D200 Board of Education COW and Special after COW Meetings - Dec 3, 2020 [2]

001good evening everyone i'd like to call to order the december 3rd 2020 committee of the whole meeting it is now 6 32 pm um this evening and as permitted by governor's executive orders 2020-07 and 2020-33 the oak park river forest high school board of education cook county illinois will convene a remote committee the whole meeting on december 3rd 2020 at 6 30 via zoom board member citizens and staff can participate with the virtual information that is under the virtual location section that is located on the high school's website the state of illinois continues to operate under disaster declaration related to the covet 19 worldwide pandemic the health department continues to advise the community to practice social distancing wear face masks and avoid unnecessary contact with others based on the current public health concerns i sarah

002spivey is head of the public body do not believe it is either practical or prudent to hold an in person meeting the board of education on december 3rd 2020. i further believe that it is neither practical nor prudent for the public to be present at the public body's regular meeting location we will continue to hold a remote meeting with updated practices to comply with public act 101-640 that was signed by governor pritzker on june 12th of 2020. all right so pursuant to public act 101-640 since the meeting cannot be conducted at the regular physical location do the health graces alternative arrangements have been made to allow any interested member of the public to hear all discussion testimony roll call votes as noted under our virtual location tab um gail if you would please call the

003roll sorry uh yes mr kovsky here dr moore here mr barron hello here mr eisley yes here mr martiri he was having a difficult time getting in i hope someone sent him a new link miss harris here and miss dixon spivey i am here um and tonight before we start the meeting uh board member baron has asked for a moment to speak um i would note that the the views of any individual board member do not necessarily reflect the views of the district or the board further i would like to explain that the board speaks either through our actions at the board table or on rare occasion through the board president at events such as the graduation when acting in the official capacity so matt if you would like to begin yes thank you i

004appreciate it sarah words have power so let me start by thanking those in the community who have shared words of appreciation and encouragement with regard to my recent letter to the editor of the wednesday journal it means a lot especially in the face of so much criticism nearly two weeks ago i was troubled when i saw an oak parker use the words white supremacist on the newspaper's facebook page to refer to a village board member my concern grew when i saw that this person's comment rather than being challenged by others was getting repeated thumbs ups regrettably this was the latest in a string of false character attacks on public officials and candidates for public office in recent years words uttered at village board meetings words used on social media words flung around without regard for

005the truth anyone who has read my letter as opposed to all the commentaries about it can see that much energy has been expended to deflect attention from one of my key points let's stop the racial identity politics the metaphor that i used was indeed provocative it is intended to provoke bystanders like those who clicked like or love in response to the white supremacist label when we witness someone baselessly using slanderous terms regardless of whether that person resides in your ideological camp we should work to bring out the best in one another amid this concerning pattern of conduct locally my letter's foremost goal is to deter further baseless attacks on people's character whether ironic or fitting how some have responded to my plea for decency is proving my point more than i dare to imagine those

006who ascribe a racist element to my words are reinforcing my point about ugly innuendo mongering in my letter i make no reference to anyone's demographic makeup and to be clear the four-year pattern that i refer to in my letter encompasses men and women from a wide variety of backgrounds too many are choosing the slanderous avenue and we all lose when we allow extremist rhetoric to prevail over reasoned mutually respectful dialogue attempts to infer a connection between my metaphor to any single group of people are inaccurate unfair and take the whole of my communication out of context again to those who have reached out with words of support during my entire time on the board especially this past week i thank you to the entire community it is my sincere hope that this chapter helps direct

007us toward more respectful reasoned public discourse thank you board president spivey for giving me the opportunity to offer these remarks all right our next item of business is visitor comments and i would note for those of you who are here to see the business of the board we do have a lot of public comment this evening um hours of public comment so if you are interested in watching the public comment please stay with us if you want to come back a little bit later to see where we are in it that is also of course an option public comment is not meant to be a discourse with a board or a conversation with the board it is for community members to express their views on items germaine to board business ms calmerton i don't know

008how we're doing this quite this evening i believe we're dividing public comment among several public comment readers so if you could direct whomever to begin with public comment i would appreciate it and again public comment tonight especially will be cut off after after three minutes per person so uh the first one is from monica sheehan and i would like to make a public comment in support of board member matt barron he has come under fire for taking a public stand against social media attacks of libel and slander such attacks are unacceptable i commend him for his action and his courage especially in live an ugly campaign aimed at distorting his message and smearing his reputation his recent opinion letter to the wednesday journal submitted a private citizen submitted as a private citizen known as a

009board member did not name or in any way identify the person who lodged the social media attack and called the village trustee a white supremacist the point of matt's letter is that that defamation of character is wrong and should not be tolerated and as a community we should all stand up against such attacks thank you amanda massey i'm writing in support of the first amendment in matt barron the exercise exercised it with his opinion letter to the wednesday journal last i checked the first amendment was still in play and even protects the people calling him a racist an ex-exo phobic etc his work on the board has been exemplary his opinion letter has nothing to do with his ability to be on the board and continue to make good decisions it seems now in oak

