 25 would be your next reassessment year which is for tax bills that come out in 26. So yeah, so you could go in spring of 26 toffect affect those bills. So here's a sample ballot question. He let bolded language in the the main body of the paragraph. It's just sample language. The attorneys who write this language have uh relented lately to allowing some language in the question about what you'd use it for. If you were going to referendum a couple years ago, that whole bolded section in the middle would not be there. So imagine

303going to ballot box and not being informed. You're like, what am I voting for? And then you have this these footnotes at the bottom which are help supposed to help educate them on what um the impact of them would be. But it still requires a lot of education to approve a limiting rate increase. You did approve a limiting rate increase I did look that up for you. I'm trying to remember now. 2017 2017. So it hasn't been that long ago you have done this uh successfully as a school district. Okay. So, what are the opportunities? The limiting rate increase is permanent unless a future board takes action to reduce all or part of it. So, what does that mean? It means if you're let's let's say last year's extension was $10 million and you get

304a 3% increase. So, you could do an extension of 10.3 million and the board says, "Nope, we're only going to do 9.5 million." Well, if you did that, that'd be a permanent reduction even though the voters had approved this. So, that's what that that caveat means. So unless a board would do that which would be very rare it would be permanent. So in comparison to a bond referendum this is one of its advantages is a limitary increase can be used to support operations. It can be used for pays you owe capital needs and it can be used to support a financing like a debt certificate or lease certificate. So I've had some clients that have chosen this path because they had needs that fell into all three of those buckets. You know, so for example,

305uh I had one client that had a 30 cent increase. They put 10 cents that 30 cents into the classroom for for improving operations, hiring people. In other words, 10 cents towards pay as you go capital because there's some routine capital that you you don't want to borrow for. And then some more long-term capital needs. They put 10 cents towards repaying a debt certificate. You know, those are just numbers that were that worked for them. wouldn't necessarily work for every district. So, what are the challenges? It can be very difficult to implement which I just explained a little bit ago because of the inter relationship in a tax cap county between reassessment and CPI. Basically, if you're in Cook County, you would need you can only uh realistically attempt this every three years. Otherwise, you

306run the risk of getting less than you thought you were going to get. And if used to repay debt, if you do an alternate revenue bond, you do have to go through petition period hearing. Alternate revenue bond is just one of three um borrowing mechanisms that you could repay from this. The other two are debt certificates and lease certificates. They don't require petition period hearing. The reason why folks will use alternate revenue bonds over the other two is they do get a slightly better interest rate. Other schools, but some schools say, I really don't want to go through petition period hearing and that's when they'll use the debt or the lease certificates. Uh so this is another matrix. It's very similar to the referendum bomb matrix I had earlier in the way that it gives

307you the $125 million is a a $10.5 million impact or levy to or I shouldn't speak a levy it would be an amount. So if this was our debt certificate, for example, you earn 125 million, the annual payment be 10.5 million, you would need a 25% increase in your limiting rate to cover that payment, which would be $75 for every $100,000 in market value. So the difference between this matrix and the matrix for the referendum bond, this referendum bond would set up a new tax just to pay that bond. This is a tax that's created within your operating funds to make this payment. And so if you wanted to follow this path and you wanted to do a $150 million referendum and pay back over 20 years, you need 30 cent limiting rate increase. If

308you had other things you wanted to do, you might end up with a 60cent overall limiting rate increase. Uh in this example, this is just focusing on a long-term capital financing. So solutions to the revenue need in the math equation that that that math equation has been something that you've guys used to describe the capital needs and other needs that you have. So a limited rate would could address the operating needs. The foster school funding and I'm going to talk about that here in the next section just for a couple minutes. Uh it could provide um money for building needs. 189 million was the number in your your last capital needs assessment. That number could be different if you were to update that. Uh it could address life safety needs and non-life safety needs. Life

309safety bonds can only address life safety needs. Um referendum approved for DEP increase could cover foster school funding and it could also address non-life safety needs. And referendum approved bonds could address all the capital needs none of your operating needs. So far you've addressed the operating needs as you know through making budget cuts which may be the pathway way you continue to to follow. Okay. So what about Foster really quick? So the average annual payment on the lease certificates is $3.2 2 million and you have about 15 years or so remaining on those maybe 16 and they're call on December 1st of 31. The call day is something we talked about earlier. So if you wanted to for example go to the voters and ask for permission you issue bonds to pay off the lease

