[3/10/25] D65 - Committee of the Whole Meeting

001e e e describing we not have good evening everybody Welcome to our committee of the whole meeting uh Adil I'm going to ask you for the roll call please yes uh today is March 10th uh the time is 4:31 roll call Lindsay Ryan here welkins here helper here H here Salem here here hernandz here all right oh that's acknowledgement yeah uh next item Up Is Our Land acknowledgement we take time to acknowledge that the land we meet on is a traditional homeland of the Council of the Three Fires the patami oju and Odawa this land also served as an important meeting place for Miami hunk the monoman inoa sack Fox Poria Arapaho shyen and other tribal Nations this land has long been a center for indigenous people to gather trade and maintain kinship types located

002at the intersection of several great waterways the region has become the site of travel and prosperity we acknowledge evidon and John Evans are tied to the massacre of the Arapaho and Cheyenne for railroads and West world expansion upon which John Evans developed his wealth and founded Evanston this land was violently taken under settler Colonial colonialism through genocide and open Warfare and the region that is now Illinois in Chicago land is still home to thousands of native people who are actively struggling for sovereignty self-determination and Justice the genocidal acts of SAR colonialism extended peoples of Africa and their enslaved descendants despite Illinois eventually prohibiting slavery slavery was an accepted practice before and after statehood the vestages of slavery remain throughout the United States and directly affect the descendants of enslaved peop rich and heterogeneous communities who

003help to find 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 and lgbtq identified peoples black and IND peoples of color and people of color writ large these patterns demonstrate that the pursuit and state sanction violence against bipac is a daily struggle for Liberation from continued social political and economic anti-black racism and oppression today we acknowledge that we are living breathing loving grieving laughing and sharing space on unseated territory may we learn to honor the historical and contemporary presence and power of the people and their belief that we must be caretakers of the lands and Waters for the livelihood of future Generations we encourage everyone to continue

004to 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 all right next is approval of agenda I move that the board approve today's meeting agenda as presented second Lindsay Ryan Yes wilon Yes H yes Kim yes Salem yes Sue yes Hernandez yes the next item up is our public comments 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 he specific concerns about staff members being mindful that the public comment period is not a suitable forum for fact finding or resolution of disputes rather we encourage members of the public who have

005concerns about specific District employees to follow District communication guidelines found in the student handbook please remember to state your name as you have three minutes to address the board also note that it is not customary for the board to respond to public comments the best way to correspond with members of the board is by emailing Schoolboard at district 65.net and with that adila do we have any comments yes we have one uh comment from Bridget udder okay I'm Bridget OT I'm aie rh's parent we heard this past weekend that our assistant principal Miss AG is being let go after this year Miss AG has been a source of consistent leadership and a classroom educator as Bessie rhods has faced repeated uncertainty our school is so fragile right now and already has been repeatedly destabilized by

006district and board actions why make another active decision to harm our kids yet again is anyone thinking of impact on our kids I know where making Cuts but the cuts at this phase are supposed to be Central admin and folks with minimal impact on kids I still haven't heard of a single administrator being let go and Miss AG has also been teaching in classrooms in addition to being a leader at the school she has direct impact on kids at all times while at work I'd like to know if the criteria being used to decide on Miss AG's future in the district as well as her position are being applied holistically across the district and in line with the advice of your consultant we have seen in the past how Bessie rhods is repeatedly singled out

007and I worry this is another example of the same thank you that concludes public comments for today thank you for the public comment uh next item up is our finance personnel and buildings and grounds Jo I take it away so our first agenda item is the fiscal year 24 Financial audit and review welcome hello how are you today um thank you for having me here today my name is Nick Cavalier I'm the principal on the district's fiscal year 2024 audit I may have a brief presentation to go over the audit results and some information in the financial statements more than happy to take any questions that you may have uh once I conclude my presentation as well so our audit procedures were completed and we issued our reports on your financial statements our dated reports

008were January 30th of 2025 um the scope of the audit is is fairly robust we provide assurances over your annual financial report the Illinois State Board of Education annual financial report a Consolidated year-end financial report that's required to be filed with the cran accountability and transparency unit um a schedule of expenditures of federal Awards because the district expends over $750,000 of federal award monies um in conducting an audit in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles for governments were're required to render a report on internal control and other matters regarding compliance with laws um and then of course we also conduct an audit over compliance for various um Federal a programs that get rotated from year to year so after we perform all of our procedures uh the results of of our audit is that we

009rendered an unmodified audit opinion on your financial statements that's the highest level of assurance that you can receive from the external order that your financial statements are prepared in accordance with the modified Cash basis of reporting um we also rendered unmodified audit opinions on the Illinois State Board of Ed's annual financial report form the Consolidated year-end financial report and the schedule of expenditures of federal Awards so these next few slides might be a little difficult to see but what I intended to do was take a couple of Snippets from the financial statements we also performed the audit for the park school joint agreement and with embedded within this particular presentation are some of those financial statement schedules as well so I can keep the board informed over um some of the matters that are interrelated

010between the two entities between the school district and in park school and this particular screenshot is the balance sheet for the school district and then right below it is the balance sheet for the park school and what you can see is that on the park school's balance sheets there is a receivable of uh $675,000 and that's money that is owed to the park school from um School District 65 and also from the high school district and if you look at the uh balance sheet in the general fund for the school district there is a receivable of $675,000 as well so the way the the bank accounts are kind of intertwined um money is co-mingled Park School spends money and then bills um Evanson School District 65 and the high school district and then the money

011is owed back to one another so essentially you have um funds that are owed between the two entities and then payable between the two entities it's a little confusing but that's essentially how the accounting Works um and then the general fund consists of three funds as you talk on on a monthly basis you have an educational account toward immunity account and working cash and those three funds are presented together to create a general fund um for the financial statement presentation um this next slide is essentially the income statement for the school district you'll have the revenues at the top expenditures in the middle there's a line that says excess deficiency of revenues over expenditures that'll essentially give you some insights into operationally how the district um Managed IT its resources within its expenditures and then

012the category right below that is other financing sources and uses this category is used for accounting for things related to long-term debt financing so when you enter into um lease agreements or um sometimes what they call it a contracts payable issuance where a lot of your technology is is essentially structured to be paid over several years and not purchased outright that activity is housed there and then of course if you issue any bonds or debt um that activity is in there in addition to transfers that are approved by the board throughout the year um if you go all the way down to the bottom about three lines up there's a category says net change in fund balance and you can see that the general fund had a decrease in fund reserves the operations and maintenance

013fund had an increase in fund reserves uh the transportation fund had a decrease in fund reserves Municipal retirement fund uh slight increase uh The Debt Service fund had a decrease in in fund balance and and the capital projects fund had a decrease um with the fire prevention and safety fund also having a small Surplus um this next slide is in these are actually schedules in your financial statements as well I wanted to show the board the breakout of the general fund because you have the Ed fund the Tor immunity and then the working cash fund and you can see that collectively the general fund presents approximately uh 233 million in fund reserves but then that's separated between those three account groups the Ed fund the Tor fund and the working cash fund so the majority

