[5/19/25] D65 - School Board Meeting

001Good evening everybody. We apologize for the delay. Welcome to our regular board meeting. Uh Adila, can you please uh do the roll call? Yes. Today is Monday, May 19th, 2025. The time is 6:18 p.m. This is the regular board of education meeting for Evston Skooki School District 65. Roll call. Salem here. Anderson here. Pinker here. Updike here. Wymer here. Wilkins here. Hernandez here. Lmano espanol. Going once, going twice. Okay. Uh, the next item on our agenda is the land acknowledgement. We take time to acknowledge that the land we meet on is the traditional homelands of the council of three fires, the Pawatami, Ojiway, and Odawa. This land also served as an important meeting place for Miami, Hochunk, the Manamini, Inoka, Sack, Fox, Poria, Arapjo, Cheyenne, and other tribal nations. This this land has long been

002a center for indigenous people to gather, trade, and maintain kinship ties. Located at the intersection of several great waterways, the region has become the site of travel and prosperity. We acknowledge Evston and John Evans are tied to the massacre of the Rapjo and Cheyenne for railroads and westward expansion upon which John Evans developed his wealth and founded Evston. This land was violently taken under settler colonialism through genocide and open warfare. And the region that is now Illinois and Chicago land 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 statehood, the vestigages of slavery remained throughout the United States and

003directly affect the descendants of enslaved peoples, rich and heterogeneous communities who helped define the African diaspora. The genocidal patterns of violence against peoples of African descent and indigenous people have been replicated to exclude and harm people from many intersecting marginalized identities in the United States, religious, minoritized, disabled, and LGBTQ identified peoples, black and indigenous people of color and people of color at large. These patterns demonstrate that the pursu 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 in the belief that we must be caretakers of the lands and

004waters 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 survival and through engagement with online and local resources such as the Chicago American Indian Community Collaborative and the Shorefront Legacy Center. Um the next item up is the approval of the meeting agenda. I'll move that the board approved today's meeting agenda as presented. Second Salem. Yes. Anderson, yes. Pinker, yes. Opt, yes. Wymer, yes. Wilkins, yes. Fernandez, yes. Uh, the next item up on our agenda is board and superintendent comments. Over toend. Awesome. I'll I'll start with uh turning it over to Melissa. Good evening, everyone. So tonight we're going to start off by celebrating our high- five recipients for March and April. So that's our celebrating excellence in

005district 65 staff recognition program. Um as a reminder and for our new board members, we have a new format for our presentations. So we actually go a team of folks go out during the school day to surprise our educators and support staff within their classrooms and workspaces with the award. So it's a really nice surprise and really turns up the joy quite a bit. Um, we would like to thank our sponsor, Byline Bank. They make this program possible at no cost to the district by sponsoring our program. Our recipients receive a gift card, a frame certificate, and a high- five water bottle. All sponsored by Bine Bank. March's winners are Stephanie Abua, music teacher at Daw and Kingsley elementary schools. Uh, Lord Lordes Barahas, uh, a par profofessional at Kingsley Elementary. April's winners are Jacob

006Rubin, classroom teacher at Walker Elementary, and Berta Dorch, uh, health clerk at Haven Middle School. Um, and I think Adila is going to turn up the J factor with our video recap. [Applause] She's always the first one to volunteer her time to help a student who's in need of a break or in need of extra help in the area. She's a vital part of fifth grade team and a big part of the kids. [Applause] [Music] [Applause] I've collaborated with Bethany through volunteering in PTA and she's consistently for years the first one to lend a hand to connect and to express gratitude. But the gratitude is mine. I feel so lucky that all three of my kids got to have you. I'm sorry. [Music] [Applause] Keith definitely went above and beyond. He shows that he cares

007about every one of you. I think you all feel that. This has been a pleasure to go teach math with you. [Applause] Everybody lost [Music] everybody. We appreciate you. Can we get a round of applause? Thank you, Melissa. So, I want to take this opportunity to extend my heartfelt thanks to our incredible fine arts educators for the energy, creativity, and care they have poured into this season of celebration. From the vi vibrant Yay Fest to inspiring concerts and powerful drama productions, you've created unforgettable moments during one of the busiest times of the school year. Your commitment and passion continue to bring our schools to life and remind us of the joy and impact of the arts. So, I want to just say thank you. Uh, I also for the remainder of my time, I want

008to I would like to invite our Haven Middle School leadership team up to just briefly share more about the state of Haven and really to address some concerns that recently have been raised regarding the school staffing model. So, I'm going to ask Mr. Latin and uh Mr. Smith to come up. Good. Good evening and thank you for inviting us to speak this evening. Uh to get started, my name is Chris Lighting and I am the principal at Haven Middle School. I'm joined by assistant principal Thomas Smith. Um so what we're going to do is just kind of go through Oh, sorry. What we're going to do is go through some of the uh the presentation that we presented we present this presentation about twice a school year. Um, this presentation that we're going to be

009going over tonight was one that we presented to our school community last week and we call it the state of haven showcase. What we're going to do right now is just kind of go through some of our data that we presented and I'm guessing you guys can hear this slide right here just shows an overall sort of like a satellite view of who our students are in terms of our demographics. You can see that we have data separated out by grade level, the number of students. We also have listed the number of students in each grade level with IEPs as well as students who are emergent bilingual or um English language learners. Um one of the other pieces of data that we felt like was really important was to show sort of like a history

010of enrollment data dating back to school year 1718. If you just take a couple minutes just to kind of absorb what's all on this chart, you'll be able to see um you know our our enrollment over the last several years as well as the number of IEPs that we've had in those consecutive school years as well as the 504s. Again, we have our our language learners listed as well as well as our low-income students the number of out of school suspensions and the number of administrators. You can see on the top we'll give you guys just a couple seconds to absorb that and then we'll move on for over to the next slide. which is um focused on the J factor. The J factor is one of our systems that we have been kind of

011following around through the district over the last couple of years. And I'll have Mr. Smith kind of talk about the J factor. Do you want to continue steering? Go ahead. Good evening, Thomas Smith. He his assistant principal at Haven. Thanks for um spending some time with us this evening. Uh did someone say JFactor? Because y'all are going to get a lot of it right now. Um on the left hand side you see uh Mr. Hernandez, who's our head custodian at Haven. We have this top secret mission where we get to celebrate the custodians every year. We do something fun with them. We distract them. All the kids line up in the hallway and we get to celebrate them. We have some of our students enrolled in Spanish. Um taking a trip down to Pilson. We

012had our first um board game night to get kids off of screens and engaging with one another. We're able to celebrate students of the month. Here we have an eighth grade student um being recognized by the eighth grade uh school counselor and eighth grade social worker. Uh on the lefth hand side you see our seal team um introducing themselves during our curriculum night. Um in the middle you see some uh faculty joy. Um this is our winner of the fantasy football draft picks which is highly competitive at Haven Middle School. The teacher on the left was awarding the teacher on the right and he said, "Oh man, that's the best photo you could get of me." And he's blinking. So, um, right hand side we have, um, one of our AVID, um, events in the

013morning, um, for folks to hear a little bit more about our AVID program, which you'll hear from some student celebrities this evening. Over on the left hand side, we had a delicious and again competitive um, opportunity with our our staff with our annual um, chili cookoff. Some of them were very very piccante. In the middle, we do have our um, really famous back to school bash. We have a DJ. We get an ice cream truck. Um, and then Mr. Lighting, I don't know what you were doing over here, but I think you were reminding um, some of the boys that it's two-hand touch and not tackle at recess. We have a student in general music having a blast playing the drums. We're able to c celebrate musical excellence. And on the right hand side, we

014have our um, the our well attended um, curriculum night. Before I introduce Talia Salant, I want to say that JFactor is a source of pride at Haven and it's not something that happens accidentally. It's done by design. And so during the presentation, I'm really hopeful that you can see um that there's a method to the madness. Without further ado, I want to celebrate one of our student ambassadors to come on up and tell us a little bit about our student ambassador program. So, I'm Talia Salon and I'm here to talk to you guys a bit about the Haven Ambassadors program. So, through my experience with the Haven Ambassadors program, I have learned many things. First, I've learned leadership through giving tours and I've also learned teamwork through event planning such as agreeing on movies for

015Haven for Haven movie night or the spirit week events. We help out with a lot of events throughout the year. We do tours for the incoming sixth graders and also students who transfer to Haven mid year. And our biggest event is the Haven movie night where we mostly are run the event along with the help of Mr. Smith. We also plan out spirit week and the recent we had an ABC countdown. And when there's like posters announcing this in the daily announcements, those are also made by us. And we have meetings like once or twice a month where we just plan out different events for Haven. And I like overall I think the ambassadors is a great opportunity because you learn so many good traits and it's super fun. [Applause] Okay. Um thank you so

016much Talia for your leadership. Uh we want to introduce our school work plan that has been a two-year uh culmination and project. We have one goal that's designed for restorative practices, a goal in average daily attendance um for our students, and then uh improving MAP data. We're going to go a little bit out of order. I'm going to hit you with the second goal first, which is improving attendance. We have a uh general um attendance goal and then um targeting um black or African-American student demographic. You can see some key strategies and key action steps to enhance um our bfold goal. One of the things that you can see over time is that we've made some substantial growth. Um Haven um at this point last year we've improved our average daily attendance rate for all

017students.56% black or African-American students 1.12% and then um at this point last year the district average was increased by 27%. So, our rate of improvement in attendance is u more than double the district average and we're really making significant strides um in supporting our um target demographic group. Uh attendance data is more than just numbers. There's a story behind it. And so, in partnership with our really um fantastic team, we designed a attendance check-in to get more of the story about what's going behind the numbers. um and we were able to um work together with students to get a little bit more data about what's going on. Um we know that in the wake of the pandemic um coming back to school for some students has been really challenging and so we want to support

018them. Um one such um one such thing we learned was there was a student um that was like I'm really having a hard time getting to school and we said why is that? Well I kind of live far away. So, we were able to um leverage a community partnership in Mike's bikes and hook the kid up with a bicycle to get them to school. We also um are transparent about our average daily attendance uh data. We share it regularly with students. This is a slide that students regularly see in our monthly town halls. I'm going to um hand the clicker back to Mr. Latt to tell us about restorative practices. All right. Thank you very much. So um our next goal that we're going to talk about is restorative practices and that's couched underneath the

019umbrella of a safe and civil school. This um this smart goal that we created is um based on we'll talk about some of our data from 22 23 school year. This is sort of the beginning of those things. We decided that we really wanted to ensure that our students had a place to come to learn and a place to learn it in a in an area that was safe. So again this is kind of uh this the impetus of our uh goal number one. The metrics that we decided to use for this specific goal was the panorama survey. And the reason that we chose it was because this was uh initially one of the lower um favorably responded to sections on the panorama survey when the students when we ended up with absorbing all of

020our student data. So we kind of looked at um that and a couple of other things and figuring out what is it that we can do in terms of our action steps and strategies. We came up with some plans and uh happy to report that this goal was our smarty goal wasn't supposed to be reached until June of this year, but we actually met the goal in in the fall of 2024. So, we kind of uh I guess did better than what we thought we were going to do. So, this is always, you know, kind of I think a great thing to celebrate. Um we're going to continue with this goal. Um just I think we're going to tweak it a little bit and um in terms of the metric, we're going to use the

021panorama survey. Our last goal for our schoolwork plan is centered around our MAP growth and we specifically wanted students we wanted to be able to move students out of the bottom cortile in on both of those assessments. The slide here that I'm going to show you right now. We were able to move a number of students out of the bottom quartile. We still had some left in there that we had hoped to get out. This is a goal that we're still moving forward and trying to perfect. So, we'll be tweaking this goal a little bit, adding some new strategies, interventions, and action steps for the next cycle. Along the way, over the last three or four years, we've developed some powerful uh partnerships with some community members, um MetaMdia, Duble Scholars, all of those that

022you see up there have been in the building and interacted with students and families at some point over the last several years. We're looking to continue um on strengthening these relationships, but then also if there any other relationships or that we should uh connect with other local organizations or partnerships, we're definitely welcome to do those things as well. So, uh, families, uh, that are going to be receiving the next few Haven newsletters will see me recommending that if there's folks that we need to meet to please reach out. Uh, I would like to now highlight another of our really cool programs that, um, I feel like brings Haven students joy. Um, personally, it brings me joy to hear students talk about their experience with this program because this is our third year of AVID at

023Haven and our first class, our first cohort of a uh AVID students are going to be graduating this year. So, we're really excited to see um and I'm really excited to be able to show you um kind of what the AVID experience is like. So, I'm going to invite a couple of our AVID scholars to the podium. I'm gonna have Chaz and Aiden come up really quickly. [Applause] I'll get it for you. Um, hi everyone. My name is Chaz and my name is Aiden. We are seventh grade AVID students. AVID is an academic program for grades six through eight. The purpose of this elective is to prepare students for college eligibility and career success. In the AVID class, we learn and develop academic vocabulary in both writing and speaking. We develop critical thinking skills and

024we use AVID organization skills to keep track of our coursework and organize our thinking and learning. We also develop focused note t taking skills while utilizing various wicker strategies that support all content areas. We attended college field trips and career day events. We also learned from guest speakers like when we had the Northwestern's women basketball team come to visit us. We also foster leadership skills in Haven events like this one. These are some highlights from our AVID classes this school year. Um, we did interviews with ETH students. Uh, the teachers and avid parents, they did a brew and brilliance. Uh, I know because my mom has a coffee cup. Uh, aid students preparing for family night in the conference room. eighth grade students took a trip to Lyola and their food hall and Miss Shaver

025got awarded for the most valuable teacher shout out at the Northwestern girls's basketball game. Next up, we have Kuya and Hannah with a speech. [Applause] Hi, my name is Hannah Angola and I'm an eighth grader who has been an AVID all three years. When I first came to AVID, I was nervous and wasn't expecting anything good would come out of it. With my doubts, I decided to give AVID a chance. Throughout all three of my years, AVID never fails to teach me something new. When getting an opportunity like AVID take it. In my first year of AVID, Miss Shaver was very welcoming and supportive towards everything such as setting goals, writing TRFs, and possible career choices. Miss Shaver made AVID feel like a home. Later that year, I would look forward to third period every

026day. Every time I walk into class, still to this day, she says hi with the biggest smile on her face. AVID is truly a great class and has shaped me in ways I could have never imagined. AVID has pointed me in the right direction. Whether it's getting ready for high school, staying organized in college. My first year, we did a college project and still to this day, I've been researching colleges for fun, admiring campuses, and finding a perfect career. AVD is truly one of my favorite classes and has helped me improve the most. Like I said, when you get the chance to be an AVID, take it. Hi, my name is Khaled Savu. I'm also an eighth grader here at Haven Middle School and also in the AVID program. Coming into middle school, I thought

027this was going to be super hard and tough, but I was really wrong. I thought AVID was just for nothing until I actually got there. Coming into sixth grade, I was super shy and not really outgoing. That all changed once I met Miss Shaver. She brought me out of my shell with nothing but encouragement and believing in my goals and what I wanted to accomplish. Miss Shaver opened up a world full of possibilities and opportunities for me and everyone else in her classes. Miss Shaver helped me so much that I even joined the school play my eighth grade year and actually auditioned for a main role and got it. I was super surprised, but a lot of it came from Miss Shaver, Mr. Char, and Miss Carl. In this program, they teach us focus notetaking

028and different ways to have a growth mindset and help us shape our futures into what we want them to look like. AVID is like my second family. just at school. It's more than a family. It's your community that you feel safe in and you can speak your mind when you want. It can help you make new friends coming into middle school. AVID isn't always about learning. We go on awesome field trips and have fun in the classroom and just build a community and have fun overall. [Applause] Thank you to Hannah and and Kalia and Aiden and Chaz's family for getting them here tonight and for them for sh for for participating. [Applause] Hello again. Uh Hannah and Kala, I don't know when you got taller taller than me, but I've been with them since they

029were in sixth grade. um unity and learning. Uh our kids come to learn and adults do too. And so that's what I'm going to tell you about in this next series of slides. We have embedded learning for adults um in our building called workshop Wednesday. Um it can be differentiated to meet various needs, but it really falls into three main buckets. The first is a wicker workshop. Wicker stands for it's an acronym for writing, inquiry, collaboration, organization, and reading. It is something that's fostered um in AVID, but we're trying to foster it um interdisciplinary as well. Um we also focus on MTSS to support students with an array of um academic and social emotional learning needs. And then we have a good old um PLC. We also have something called uh focus Friday, which I'm

030going to tell you about in a second. These are just some artifacts and products that our um educator team at Haven has been able to uh create uh through that workshop Wednesday model. We also um have focus Friday which is this year has really been dedicated to our goal um behind restorative practices which is most focused on students. We um a few years ago uh we had about um 10 educators including myself and Mr. Glatting and um Jacob Delay uh attend the training. Jacob Delay has um gone through a training where he can do kind of a train the trainer and so he's able to lead and facilitate some really great learning and restorative practices work um at Haven. Pass it over uh to Mr. Latin. Thank you. So now we're going to go and

031just review some of our schoolwide trends. Um, you can see on the left side, this is school year 2122. Um, this was kind of I I would say the first year that I really experienced Haven for all of its wonderfulness. Um, right after COVID, um, if we all just decide to take a trip down memory lane, um, we can remember the sort of some of the events that, um, took place during that school year and the following school year. Um, at the end of 2122, uh, Mr. Smith and I really sat down and thought there's some things that we really need to systematize here so that we can have things running a little bit more smoothly. We need to see students in classrooms more often than we see them out of the classroom. And so

032you can see here in the column that says 2223. These are all of the I would say the major or the heavy hitter strategies and action steps that we put into place um throughout that school or starting at that school year. Um you can see here that we have some things that are highlighted that are specific to um our scheduling um of students and we just are happy to share that we've had quite a bit of success in terms of student academic growth um I would we could say starting from 22 23 um that we'll see in a few other slides um if you are interested in having some research to read through there's some there's tons here for you to absorb um we won't go through all of them but you definitely have that

033at your disposal. proposal. Um what I'd like to show now is if everybody can see it looks a little small but we have um four consecutive years of scheduling. Um you can see on the top left we have school year 22 23. Move over to the right 23 24 25 on the bottom left and then on the bottom right 2526 which is our projected um uh which is based on our projected enrollment for this coming year. Um you can see that there's a history of the way that we have adjusted or adapted to the needs of our students in terms of staffing. Um I'll just kind of let you guys absorb that for just a second and then we'll move forward. Um uh also uh in the year 23 2023 um Haven was for the

034first time in a while um no longer designated as an underperforming school. on October of 2023, we were we were designated by the Illinois State Board of Education as a commendable school. Something that we are all very very happy about. The next thing that I want to talk about is this wonderful test that we all take in the state of Illinois, the Illinois Assessment of Readiness. There are five levels of proficiency that students um are ranked in based on their performance on this assessment. Um you can see that the five are listed there with kind of an explanation of what each one is. And for this the next few slides, what we're going to be focusing on is I want to draw everyone's attention to the uh percentages in the level four and level five.