010park that if you don't agree with the oak park progressives they go after you this is another example of just that thank you this is from dan moreni morale dear district 200 school board i understand that at your meeting tonight you are receiving letters of condemnation of your colleague matt barron this is a letter this is due to a letter that matt submitted in last week's wednesday journal as you consider these letters i'd encourage you to keep in mind the following relevant facts of the situation matt wrote this letter in his capacity as a resident of heart not in his role as a district 204 being a member of the local elected body does not remove one's right to have and express opinions on local issues in that letter matt did not mention the name

011of the person who used the term on social media that prompted the letter to the editor well one could make the case that the metaphor used in the letter was inappropriate matt's intention was not to imply that the person who used the term was that was what was being described in the metaphor rather the metaphor that was describing the tactic being used by that person confidently the point of the letter was about a larger social societal trend of silencing voices rather than the individual incident that prompted the letter i believe there is an increasing tendency to judge incidents like this one based on people's interpretation of the incident rather than the co intent in this case i encourage you to objectively think about matt as someone you have gotten to know look at his life's

012work and how he gives his life do you believe his intent was what his critics might ask you to believe i certainly do not perhaps you agree with me that matt did not intend harm with his letter however you believe that harm was caused in if that is the case i encourage you to treat your colleague with grace and forgiveness as he would likely do to you if the roles were reversed we are all human stumblings through life we make mistakes and are imperfect in these moments it is imperative to judge each other by the kind entire content of our character rather than an imperfect act thank you for your service to the district 200 school board i'm going to interrupt myself right now mr martiri is trying to get into the board meeting so

013if someone could send him a link this is from paul goyatt district 200 board of education numbers as you don't no doubt know one of your recent one of you recently wrote a letter to the local paper using is is islamic phobic troops to condemn a resident of our community who is muslim suggesting a facebook comment she had posted was a form of terrorism this racist action is absolutely beyond the pale and must be repudiated in the strongest possible terms that this board member wrote this letter on his own time is immaterial the first job of our board of education must be to ensure the safety of our students how can students at oprf feel safe knowing that their social media comments could at any moment lead to them being branded terrorists by a member

014of their own school board i call upon the board of education to question i call upon the board member in question to resign immediately i further call upon the board to announce this action in a public statement for our muslim students and the entire park river forest community to see this is from leslie stefan dear board i must strongly object to the letters vilifying matt barron for his letter to the editor the attacks on matt illustrate the point that he is making which is one is that one cannot object to slander in this community without being branded some horrible name this is bullying pure and simple and should be condoned perhaps matt's choice of the word terrorism instead of bullying was a poor word choice that does not excuse his miscontroring of what matt said

015nor does it excuse the original name calling that precipitated this letter to demand that maths suffer consequences for expressing a legitimate outrage of the slanderer and bullying that takes place in this town is a severe miscarriage of civic duty i request that the board not take any inappropriate action against someone who does not deserve it kitty conklin says i would like to make a public comment strongly in support of board member that baron i've known matt for four years and know him to be a welcoming and open person to all however recently he's been attacked for taking a public stand against name calling on social media such tax are unacceptable i some more support matt for speaking up especially in light of community efforts aimed at distorting his message and destroying his reputation to me

016the point of matt's letter was clear and is a great lesson regardless of where one lives defamation of character is wrong and should not be tolerant thank you for listening jason sherman hi i know there have been a lot of words written and said and and said by and about mary matt baron of late i'm not writing about that but instead about the last 15 years that i've known liked and worked with matt and during that time i have seen him to be an eternal optimist loyal friend helpful and skilled colleague dedicated public servant fantastic parent leader in his church religious community and sometimes outspoken about his convictions i think this community and the opioi and opr hs is lucky to have him thank you for hearing me barbara out dolan i've known matt for

017years first professionally then through our work together at oprah high school's incubator program and more recently socially with his wife bridget i may not agree with everything matt says but i do respect his right to express his thoughts opinions and feelings without being piled on i believe this community has a responsibility to respect those who are willing to speak out despite knowing that they may become the subject of attack especially those who have chosen the path of elected position it is the repeated pattern of the silent bulk silent majority vocal minority in oak park that enables and invoke involves emboldens those who speak and act on words of division even though i believe they are in the minority kathy young is a highly respected former business owner and executive director of the opr chamber of

018commerce spoke about his behavior eloquently in her interspersed speech for tedx oak park women in 2017 why outreach has the power to save or destroy our communities i encourage everyone to look that up and take the 15 minutes necessary to watch thank you um i'm going to ask someone to either greg or joylin to carry on i need to okay mr martiri ann mcnamee kills hello i'm writing as i am sure many others have to express my disappointment and disgust towards an editorial authored by d200 board member matt barron in this opt-in mr baron refers to dima ali an active oak park community member a muslim mother woman an iraq an iraq war survivor and refugee and a d200 d-97 parent as a terrorist mr bearing knowingly and purposely evokes racist anti-muslim tropes as he