310certificates. Well, you couldn't do that until 2031, at least not cost effectively. Uh and I'll explain why in just a moment. And the interest rate on those lease certificates is 5%. Okay. Uh so as I mentioned the call day is December 1st to 31. As I've also mentioned earlier in the presentation any refinancing of a tax exempt obligation in order for that refinancing to be taxexempt has to occur within 90 days of that call date. So that means we couldn't do any refinancing of the lease certificates until late in 2031. Uh and those taxable interest rates would be one and a quarter% to one and a half% higher. So if you went to referendum next year and as part of that referendum question was we want to pay off the lease certificates. Well, that financing

311would increase the amount you'd have to pay back for this foster school financing by $8.6 million was our estimate. Now, it's going to vary by uh interest rates changing and that's because you would have to sell those obligations as being taxable, which means you'd have an interest rate well above 5%, probably above 6% in today's market. So, you really your best way unfortunately right now to manage the f the cost of the foster school at least from a total debt service impact is to continue to pay that from your operating funds uh until at least 2031. Uh and then if you wanted to go to the voters for a referendum to pay off the the financing for foster school, you could do that. Uh that's where the limiting rate option is um a viable option

312in the in the sense of cost effectiveness. There's other reasons why limiting rate may not be viable for political reasons. you know, maybe not something the voters want to approve, but the limiting rate could be increased for again a variety of reasons to fund capital projects, but also to help support the payment on these lease certificates. So, the last section of the presentation are upcoming election dates should the board decide this is part of the path towards improving the the financial picture at the district. Uh so you have March 17th of 2026 and that that's the only date uh in before you're reassessed that you could go to referendum and impact that reassessment year. Um if you wait till November of 26, you would be already past that reassessment year. So then, you know, so

313if limiting rate is a viable option in your mind, you want to go either on March 17th of 26 or wait until uh November 7th of 28 or March of 29. You know, unfortunately, uh th those are your your options. Otherwise, you take the risk that you wouldn't get as much from that living rate increase in any of those other election dates. for a bond issue. Any of these dates could be viable to meet your timeline for what if you choose to go that pathway to fund your future capital needs. And then these are some dates that um a community engagement firm helped us put together or just or they may just be based on our experience. I'm borrowing these from one of my colleagues. uh if you were wanting to go to referendum on

314March of 26, you really need to start engaging with your community now and uh and then report the community engagement back to the board by September. board finalized project scope by October 25 and then November 25, uh, you'd be voting on the ballot language or determining the ballot language, then voting on it by December 25. And then you you' be educating the community through January to March and then voting on that in March. And then for November, uh, you see the dates that are there um, for a referendum on that day as far as a timeline to follow it. Okay. So that there's some other slides in the appendix which are for additional information. If you like it, if you look through this presentation later, you have a question something in the appendix, you know,

315just email the administration. I can answer those questions. I know some of for some of you this may be the first time you heard it and it's got to sink in. You have to hear the second and third time to fully grasp it all. But um I will pause now for any questions that you might have. Um the life safety bonds you said there, what is the impact of them not being under the DEP in terms of how we might think about using them given so many of our buildings are I imagine have life safety issues. Yeah, if you go trying to get back to that slide. I don't know if somebody can help me. Are you helping me? Thank you. I don't know if you've been helping me along, right? None of those last

316things are relevant. Oh, a couple more slides. Okay. Right there. Right there. So, in the until last year, if you had life safety approvals from the state, you had to fit them within your DUB. If you had your Dub was going to if you're at a point where you're going to make your last payment on your outstanding Dub bonds, you could have fit in life safety bonds with no increase to the taxpayer. been like paying off your old car and then buying a new car. Well, now with this and maybe I'll give you a just a minute of background. Why did this general assembly make this change? And so the uh the general assembly was approached by um Representative Chapman and Cutler, the bond council firm that represents a lot of school districts about some

317changes that would benefit school districts. And one of those was this change to life safety bonds. The argument was that every school district in the state has to do a life safety survey. And so it's a mandate, right? If you're in a non-t tax cap county, they can just go out and sell life safety bonds to provide funding for this mandate. Well, there's many school districts that um are restricted to their DUB or don't even have a DUB. There's many school districts in the Cer County area that don't even have a DUB to address safety needs. So for them it was an unfunded mandate. So they're sympathetic to that argument and then uh the concern was well would they just be given a blank check for school districts go sell as many life safety bonds

318as they want and the that concern was alleviated because ultimately ISB has to approve the only state board of education has to approve the life safety request. So you just don't have a blank check. Okay. So then what's the impact? So, if you were to go out and sell life safety bonds this year to impact next year's tax bills, the impact right here would be for every $10 million you sold, if you if you uh advertise that over a 15-year period, you would raise your bond levy by a million per year. So, every $100,000 of market value, then their bill would be $7 higher. So, if you did a $30 million life safety bond, uh, that'd be $21 multiplied by five, you'd be like a $100 then for every $100,000 market value. Um, or excuse

