Fairview District 72 Board of Education Meeting - 11/17/2021

001[Music] good evening everyone i hope you can all hear me okay um i am reconvening to um open session the regular meeting over the fairview district 72 board of education november 17 2021 we have already established that we have a quorum this evening i would just like to remind everyone and i will double check myself that your silence cell phones are silenced and if you would please join me in the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance thank you so our first item of business this evening is to approve the minutes of the regular and closed session meetings of october 20th 2021 can i have a motion and a second to approve some more i'll second are there any comments or edits to the minutes no no no in that case all those in favor say

002aye aye any opposed say nay the minutes are approved so next item is to approve the payment of bills in the amount of two hundred and thirty two thousand dollars nine hundred and four sorry two hundred and thirty two thousand nine hundred and four dollars and twenty five cents can i have a motion and a second second are there any questions regarding the bells we're all good okay in that case with the secretary please call the roll uh miss brown yes uh mr giuliana yes miss lanois yes i vote yes i'm miss boosti yes perfect thank you next item is a pta report do we have a report this evening excellent just october 29th we had our fall parties at school for the kindergarten to fourth graders which was a fun event for all the

003students on october 30th we had the first pta trunca retreat which we will thank the volunteers and all the families who participated it was a grand success and we got really good responses from the parents and the students and we look forward to make it like an annual event uh november 4th is a was a third pda benefit night at william in downtown skokie november 10th we had our pda general meeting on zoom and the upcoming events is december 9th pda benefit night at portulos and skokie that's all we have i think it's amazing that you're managing to pull these events together even in the circumstances that we're in it's it's really great i know the kids are loving it thank you thank you so much it's possible only with the support of the school

004and the parents and thank you for the uh spirit wear the pta spirit wear i i've loved some of the new items so i think that's really exciting for everyone when there are some new items to choose from so i know that the deadline is tonight so if there's anyone who hasn't ordered this is your chance to support the pta but there's i love the um sherpa jacket the the fluffy ones so thank you for your efforts on that as well thank you so much thank you okay so a school activity report is next um does a board administration have good news to share from the district anyone do you want to go ahead just a couple items from the school side of things we had a great fall season in athletics which i know

005last month got talked about and we continued with our basketball season as well which is great and then we also are gearing up for uh concerts again um so our music department and administration came together to think about you know ways to do it safely and to get our students to be able to perform so we are doing that uh ticket only for students that are a part of those ensembles will be able to um give their family members a couple tickets to come see live performances in the evening um so those are happening kind of from now uh from now until our next board meeting so that's really exciting so thanks the effort of music department and for you know cindy and the board for allowing us to do that so great thank you

006anyone else got anything to share sorry marianna we're just racking our memory for dates um i will share um thank you to the fairview teaching staff as well as all of our members of our fairview staff for helping us become a top workplace for the third consecutive year in a row we're really thrilled to have high participation in the survey that all staff members took and based on their ratings of their experience working here at fairview the district was once again uh at the top of the pack so i'm very proud of that and certainly something that you know warrants good news um from our point of view so thank you to everyone um we are privileged to work with so many wonderful professionals here at fairview so good job yup congratulations uh okeydoke so

007we're flying through this evening which is great because we've got a lot to get through um and the first of those is our of our administrative administrative reports is an equity audit report from dr dubiel yes so dr dubial and i are going to co-present um this report so just because of the way the technology is set up i think i am going to move over to the podium if that's okay with everyone this is dr dubielle the last time i think the board had an opportunity um to meet dr dubielle was remotely she was up on the big screen um so we're very pleased to have her here in person with us this evening and we are going to run through um a brief presentation that we've collaborated on um and then we'll get

008to you know any questions or comments from the board if that makes sense so um to begin with i just would like to start out by reminding all of us who are present here tonight the district 72 mission statement creating a strong foundation for academic excellence and personal growth by setting high expectations teaching to the needs of learners and embracing the richness of our cultural diversity this mission statement has been a part of the fairview culture for many many years and i really am proud about the way in which we came to the mission statement because it was a collaboration of all of the community stakeholders students parents teachers staff etc and it's one that we continue to feel really rings true for what we're doing here in the district each and every day prior

009to the 2019-2023 strategic plan i wanted to touch upon some of the work that we had begun um we were a founding member of the skokie el parent center in 2008. the el parent center is responsible for the parent mentor program that fairview has taken advantage of for many many years the center also has provided interpreter certification to fairview parents who wanted to become trained interpreters not only to help out here at fairview within their own community but to also have the ability to be paid and employed as interpreters elsewhere the center provides english classes which again many fairview parents have taken advantage of and job training opportunities the goal of the center has always been to support immigrant parents in supporting their children in american public schools specifically here in skokie but we've also

010tried to help them be able to promote themselves whether it be through job training learning english or just serving as a parent volunteer in our community we've also participated uh fairly significantly in the village of scoby's coming together programming that's a collaboration throughout the entire village and has traditionally focused on different cultures that are represented here in skokie at the district level we've gone through several curriculum adoptions one component of every curriculum adoption is to include input from all of the stakeholders and to integrate uh equity through the lens of that particular curriculum so that has been a part of our curriculum adoption process for many years mr shurmur was a part of our science district learning team and the adoption of our science curriculum and one small example that we looked for when we

011were reviewing curriculums were finding textbooks that represented scientists of different genders and different race and culture so that's something that we do embed throughout all of what we do the learning center and classroom book collections have been reevaluated to provide additional collections from different genres as well as different authors we have employed our first director of special education here in the district to make sure that our special education students are well supported we've established an instructional program for special education students with more significant needs right here in-house we have a gifted program that has had updated entrance requirements to make sure that we are representing students of all types in that program and we've adopted a k-8 social emotional learning curriculum to help support all of our students this is just one of the goals

012in our current strategic plan an important pillar goal number three uh surrounds diversity and inclusivity and you can see the very specific activities that the district has undertaken over the last couple of years and where we're headed in terms of the strategic plan going forward other equity initiatives that i wanted to point out some of which i've touched upon already is the participation in the parent mentor program in the el parent center the interpreter training the strategic plan including goal number three diversity and inclusivity the various objectives that we've completed up to this point in time the seat training that has been taken advantage of by representatives of the administration faculty staff and board of ed our assistant superintendent jeff fair served on the edred equity ad hoc committee as well as the bipap hiring

013subcommittee of ed reg in september of 2020 is when the board first approved the equity audit it's hard to believe it's been over a year since that point we've done various staff trainings including those on gender this year we have done training on disability awareness and the district equity leadership team has been formed and met i'm going to hand it over to dr dubio as she's going to go through the expectations of the presentation and her part of the discussion thank you good evening everyone so um the expectations of what i will go over today we'll discuss the phases of the audit the quantitative and qualitative overview and basically the summary findings and next steps as you have received an extensive comprehensive report that provides details into the equity audit process this is designed to

014provide an overview of all so a little bit information about the purpose of an equity audit it is to determine areas of strength and needed improvement when it comes to advancing equity for each student it is a fact-finding process that aids in identifying gaps and leads to tangible recommendations to address and mitigate inequities so the equity process in itself is approximately a 9 to 12 month process and there are five phases to it the first phase requires the district assembling a team called the district equity leadership team that team completes a needs assessment where they're evaluating the district and ten major components with an associated rubric to identify areas of string in the tent components as a system it is also a data point in the equity audit phase one also allows for the team

015to provide direction to the quantitative and qualitative process every equity audit is customized for the organization the community or the in-house stakeholders know best of what that direction is as every organization is very unique the quantitative part involves the district reviewing a long list of data considerations and they determine which pieces of data should be gathered synthesized and analyzed with an equity lens the qualitative part involves what questions to ask at the different stakeholders that will be participating in focus groups your district had three stakeholder focus groups students staff and parents guardians caretakers so the team decides what questions to ask those stakeholders they do receive a bank of questions but they're certainly not limited to those questions those questions are driven by what they know and their knowledge in their own community so it

016does differ from organization to organization after phase one phase oh a huge thank you to the members of the adult team after phase one phase two and three occur simultaneously phase two is where the district now gathers that data they essentially have some homework and that does take several months to upload and synthesize the data and then that data ranges greatly this is not an exhaustive list but it includes such pieces as demographics our academic programming services and support like our spin up program the tier services student discipline typically what is presented to the state in school and out of school suspension which we must report academic progress can a gleam from standard assessment to grading absenteeism the number of languages staff and board demographics this is not the entire list of data considerations that

017the team can agree to gather and synthesize and be analyzed with an equity lens phase three of the equity audit is then those focus groups your district had a total of 18 focus group a couple of things with 18. when it comes to districts choosing an equity audit it is designed by packages so the cost of an equity audit will vary often times based on the extent and time that needs to be devoted to that audit so 18 is a standard number that is provided by my company so 18 focus group equals this amount and this time 30 focus groups equals this amount in this time and so on so those 18 focus group do come from an option of what the district can choose which uh package is best for them for the size

018of your district the package chosen was appropriate the team also decides of those 18 focus groups how many are dedicated to students to staff to parents guardians and caretakers they have complete ownership with that it's just one of the one in many ways an audit must be customized for a client so they do the legwork and a lot of coordination and behind the scenes in communicating to stakeholders and organizing the actual focus group to participate and then the some people who do participate um often well depending on the role so oftentimes we'll sign up or commit but don't actually participate your district overall had a really good representation now one of the critiques to highlight is is this an a good number there is no magic number when it comes to research you are depending