035And specifically the um those are the areas where students have met expectations or um have exceeded them. And so this next slide right here um again we start back from as early as school year 2018 or I'm sorry 2018 2019. And if you look through um sort of vertically on columns one through five from the left to the right um we will notice that there is some change in the percentage of students performance levels. Um just to sort of like not have all of us absorbing all this data right now. What I can tell you is that we have successfully moved students um from the lower levels of proficiency to higher levels of proficiency. Um you can see that um for example in the year 2223 and 2324 specifically we've had a significant shift in

036the number of students that have met or exceeded in the Illinois assessment of readiness and this is only for math. We're going to show you now some information on the same assessment but only it's going to be focused in reading. You can see the same trend. More students are moving from um areas of lower proficiency into higher proficiency into the areas of meet meets or exceeds. Um, again, something that we're all very proud of. The last couple of slides for the IR assessment are things that I'm going to um just highlight. This was um this actually this image and this um sort of concept was shared earlier this past school year. uh Donna Cross I believe presented on this and this is just sort of an an opportunity for us to kind of see um

037you know what is our change looking like starting with um IR assessment data from school year 22 23 ending um in the school year 2425 which was this past year you what we can see or this past this past fall what you can see is that over time um Haven has improved that number of students that are in the the level four and level five by 12.8 percentage points, which is a pretty significant gain, which is a pretty significant gain um in student performance. Um the next slide um shows the same assessment. We're just looking at it in ELA. You can see that at the beginning of sort of like the three-year period, we had about 30% of our student just over 30% of our students performing in the meets and exceeds area. However, um

038by the time the last year's session of the IR assessment rolled around, we had 61% of our students either meeting or seating and that number is significant. I think that there are many schools in the state of Illinois who um would be happy to have uh student proficiencies at this level. Um so again, this is uh all this was this is all a result of lots of hard work, strategic planning and collaboration. Thank you for your time. This was the last slide. It went faster than I thought it was going to, but we're here at the very end. Thank you, Chris. Thank you. Thank you, Thomas. And thank you. Give a special thank you to our Haven students. They did amazing. And to their parents, thank you for bringing them. And so we're just grateful

039to see the great success that um the Haven School team is really doing. And I wanted to make sure that, you know, while change is hard, uh really understanding the growth and the work that they're doing to really change outcomes for students. And so we want to continue to be partners uh in the work with that. And so kudos to the Haven team holistically for the hard work that they do every day. [Applause] Is this something we're going to discuss on the agenda or is that it? You you can if you want to ask if you have any questions for administrator who are here again please. One question. So like first of all just it's great to see all of the progress that you've been making both on the academic side and on the culture

040side. That's very encouraging to see. Um, and it's always great to hear from students directly as well. Um, I guess my first question is just looking at these results. Can you talk a little bit about how you think you were able to make this progress? And I know you had the one page on there with all of the different things that you know you've done over the last few years in order to make progress, but I'd love to just hear a little bit more like how you think um things are sort of coming together and how like like what is the secret? What are the things that you think have been particularly effective in getting us to where you are now? I think one of the I think it's not I I don't think one

041answer. I think it was more of a feeling. We It was very palpable that there were some changes that needed to happen or systems that needed to be put into place to kind of move the feel of the building. Um so that way the the learning could take place. Um again, I think one of the very first things that we started out doing, one of the first things that I remember having a conversation was was that we needed to make sure that students, staff, and families were clear about our expectations for students um roles and responsibilities. And there was an a there was that was absent. there was no clearcut um descriptive expectations for what how students were to be a part of the learning community and once we were able to establish that it

042all kind of fell into place. I think that was probably the first thing that I think was most important but in terms of there's a number of things I think that were probably um contributing to the overall success for the last three years. Thank you. So, um, thank you. And I want to say, um, those are phenomenal gains to the administration, to the teachers, to the families. It takes everyone working together to, um, to make them happen once and to continue to happen. Can so one um and I don't know if you can if you can um address this but those gains are a combination of both your cohort model and I assume both your the model and ways in which teachers have been teaching now. So, can you speak um um can you speak

043to how looking at those gains and being able to look at them between the cohort model um is there a difference in terms of is is part of your change based on you're seeing your cohort model outperform your traditional schooling model. I think to get a really good answer that's going to take some deeper dive. We would have to look at students across sixth, seventh, and eighth grade. compare that to same age peers over that three-year period. That might be one that we have to circle back on. Um, but I think that it's a it's a it's a concerted effort from a lot of things that we sort of actionized um that were absent. Wasn't that the reason for the change? I'm sorry. Wasn't that the like wasn't Nicole's question. Wasn't that the reason for

044the staffing model change? The reason for the staffing model change is aligned with the students enrollment. Okay. So in terms of having um sections that are closing, this was a way for us to make sure that students had an opportunity to be in in classrooms um and absorb information and have exposure to the content and curriculum in ways that they wouldn't have been able to before. So again, when I say it was a concerted effort, there's a million different things that that were on the list of things that we wanted to make improvements of that you could see in that column right there. That was one of them. That was one of the the first ones that we highlighted. So thank you. I think the the progress really speaks to the hard work of the

045teachers and administrators and students. Um, I I I'm I'm wondering if you can speak a little bit to the conversation and the engagement that you had with your teaching staff around the changes that were made in the cohort model and how those were received by the teachers. Can you can you repeat that, please? Yeah, sure. Can you speak a little bit to the staffing changes that were made and the conversations and the engagement that you had with your teachers um prior to those decisions being made? Sure. Um we followed appropriate communication and collaboration channels related to teacher assignments for the following school year. Um our top priority has always been very clear which is ensuring that students are set up for success um and that teachers are feeling supported in their role. Um that being

046said, in the state of Haven showcase that you just saw, um declining student enrollment has led to reduction in available class sections. Um which directly impacts how teacher assignments are determined to support those student needs. Um these shifts are obviously not made lightly. Um we take them seriously and they reflect really evolving realities of again our enrollment trends um and the need to align staffing with available resources while keeping student learning at the center. Just a follow-up question to that. For teachers who are already sort of using like a part of the cohort model, have you received any feedback either on like how it's going as well as just what sort of support they feel like made them successful or or would make them successful. Um, as a part of that model, I don't know,

047you can talk to her too. She probably involved as well. Yes. Um, under our leadership, um, again, we've consistently tried to center students, um, and their experience in our decision-m as the primary stakeholder. Um, as with many aspects in school life, um, there are trade-offs when it comes to course assignments. Some educators really thrive when they're deeply immersed in a single content area. Others are really energized by the opportunity to teach, for example, math across multiple um, levels. adapting instruction to meet uh varied student needs. Um, still others really prefer teaching multiple levels. I'm sorry. Um, others uh multiple grade levels adapting instruction. Uh, still others prefer teaching multiple subjects to the same group of students. Um, which again values kind of deeper relationships. So there's gives and takes. Um at Haven, we do actively

048engage all key stakeholder groups, students, parents, caregivers, um and staff by providing structured opportunities. We give a m beginning of year, middle of year, and end of year survey. Um we take that feedback really seriously. Um and we consistently use it as a foundation for reflection, growth, and continuous improvement across our school community. Um so it does come with kind of mixed reviews. Um I was a former math and science teacher myself. I have had the experience of looping up with students and I will tell you that you really have to maslow before you can bloom. You have to connect with kids and provide deep authentic relationships. I love unpacking a good science and math standard uh maybe more than anybody in this room. Um but you really have to connect with um kids first.

049So give and take. I would say I think one of the concerns that I that I have is that teaching science is a is a I think a difficult thing and that there's a lot of prep involved especially when you're doing experimentation and things like that and I'm concerned that you know you get the that that the teachers that are teaching those subjects if they have a lot of experience teaching those subjects it goes faster for them and they have a greater facility and then the kids get that excitement and so have you how did you consider kind of the teachers um I guess uh you know core competencies and strengths in teaching when you made these assignments decisions. So in terms of the assignments I think that um it's important to realize that the

050the teachers are assigned to teach in one content area. The ones that are on a twoerson team that they are endorsed in. For example, we have teachers who are teaching language arts are endorsed in language arts. The teachers that are endorsed in math are teaching math and they may have um an endorsement in another content area or they may not have another endorsement in another content area. Again, just like Mr. Smith had talked about earlier. These are the two ways in which we're able to make sure that students have um what I want to make sure is I'm dispelling any myths that teachers are walking into a classroom where they don't they're not they don't know anything. So, I just want to make sure that that's clear. Um, because otherwise I feel like it would

051be really hard for us to talk about all the celebrations and gains that we've made if you know things weren't aligned in ways that met students needs. Okay. I have I have two questions. I want to first of all say thank you. Um, but I noticed although enrollment is dropping, the number of students that receive our IEPs are five, the students that receive individual education services is increasing. So, how is that factored into the change in teacher cohorts and assignments? So the answer to that question is students with individualized education plans still get the same accommodations and supports that is outlined in their IEPs. That isn't changing. Um so there's okay um also uh Haven has demonstrated significant progress with the current model um and with any adjustments in the model. What do you expect

052in terms of outcomes moving forward? I would say anything that we do, our goal is to make sure that we're improving um opportunities for students to demonstrate improved or high proficiencies of learning. So, if I would say just like if we find that there's a system that we want to tweak to sort of help meet that need a little bit better, then we're able to go to the drawing board and collaborate and see what it is that we need to do to make systems better. If you make a significant change now though, will you will you check more often to make sure that what the changes that you've made are are positive? I think yes. And I think one of the ways that we were able to do that is with our we do three

053uh surveys with student, staff, and uh faculty three times a year, which allows us to have sort of a really good touch point um in terms of what systems might need to be tweaked or what systems might need to be thrown out or what systems might need to be enhanced. and what will you do to help uh prepare teachers for their change in teaching assignments? So, there are a lot of different opportunities. We have um as early as we're already starting conversations right now with our JH curriculum uh in instruction teammates. U we're looking at creating opportunities for folks to attend some voluntary summer work and then also some uh at the beginning of the year we have new teacher training where teachers are going to be invited to attend those. But then also remember

054we have an an in during the school day embedded PD um time for teachers. So we have times carved out on Wednesdays and on Fridays to really lift and um some of the systems that we're going to be providing some PD over, but then also that's also an opportunity for us to reflect and uh look at student work samples and all those other things. So we have stuff times during the day that are built in for those kind of things as well. Thank you. If if I could add in terms of your first question in regards to meeting the needs of our students with IEPs, we are increasing allocations for um Haven in terms of um um teachers, our LBS1 teachers. Um so that's going to increase by three teachers there. So it will make

055sure that we address the needs of our students with IEPs in addition to other allocation increases in um personnel um including psychologists there too. Thank you all for being with us tonight and sharing this presentation. Uh it was already asked about engagement with teachers. More specifically, can I ask about your engagement with deck over this? Can you repeat that please? Can I ask it was asked already about engagement with teachers and communication? Can I ask more specifically about your communication with deck about this? So I think um just like Mr. Smith had said, all of our communication has been aligned to our expectations. So, um, anybody that's a deck rep that has had conversations with us has been made aware of their assignment chain. I have a question about students because I feel like, um,

056you know, this is a model I'm getting more familiar with and I know, you know, part of it is just because of the number of students and trying to serve it. But, and this is a question for you, but administration feel free to chime in as well. What are the sort of pros and cons for this sort of model versus a traditional model for students? Like has that I'm sure it's been done at other places and feels it seems like it even at Haven for a few years we've had it in certain areas as well. So I'd love to understand that more. You want to start with y'all pros and cons? Um I think in terms could you maybe narrow it down just a little bit? Yeah, just the pros and cons on students of

057um the cohort model versus having like a separate teacher for every sub fewer fewer educators per grade versus depth of ex of expertise per subject area. So, one of the areas that our next school improvement goal is going to be based around is going to be student teacher relationships. in a in a goal like that where we're really trying to focus on how can we provide students with opportunities to build deep relationships with their teachers. This model kind of helps lends itself to that. Um I think the other thing to keep in mind is that um just like we're hoping through like through that scenario we were hoping that students build deep models. We already model that sort of system in the district in our in our school for students because for example uh we

058have our SEAL teammates that loop with students from sixth grade, seventh grade, eighth grade. That's just done primarily just so that students and those staff members can build deep relationships along with their families. Um it'd be a great way to have some historical knowledge on how students perform compared to their sixth grade year as we're walking out the door to do our transition meetings to high school. So again, really systematic in terms of like how we can really build relationships. Um, and again, we're we're doing some things that have never, to my knowledge, have never really been done with to this scale at Haven. And so, um, you know, if we find that there's some things that we're going to tweak, uh, and roll things back if if they aren't working, we're definitely going to

059do that. We're not going to we're going to stay student centered in all the decisions that we make. So, and just one last just a a cl whose schedule is being changed. I don't know the number off the top of my head, but we can get that for you. Did you all have anything like on the district side because I know you probably done more research on this than Yeah, I think a model like this is exactly what he articulated in in the sense of uh fewer adults touching kids, right? To really build relationships. We know that coming off CO um the needs social emotional needs of students were much greater and I think in a model like this this allows for better relationship building. I think um in full transparency you know um one

060of the things that that's on the table for us is the structure that we have in our middle school model. our middle school uh schedule really needs to be revamped so it really gets to a student centered model. I know that when we talk about collaboration with deck, there's a subcommittee that is spending time trying to be very thoughtful about how to really re-imagine that to really put put kids at the center. that would be much better for them and potentially allow, you know, the model that we're talking about in terms of one teacher teaching one content area at a time. I think this allows for some collaboration, better collaboration among teachers, cross collaboration. In all honesty, we're shifting to a humanities and esteem focus. So this particular model supports that shift and could be

061leveraged as a model as we expand out of how we could do this in some other places if that makes any sense. So I think there are different pros and cons to the model and again with the reduction of enrollment across the district. We're going to have to be really thoughtful about and creative with enrollment to continue to meet the needs of students. Um but again, you know, making sure one of the major things is making sure you have the appropriate license and certification to be able to teach children. And so if we have those things, being open and having the mindset to be a little bit flexible to allow for for us to be able to do that. And so it's a lot of considerations that have to be taken into consideration. Got it.

062That makes sense. You know, one of the things I think about and you pointed to one of your data points around attendance, right? We need to have students in our classrooms. Uh and part of again every every school district is struggling with, you know, chronic absenteeism and just having, you know, again, the threshold have being 18 days that they miss out and particularly students of color, particularly students from lower income, particularly students who have IEPs. Uh so to see that right um that improvement is is a testament to just it's that Maslau right which we're talking about for folks who are educators. Maslau talks about uh ensuring that students basic needs are met before they can even start learning right so that right there is is pointing towards um some good practices which again Haven

063historically and again I've been here close to nine years that just hasn't been the case. I mean, students and and families of color have not felt uh that welcome and um to see that uh is is it's just really something that we should be striving for getting the students in the in the classrooms. And then I really appreciate again you all building on that now because now the the next uh smarty what I'm hearing is that now you're going to look at teacher student relationships and that's critical. I mean that that's critical because and again I know teachers teachers h have are asked to do so much to be social workers to to teach content to deal with parents like again there's so much that teachers are asked to do and administrators as well uh

064but to again at the core we really should be focusing on what is it that students and families need right and how can we create a culture and a climate within each and every one of our schools where students and their families right because again students are not just these small you know widgets that we have in our classrooms, but they they're they're couched by family and community. How can we create a community that that feels welcoming to all students that step into all of our schools? And I think that's something that we've struggled with. Uh and then we've made some some according to the data, we've made some strides. Uh uh again, back when I started, we weren't even measuring social emotional learning. So the panorama survey that's something that that that again is

065now feeding us insight that we across the system educators parents board members administrators really need to be digging into and paying attention to to in order to drive uh better outcomes and improved outcomes for all students. So again I I just appreciate the work that you all are doing. Um, I know when I was a teacher, again, I was told, again, I'll tell you, one of the first schools I started at, uh, over in CPS, um, Padaveski school, I I was hired as a bilingual, uh, uh, teacher, and I, I was transitional bilingual. I had to, I had a case load of students, uh, and, uh, that that school was rough. It was in North Lawndale. No, no long it was one of the ones that was closed, um, back in the day, um, by

066Rahm Emanuel. Uh but it was um again primarily African-American, but we had Latinos in there and that was it, right? And we're all workingass. Um and there was a point where because the climate was just so there was so much trauma. There was just so many things going on. Again, I had to get pulled from my case load in order to um meet the needs of the students that needed me at the time. So the administrator had to pull me. And again, I I got into teaching to again my my specialty is to be bilingual, a bilingual educator. So, I had to and it it got me upset. I wasn't happy with it. But again, my job as an educator is to be where the need is at, right? Be there for the students. It

067ain't about me. So, I I was put again, I taught from pre from preK on to 8th grade. I mean, because teachers wouldn't show up. So, I was put in there and I got to know every, you know, the class, every student. I got to know their parents. There were some really rough days, but I stuck it out and because that that is what we as educators are tasked with is we're going to be where the need we're needed. Uh, and again, given these times where public education is uh in the crosshairs, right? uh uh and we're really questioning um you know where where where things are going to go uh and and figuring out how to deliver a high quality educational experience for for the students that remain uh I I think it's it's

068really critical that we really focus on relationships uh and start from there. So again that's just my take on this. So, thank you for the work that you all all our educators who are doing uh at Haven and across all our schools and the administrators and and again, it's just some incredible work, but a lot of work to do still. Um can can I make one suggestion? um because the because the students at Haven are going to have a different um core structure, if you will, than the other middle schools and they're then going to the high school that there's some um conversation with the high schools and make sure because they're then going to a really big high school with so many classes. How to make sure that that transition for them that there's

069some intentionality um for their ninth grade year that we're making sure that that transition happens uh great for them. that can happen. So, just making sure that we intend. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thanks again. All right. The next item up on our agenda is the public comments. Uh 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 hear specific concerns about 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

070minutes to address the board. Also note that is not customary for the board to respond to public comments. The best way to correspond with members of the board is by emailing schoolboard district 65.net. With that, Adila, do we have any folks for public comments? Um, I'll start off by calling the first three. Dr. Trisha Baker, Kelly Post, Tara Calwell. Good evening, Dr. Turner, school board, Evson community. My name is Dr. Trisha Baker. I am currently serving as the union president for deck and I'm here to read a statement written by on behalf of the Haven teachers that have been impacted by schedule changes for next school year. It has been brought to our attention at DEX Exec that next year at Haven 38% of teachers will be teaching a subject they are not endorsed in.