019likes a facebook comment miss ali made about barron's buddy oak park trustee and oakport presidential candidate dan maroney to a bomb-laden backpack on a train ironically mr barron hurls this racist propaganda in attempt to disprove the notion that his friend mr moroney participates in white supremacy culture setting aside the fact that mr barron seems to misunderstand what white supremacy culture not to be confused with white nationalism actually means by immediately jumping to the use of excessively islamophobic imagery and language as a means of discrediting a muslim woman mr barron only seems to prove here that he too is entrenched in white supremacy i ask the d200 takes swift disciplinary action against mr barron his comments prove him to be happy and publicly and public publicly dole out racial racist language in order to combat non-white

020or non-christian community members and most disturbingly d200 parents who hurt his sensibilities worse considering he is a pr professional it appears that mr barron is likely trying to drum up the same kind of national attention from far right and yes known white supremacist news outlets like trustee moroney previously engaged with and that resulted at that time in multiple death threats aimed at a female oak park trustee mr baron seems to think this is a game but for a muslim woman in america this is quite literally life or death this kind of attack means that dean i think they mean d200 that the d200 parent is now afraid for herself and her children the very children whose education mr barron was elected to help guide it would not be a stretch to say that if there

021is in fact terrorism happening here miss ali is the victim not the perpetrator this is not a private citizen exercising his right to free speech this is about a school board member waging a racist attack on a local parent for the sake of pr for his pal we cannot have a school leader making baseless and racist attacks against one of our community members i look forward to hearing what steps you would take to uphold your own equity and diversity commitment with regards to this matter thank you miss mara o'hara d-o-p-r-f board i've seen something and i've seen something and so i must say something i've seen yet another example of the white majority enjoying positions of power and influence silencing the views of people who don't think like they do or see things the way

022they see them i'm sure you've heard from many citizens about mr berry's incendiary opt-ed which appeared in the wednesday journal under the title when you see something say something mr barron also posted the piece on his business blog insiderd cripper.com with additional offensive narrative under the title my response to a local hypocritical band of hate has no home here to rogue warriors yes while the wednesday journal took the piece down his decisive views live on through his blog in this preamble to the opt-in which pejoratively revisits the events between trustee buchanan and maroney that occurred last year baron identifies himself as an elected official do i need to read the piece from his page i'll go on to the rest of the letter but it speaks to his 2013. since 2013. i read it i

023have been an elected official in oak park first through my four-year term on the library board and then my current tenure on the g200 oak park and river forest high school board of education in that time i have observed some of the most staunch anti-trumpers exhibit the same rebellion qualities of intolerance bullying and racially charged rhetoric that they accurately ascribe to trump interestingly baron's prior blog post entitled in the crosshairs of the critic take these three key steps which seem to indicate that the strategy of reacting to a controversy on social media prolongs the attention and is often ill-advised yet in this case mr barron chose to prolong attention to his argument that mr moroney has been wrong the cynic in me wonders if mr barron might be acting in the interest of mr ronnie's

024campaign for village president which was announced sunday even more concerning about both these posts is the evident divisive attitude towards non-whites in the first article muslim equals terrorists islamophobia is clearly evident in the second post baron's dog whistles the readers to pay really close attention by letting us know that this person of concern is black this information completely extract extraneous to the intended lesson he says in a nutshell a former organizational member terminated after 18 months earlier due to various professional shortcomings began making allegations that the organization felt consistent of half truth distorted depictions and outright falsehoods the three minutes yeah that's time good afternoon a commentator and an article on the wednesday journal website urged readers to write the d200 board to express their anger about mr barron matt barron's opinion piece on the

025paper so i'm writing to say i expressed support of mr barron as a fellow resident and d200 board member the next one is from jack jolin i'm sorry who was the previous commenter i don't think we got the person did not say it just said good afternoon a comment to an article so i don't know thank you jack powers through an acquaintance but not a close though and acquaintance but not a close personal friend of mats i am a long resident of oak park and an observer of local issues from attending d200 board meetings and other events i have found matt to be well informed capable of understanding complex issues with nuances think with nuanced thinking and as having the ability to work towards fair realistic solutions that consider a multitude of interest that the

026d200 board must include in his thinking not an easy task as all of you well know you served with matt on the d200 board certainly you have witnessed firsthand his even-handedness compassion fairness and interest in making oprf a better institution for every single kid and family of any background he strikes me as an exemplary elected official and resident a tolerant guy in intolerant times lisa mullen i am writing in response to matt barrett's recent letter in the wednesday journal as a parent of two soon-to-be three students at oprf i was appalled to hear these racist comments targeted as a muslim member of our community the racist rhetoric used in the letter was very intentional how will our muslim students feel safe at oprf knowing that a board member is publicly making statements like this i

027would like to hear a public apology from mr barron as a way to repair relationships with our muslim community members i also ask that he would consider resigning alison sloan in this unprecedented time for our students teachers and families i ask you to please consider how important sports are for our kids mental health this year despite a budget shortfall for everyone we can find a way to stay afloat and provide these kids with an outlet please do not cut out sports if it's safe for everyone to play the next one is from olivia elmiger i think your decision of cutting sports and pool time is a false judgment students and outside sources love our facilities and feel like a part of oprf while playing sports during their four years personally i swam at opr for