019on a sample size it's no different than those who complete a survey survey the difference is survey often is close-ended and it's ideal to have about 50 of survey respondents you don't have a survey you have focus group so it's a lot more intense and it's open-ended so there is the research is very clear there is no magical number to achieve to suggest that it is a good case study or a sample size so what we want to depend on is the quality of responses in other words there are focus groups where there could be 10 people signed up and two people will be speaking so we don't get lost necessarily on the number even though it is important to acknowledge but really the quality of feedback that per respondents uh provide phase four and

020phase five of the audit is the analysis by the time i reach phase four we have received all the quantitative and qualitative data and my team is um analyzing that it does go through four layers of analysis with different people to ensure impartiality so different folks are analyzing the quantitative different folks are analyzing the qualitative and i analyze both and finally phase five as you're aware are is the finding it's the actual report that lists the findings the recommendations and how it is research based one thing to be clear when it comes to the equity audit just like any other research project it's always going to have limited capacity so the limits will be to that time frame of data that we analyzed the limits will also be to the information that's provided the focus

021group responses the data and the needs assessment it is not intended to be exhaustive it is intended to analyze and make recommendations based on that information provided the accountability framework so in the equity audit as you are aware there is an accountability framework already already integrated in the report and what we know and the research is very clear on this is there's no one way to advance equity within any system systems are not designed and have not been designed to be equitable so in order for an organization particularly a school district which is considered one of the most complex organizations in the united states there is not one thing we can do to advance equity there are multiple considerations and so an accountability framework is ideal to help frame those recommendations the accountability framework used

022is the five strands of systemic equity this accountability framework is clear when it comes to organizations particular public school district there are systems considerations let's take a vulnerable look at our policies our practices our decision making our fiscal responsibility our allocation teaching and learning our curriculum our assessments our academic programs our instructional practices student voice climate culture discipline extracurricular scl trauma informed as well as the climatic culture of the stakeholders who occupy the organization professional development there is no final destination to this learning equity is deeply embedded and has a multitude of paradigms so the journey as you probably have heard of the term equity journey absolutely has valid considerations because there is no end point to the learning when it comes to equity it is complex and it is pervasive often related to power

023base because of identities and intersectionality of identities it is very personal work and it is very structural and systemic work so the learning towards it will never end family and community as agency we certainly can do this work alone so it is critical that we have partnerships with the families and the communities that we serve so the recommendations offered are under this accountability framework to allow for implementation now as districts implement their findings let's be clear there's not one strand that's more important than the other so in other words system is not important more important than teaching learning teaching and learning is not important in family and community is agency when organizations are serious and committed to an organizational commitment advancing equity they understand that they must do work in each of the five strands

024so the recommendations in the report are designed to have recommendations under each of the strands so under systems strand you had two recommendations accelerate the commitment and communication toward equity through systemic and transparent means one of the things that was clear was a lack of a plan a specific plan now you have a phenomenal strategic plan but an equity plan is specific to just an equity plan it utilizes accountability and measurable metrics as well as transparency in its commitment an equity plan is designed to align with the work that already exists like strategic plan district mission statements a variety of commitments made by the district but it is also designed by the stakeholders and we'll talk a little bit about the equity action plan and what that's going to entail for the future so that

025the team can reconvene and decide how do we prioritize these findings and what do we do to make sure that we can that they're actually feasible and we could do the work so what is always going to be an important finding is we need a plan and we need to be transparent in that plan and it needs to be exclusively on equity because it is foundational another finding and it's a very classic finding it's a issue that is occurring across the country and it's our ability to attract and retain highly qualified diverse teachers and administrators specifically with your district quantitative data by race ethnicity as well as gender it is a challenging challenging aspect there are a multitude of districts that are often competing for the same highly qualified minoritized candidates so we have to

026perhaps think creatively we have to perhaps have hiring practices where we are thinking critically of our interviewing questions for candidates so even though we might not reach this subliminal number whatever it may be to our highly qualified diverse staff we can ensure for example that when we do interview candidates that they are committed and they understand the importance and the richness of the diversity in your district teaching and learning is another finding embed culturally responsive curriculum and resources in each content and grade exciting that the work is do taking place in ela and science and adopting the new curriculum at your district as you can imagine oftentimes the expectation is that culturally responsive practices and pedagogy are the responsibility of ela or social studies teacher that is a huge misnomer it is a responsibility of

027all educators to be culturally responsive to educators in all contents so being very deliberate in that whether it's looking at our scope and sequence of our units whether it's offering a representation in our resources there's almost an endless way to ensure that all educators embrace pedagogy and practices in every content and every grade and tap and oftentimes people wonder what that is the most basic example is culturally responsive curriculum is tapping into students lived experiences and backgrounds and so educators are not expected to be an expert in cultures it's impossible there are cultures within cultures but what we can do is offer open platforms so the students can see themselves so we welcome opportunities for students to share of course at their comfort level while ensuring that our curriculum and instruction offers opportunity for students

028to see themselves and we model what that could look like we tap into students lived experience we make it make sense so something as simple as teaching fractions for example some may say it's not simple but something as simple as teaching fractions for example making that curriculum come alive how can teaching fractions how is it relative to your work at home why is it important in the real world why does this skill matter so it's not just coming in to a classroom and not necessarily that's happening across the board but oftentimes if we're not very deliberate in our identity in our unit mapping to ensure that we have curricular resources in each continent grade we are not providing the tools for the teachers to actually have that in front of them and teachers absolutely have

029professional discretion about what that looks like but offering opportunities within and being very intentional in our deliberate curriculum or resources can be key so that the students can see how this content is absolutely relevant and important for their development 2.2 heighten the communication efforts to stakeholders about the equitable access and opportunity to your ela math and spin-off programs so it was uh interesting in talking to community stakeholders talking to a variety of different stakeholders i think it's the perception currently at your district about how spin up programs can be accessed and so there needs to be some consideration in the communication efforts and i do not doubt that it is happening and sometimes it is that perception but it was one of the uh themes that came out in the conversations through the focus group

030with stakeholders student voice climate culture one of the findings in that was just to develop a student equity advisory committee there will always be findings in each of the strands just to be clear and the student equity advisory committee could be an opportunity to continuously take pulse on how students are feeling how they're experiencing where they feel included and a sense of belonging in their experience as a as a people professional development as mentioned earlier that will be one of those findings if you create a action plan that will be consistently there as we have some foundational professional development for example for all staff we need to consider onboarding then we need to consider differentiation opportunities as people are very different places when it comes to understanding equity as it comes to navigating it and

031demonstrating its practice in the classroom or beyond because it's certainly not exclusive to teachers it is an expectation that all staff have some common language and understanding when it comes to equity and last and certainly not least is family and community as agency opportunities to also tap into our communities to develop that understanding and partnership and learn from them and also make them mutually learn from us about the spin-off programs about our equity efforts identifying perhaps barriers we hadn't noticed because of perhaps our existence in the systems and unknowingly having blinders to how our system functions so having open opportunities now how to design that there's a number of different ways and that'll come through the conversations with the team because it really is endless on how to design that but making sure that we

032are offering an open door opportunity for community members to serve on the committee to consistently give us feedback and allow us to create that partnership their relationship letting them know that we are devoted to equity in all students so while we went through the process of the audit and collecting the data i thought it was important to note that we didn't just step into a holding pattern the district continued to work through all of the data that was requested from dr dubiel it was an intensive process and it involved members of our staff from every part of the building we conducted our professional development on equity topics so we could continue that work and we employed for the first time our director of community and student engagement which is a new role for fairview and

033one that you know we believe is really going to help our efforts in moving forward um down this this pathway towards being a more equitable school in district our next steps we will and we have already placed on our staff development calendar for november 29th we will be convening the district equity leadership team and we will be reviewing the equity audit and their findings at that time we will begin our work to prioritize the recommendations to pursue in the near and long term we will communicate the findings and the next steps to parents and the full staff in january of 22 and we will work to develop an equity action plan with the district equity leadership team and we've already been able to schedule dr dubiel to support us in that work on april 29th

034which is a district institute day and june 8th and june 10th hoping that we may be able to springboard some summer curriculum planning at that time because school will be officially out for the summer so those are our plans moving forward i would be happy to entertain questions or feedback from the board dr dubiel will as well so please you know let us know if you'd like to have clarification if you have questions does anybody have questions anyone i just want to thank dr daviel for the effort that was involved in putting this together my my one question would be from all the findings that you've presented to us here is there one that you need the board to support you on in terms of not just you but really our school district where can

035we help drive this forward um together collaboratively so one of the things that we know is helpful and actually working with law firms in the state of illinois is to further cement the equity work and commitment there are a couple of things that we have received in some suggestions it is ideal when we have board policies board language on equity when that's not in existence a district statement from the board and its commitment on equity and when that's unavailable a district statement what the lawyers have told us is it is ideal to have all three especially when there is contention or a misunderstanding towards equity that the district and the leadership can stand behind the board policy district statement and or board policy the board statement and or the district statement so ideally that may