014of the general funds presentation or fund reserves um is predominantly um within the working cash fund at the end of the year this is a uh schedule that's embedded in the annual financial report form that every school district in the state has to um issue an audit opinion on and file with the State Board um this is the financial profile score it's not finalized the state accepts these when the audits are issued and then they finalize them at a later date um there's several different metrics that are looked at um fund balance to revenue ratio expenditure to revenue ratio uh the days of cash on hand how much short-term borrowing is remaining in addition to long-term um borrowing amounts and for those various metrics they'll rate you on a four point scale each one of

015those are weighted and then calculates a score at the end for being the highest um your District score on a preliminary basis was 3.0 which puts you in the warning category um it's important to understand that this particular metric only considers um your Ed your on andm your trans and your working cash funds those four funds are what part of this calculation okay so this next slide is really just to give you some insights into the park school's financial results for fiscal year 24 um the balance sheet you can see is at the top and then down below in the middle is the um the income statement for the park school and really for the most part what you'll notice is that the park school started the year with a zero fund balance and ended

016the year as a fund balance um since I've been working with the school districts my understanding that that really operates essentially as a break even position at the end of each year so at the end of the year there's a true up on the costs to the revenues that are received and then there's a billing back and forth to the individual particip SP districts um essentially School District 65 and the high school district um during the course of the audit we gain an understanding of the internal controls that are present for the preparation of the financial statements themselves we'll look at several key transaction Cycles accounts payable payroll um the treasury function will'll also gain an understanding of a lot of other processes and during this the course of the audit if we identify jial

017audit adjustments or if we identify matters that We Believe are important to bring to the attention to the governing body that could present themselves in a way that you may not detect a error in your financial statements without the audit being performed we'll bring those to your attention so this year we have two material weaknesses that we're reporting to you and I'll talk a little bit about those on the next couple of slides um so the first material weakness relates to the bank reconciliation process so during the course of our audit we confirm cash and investment balances we look at the um reconciling items between what's recorded in the book and what's transpiring in the bank um and then there's also some interrelated activity that takes place between the school district and the park schools

018um balance sheets for various Billings and things of that nature um and then during the course of the audit We performed all of our testing and then ultimately the value of the cash at Investments that's presented in the school district's financial statements is higher than the bank balances based on the reconciling items that were presented to us that value accounts to be $575,000 so um we've talked about this with the administration I know everybody is closely looking at the bank reconciliation process and and going ahead and and looking at things essentially our recommendation is to you know review these reconciliations closely if there's an unlocated difference continue to perform additional procedures until it can be resolved and cleared um the second matter relates to the annual TRS um report so at the end of every

019fiscal year the school district and every other school district in the state has to file a report with the teachers retirement system that says here is the value of all of our creditable earnings for all of the employees and this is the value of the amounts that we've remitted to the system it's essentially a Reconciliation this is how much we've remitted throughout the year how much we've reported and then at the end of the year you take a step back and do a holistic look and say okay here's what we believe it is and how much have we emitted and during that process we noticed that there was an amount payable to TRS at the end of that particular reporting period um generally speaking there should not be a significant amount owed to the teachers

020retirement system and it could generally be indicative of some level of reporting that took place during the year that may have um missed something or or inaccurately reported um the value or remitted less to to the teachers retirement system so um when we were when we were doing this analysis on the report we get a copy of it it's a lot of disclosures in the financial statements it's used for the development of the on behalf payment that gets recorded in your financial statements and we notice that there was an amount that was owed for $718,000 so essentially during fiscal year 204 $718,000 was not yet remitted to the teachers retirement system and was instead remitted in fiscal year 25 um we wanted to bring this to your attention because this a sizable dollar amount um

021we of course recommend that that report gets reviewed closely and actually on a monthly basis to make sure that amounts are remitted appropriately um these are more related to comments and and recommendations from us to the management and to the governing body um the the concept of the journal entry process somebody can go into the system and and record an entry to move amounts between accounts or to record something that may not have been recorded previously a journal entry system is essentially another module within your software to perform an adjustment to your accounting records and um during the course of the audit one of the things that came up was this entry between the park school and the school district's accounting records for the true up of the amounts owed between the two entities at

022the end of the year um we noticed that that that entry was recorded um exclusively by the the business manager and wasn't reviewed by anybody else at that particular time and our recommendation is that you'd have a secondary review over that entry before it would be recorded by someone outside of the prepare and then our other comment relates essentially to the the documentation of internal control Cycles so how our processes followed within the business office when are they performed by who is reviewing those process es you know some various dates and things like that to make sure that you know things are being performed as intended it'll also allow for you to gain a better understanding of your internal control to your environment within your accounting function and if there are other processes that could

023potentially be improved on by you know segregating duties or delegation of tasks to others with um defined reviews that are documented so I I talked a little bit earlier about the single audit that the district was subject to um this particular audit cycle there were three major programs that were audited the Head Start program the title one program and the education stabilization fund or it's commonly referred to as like the pandemic Aid funding um the district expended approximately $ 13.1 million in federal Awards um the collective value of the programs that were audited as major was 60% coverage you're required to have 40% based on the uniform guidance and our responsibility is to render an opinion on your compliance and your internal controls over compliance based on our testing that's performed in accordance with the

024single audit act and please to let the board know that there were no compliance matters that were identified during the course of that audit or any internal control matters that were identified and reported that'll conclude my presentation on the audit results I'm more than happy to take any questions at this time thank you did you interview any board members over the course of this audit this year I'm so sorry did you interview any board members for this audit this year yes okay who got who interviewed just curious which board members I don't have it with me right now I'm so sorry okay anybody talk to an auditor no that stood out because I know at least the past four years I've talked to the to somebody in the audit process and that didn't happen this

025year so I was just curious who we talked to um and I I raised that question specifically because on slide 13 you notice the documentation of internal controls and my notes of the last four years of interviews that's been my comment to the auditor so I have a question about how when you look at the internal controls and you do the auditing how is a board able to assess fraud or internal control system errors outside of the administration if it's done within the framework of your audit process that you look for sure so when we when we plan our audit we'll perform a series of walkthroughs through inquiry um sampling right I'm sorry it's sampling sampling is one of the matters yes so we'll we'll walk through the processes verbally and through actual reperformance of

026what everyone's tasks are what my comment was is the actual physical documentation of all of those processes in a written form start to finish right right so the anybody else have any questions I I do but there was some new information in here you can go ahead if you want M maybe followup questions on the that you think you interviewed board members and all of us said we didn't get interviewed but well I I I only asked that and it's you know I am sitting in judgment um so not to say not judgmentally but I specifically have talked for years about written internal control procedures and cach handling to Auditors in the interviews that I've had um which is why I asked so I just want to be on record that that has been a

027part of previous conversations um not that it would would have been any different this year because it's been an issue over the past years that hasn't been resolved either so it's no different this year except that we seem to be missing each other and where conversations were had and that we would want to make sure that for future that that piece was solved um so any other questions my questions are more for Tamara since this was for fiscal year 24 and you started July 1st right of this of uh 24 like have some of these like the TRS issue for example has that been mitigated like are we doing that differently this year or was that accounted for in our financials so as far as um the TRS issue what that resulted from was uh

028the staff member who was responsible for that reporting there were some errors that were coming up during the reporting and the reports were forced through so what the TRS annual report does is it forces a true up so you do the report and trsn says oh you owe us x amount of dollars so that payment was made in December um since that time we've worked with the team to ensure that those processes are tighter that we're not just forcing reports through and that those errors uh are being addressed at the time so unfortunately I didn't know that this was happening obviously I wasn't here last year but didn't know at the time time when the trist report was filed which that report was filed in August um Nick was actually the one that brought it