028all four years and wouldn't have had it any other way i would sincerely break it was sincerely it says i i would sincerely break my heart seeing swim dive being cut from oprf growing up i looked up to those swimmers and wanted to be just like them i did club swimming at oprf and it meant everything to me knowing i got to be an oprf swimmer one day you would be crushing young athletes hopes and dreams by reducing the sports and clubs julie ellenger the physical education department would be greatly affected by the loss of the pool for pool facilities as it stands the facilities we have are in high demand for many different classes offered very often every period throughout the day most pe classes have anywhere from 36 to 45 students rostered the

029pools are normally used six to eight periods a day for adventure education class freshman boys and girls classes and sophomore boys and girls classes we are integrating life safety skills in pe and teaching students basic water safety our black and brown students may never have had an opportunity to learn these skills if not for the pe department according to the cdc there are 3 500 drowning deaths a year the number of black children who drown outnumber white children by three times not to mention the hundreds of student athletes who participate in water polo swim and dive synchronize swimming programs who work harder at their sport so that they may continue on in college will be affected state championships have come through our facilities over decades some teach here now the oak park and river forest

030dale you're throwing me off i'm sorry very sorry theo park and river forest the oak park park district and wssr also use the facilities in the evenings the lack of aquatic facilities in the area will likely greatly affect them also i feel like every few years we have to fight for these facilities that if repaired over 12 years ago when the fight first started the maintenance costs would be so which be so much less it is my opinion cutting sports and clubs let alone funds for special education would be detrimental to the needs of the community wssra and our student body ryan mcfadden can't cut sports literally ruin futures by cutting sports and that also means less money that the school brings in a lose-lose kathy jacobs i am a 1993 graduate of oprf and

031parent of a caring freshman and a year that has been extremely challenging for freshmen who have never met classmates or teachers or been inside the building limited sports and extracurriculars have been the saving grace of this of an isolating and challenging high school experience my daughter was on the varsity cross country team which happens to be the best cross-country team girls or boys in the history of the school they were ranked and performed fourth base the best in the state and a state champion runner sports and extracurriculars are what makes high school and oprah in particular meaningful at a time when we are asking kids and families to sacrifice so much it is shocking to me that a school with the resources of oprf is suggesting cutting out what makes the school great the board

032must know how many families will leave the district if this happens and how many kids will stay if the irreparable harm amends your decision about a flat budget requiring draconian cuts to find ways to avoid these cuts as our teenagers have already lost a year of their normal adolescent experience kathy jacobs parent of a 2024 husky i am a 1993 graduate of oprf and parent of a current freshman this seems like the same this is the same letter twice okay i'm going to michelle jocks please do not consider shutting down the swimming and water polo team program these teams require little cost to the athletes other than a swimsuit to participate making it open to many potential participants these programs are well attended and successful by both bought for by both boys and girls teams

033these athletes tend to be true student athletes please verify with the athletic office but i believe you will find both swimming and water polo have some of the highest gpas of oprs teams i do believe the existing pools are costly as they're extremely old and in disrepair from years of neglected maintenance i've only kept up to date on the latest capital plans for the school but i hope that the new pool is still in the plan swimming is a life skill as well as a great form of exercise that can be enjoyed by many with different skill levels and done throughout their lives not having a pool is also a divisive and minority disservice to the minority population who have been historically underserved with lack of access as such facilities please excuse the brevity but

034thought it best given the likelihood of many emails and information submitted sincerely from anthony kolovitz dear board of education as a parent of an oprf student and an alum of 1989 i am so tired i am so tired the board threatening to take things away from students the kids may not be back at oprf until fall of 2021. now the boy wants to save the taxpayers a few bucks in order to do this they will reduce positive outlets for kids my late brother alex benefited from this his participation in oprs best buddies program his my son is a member of the swim and the water polo teams i don't want any academic resources activities or sports cut please consider the students who will come back to oprf and may find that the only activity they

035participated in was cut by the board i asked the board to reverse the flat tax levy decision and approve the cpi increase erica gimble i understand there is a budget softball shortfall but i don't know whether or not the district has savings or funds to cover the shortfall either way i'm the parent of a swimmer her experience as a freshman at opr as an opr freshman on the opioid team was exceptional and i hope the pools and the swim program will continue into 2021-22 along with special education overtime pay is needed and all the other important programs at oprf paul miller class of 2020 duro prf administration as an alumnus who has read your proposed budget cuts for the 21 22 academic year i find some of the areas targeted for cuts to be a

036great concern in particular your decision to cut spending on the pools by a hundred thousand a hundred thousand dollars is misguided and short-sighted if maintaining the operations of both pools is generously generally impossible given the budget crisis i implore you to do whatever it takes to save at least one pool that reasoning for this is true the reasoning for this is twofold first the pools give low-income students the opportunity to learn how to swim during gym class and practice these skills on the swim team a budget cut would prevent the swimming will prevent swimming for being a no-cut sport which is accessible to students across the income spectrum for a school that proportionately aims to reduce deleterious effects on income and equity inequality the proposed budget cuts are ineffective second the pool is home to