036be something that will come out of the eap the equity action plan but is it ideal to have that absolutely it only is going to further support the work that the leadership and all staff wants to do to serve all kids thank you and my my follow-up to that would be um given the new role that we've um added um jordan kilpatrick would you uh is there anything that you could do to help ensure that this person in this role is most successful in our community and i think i might be able to speak for both of us on this you know first and foremost um dr dubiel and i collaborated on the job description so that we could make sure that um any individual that we were interviewing would have a really strong sense

037of what their role was going to encompass um and i think that you know numerous pieces have been put in place to support uh the new director of community and student engagement including uh and not limited to but including connecting her with other people in like positions in different districts um here she's a singleton so to speak um so connecting her up with people who have been in her role in different places i think is a really great step to um begin to help her on board but also just having full access to all of the administrative team um you know in our support of her as she's working through getting to build relationships you know those are just some of the strategies that we've utilized but i i really think being able to um

038be in this partnership with dr dubiella at the right time we were able to kind of bounce back and forth how best to approach the new position in the district and if i just may add when organizations employ someone for such a role should absolutely be applauded it's a demonstration of their commitment that we have somebody dedicated to this work but at the same time we have to be re uh realistic that the onus or responsibility for a system to move the equity needle forward cannot be placed solely on one individual they're there to support they're there to provide critical feedback constructive feedback that can often be uncomfortable so i think in furthering having this role it's understanding the challenges that come with it and supporting the individual in that role thank you i have

039a question about the um the delt the belt equity learning team so uh you you brought up the slide with all the people that had been involved in the process of developing um the the plan um would you envisage that that's the sort of size of an equity learning team going forward and and we we should be keeping at that level to sort of try and draw from various different aspects of the school or and and how clearly the work's going to be pretty intensive in this next year um to really get this thing moving but how would you see things planning out in terms of just uh frequency of meeting and activities and things like that going forward with with the team well i'm not sure i can comment on the frequency because that

040will vary but the makeup of the dealt the actual number there's a real reasoning behind that knowing that um it is absolutely required during phase one of the equity audit for a district to assemble a team they are given guidance on the membership of that team because there is an assumption on my part that we continue the partnership and there's going to be an eap because the findings from the equity audit the report itself as you know can be overwhelming so the idea is that your delts should have a minimum of 25 people we don't have to go extremely over that but the reason for the 25 people is those individuals are going to be divided into those five strands so they're going to be developed and so typically about five people in each of

041their strands they're going to be divided to develop those objectives that meet those goals either adopting the findings or identifying new areas of growth that allow for alignment to work that is currently existing accountability measures so that's an ideal number to have a minimum of 25 people i caution going really above that number and i've worked with all size teams um that go above that number because we we have to make some decisions or have to go it's a planning uh group and their role is to make some decisions that is systemic for the benefit of all students and then there are some strategic considerations as to who are the individuals in that role do they work with some of our historically marginalized identities for example do they work and do they have experience working

042with our special education kiddos do they have a background when working with their english language learners do they work in a title one school for example that criticalness of working with those students of those identities is important as well as their own identities their understanding and equity because this is not a pd if you will but this is action planning so they're going to need to be a very decently well versed in the work so that they can develop a plan that makes sense for their district so that's the logic behind that number but the frequency yeah and i can't speak to the frequency at this moment i will mention though that that list will increase by one because we do have jordan on board and she's not hearing this for the first time tonight

043she is absolutely going to be integrated into the team her name wasn't included in this presentation because she was not a part of the previous work but she will be added to the team and you know we will be looking at the availability of our teams to meet whether it be on mondays during staff development time or as i already mentioned that we were tapping an institute day to continue this work so that will be you know more to come but luckily this district has embedded within our current schedules many opportunities for professional development time to work together in committees sounds good i i just wanted to be sure that having done all this that we have the team to take it forward and that team is adequate and supported and equipped to move forward

044and to continue the journey anyone else um i had a question as i as i'm aware that you were involved with other um audit reports in other schools where would you say we fall on a kind of a spectrum so one of the things i purposely do not do is provide any type of rating of where districts are at when it comes to their equity journey i can't tell you how different it varies to make a fair comparison which suggests that the demographics are identical or alike would suggest that the resources and personnel alike and even if the data was alike that would also have to suggest that the stakeholders that are participating in the focus group have similar mindsets there are focus groups where there are things said that would be shocking that is

045heartbreaking and then there are things that are said that people recognize this is important for all kids all kids need to feel cared for and love and make sure that the institution of education remains the institution of education we're educating the whole child we are the only institution design in the country charged with educating other human beings so as a result we are educating the whole child and not sure if every organization even if it was a district exactly like yours in the numbers they would also have to have that mindset to do a fair comparison i will say this there are districts and i've done multiple equity audits that have a lot more findings than your equity audit so hopefully that that helps does anybody else have anything to add or any other comments

046or questions just just thank you for taking us on this journey and it is a journey it's going to be something we're going to work through you know for the foreseeable future just but thank you for getting it started first absolutely on behalf of the board um yes thank you so much for all your work and um thank you for guiding us through the process and i i know that we're not saying goodbye to you tonight or anything like that that you're you're still very much connected with fairview and um as you said at the outset there is no final place with this it is a journey and we're all on that journey and we're all learning all the time and we're all trying to improve so um thank you for sending us on that

047path i really appreciate it thank you and thank you i certainly didn't start the work you all did so really the accolades go to your community because it's clear that you are committed and you understand that this isn't is forever more this is the long haul so you certainly make it easier so thank you thank you very much wonderful uh so take a deep breath and get on to our next big report for the evening absolutely well we're going to uh move on to a presentation from arkhan the district's architects and i'm not sure if george or our amazing uh architect mr jeff huck are gonna start um but i guess you two will sort that out we'll get your presentation up and they're really here to uh bring us sort of an update uh

048bring the board an update as to what has been going on over the past couple of weeks and month um and then we will move on to talk more about finances of the project so we get george first okay jeff will be up here don't worry but it's just george first um thanks for having us again tonight i know we missed you last month so we will kind of catch up to speed on some of the things that have been happening uh if you recall when when we exited out of summer we had come here showing you the overall 30 000 foot up in the air master plan picture uh since then we've been kind of bringing it all the way down to street level and to do that has been doing our due diligence

049and really digging into the existing building and coming up with more uh concrete solution uh of the master plan so in september uh some of the fact-finding things that we did was to get a an accurate survey done of your property so before we were using it off of an aerial photograph to kind of get a gauge of your property lines now that site survey really became a really deep dive understanding of all your property lines setbacks what's adjacent to us where the tennis courts fall where the playgrounds fall where our back part a lot is with with the uh with the running track uh and that really helped implement a more accurate picture of kind of what we're doing for the final solution right our engineers that we brought on board from a mechanical

050electrical plumbing side started looking at your existing systems understanding what kind of power capacity the existing building has do we have enough electrical service coming to it to add on do we have to do anything crazy or larger scale pieces to it or not uh looking at your plumbing looking at your mechanical how it's designed and really starting to deep dive in and how to the the the nuts and bolts of the of the plan if you will uh as we got into october the fun part happened where we circled back to staff and started getting into the spaces once again the first time we met with them we kind of were talking about big picture where they want to be zoned what kind of adjacencies they like to have what kind of spaces that

051they don't have now so we would like to create this time it was all right now we're looking at the four walls of your room how do those four walls want to be filled in right uh so it was it was a much deeper dive in those regards and we had a nice long conversation with every group uh throughout the whole building uh and and kind of used those notes to help further develop the master plan itself as we exited out of that uh all that information was kind of put together and digested and really what you're going to see today is more of a fine tune of what we've been showing you up to a date uh a lot of things that we learned from constructability from where things are touching onto your existing

052building how they're touching out your existing building making logical and kind of cost effective solutions to kind of make sure it all can stand up right that was kind of what we did over the last few months it's still evolving as it is but we're getting closer and closer and fine-tuning both the south edition as well as the east edition uh as we as we put the programs in there and kind of uh started the further developing the design process what you're seeing here is your existing building i have the cursory kind of showing everything laramie is so east is the bottom of the page and and one of these days we'll start flipping it sideways to confuse everyone back to what it should be the north-south arrangement but it fits nicely in a landscape

053format so as long as we all get acclimated or don't want to tilt our heads this is kind of how we'll probably always show it but from an existing building perspective we have our front entrance in the front that you see to get everyone acclimated we have our the patio that kind of where we have our queuing of students we have the library that's kind of in the front end of laramie as well uh all the spaces that are lining up here are classroom spaces off that main hallway the reason i'm calling more attention to this as you'll see in the next plan of how these the the heavy the heaviness of the renovation work that will be happening in the building would be happening right here in this kind of center core those classrooms

054here the classrooms here and then this one that is actually subdivided into two programs currently right as we get toward the south where the tennis courts are in the playground this is the location where we will be tacking on are the new addition that will be that the pre-k and k-wing that will be married to the first and second graders that are happening here the next plan i will turn it over to jeff as he kind of gets you more enlightened on the spaces themselves and how they've changed a bit so for those of you who haven't figured out the inside joke a while back cindy figured out that i blush easily so that's why um so just a couple things as george mentioned the meetings with the teachers in the staff as well as

055our engineers that have been ongoing have really started to inform some of the details uh along with the overall uh the bigger picture items so a couple things are different in the plan today where we are in the progress as of today than you saw last time um as we started to meet with our teachers i'm sorry our engineers one of the things we figured out is that connecting up to the existing gym back here if you remember we had the multi-purpose space in the back back here by the gym it's fairly complicated because of the elevation changes the steps coming out but also the exposed structure so they asked us a question which we then took back to your administration um with the idea that maybe we take that multi-purpose room that was back