319me, I think I already did the multiplication by five. That'd be like a $500,000 home would be $100. So, do you consider this is about uh you're going to see a lot of these? Yes. I've already had just today we closed on a $30 million late safety bond for Lincolnway schools. They didn't have a DEB. So, this is a game changer for them because they had a lot of financial difficulty over the last few years. You you you may be aware. But it really gets down to, you know, engaging with the architect and finding out, you know, that 189 million. That was one of the questions the committee had when I presented to them is how much of that's life safety? I mean, it's $10 million. It's just a drop in the bucket. I imagine

320with you having older buildings, it's probably much higher than $10 million. Any other questions for Bob? Really helpful though to understand the options. I have one question. Sure. Can you go back to the limiting rate slide? Sure. Oh, that's going down. Sorry. There it is. Let's go to Well, I guess what I wanted to better understand is the the EVA reassessment, the tax cap, and the limiting rate, and the timing there because it sounds like it's obviously the most versatile funding choice for us. It's probably a really difficult one for us to undergo in the next nine months because of all the rest of the things that we have to address. Um but if it sounds like if we don't do it don't go forward with that then we have to wait another three years.

321Can can you just help me understand that better? So your every year the district has its extension for its operating funds ignoring the debt portion because it's outside the tax cap. So you have this extension and the tax cap law says you can increase that by the lesser CPI or 5%. So uh recently it's been the CPI but a couple years ago for two years in a row it was 5% because of how high CPI was. First time ever in the history of the tax cut by the way. So if your so that so when the uh computations then made by the county clerk to say okay I'm going to take your last year's extension increase it by 5%. And then it takes that number and it looks at your EAV and then it calculates

322the tax rate off of that. So it's just a a mathematical equation. The tax rate is the variable that fluctuates to based off these other two variables that are more the control variables EAV and your extension. And so the tax, so in your non-reassessment years, usually your reassessment rate is below the CPI factor. So when you figure out your extension, it goes up. UV went down. So now to get that higher extension, your tax rate has to go up. So if you look if you look at the history of the district's limiting rate, it would have years where it went up, went up, and then went down. that that was the reassessment year because in your reassessment year your tax extension can go up by that CPI factor and then your your EAV goes way

323up. You know, it's been double digits in Cook County recently in the reassessment years. So the EV goes way up. Well, how does the tax cap prevent you from collecting all those additional dollars? It drops your rate down. So if you are if uh let's say working on your financial projections, your capital needs, you determine we want to get 50 cents to ask the voters for 50 cents and that translates to an extra I'm making all these numbers up if anybody's listening. Okay, that translates to an extra $15 million. And so you go to the voters say, "Okay, approve a 50 million or 50 cent increase because this is going to give us an extra $15 million is what we're going to use it for. And that's on top of what you get just from

324the tax cap alone. So if the tax cap doing its normal functioning and you're off assessment year would have raised your rate, let's say 20 cents just to get the CPI increase, well now really instead of getting a 50 cent increase over the prior year, you're only getting a 30 cent increase. So instead of getting $15 million more, maybe you only get $8 million more than you are planning for. So now you're short on what what your future needs are. And there's the only way to control that in an off assessment year is to instead of going for 50 cents, which is what you think you need in dollar terms, because that's what the law requires you to do. You know what you need in dollars, now convert it to a rate. Well, now I

325think my EV is going down, so I need to ask for 75 cents instead of 50 cents to get $15 million. So now you got to explain to the voters, I'm asking for 75, but it's really only going to be 50. They're not going to get it at all. So, in your reassessment year, um, your rates naturally probably going to go down and so you'll be able to capture that $15 million plus your CPI increase plus an amount for new property. You have to be very careful in those reassessment years though because some districts have gotten burned in the opposite direction because many districts will just do what's called a a balloon levy where they'll ask the voters or they'll pass a levy because at the end of the day you can you can pass

326a levy that's twice as much as the prior year but the tax cap's only going to give you CPI. So districts will just say, "You know what? I'm just going to pass a 15% increase in my levy because I know at the end of the day I'll get CPI plus some new property." Well, if you were to pass a 15% increase in your levy in your reassessment year and you went for referendum, you would get 15% increase in your levy because essentially become unfrozen for that year. So, you got to be very careful. Otherwise, you'll hammer your taxpayers if you don't levy correctly by levying too much after they've approved a a referendum increase. And the way you do that is that dollar amount, let's use that $15 million again. When you pass your levy,