037the most successful athletic program in oprf the swimming dive team the men's swim team was undefeated last season until the state meet where it placed fourth aside from the laudable performance the swim team effectively molds its members into amiable and intelligent contributors to society hair swim clothes called lung green places the utmost importance on giving back to the community for example the boys and girls swim teams have helped prepare meals for people living under the poverty line in third world countries by volunteering to feed my starving children annually in addition to this during the 2019 season the girl 20 hosted a swimathon to raise money to build a well in an african village where there was inadequate access to fresh water the boys team took this step further in the winter when they successfully persuaded

038other schools and the west suburban conference to participate in this same charity event beyond cultivating the spirit of generosity and athletics the swim team also promotes academic achievement last year two seniors for the boys swim team were the recipients of the oprs scholarship club the awards given to students who have maintained perfect gpas throughout their high school careers and the equivalent of valedictorias five seniors from the boy swim and dive team earned acceptance into the top 20 unit top 20 universities this is no coincidence and it's not something that should be overlooked the physical demands inherent to the sport combined with one of the most rigorous practice schedules in this school ensures that swimmers learn time management skills and self-discipline i hope that you take this time to read this post and consider it as

039i spent much time deliberating and reflecting on the subject thank you for your consideration greg next comment is by don glossa it simply reads yes if we find more to that comment we will return to it and read it that's all there was okay yes dr anthony wood i write with respect to the potential closing of the swimming pools in response to the tax levy and budget cuts as you know there has been much debate and controversy around building a much-needed new pool in oak park in recent years which is clearly unlikely to come to fruition now but to also but to also now hear that the actual existing pools could be closed and all swimming related classes and clubs canceled in the future seems to add insult to injury the benefits of swim team

040are impossible to overstate including the physical and mental health benefits the rigor and endurance learned and the teamwork and camaraderie that develops students would certainly be devastated to learn this and it does nothing to support the school's aim to nurture the whole and prepare students for college and life in general yes opr fhs may be looking at a budget shortfall because of the failed tax levy but why can it not draw from its considerable reserves built up over numerous years to fund these programs once it has drawn down these reserves to reasonable levels somewhat it will probably find that op residents are more willing to fund tax increases to support the school generally allison white the proposed cuts to staff programs and athletics is unacceptable and will have an extremely negative impact to the well-being

041of our students in our community in my opinion approving the cpi increase is the only responsible action this board can take sarah joyce and matt corritz don't be a second-rate school people live here and pay the taxes they pay to have the benefit of what has always been a first-rate education system that includes extracurricular activities and athletics that a school like ours does not have a first-rate pool is already pathetic anyone who is responsible for allowing the further degradation of a historically excellent academic high school experience including a high caliber swing program with coach clyde and his staff admirably provide and a pool should be ashamed paul giersdorf hello i'm writing in support of budgeting to maintain not reduce the number of student clubs in sports currently offered at oprf as a parent of three

042high schoolers enrolled at fenwick i see firsthand how participation in sports the arts and student clubs engage their minds develop their character and build healthy habits throughout their high school years especially this current year to serve a well-balanced student body's needs we must acknowledge some programs and services just cost more than others you probably wouldn't be considering cutting meat and milk from school lunches and you probably wouldn't consider cutting science and technology classes from the curriculum so why target high-cost student activities example theater and sports example football swimming from the balanced offerings that exist today as an oak park homeowner who does not draw on oprf services i support the necessary budgeting to ensure an equitable balance of student clubs sports and social services are maintained for the high schoolers in our community this is

043a matter of investing and developing the future character of our community on a closing note i would encourage each advisor of oprs student clubs and activities as well as coaches to consider what traditions and budgeting relics of era's past should be retired my family has noted the silly spend and unnecessary stress associated with these traditions that we have unregrettably avoided during the pandemic perhaps perhaps new modern and equitable traditions will arise from the ashes of the current school year with warmest regards respect and appreciation for the tough decisions you were elected to make paul giersdorf marry colleen roberts the board must reverse its preliminary decision to set to seek a flat tax levy the impact of the loss of funds to the high school would reverberate through the oak park river forest community of course

044the children will feel it immediately with the loss of teachers programs clubs and sports with those losses our school will lose students to provide to private schools further increasing segregation as our school loses its reputation of excellence oak park and river forests will not be a sought after school sought after community to raise children property values will decrease and so will the tax base further impacting the school please make a common sense decision for the future of the community and our children reject the flat tax levy and institute a tax based upon the cpi thank you max secularis right now i am at a loss with the school and community that i have dedicated my life to for 36 years oprf has been a part of me longer for my entire family i'm shocked and

045saddened to read that any summer camps sports and clubs activities might actually be cut from the school's budget i understand the tax burden most people feel in this community i share that burden with you there has to be another way through this the list of proposed cuts can't actually be an option i will it will devastate our kids and hurt our community my job as an educator and coach is to better students and athletes and this proposal does the opposite if this is our answer to the budget program and the vote passes someone along the way has not done their job correctly while this would affect our students athletes and community as a whole this would be terrible for our minority student athletes for a district and community that preaches equity taking away sports clubs