056here and we bring it down to the east and put it in the front of the building off of laramie and so we asked the your district administration is that something you would be comfortable with and not only did they come back and say yeah it seems like something we'd be comfortable with and oh by the way it might offer some advantages to us as well in how we would not only bring students in for pre-k uh early childhood but also how we might use that space after hours and and for our relationship with the park district which is good and for other things maybe even board meetings so one of the big changes that you'll see is that we now have a multi-purpose room in this position on the on the plan right next

057to and looking out onto the playground area for the park district here very close to a drop-off that will be set up at different times of the day for different things but primarily for pre-k parents to drop their students off and then our classroom wing which goes back for our pre-k and kindergarteners back this way is held off of that existing gem by 15 feet in order to allow us to build easily without having to mess with that structural system of that existing gem it's a more efficient way of building it and at the same time it gets that multi-purpose room in a in a space that actually makes it a a lot more functional and perhaps adding some value than we had before the one thing that it did by moving the multi-purpose room

058down here is it it displaced two special education classrooms they were general classrooms we happened to have them labeled as special ed they didn't go away we just slid them around the corner to where you see these two blue spaces here and the classrooms that were displaced there we've added to the front right in here where my cursor is and we've connected it allowed us to connect this second grade hallway to what we assume will be the third grade first floor on the two-story edition so now we have a circulation what i would call a circulation doughnut that goes in front of your area where your cafeteria is and your art rooms and such back down through into the addition where the the new library is going to be into these classrooms and it connects

059over here as well so as you might have bubbles go through in in grades it might be easier to uh to allow them to shift and slide so that i'm not landlocked with my third grade in my fourth grade i've got flexibility now that i didn't have before so just by simply moving that middle or that multi-purpose space to the front of the building we're able to pick up some efficiencies the other piece that's a little different than what you saw last time is in the area of the two stem labs we had always been showing a stem lab here in this corner and we had been showing the library essentially in this area where my cursor is and we had the second stem lab right here where my cursor is and it was a

060two-story stem lab and there was a courtyard right in here right between the two stem labs as we were talking to your stem teachers and we started to understand their program and started understand how they would like to function um it became important that they had a shared storage space in between um and and that it was okay to have them both in a single story space this wall right here is your existing exterior wall so we've put the two stem labs one here and one here next to each other with with a storage space in between and your tech hub and tech director in between and allowed the library now to be a large two-story space in this area and taken that courtyard out we haven't necessarily lost that ability to go outside from

061the library because this area that's currently shaded as blue here is actually going to become a little courtyard or we're proposing that it becomes a little courtyard off of the library that i could then go and take a book outside and read um but it's a protected courtyard it's not you're not worried about a student wandering off the only way they would access that it would be through the library so we've been we've improved our library a little bit through that it's more efficient it's a little bit larger our stem labs now work a little bit better together than we should we had shown before and some of our support spaces if you wanted to lock off this library and use it after hours for for anyone and lock the rest of the building off

062now start to show up with washrooms and some team rooms and some other spaces on this first floor so a couple of things that we've done have essentially shifted volume around simplified construction and gotten us a lot more efficient in the uh the exercise and all that came out of our meetings with your teachers and your staff as well as meetings with our engineers so if i go to the next page we want to show these next two pages just to reinforce again that we're touching the building in two different locations uh two different construction schedules essentially although they would overlap we still have on the south end of the building the pre-k and kindergarten wing with its multi-purpose space it's just the biggest difference is it's not touching the gym now and the multi-purpose

063room is up here and then if i go to the next and that could be a project and if i go to the next page the two-story edition with the library in the front of the building which really continues the same aesthetic that you're going to have that's from the 2000 edition on down to the entire length of the building that's really a separate project as well with the interior spaces these stem labs that science lab that george mentioned uh our student support services spaces with psychologists and social workers and counselors and all those folks in this area and then just shifting a couple classrooms around all of that is stuff that would happen during the same period as this addition but that work inside the existing building would be summer type work uh but

064this would be essentially it's a it's a separate project but projects that overlap each other did i miss anything george okay any questions for us uh yeah just a quick question that um you obviously have consulted with the staff and they've had their say which i think is wonderful and uh it is amazing the the things that that come out from from those conversations uh my little concern is you know how how is this affecting the bottom line of it all if we're if we're changing this and adding that and you know they say the most expensive words in home improvement are while we're at it right right because you just keep adding and think oh we could do this we could do that does it change things much we're very conscious of your budget

065so as we shift things one of the first questions we ask is that is it going to affect the budget and we're very fortunate in the the shifts that we've made have actually reduced slightly the overall area and at this point area equals dollars so we're within the same budget um and in addition to actually shrinking the area and it's slight it's a little bit but we didn't go the other way which is good uh the biggest thing that we did is we made the construction process more efficient we eliminated some of the um complexities that were there just because of the shape of the existing building um so in both cases we've gone the right we've gone the correct direction one of this is probably one of the last times i would say that

066we'll only show you floor plans the next time we present to you we're going to begin to show you what is the look of the building how are the how is the exterior detailed um how some of these spaces get light into them what do the interior spaces begin to look like that's our next step in our development um and i think what you'll see is we're starting to get more as we do more and more of that we become more and more efficient in the we're always looking for opportunities to become more efficient and how it's built excellent thank you i'm going to throw one more piece to the puzzle if we had a next steps piece that you'd see here uh as we exit the gate out of this schematic stage or design

067development stage we're gonna have a lot of checks and balances that are gonna be going forward so one of our next milestones at the end of this month is to really take all our engineers work our work and start pricing it more detailed right we started big picture area now we're going to assign more trades and understand since you know mechanical systems better the numbers will get more and more accurate they'll still be conservative because there's a lot of unknowns but step one will be that then at the end of the year will be another round and then after that will be another one so as we march towards any finish line that we're going towards whatever our final target is for a deadline by the time we get toward that deadline we should have

068a really accurate picture of what that cost is going to be before we make any step of going out to bed so we would never take you out there with any sort of guesswork i want to piggyback off of your questions have you guys i mean we want to make all the changes we can now before all that detail goes into play i mean the changes um have you guys exhausted all the conversations with the administration and is there anything left or is that kind of all been completed at this point yeah i mean i i would say i think we're 95 there um you know there's still some pretty major topics for discussion um you know it's been kind of a cool process because each time we meet we kind of focus in on

069another part of the project so we've spent a lot of time talking about um that multi-purpose room and where it should be and what we're going to use it for we spent a great deal of time talking about the parking lot and how it should flow and how we would do drop off and pick up um so we're kind of doing it piece by piece kind of big pieces um and i would say we're pretty close um we are planning on circling back to our student groups um who who met a while back now i can't exactly remember when but we're going to revisit and kind of get more let them know what's going on and show them sort of how their ideas and input have helped to to mold this project but i'm sure

070they're going to give us some additional feedback that you know might be um you know something that changes you know the the plan as well so i feel like we're in a very good position um and like i said i really have appreciated that we've sort of just taken one chunk at a time because there are many many many details that go with each piece so what's that yeah if you say that second yeah that's it so i just have a quick question about the so the 15 feet of space that was added to this one between the gym and right originally they were touching now there's 15 feet of space what would you imagine going right right now that 15 feet is asphalt right would it stay asphalt or would that be landscaped how

071would that um because then there are classrooms that will be looking out basically onto the wall of the gym let me start on to i'll start it and then george will we'll jump in a little bit on this as well if you remember and and i wouldn't blame anyone who doesn't remember we've shown you a lot of different plans um the classrooms that we had in that area before were butted up right next to that that existing gym so what was lacking in a couple of those classrooms were windows so the biggest thing that we're gaining is windows as we begin to develop this we want to take a look at what type of window is the most appropriate my guess is that we probably don't want to have a window down here that has

072you looking at the asphalt and at the uh at the side but more likely we're looking at high windows along that that passageway we haven't gotten to the point yet where we've we've come to any real definitive ideas with with our team and our team including your administration our uh our engineers and everyone i think that's the next step to understand that we do know that we have to get back in that space to maintain it likewise any courtyard that we're looking at is how how do we maintain it so it's a great question we're still the we're still in the development process on it um we do know that getting natural light into those classrooms is a benefit even if it is light from a shaft in between a gym and a wall um

073i think i probably have answered this as far as i can at the moment unless you've got something there george i mean you pretty much hit it jeff the if you look at those of those three classrooms the uppermost and the bottom most or the west and the east can have windows opening towards the track and the other one opening towards the south classroom so really it was the middle one and as we met with teachers one of the the pictures they showed us and things they liked was in the hallways is there any way to get some more clear story windows higher up windows into the hallways to make them get more natural light into the corridors so that's kind of one of the ways that jeff's talking not only do we get higher

074on the outside but having on the inside helps get those volumes to feel even better right so we are experimenting with those right now but that was a really good point and that's a really good piece that we're trying to figure out and the other thing i will add is in talking with our pe staff they use those self exit doors for moving equipment in and out um you know one thing they noted to us is they prefer ramps rather than stairs um so we have to keep in mind their use of the space as well so i would guess it's going to be a harder surface for them to be moving equipment in and out but um you know that could be framed by grass sea surfaces uh as they said we haven't quite