029to my attention in the course of the audit uh saying that this has happened have you seen this and I said no I haven't so we had several phone calls to uh talk through what happened and um he mentioned that it would be written up as an audit finding I said absolutely um so yes we are definitely has been addressed with the team we're making steps to correct that so it doesn't happen in the future thank you it's helpful I guess with the the unallocated difference of the 575 in the bank reconciliation process um I guess first you know what steps are we looking to address this um and then is there already like documentation that we've been developing to prevent this from happening again so one thing that we've done with the team member

030who's responsible for that portion of the work is we have engaged um our software provider Tyler Technologies she's had several hours of reconciliation training um so there there are outside eyes on it as well we are getting closer to tying those differences out so we don't have those variations from month to month as well part of it we believe is um just in the the way that the bank reconciliation is done as far as looking at our investment statements in terms of market value versus um what the cost value is so that's a portion of it and there's some other issues that are going on as well however we do have um the person responsible for that part of it has been working with Tyler Technologies and we're getting close to having that zeroed out

031so as we move forward that won't be a finding going into the future as well and to answer your question about documentation yes we have that documented thank you we don't have a copy of the full audit yet correct yes you have it do we have it m okay was it Shar in our packet today it was shared uh a couple weeks ago in like a weekly update maybe yeah it was two back-to-back weekly updates and then it might have been on the February 2 fourth board packet as well but it was here this is a little bit later than we typically do an audit isn't it it is a little bit later than usual yes is there a reason for that um Nick would you like to speak to so we issued our reports

032in at the end of January I think last year it was in December so yes there was some delays in the audit process any other questions just back to um the internal control Cycles I know this is something that we've talked about internally and and that we've been sort of looking at just want to understand maybe now isn't the time but sort of an update on where we stand in terms of documenting that because I know you always talk about being able to document document document so that we don't have these issues and you know even with different Personnel changes we won't have these issues in the future So to that specific audit comment um we're in the process of beginning that documentation since that was written up for this year uh in the audit

033I didn't notice it in previous year's audits but I haven't dug that deep into the previous year's audits either but uh we'll definitely make sure to have those steps documented the internal controls process documented as well okay and is that something that'll come back to the board just to understand or be aware of um I guess for that and all of the material findings here we can definitely share that to yes absolutely yeah yeah exactly exactly any other questions thank you Nick okay thank you next up is our financial audit or financial update sorry I just did the audit welcome back thank you great to see everybody again um so so tonight um as a part of the initiative to improve breast practices in the business office one of the mandates was to provide um

034financial statements monthly financial statements kind of to the points that you're mentioning that are timely accurate and informative I think this is very important especially for this school district as we know it has challenges going forward so it's very important that the board of education is up to date on what's going on and can get ahead of it so uh the report's been revised um in a way that I think will be will provide really good informational value to the board and I wanted to go through February's report as a way of showing how to read the report and to give a kind of a midyear update of where I think the district is trending relative to budget so the first page of the report is basically just monthly information what happened during the month

035so the top chart shows you know on a monthly basis the revenues and expenditure patterns for the year uh and and you could see that the revenues July and August the big spikes are taxes when taxes come in so March will be another high year high month uh so for the month of February the district received 25 uh a little over $25 million in revenues and the district spent a little over 18 million I is is that 18 or 16 I can't tell 16 million yeah a little over $16 million and then and then the the bottom uh graph shows fund balances how they move per year so this kind of gives a snapshot of what happened during the month which in and of itself is incomplete so there are School districts that that there's

036some school districts that don't don't do anything there's some school districts that stop there but this this report is going to go beyond that so on the second page we now look at I click here sorry we now look at how how the district's fiscal year performance is tracking to the budget so the top line is is the board approved budget so the beginning balance all funds was n a little over $90 million we budgeted revenues of 178 million budgeted expenditures of 2113 million and we're projecting to end the year at $55 million now that's a combination of the structural deficit and the fact that we're going to be spending down the bond proceeds from the uh from the project to date we started the year again with 9.2 million year to date revenues are

037114 million year-to dat expenditures are 111 million so actually through February our fund balances have increased um so that's that's just a piece of information that's going to be looked at deeper into as we get into the report revenues received this Compares actual year-to dat revenues to total budget and this gives you an idea of how we're trending at least through February relative to the budget so you could see in aggregate the district has received about 64% of its budgeted revenues through March through February excuse me um March I expect the number to grow significantly as you'll get the majority of your spring tax collection money in at that time and then when you look at the expenditures um through February the district is still a little below 52% of budgeted expenditures and then when

038you look at it per line item this provides some good information so salaries are at about 54% so so you could look at that and say well we're more than halfway through the year um but but in terms of the salaries uh the school districts pay out this the June and the July so so six payrolls in June so you can't really assess that but uh benefits are higher are trending higher but that that points out to what happened that that Nick talked about that there was 732 th000 of expenses that should happened last year um but happened this year um unanticipated purchase encouraging note purchase services are trending uh significantly better than what we anticipated we still under half the budget and we're through February on purchase services and um I can tell you

039that uh Transportation expenditures are trending below budget and special education uh purchase services are trending significantly below budget as as the district is working aggressively to not hire outside sources if if possible to provide parah assistance and things like that supplies also are trending uh well below budget uh just basically 50% of the supply budget has been spent and again we're through February uh often times through February much of these supplies have already been uh accounted for because a lot of supplies are at the beginning of the year to get the classrooms going uh capital outlay is below budget but that's because the project you know that's just the timing of the project those expenditures are going to start accelerating uh tuition is another special education tuition is also trending less than budget so so

040so that cost uh through uh through February we spent $2.6 billion off of a $7.8 million budget and then Debt Service um is is likely going to be you know pretty close to to where it's going to end up uh so in aggregate if you look at this page alone this kind of gives you an idea of how the district looks relative to budget which is positive but then the next logical step which is beyond where most school districts go is how are we looking compared to this point in time last year so if you go to the next slide if I go to the next slide this is this this third page is I think it's a very relevant document uh especially for this school district as you're making your major decisions so this

041Compares now um the current year versus the prior year um in terms of monthly fund balances and in terms of year-to-date revenues and year today expenditure so um you could see that through um through February this year versus February last year uh we've received about $3.5 million more money on the real estate tax side that's partially due to the CPI increase from the tax levy uh part of that is offset if you look at Federal revenues our federal revenues are down versus last year because we got a lot of eser money last year that we weren't getting this year which we anticipated on the expenditure side and this is um this is very uh this gives us cause for optimism um you could see that through this through February of last year we had spent

042$120 million and this year we've only spent $111 million so so if you look at those two boxes on the bottom left through February of this year our current year-to date revenues versus expenditures are a positive about $3.6 billion about a $3.6 billion Surplus through February of last year we had about a $9.3 million deficit so this is indication that the decisions made by the Board of Education to uh to make those tough decisions to reduce the budget for this year not counting what you just did for next year because this doesn't factor that in um are being reflected on your finances and in addition to that some of the practices that have been put in place beyond that um especially with the mindset that Dr Turner and her team had put in that to