046and activities would be detrimental please as a coach teacher and community member i'm asking you to find a more equitable solution that doesn't harm the kids that make oprf what it is it's a great day to be a husky uh next comment carolyn rouch i'm a swim mom i wear that moniker proudly because the finest kids i know are swimmers they have the most impressive dedication to training and are fierce competitors but also have the most amazing respect for each other swimming builds character my freshman son is hoping to make the swim team it's all he's wanted to do for years he's doing great so far scholastically at oprfhs in all honors courses that 1b he's hoping to elevate remote learning and now the pause has been brutal enough on that oprf high school is

047the jewel in the crown of this community if the board starts chipping away at its clubs sports and special education the school will lose the overall package that drives people to live here cuts that impact students will eventually deteriorate and the outstanding um that this school has the outstanding standing that this school has excuse me lifetime oak parkers and those who aspire to be know how dear this community is as a realtor in the area i know the whole package is key to this community thriving i urge you to reconsider cutting the swim and dive and water polo programs patty flannery thank you board members for holding the line on the tax levy according to the papa's the papas excesses assessors report from 2000 to 2020 oak park residents have been burdened with a residential

048tax increase of 166 percent versus u.s rate inflation of 48 percent during the same time period the source of the bureau of labor statistics d200 and d97 have been the driving force behind the 166 property tax hikes with increased staff salaries and overly generous benefit packages that far exceed state averages first staff size and admin educators compensation packages the unintended consequences of this excessive taxation has resulted in a loss of diversity income and race and an unreasonable unexpected financial burden on hard-working middle-class families and seniors on fixed incomes during covet 19 many families are barely hanging on with unemployment at 10 plus and parents primarily moms forced to leave their jobs to facilitate remote learning to help children deal with depression and isolation meanwhile opr fhs administration faculty staff received generous pay and benefits throughout

049the pandemic despite stopping instructional learning last spring and less than stellar remote learning experience this fall yet the administration athletic department and business office are threatening parents by recommending cuts to student programs field trips and daily outings for special ed students are they tone deaf do they ever consider the cumulative negative impact on low income and middle class families that don't have health insurance guaranteed salaries or multi-million dollar taxpayer funded pensions it's important to note california's public unions accept a 9.23 percent pay cut in exchange for two days of flexible time off and suspended four point four percent pay increases due to the financial loss and hardship inflicted on california residents taxpayers associated with cobit 19. where is the shared sacrifice with illinois public unions opr fhs instructional cost per student is 77 77 percent

050higher than state averages and has an increased administrative staff of 45 percent with 34 higher salaries the boa can and should right-size the budget staff benefits package versus cutting services for students and provide taxpayers a much deserved tax credit thank you in advance for your accountability to our students community and staff i'll i'll wrap up this page here monica sheehan good evening my name is monica sheehan and i thank you for that monica's comment was actually the first one that was read so this is a this is a different comment but it should still fit in within the three-minute timeline okay i'm sorry go ahead thank you uh good evening my name is monica sheehan and i thank you for the opportunity to make a public comment it concerns agenda item 5a i applaud the

051board's levy decision last month to forego the cpi increase and urge the board to stay the course a flat levy is a reasonable and responsive course of action especially during a pandemic according to its memo tonight the administration will ask the board to reconsider its decision and levy that max instead in defense of the action the administration states that since 2013 the district has levied 48.5 million less than it was permitted by law yet the memo omits the reason why the lower levies were possible for nearly a decade d200 used a tax loophole that resulted in a mountainous cash reserve of unauthorized tax dollars that topped out at 100 130 million in short d200 overtaxed its residents as requested by the board the administration is presenting 1.7 million in cuts to offset the budget shortfall

052that would result from a flat levy yet rather than follow the administration's recommendation to cut student services sports and clubs there is another option according to the five-year financial projections d200 cash reserve tops 90 million including 20 million still earmarked for imagines project 2 its pool and natatorium respectfully the board should consider using its cash reserve to balance next year's budget and it could also look to trim costs such as its 900 per diem uh gail yes unless you'd like me to continue i'm happy either way nope it's fine let me just um just kind of catching up on something else so monica was the last one we're on page 17. yep okay from bill gale as a district 200 long-time taxpayer i applaud the district 200 board's decision to seek a flat tax levy

053we need to respect the tax payers financial situations in these uncertain and unprecedented times susan caldwell says dear members of the board i am an oak park resident and parent of four school-age children i would like to comment on two issues today board member behavior and the tax levy first and foremost i was appalled to read board member matt barron's letter to the editor in the wednesday journal this week i have generally supported mr barron's action on this board but his letter to the editor supposedly defending trustee dan millenni maloney was a comment on the wednesday journal site reflected extremely poor judgment unbecoming a leader in this community it was very concerning that a member of this board does not grasp the extent of his own privilege and is willing to wield that privilege against

054a marginalized member of this community calling out white supremacy whether or not justified is not violence and it's analyzes uh analog decisions such an accusation to terrorism is outrageous i certainly hope that mr barron did not know that the woman who had left the comment was a muslim refugee but regardless he knows now and has only doubled down on his message according to his website mr baron took a negative comment that caused mr maloney to no significant harm and had already been removed and escalated in such a way that inflicted very real harm on a private member of this community at the very least i would expect mr barron to apologize for his actions or for the war to issue a statement concerning condemning his behavior if anyone wants the discourse to improve everyone has