075gotten that far but there are some details uh that go with that space that we have to pay attention to and i'll add one more piece to this and and we've talked and if you can follow my cursor we we've talked from a long-term standpoint master plan standpoint about how we can take spaces like this courtyard here and the courtyard that's back here in the lower level wing and then this space here and how can we turn those into [Music] educational learning opportunities outdoor learning opportunities during the times of the year when you can actually you can actually go outside and it's not too cold and all of that um we're all you know as i mentioned before we're proposing that this blue space here become an outdoor space off of the library all of

076that means that we have to spend some sort of attention to detail on what that environment is like it wants to probably be something more than just asphalt and brick wall is there a way we can um put some sort of amenity into those spaces so that it's a place that someone might want to go if you notice in these classrooms here each of them has a second exit even along this side because of the size of those rooms we're required to have a second exit it would be nice if we could actually look at that as an opportunity as opposed to a necessary evil that passageway there and maybe there's something we can plan long term in this passage that satisfies what dr whitaker was just saying about the need to take stuff out

077from the gym but also an opportunity much like what we might address as a learning opportunity in these other courtyards so we're not there yet but i think that's in the back of our mind as we we look at that space and maybe it actually becomes a nicer space than what we're you know what we might imagine today thank you sure anyone else questions right one more question i just that green space next to the gym that's would that be open to the public or is that is there would that be closed off is this a safety you're talking this space here or microsoft yes correct uh one of the things we i'm sorry one of the things that we would definitely do is is gate that off um the last thing you want is

078for someone to wander back there and hang out overnight uh you know it's bad things happen and places like that so uh it would definitely be a gated off space which would also make it [Music] suitable for an outdoor learning opportunity because you're not worried about supervision okay so um okay ready to move on ready to move on yes thank you very much uh next up uh we will get the next presentation up elizabeth hennessey has joined us this evening from raymond james so we'll get elizabeth up thank you for being here with us there we go great thank you for having me tonight i'm going to go through the funding plan for the project thank you can everybody hear me okay great i'll quickly review the bond market this chart shows interest rates for

079the 30-year the 10-year and the one-year aaa rated mmd index the yellow the red and the purple line the blue line is the 10-year u.s treasury and rates have been coming down since january of 19 and then we hit the pandemic in march of 2020 and interest rates went up dramatically as many investors were fearful that people weren't going to pay property taxes and there would be defaults so the federal reserve stepped in and became the lender of last resort also brought the fed funds rate down to zero and interest rates then came back to normal and continued on their downward slope till we hit in august 2020 the lowest point of interest rates ever and you can see where it been pretty stable with the exception of the blue line which is the u.s

080treasury which has been going up and down and up again and our municipal bond market is beginning to follow along a bit as we um anticipate and experience inflation uh whether it's from supply chain or if it's permanently here with us seems to be the question of the day so we anticipate we will have higher interest rates in the future the bond market has priced in two fed rate increases one in the second quarter and one in the fourth quarter of 22 already so but we're still relatively low from a historical basis so the district has a statutory debt limit of 38.2 million that's 6.9 percent of the eav you also have a non-referendum bond working cash bond limit of 16 million these are set forth in the statute at the state level just to

081review your bond rating um you have had no debt for quite a while so there's no bond rating currently but back in 2016 the district's general obligation debt was rated double a2 that was an upgrade from february of 06. so very strong rating the highest rating is aaa so you're two steps away from that very highest rating double a2 is a very strong rating so funding needs i the district's considering these projects as your architects just outlined for classroom space and full-day kindergarten and early childhood and you have both referendum and non-referendum funding options the options we're going to talk about tonight are non-referendum the first option is with using the debt service extension base and the second is using debt certificates which is like a loan that you're repaying out of your operating funds

082so it necessitates budgeting for those payments on an annual basis so you have the ability to fund these projects without referendum the three sources are fund balance of 7 million debt service extension-based bonds of 10 million and debt certificates of 5 million for total proceeds of 22 million so first i'm going to talk about the fund balance this is the update from the fy21 audit hot off the press and it looks at your funds the operating funds education o m transportation imrf working cash and tort then debt service and capital projects so the district's fund balance policies to maintain of the year's spending in the fund balance and currently based on the 2021 audit the operating funds have 136 of expenditures in the fund balance so if we take 7 million and apply it to

083the capital projects that leaves you with an ending fund balance of 10.5 million which is 82 percent of the revenues sorry fund balance as a percent of revenues not as expenditures as your policy so anyway you can afford to spend the 7 million dollars out of your fund balance and still maintain your policy above your policy so that's fund balance next i would like to talk about the non-referendum debt service extension-based bonds there are three types working cash life safety and funding bonds these would be working cash they require a petition period and a public hearing you'll consider that resolution of intent later tonight to authorize borrowing we're looking at 10 million so hopefully if you can't see this on the big screen you can see it on the screen on your computer we're looking

084at issuing 10 million it would be repaid over 15 years now these type of bonds are limited to the district's debt service extension base which is in the fourth column from the left that amount is part of the tax limitation law and goes back to 1994. in 1994 the district had approximately 650 000 that it spent on principle and interest on bonds and that became your debt service extension base in 2009 they applied the cpi to that amount so it is currently in 2021 levy year 735 thousand 445. that means you can pay off that amount of principal and interest on bonds a year you can go out for a maximum of 20 years to generate 10 million you need to go out about 15 years but it's important to think about when you might

085be able to access those funds again so to that end we have created what i will call a channel in 2031. so if you look at the column that's got the highlight highlighted numbers in green that begins in 2031 so in the last five years of the repayment we're reducing that payments to allow you to issue bonds again in 10 years so that gives future boards some flexibility so this debt service extension base is a debt service levy outside of the operating levy and so there is a slight tax rate increase to that and it's approximately uh 15 cents for a 300 000 home it's on average 123 a year for those 15 years okay here's a graphic of it i like the graphic so the line is the debt service extension based limit the

086green bars represent the debt service on the 10 million bonds and you can see in 2031 the bars don't go all the way up to the line that's where future boards will have the option to issue additional debt i'll also add these bonds will be callable so you would have the opportunity to refund them at a later date to issue new bonds or to save interest if the interest rate market permits so again the debt service extension base is part of the tax limitation law the estimated all-in true interest cost is 2.19 based on this 15-year payback that includes a cushion of 25 basis points because we always like to be conservative and that so if you were to issue those bonds today the interest rate would be something like 1.95 so great time to

087issue debt even though we have experienced a little bit of increase in the interest rates at this time as i mentioned you have the flexibility to issue additional bonds in 10 years and the bonds are callable typically after nine years the next type of debt is debt certificates and these are paid from the district's operating funds typically the o m fund the maximum length is 20 years they count against the district's debt limit and the legal requirement is simply the adoption of a debt certificate resolution these type of debt does not increase taxes at all because you're making room within your current budget to pay the debt service on these bonds so here we're looking at issuing five million okay and we're going to pay that off over 15 years as well the annual payments

088are under 400 000 about 390 000 a year so the district has had surpluses in prior years part of that surplus would now be dedicated to budgeting for this 390 000 dollar payment the debt certificates would also be callable prior to maturity after nine years and they would be issued at the same time as the 10 million so we would have efficiency in issuing both pieces at the same time the interest rate here is estimated to be 2.22 percent it also has a 25 basis point cushion so again we're looking at an interest rate under 2 for these bonds so this is just a summary because you've got 15 years and a call there should be future flexibility but it does take budgetary discipline the good news is the district again has generated surpluses so

089should be able to afford these payments so before i jump into the schedule i'll just pause here and see if you have any questions and by the way this is the information that we talked about at the town hall back on october 12th well it's complicated i'm sorry no i i i did look at some of this before and and tried to follow it and i know our um our finance committee have already discussed this and worked through it um as far as i understand it what you were saying about um that you had that graphic where the line went up and there were the bars so you're saying that the final years have the potential to be sort of reameterize and would actually be sort of changing the debt at that point and kind

090of like refinancing your mortgage is that what you mean that's what i mean so you could either refinance um you know at year nine or you could issue new bonds at year 10 because there's some room to pay interest under the 2031 bar and you could add additional bonds so we just want to preserve some flexibility for boards and administrations in the future i'm i'm guessing it's unlikely that those are going to be at this sort of two or two point two percent though by that time right uh i heard i know i had to predict that it is historically quite low right now it's very low from the historical perspective yes um if this 10 million bond is issued in 2022 um does the repayment start in 2021 still that's the tax levy yeah

091so 2021 levy year will provide you dollars 61 22 and 12 120. the questions um well thank you for explaining it to us as simply as possible um so uh we will be uh i'm going i'm going all the way around sorry i meant to go to the schedule because tonight in the schedule get to the right slide sorry guys okay so um here we are november 17th tonight on your agenda you will consider the resolution of intent to issue the bonds and a public hearing will be scheduled for your board meeting on december 15th so once the resolution of intent is approved the notice of intent goes in the newspaper starting a 30-day petition period and if 10 percent of the registered voters were to submit a petition then the issue would be required