071Meaning they have no certification to teach the subject they are being assigned to teach. None. Unlike elementary school teachers we have a degree who have a degree in elementary education. Many middle school teachers are what we call secondary certified meaning they have a degree in the subject they are studied in and are certified to teach that subject from grades 6 through 12. We have been informed that Haven families received rationale behind the recent changes made by the principles principles. However, this courtesy was not extended to the educators. So to reiterate at this time, a third of the teachers at Haven will be teaching a subject they are not endorsed to teach for at least half part of the school day. This will negatively impact students and create a huge burden on our educators. In addition,

072a full twothirds of core teachers at Haven will be teaching a new curriculum either because they are they removed grade levels or into subject areas they have not previously taught. Haven is the only middle school in the district where educators are expected to teach outside of their endorsed content area. At this moment, there are no plans from the district or our building administration to provide training for these educators. Nor is there any explanation as to why such dramatic changes are desirable or even necessary. Middle school educators chose a content to specialize in and a focus on as part of their teaching training teacher training just like high school teachers. Others find a passion for teaching a particular content once they are in a middle school classroom. Anyone who has been taught who has been taught

073by a teacher who loves what they teach knows this their passion for the subject is often infectious and aspiring to students. At Haven Middle School, there is a documented pattern of content, knowledge, specialization, and endorsements being undermined and discarded. Educators are treated as cogs in a machine being moved around year after year from grade to grade, subject to subject. My name is Kelly Post. I am also on the deck executive um team. If there is a vision or a goal in mind that has that has not been shared with educators, nor have they been included in a contractually mandated scheduling committee that should be the place where a shared vision could have been co co-created. The schedule was created in a vacuum by building administration. Does it make sense to this board to leave the

074educators out of the process? Is this what the board wants leadership to look like in district 65? As a school district and community, we should want our children to be given the best education possible at each school. In fact, our motto is every child every day, whatever it takes. We ask this board and the community, are we living up to this motto at Haven Middle School? Community members, is this the quality of education you expected when you chose to send your children to Evston public schools? Would you send a your child to a high school where a teacher certified in math is made to teach a biology class and just hope for the best? We believe we all know the answer to these questions. Our students deserve better. They deserve to learn from teachers who

075have developed their craft and as teachers, we deserve to be treated like the experts we are with courtesy, professionalism, dignity, respect, and humanization. Thank you. [Applause] Good evening. Um, I'm Tara Kovville and I am a um parent in the Haven community. I have a current sixth grader at Haven and a freshman at ETHS who graduated from Haven last year. I'm reading this on behalf of the teachers at Haven Middle School. According to your board policy, you recognize the aim of public schools is to provide the best education possible for students and youth of the district. I fundamentally agree with this and every day I try my hardest to uphold this value in my classroom. And again, this is from a teacher. And yet, it becomes more and more challenging, especially as we take a deep

076dive into the proposed scheduling changes set to take place at Haven Middle School for the 2025 2026 school year. As of now, 67% of core educators at Haven are assigned into new content areas and or grade levels. That means that twothirds of the educators will be learning new curriculums and new standards. Furthermore, 38% of Haven core educators are assigned to teach subjects in content areas they aren't even endorsed to teach. Those certified to teach secondary math are scheduled to also teach science next year for the first time ever with zero training or content knowledge to teach science. How does having us teach science provide the best education possible for students in this district? I want to highlight one of my colleagues who came to speak in front of the board last year who is a

077nationally certified nationally board certified to teach science. She was taken out of her specialty and placed in an ELA classroom. next year. She is still not slated to teach science and yet we are. If eight out of 12 people slated to teach science next year are not endorsed, that leaves four science teachers to help mentor us. Unfortunately, only two of the four have ever taught the grade level they are assigned. How does this serve anyone? Who will support us? Who will mentor us? With over half of the school learning new contents and curriculums, who will be left to pick up the pieces? As of now, there isn't even a concept of a plan on how to get us trained. District directors are new and we're consolidated from four to two positions. Will they have enough

078time to assist all of us to learn new material, new curriculums, new standards with only 15 school days before we begin teaching these new contents? How is that possible? The other core subjects have taken a hard hit as well. Most ELA teachers will be teaching a new social studies curriculum as they have now been assigned to teach social studies, leaving four teachers newly assigned to teach ELA without any support. If the ELA teachers are busy trying to learn a new subject matter and how best to teach it, they will not have time to help support these new ELA teachers. There are enough teachers with the correct endorsements to teach every subject. There is no need for these drastic changes. Is that my time? Can I say anything else? Keep going. I can keep going. Okay.

079There's no need. There is no reason that highly qualified teachers are not teaching the content they are highly qualified and certified to teach. And there is no other Evston Middle School where anything close to this is taking [Applause] place. Next we have Melissa Rosenwig, Bridget Utter, and Gabrielle Good evening. My name is Melissa Rosenwag. I am a Bessie Rhodess parent. Um, parents from the Bessie Rhodess community have assembled tonight to publicly welcome the new school board and communicate our desire to work closely with you on ensuring that the final year at our school is a smooth one, one with strong support and stability from D65 and that our children's future success in District 65 is secured. Towards that end, we wish to share with you the results of a PTA survey that was conducted with

080families in March. We have emailed copies of the survey report to you for your review, and tonight we will present what support and stability entails based on these results. There are several key takeaways from this survey. To begin with, it revealed that there are families in our community who are still unaware or do not understand that Bessie Roads is slated to close at the end of the 202526 school year. The district has to continue to reach out to our families and communicate this information along with the range of options that families have for their children, especially to our parents for whom English is not their first language. Holding in-person meetings at Bessie Roads with sufficient translation services and child care is the best way to interact with our families. I'm Bridget Otter. I'm a Bessie

081Rhodess parent and I'm sorry to the audience for people's hair we pulled and other things like that. Um, Bessie Rose remains highly desirable for families with children in grades K through five. But for families with children in in adv in or advancing to the middle school grades, there's an incredible lack of certainty and support. The disruptions to the seventh and eighth grade classes this year's continues to affect our community. As a result, extremely clear planning and support has to be provided to these families right away. All Bessie Roads families and especially our middle schoolers should have their first choice for school transfers transfers honored including placement in King Arts and other permissive transfers. We are particularly concerned with how our Spanish-sp speakaking families are being told their only options are foster or their neighborhood school

082while our English-sp speakaking families are able to advocate for King Arts or other permissive transfers. Our Spanish-sp speakaking families deserve to be appraised of their options as well. For our K through four parents who are interested in rolling their children at Foster, they should be allowed to have their children continue on to Haven with their cohort of friends regardless of whether or not their feed or middle middle school offers dual language. This is the closest thing that District 65 can offer to K through8 twe for our Bessie Roads families and it should be honored. The district wants Bessie Roads families to inform them of their plans for the 20 26 to 27 school year by this September. But it's important that parents understand this is not a final or binding decision. Too many uncertainties remain

083for our families to be expected to choose in the fall, including which additional schools will close, what other families will be doing, and where the Bessie Roads teachers will be placed. Thank you. My name is Gabriel Anaja. I'm a parent of Bessie Roads student. I'll continue with the uh comments here. Only 20 only 22% of the students in the survey plan to attend foster school when it opens. This includes six out of 11 children for whom foster is their neighborhood school. If this trend holds with the current student body, the district can expect that fewer than 45 students from Bessie roads will transition to foster when it opens. It is clear from the survey responses that for Bessie road families two tracks of twe at foster is not equivalent to the education and environment that

084wallto-wall k through8 twe provides. In fact, when surveyed families registered tremendous interest in continuing wallto-wall K through8 in the district, but also hardware and a string lack of faith in the district to do right by the Bessie Rose community. Clearly, there is still a great deal of repair work to be done and the Bessie Rose community is still hurting and grieving. Part of that repair work will entail ensuring that the families who choose to go to foster get taken care of. This includes holding bilingual in-person foster school welcoming events at Bessie Roads, a comfortable and a familiar space. Hosting several in-person interactions with the new foster school principal at Bessie Roads to discuss the culture, climate, and curriculum at Foster. Retaining as many Bessie Roads teachers as possible in the new foster school. Keeping Bessie

085Road cohorts together by allowing K to4 Basy Road students to attend Haven Middle School. Ensuring that families know that the siblings of Basero students who are currently in the district can attend foster [Applause] school. Ashley Jackson, Marsha Belchure, Jim Belchure. My name is Ashley Jackson and I have a second grader at Bessie Roads. And many of you know I have big feelings, but I'm going to stick to the script today and finish um with respect to the ask for our Bessie Rhodess families. For the 202526 school year, Bessie Rhodess deserves an explicit written commitment from the district to finish strong and without further disruption. Bessie Road should be allowed to maintain its concierge to preserve continuity of student and family services. Our beloved Mandarin program should be reinstated and supported. For any Bessie Road children

086who plan to transition to general education, be it after this year or the following year, they should be given free summer support so they can transition successfully to their new English language environments. President Hernandez, I really agree with you, but I agree with what you said earlier. Our kids are not widgets. There should be absolutely no more cuts to our staff, curricula, programming, or resources for the 202526 school year. We are still here. Our kids are still going to school. Our children deserve the same quality education as everyone else. The board made the decision to close us, but our school is not closed. We still exist. We refuse to be the source of any further cost-saving measures. Our students, the Bessie Roads community, a community of over 90% students of color, they have sacrificed enough.

087The board has made the decision. Now, show up. Don't just schedule meetings. Come to the meetings. Show these families. Show these students that you care. Thank you. [Applause] Good evening. My name is James Belchure and I'm here to speak in support of the parents who wish to have some input into the building of foster school. Thank you for giving me an opportunity to speak and giving them an opportunity to air their points of view. We know it's been a long night for you and I I I feel for the job that you have and I know that you take your job seriously and you need to know that we the parents take you seriously and the responsibility that you have. I've been fortunate in my life that I've happened to know quite a few people

088who've done well in their life and many of those people many will say that they owe their success to the education that they received in the Evson school system and I want you to know that that is the word that goes out. So, we understand the job that you have and the job that you do very well, but we also want you to know too that you're just part of the overall system that is so important to the education of our students, the teachers, administration and the parents for forming a very very important triangle in the support of our students. I last attended foster school and I think that's primarily the reason I'm here. I was part of that last group who grad who left foster school as a consequence of the fire. It was

089a night I remember sitting at the dinner table. I think it was about eight years old, nine years old and somebody said there's a fire. The school's on fire. And I ran out. I lived on Foster Street and from my uh stoop I could look two blocks down and I could see the flames coming up from the school and kids being kids. I went down there were a bunch of group kids jumping around. Oh, it's over school. No more school. No more school. Well, you know that's not going to happen, you know. And within a couple days, we were reenrolled at other schools and moving right along. But this is the the role that you guys play. One thing before the clock is kicking down. I remember one day I was in third grade and

090I walked into the school room and my mother was there and I was so surprised. I said, "What are you doing here?" And she said, "I am going to be a room mother." It was one of the proudest days of my life. My mom was going to be a room mother. that parent involvement goes further than anything any of us can do. And thank you. My time is up. Thank you. [Applause] We had um Marsha Belter. Okay. Jerome Summers. Taran Nemo Tasha Shepard. Hello honorable board members, hardworking staff, uh teaching teaching folk. U my name is Jerome Summers. I'm a two-term former district 65 board member myself. Uh also went to foster school. Was one of the first 100 kids to get bust. My family's been in fifth ward since the 1890s. For over 100

091years, Can you hear me? Can folk hear me? Okay. For over 100 years, uh the general education programs have been designed to enhance and accentuate and validate children of European descent. and District 65 does a great job at that. I think our children of European descent is excelling at 90 plus percent and I'm proud to be a part of that. That's it's phenomenal. You know, good job. Uh right now there are at least 30 maybe even 40 or more classrooms today dedicated to enhance and accentuate and validate children of Latino descent in the form of twe newcomer programs English as a second language probably some special ed classes and if they need that I'm okay with that they're Epson kids and I want them to thrive as well but there are only six classrooms six

092out of hundreds of classrooms dedicated to enhance and accentuate and validate children of African descent. And that's the tweet program. And there was originally because I was on the board when it passed, the six passed because that board kind of finagled and parliamentary procedured the second strand out of Kingsley, which it should have been, and sent it to as far away from the fifth ward as it could be at Oakton. God bless Oakland though, you know, no question about that. Um, but to have a school, from what I hear, this foster school is supposed to have two TWW strands and two Gen Ed strands and no ACC strand in a community that has borne the brunt of desegregation and been have every kid bust out for 60 almost 60 years for God's sake. And to

093not have an ACC strand in that school, in that place says to that community and those children that other cultures and other to validate other people is more important than the people who actually historically have lived here. And I just think that's it's not a good thing at all. And you have it was a board that took away that second strand that would complement the first strand or the you know to have two strands that can complement each other. It was a board that took that away and it's a board that can correct that. You can do it. You have the power to do it. You know it. I know it. The good people of Epson know it. The American people know it. How about that? Uh and we need to get that done. So

094I'm I you know I'm here to say to you please do the right thing. have an ACC program at the fifth word school at Foster School. My name is Taran and I am a fourth grade student in the ACC program at Oakland Elementary School. Each day I begin with the ACC creed. I have faith in myself. I have faith in my teachers. I will accept my duties and responsibilities. I respect others and I seek their respect. I have selfrespect. I have self-control. I can learn if I study hard. I will learn because I will study hard. I love myself. And by loving myself, I can be myself and know myself. I believe I will achieve. I'll succeed. I am the one who is talking. [Applause] That's the ACC creed. I want to continue this creed

095throughout my Oakland career and I look forward to sharing the ACC creed with students at the new foster school. [Applause] Clearly that's my daughter, right? Um, but just to echo the words of Mr. summers. I think it's really imperative that the ACC be implemented at foster school for the very reasons that he gave and just being an ACC parent going to Oakdton, being involved in this community since I was a kid, I know the positive impact that the ACC program has had not only on my daughter, um, but all of her fellow classmates. Um, any good evening. Um, I have been a an LA language arts teacher for 15 years and I've taught in three school districts around the Northshore community and I've found that when teaching students of color, the best results come when

096their own identities are at the center of instruction. Students need to feel seen and heard and know that their experiences and cultural identities are important and are the root of the classroom. This creates a strong community no matter ethnicity, gender, or religious beliefs where everyone can learn and be respected. If teachers don't acknowledge students perspectives and how their lived experiences connect to the texts they read, then mostly students of color continue to feel marginalized and stereotyped, avoid reading, and are not engaged. It's important to have voices of color at the center of the text they read. It's important for students to see themselves positively in the text they read, which is often not the case with traditional classrooms and curriculums. Teachers have a responsibility to ensure that students of color learn and know about their

097historical contributions across content areas so they are empowered to continue the legacy of their ancestors. I know for a fact that the ACC teachers center their students identities and create a positive environment for them to thrive and love the skin they are in. I know for a fact that the ACC program empowers students to be their best selves by honoring their past and their obligation to those that came before them. So, I'm in support of the ACC being at Foster School. Thank you. Next we have Terry Sheepard and then Dolores Colon and Ross and Olivia. Okay, so that was my granddaughter and that was my daughter. So we got three generations here tonight all in support of ACC. Good evening, Superintendent Turner, administrative staff and board members. My name is Terry Shepard. I ran for

098the board in 199 something. My platform was as an advocate for the black students of district 65. My goal remains unchanged. My focus, however, is now on the ACC at Oakton. I want this learning opportunity to be extended across the district, particularly to students who will attend the new foster school. My argument for supporting this curriculum remains the same. Unless I have missed something, black students in district 65 are still performing poorly compared to their white counterparts. My belief is still the same. Black students do not see themselves in their curriculum. You cannot be what you cannot see. The ACC is at Oakton is about to celebrate its 21st year and I believe crossover is Wednesday. So I hope you all come. I'd love to see you there. Tuesday. Tuesday. Tuesday. Thank you. Tomorrow. Tuesday.

099Yeah. Oh wow. Okay. Good. Okay. I hope to see you all Tuesday at the AC at the crossover. Many of the challenges of the founding teachers, Mrs. Braithweight, Mrs. Barry and Miss Francis are still in existence. Lack of adequate training and support from the district office. I request that you prioritize the needs of the black students in district 65 by reinforcing the ACC program at Oakton and creating a vibrant ACC STEM curriculum for the students at the new Foster School. Thank you. [Applause] Good evening everyone. It's a pleasure to be here. I just want to introduce myself. I'm Dolores Clone. I have a current kindergartener at Oakton. I am currently a community member on the policy board here for the Head Start. I had just joined um the ACC parent committee and I'm also on

100the PTA at Oakton. will be serving as co-VP next year. So, get used to seeing me. But with that being said, my daughter's experience in Evston has been overwhelming. I am a person who grew up in Chicago. I had a grandmother who worked for CPS for 40 years and she had no respect and no real feelings for CPS and what they did and mainly did not do for their students. I moved here to Evston because I believe in Evston and the reason I am here is the reason so many people are here. You cannot be what you cannot see. And watching my daughter get the kind of education that I was denied has been amazing and it's something that I want for every child in this district. Please, ACC is so important. It creates fabulous

101children. It will be nothing but a mark of success for Evston. So please, please allow it for foster school. Please, [Applause] please. Um, hello. Happy Monday and good evening. Um, my name is Olivia Olsen and I'm a graduate of Haven Middle School and as of yesterday, a graduate of ETHS. Hello everyone. My name is Nathan Campbell. I graduated from ECHS in 2024. I'm a college and military here. I'll be going off to Morehouse in a few months. [Applause] We both served on the city on this I'm sorry we both served on the city of Evston youth advisory council and our youth advocates in Evston cradle to career during the summer of 2023. We canvased you. We canvased using the fifth ward, walking doortodoor, covering hundreds of residents and speaking with dozens of families and people

102old and young about their experiences with the district and what they would like to see from the district. The vast majority were passionate about ensuring the new foster school would be both a STEM school and an ACC school. We wanted to be here tonight to share our firsthand experience and remind all of the board members, new and old, that you are representing the residents and that it is the core of your oath and your purpose and the purpose of your position to represent their wants and needs and advocate for them. We hope this information will help you to make an informed decision. Thank you. Have a good rest of your evening. [Applause] Next we have um Brande Otis. Let me pronounce that again. Brande Otis, Martha Burns, and then Kate McCarthy. Okay. Hello. Can you

103all hear me? All right. Um, good evening board members in Evston community. My name is Dr. Brandy Otis. I'm a posttock in black studies at Northwestern and a founder of the ACC parent committee at Oakton. I am not an Evstonian and I am humbled that folks in this community trust me to advocate for a program that I have come to love and respect. I stand here in deep solidarity with the families, educators, and community members on the day of Malcolm X's 100th birthday to call for the full implementation of ACC at Foster School. I'm going to talk briefly about the achievement gap. The academic disparities in this district, commonly referred to as the achievement gap, are not new. They are persistent, predictable, and painful, especially for black children. The district's report card shows consistent gaps

104in English and math between black and white students. And while I'm sure this district is full of hardworking and intentional educators and administrators, the persistence of these inequities point to a deeper issue. I want us to consider what we traditionally call an achievement gap to be something deeper. An education debt, as Gloria Latson Billings calls it. A debt owed to generations of black students who've been historically underserved, overlooked, and undersupported across the nation. Focusing only on an achievement gap leaves us looking for short-term solutions to long-standing problems. It does not push us to situate the problem of black education as one of deep historical neglect. That long-standing histories of discrimination, exclusion from education, unequal learning environments, anti-black violence and policy mean that the problems that black children face are not of their own creation, that

105this country is indebted. I've learned in my short time here in Evston that the successful reopening of foster school is more than symbolic. It is your choice to do right by black children and address this education debt. The community agrees that ACC is a continuation of what it means to do right by black children. Since 2022, ACC students have scored at or above nonACC students at Oakton in English. Dr. Trisha Baker's prepandemic dissertation showed gains in literacy for black students in Oakton's ACC program. And my own personal ethnographic research suggests that the success of ACC is more than academic and curricular. It is social and emotional. And that is because of the unique opportunities that ACC provides black children to be in the presence of dedicated black educators who know what it means to educate

106black children. An intentional dedicated space that specifically affirm black identity and culture. By fully embracing and supporting ACC at Foster, we are making a powerful statement that we are committed to educational well-being of black babies. Let us not think of the current academic gaps as solely indicative of what black students can or cannot do because we know they're brilliant, but rather a reflection of historical inequity that works to ensure their place at the bottom. Instead of simply asking, what are the problems facing black children, we might also ask, what do we owe black children? Reopening Foster with a strong ACC program is not just a decision. It is a declaration that we love our black children and we're ready to give them what they've always been owed. Thank you. [Applause] Uh good evening. First, I'd