327you take last year's levy, add 15 million plus the CPI plus a new property amount, and then that way you get no more than what you told the voters you wanted to get in dollars. So often times what ends up happening then when you prove it in a a reassessment year you may have asked the voters for you know a limiting rate of um four which is like 50 cent increase in my example and you actually by time you you extend your taxes it ends up being 375 because of the relationship tax cap even though you got every dollar that you wanted. What would be great is if the general assembly reformed this ballot language. Instead of you asking for a rate, you ask for a dollar amount because then it wouldn't matter what EAV

328and CPI and all those variables are. But until they reform it, you know, you're stuck trying to play this game of converting a dollar amount to a tax rate and that's your voters for this arbitrary tax rate. Does that answer your question? Yes. Thank you. Yep. Okay. to process. Any other questions? You have any questions about the steps potentially take in 2025 because we could bring a resolutions as soon as the next meeting if uh that was the two refundings for savings. Again, those would only happen if they save money when you get around to August. And then that 2 point something million to make that December 1st lease certificate payment which was incorporated in your plan. Right. So you said it would be 21.4 million in bonds, right? Yes. So and we would basically

329retire 11.4 from 2014 and 7.6 from 2015. And then we would have enough left over to pay what was it? 945,000. Well, 945,000 is what you already paid today from the financing we did in March and then the other 2.3ish million would be the payments due in December. Um, the reason why we didn't take care of even though it was part of the plan, we didn't do the June and December all together in March because the December portion would had to be taxable because we were more than 90 days away and we knew these were funies were coming up. We said, "Well, it makes a whole lot more sense to just do everything together uh at one time, so everything could be tax exempt." And these are going to be um these are not going

330to be general obligation bonds. These are going to be um caps. No, they will be they will be general obligation bonds. Yeah. And fortunately, there's some um the terminology is so a capital appreciation bond can be a general obligation bond. So capital appreciation bonds get into the frequency at which interest is paid. General obligation is the tax that's being collected to pay it. So it could be a current interest bond or a capital appreciation bond. And do you see um so if we bring a resolution and authorize the issuance of these bonds then we essentially have the ability to watch the market for the most favorable condition for us to issue or for for your firm to take those bonds to market. Right. Yeah, you can you can definitely monitor then for you we can't

331predict what interest rates would be, but you can at least make sure you're not selling in a volatile market like what happened after tariffs are first announced, interest rates went up like 90 basis points in three days. We don't want to sell bonds in that market. But well, so to that end, you know, the bond market generally is experiencing some uncertainty now because of the tax bill that's on the market, potential debt deficit and debt limits that we have, and just the general inconsistency and eretic nature of the current administration. Um, you know, is there uh like what happens if we authorize it, but the environment just isn't good? Then what? Yeah, I mean if the environment's not good, you you would we would eliminate the portion at a minimum eliminate the portion that's for

332savings, those two the 14 and 15 bonds and then it'd be up to you if you still want to do the lease certificate portion because the port the purpose of that is not for savings but to uh help the the operating budget, right? So this bond issue could get considerably smaller than if the if interest rates were at a level that made sense for Okay. So, we're looking at having the lease certificate bonds, potentially life safety bonds, and another type of bond. I mean, right? No, the the author for this year it would be a the DUB bond to which is under school code a working cash bond to make that foster lease certificate payment and then a normal refinancing bond to refinance those other two bonds be no life safety bonds as part of

333the 21 half million I meant in like a couple years we're looking safety bonds and then Okay, that's what I'm saying. Okay. Yeah. We would anticipate you do life safety bonds until at least 2026 if you decide to even go that path. No, I think we're good. What do you think, Tamara? About which part? About the 22.4 4 million in sort of retiring the 2014 2015 and then being able to um finance the December payment. Um I think that's a great strategy that uh 2.3 million was factored into SDRP2. So if we don't take that step one then that authority expires in September of 2026. Is that right? Mhm. So then that that bonding authority expires in September 2026 and we lose access to that money um for that time period. So if we move

334forward with that, we get to keep that $2.3 million in our operating funds and then refunding the bonds that are outstanding does save a bit of money as well. And we're already we're already doing that or we've taken the steps we need to in order to do that. Correct. But we don't have to pass an additional resolution. No, there there would be an additional resolution to pass. So Bob, you want to talk about that part? Yeah, there'll be the the the authority that's already been created is for the public notification. That's good September 26, but it still requires board action to create the authority to actually sell the bonds. that's what we would contemplate you could approve later this month at your board meeting in um whenever that date is. So other than just the