092to be voted on at referendum so this is the process set forth in the statute public hearing on december 15th on january 19th the board would approve the bond resolution and the debt certificate resolutions so that would be 15 million all together 10 million of the d sub working cash bonds and 5 million of the debt certificates so we would then go to sell the bonds in the market assuming appropriate market conditions and then you would receive the proceeds in february and the important thing about this timing is that by issuing the bonds in january we can still get on the 2021 levy so we can start paying principal and interest back um if we go beyond march one then we're on to the next level year so timing's important timing's important right thanks so

093yes uh we will be taking action on this this evening so um [Music] now's your chance to get any questions answered before we we take that action so last call everybody okay good well thank you very much for your presentation this evening i really appreciate and thank you to our architects as well for their presentation um a very detailed very good explanation for us all thank you very much so moving along um we have our superintendence report for november thank you i i really believe that most of what's included within this report has either been reported on or will be reported on prior to the end of this meeting so i'm not going to review any of that i will mention that we have hit a little bump in the road with our shield testing

094because the district as our many in illinois are receiving a new third party vendor to conduct the testing so we're hopeful that transition will be seamless but that's something we've been working hard on making happen over the last couple of weeks and the only other thing and again we will talk about this a little bit more in detail later we did spend a significant amount of time reviewing proposals from construction management companies interviewing construction management companies checking references etc and we do have a recommendation for the board later this evening so i will keep it short unless there are questions from board members about anything included on the report any questions okay thank you so um i also i want to keep this next item extremely short but this coming weekend is the iasb conference

095and i will be the board delegate for that um and when we discuss the resolutions last month there were two that we were unsure of and um and i i'll confess i i literally forgot to turn the page and there was one at the very end that i that i missed last time so that's my fault entirely but um so i just wanted to double check uh the three that are still in question one was um item number 11 uh which is clean energy infrastructure federal funding this was um a proposal from a school district to be able to uh get more funding for um solar panels and clean energy infrastructure from the federal government that funding would be from the federal government to to aid that the committee resolutions committee at iasb actually said

096that they do not recommend it and we had some sort of doubt about it at the time um their their logic behind it was that that you know we're at this place in time where people have already invested and their other people that are going to invest and it would only really benefit the people going forward rather than those people that have already made those investments um so we kind of left it that we didn't really know where we where we felt about it so does anybody have any thoughts or shall i go with the recommendation of the committee at iasb i would say sorry i would say my my recommendation would be to adopt it to adopt yep okay i agree i think any green initiatives that we can support i would agree with

097sharing okay me too i was going to say do not i was going to go with isaac just because to keep federal funding at a limited with education it's not any against any green uh initiatives it's just uh so that funding stays at a local level yeah okay and uh any thoughts i would lean with the iasb's recommendation okay well that kind of puts it in a bit of an even split so um i may just touch space with our two absent board members this evening and get their opinion and they can they can point me in the right direction one way or another i mean i can't think how else to to sort of resolve that right now um i'll get their opinion on it and i will let you know how i will

098be voting according to to which way that falls um but wait can we just shireen and sargon and aaron and yourself were moving towards the recommend correct to adapt no no no sargon and jackie were both to go with the isb which is to not recommend okay and the other three of us were to recommend do you want to touch base with the other two yes so we can figure that out i just want to make sure we have it straight yeah it's not a big deal i mean at the end of the day this is just a recommendation about um uh you know what what recommendations we have for for iasb to move forward with legislation it doesn't mean that this is going to become law tomorrow by any means and i also should

099point out that if this is on the do not recommend do do not adopt list then it won't necessarily be discussed anyway and it will just be dead in the water so they will only be if somebody questions it if the um district put submits an appeal that it will actually even come up for discussion anyway so i'd just like to be prepared one way or the other so uh the other one that we were undecided about was the uh number 16 oh no i'm sorry number nine yes number nine i'm jumping back to number nine they're in a different order on my sheet uh so this one was uh resolving uh uh to advocate for local school district control of content and curriculum for health and sex education courses offered in the district um

100and the real issue with this is that there is senate bill 0818 out there right now that um is suggesting that there should be the language may rather than shall so it's much more about local control rather than um being something that uh is most strictly regulated by by a mandate so that was one that we were unsure about the recommendation of the committee was to adopt it on the lines of local control and having districts decide how they want to do it so um any thoughts on that it's i'm sorry it's local control versus versus state the the recommendation of the isb uh committee is to adopt it with the view that it allows for local control i would be in favor of a local country i'm in the same boat i would agree

101with the what they're saying to adopt and keep control at a local level okay i also agree yeah okay i agree as well we're good then that will be do adopt and then finally yes apologies that i skipped over the very last one accidentally last time uh this one was pretty broad um they want to overhaul the entire school code i mean that sounds really simple in a sentence until you realize that the school code is this big um so the recommendation of the committee is to not adopt not simply because they don't think that the school code should be reviewed it should quite probably be reviewed but the idea that you could just sum that up in one sentence and just overhaul it was far too broad and they wanted a resolution that had

102a greater a narrower focus going forward to focus on the real issues of the school code that needed the focus so their recommendation is to not adopt because it was too broad and i agree with them i agree with them i also agree i agree with your recommendation i mean it's just it's like let's change everything that's basically what it says and it's like well what do you mean everything i mean okay so i will go with a do not adopt which as i say the protocol is that it probably won't come up for vote anyway unless it is appealed by the district so thank you for helping me move through those quite quickly um i will just consult with the other couple of board members on the first one that we talked about um

103and we'll go with that so uh board committees and representatives the first one on my list here is finance and personnel committee aaron do you have a report yes the finance and personnel committee met i think that was last week and we discussed the district audit and we had a presentation by our auditor uh that was very informative uh we also discussed the uh 21 tentative district levy um that we will be talking about a little bit later today is there anything else i'm forgetting nope great thank you um i'm up next for edward and forgive me i'm i've got too many notepads here and i've got oh thank you so uh edward has been busy um the uh veto session uh took place between october 19th and 21st and then the 26th to the

10428th um and it was pretty active uh they've been working on various different things uh the ones that they mentioned uh most recently uh was i should have bought my glasses i'm sorry um yeah there was some proposed language to the healthcare rate of conscience act uh which is being cited by many people um as a legal reason for being exempt from from getting a vaccine and being exempt for any sort of mandate about getting a vaccine um that has been passed and that is with the governor to be signed um or will be with the governor i don't think it is actually there yet um there was also some legislation um about schools providing resource guide crafted by isb on sexual misconduct um the edward is still working with legislators on that um that's

105about it is the main ones i know that there was a meeting this last friday unfortunately i wasn't able to attend um but they are moving forward with their ad hoc committees um i shall be participating in one that whenever i can um but i think there is still more to go in in uh toward the end of this session that we're in right now sorry i really should have bought my glasses so um we don't have uh nora downing here this evening so she actually forwarded a report to us um and you'll read that for us yeah so uh this is just a summary of notes from the ntdse board meeting um that took place on november 2nd there will be a vaccination clinic at malloy for the ntdse community the date for that

106is to be determined dr mark dixon an expert in autism strategies and assessment of those strategies will be partnering for a year-long professional development with the ntds ntdse staff fairview provided space for ntdse staff on their professional development day and they were grateful for that a total of 18 fairview students are being serviced by the ntdse programs and the early childhood alliance focus uh focuses on providing screening and supporting children birth age to three they are working with our district to identify families that might be eligible for some home-based head start services thank you um and then lastly is pta liaison also diana is unable to be here this evening but she gave you a couple of notes um actually uh miss larkin is going to share the notes from the pta meeting oh she

107was she was present excellent thank you good evening everyone um i was present for the last um general meeting which was last week there was a quite a bit going on um so the pta diversity equity and inclusion had their presentation from dr lawana wells um via zoom on october 27th which was well attended and received by the community um kajal and steve planned an amazing trunk or treat on saturday october 30th i actually attended with my family and it was such a wonderful event there were 25 different trunks decorated and it was so well organized especially in such a year of still uncertainty and it was really nice to see everyone together there was classroom parties for k-4 students on friday october 29th which were great room parents coordinated wonderful activities and dropped off

108different activities for classroom teachers to run there was conversation about upcoming events so the pta spirit where sale that was mentioned earlier which ends tonight we also had conversation about upcoming room parent activities for the winter parties and the room parent chairs expressed there was a really great turnout this year in terms of collecting fees which helped to fund teacher appreciation lunches and support staff breakfast along with um the upcoming party so that was awesome so thanks to everyone for all their support with that uh we're tentatively still planning on a book fair in february but still tbd on that but the uh chairs for the book fair are really trying to coordinate and um some plans with miss bashan our learning center director um the diversity equity and inclusion committee is working to plan

109another event they're still in the process of what that might look like and then i think one of the biggest highlights of this year a huge improvement for our community has been the pta website so a couple of parents have really collaborated on taking charge of it if you haven't had the opportunity to check it out it's linked in our in the pta newsletter every week but it's really provides a great uh explanation of who the pta is here at fairview what they do who's involved there's videos and explanations of committees so there's also access the digital directory so a lot going on for pta thank you thank you very much next item is freedom of information requests i can report that there was one request received in this last month and it was responded

110to appropriately our next item is information items and correspondence do we have anything to report yes there was uh one item of correspondence since our last meeting and that was from technology director healy i was a thank you card for the fruit following his surgery good i'm glad he's doing well so uh next is public comment um i would ask the members of the audience to address the board um if they would come to the microphone state their names and we will set the three minute time limit which will be kept by the secretary is there any member of the public that wishes to address the board hello my name is elizabeth palmer and i'm a fairview parent first i want to thank you for the measures that you have taken this fall in helping