107like to congratulate the newly seated board members, uh, Maria, Nicole, and Patricia, and then Andrew. I don't think I met you on the trail. Uh, one thing I want to say just to the new board members that when you're in executive session, I want you to remember when you have personnel matters, make sure that you listen and treat those personnel matters as if they're happening to you. And that's just one thing I'd like to say. Good evening, Dr. Turner, and everyone else. Um, I just want to say that I'm going to condense what I had to say because I feel that everyone that has came before me that has spoke about the ACC uh, initiative and STEM program needing to be at Foster uh, school, I concur with. I want you to know that my

108involvement in district 65 goes back to um, Orington School in 1992. I am making legacy boxes for my children. And I found this Orington school um April 1995. And I was reading the newsletter uh not because I was president of Orange School PTA, but because I was just reading what we were talking about and in 1995, we were talking about some of the same stubborn issues that we are talking about today. When I arrived at Orington School, there was a pay phone on the first floor and uh as you come up the stairs and I called my sister and I said, "You will not believe the beauty and the presence that this school has." I said, "My kids will get a quality education." Let's fast forward to 2025. I've been on every committee that I

109could be on in this district. I've done everything that I can to support this district. I have believed without even looking at race as the number one factor as the problem. Well, after 28 29 years, unfortunately, race is an issue and race is a very strong issue in this district. I've been trying to figure out, well, what is it? because we have master teachers that are making an average salary of $70,000. We have a day now full of administrators that are probably all making six figures. We have student teacher ratios that are low. We have every student in the district with a Chromebook or iPad. We have small class sizes. We paid $25,78 for every student represented in this district with operation and curriculum. Well, what is it then? What is it? And after all

110is said and done, what it is is is that we have uh uh Sergey, I'm going to ask you for professional courtesy as a board member. Uh if you would extend just a few few more minutes to me. Um, I was trying to figure out, well, what is it? And it is what I did learn when I saw ACC, what I did like about the students in that program for black students. For the first time, I witnessed black kids, you know, feeling confident and good about themselves in numbers. I don't see that anywhere else. And I'm saying that I know you guys should be tired of failing. You should be tired of presenting initiatives that are not working for the very students that you say they working for. I'm on the SAP 3 uh committee

111with uh Dr. McCoy and Kirby uh and Dr. uh Pittz as our leader and I'm enjoying it because I do enjoy whatever I put myself into. I do enjoy it. But I'm here to say that I was shocked and appalled that foster school would open up without a ACC program or something to say that it's going to be geared toward black kids. Your end product with black kids, you're not doing it. You're not doing it. I don't know what it's going to take in order for you to to in order for it to change, but I'm asking you I'm asking you to consider putting two strands of ACC and STEM over at Foster School. We'd like you to look at your training and professional development provided for the ACC teachers specific to that kind of

112curriculum. We're also asking for support for teacher retention into the ACC program and early education training and orientation to support new teachers in the ACC program. Financial and resource support for cultural enrichment. And finally, to the black people in this community, we need to stand for our black kids because it is too many black kids that are not making. We can do better and God expects us to do better. Thank you. Um, good evening. My name is Kate McCarthy. I have two children at Lincolnwood Elementary and one child at Haven. I'm on the superintendent parent advisory council as well. Um, I'm speaking tonight to respectfully call on each school board liaison to fulfill the full scope of their responsibilities as outlined in the school liaison protocols on the district website. Given that this school board

113doesn't have any representation from schools in the sixth and seventh wards, the liaison will play a critical role as life-changing decisions are being made around school closures and consolidations. In the past six months, it has become increasingly clear that some liaison are not actively participating in the way this role role requires. Whether it's lack of visibility, failure to attend key events or meetings, or simply not responding to outreach from the communities they serve. This is not acceptable. These protocols make it clear that liaison are expected to maintain direct and ongoing communication with the school communities they represent through school visits, PTA meetings, and other forms of engagement and to provide accurate information about schoolboard proposals that may impact those communities. With potential school closures and consolidations looming, it is essential that each liaison each liaison

114schedules a meeting with their assigned school community within the next month. These meetings should offer an open forum for parents to ask questions, voice concerns, and receive clear, honest information before any decisions are made. While liaison do not serve as advocates, the protocol charges them with ensuring concerns are elevated to the superintendent and board and with keeping the community informed of proposals and policies that affect them. Now is the time to live up to that commitment before irreversible decisions are made. Our communities deserve transparency, accountability, and a chance to be heard. Thank you. [Applause] That concludes the public comments for tonight. Thank you, Da. And thank you to all our public commenters. Next item up is uh our updates and discussions. We got a foster school update and approval for family focus easement for foster

115school. Maya So, I'll be quick tonight uh after a broad uh foster school update at our last board meeting. Uh there's no new changes and nothing really new to report in terms of an update that is any different from that except for we do have one uh vote on the docket. We have entered, we are looking seeking to enter an easement agreement with Family Focus um for a portion of their property that will be that the school used to extend the playground and the play area. Um we are adding uh piping for drainage. We are putting out a field track and a field light for that area. And that's the end of my report. So, so what that e easement agreement is also joins the easement agreement we already have in existence with the city

116for the same purpose and it's basically to create a a unified campus across the three organizations to serve the community and create the best possible playfield as possible. So that's the only thing that's on the docket for foster school tonight. Thank you. Any questions? Okay. I move that the board of education approve the easement and land rights use agreement with family focus as presented. Second. Salem, yes. Anderson, yes. Pinker, yes. Updike, yes. Wymer, yes. Wilkins, yes. Hernandez, yes. Motion passes 70. Next item up on our agenda is the SAP 3 update and the approval of our foster school principal. So, thank you. Thank you, Kirby. It is with great pleasure that I announce the appointment of Charize Burke as the founding principal of Foster School effective July 1st, [Applause] 2026. In the interim, Principal Burke

117will serve in a dual role as the outgoing principal of Dr. Betsy Rose School of Global Studies and as the planning principal for Foster School. Her primary responsibilities remain in service to the Betsy Rhodess community while spending time preparing for the opening of Foster School in fall 2026. Principal Burke's qualities and experience are deeply aligned to our leadership profile developed by staff and future families and she was highly regarded by the interview panel. She is a passionate advocate for equity and excellence directly supporting students from various backgrounds and cultures. Messages will be going out this evening to the Betsy Rose community and the broader future foster community. I would like to invite principal Burke Kale up for a few words at this [Applause] moment for appointment. Oh, let them make the motion. Sorry. So, I'll

118go ahead and make the motion. Sorry, Principal Bio. All right. I move that the board of education approve and authorize the board president to sign a contract with Charles Burkeel to serve as the principal of Foster School. Second. Second. Salem, yes. Anderson, yes. Pinker, yes. Optic, yes. Wymer, yes. Wilkins, yes. Hernandez, yes. Motion passes 70. [Applause] Good evening, D65 faculty, students, staff, families, community, and school board members. I am deeply honored to unite the strong legacy of Foster School and the amplified global vision we've cultivated at Betsy Roads. Foster School was built on the powerful foundation of ensuring every child develops a strong sense of self. Now returning to the very site where Dr. Dr. Betsy Rose began her remarkable District 65 teaching career. We will build upon this foundation. The renewed Foster School will

119bring students from across our community together, empowering a new generation of learners and preparing them to engage with our diverse world. As someone who embodies multilingualism and multiculturalism through my own family's heritage, I am excited to continue to help our students explore the rich tapestry of global identities and connections. Thank you very much. [Applause] So, a lot of excitement. Congratulations. Uh, so wonderful that we now have a leader uh for our foster school. The next item up that we have is our SAP 3 update. I'm sorry, SDRP update, strategic approval. We already Good evening everyone. We have Dr. Susan Harkin from Student Center Services with us tonight. Um so she is going to kick off the presentation and then we'll uh make our way through it with some uh present some information presented by myself,

120Dr. Beardsley as well as Dr. Melissa. Um and then we'll have Susan close us out. So all right, welcome. So good evening. Thank you for having uh me tonight. Um want to introduce ourselves for some of the existing board members. This is um a presentation partially of what you've seen before of helping you understand our role. Would you like me to wait? Yeah, just wait. Sure. Folks, sweetie, if we could uh please uh quietly quietly exit to the meeting is ongoing. Thank you. So again, thank you for having me tonight. Um really looking forward to giving you an overview of how we're supporting um the strategic deficit reduction plan in conjunction and in alignment with your staff. Tell us who you are. Sure. I thought there was a slide up there, but it's gone right

121now, so I apologize. So, um, my name is Susan Harkin. Um, we're with student centered services. My partner, uh, Dr. Greg Fenel also assists, uh, with the support for, uh, Dr. Turner and the team. We were part of the phase two portion of the strategic deficit reduction plan and now we're supporting the team for the next for 11 months more than less than 11 months now for how we're going to support phase three. Um so when we walked into the door we felt it was really important for us to acknowledge what are the current challenges that are facing uh district 65. Um after this year you will have had three years of uh spending more than what you have. Uh your enrollment is going down which has caused some of the challenges that were spoken

122about tonight and some of the complexities of what's in front of us. Um there are definitely facility needs that are out there about $188 million worth of identified needs and those were needs that were I think that number was from a couple of years ago. So that number is if we index it, thank you. Uh would be uh probably significantly higher if we keep all of the schools open. Um we are in a stage of increasing cost of certainly we know that that's just part of the economic climate and what's happening with inflation and everything else. Um certainly our students need more than they ever have. We still are dealing with the residual of what CO brought forward for the challenges for our students and that still is part of our education system. Um the

123next item that's second from the bottom, the district has lost its funding source of revenue that came through grant dollars called ESSER to help support how we help bridge the gap of what occurred for our students with COVID. And that's not spelled right CPPRT. Um there also is a declining revenue source called corporate property replacement tax. There's probably a personal property rel replacement tax where we had seen a significant increase in school districts and that revenue has decreased as well too. Um and one of the things that we felt was the most important piece that we hope to help support Dr. Turner with who's done a phenomenal job of getting out there and interacting uh with your community is how do we help provide transparent um information about what are some of the challenges with

124the district? Um we all know how strongly Evston supports its um education system, but when we go back to three years of deficit spending, we're really in a difficult time right now. And so we're here to support the team on how do we with our experience both Dr. Fnel and myself have been with districts that have experienced significant financial issues and how do you navigate still making reductions but really keeping our students at the focus of our conversations to ensure that we continue providing the education that our students deserve. So, we're in phase three of this uh process of the strategic deficit reduction plan. And again, I apologize if this is um something you're familiar with, but we really believe it's important to ground what this last phase is. So, in uh fiscal year 24,

125um there was an identification that there was this deficit that was not identified. And so, uh, the district immediately went into what can we do to make some cuts in real time. So, at that point, there were $7.4 million of reductions that were made for the fiscal year 2025. Immediately, they went into hiring fees freeze. So, they identified those positions that if they weren't critical to the current programming for students, we did not hire those positions back. and additionally what positions were vacant. They did not hire. They went into reducing purchase services which are where we spend money to have somebody come in that isn't a district employee and provide services. So the team went into also making reductions where they could and would not compromise our services to students and they made reductions. And

126then at the end of all this they developed our framework to include stakeholders in a process as we made reductions how we grounded the work in feedback from the community and engagement with the community so they understood the complexities and the challenges of what the district is facing. In December we worked alongside Dr. Turner and her team to look at how do we stabilize the district. Originally the charge was really looking at what schools we could close and talk about that as an option. And we felt what was most important is can we just financially stabilize the district? Can we put ourselves in a place that we don't compromise the district's finances and find some reductions that can immediately put us in a place where we aren't borrowing money and we aren't making significant cuts

127to the school district in programming without really taking ourselves through a thoughtful process in order to evaluate those types of decisions and really engage the community in a more thoughtful process. because these decisions in front of us are not going to be easy. And that's the one thing we repeat over and over again. This is not going to be easy. And we went through and cut $13.2 2 million that I believe you've been seeing some of that come through publicly as we've eliminated many positions specifically at the central office level as well as looking at other areas that continued your current programming for your students and really focused on where can we make reductions that would not impact our schools at this point. It isn't easy and you're going to have to feel a big

128difference moving forward. And I think Dr. Turner says it best. You know, you've been able to provide a very hightouch customer service when you had those additional positions and now as we look to reduce that, it is going to feel differently. But we preserve programming. we preserved all of the things that are valued by our parents, by our families, by our students that we could continue providing those. So, the first phase was how do we make some reductions, but really preserve what's happening in our schools. There will be changes in our schools, but it really was not necessarily in the classroom environment. We're now in phase three. We are moving towards sustainability. We are looking at $15 million more of reductions. And as I said to you, this is not going to be easy. So,

129um, we'll walk you through the timeline because you ultimately are responsible for whatever proposed reductions that we are recommending and helping you understand that because we will charge the board to make that final approval what that will be. So as we look at financial sustainability, we're really looking at how do we balance the current budget so that ongoing what we make as reductions that we are no longer spending our savings account to subsidize what we're providing in the classroom. And if this was your own home, you know, at some point you can't keep using your savings account to manage your day-to-day expenses. We also need to address aging facilities. Um we have roofs that are in disrepair. We have structural foundational pieces that need to be addressed and that is critical for the district to

130um make sure that its investment in its home, its schools that we aren't neglecting those and we're at critical time to start doing that. We are in a position that enrollment has declined greatly and that is an opportunity for discussion. no decisions, but a discussion of what does that look like for us? And then ultimately, um, again, great conversation tonight. How do we make sure that what programming we're providing in our schools meets the need of our community, meets the need of our students, and we make sure that it's placed in locations that best support what's best for our students, and how we can go about providing the optimal learning environment for them. So, this is the important piece that we really want to reiterate with the new board members. Um, again, we're here to

131address phase three to get us back to sustainability that we aren't having these conversations when we're talking about the district finances. We are not talking about what we need to do for students. I've been in a district where all we did was talk about the district's finances. And I was very happy when we transitioned to how are we investing in our students? how we are using our resources for best for kids, but until we get this piece done, we won't be able to have those conversations. Uh we do have an internal steering committee. Obviously, there's going to be a lot of different viewpoints on what should be done here, and we're doing our best to take all of that information in to come up with the recommendation that your team knows is best within all

132of the layers of compliance, the collective bargaining agreements, um what we statutoily have to do, all of that has to be laid over. So, there's no silver bullet. And so ultimately there is an internal steering committee that will bring forward to you three to five scenarios on how to get this district back to financial s sustainability and stability. We are then working with the community steering committee. At this point, that group, which is comprised of three subcommittees, will come together to help give us the input and feedback as our experts into the proposed scenarios that are going to come to you. We've broken it down into three committees because we feel it's very complex and if we can get people passionate about their committee and give us input into that, we'll we bring them together

133at every meeting that they come together to talk about what works being done. But we have a facilities, a finance, and a programs committee. The facility is really looking at school capacity. where should our programs be and the potential for school consolidations. And we'll talk about how this all fits together because we hope to bring forward to you what will be a recommendation that has various options for you because as we talk about part of this it's a financial math equation that we will provide to you of what do we need to do to get the b district back to financial sustainability. The finance committee then based upon the feedback that they get from this facility and the programs committee will come up with how do we get the district back to financial stability and

134model what that will look like. The last piece is the programs committee which will say okay if we close schools if we keep them all open where's the optimal place that we will put programs in so that kids receive the services where they should and this work works in conjunction with the student assignment planning committee and is taking that feedback in. So we do have other groups that are out there and ultimately if they someone is not on one of the committees they also can provide feedback through all the work that Melissa does and she will provide you with an overview of what that piece looks like. So therefore we are doing our best for community trust to bring information in a consolidated manner to you to help you make the most informed decision. I

135think you have a couple slides after this. Okay. Perfect. All right. So, it jumped there. All righty. So, so this is our timeline. Um, in February, we group regrouped after the board um approved the 13.2 million of reductions to get us to stability. The team did not stop working. They continued to work to really bring all of the data points together in order to start our work with the steering committee, community steering committee, and the subcommittees. Right now we're in what would be called phase three part one. Uh we started meeting in April with the groups. This portion of the the work we're doing is really level setting providing background information to the people on the committee. And really at the end of the day I think Stacy's got the Dr. Beardley has the biggest

136lift here, which is really looking at our current buildings again with the opportunity with declining enrollment. If we were to make a recommendation that um should we close schools, she's developing the criteria for how we would come back with that recommendation for you. And again, that's a big piece of the stakeholder engagement as well, too. Um, we will take a break over the summer. We want to give everybody a break, but that doesn't mean this team that's sitting in front of you won't be working. They'll be taking the information that's being provided and gathered at this stage, and we'll talk about the ultimate timeline of of where we're going to next. and when we'll come back to you in June to really then take the time based upon that information and how do we make

137programs, facilities, and finance merged together then to come back in the fall to then make a recommendation of how do we balance our budget? How do we review our enrollment? How do we look at our facilities? and how do we come up with a solution to the remaining piece of how do we get district 60 back 65 back to financial uh stability? Um and that recommendation if it were a selection to close schools there's a timeline that we'll present to you on what that piece looks like. So right now again phase one we're meeting we'll have six meetings with the community steering and the and the subcommittees from April 9th to June 30th. Our role as student centered services are to be the guard rails for the internal team. They understand what's in front of

138them. We have the experience having been through it. How do we support them to bring this very complex problem together in a in a way that it can be digested and understandable? I can tell you right now I'm working very closely with uh Miss Mitchell and you know we've got some really great thoughtful questions that are coming through the finance committee and I know Stacy probably has been the same way as well as um Dr. Spouth. So, we're going to bring that together and then the plan is that your last meeting in June will provide you with an update at that point in time. Again, what we want to reiterate are the roles. Ultimately, the board will have to make the decision, especially in light of if we if there's a recommendation to move forward

139with closing schools. There's a whole timeline in the school code that we will need to follow ultimately trying to get the district back to financial uh stability and sustainability. that also will be at your level to ensure that whatever those recommendations are. The internal team is the one that really will know the ins and outs and specifics and they'll go through how they're supporting this work going forward. And again, our job is to provide the guard rails and experience from having done this in other districts on how we move this forward in a way very difficult, very challenging, but at the end of the day, we've engaged and tried to do our best as best as we can in an overloaded world with technology and information coming at you that your community understands the challenge

140in front of us and what we're trying to do. I think I turn it over to you, right? Yes. Thank you, Dr. Harkkins. So, um, she talked quite a bit about the different pieces of the puzzle. This is really just a revisit of a previous slide from the last meeting, but it's the visual of all of the components within our SDRP ecosystem, as we call it. Um, just a reminder about being rooted in stakeholder voice, but ultimately funneling up to the board of education in terms of any decision making for closures and consolidations potentially. Um so this slide we also shared at the May 5th I believe committee of the whole meeting but this is just a highle synopsis of our stakeholder engagement that we conducted um mostly during the month of April. So we

141had five in-person stakeholder engagement sessions. We complemented those with an online survey option because we knew not everybody is able to come out and attend those meetings for different reasons. Um, we've been working closely over the past month with our partners at Northwestern and the School of Education and Social Policy to conduct an independent analysis of all of the stakeholder data that we had gathered during that time. Since then, that information has been analyzed and turned over to the SDRP facilities committee led by Dr. Beardsley who's been reviewing that analysis and really churning it to plug into potential consolidation and closure criteria. In addition, our superintendent parent caregiver advisory council meeting is actually tomorrow night in this room and so they'll be doing the same. So, as you saw on the previous slide, the purpose

142is some checks and balances across different groups to see where we're landing on potential criteria and that we can bring forth to the school board. Um, additionally, if you could just go back for one second, um, we want to be very transparent about this. So, the analysis, um, is available on our website on the SDRP section right on our homepage. So, that's the analysis from, um, our researcher at Northwestern. In addition, all of the meeting summaries, so all of the chart paper and sticky notes and activities, all of that was captured verbatim and is published online for each of those meetings. Additionally, you could use our translate feature on our website to translate that content as well. Um, and then lastly, all of the creative solutions that we had gathered as part of those meetings

143are also available on those pages too. Um, so we're just going to talk at a really really high level because it's online and everybody can go and review some of the criteria that emerged. So we crosswalked the written analysis as well as the in-person stakeholder engagement and some common themes really bubbled to the top around each of these criteria. So the purpose of the committee and the parent advisory group is really to churn what does that look like? What could potential waiting be looked like? Um so our first one that we looked at was equity. Um, and really just a lot of stakeholders stress the importance of access to services and programs, especially from students from historically marginalized communities, still emphasizing wraparound supports, mental health services, social worker, special education, etc. Um, additionally, walkability emerged

144as a top priority. Um, there were some questions about, well, define walkability. What does that look like? It could mean different things to different people, but essentially everybody's looking for equitable access to well-resourced, highquality schools and still within all neighborhoods in our community. The next one, um, so excellence was really broad and I think that from those who attended the sessions and I think from my colleagues, I think this was a difficult one for people to sort of grapple with around what does this mean? But essentially what had emerged as themes is really sustained investments in education in high quality educators and small class sizes um greater access to social workers um mental health staff face leaison counselors etc. Um in addition to engaging well-resourced classrooms, uh continued focus on enrichment programs, so before and

145after school learning and really modern instruction in classrooms. Um and then lastly, academic excellence in terms of rigorous consistent academic standards across all schools for all learners. Uh the next one, so finance. Uh so really this is a thoughtful thoughtful use of funds with a focus on long-term um financial health and accountability. There was a lot of concerns raised around uh and Dr. Beardsley presented a lot of data on the facility conditions, aging buildings, cost of repairs. There was a lot of concern that was emphasized about you know is that the best use of dollars? How can the district strategically prioritize while maintaining other important investments? Um so really whether that's fiscally responsible um there was some suggestions again on creative solutions and and fundraising and and such. Um but also really future focused planning.