335general environment um that creates some uncertainty and then just the I think the perception that we're just borrowing more money to pay off our debt. Um what other downsides do you see Tamara or are there any others? Yeah, the the downsides. Well, I mean, it's just the market uncertainty because you wouldn't you wouldn't refinance the m the majority of issuance is to lower what you're paying. So, you're rep so you're paying off some principal and replacing with new principal. It's like paying off your old mortgage and replacing with a new one, you know. So, you're not really other than the um the 2.3 or 4 million, whatever that amount was, you're not really adding to your debt. You're just adding that in. You know, the So, the downside to that, I suppose, is that payment

336you're making on December 1st and the lease certificates from your operating funds by bonding to make that payment, you're making it a few years down the road instead of now. But it's a way to help offset the the large amount of cuts that you had to make for this fiscal year. You would have had to find another $2.5 million to cut from the FY2526 budget. And then just the transaction costs, what are the transaction costs just out of curiosity from a bond? On a deal this size, bond issue this size, the uh transaction cost probably would be 1 and a half%. And that consists of your legal fees, your rating fees, paying agent, um underwriting, and then PMAs, your municipal advisor, our fees included with that as well. And were those transaction costs included in

337the savings? They're netted from the savings. So what you're seeing there are net of any estimated transaction costs. Good question. So I'm just seeing a savings of it was about 768 on the first on the 2014s and about 291 on the 2015s. Is that right? Yes. So about a million bucks. Let's just say give or take of savings and it's going to cost us about 321,000 to actually issue the bonds. So we're going to end up saving about 700,000. No, the the 1 million is already net of that. So the gross amount would be 1.3. Yeah. Okay. Got it. Right. Okay. Okay. That's what I was for the clarified question. I'm keeping track. Great. Glad I have this good support. So then I guess one question I have is uh would we like to bring

338what would we need on June 23rd? a resolution, a parameters resolution. Yeah. Resolution. Should we have um our bond council at Chapman and Cutler work on a parameters resolution to bring forward on June 23rd? I think we should. But do we need to make a Well, well, not yet. What they'll do? They'll prepare it and then it'll come on the 23rd. So, I need my other finance committee members. Summer's not here. So, just Yes. I won't be here on the Is that a problem? We'll have five board members on the 23rd. I'm at a wedding. Sorry. Yep. So you just got to bring I did work for a municipal bond shop like 25 years ago. So like this is really I'm recognizing it. But good job. Keep it up. All right. So we will work

339with PMA and Chapman and Cutler to get that parameters resolution to you then for the 23rd. Okay. Well, thank you. Thanks. You're welcome. Thank you for your patience. No problem. Next, we're gonna give you a beeper so we can call you a half an hour ahead. Okay. I think that's it. All right. Question for you colleagues. Um we Yeah. The next item for business here is uh board business. Right. Um now we can do two things. We can hold these two discussion items off until the 23rd. U again that's al you know putting more on our plate for the 23rd. U or we we can discuss these. Um I know we can definitely do the the approval of the 2025 2026 board meeting calendar. That's easy one. the the one I I do want to

340consider if you want to move away or if you if you already if you feel you already have items to to plan for our planning calendar uh you know we can do that today or we can hold off till the 23rd and then I think what'll the benefit of the 23rd is that we'll be at our board retreat so then they'll be you know that that that gives us an opportunity to kind of that would be good okay so so does That sound good? The so for the board B board calendar 2025 26 planning 23rd. Yes. Yes. Okay. Great. So um so any questions on the approval of the 2025 2026 board meeting calendar? Questions, concerns, comments on that? That's just the dates, right? It's not the topics. Topics we'll talk about next at our

341regular board. This is only board, not the Yep. Okie dokie. So I move that the board of ed education approve the proposed 2025 2026 board meeting calendar as presented. Second Anderson. Yes. Pinker. Yes. Optic. Yes. Wymer. Yes. Wilin. Yes. Salem. Hernandez. Yes. All right. Um any other board business? It seems like not. I know we want it's been a long night. Um, so I'm going to motion to move into our close session um on June 12th at 12 PM to discuss the appointment, employment, compensation, discipline, performance, or dismissal. I move that the board of education enter into close session of specific employees, litigation, and self-evaluation practices and pro procedures or ethics in meeting with a representative of a statewide association of which the public body is a member. Do we have a second? Anderson, yes.

342Pinker, yes. Updike, yes. Wymer, yes. Wilkins, yes. Hernandez, yes. All right. So, uh, please note that the FY items on today's agenda for our public as well as yourselves. I know you looked at those. The next board of education meeting will be held on June 23rd, 2025 at 6 PM. With no further business, I adjourn this meeting at 9:13 p.m.