111slow the spread of covid in our community you've offered the shield testing which has caught some asymptomatic cases and you've continued to ask students to wear masks and i want to thank you also for the vaccine clinic that you've set up for children who are now eligible for that that's really a gift to our students but also to the wider community so thank you i also want to encourage you to follow dr dubial's suggestion that you create board policies a board statement and a district statement that state clearly and specifically your commitment as a district to equity as she noted equity work is most successful when like the widest range of stakeholders in the community embrace it and i think for that to happen in a large organization it needs to be embraced comprehensively unequivocally

112and transparently by the people at the top and that's you there's been currently a lack of trust i think on the part of some community members who don't believe that you are committed to equity in a real way and i think this is an easy way that you can start to begin to rebuild that trust and also to get greater buy-in from the whole community thank you for coming my name is john delgino and i'm a resident of district 72. it's my hope i have been using the the track at fairview for 30 something years now walking bicycling and it's my and i know the students use it extensively and the community does as well and it's my hope that with the renovations that something will be done for the track because it's in horrible

113condition right now uh and and i i thought this is an opportunity that we have and if we can i think it would be a great boon for the students obviously and it would be really great for the community thank you for your comment is there anyone else wishes to address the board i should also add that um dr whitaker informed me that there were no comments received from the public via the uh online form this month so there are no other comments to be made that way okay thank you thank you for your comments so we're ending up with our action items this evening um first is to approve the district facility projects as were presented earlier this evening so this is basically approving uh the presentation that we had from our architect arkhan

114so can i have a motion and a second to approve the district facility projects so moved second are there any final questions or comments anybody wants to make i i would just like to clarify my recommendation is that the board is approving this evening all of the projects that have been discussed the south wing that would include the preschool in kindergarten as well as the improvement and the rebuilding of the learning center so at times throughout the course of the last several months we've talked about parts of the project but this evening my recommendation that i'm asking the board vote on is to approve all of those parts everybody's clear we've voted for all the projects that have been present proposed to us okay sorry one just quit that also includes the parking lot read

115right in that diagram the flipping of the parking lot yes the parking lot the underground water storage uh everything related that you've heard about uh there will also it will also include um a revamp of furniture within the building so throughout the building there will be touches um but that the dollar amount that you've seen and that you we've talked about includes everything okay everybody clear on what they're voting okay in that case put the secretary police caller oh yeah we'll do these individually could the secretary please call the roll uh miss brown yes uh mr guliana yes miss lenoy yes i vote yes miss boosti yes okay the projects are approved uh the second action item is for a resolution declaring the intention to issue 10 million dollars working fund bonds for the purpose

116of increasing the working cash and directing that notice of such intention to be published in the manner provided by law in english it is basically moving forward up with our proposal to uh issue the 10 million in bonds um proceed with the public uh discussion about it and next month's meeting everybody say what we're voting on that have i got that right yes thank you okay and no other questions on that one for clarifications okay in that case with the secretary please call the role sorry do we we need to have a motion oh i'm sorry sorry yes you're absolutely right motion and second motion one second now the voicemail now we'll go over this vote thank you miss boisd yes i vote yes ms lenoy yes mr guliana yes uh miss brown yes okay

117we'll be proceeding with that um so next can i have a motion and a second to approve the employment of patrick quinn and associates as construction manager sorry frederick quinn this is practical i know that was my mistake that's all right they're all irish well they are okay frederick quinn an associate says construction manager our motion second okay we having some further discussion or explanation on this yes mr fair is going to expand upon it sure thank you uh so we went through the much like the architect last year we went through the rfu process for hiring construction manager uh this is the first time in 20 years that we've had a construction manager to manage projects at the building uh with that rfq we received nine responses from companies these were all companies that

118were either recommended by our architects or from other school districts and they all did extensive work with schools uh from those nine companies we looked for three to four that we thought offered the best solution to our issues right now uh the evaluation of these in miss illinois and mr shurmur remember this from the architect interviews as well is that we were looking for companies that would be that are familiar with niles township that were familiar with illinois as a whole familiar with school districts and then also we looked at it through the lens of the projects that we're looking at specifically we picked four we had interviews with those candidates and from those candidates we selected frederick quinn uh at this time they have begun working with archon already uh our our lawyers and

119frederick quinn's lawyers are strictly working on contract right now in regards to both fees and language for the project but as far as we're saying right now they are already meeting with our architects to actually go through the initial stages of introducing because they have not worked with arkon in quite some time but they are familiar with people at arcon and with projects arkhan has done so by next board we will have an agreement in place to to actually have signature for the board for board approval but at this time we're recommending quinn be hired as construction manager for the project thank you um sorry jackie and i were able to be a part of the the meetings interviewing the final four um and uh yeah definitely this particular company stood out as as being

120um most appropriate for our project i think we felt comfortable that we weren't going to make a terrible mistake by choosing any of them that they were all very competent and capable and have worked on many projects like this before um i think it was kind of a balance in terms of size you know where we were as a size of a project versus some of the companies that worked on much bigger things and then you feel like you're a smaller fish um and uh sometimes it was just simply just that the presentation itself wasn't that the people speaking that you just felt more confident with some people than others because if there was lots of uh non-committal kind of language then there was concern that they wouldn't really be your best advocate at times

121for for getting things done so so they were definitely my choice too so anything to add i neglected to mention we got recommendations from both skokie 73 and a half uh kennel worth glenn ellen 41 and skokie park district and the one common theme i noticed and cindy noticed as well among all of them was that they they really seemed to have your best interests at heart and you never felt like they were um like they were always they were always advocating for you and they were always on top of everything and it was in the interview and you guys probably noticed this as well it just it felt like they would become part of our team it wasn't a separate entity it was someone that was felt like they were gonna become part of

122our team as well and i think that gave us a lot of comfort especially not having been through this process before uh i know i touched on this too they haven't worked with archon before but jeff hawk with arcon had worked with them at a previous firm so he's very familiar with the owner and just spoke volumes or spoke wonders about their owner who has stated he's going to be very involved and we didn't feel like we would get that at some of the other bigger firms that we were talking to here we felt that the owner was very much invested in our project not just because it's a project because it's our project okay any questions okay did we did get motion in a second yes okay in that case uh could the secretary

123yes mr giuliana yes i'm miss lanois yes i vote yes i'm espoused yes ms brown yes excellent um then our next item is uh can i have a motion and a second to approve uh accepting the fy 21 audited financial statements so moved a second um is there any discussion on this do we actually have fueled it yeah we did um a couple points the audit was delayed a little this year because most districts that received way more federal funding than they're used to because of all the escrow funds that were released this past year had to undergo uh additional additional step in the audit process so that delayed everything pushed everything back but we have received the audited financial statements that were in your board pack and i have a booklet for everyone if

124you'd if you'd like um and there were again we talked about this the finance committee and jim henry presented there were no findings this year everything was in working order and you know a big thanks to every your big thanks to our our office staff for compiling everything uh jude delasha does a fantastic job is so organized and makes it very simple for them this year was happened to be i was out the entire week because my daughter was born so thank you to everyone that picked up the slack in my absence i did note to the auditor that i did call him from the hospital room to make sure everything was going okay i asked if they got us some kind of discount he said no so that whatever but i but uh yeah

125the tax deductions right right but we've gotten to a stage in the process where they are very familiar with the reports that we have um and the fact that again it's another year with no concern just speak speaks volumes to how we operate things in the business department but because we're small it takes everyone here to be involved in that so the school office the district office does a fantastic job and our processes the processes that we have in place this just reiterates that they're they're functioning right now so that's good so thank you excellent great thank you very much does anybody have any questions for jeff regarding the audit statements okay in that case for the second oh do we get most in a second yes we did uh can the secretary please call

126the wrong uh miss brown yes mr guliana yes miss lanois yes miss boosie yes and i vote yes perfect statements are accepted okay i think we're on to the last one so can i have a motion and a second to adopt the tentative 2022 tax levy motion [Music] sorry i'm sorry to check you first yeah okay okay this is assuming what everyone is here for uh this is the first this is the first year of my time here that no one has left before this it seem [Music] well thank you uh the tax levy and i i say this up front to any board member any community member here please reach out to me if you'd ever like to sit down and go through this in more detail it is the most complicated thing we

127do as business officials is the tax levy cook county makes it more difficult but it is a very difficult process so in advance please reach out to me i'm going to fly through some of these pretty quickly tonight but please reach out to me if you ever have any questions uh everything that the levy is our request for money every year from the community for property tax dollars there are limitations that i'll get to in a minute but this is our budget summary for this year this is what dictates what we request every year as you can see 74 of our revenue on a yearly basis is from local property taxes and this year is lower than usual because of the large amount of federal money that we're getting and the large increase in cpprt

128money that we're getting tax levy versus tax extension you'll hear the two terms used frequently together tax levy is what the district requests the tax extension is what's actually received after the county goes through the evaluation and assessment process everything that people sometimes get confused because they think that the school district is the one that dictates how much money is on their taxes when in actuality it's how much your property is valued for assessed valuation there's a taxable value placed on your property that is then equalized and there's a multiplier applied and what that does is in cook county they're trying to bring market value up to about one third of what the assessed value should be um residential real estate in the area is assessed at about 10 percent or equalized assessed at 10