146There was a lot of a lot of data and you'll see that if you look through the analysis around not making necessarily short-term decisions based on current enrollment but really looking into the future as well as um you know what are shifts going to look like around enrollment and different neighborhoods demographic shifts housing changes and vision Evston things like that that are underway and then the last one is really about um facilities um lining school building capacity with actual enrollment and took some notes here. Um, some some build some individuals noted just the shifting enrollment and buildings that were underutilized. Some places that especially in some of our middle schools might which may feel a bit overcrowded but you know may shift over time with the demographics. But um also just flexible planning um cautioning

147against permanent school closures or anything that feels like a one-time decision that we can't you know potentially walk back from as we change later. There was a lot of creative solutions around flexibility within buildings for other services within the community, child care needs, community partnerships, expanding prek, etc. Um, so I encourage everybody to go online to our website to read more in depth, but these are the were the top level themes that have bubbled up as part of that analysis and engagement. All right. So um I will spend just a brief amount of time talking about uh some of the things that we've covered in the finance subcommittee. So first of all, the overarching purpose of the finance subcommittee is to analyze the financial impacts of the recommendations coming out of the other two subcommittees

148out of programs and facilities. There are six responsibilities that that subcommittee is charged with as well. Uh and all of those detail how the group will achieve that overarching purpose. Some of those responsibilities will not be achieved prior to our break for summer. So, I just wanted to be sure to call that out. Uh, for instance, the the collaboration with HR, uh, that part won't happen until we come back in the fall and start really working through the plans. So, some of those things just will not be able to be accomplished, uh, during this first spring session. Next slide, Susan. So, now just at a very high level talk about some of the things that we've covered in those first three meetings. So the April 9th meeting, our first meeting was really what I like

149to call school finance 101. So it was a very high level um explanation of what school finance is, where we get our revenues from, how we spend our money, what fund accounting is. Um and then that really allowed us to go into a robust question and answer session uh regarding our expenditures and the way the district receives this money. Uh we also revisited the why behind why we were having the conversations and that being the structural deficit as well as the facility needs that we currently do not have an identified funding source for. That second meeting on April 23rd was all about risks and vulnerabilities. Uh so we did have some continued discussion on the school finance 101 because there were some things that we didn't get to get to during that first meeting. But

150that second meeting was really focused on those risks and vulnerabilities with the goal being to uh lift some of those things up, the risk vulnerabilities that that we had not thought about. Uh so we were really leaning into the committee to provide some of those uh some of those things for us. And those three questions we had the group work on. We split the entire committee into three different groups. Had them address those three questions. What are potential unintended consequences? uh what are some financial assump ass assumptions that carry the most risk and then where might the plan be most financially vulnerable. Our most recent meeting on May 7th featured um a guest from PMA Securities, our municipal adviser Bob Lewis. So he spent the entire time walking the group through different financial levers available

151to the district in terms of financing. Um so at the end of the meeting uh the committee really had a much better understanding of the pros and cons of each. So that will help us as we move forward into our next work for the next three meetings and then as we move forward to the work in the fall. Next slide. So what's next? Uh for these next few meetings we will as a committee analyze some facilities maintenance and operations expenditures and then move into scenario building. So, how will we incorporate expenditure reductions, revenue generation, as well as some of those financing options that we talked about at May 7th? How will we incorporate all of those toward a financial a sustainable financial future? Um, how will we do so in the most equitable way possible?

152So, we will be looking at the RIA as we uh in this next meeting on Wednesday, which is our next meeting. Uh, and we'll definitely be looking at the RIA during that meeting. And then also how will we ensure that the reductions in one area uh don't result in greater costs elsewhere. So really looking into those reductions and making sure that we're not going to unintentionally increase costs above what we're saving. So the next committee is a program subcommittee. So our purpose is to inventory district programs and their effectiveness and make recommendations to the facilities committee. Um, ultimately we're going to provide input around a cohesive plan and we want to optimize program placement and ensure equitable access to opportunities. I can't see this deck, so I'm looking at my computer. Um, every single time

153we review a program, we look at impact academic and social emotional learning data. We also look at demands and any unique facilities that might uh the program might need. So, next slide. Um we started on April 9th with just a general overview of the programs we're going to be looking at and then each um subsequent meeting we go through and take a deep dive. So we did African center curriculum on the 23rd um King Arts Magnet on May 7th. We're doing dual language this Wednesday. We'll do an early childhood on June 4th and a final report on June 18th. both dual language and early childhood came lattered later in this process because we are leaning on the SAP 3 process for both of these. Um at each meeting um we have program teams that present

154specific information and data about their program and then a committee our committee uses guiding questions to analyze the programs. Our goal is to make recommendations and we've been very specific with our committee that we're not setting policy and we're not cutting programs. So what we do is we u utilize a set of five guiding questions every single time we do this analysis and then we gather this information um and we work with one of our Northwestern partners to come up with a program. So are the programs located where families need and want them? What does data tell us about student residence patterns and how does the program location affect um access and travel time? Which programs are producing the strongest student outcomes? And what facility or location factors contribute to that success? How would a

155school or program relocations, closures, or consolidations impact students, families, and equitable access to these programs? And how can we optimize the use of space and resources while ensuring programs have the necessary facilities to support and maintain equity quality? All right. I have the facility subcommittee to bring it home. All right. So, the ultimate purpose of the facility subcommittee is to develop a long-term facility plan for facility improvement. In the short term, we are focused on developing categories and criteria to inform modeling for scenarios for potential school closing. We can go on to the next slide. In our meetings, essentially the first three meetings, we've been really working to get familiar with relevant data to inform categories and criteria. Initially we started with demography the demography report and the master facility plan. Meeting two we introduced

156the race racial equity impact assessment tool and went deeper on the demography and master facility plan. The committee had also put in additional data inputs after meeting one. So we've added those as well as we shifted into meeting three. We took the input of the community feedback, the feedback from the community sessions and the survey as kind of the next layer of information that we're putting into our process. And we added in density maps for where the eels are, which includes twe students. So we included TWE as well as TWE and TW TWE and TWWS. So all students in the TWE programs as well as EL students more broadly across other programs to understand where those students live. looked at King Arts also because that 2024 demography report has students in their neighborhood attendance boundaries.

157So the committee wanted to understand kind of how those students distribute themselves naturally in our system. Uh again put the racial equity lens in moving forward. We are going to um essentially have a few things going on. We started facility walkthroughs this weekend. We did seven schools on Sunday. We do the last batch a week from Thursday because we didn't want four evenings in a row this week. Um and then we are coming back together later this week in to process in the next layers of data and the group is going to come together and the next layer also includes the the input from the spa meeting this week as well um and some additional data requests around facilities and facility inputs. And so they're going to come together as a whole group and really

158try to churn in this meeting and next meeting to get to their final categories and criteria while holding also kind of this understanding of impact across different groups by race and culture. Um and I think that captures oh the second deliverable there is just a list of must haves. They're holding that it is important to understand the different assets of common spaces within the buildings in this process. So thank you. So we've break broken down this phase three into four parts and one was just kind of working behind the scenes. So again we're in part one with coming back to you in June as a board with an update on how it's starting to settle with the primary focus on if we are going to make a recommendation to you about closing school. What is

159the criteria and feedback that we receive to land on what that will look like? Again, the team here will work over the summer to then use that data based upon your feedback and input on what's presented to you on June 23rd to re-engage either the end of August or beginning of September to continue the work with this committee. Then to really come up with three to five scenarios to help help guide you and then get your feedback on what those next steps would be. Part four is always if we move forward with whatever version of the strategic deficit reduction plan, how do we support our students, our staff, our community, our families in that time frame should there be whatever that recommendation and impact will be. Um, and for those that were on the board

160previously, our expectation is that we will present that and make sure that you've got an opportunity to give us the feedback that you and adjustments that you want to have brought forward. And I think that worked and was highly effective the last time because ultimately we want to make sure that you one have the information to make an informed decision and that if you do have suggestions as the governing body in relationship to school district 65 that you have the information in order to make the recommended vote to move forward with getting us to this final stage. And again, our role as student centered services is truly walking alongside your very competent and highly qualified staff to just guide them through this process and bring the information together so that it can be easily reviewed

161and digested hopefully by your community, but more importantly by you as you have to make this hard decision that will be in front of you. And I think the next piece is if there's any questions. appreciate you and the team uh presenting a comprehensive look for the whole board and particularly our new board members. I hope you benefited from kind of getting this overview of a little bit of the history but also what's ahead for us. I'll open it up for any questions from colleagues. Yeah, I have a question. [Music] Um the 15 million total it says estimated for the fiscal year 27 I believe it is. Um I I know that in the community meetings it was on the slides it said 10 to 15 million. That's a big window. Um can you tell

162me more about that? Sure. So one of it is we really want to see where you end the year because um you have made these significant cuts. You your practices in accounting maybe weren't as uh paying bills on time. So, what we really want to ensure is once we see where this year ends, we will update all of the projection modeling. At this point, we think we're probably closer to about 12.5 million, but absolutely as soon as we get the updated financials for June 30th, we will be clear with what that exact number is, but we really want to get the year closed out to understand what are the projections moving forward and what that number is. Thank you. I have a couple. Can I keep going or you want me? Okay. Um, so then

163I have a question as well about what do we mean by sustainability here? So, um, what could a district of our size expect to expend? For instance, if we don't want to be taking on deferred maintenance at excessive rates, does this cut of possibly 12.5 million to 15 million, does that get us just to being in the black or does that get us to truly sustainable with long-term maintenance with um Yeah. Yep. That's a great So, first and foremost, the 12.5 million will get you back in compliance with your fund balance policy. That's really it. And it really gets you to the point that you shouldn't have to borrow money. And and one of the challenges right now in Cook County is the fact that depending upon when tax bills go out, that 90 days

164is really critical to avoid short-term borrowing. To your point, it does not address anything related to the $188 million that's currently out there, as well as building some sort of annual reinvestment back into your facilities that would be appropriate for a district this size. We will be talking about that and are talking about that with the finance committee and so we'll bring that into the conversation. However, I think there's three pieces. one, right? How do we get back to that we're financially sustainable and can pay our bills? Two, how do we ha uh work towards making sure our deferred maintenance gets completed? And ultimately, is there a way for us to figure out how to get a ongoing financial source to make sure that on an annual basis you're reinvesting into the most important asset

165in the district beyond your kids and your staff that that we we make sure that that's not we're not back in this cycle. And that will be a conversation we bring forward to you, right? Do we need to identify an ongoing revenue source to do that? Do we need to make further cuts as well too? And and and really at the end of the day, the it will be here's your options. We're really not going to tell you what to do, but here are your options and here's the impact of that decision. But great question. I have a question. Um, how will how will we assess the change in student populations that will occur with the opening of the new foster school? How will we determine the actual numbers of students that will be moving

166from school from the the place where the students are distributed from back to foster school and what those implications will have for enrollment at those schools. So, I'm going to turn this over to Dr. Beardsley. She's actively been doing that already in in preparedness for that. So um two pieces to this answer. First that uh 2024 demography report gives us projections on essentially gives us the number that if all students based on that enrollment trend that we have over time that live in the foster attendance boundary attend Foster, it gives us kind of a max enrollment ceiling. Okay. And so the number that's stuck in my head right now is 477, but I can't remember exactly which year that is, but that's based on our kind of enrollment trends and looking at the forecasting he

167did, if all of the students that lived in that foster attendance boundary at the enrollment rate that we practice were to attend, that would be about our number. We also know that when SAP 2 wrapped up, there are families families that are currently attending Willard, Lincolnwood schools other than, you know, that will that live in Foster boundaries but are in different schools. If you've already started in those schools, you will have a choice about whether you stay in that school or whether you return. So if the year that foster opens, a family has a second grader at Lincolnwood, they will have the opportunity to decide if they stay in Lincolnwood or return to Foster. We do no longer provide transportation, however. Okay. So, one of the things the the comments today around Bessie Rhodess noted

168that we plan on pushing out a survey to the folks that live in the foster attendance boundaries and that have students in district 65 in September like midepptember window to say what is your indication about where you are going to attend in the upcoming school year. Are you going to attend Foster or are you wishing to continue to attend the school that you are in? That will give us a ballpark. We are not going to require that families re-register. They're already registered in the district. If they're at a year that would require re-registration, they will have to, but there won't be an additional step, but it will be a form that will be asking the families to make, you know, to let us know what their plans are. All right? And we will then kind

169of continue to follow up and monitor those numbers, but we are, you know, that's how we're going to get our initial look at what our projected enrollments will be. Is there a deadline? Do we have a hard stop? We will give a hard stop and then we'll look at what our response rates are and do further outreach and that might involve community events. It might be going to school events, things like that. This also allows us potentially to get this information into the back to school curriculum nights to try to get make sure that people know this is coming to be able to, you know, increase. But it's going to take a good bit of outreach to try to get a very solid response rate. I have a question. Can you go back to the

170timing slide again? Yeah. When did you say the break was going to be over the summer? So, our last meeting is June 18th. You have a board meeting on June 23rd. The break will pretty much be the whole month of July and a couple weeks into August before we reconvene the subcommittees. Okay. So who is participating in phase two? Phase two is your internal staff. I'm so part two is internal staff. You got it. Okay. And and and what it boils down to is then how do we take all the information together to bring back then based upon what data that the team collects. Yeah. One one thing I just want to say is that there's so much anxiety in our community over this subject that the timeline that we've laid out, while I appreciate

171our need to be very thoughtful and thorough and deliberate and um collaborative in how we're making these decisions, I just urge us to really share some of what the thoughts are prior to potentially, you know, late fall. um just to try and alleviate some of the anxieties that that are that are in our community and to really lean into the communications with the individual school districts and when we're or school buildings and working with PTAs and things to get their feedback on attendance and things like that so that we can be as transparent as possible. Um, you know, I think there's just, you know, every day there's some rumor of, oh, this school is closing and that school's closing and, you know, we just don't know the answer to that question. But in the absence

172of that information, rumors are going to fly. Absolutely. Appreciate that. We'll certainly as we look to build out that part three, we'll certainly make sure that we're working as effectively trying to find that right balance between being thoughtful and engaging with the community and then sharing when we're ready for what would be the recommendation. Have I have a a couple of questions and one to say like I really appreciate the process. I appreciate how SD or PHA is coming together and so my questions aren't because I don't trust the process or definitely the people who are leading it. I think y'all are doing a phenomenal job. the board is responsible for the decision, right? And we were going to have to live that decision and being if we hear about foster school and we hear

173about, you know, we're talking about decisions made in 1970. And so, in some sense, I feel like we're the most passive in this process. Information is coming to us, right? um you know interpretations um and we're making decisions on that but we're not necessarily in the process to hear it. So I think there was a phenomenal um uh Tamara you were talking about the the conversation about finance and the folks who came to explain it which I would imagine that board members should hear that as well. Um but I also understand OMA um and so I know you've had this experience. So can you say a little bit about the models for you know the the challenge of you know we're not making the sausage and so I'm not you know saying hey let us

174do it but how do we really know understand the details to hear it and not always get the interpretation of it yeah and it's and it's so complex I'm not I won't even say for because I think y'all doing a really good job of of of giving notes. So it's it's not at all a critique but I'm just I'm struggling with the responsibility but with being not necessarily you know being part of the creation of the you know and if we get to a point we're like no what does that mean like if we're like no we don't like this criteria well the process has already been created so can you help us so we can all understand that and u thank you sure so I think there's a couple of things and I would

175defer to Dr. Turner, but I've previously allowed board members, as long as you're not violating Open Meetings Act and and to, you know, where maybe your area of expertise is or isn't, I really encourage you to really maybe come to that piece and I'll let Dr. Turner work out those details. Um, because I think at the end of the day, right, it is very complicated, right? Um, I would assume you probably could have access to staff members. And again, now I'm going out on a limb. So, Dr. Turner told me to shut up when I'm supposed to shut up, but I I'm assuming if you have specific questions that you would like to have asked because you want to prudently move forward with being educated in what you're doing. My assumption is balancing all the

176work that they have on their plates, but making sure you are informed with what you need. I'm assuming there probably would be a protocol, and I'll let you speak to that, Dr. Turner because to your point absolutely we don't want to be at a place that all of a sudden you we haven't brought you along in the process as well too. So um I will defer to Dr. Turner. She wants to add anything to that portion of the conversation. Yeah. Thanks Dr. Harkin. So so two two things. One I think we kind of talked to the board about this. We're setting up a plan for a onboarding schedule for board members to meet with all of the respective departments and teams to get the onboarding that you need starting now really in June throughout the

177summer um during the availability of of my team when we're not in the midst of working all on all of these things as well as not trying you know getting in some uh mental and physical health uh during with with vacations during that time when everyone else is on vacation. And so that will be set up in an onboarding schedule. I think I'm going to volley it to Melissa because we know that board members have been asking specifically around um the attending these events. And so again, we wanted to make sure that we got clearance from our legal counsel who just gave us clearance. And so, do you want to share what was shared with you so that board members know what their participation can look like so that we're not in violation of OMA?