043make sure that all expenditures are made um carefully and through the lens of return on investment in terms of student learning um has really slowed down expenditure growth I know that uh Miss MIT has been spending a lot of time with the different departments um working closely with them um really again scrutinizing expenditures not in terms of sacrificing for kids but in terms of efficiencies and and and it's paying off and um and uh which leads again me to conclude that um in that early indications are that the district is going to outperform its budget again there's four months left and uh but but this is a document for the the Board of Education to closely track and for some of the questions like you were asking um those are the things that pop up

044from these reports um in terms of what's going on so next year at this point in time when you're looking at expenditures year to dat versus last year if numbers are trending higher then that's a cause for concern because there were significant reductions for example the fourth part of the slide is just a cash flow this is revenues received by month Uh current year versus the last two years uh because the district has had some um one of one of the well I'll get into the practice in a minute but this kind of just shows the pattern of revenues and expenditures versus uh the prior two years and then the final page of the report is just a breakdown of the activity by fund um which is um which is important but less important now

045than it was several years ago because school districts can very easily move money around between funds if it needs to where it was more restrictive in the past so um our hope is that this is going to give a good piece of information as a part of recognizing best practices um so that the district so that your District or your board of education uh when it approves a budget that's balanced and it ends up not being balanced that that that you would be ahead of that before the fisal clear ended and you heard it from the Auditors so um that's just one of the things that the district's been doing um the other things that the district have been doing is that um that are important to note is that the districts are paying their

046bills on time and and are coding the the bills more accurately this is going to create a better Baseline for us as we prepare the budget for next year it was it was challenging preparing the budget because there was the information wasn't as complete as we would have lik to have seen it um but but the the the but but the way things have been paid timely the way things have been paid accurately um the way um Tamara has interacting with the buildings to work closely with them on their budgets uh the way the discussions are being had in the transportation department with special education all around efficiencies and spending within your need within your needs are paying off and and and I could say that um and maybe Tamara will want to expand on

047some of the other practices that the district or that that her office is doing but but I could say that um if it wasn't for kind of the Swift if it wasn't for the attention that the board has placed on this once it learned of the issue to get it resolved right away and the Swift action that was taken by the administration to to come up with solutions that were supported by the board this District would look a lot different than it does right now the district is definitely better in better position financially and in terms of systems than it was when I started working with the district 18 months ago so so I think that you know it's been it's been tough to be a board member it's been tough to be an administrator

048here for sure I'm very empathetic to that but but but but know that in my opinion once the information was brought to the to the light I think the district is done an amazing job of of quickly addressing the issue now that doesn't mean the problems are solved uh there's a lot of challenges that still face your District including major Capital needs and the fact that I think there's a lot of financial headwinds for all school districts in Illinois going forward so so you still have to navigate through those but to get to the point of a of a of a $10 million plus structural deficit to to close to balance budgets is really an amazing feat so I congratulate you on that thank you um questions for Dr Grossi my only question is um

049you know we have been having an 18-month conversation about what what could happen if we didn't do all of these things I appreciate the acknowledgement that we've done a lot of the things that we needed to do what does this mean for our trajectory with the issues that we could have had with the state like where are we with all of that now sure so so so the so the first like to me the first major fire that had to be put out was to get was was to get rid of the structural deficit the district could had to stop the bleeding as much as possible so and and the district has come very close to stopping the bleeding for this point in time the challenges that you still face are that your fund balances

050are now low so even even with balanced budgets you're still vulnerable because your fund balances are low so that so that's a challenge that that you're going to have to address at some point in time secondly you have major capital investment that needs to be made now I I know that you're you're you started the tough discussions around building you know addressing the uh right sizing the number of buildings to your student population and and that's going to be a critical aspect to to to minimize how much money needs to be done to address that but that's still that's still a decision that's going to have to be made how do how do we address those needs I would argue that the district really does not have the fund balance reserves to address major Capital

051anymore so so if you have to address major Capital it's going to have to come through through some sort of debt issuance or some source of revenues beyond your regular operating budget um and then in addition to that with almost all the school districts I'm working with there's new challenges CPI is going down which means that your major source of revenues and your only source of Revenue growth is real estate taxes that's going to probably grow at less than half of what it grew the last two years uh your erer money has dried up uh I just learned today that corporate personal property taxes is probably going to drop it again one more year uh we didn't anticipate that interest earnings are going down as the Federal Reserve is lowering rates and the cost of

052Labor uh and the cost whether it's internal through your Collective bar agreements or whether it's external is still is going up throughout Illinois probably more than anywhere especially education in Illinois and that's going to be a challenge so so these are embedded challenges for all school districts but the challenge with your district is when you get the balance budget is that you're still uh vulnerable just because your fund balances are are low but again with that being said you've addressed the first part there's still work to be done but hopefully um after the building closing issues you know then then you you know then I think hopefully you could figure out a way to uh address the issues without having to dig any deeper into operational costs of the district have we demonstrated enough action

053to change our warning status with the state or because because the the the primary variable still about the fund balance there could be Improvement so so one of the variables is fund balance Reserves so that so that's that's gonna you know that's going to stay low so that that's going to always hurt you until it pumps back up either through structural surpluses which is going to be really challenging without impacting the kids or something else um but if you could turn your deficits into into balanced budgets that will help that indicator but you're still the district still likely is going to be in in the lower two categories you're in the lowest category now more than likely that you'll be in the lower two categories um but again if if it just reflecting back if

054it wasn't for major decisions that that have been that you've had to make tough decisions including the changing of the school footprint which was done you know I think that was the first action that was taken related to to these challenges the the district would be a very different spot right now do we have an estimate of with the way the budget is going how many days of um cash we'd have like was it believe your previous projection was 72 if if you don't know that number now that's okay but it's got a high right well it's it's it's it's interesting because um give me a second here so so first of all the so the so so the lowest point the district's fund balance reserves were was in 20 2017 you had 86 days

055of reserves what year sorry 2017 2017 thank you and and and the following year you went for referendum or the referendum came in and and your fund balances jumped up to 136 you know and and then and then you got the highest you ever got to was 165 18 180 days is what the state would want excuse me to have the highest um on their rubric the highest score is 180 days um it's it it's it's there's a very good possibility you were just overnight T correct me if I'm wrong you were just over 90 days maybe closer to 100 days at the end of 2024 and depending how this year ends up I think we budgeted that we were going to end up below your fund balance Target of 90 days we'll see how

056the fiscal year ends and and we're not saying that you know there's again there's still four more months of of things that are going to happen um but um you're going to be close more than likely to that 90day threshold so we're trending higher than what was predicted it feels right now you're TR I'm not saying that you're trending balanced budget but but but I believe the budget the approved budget I believe was around $13 million deficit in aggregate um or I think excluding the uh capital projects fund and um right now it's trending better than that and and again once March comes out we'll have more information April comes out and and again the nice thing about these reports is that you could get some real time feedback now where if you had these

057reports two years ago it might have been earlier than 18 months that you would have had to address the issues thank you yeah it's really helpful having these reports just um one question and you you addressed this as you were speaking one of the things that I know the Administration has worked really hard on thank you Miss Mitchell thank you Dr Turner is our expenditures and trying to make sure that we've got a more accurate picture of expenditures because we're paying bills on time um I'm just wondering how confident do you feel about like these numbers in here you know I know things are never perfect but being close to what is actual expenditures so one of the things that we've done um because I'm I'm looking at the numbers and I honestly have the