055a role in doing so and using bullying tactics to intentionally silence this and only excaliburates the problem secondly i would like to thank the board for adopting a flat tax levy and not taking a 2.3 cpi increase first of all looking at the current monthly cpi the actual cpi is not increasing at even close to 2.3 due to the pandemic the october 2019 to october 2020 levels reflect an increase of less than one percent secondly the board is sitting on a large reserve that needs to be spent down and third if it does result in making cuts to future planned expenses that is a small price to pay for providing needed tax relief to oak park residents in this time when much of the community is struggling economically due to the pandemic i have seen

056the proposed cuts and none seem egregious in fact i was shocked to find out that the high school doesn't always reuse novels for classes like they do textbooks that should be the easiest thing to cut as it not only saves money but also the environment students will not suffer from these small changes indeed oprf high school has more clubs sports and activities currently than the private seven sisters college i attended and my education certainly didn't suffer for it okay thank you this is ines feliciano you cannot close the pools or cut swimming it's one of the more popular sports at oprf and not only that but it's the only sport that some people will do while at school i've been at swimming and i been swimming in those pools since i was six years old

057swim meet after swim meet don't close and my high school career just started this is from maureen malios the flat tax levy will further reduce the vitality of oak park and the status of the school system please reconsider your decision our kids our future have the significantly impacted by the have been significantly impacted by the pandemic we cannot continue to penalize them quinn carlson our community is extremely lucky to have coach clyde running oprf swimming this program produces some of our best children who go on and do great things making all of us proud and confident about the future of our community a strong leader like coach clyde combined with an aquatic facility where our kids can get the best possible exercise while learning how to push themselves in a teen environment is well worth

058the investment it's very hard it's very dismaying to come to realize that this community and its rich almost exorbitant tax base has done such a poor job of managing resources that this is even being raised greg ignatho athletics are a vital part of the developmental journey our students are on ensuring that our students and community have access to why a wide variety of athletic training and competition is exceptionally important this is particularly true for athletic facilities that are also necessary for teaching life and safety skills such as a pool for swimming instruction drowning is one of the most common cases or causes of child death a community like oprf would suffer immensely if it were to lose a pool due to budget cuts holly utter budget cuffs cuts that include the swimming pool will ensure

059that we will move and leave this district or send our kids to private schools where they can swim why not cut the administrator pay instead we are so top-heavy with administrators and thinking that not teaching our children to swim when we live adjacent to an enormous body of fresh water is a disgrace save our pools robin bassey my daughters ages 8 and 11 swim for ymca top swim team the program also uses utilizes the oprf pool for children with sensory issues and difficulty with team sports swim not only offers exercise and strength but a focus on personal best effort that work ethic helps them in every growth area of growth please reconsider cuts on behalf of the class of 2027. john eckman coach borgia has alerted the parents of current student athletes that sports programs

060may be cut this would be a travesty of epic proportions the opportunity of playing lacrosse has meant the world to my daughter and the rest of her teammates not only competing but the value of teamwork the discipline of practicing and the great friendships she has forged i haven't been a resident of oak park for 14 years and like all parents have paid my share of property taxes that with the assurances that despite how high they've been they go to protecting these valuable outlets for our kids if the tremendous amount of parents if the tremendous amount all parents have paid in taxes isn't sufficient then that is just gross mismanagement and it should not be inflicted on student athletes to pay the price specific to girls lacrosse they have already suffered the devastating blow of losing

061a whole season to the pandemic i can't imagine what losing the program would mean to these girls please do the right thing save this program the consequences of taking it away will be devastating to these girls corey kessler being able to swim is an essential life skill which every oprf graduate should have the opportunity to obtain this disproportionately affects our lower income students and flies in the face of what our community is about just the top thought of closing down our pool and that we continue to have this discussion nausea jessica iverson i'm the parent of a sophomore at opra i am urging the board to look for alternative financial solutions that do not result in cutting extracurricular activities the richness of opportunity in athletics clubs and other activities is a primary driver in our

062choosing this school it is to the benefit of our kids to keep these opportunities alive it becomes even clearer in our current environment how important these activities are to the mental health of our kids and a sense of normalcy thank you alison costello i do not have kids but as a student i was very involved in the arts for many kids arts and sports are what excites them about school with the great requirements to participate it motivates kids to do their best academically without something to look forward to or something to help kids stay fit i fear that we're raising a generation of disengaged unhealthy unmotivated kids families who can afford private programming and can transport can make do but those who cannot will be left with nothing maria ping my freshman is a swimmer

063and it is her lifeline it helps her to be a better student a better friend keeps her active and most importantly kept her feeling like a part of oprf even though she couldn't go to school closing the pool would be a huge disservice to the opr and our students eric simon thank you to the board for their time and efforts during this unprecedented pandemic never before in our lifetimes have we faced a situation like this it's been heartbreaking watching our kids in this confinement situation struggle with their home school work and lives as everything that makes childhood great is on pause a long pause time that can't ever be recovered the downside of remote education is well documented and growing but i wanted to send a quick comment on what i consider the most valuable