178So, I'll I'll turn it over to you, Melissa. Yeah, we wanted to be especially mindful of that just given the significance of the decisions and making sure that we were doing everything by the book. So, um I have reached out. You should have all gotten a message from me about attending one of the upcoming SDRP meetings. essentially we can have two board members present at those meetings um without being in any issue or concern of violation. Um I believe that the thought of our team was really to allow that opportunity to all board members to participate knowing that you all have a vote and an equal responsibility to make decisions. That being said, I believe if it's the desire of the board where it's maybe one individual who's going to repeatedly or serve as a

179liaison to a committee and share updates with the rest of the board, I think that's totally allowable. Right now, we wanted to allow everybody in these next couple meetings the opportunity to be able to participate. And then, um, as Dr. Harkin mentioned, they're going to pick back up in August again. So, if there's a more consistent schedule for that, um, but yeah, we we heard those concerns and and wanting to be able to attend those. So, um I'll be reaching out to you all as I got some final updates from some other board members with the upcoming schedule for the next meetings and to um and once we have uh proposals and this um right now has really been the um the um superintendent and her team engaging the community. Um, in your experience, is

180it always the superintendent and the team or is there should be a role that the board plays also once we're, you know, when we're saying, "Hey, here's what it is." We have to think about what we're going to do. And just getting your experience and having, you know, been through this process. Yeah. Typically, I've not had board members that have actually sitting on it because it is that challenging piece of the open meetings act. And so I I believe it's always been in my experience that we keep you informed and we find ways to make sure that you have information so that we're bringing you along in the process and also using board meetings, right, really is the avenue because we don't want to do things that aren't transparent. So I think, you know, it's

181either more frequent updates potentially here and I know it's already late tonight, right, with your board meetings, but I think, you know, is is there a balance? And I know you do have a standing agenda item which is this this specific topic. So I think you know at this point are can you add into your board meetings maybe also so that one everybody in the public knows what you're hearing and you're voicing your concerns asking your questions so that your community knows where you stand with all this. So I you know I think there's all of those options. Typically though because of the open meetings act it makes it very challenging for board members to actually serve on these types of committees. And at the end of the day, right, we also don't want to

182leave the impression that the committees are the decision maker. And I think once you come into it and participate in it, it gives the lens really at the end of the day, we're getting their feedback. And again, we have people at various viewpoints in our committee structures, right, that have very different opinions. And so, right, that's the challenge in the beautiful democratic process, which is how do we land with trying to hear voices, trying to solve the math equation and do right by our community and kids. And so, I I would just suggest that you know, either probably more frequent or um you know, I think it's really great if you can come attend because I think you'll learn a lot from that. Thank you on that. It was just important to sort of talk

183about this as people were saying what is your role uh in doing that and one like just for the record because I know Northwestern was mentioned and I know there's I have nothing to do um with the analysis that Northwestern is doing for uh SDP. I'm disconnected for that. Just want to put that in the record. Thank you. I have two more questions. Um, so some things are best left up the imagination, but I heard you say additional funding sources. So I I'm put I want to I want to push at this because I'm concerned that on the slides it looks like we're going to make it to the end of SDRP3 and we're done. And that's I don't I don't think that's the case. I think we're going to have hard work to do

184after SDRP3. So can you tell me I don't want to leave it up to my imagination or the community's imagination. What is additional funding sources? Sure. So, so ultimately, don't you have that on the slide, Susan? I thought it was on one. I could have missed it. I It's 9 p.m. Go back. It's the slide. Keep going. I think it's on finance. It is right right there. Go back. Oh, it's even here, too. Explore potential referendum options. Yeah. But if you go back to that other one, it says funding sources and then it lists the other options that are other funding sources. I did not say it out loud. Um, but absolutely the math equation also can afford for if there's support to increase taxes to afford some of the financial challenges in front of

185us as well too. So, um, ultimately reductions ultimately revenue source that comes in to help support this and I think that's going to be what's in front of this community. It's, you know, certainly, you know, we can go further into additional reductions. Um, but I can't promise you this time that it won't make significant impacts to what we're doing in our classrooms and in our schools. But yes, the the conversation was um potentially a referendum. And this actually this this right here is really the question for me. We need to understand that and we're not in that conversation and that is what my concern is. We're going to get to the point where we're going to have to be making decisions, you know, and I understand Tamara is going to understand it and everyone else

186and I just want to figure out if there's ways that we can figure out how to learn it and understand it so when we present it maybe proposals like that we can understand it. So, and that would be my recommendation for the June 23rd presentation, right? once we get the information because if this community group can't get behind potentially this as an option I think this will be your litmitness test. Is this something we should move forward with? And so so I think we're trying to educate this community group to see help them understand this with us coming back to you in June for what those might be and what those options might be. Does that feel right? Yeah. I mean, so yes and no, but in some sense that we were vetted by the

187community to sort of help in this process. And I trust and respect the community. So I'm not saying it doesn't feel right, but actually what I feel I hear you saying that you present these and if the community decides life safety bonds is not an option, but maybe it should be an option, it's not going to be on the table. And I think and so that's that's the piece where I'm I'm grappling with um and I mean we're not going to you know just that's just the reality and I just want to put I'm just trying to bring this into the space when later someone's like oh why didn't it's like well it's a the board role is is unique in the situation of OMA in terms of how you're actively involved in the process

188but okay thank you and can I jump in real quick? I'm sorry I don't mean to cut anyone off. um in January when we had our municipal adviser out, he presented a schedule that involved coming back to the board in June to represent some financing information. So, um that's in the plan right now. What I what I'm hoping is that he'll be able to come to the June 2nd committee of the whole meeting and then that way he can give a full um presentation, a full outline of all of the financing options available. And so then that way the board will have that opportunity to sit with that from June 2nd until June 23rd. Uh and that'll be an opportunity to ask him all of the questions. I do have the slide deck that he

189used for May 7. So I'm happy to share that with Adila uh to share with the board as well. So uh you're welcome to all of that information. I have one last question too. Uh so um and this may be for you Dr. Turner. Um but um so how are we intentionally engaging? So there's persons and communities who typically won't be represented in these volunteer meetings that repeated over time. So, just how are we intentionally engaging uh racial minoritized communities, low-in communities, Spanish speaking? Um, and then will be will we as a board be able to see data about where demographic data about where where I mean we have the the totals here, but will we able to see, you know, here's how many folk from this and this school or um um black persons

190or lowincome persons or Yeah, I we have the information from the application that was provided to us by each of the um individuals who uh were selected to serve on the committee. So, that's something that we can definitely look at providing to the board um with the information. That being said, not everybody, you know, responds to every every question and and some people choose not to selfidentify, but we could provide the information from the committees on that. Um, additionally, just in terms of some like engagement and outreach, some of what we've been trying to do over this past year in various phases is, you know, going into places where um families and community members are at. So, um I know was it two months ago or something, Dr. Turner attended the Fifth Ward Black Club

191meeting and we're trying to meet families there. Additionally, we've given this presentation at our bilingual parent advisory committee meeting to try and engage families. Um, we always send out I think one of the reasons that we've been successful with phase one and two of our SDRP engagement and we can always get better and reach more families and communities of course, but um we've really intentionally partnered with community organizations to help share information. So, um, that's, uh, Evston Cradle to career, um, the Evston chapter of NAACP with our pay, uh, PTA organizations, um, Evston Latinos, different groups to be able to share information, knowing not everybody may read the Fast Five or go onto the district website, but they may be reading something in their church bulletin. So, we send it to all of our faith-based

192leaders and ask them to share the information out. So, I do think that some of our engagement rates have been a little bit higher there, but there's definitely room to improve and we're always open to suggestions. So, if any board members or community members have ways of connecting, um I think that's definitely something we're interested in knowing more. Yeah, I was I was going to echo the same thing. You know, I want to make it clear and I know new board members are coming in, but we we don't claim to be the experts at this. We're we're giving it the best run that we possibly got. And so what we do welcome is is the the feedback and insight of ways that you believe that we can target those um marginalized communities that we haven't

193already um thought about based off of our outreach to in certain spaces and places in Evston as well as being thoughtful about partnering partnering with our community partners. This is also making me think and I don't know and and maybe you can chime on this is you know it goes back to Nicole's question of really how can board members be involved in this process? How can board members create a space where um it's open that's led by you all as board members to glean any feedback and allow us as district maybe potentially to be in the space to be listeners and you all facilitate it. Right. I'm thinking of things that I'm told the district used to do um the coffee Yeah. the real estate meetings or something that Right. Like so so I I

194want to say very transparently me and my team welcome that because I do think and what we made clear on about the first three or five slides is that the decision the the the board of education holds the decision. So I think the the comm you all having some stake in that in the community of holding that and hearing what is being said that often times may not be shared with the district because we're making the decision when we've said to them that we're not may open up this level of transparency to you all that we're not getting. So, I just want to say that very very openly that we're willing, you know, we're open to that. Like, we have no reservation on on that. What that would look like as again relates to OMA

195and how you do it. We can partner with our legal counsel to figure out how to do it. I don't know how the cafes were done. Yeah, we we've coordinated them in the past with previous boards and as one of the parent mentioned in public comment, you know, each of the board members has a school serves as a school liaison which has been a good avenue to be able to ensure that all schools are represented and have connections. So, in the past, we've seen board members do events by feeder patterns, going to the uh you know, a lot of our principles host coffees and things in the morning and going out. So, um, Adila and I have always partnered to support the board in terms of that kind of engagement and outreach. So, that's something

196that was is being planned as part of the communications team on boarding for board members that'll be coming up. One thing I was thinking about too is uh we can go, you know, the alderman have their ward meetings, right? So, that's one way where we can invite ourselves as part of the agenda, right? and attend some of those ward meetings where folks again these are spaces that are already you know happening uh that are already engaging folks uh again I used I used to at the beginning of my board uh board tenure was host coffees uh with another board member so that again within the parameters of uh of so that's another option as well you know we host them in the second ward in the fifth ward where they were you know really try

197I would try to target the the Latino community to kind of let me know what's going on uh so So, and then bring back that information to the rest of the board and say, "Look, here's what I heard and this is what folks are thinking." So, again, I think us being proactive if if you feel if you all feel that's a need or there's a miss there's a missing aspect or viewpoint, that's I think where we could step in as board members. Right. We need to be carried away. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Any other questions, comments, questions, concerns? One one question for me. Uh you know um so given the current federal administration and uh the attacks on on on work on some of the good work that we've done here um is is the possible

198loss of federal funding factored into uh that last number that the 15 million. Um so okay. Yeah. So we're yeah it's I guess not. So you know the and it's one that all school districts are grappling with and all school districts are grappling with this. I'm just saying, you know, it's something that we of course has definitely has to be on our radar. Y that's actually going to make it even more complicated. Yeah, absolutely. On the deficit, right? If I can go back to just just because I can be the consultant that just raises this if you do make the decision that individually you're going to engage in various groups, I would establish a protocol of what you're asking because at the end of the day, you're just one board member, right? and in in

199one we have to protect you because right people are going to want you to say certain things, promise certain things and again you're a group of seven that ultimately will have to vote on it. So I would just recommend absolutely whatever access you can give to groups that potentially we don't normally get feedback on is important but a structure in order to get that information in a way that we can put it into our ultimate decision making. I would just caution us that we make sure we follow through with what that will look like. I think it's really important, but I think a structure is really important as well. Can we work with you? Yeah, and that's what I I was going to say. Can we make sure that the first initial conversations with board

200members and two ons are established that criteria is established and that's usually how Dr. Harkin starts off with kind of hearing and then kind of naming collectively what she heard and kind of creating some some level of some parameters for us. So, thank you for naming that. Yeah. So, again, really important and you have access, but really you need to make sure ultimately you're one vote and so we want to make sure we manage that information. You can't just go and say I wish there was a magic wand that solved all of this, right? Because I think that's ultimately what we'd love, right? Yeah, the the reminder is that is this is that again I think we you know we we all come with as board members we we we have these issues that we

201all each care about tremendously right all of us campaigned and worked towards this role uh to try to make an impact on some of the things that we care about. The reminder is that again we're we're working at a systems level, right? We're trying to make sustainable substantive change at a systems level and it's really easy to get um caught up by the folks who have our ear immediately, right? Uh so the reminder is this is that so we we have to have that structure uh and ensure and remind ourselves okay we are working for all students for a whole system and what is it that we can do to again really uplift the work that's been going on and planning all of this uh to create a sustainable and highquality educational system right not

202just the school not just the classroom not just the teacher but a whole system that that we're in charge of, right? Um that should be financially sustainable and then really guarantees incredible social emotional as well as uh academic uh outcomes for our students and families. So again, that that is the thing that we always have to remind ourselves of. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Uh so the next item up is our uh the April 2025 uh finan I'm sorry the 65 financial systems and best practices as well as our 2025 financial report. Thanks Dr. Harkin. Thank you Dr. Hark. All right. So, uh, the presentation, this presentation, uh, is an opportunity to revisit a framework that was presented in September of 2024. So, just about, what's that, nine months ago?

203Um, so it's an opportunity to discuss the progress that we've made so far uh towards the things that are in that framework. So uh the items that are here uh on this slide again meant to be a framework that shaped the major focus of the financial services department for this year for FY25. That focus was to ensure that we were aligning systems with best practices in terms of creating efficiencies, improving the timeliness of delivery of key financial information to the board and improving our checks and balances uh throughout the department. So I will talk through some of the actions that we've taken to date as we uh worked through this framework for this year. This looks like a road map to me. So it gets us from point A to point B. All of the

204points that or all of the bullet points there are how we are getting from point A to point B in this framework. So you'll note that there's one bullet point there that is uh highlighted in red font and I'll talk about that a bit later. That one's a bit different because we had to pause it for this fiscal year due to the work and the focus that we had on the SDRP. Uh so but I will talk about that a bit later. So now I will move into uh just speaking about some of the things that we accomplished this year that we're proud of um and how we addressed all of these bullet points. So the first thing up monthly reporting. So we made a commitment to the board and the community to provide a

205financial uh dashboard and we've done that. That financial dashboard is available on the website on the financial services section. uh through that we've increased accessibility of our monthly reports. So our monthly reports have always been available on board book but for people to get to them they would have to know to go to the website go to uh the board of education link and then scroll to each agenda item. So, we've put those monthly dashboards uh on that page there on the financial services website. So, the monthly reports are visible to both the board and the community. Additionally, the uh full monthly financials have been enhanced a bit for readability. So, in the past, those uh monthly financial reports again, you'd have to go to board book, people would have to click through each individual

206report to see information. So, what we've done is streamline things, put everything into one report, divide it into sections, so the user can just go through, look at a financial report, scroll to whatever section they're interested in looking at in one document, and not have to click through five or six different reports in order to get information. So, we think that that's a much more user-friendly experience with our monthly reports. Uh as far as timely recording of financial activity, one of the things that we really wanted to uh highlight there is this is something that Dr. Turner began last fiscal year uh by directing that all bills relevant to FY24 be paid prior to June 30th of that fiscal year. The reason that happened is that it had been discovered that at times bills were

207being held from one fiscal year to the next. And so, uh, that was identified by our independent financial auditors from Illuminate. Once that was identified, Dr. Turner gave that directive to, uh, pay those bills in the correct fiscal year. And so, we're continuing with that because that is definitely a best practice. Um, also, financial reports are being presented to the board as of the close of the prior fiscal month. Um, in the past, those reports were sometimes as much as four months behind for the board. So for instance, in May of 2024, the board was looking at financial reports from March of 2024, whereas this May, you're looking at financial reports as of April 30th. So, uh, we've closed that gap by a month and provided that timely information. Moving on to budget control systems.

208Uh, one of the features that we've been sure to engage in our financial software is to not allow requisitions to move forward if a budget line has been exceeded. Uh, so that is an additional feature that we have to ensure that we're staying within budget per each budget line. Um, additionally, members of the financial services team conducted what we call a training tour. So they went to each school to meet with the administration, the administrative staff there as well. Um and then met with individual departments here at JH to make sure that there was and provide a better understanding of the financial software, understanding the budget reports because what we learned was that there was not a lot of familiarity with looking at budget reports with using the financial software really having an understanding of

209the budgeting process and the expenditure process at all. So really proud of the work that the team did there with getting that training tour done. Uh and lastly, what we've done is create system generated and scheduled reports. So cabinet leads and department heads are now receiving system generated budget reports. This can help them track their spendown of budget lines and then monitor progress towards budgetary goals for the year. In terms of accounts payable processes, we've moved uh from perhaps what were several check runs per month to just one large AP check run per month plus our payroll liabilities and utilities runs. That aligns us to board policy which that was not happening in the past. Um and then again the board was receiving a list of bills. Uh right now the board is receiving a

210list of bills in advance of payment. Um, and that was not happening in the past. The board was receiving a list of bills that was two months old, sometimes four months old. Those bills had already been released. So, it was moreformational versus reviewing the bills and having a chance to ask questions, perhaps pull a bill back, etc. So, we've uh changed that process as well. As far as the use of pecards, we've enhanced some of those practices. There were pecards that were or the pec cards are the district's credit card. So pec cards were issued in individual staff member names and what we did was change those uh pec cards that were in individual names to department cards. So we have reduced the cards down to five department cards. Those are technology buildings and grounds

211financial services nutrition services and the superintendent. Uh many of the miscellaneous purchases are charged to the financial services department card, but that's only after review and approval. And please please specify superintendent cuz I I want not want to go on record. My good friend Jeff is here from Evston now. He's ready to create a narrative. So I do not have and I just want to say that again. I do not have access to a card. I never had one since I've been in this role even when I started as the interim superintendent. And so that every card that you are that she's referring to and I'm going on record publicly for this is held in the financial services department with a whole system to check out. I don't even know what the pecard looks like.