058conversation with my director I'm like okay this feels too good to be true let's reach out to vendors and get state ments from them to see exactly what invoices we have open so we taken that step to kind of confirm where we are um and there were no surprises with the statements that have come back so there were really like of course there were some open invoices out there but it wasn't like there were millions of dollars of invoices that were open or even hundreds of thousands of dollars of invoices that were open so we are keeping our finger on the pulse to make sure sure that what we're seeing in the reports is actually what's happening Fant I just wanted to follow up on that um and wondering it's great that we are now

059paying our bills on time and so that the you know everything is going to be the expenditures are within the budget year and then the payouts are within the budget year and I was wondering if that cleaning up that practice is related to the um the audit and the reconciliation errors that you were talking about like that you know could we have avoided those reconciliation errors if we had better like you know paying the bills on time and stuff like that like are those related issues they're not no they're two separate issues okay thank you one critique and one question I realize deficits are usually in uh parentheses um but that bottom right number has a really poorly placed negative symbol oh that that's the transfers yeah I know it's a BL yeah I saw

060that too but that just showed that the the transvers others cumulative are negative and and zero um question for you on slide three maybe two two on slide two um so just as an example tuition and other other third from the bottom $2.6 million year-to date 7.8 million budgeted the budgeted number came from in the budget plan an expected outcome of being Due about 7.8 million it was yes it was it was it was built on how much the district spent last year and it recognized the uncertainty of um for all school districts when they budget for for special ed you never know the number of students that are going to come into the program and usually that that of all the line items the major object categories is the one that districts are most

061uncertain when they put their budget together because it's something they really can't they can't control as much as the other expenditures so that that makes sense so if you go to the next the next slide um on the bottom right the tuition and other the 2.6 million is there is current and at this point last year we had still only expended 3.4 million which means that between now and the end of the year last year year we spent about $4 million on the sped side of the house so if you recall um to catch with catching up with a lot of the bills we pumped a lot of bills in in the at the end of the year to get caught up as much as possible before Tamara took over that's what I was going

062to ask what's what's missing there because that's not tuition that's got to be something else no it's t i it's mostly tuition but but there was a lot of there was some like old bills that we to yeah and the true up also with the uh the park school that Nick mentioned is a endof year adjustment that's called the tuition expense so if you hold on to $4 million with the bills to the next budget it really makes your previous one look a lot more golden than it is is that a recommendation correct and I just want to add to that that was the pattern and Trend in this District it wasn't until last year that I flat out said pay all of the bills in this fiscal year and as much as possible let's

063not take the current fiscal year into the new fiscal year so that that was where that that Rush came so we knew that that was going to happen um again I want to just say kudos to um Fay and to Tamara for sending out communication now to school saying get your bills in by this particular deadline because they're not going to get paid right and to vendors and they're sending emails to vendors telling them there's a cut off date anything that we owe you in by this date to get it paid and your bills are being approved before they're being distributed as well which is was a major thank you for asking your team to pay the bills on time like it shouldn't be such a Monumental shift for practice for organization but but it

064is I mean I think that's the important part is like for anyone who hasn't been following they're like this seems rather basic that shouldn't be but in my six years on the board we haven't done it right so it is you know it is significant for us to make and it is required a heavy lift for the admin to to make that a reality so and it and it will help us be more true to our numbers moving forward yeah and just to build on that again this is this this is something that's been happening historically right with with previous administrations not just one administ previous administrations um so having as a board and as a as a this Administration actually really digging in and saying this is not right and we really need to

065figure out out some processes in order to make this right uh of course has been long overdue uh and and I'm happy to see these reports that's part of how we again as a board keep informed uh again H how could we have known you know and I think you know Biz asked this question months ago it's like how could we have known right because we again what we're seeing here are kind of just as an amalgamation of of different expenses and revenues right but in regards to knowing when the bills get paid that's something that we're not we weren't privy to uh as a board right or wasn't shared with us which is again it just it just frustrates me but but but again I'm also excited that we are now have taken hold

066of this issue that's been going on for a while um and and and are right you know correcting uh the the the the pathway and the processes moving forward around how um the finances function in this District so again kudos to you know get to to the illuminate team as well who you know you know came with Dr Cher kind of helped us it could create these types of reports and and got us digging into some of these Pro processes and practices that um you know again just have been ongoing in this District thanks to tamaron and her team uh for digging in and reaching out to you know uh you know departments and and and and and U school buildings and school building leadership um again I I think I see a bright future

067ahead again of course as you're saying there's many challenges ahead a lot of headwinds um financially but I think uh we're on the right track and uh again looking forward to the again the next iteration of the board because again we've got a lot of work to continue to do uh to you know stabilize continue to stabilize and and ultimately uh get rid of the structural deficit Y at some point and and and it's our job collectively to give the Board of Education the best possible information as you make your tough decisions and there's going to be a lot of major decision you know you've already had to live through tough decisions for 18 months there's still going to be some tough decisions but you know hopefully it's you know at some point in time

068that's going to go away and there could be a true focus on what you're supposed to be focusing at can you go can you go um up one slide like one previous slide I just want to be crystal clear here um with the projected revenues like that number is pretty set right like we know so we've collected 60 I'm looking at the orange yes we've collected 64.2% our revenues are we know what they're going to be so there's no variables through February what but I'm saying like over the projection like our revenues that we expect is there any chance that they change in this fiscal year so so the real estate taxes should be pretty close um you know and assuming that uh that number should that number there's more confidence in and now if

069if if it gets to the way it was historically where the state delays payments or something like that that's one thing but but but if the money comes in on time from the state and federal government government then um you know we feel that we're going to end up pretty close to budget thank you you're welcome any other questions thank you thanks everybody good to see you our next agenda item is the building use fees so we have an update to our facility rental agreements Dr gley yes so memo in the board packet essentially outlines a few fundamental changes um number one when we took a look at the kind of fee structure that we had posted on the website we noticed a few things one we needed to clean up some policy language so

070there's a recommended recommendation for shifting policy language second we were basing all pricing entirely on square footage which was not entirely a clear and understandable metric that was being built out consistently to our community um and so for Community it was difficult to estimate like what is a fair cost on this and what is number three we um didn't have a real tight rental agreement that went to the individuals that were renting our property to make be very clear about what their responsibilities were and around payment so we did some investigation went out pulled in essentially policies and practices from about 10 different districts and essentially developed a new a new process that's outlined in the memo I think critical also in there is that previous L we didn't break out any specific groups for

071the types of rentals so you'll notice that we're clear up front that school sponsored events PTA events Park District events are dealt with differently and we do show in the tables what cost would be if you were charged but the gray indicates that there would be no charge for those groups as long as they're within our working hours if somebody chooses to rent and gets an agreement to rent a facility over nonworking hours then there would be a charge to cover our costs and so because we'd need to bring in a concierge or a custodian in that space But the goal of this is essentially to be clearer about our rental rates during the school year and the summer for both the community members that want to use our buildings and for the district tighten

072up our invoicing and processes and then making sure we have a clear rental agreement in case something we need to follow up around damage to a building or around the roles the expectations while you're in our buildings and to make sure board policy is aligned with these ENT with these procedures that we're bringing forward questions I just had a question about understanding the workflow um and who's managing the process of determining well you owe this much and billing and approving and all of that so we did not change the community facing permit request so That Remains the Same people fill out a permit request those very frequently get routed either to the school principal or to buildings and grounds but either way principal signs off on it buildings and ground signs off on it it's