129and then commercial and industrial properties is set to 25 what that means is that districts with large industrial and commercial property have a higher eav which makes it easier on their homeowners our eav is substantial due to the large commercial industrial tax base that we do have the property tax extension limitation law and you've heard elizabeth hennessy tonight referred to this as well when referring to the debt service extension base was a law put in place in 1994 what it did was it limited how much school districts could ask for in the levy process uh the lesser of five percent or the cpi as of december 31st the previous year december 31st last year the cpi was at 1.4 so there's a there's a calculation built in that allows for us to access some new

130property that came on this past year but that 1.4 we're always about we're trending about one to two percent above what that actually is with new properties so 1.4 really limits us as far as how much that we can access with with revenue every year cpi if you're if anyone's tracking it this year though is about 4.5 to 5 right now which is the highest it's been in a long time these are some other terms you'll see collection is the receipt that when the district actually gets the county treasurer gets the money distribution is when that money is then funneled out to the township treasurer's office here and placed in the school funds a tax increment financing district is not something that we currently have in place but that's a tool used to help blemish

131or to help areas and generate economic economic development and there's a loss in cost lost in cost is three percent the county adds three percent addition to the levy because of factoring in not collecting all property taxes this is a look at the calendar for the year so we have our budget estimates marks through june uh august was a little later we usually get the tax rate report in june or july this year we got in august uh there was a lot to the assessment proposition process this year especially with the uh the pandemic uh we then prepped the lobby finance committee meeting levy presentation the board and the public hearing to adopt and then a levy is delivered to the county clerk uh december typically that has happened um because we don't go over

132there's a five percent cap if we go over five percent then we have to have a public hearing in the in the spirit of transparency we've always had a public hearing regardless whether we go over the five percent or not so we'll present it in november we always presented tentative in november and then approved a head public hearing in december uh the tax levy timeline there is there's a measurement period and then we have attended levy and then the tax levy is approved but this is where it gets a little convoluted because cpi december 20 and then we're talking right now about the levy 2021 for the school year 22 but then we get money in 22 and 23. so we're talking about four different years at the same time there's a breakdown of our

133eav as a district uh you'll see that large piece for commercial and the large piece for industrial and then the residential there and that that helps us that helps our homeowners out that's a look at niles township as a whole uh we currently have the second lowest tax rate in the township by far uh and a culver 71 there is about 1.79 is very low but you'll see is the residential column there it's tied directly to the percentage of residential property in the district these are some calculations so you'll have a property that's 350 000 that because it's a residential property is brought down to 10 percent for an assessed value of 35 then the county which changes a multiplier every year again they're trying to get everything to about one third of market rate

134it brings it back up to the equalized assessed value and you'll see that in your tax bill every year is that that will be the the number that's actually taxed there's a look at total equalized assessed valuation in the district over the course of the last 10 years uh we had we're getting down to historic lows in 2015 i mean we dropped down to about 370 370 million uh at one point prior to 2011 we're about 620 630 million and we're getting back up to those levels now and these assumptions here i'm assuming a pretty stable eav because we've seen so much increase over the last few years it's hard to tell whether that's going to continue these are levy calculations and how we get to the point of getting the tax rate so we

135take that prior year how much we actually got the prior year times one plus the cpi which gives us our maximum then there's a there's a factor in there for new properties so we have our eav but then you back out the new property and it gives you a little a little bit of a larger amount to actually access that new property in the first year there's a look at our extension over time and then our tax rate overtime and you'll see back in 2013 we're up about 2.55 at the time that is the last time the district was paying off a debt those numbers presented by liz hennessey tonight this these numbers you're seeing here do not include those numbers but given the tax rate that we're at now plus the numbers that she

136had would put us around 2.2 2.25 which is still well below our high and again the third we're the second lowest in the township the third lowest is about 2.7 right now and there's the relationship that i talk about between eav extension and tax rate uh you'll see that extension is pretty is in a pretty narrow band but then that eav goes down the tax rate goes up and that's the relationship that we're talking about so really what we're going to see every year is the eav and our district to go up the more that's why you want new businesses in your area that's you want that's why you want these things to be to going there are the variables we're looking at for this year again 1.4 percent down from 2.3 last year existing

137property and factoring a negative five percent decrease again largely tied to the unknown we're having our triannual reassessment in 2022 that's generally when we see a lot of changes in our eavs every third year there's two different uh two different projections i'm showing in the in the board packet one was an extension projection which i try to be as accurate as possible levy is to protect the district in case of a bundle of new property coming in so extension projections at 10 million the levee of projections the 25. we've had a 10-year average of new property about 4.1 but that 4.99 levy that we traditionally do and again that's something that's been on board since before i came on in 2011 was that 4.99 increase uh in the levy request every year simply because that

138protects the district in case there is an influx of new property do we expect to get that no we've never come even close to that number but we do that just to protect in case there is an influx of new property uh the most new property in the last 10 years that we've we've had is 12.4 million which is last year again the key to understanding this is that so much of this is out of our control right now we're just doing what we can to project with unknown variables we'll find this out between june and august next year what that actually is uh we levy every year for these specific funds again tied to the budget that we do uh the non-capped is the debt service that's something that's going to be tied to

139if it's approved in december what the 10 million dollars in uh debits debt service that will come off that's not going to be reflected tonight what we actually file with the county they will actually add that on there in march here's what we're proposing tonight again the first column is the 2020 extension what we actually received the second column is the levy that's actually what's going to be on the levy document that we submit to the county and then that projected extension just column i use kind just to say here this is what we is a more realistic idea of what could happen again that debt service component not being included here and that'll be in the bond and interest line you'll see they're under the tax rate that's where that will be huge component

140again that's the downside of having a lot of commercial property here is that we do have a property tax appeals um process that we've always been hit pretty hard with these uh the first part is the border review where people can file appeal and it changes their eav but the money doesn't come off the district's books the appeal board of the circuit court that's when intervention in those in those cases actually reflects a negative money to the district that's a huge reason that we're why we're part of the property tax appeals cooperative with other niles township districts to share the cost of those services those legal services it's always fared well for us over the course of the last 10 years we've i believe it's austin district 68 have benefited the most is when talking

141about total dollars saved as a result of being part of this cooperative the final slide is the levy recommendation is the 4.99 truth and taxation threshold again we've just talked about that that we hold a public hearing regardless of whether or not we're over that just for for transparency's sake uh new property remains small as a percentage of total eav cp cpi is trending very high for next year again that is it's it's never been above 3.1 3.2 over the last 10 years there's a point it was 4.1 i think in 2008 but this is a huge number that's going to drive revenues up an important reminder that districts requesting money is not the driver of higher taxes i can't reiterate that enough we are very limited by ptel what we can request every year

142with the allocation of levy we mix it up between funds it's basically to bring the funds in balance both what we budgeted as well as well as what we have in the fund balance currently and there's also levy and tax bill calculations that make available on the fairview website so that was a very very quick overview of a complicated process but please let me know if you have any questions i was just going to ask about the the new property it's like um a lot of this new warehousing that that's the new property that we're seeing yeah yeah and things that are repurposed too so things that have been closed that have just are being reopened they also they do a lot of those estimates also based on gender income potentially generated from those properties

143um so cpprt is a huge it's not part of this but cpprt is a huge component of our commercial tax base as well because that has gone significantly up and that's to replace dollars that were lost 20 something years ago when they used to tax personal property for businesses but i right in thinking that there's some kind of um delay between a building going up i'm sorry was that is there some kind of delay between a building actually going up and actually us collecting taxes on it yeah it's about a year and a half to your delay okay yeah again it goes back to that staggering of the years we're talking about cpi from 2020 21 tax levy 22 budget we get the money in 22 and 23. like when the property comes on the

144books it's not gonna be assessed until next year but then it's new property and that next year so you're actually not going to get the tax money from that until following you so we should be collecting on fedex but not quite on amazon what is the new fedex building and same with the tax appeals too i mean we we we're paying back we'll get a tax appeal from 2010 11 that we're having paid negative amounts for just because it drags on the courts yeah okay any other questions for jeff basically we're um adopting the tentative levy uh in advance of it going to a full vote in december after we've had the public hearing so any other questions i had a question um i i heard one way then i heard the other is this

145uh take into account the bonds it does not it does not no what happens is that once the resolution is approved by the board that will be submitted to the county the county will then add that to add that on in march so we get the tax rate report which that's when if they tell us hey this is what your eav was that you guessed about last year and this is what these numbers are that you guessed on they'll include that in there okay anyways no other questions uh could the secretary please call the role yes miss boosti yes uh miss brown yes mr giuliana yes miss lenoy yes and i vote yes excellent thank you very much mr fayette as always a very clear explanation and you know i i don't tire of hearing

146every actually because i think it just refreshes my mind every year and it's wonderful thank you very much so um are there any other items for future consideration now i was just going to mention that i will be going to the isp conference this weekend and jackie will be coming along to the conference and i believe sargon too hopefully yeah so um uh we'll report back at that next month and see what wonderful things we found out uh anything else in that case can i have a motion and a second to adjourn the meeting this evening at 9 10. so moved our second could the secretary please call the role uh yes miss brucey yes uh miss lanoing yes mr giuliana yes miss brown yes and i vote yes okay thank you very much everybody

147thank you for your presentations and your contributions [Music]