212So I just want to be very clear with everybody in stating that because I know the narratives that we'll create. All right. Thank you Dr. Turner. Um additionally we uh implemented a pecard manual that had been developed. It started being developed in April of 2024, again under Dr. Turner's leadership. Um, so that PECARD manual began development in April 2024. Uh, we finalized it in August of 2024 and now that PECARD manual is in use. All of the users of the Pecards, uh, for instance, I mentioned the financial services card being used for miscellaneous purposes. So, as people are using that card, they have to get approval. There's a form, they have to sign off on everything. So, there's a whole process with it that we've implemented. Um, in terms of the contract approval process, that

213process has been enhanced a bit this year. The district had a robust contract process in place last year, but we've enhanced it even more uh to the point where cabinet members are bringing uh scopes of work, if they have any contracts, bringing a scope of work to weekly check-in meetings with Dr. Turner. Um and also requesters are required to provide an adequate funding source. So if that account number that's put on that statement uh uh the S so is not adequately funded that contract does not get approved. Additionally, if a contract is going to exceed the amount that was approved, then that contract has to go through an amendment process. So, we're not just allowing contracts to go above what was approved uh because that was an issue in years past. And so, now I

214want to talk about some strategic accomplishments that uh we are very proud of in the financial services department. So, as far as sitebased budgeting, we have expanded that sitebased budgeting. It was in place in the district, but we've expanded it a bit. One area that we've expanded it is um implementing for various expenditures like lunchroom supervisors uh agency related services like our temporary agencies and staff recognition. In the past all of those expenditures were charged to one district-wide account. So it's very difficult for building leaders to know how much they were spending in these areas and difficult for district staff to determine what school was spending this or what department was spending that. So we've broken that out and made it uh sight based so the building leaders can have a better understanding and we

215can at the district level as well. As part of that we partnered with the human relations team on creating a staffing allocation for lunchroom supervision. Again that uh was more of a a building thing where oh I need a lunchroom supervisor so we'll just call Stipers and get a lunchroom supervisor out. Styver is an agency. Um whereas we put in place this year there's a formula that goes into place and says this building can have x number of lunchroom supervisors and that's what we hold the buildings to uh as far as the a participation. So I'll jump down to that last bullet point because it's tied together. So that last bullet point there of development of a new vendor form. There was a state mandate in 2022 uh where vendor information was required to be

216collected in terms of WBE or women business enterprise, minority business enterprise, small business or veteranowned. That vendor form had not been updated in the district. So we had our team update the business update the vendor form. So we're collecting that information. Uh so as part of that we reached out to our existing vendors and asked them to complete the information on the form and asked if you're not participating in the AC uh process to get paid would you like to do so and so that generated increased participation in our AC process as one of our checks and balances that we implemented. We now have a two-party review for a system setup. So one employee will uh look at the information that's coming from the vendor, put it into the system. Employee number two will review

217that and make sure that everything is correct before that information is finalized. Uh that helps to prevent payments going to the wrong vendor and it can also be a fraud prevention as well. Uh we also engaged a new municipal advisory firm PMA Securities. I mentioned uh Mr. Bob Lewis earlier. Also a new independent financial audit firm. Uh that firm's name is Whipley. the district's independent financial auditors, Baker Tilly, had been in place for five years. Uh recognized best practice in governmental accounting is to re-evaluate and perhaps competitively bid audit services every 5 to seven years. So, we engaged in that process. Uh and we now have a new financial auditor that will be auditing this fiscal year and then the next four as well because the contract is for five years. Uh and then I

218already covered the development of the vendor form. Other accomplishments, cost containment strategies. We partnered with the transportation team to consolidate some prek routes and that's uh reduced some costs for this year. Our grants manager has also been doing some proactive grant monitoring to reduce the return of funds. So in years past there's been um sometimes where all of the grant funds just can't be spent and then those funds are getting returned. So we have her being uh much more proactive and reaching out to people who are responsible for those grants to hopefully reduce the amount of funds that are being returned. And then lastly there the audit finding corrective actions. So for the FY24 audit there were two findings identified. One related to the TRS annual financial report the other related to the bank reconciliation

219process. So that TRS annual report finding, we have corrected that by now having the payroll staff proactively review the TRS data to ensure that it's accurate and submit it on time. Uh what really caused that finding was last year the staff was just pushing reports through with errors on them and not addressing those errors and then that resulted in that large amount that had to be paid in this fiscal year that should have been paid in last fiscal year. uh for the bank reconciliation process. Right now, we have all of the reconciling adjustments that are appearing on the uh bank wreck, those are able to be tied to supporting documentation in the general ledger. So, all of that has been um everything that's a reconciling adjustment can be substantiated. We have the support to back

220it up. So, that has been corrected as well. So, when the audit team comes in to audit this year's books, that should resolve both of those audit findings. future considerations. Again, that development of position control system, that was what was in red on that slide that had all the bullet points. We had to pause that due to our focus on SDRP. So, that's a project that we will collaboratively work with the human relations team on. Um, as soon as we can get some breath from SDRP, we will um put some time in the focus there. Timekeeper software is another collaborative project with human relations as well as technology that's going to increase our efficiency and accuracy within the payroll department. Um, and we are looking to implement that next year, next fiscal year as well.

221And then lastly, workflow management. All of the changes with SDRP phase 2 implementation are going to require some workflow adjustments within our financial software and then staff training as a result of that. So there may be people in the system responsible for entering requisitions or approving requisitions that have never done so. Um so it's going to require some hands-on training with that. So, a lot of focus will be on that in the next uh in the coming months as we shift into the uh new way that the district is going to look as far as staffing. And that is all I have for that update. Questions? Thank you so much, Tamara, for presenting some of the uh controls as well as refined processes around our finances. Colleagues, are any questions? I just want to say

222like I I feel like you went through this, but I just want to point out this is a tremendous accomplishment and I just as a board member I feel yeah I feel so much better. I I feel like in the past we saw reports that were you know pretty much meaningless because we didn't know how much had been spent. We didn't know what was paid, what was unpaid, how much was left in budget. Um, and these changes and controls that you've put in place just give me so much more confidence and help us be able to make the decisions we need to make because we're looking at accurate information. Thank you to both of you. This is really big. Dr. Turner is just systems, processes, and procedures. And I do want to give a big

223shout out to my team, my financial services team, and my director of financial services is back there, Fay Kung Lee, as well. So, um, could not put all of these things in place without the team supporting. So, just wanted to be sure to give that shout out as well. A question. I just have one question and I know, you know, I think that all of the work that we're doing in STRP is really a result of, you know, a lot of this work not having been done prior. So, thank you so much for all of this diligence and detail oriented and systems building here. You know, I think one of the things that the community is is always asking is, you know, there was a lot of irregularities prior to your arrival, Dr. Turner and

224and now that we can see sort of what that means, what would your you know as as a superintendent of the district now, how can you or what what advice do you give to the board or how can you as the leader of the district ensure that the that the deficit spending that was not budgeted for doesn't happen again? That's a good question. Um how can my your question to me is recommendation do you have for this board and what can you do to help support the work that Tamara's been doing and that to to prevent the the malfeasants or you know issues that we we encountered over the last several years. I think I think my recommendation to the board is is what you know um ex the existing board and what you know

225you all as new board members I think ask the questions right like you know you you come into a very unique role of not knowing the intricacies of how things go and so feel free to ask the team questions we don't have a a problem with answering any of your questions of course Tamara as the CFO does the more finite uh in the weeds with her team, but she's very knowledgeable and skilled. And I think, you know, we have a a great system where it's the checks and balances. I follow that same measure when I meet with my team weekly, right? I'm asking questions about their work. I'm trying to really get to peeling the layers of the onion to really understand of all of the different aspects. And I think the more that uh

226that happens, it allows us to have honest conversations. It allow us to see other avenues and things that we may not see. Um and I think that has been helpful for me and my team in terms of your level of inquiry. I think as four new board members coming in, it takes us back to ground zero because you're asking very minute things which allows us to check and make sure you know like that you have the clear understanding and that we're transparent and then you help us to see then what aspects is necessary for us to be transparent and and forthright with the community. I think we've, you know, collectively, and I I speak on behalf of the existing folks that's up here, we've we've really tried to get very much um more succinct in

227the processes and much more transparent around having the open conversations. And I think the more we have these open conversations around where the the challenges are, where we see things go with the budget, it it just helps people to see like we have nothing to hide. like we we we're giving you everything. We put it in the the monthly reports. And so I think that that piece helps. I think you know the control systems that we've put in place in full transparency really really is mechanisms to keep me even honest as the superintendent. Right? As I stated before, I don't own a a pecard. I have to go through the same process as every other employee. I can't require or put a system, a process or a structure in place that I don't hold myself

228or expect them to hold. Like I don't my rank as a superintendent doesn't make me elevated from not holding true to the same systems processes that I have staff to do. And so they'll tell you, you know, I'll I'll go the long way of, you know, submitting for a reimbursement and go through the same process that any of them would have to go through just to keep the controls in place because really what it's about in full transparency creating systems, processes, and structures should should outlive people. And the practice we've done in this district is we have operated under where practices have been hijacked or held under people and then when they leave it's such a I like to use this term that I we keep continuously uncovering. It's called manufactured chaos, right? It's just

229manufactured chaos because this is what this person has done and you can't figure it out. It's so convoluted. It's not the most efficient way to do business. And the amount of time and work that we put into this work is just crazy. I just think about in in previous years the payroll department really kind of operate. I feel like it's and and FA and Tamara will be able to tell you a little bit more. I haven't heard the oh I you know they might come in on Saturdays and fix problems but it was like almost like they work 24 hours a day seven days a week cuz they here on Saturday and Sunday trying it that doesn't even make any sense right and so how do we just are thoughtful about putting the systems in

230place making sure they're as efficient and productive and accurate and more importantly it's giving us a it's getting us a return on our invest investment so that we can all work toward a level of work life balance. Um, if that makes any sense. And so I think I don't know if I answered your question, but I think that's that's just where I am right now. I just don't want to continue to work this hard. I just don't want my team to continue to work this hard. So it's about putting the systems, the processes in place and then letting it I the visual that comes in my mind is a gear. And when things are moving, that gear is constantly turnurning on and on and on and on. And there's refinements. You might have to add

231some oil to it to kind of if it starts to slow down, but it's it's continuing to move. And that's what we're really trying to get through to get to by creating these systems, processes, and structures here in the district. It's a flywheel. A flywheel. Oh, it's called a flywheel now. A flywheel. Thank you. I'm old school. It's a gear. Flywheel. Flyhe starts moving by itself. Thank you very much. Thanks, Tamara. Great job. Thank you. Next item up is our proposed action items. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. The 2025 financial report. I'm sorry. Yes. So, the uh April 2025 financial reports have been provided for your review and those reports are publicly available in board book as well. Now we have our proposed action items. Omer, I move that the board of education approve the

232items, accept the recommendations outlined in the attached group motion, and approve the personnel appointments, leaves, and separations. Resolutions authorizing notice of dismissal of educational support staff employees as noted, April 2025 board of education meeting minutes, gift acceptance for Lincoln, Nichols, and Walker, and the May 2025 bills payable. Second. Any questions or comments before we vote? I have a question about the gifts. Um just as far as the one fund um and ensuring um equitable access to resources across the district um particularly want to ask about the the the screens um AV in the cafeteria space. Is that representative of all schools having similar capabilities? So specifically that is a gift from the Nichols PTA to the Nickel Nichols cafeteria and that is part of the technologies plan for essentially space improvement and that work has

233already be been done at Haven and Chute. So it actually does really it is an equitable contribution and it relieves the district of a technology expense that we had in our plan. Thank you. We'll take the vote. Salem, yes. Anderson, yes. Pinker, yes. Updike, yes. Wymer, yes. Wilkins, yes. Hernandez, yes. Motion passes 70. All right. So, the next item up is our amended school year 2024 2025 administrator contracts. I move that the board of education approve the amended school year 2024 2022 administrator contract as noted. a second. Any questions or comments for the vote? I just Tiffany stepped out, but I just really want to just remind the board that these if if new board would know, but existing board, but to tell everybody these are the 2024 2025 administrative contracts. When we engage in

234the um uh bargaining agreement with the deck teachers union, we paused on any body receiving any type of updates. Once that was passed, the board came back later approved for those administrative increases and this is just approving the contracts to match that essentially. Just so just wanted to give that public commentary. Okay, I'll take the vote. Salem, yes. Anderson, yes. Pinker, yes. Updike, yes. Wymer, yes. Wilkins, yes. Hernandez, yes. Motion passes 70. Next item is our bids for grounds and landscape maintenance. I move that the board of education approve the recommended bid for grounds and landscape maintenance services. Second. questions come. Okay, take the vote. Salem, yes. Anderson, yes. Pinker, yes. Update, yes. Wymer, yes. Wilkins, yes. Hernandez, yes. Motion passes 70. Next item up is the approval of the flooring bid. I move that

235the board of education approve the recommended flooring bid. Second. Is this any questions? Is this the foster school flooring bid? Yes. This is the one that was like the increase in price. Yeah. You want to come talk about it? This was the foster school one, right, Kurt? This to everyone? No. Oh, this is Omar. No, this is not Oh, this is not that. I'm sorry. This one in particular is the flooring that is going into Willard, Washington, and Haven after we abate asbestous this summer. Oh, okay. Okay. Thank you. Are these the three schools we're taking offline to do this? These three schools do not have summer programming. Right. Okay. Just thanks for that clarity. I remember that. Yeah. These are the three schools. Sorry, Omar. You want to just tell us something? Omar, what

236you got to say? Yeah. Um, yeah, this is for the uh project, summer project that we have uh districtwide, not the uh foster school. Okay. Okay. Okay. Thank you. All right. Thank you. It's not F. Thank you. Thanks. Did anyone second it? Yeah. Hernand it. I'll take the vote. Salem. Yes. Anderson, yes. Pinker, yes. Up, yes. Wymer, yes. Wilkins, yes. Hernandez, yes. Motion passes 70. Next item up is approval of the 2025 Cintas dust map service agreement. I move that the board of education approve the recommended 2025 CANS dust mop service agreement. Second. Any questions, comments, colleagues? Yeah, I'm curious here if we're with the removal of the uniform rental here. Um, is this cost being passed on to employees? What's happening with the uniforms? So, the cost is not being passed on to the

237employees. There are a couple things going on here. Over the last couple years, uh, custodians and maintenance team have the have had the opportunity to wear the Cintas uniforms with a which is a shirt pant combination or to wear a District 65 t-shirt that is essentially a m a t-shirt for maintenance team. the vast majority of the employees opt for the t-shirt and their personal pants. Um, so we will continue to provide the t-shirts as well as, you know, we'll kind of move in and out with sweatshirts or things like that for appropriate seasons. We'll continue to do that. We did also engage with the union with ECMA on this so they know we're moving away from this. Part of the agreement though to get out of the agreement, we needed to purchase the uniforms

238that were part of this whole rental deal. Those uniforms will continue to be available for the employees that we have and they'll use them and then we'll phase them out ultimately in time, but no additional cost is being passed on to the to the custodians or maintenance teams. I don't think I've ever seen them, but just in the district 65, the maintenance team wears them a little bit more than custodial warehouse, but all of them had them and so it was time to get out of the contract. I'm thinking of the our custodians at the schools cuz they and this does also include then the cleaning of the dust mops, replacement of those and the mats on the entrance to school which are really difficult to clean with our equipment. Thank you. Can we Did

239we get a second for that? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I'll take the vote. Salem, yes. Anderson, yes. Pinker, yes. Optic, yes. Wymer, yes. Wilkins, yes. Hernandez, yes. Motion passes 70. Next item up is the approval of nutrition services contract with district 202. I move the board of education approve the recommended nutrition services contract with district 202. Second. Okay, we'll take the vote. Salem, yes. Anderson, yes. Pinker, yes. Optek, yes. Wymer, yes. Wilkins, yes. Hernandez, yes. Motion passes 70. Next item up is approval of recommended meal price increase for fiscal year 26. I move that the board of education approve the recommended fiscal year 26 meal price increase. Second. Any questions or comments on the on the meal increases? I was just curious the impact on the reduced cost. Um what is that? It it's still minimal.

240It looks like 40 cents I believe. Yeah, it's an incremental and small increase. What was the increase? the I would I honestly don't have that in front of me, but it steps down, so it's 40 or a little bit more. Okay. Okay. I'll take the vote. Salem, yes. Anderson, yes. Pinker, yes. Update, yes. Wymer, yes. Wilkins, yes. Hernandez, yes. Motion passes 70. The next item up is our fiscal year 26 consolidated district plan for title and grants. I move that the board of education approve the recommended fiscal year 26 consolidated district plan for title and IDA grants. Second. Any comments or questions on this? Is it possible really high level just to give like a few brief bullets on what the changes were? Anybody want to speak to the changes to the consolidated um changes

241to Well, for IDEA, there's no changes. We're just continuing on with our SD um our strategic plan to address um areas like um continued improvement in reading and um math for students with IEPs, decreasing um uh suspension rates for our students with IEPs. Uh same thing for students who um are at risk. Um so all of our efforts are aimed at that in addition to um our parah educators. Um um there's about 47 I believe uh PAR educators that are funded um through our idea grant. So no real changes just continuing on with the strategic plan. That's great. Thank you. I have a couple. I did provide um additional deta I can provide additional details though to to really lay out exactly what the funding is um geared towards. Um so a couple places in

242this um there is a baseline metric for suspension rate by race, socioeconomic status, and students with disabilities. It was blank or had a hy a dash. What is that? Yes. So, um I can generate that information for you all and provide that information um at a later date. I don't have that available, but we did provide it in our EPI uh presentation. Um so, I just need to pull it from there in order to um provide you all with that. Um and I can do that as early as um tomorrow or Wednesday for you guys. Um, on page 28, it says that there's quarterly progress reviews on the strategic plan that are public available at the district's website. I think the quarterly progress reviews aren't the EPI report. Yeah, they're Well, that's that's just one

243part of the strategic plan though, right? So, that's not the KPIs then, right? Yeah, it's not the KPI. So, just to flag for us, I know that this has a function that, you know, we don't need to pick at that, but just to flag for us that we need to be posting that. Um, that needs to be publicly available. Um, and then there's another one in page 47. It says that IEP data includes disagregated data for black, latinext, and duly identified students. Um, I thought that it said that was available. I can't find that data. So, I'm just curious where that is publicly available. It was um an update in our last um EPI. It's on the EPI. Yes. But um again, I can just pull that information to make it accessible to you all

244in one space. Okay. Thank you. I went through the EPI really quick earlier tonight and I just didn't see it. I'll go back again. Okay. Let's go for the vote. I'll take the vote. Salem, yes. Anderson, yes. Pinker, yes. Optek, yes. Wymer, yes. Wilkins, yes. Hernandez, yes. Motion passes 70. All right. Next item up is the board organization and approval of the 2025 2026 board meeting dates. Uh I move that the board of education approve the recommended 2025 2026 board meeting dates. Second. Any uh discussion on that uh or concerns? I just want to know that 4:30 is hard for folk uh who have business hour jobs. Yeah, I agree. I know we you know we we've talked about this in previous board iterations. Uh it it is tough. I know for the for the

245for the doctor Dr. Turner and her team again I know it's again as we mentioned earlier right we really want to try to strike a work life balance for everybody. Um, yeah. I mean, again, at 4 4:30 is a is a bit tough for folks who again, like you said, Andrew, you know, you got your families and there's things that you want to do or or get done. Uh, got to prepare dinner just before you leave, come come to a board meeting, right? You don't have you don't get time to do that if you're coming in 4:30. So, I I know the challenge. Uh um so I mean we used to we used to start um our at least committee the whole meetings uh I I believe it was at 5:30 if I remember correctly.