073buildings and grounds that assesses the fee that we would charge okay it is buildings and grounds that then also communicates to the person who's completed the permit what the fee would be what the terms of the agreement are and what is also attached in there is then the the signed rental agreement so if they're going to accept the fee and the terms they sign and return that we put them on the calendar for that particular facility um once that happens for summer we are right now we're trying out passing the invoices then to the to the financial services department to follow up on billing uh depending on how that works out we'll see how how we want to manage the other ones we are currently also we use um a brightly product called School dude

074for our uh work tickets they also have a facilities module that we have access access to so we're working on getting that cleaned up so that we could also potentially use that to manage and it has some access to potential billing in some cases uh we use my school bucks for lunch that is also one that they're compatible with so we'll look at different Alternatives right now we're working with financial services to ensure we get collection right so then the invoice goes to financial services to ensure that the payment is we send it and we give we send the tracking information to financial services so we can receive the payment and then if there's assessed damages that also then gets added to the in buildings and grounds does there's language in the rental agreement that

075says that you are accountable for any damages that could be damaged to a piano it could be damaged to a desk Furniture whatever it may be we would we would essentially write an additional invoice for those damages and they would need to pay that in order to be able to access our buildings again thank you is there any language in the contract um about District 65 values type things right so if someone rents our space and then does something that creates a unsafe situation for any population or like that that would make that clear that that's our so there is I would need to go back into the agreement to pull it up specifically but we do have some limitations around the types of activities that can occur in our buildings and they should be

076ones that are ultimately supportive of the values of the district as well as the population that building serves yeah I just know I need to I don't have it right in front of me I can go take a look at that um and follow up with the board certainly on it but we did use some language to generally frame the types of events that the buildings can be used for and then what is our recourse if something happens that is that it is not right like so is it just that they're banned in the future is that there's is there any consequence right like I'm going to just be we've had a situation right where like even the planners weren't planning for it to necessarily take on a different you know right groups groups morph

077as they're Gathering so like what's our because there's reputational harm to the district from those things happening what what is our recourse if somebody holds an event and somebody present does something that causes reputational harm for the district yeah so I think again we'd want to go back to when we consider rentals are we holding to the kind of the core purpose and function that the community expects us to play in this community so I think we have to hold that frame things can happen um I think I don't have an entirely satisfying comment for the board on this we can think some more but the reality is if it's criminal it would become a criminal issue if it was damaged it would be a fee issue and I think it would be then clearly

078not allowing that organization to continue to access District 65 facilities in the future um I think we can always really try to make sure that we are allowing organizations that have aligned values and student centered programming into the buildings but if something goes wrong I think that's a risk we take I think there's um so to your question in the contract section f is compliance with laws and policies says shall comply with school district policies and procedures yeah but if I'm reading it right this seems to be written in a way that if you are in the same town as us and you're serving the same kids with us as us whether they're d65 kids or Just Community kids um this is a lot easier of a process than if you're a different group that

079wants to use our facilities that is correct yeah and it's we're trying to hold that there are long-term nonprofit Partners things along those lines that have been in our facilities that are over a long time that are committed to serving the students in our district and so hopefully this is a more straightforward process and it's clearer about what they can expect around UH responsibilities and fees and I think gets us all on the same page but I think to Joy's point I just want to highlight like you know when we go past the school hours yep it cost the district financially so like we we can't like we we want to we will continue to be good partners but at some point we got to share the load on the expense of custodial cost to

080open buildings and do all of those things so I just want to highlight cuz I think that's where we take the biggest hit as a district um while while and it's not the perception is that we're not being great Partners we are but we got to also be realistic around what the financial state for us looks like at a as a district and and we need some support um in doing that and so just want to that was want to make for for strong Partners we want to make the facilities available but we also need to do it in a way where we're not losing money so that's why if it's within the work hours our standard work hours if it's beyond those work hours we will need to charge for the appropriate opening and

081supervision of the billing Stacey I'm I'm assuming that when we say the work hours we mean like if Child Care is open till 6 yeah our yeah the C somebody doing something 4 to 6 it says 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. on the school calar on school days it say open and it's after that that doesn't work that's when we have staff the building I see okay and that's during the school year during the summer it's a little bit different and or Saturdays or so the biggest challenges are really later evening events or weekend events and in that case we're having to bring people in on overtime so we need support covering those cost where does um polling place stuff fall in like do so the polling place is a is not a rental agreement

082it's really part of an inter governmental agreement so I was not really thinking about we were not addressing polling in this situation okay thank you good question thank you yeah thank you our next agenda item is the bid acceptance for Doorway to learning projects yep getting a door it's literally a doorway so essentially Doorway to learning um has Grant funds that they want to commit to having an additional access to the building it's going to create ease of access for dropping students off um essentially Family Access and also additional Safety and Security Access so we this is a project that we were looking at it ended up coming in higher than we wanted so we went out to bid and this is essentially the bid that we would like to accept to move forward with

083the project so this $68,900 yes is an addition to the grant the that will be paid for using Grant funds they are paying for it fully out of Grant funds great yep any questions about the the bid no questions I move that the board accept the superb steel and construction bid in the amount of $68,900 for completion for the scoped project of the construction of an emergency exit door in the Family Center at je second Lind Ryan yes wiins yes hurn yes Kim yes Salem yes Sue yes Hernandez yes our next agenda item is the approval of the District 65 phone contract all right yep technology team led by Elena lots of support from the technology team essentially as we reviewed contracts earlier in the year under Dr Turner's guidance um this is one that

084initially we thought was going to come due in March of 2025 due to pandemic and delayed implementation we then discovered that it wasn't coming due until March 2026 the team however really decided to dig in went out and got multiple quotes um and after vetting the quote went back to their our current provider and rival 5 matched a lower quote in order to maintain our business and so you can see there's really sizable saving monthly and annually through the team's kind of diligence and negotiation we're going to have parallel services and return pretty significant monthly and annual savings with this contract and they will honor this immediately so as soon as we sign we will be out of the last essentially 12 months of our contract and move into cost savings great and this is

085good because it won't require us to have to do the rein configuration of going with somebody else new to get the phone system over and do all of that the wiring and all that so this just makes it easier so we're grateful for any any way we can really find savings is really what the the the focus of the team has been that's great and we're looking at $43,000 annually which is excellent also sounds like a partner that we want to be doing business with that you brought them a situation that they didn't have to engage in at all because the contract wasn't due for a year and like okay they're going to put us on New terms and reduce our costs great great any questions wondering about other contracts that can be renegotiated if

086not I move that the board approved the five-year contract renewal with rival five to secure reduced pricing while maintaining the district's current phone system second Lindsay Ryan Yes hel yes Ken yes Salem yes Sue yes Hernandez yes our next agenda item is the Foster School construction update and it sounds like it's going to be a big month little month a foundational month uh good afternoon every one I think it's still yes excellent um so foster School update for March uh since our February lot has has happened do have the clicker I do a presentation I got it oh no that's good um so as standard we kind of standardize our update to uh standard agenda that's we also feed into our monthly newsletter which we sent out last week to all the Foster families um

087current and future um so we'll talk about update classic schedule and budget um we had a foster family gathering which we have some updates on they chose a School logo and colors which we'll present and then we'll talk about up next and then lastly there's a CH approval to the board for the board to vote on two change orders within one uh contract uh just as an update on the site in the last month um they've been installing ground piping for electrical and for plumbing the electrical is to get ready for ComEd service which is a key Benchmark in April and then um also to prepare for water and sewage uh ties to the city once we can dig into the city uh in April around the foundation they've been uh installing um anchor bolts

088and steel plates the you can see that the um the steel plates are are surveyed and they're around the entire foundation and they're for verification of the elevations for the pre-cast walls that are coming in next week and the anchor bolts with the base plates are the base set up for the steel columns that will support the building uh down the center aisles uh the last week they've also installed a huge storm trap Basin uh this is kind of basin that we'll have both under the Playfield and under the parking lots so they'll be installing another one later on uh once they take up the parking lot this is a great uh investment for the community because it helps uh address flooding issues especially in this area which is a pretty high water table you

089can see uh this was a beginning picture last Thursday uh later in the day on Thursday and then on uh Friday and today they finish it up by sealing it so it's an incredible huge wide Chasm of underground Labyrinth um to prepare for prepare for and hold storm water as it comes in and then slowly release it uh over time uh in terms of schedule we've had a schedule update um we are looking to we move back the flooring and kitchen equipment as we're still working through although I think we've decided finally the types of flooring um patterns and uh whatnot for the library and for the hallways and for the classrooms um now that we've pretty much cinched on that we'll be looking to uh look for the May 5th board as a uh

090final act for this board to approve the bid group four for flooring and kitchen equipment it's not a huge timely issue because we're not going to be putting in flooring in pi until until much later this year and and next year otherwise the schedules on schedule um and uh again pre-cast is going in next week in terms of budget uh we have a change order which we'll talk about in a little bit but with that mechanical change contractor's change order it's an increase of a little over $100,000 to the budget and that will increase the bid group three projected actual by that amount um how do we address that we take it out of the project contingency so that has decreased by $114,000 that's still uh still at high levels and we feel confident with

091that number still um overall the budget is unchanged uh and you can see we're still holding strong at$ 48.5 million on February 19th in 10 degree weather at night we had over 120 attendees come to our foster family gathering uh it was a a nice event with um pizza and tamales with everybody it was festive the kids had a lot of fun because we were able to open up the gym and give them a little chance to run around as well um very encouraged by the number of Bessie roads that families that attended and showed up uh 50/50 mix between Bessie roads families and non Bessie roads fifth W families uh we focused on community building we focused on kind of providing just a school information exchange and addressing questions and concerns they had and

092providing General updates um we chose the School logo and colors and we also had an exchange of thinking about how how next can we think about bringing people together and what should we focus on so we had over 50 suggestions for that and the Foster transition committee which is part of our Sab committee is working on kind of taking the the lead on that next steps uh that quote kind of represents what we're all why we're doing this and while we're building a school right there and for our logo are colors uh the community and the F future Foster family community shows maroon and gold as the primary two colors with the orange as an accent and you can see the phoenix bird uh there as the selection so that'll be the future of the

093Foster and that's how we'll we'll Market it going forward and branding it um next so next week pre-cast wall erection literally within a couple weeks you'll see an entire building face around the whole size because that's how quickly it goes up be a ton of tra uh truck traffic we've notified Alderman uh council member Burns and sent be part of the fifth W newsletter as well as our own newsletter making sure the community knows that um Ashland's going to be a little hard to travel and be wary of traveling on Ashland um we do have I I'll go ahead a little I guess I won't go ahead uh oh it's not there um if you updated it oh it's okay so I have I just showed a um picture of the truck routes and how

094trucks are coming in another Community we work closely with the city to make sure it's very limited we go we go to McCormick we go to Green Bay we go a block and a half down ashin we're at the school and we go basically the back way out so we're not going through any really any residential streets because the only part of ashin that we're going down is pretty much the industrial part of Ashland with a lot of businesses um and then the big big uh next big um Benchmark is getting comed service in April um connecting and and scheduling with ComEd is always an issue cuz they're big company and they're hard to coordinate and they're servicing a lot of folks but um that's the plan and and the court and Clark has been

095all over that um in terms of our change order um as is was given to you in a memo in the in the board packet cour and Clark outlined the basis for the change order but basically uh they we had a pre-bid alternate to include a carbon dioxide system which not only gives us more lead points and stabilizes our lead rating but also is just creates a safer environment and a safer building and I think talking to Stacy and Omar and and Dr Turner U moving forward any kind of initiative that we can install the CO2 system across a building that's economical we move towards that as a standard um so that's an additional 80,000 that we that you didn't approve because it was withheld from the bid at that time uh back in December

096and then we opted to uh go for building management controls with cister Co because we already have a contract with cister Co they service all our buildings that we work with their equipment and their software uh so introducing an alternative software for $24,000 less didn't make sense um so we're maintaining that relationship and it's going to cost us that amount of money uh and so it's an increase to the uh contract that you approved by $14,000 overall and that is that is it what does that bring our contingency amount to do you know so the the actual building contingency there is 1 so it brings us down to 1.9 72 we still have in our contingency that's how much we have in our building you can also see that we have 2.37 in contractor allowances

097that's also a form of contingency that's more project contingency that you've approved already so um the 1. n72 is is kind of in a secured Vault and we have to go pretty much through board approval when we want to access that going forward so we protect that dearly but we think this invest these two Investments make a lot of sense for both uh the school for the district and for the students and staff that will be working in the building and kudos to to Kirby he is like a watchdog on this money um so much so that he discovered the purchase of some cameras on the site um that we did not authorize and so I just want to publicly say like thank you so much for scrubbing this with a fine tooth comb as

098you have been doing and so I just wanted to just say that publicly um he he is really watching it to make sure that um we stay within that budget amount and and we're doing what we supposed to do because again if if he didn't catch that yeah he would have bought some nice cameras for the construction it also relates to our the support we have with our owner representative at Turner Townson and Harry and Ben kogan and his help any other questions any questions you no then um I move that the Board of Education approve the change order number one for the bid alternate from mg mechanical in the amount of $80,000 for carbon dioxide sensors required to achieve the lead certification level and change order number two to use controls by the train

099company for a lower cost of $246 thus increasing the mg mechanical contract by $4,688 M 8967 21 second Lindsay Ryan Yes Wilkins yes hper yes Kim yes Salem yes Sue yes Hernandez yes thank you thank you and next up is our sap 3 update dual language hi everyone hey am hello next slide oh I have it sorry so today I'm here to update you on sap 3 dual language and we're going to talk a little bit update you on how we built the committee and really an update on the two of the three meetings for um the sa 3 the timeline there was is kind of three phases the first phase was uh the planning stage we're now in the implementation phase and after our our March 20th meeting we will be giving uh do

100Turner the recommendation from the committee um the recruitment of the of the committee um members we had Outreach to all K5 twe families the sixth grade dual language the Spanish language arts families and caregivers as well as Educators to join the committee um we have the communication department has been working with us to really help um have high visibility and have um the members that we have and they've done a lot of work and I want to thank them publicly a lot of uh social media posts uh post on the sap web page the we were highlighted in the Fast Five uh we we called uh we asked principals um to include it in their and their school websites the invitation and also the PTA policy Council to share with their members um I want