246So we we just put it back an hour for the this p in our last iteration. Uh but again something that again we're open to discussing and I mean what what do folks think? I mean can we 4:30, 5:30. What What What are folks thoughts and Angel as well and your team? I mean, I I know it's again, it's a tough balance here in regards to making sure that we get enough time to discuss this business. And again, there's no winning. It's a rock and a hard place because when you started at 5:30, then we'll end we'll end up later, right? So, it's it's really no winning either way. So, but would folks be amanable to maybe going back to a 5:30 start for the um to the committee of the whole meeting? What was

247I'm I'm fine either way. 5:30 does feel a little late. Um I don't know five or I was going to say five o'clock. Okay. Five. Yes. A friendly amendment, I guess. move in the structure uh for the so then there's also questions around the structure of the um let's see it that's not it yeah okay you know we can discuss that and be committee committing school leaison assignments so okay so are we are we okay with five o'clock start from committee the holds and of course we're going to have a discussion about what does that look like all All right. And then 6:00 for sorry 6:00 for the regular meetings like today or is that staying at 6? Are we okay with 6:00 with regular boards? Was that a Can we do the other one

248first? Because in some sense we're talking about Yeah.ruct a change to the change to structure to the committee structure. Agree. Say six until we Yeah, that's right. Because there is there is a Yeah. Okay. Okay. So So let's Yeah, we're going to hold our vote on that. But let's look at the committee and school leaison assignments. Um so in um honor and respect to the OMA, I know I've reached out individually to some of you. You reached out to me in regards to what the school board assignments in the past week individually again uh in in compliance with OMA. Uh so what I do have in regards to and I'll read off or u at least what I've come down to in in the draft for the school leaison assignments. Let me know if you

249want to change but here's who I have uh for 2025 2026 Bessie Rhodess. Uh the board liaison is Omar Salem. Uh for shoot we have Maria Forest Updike. Uh for Daws we have Andrew Wymer. For Dwey, we have Maya Wilkins. For early childhood, uh, we have Patricia Anderson. For foster school, we have Nicole Pinker. For Haven Haven, we have Maria Forest Optike. For King Lab, we have Nicole Pinker. For Kingsley, we have Maya Wilkins. For Lincoln, we have Andrew Wymer. For Lincolnwood, we have Nicole Pinker. For Nicholls, we have Omar Salem. For Oakton, that's Sergio Hernandez. Orington, Sergio Hernandez. Park, Patricia Anderson, Rice, Patricia Anderson. Walker, Omar Salem, Washington, Sergio Hernandez, and Willard Maria Force. Optike, is there any are we okay? Is there any changes that you'd like to see in this draft? Okay.

250All right. The next uh piece that we we're looking at too is the committees. Uh so we're looking for chairs. Uh and let me find that document here. It's on the back. It's on the back of Oh, it's in the back of the Okay. Did send out a Oh, here we go. Okay. Okay. So, uh, for curriculum policy committee, uh, I have Maya Wilkins as the chairperson and, uh, Andrew Wymer and Pat Anderson. For curriculum policy committee, uh, joint district 65202 committee, we have Nicole Pinker, Sergio Hernandez, and Maya Wilkins. But I'll I'll I'll stop here and I'll ask Nicole, you have So, one question is around the joint whether the joint district one and the city school leaison can be combined. I mean, they're not they have to stay. Can they 65 and 202?

251So you have 65 and 202 that's one committee and then you have the city school liaison committee or this, you know, they're both around relationships with the schools. Um, and they both don't meet that often. So they're separate as opposed to having a partnership committee which is, you know, whether these can combi be combined into one committee that does both of these things. So I'm not saying make them separate, but it's I think the only difference is is in the joint district is just district. It doesn't include the city, right? But you I would hope that in that joint that we can then work together to then go to the city one, you know what I mean? So if it's the same people in some sense who were in those that hopefully there's a relationship

252and shared understanding. So when we're talking to the city the 202 you know we have a you know maybe not but it's just like they don't meet that often in the same way as like curriculum and personnel like they're not like how the city liaison is what twice a year and 65 is twice what three times. I'm sure it'll be once right. Yeah. So it's like these are those are simple committees and would hope to try to bring a coherency uh to them. So so what I'm hearing Nicole is that we combine um or proposed to our partners uh because we so this will have to be a proposal to to our our institutional partners at 202 as well as the city. Maybe it's another point of clarification people. It could just be simple as

253having the same all the same people. Oh, I see the same people going on those committees. Okay, that's what I'm making because I'm sorry people on the committee. I misunderstood. Yeah, because that would be a a longer conversation. I'm sorry. The same people on the committ. Yeah. What do folks think? Is that again that's that's up to I think it's a good idea and I'm willing to if you want to switch me out of the school city city school leaison one then move my like my can double up there and then it's you all are the same people. Okay. If Maya's okay with that. Are you okay with that, Maya? Sure. Yeah. All right. So, what we have then is uh for the for both the 20265 committee as well as the city school liaison,

254it's Nicole Pinker, Sergio Hernandez, and Maya Wilkins. I think more importantly, we want to change the committee, right, and have it be a community partnerships committee. We don't know if we can because it's not we co-own. It's easier right now to just have the same people because these are committees that we Oh, understood. Got it. But but it doesn't mean we can't have that conversation as an agenda item for both, right? Because I think it would make it more efficient and more Yeah. I mean, again, having two separate Yeah. That's right. Yeah. But we we could definitely look between the joint district 2 65 202 and city layers. Huh. So, two things. The 202 has already they sent us something and proposed one date next year. That date is in January. That date is in

255January and they have already approved this their board that one day right so it's on the books as an approval for them collaborative. So we're going so January 12th the city school liaison I believe this is three times I host it once. Yeah Luke host it once and Marcus host hosts once. So this this city school liaison committee meeting happens three times a year. But would we imagine I'm given our situ that we need a lot more collaboration with our city a you know city folks uh soon and so I mean it's three but hoping to try to lean on them a little bit they do if it's the same three people I think you can function you know I mean internally for us it essentially be one committee and right all right so so

256that's been sorted out here for the 20265 joint. We have the same members Nicole Sergio Maya and as well as city school leaison personnel buildings and grounds finance committee we have Moria Forest Updike as the chair chair Omar Salem and Nicole Baker Park School Advisory Board we have Pat Anderson Andrew Wymer and Sergio Hernandez for our Ed Red representative Maria Forest Optike Illinois Association of School Boards delegate Maya Wilkins and then our policy committee uh board rep is Pat Anderson. Uh any do do you all want any changes or would you like to be added or would you like to swap out with somebody on any of these committees? What is the ED representative? Ed attending the meetings with myself and uh Tamara monthly and it's ED red is a legislative group so you learn

257all of the legislation about all of the things in this group. So you would attend that meeting. Um the frequency of that meeting happens about what once a month Tamara perfect. Okay. Any other thoughts, comments on these committee appointments, assignments? Okay. Now we go back to uh the vote. So I move that the board of education approve the recommended 2025 2026 board meeting dates. Well, I think I think um I thought y'all was still discussing the committee of the whole, right? Yeah, the committee. Yeah. So, are we going to do committee of the whole or are we going to go back to the whole structure committee of the whole? Okay, let's talk about that. Good catch. Thank you. So, the you had made the ask uh conversation has been floated around moving back to committ

258having the committee meetings in the first hour and then coming back to the six o'clock. One question is that is that really having the that's really having the curriculum and the which meeting which meetings would happen? It's really the curriculum and the personnel. Yeah. So those two right we we've we the way it's been structured before is that we've had uh separate meetings um either on the same day or on a separate day like on a Monday we do the policy committee and then on a Wednesday we would do uh the finance and buildings and grounds. Um, again, concurrent structure is a committee to the whole. Um, so what I'm hearing is there maybe a desire to maybe go back to uh perhaps even having both committees meet because that I think that's happened before

259as well where you have they both committees meet at the same day but at maybe at a staggered time or in or at the same time but in let's say we divide this room in committee and person what is it person was it policy policy meets over there in curriculum u and maybe the and finance meets in another room or on this side, right? Because we do have a room divider and that may be that we we can continue doing it that way. What do folks think about that? I like the idea of staggered meetings just because I I think there are going to be times when, you know, we want to listen in to both or we need some of the same people in both. But like if we have one start then we

260just have to be careful about sticking to the time so that the second committee meeting can start um around when it needs to start. But I mean that idea seems to work and then it it keeps you know it means that people only have to be here one one day on top of our regular board meetings. Investigation on the the ability to use the AI summary. We did an invest several we had several investigations and we actually have a conversation with the legal council scheduled with board leadership tomorrow. Oh, okay. Because he gave us parameters around the translation piece. It was more around the um the zoom aspect. Do you remember from what he said, Melissa? No. I know that it was a topic of of conversation, but just on using uh AI for like

261official meeting purposes versus just using them as, you know, like a meeting summary or or recap. Um, but that was going to be discussed tomorrow. I think it's because we're a public body, we're regulated by certain we're we're a public body, so we're regulated by certain parameters for um use on Well, I'm not sure. Yeah, I think the only point was that in order to make sure that we to to economize the time of the staff being present during those those committee meetings that we were able to use technology to assist other people who weren't able to attend to understand what was discussed in a way that was concise. The challenge is the it's not the transcription, it's the use of summary which becomes the problem. So you can just do transcription summary. If you

262use the AI summary, it's given an interpretation and that might be the part that's problematic. But yeah, he the legal counselor said that. But I think what was on the table essentially that board wanted to discuss was both meetings happening at the same time on the same day in different locations. Yeah. So if part of it is it's like so we're like then the meeting as a whole we're listening to all of it and and I think what we were saying is like we didn't feel like we were really leading it whereas you want to dive into it but you know you got a whole lot of things to talk about. It would then require trust right and you know I'm like hey Pat I'm over in the finance and I trust that uh the

263curriculum and policy um that I can you know find out and we also have a way of communicating. If we do them separate then the question is then you're like every two you know like you're two you wouldn't meet for two months right? No, you stand on the same it's still a monthly. Yeah. So would we then lower would we decrease the the overlap? Right. So if we say five like 5 to 5:30 5:30 to 6 and 6 to the meetings would be shorter in that sense. They would have to be nothing is ever shorter shorter. This this sounds good, but the reason we landed here is simply because when we had two separate meetings and we come back and ask you to vote on something at the require at the regular board meeting, then

264essentially it was taxing for us because we had to repeat stuff that we've already said in the separate meetings, right? So the level of it it was no translation back to for example if Omar came to the curriculum and policy meeting but he's not on the finance buildings and grounds but then he comes to the regular board meeting and we putting a vote on the table for something and he like wait a minute I don't even know what what y'all talk we like well we discussed this in curriculum and policy he like yeah I know but can you like give us a right so like that was really kind of what landed us to shift to the one meeting that makes any sense. What this does is it really makes it imperative that the people

265that are in each of the committee meetings are connecting individually with the members that aren't present so that they know what's going on. So that's more of a I think commitment on our part. If we want to be dive deeper on each of these topics, we have to commit to communicating with each other, which I can communic I can I can commit to. Yeah. I think stuff I think things can get lost in translation. I think the good thing though is that you can, you know, like you can still watch the meetings. And so I think like if we do this, we should we should commit to get up to speed on our own so that we don't have to have the team make the same presentations twice because that really is where the inefficiency

266comes in. It's like they have to present twice. If you're on the finance committee, you're listening to the same presentation twice. So I think if we move back to that structure, we should like agree that we're going to find a way to learn what happened in that meeting by watching it or by summary, whatever we end up doing before the board meeting. I ask a question then. Do we have to do committees? Like can we just have two regular meetings because it feels like then it's still a little bit repetitive, frankly, when we do a committee of the whole and then a meeting. Yeah. Like if we're meeting every two weeks, let's just meet every two weeks and um scrap the committees, I guess. I don't know. I think the point is that like there's

267expertise and there's a lot to know and being an expert in every aspect is more challenging. Is this is this something we have to have the committee's um No, I think that's why we merged to the committee the whole structure the committee the whole structure just allowed us that flexibility if there was a heavy load for finance we could you know utilize that time and then also utilize the curriculum policy similarly I mean in our structure we were switching them out so it is sort of staggered it's just in a It's in a one meeting format. One thing from the and maybe it's just it appears that in the committee as a whole the board is less leading in the in the committee piece of it. Um whereas I imagine if you're in the committee

268meetings they're co-leading or co- with in partnership. It just appears as watching them that I feel like it's more the um the your cabinet is leading those and part of is understanding what is our role in terms of leading these committees you know um and it just seems like watching the board the uh committee of the whole I feel like y'all are doing a lot of the uh cabinet is doing a lot of the always right but we're but in this sense it's like moving it to we're responsible for for doing our work and leading them so I mean is that. So it might just be the way that the committee of the whole has been doing. The board hasn't been, you know, so it might not be the committee of the whole structure. It

269might be the the leadership of it, but it just but it seems like to me it seems like just another meeting as opposed to where I've seen committee meetings before. I felt like the board is going to those before it was committee feel like the board was responsible for leading uh the meeting. So I am curious. I don't know if the what Tamar and Stacy how do y'all I mean do you care if it's you know whether they're committee meetings because y'all would have to be in them I assume or can I ask that I don't know if I can ask that I don't I don't Yeah I would they're here to answer are you asking us if we I'm it's late and I'm got to get Are you asking if we care if it

270separate committees or together? Yes. separate and if we are helping to you know driving more of the committee you know if Maria is leading you know helping to drive more of the finance one if we separate it do you need more time to answer yeah I think that's a difficult one to answer because you're asking us to kind of shift structurally the way we've gone about it generally these committees have been space committees or meetings have been places to bring like a report on work like it's a place to bring to you the topics that you have said, hey, this is what we want on the board calendar. This is, you know, it's a good place for updates. It's a good place to bring projects or proposals or things that you've said, hey, this is

271what the board wants to learn about. So, what you're asking is really kind of bigger than the meeting itself. It's about rethinking the way the work happens. So, I don't think that an answer to that. We've been doing the heavy lift of preparing for all and now you carry the the lift, the chair people, right? Right. We the meeting. So, can we have it like if we do split up? Can we have them on the same day like an hour and a half apart and then board members can either come and watch their the committee that they're not on or they can find a way to, you know, update themselves before the next board meeting. Um, but that way like it's on the same day, you've got the staff here that you need to answer

272the questions. Um but you know if you know if you're not on that committee you don't have to be there in you know to ask questions and to be there during that actual meeting. Would that work? My only concern is with the hour and a half apart just being considerate of the fact that like if we're starting the committee meeting at 5:00 then the staff has to stay for the 6:30 portion. Right. Well I mean they would have to stay for the part that's relevant to them. So, you know, if if you don't need to be at the finance meeting and it's time for the finance meeting, then you could leave for that. Um, but but if it's if but yeah, but if it's on the same day and I'm on the curriculum meeting, but

273curriculum is not until after the finance meeting today. I can't go home. I still got to stay here. So, it it is there's no give and take for, right? Well, it's sort of like the committee of the whole. Everybody's there anyway. the staff from a staff perspective is like having the committee of the whole or members who would have a different What if we tried what if we just tried to do them at the same time and then said okay we're going to use maybe it's an AI transcription maybe it's the recordings and we just went six months and said do we feel like it's okay and everybody can have conversations individually after the fact and I'm a little bit just concerned about asking asking everybody to hang around here late. When you say save

274time, you mean like simultaneously? Yes. Simultaneously. So meaning JTC the curriculum and policy in that feels a little bit hard especially if like we need Melissa in one and then like we have a question for in one and she's in the other. Um but if everyone else thinks it can work, I'm fine with it. I've never done this before. It does feel a little harder to coordinate. Like I think it would take a lot more coordination in terms of who's where. I guess for me the committee structure makes the mo most sense if we're using them as like that's where we should be weeding out ideas. It doesn't feel like we use it that way and that's why that meeting every other week might make more sense. We'd have less repetitiveness. Like you know a

275lot of times Kirby says the same thing which is I already went over this at the committee of the whole. So then why are we doing it twice? Let's just do it once and then vote. Um, maybe we try that for a bit. I don't know. Like we wouldn't have saved all these approvals for tonight, right? Like look, I mean, we've been here for five hours, you all. Like we if we had a meeting every two weeks, maybe it would be faster. So I think where I am there's a meeting with the board leadership tomorrow to figure out what legally we are supposed to do or not as it relates to are we supposed to have committee meetings? Are we just can we can we just have two regular board meetings, right? Like cuz because

276I don't know. I think the other thing too, you know, I I feel like I feel like we're scrapping a system that we have We're we're we're scrapping the way we do committee of the whole meetings right now when in full transparency it really hasn't been articulated to me or my team how the board wants these committee meetings to go because then we can structure them to whatever it is that works for you. the the way we run them is pretty much again how I inherited with the difference of instead of it being two separate meetings, I just did the infusion of one meeting and we split. But if it's you want the structure, you like we want this agenda to be like this for this meeting and this to be like this for this

277meeting and we want it to be 30 minutes. Trust and believe our team can try to produce that. But we haven't, you know, You know what I mean? Like if we knew that like to to Omar's point, if if I knew that having Kirby to repeat that and really it was because we were we are constantly scrutinized about the transparency and then it's we got flooded with people saying, "Well, you never said that or you got emails saying we never covered it." And we've covered it, which is why I kept having him to repeat it, which is one of the reasons why the board at that time said for every agenda, put a SDP update on there. put a SAP update on there, put a foster, that's why you have those three standing ones and

278it feels like that because that was the ask of the board to get at that. But if that is not what this current board wants, my team and I, we're we're more than willing to adjust it. We just don't know what what you want. Um, so I think for us tomorrow, we we have a call board leadership scheduled with um with Brian to give us a little bit of clarity. Um, I I think you know I I see the I and what I really need to get to is because I think we established if we run the meetings at the same time, we have to really be clear around um the recording aspect because this is the only space we have the capacity to record. So if we run it run them at the same

279time which again nothing requires us to have to publicly if we post it people come you we do some transcation or whatever you say is that maybe maybe board members come and give at the regular board meeting you give an update from from the chairperson perspective on what you covered so it's publicly out there for people. if we're ready to re-imag the way we've been operating of all of this over excessive recording of everything because it's just been the transparency that we've been trying to really push in the district. If we're open to do that, I think we can make it work with the both meetings starting at the same time knowing that the district team would be split up into different places if that is what if if that's what the board wants. But

280I I feel like yeah, it's a lot. um to process all of the things. I'm just I'm just not sure this is not help this is not going to help what I'm about to say. Uh I'm not sure how we move proposals through. I'm just I'm used to a more formal committee approach where there's a subcommittee who sends it up to the next committee. Um so I don't know how that works with committee on the whole. Seems like it's just two board meetings. So, I would personally really like to see separate committees, but then send things up to the board. That's my one perspective. I I agree with that. I think the other the other thing we could do is just alternate the recording, right? So, there could be a transcription if we're allowed to

281transcribe a meeting um using technology and then the other committee could meet here and have it recorded. So at least every other one each committee would have a recorded meeting if we did it at the same time. Um if the goal is because I do think transparency is important. We'll see what he says possible tomorrow. So we have not decided. Let's go home. Let's go home. But the vote is for the dates. Okay. Sorry. Do we is our next meeting set? Yeah. Right. the June 20 or is it not June 3rd or is it not June 3rd is the committee of the whole even if we don't vote like that's to finish like this next calendar is for the next fiscal year correct so we can table this okay so do we need a motion

282or no to table it or no do we not do we need a motion so we we're just going to table okay great we need a well so you guys are going to go check with the legal yeah we're going to check with but we're not going to wait until after July No. No. Decide this. Okay. I think that's what Omar was saying. Do we have some more meetings at this cycle? We do. June. June 3rd. Yeah. The goal is is to meet with legal counsel. Our next meeting is June 3rd. The goal is to bring this put this back on the agenda for the board to discuss on June and take. Okay. So, there wouldn't be an independent committee meeting prior to then. Well, it's not it's not on this year. That's next year.

283We're talking about next. Yeah, we're talking about next. Yeah. Got it. All right. So, we voted on the approval of the 20 Well, the board meeting dates. We're going to have the table because, right, we have Okay, got it. All right. Any other business, if any? A lot of business today. I have a water gun for anyone who raises their hand. Uh just please note that the June uh regular board meeting has been rescheduled to June 23rd, 2025. With no further business, I adjourn this meeting at 10:21 p.m. Thank you everybody. Have a good rest of the week. Take care.