101to give a shout out to this committee they are inquisitive they're dedicated to the process and they really are true champions of dual language education it is a really strong committee um the majority of the community are parents and caregivers all twe schools were represented there's teacher participation and staff representation and there's a balance of language speakers of native language speakers in both ends we're GNA I'm going to just update you the first meeting was really foundational the second meeting was really the meat and potatoes of of of our work and then the third meeting we're going to go through the recommendation making process um I want to make it clear that we are not picking one school over another school what we are picking in this committee is which one will start first and

102the very next year the other one will start so our essential question is where will the Dual language Middle School be located for the fall of the school year 26 and 27th and that would either be shoot or nickels our first first meeting um was really to have an overview of the process we gave the background of the sap one and two uh we gave benefits and research of dual language program so we all had a shared understanding and we had a deeper understanding of the differences and similarities between twe and the Dual language models that are for the Middle School in meeting two really was critical as we need to make a decision based on data we began with Ria to set the necessary perspectives as we looked at the data I want to

103highlight that the data was General there was no individual student data shared um I we we also um the data consisted of enrollment which is current and future projections the results of twe K5 parent and caregiver survey and the five Essentials and the guidance principal of dual language education crosswalk as you know the Illinois essential 5 is an annual survey that's research-based really that is uh administered by the state of Illinois's bard of ad uh to teachers parents and students to gauge the school Effectiveness so we use that data in with the data of The Guiding principles of dual language education which is really a framework that provides um um districts for the planning implementation and evaluation of a successful a successful dual language models um with using SE seven strands so we kind of

104um looked at both and we the inter um inter section inter thank you um I want us to uh kind of look at what we gave as as the protocol call for the data um we did provide the presentation of the data but then there was a lot of self-reflection and table talk and we use reflective uh questions to gain understanding from very general um thinking about the data like what am I noticing to a much more uh deeper understanding of you know does my interpretation of the data change when I look through it with an equity lens so we wanted it to just not be uh we we wanted to be deep and understanding that the data is more than just where I want it to be in my feeder pattern school because it's

105my kids go there right and then we have the upcoming meeting our last one in March our March 20th next week and committee members will be using a scoring rubric based on the data presented to determine the recommendation for the next site and that is the update any questions sure um I I think I appreciate this information I think you know as I'm looking at our success of this program there's in my mind three F major factors one is the product is it what people want and what is best for our district two is the Staffing do we have the Educators and can we get the Educators we need to run it and the third is enrollment right do the people actually sign up for it right so I guess my question for you is

106in this process how are we assessing sounds like we're doing a good amount on the product side right and making sure that the product is there but how do we determine that we're going to have the Staffing we need and also what is the process going to include to survey so in the survey so in the survey it did it did ask very specific questions um that included are will you determine will it uh will you be continuing on to a dual language education and it was a overwhelmingly response of the majority of the people will continue I don't have those numbers exactly but I in our last share out I'll be happy to include them to you did we did we ask specifically like I think it's a different question would I would I

107enroll my child in this program if it's in my feeder pattern versus if it's not in my feeder pattern will I still enroll my child in this program did we ask that specifically in the process there were about 20 Questions yeah you you can get back to me on it I just I think that like there are some people that are like yeah if they continue to go with all of their friends then I'm in versus like oh we chose the other school are you still coming with us right is a I I think is an important question great yeah and I guess more generally I was curious to hear about some of the criteria that are being considered over which about which school to start with is it about enrollment patterns and and interest

108mostly um where where potential families would are are living right it's enrollment but it's more than just the G right like it's just more than numbers because you can have higher enrollment but the Readiness makes a difference too so we we thought it was important to bring in those five Essentials um and um there there are I mean part of the inquiry of this process right are there there's questions that we have to determine uh if we can um really um narrow down to think about you know what happens to those uh students that want to start in a different program we know we're starting some even this year in our twe we've had two twe sixth grade nights or one is Saturday when was at night and we had a a a family from

109Willard um say that they're going to start at bety roads next year so they can start the Dual language program so the interest is there um I think that we will see more of that when when it moves to the Middle School like the whole middle school as opposed to a school that's in transition yeah it's a different ask I I guess I should clarify my biggest fear is something we don't control you don't control we don't control of that people say we want this and then they don't enroll right so that's why I'm just trying to think through how do we have any confidence because you know people change and they're allow they're allowed to say in fourth grade that I'll totally do this in sixth grade and then we don't have the ability

110to make them enroll in sixth grade right so like I think that part is scary and we should keep thinking about what how how valid that data is and you know and that's why I'm saying like sparse paring sorry the like I'll definitely go if it's at shoot versus I will maybe go if it's at nickel right like whatever that math is because you know it's going to be a significant investment and Staffing uh changes to make that make it all work and so and there is a number where I think we can't make it work for a you know if it's below a certain number we can't make it work to be a positive experience for students and so that's you know the Staffing and the actual enrollment just the interest is the part

111that I I'm still wrapping my head around how we can feel confident about the numbers so the carrot for the enrollment I think is something that we discussed at the Joint uh U tool 265 meeting and that's presenting to uh our sap group and the families across the community right uh who are enrolling in our schools that we have a we're working on a Continuum that's going to develop from you to start here and it's going to end up with the child with your student uh getting a sealed by literacy right which again is a college credit and it's just a a benefit so I think part of it is going to be our communication team with that can you know can help out in regards to kind of marketing that aspect of it it's

112that this is a Continuum we're going to draw a direct line to a seal of by literacy that's going to benefit your child in the end um with again having a free college credit and I mean it's yeah so so I think as we think about and and again don't know if you've discussed that with them or if that's how it's been presented but yeah I mean that that's really something to really think about and and really um kind of uh problematize with the group right uh and with our team so in regards to again just off making sure that we're offering a clear picture of what uh the end goal and the vision is for for our multilingual program right yeah I think it's also hard that like I'm not sure having it at

113Bessie roads is going to be a allow us to predict interest you know the the the Dynamics of choosing a program at a school that is closing is different than choosing a program at a school that is going to continue on right especially if you have multiple children so um you know I think that that's a hard part to to make sense of as well of like okay if our numbers are low right now or next year does that mean there isn't going to be significant interest one year or two year down the road when it's housed at a school that has more population density to draw from I don't envy you from figuring it all out I appreciate you thank you you curriculum and policy I'm ready all right um let's start with our

114committee review document anybody have any questions about that document no anybody I do think this format is allowing us to have a lot more clarity um I appreciate the the structure but I think allows us to go okay this is what's happening this is what the next step is there's less less that is unclear so I will move us on to policy review um I just want to before we go into the specific policies explain that like this is an annual review that we do every year this is not in response to any federal changes or other local changes um that is causing us to make any policy changes so each year um policy changes are recommended by the state and we look at our policies and figure out what we would need to change

115to be consistent with those policies and whether we have any concerns and so this is that same process we go through annually um anybody have any questions about the policy review document there didn't seem to be any major it was like little language changes all right then I move that the board approve press 117 as presented second Lindsay Ryan Yes wel yes yes Tim yes Salem yes Sue yes Hernandez yes all right um we have come to the end of our committee whole meeting but I'm I moved at the Board of Education moving to close session to discuss the appointment employment compensation and performance of specific employees and negotiations second Salem yes yes haper yes Lindsay Ryan Yes Kim yes wils yes Hernandez yes that was a hard second and I was like I don't

116want a second extend extend the me e e for