064part of schooling the social interactions managing friendships learning how to communicate and solve problems this is what happens in the hallways lunchrooms and on the field in court with athletics and activities these are the lice lessons and skills that hold even more weight in the real world my plea to the board would be to make the budget short fall make up the budget shortfall so you don't have to make tough decisions and take away more from our children who've already lost so much if you do choose to seek a flat text levy leaving a budget shortfall please don't come after the easy button which is sports our children have already lost a season it is so important to their mental and physical health and there are so many lessons in high school athletics they need

065to learn they have so they have had so much taken away do not take this away from them karen simon i'm writing to urge you to con reconsider the flat tax levy that you settled on last month i'm so grateful for the school board who took the time to consider the financial burden that the pandemic has placed on local businesses and families however i feel that a flat tax levy would be a mistake for this district not only financially ultimately requiring an even greater tax burden for struggling struggling families down the road but for the well-being of our kids the copen 19 pandemic has been devastating on so many levels so much disappointment so much loss each morning i wake up to a new story about the impact that it is having on children from

066the loss of academic ground during remote learning to increase anxiety depression and suicide suicidality cause from social uh isolation fear and uncertainty what helps the ability the availability of teachers counselors and social workers with reasonable sizes class sizes and caseloads who can be there for support hope and anticipation thoughts of returning to the huge crazy building that they love with crowded halls and lunchrooms and activities oak park river forest high school prides itself on being a place where a kid can find exactly the club sport activity that they need to thrive a 1.7 million dollar budget shortfall necessitates a reduction in everything i just mentioned it means a reduction in staff which will have implications for the number of people who can look out for a child that may be about to fall through the

067cracks it means closing facilities that kids depend on for before and after school programs and physical activity and it means the termination of clubs sports and activities that are very the very reason that some of our students wake up every day and eagerly head to campus i have one of those students there are kids who light up when they ace a test there are kids who light up when they land the lead role in a play or musical or nail a new piece and spoken word there are kids who want nothing more than to play their instruments in the band and orchestra or white write for the paper or create art or problem solve with her personal peers to help others in need and there are kids like mine who light up in the field

068helping her team in her school to a win now is not the time to cut very things that these kids hope and motivation for the future are returned to normal school as they left in march if you cannot or will not reconsider your decision please do not cut the sports services clubs and activities that our kids now need more than ever to preserve their mental health physical well-being and social connectedness the impact of opr f girls and boys swim teams have on countless numbers of opr students cannot be emphasized enough this no-cut program is extraordinary in its development of not only great swimmers who have gone on to compete at division division one universities across the country but in its development of great people and citizens in a massive high school this program gives girls

069and boys a chance to belong to a community and to work on themselves learning how to take care of their bodies and their minds key life skills one 2020 opr grad an island immigrant whose parents lived out of the u.s and whose older brother worked two jobs to support the two of them loved being on the team in a world of struggles all around him this team and these practices were respite from all of it a time of a time to connect with other boys and to improve his swimming through this team he learned of other opportunities for his life beyond his own family's path this team showed him another path in another way please continue to give the girls and boys at oak park and river forest the chance to envision greatness in themselves

070to give them a sense of community and to not eliminate the girls and boys swim teams critical cornerstones of this large school community james kebander kebbinger times short time short a funding call for hard choices i am in favor of cuts to athletic programs including and especially the pool the high school is over funded at the best times relative to our early education system brills like pools that benefit only a few at tremendous cost per person can go when facing hard funding choices these are there are lots of other places to learn to swim in the community let's put our limited dollars where they can benefit far more people rebecca malley pool closing would take three points sports away from our boys and girls water polo swimming and diving and synchronized swimming park district swimming

071lessons for the community during the winter leaving expensive lessons the only option for much of the year we lose swimming lessons at oprf for every student regardless of social economic factors and ymca swim lesson practices the only team that provides support forgives me for low-income families in addition the loss allows oprf to fall behind comparable high schools in terms of facilities and resources claudia rustat i'm writing to ask the board to reconsider the pool closure and any cuts to special education programming my family joined the other comments regarding the critical benefits of the pool swimming of the pool swimming as it is not only great exercise but the laws allows participation in both individual and team events allowing for a wider range of partic participation than some other sports as for special education programming those

072opportunities are already limited in the general public and is very difficult if not impossible and also costly to replace outside the school setting special education programming is critical to an inclusive school environment thanks for your consideration the next one doesn't have a name but it says regarding cuts to school program sports based on a phony budget deficit this is ridiculous what happened to the mo time what happened to the millions of dollars in surplus that oprf had just two years ago the school board needs to go back to the basics of what school provides students and stop worrying about going above and beyond on making everyone feel inclusive and heard kids figure it out and don't need hand holding by school leadership or approved walk-offs to voice their opinion what a joke the fact that

073you are considering cutting sports closing pools and taking away activities that foster collaboration and teamwork is pathetic these are the activities that build character leadership and collaboration i'm glad my last child is a senior at oprf and done with it can't get out soon enough the leadership has taken a high school that was a decade ago held at high regard and has made it subpar on so many levels good luck in attracting top academic talent to teach it oprl i wouldn't recommend the current school to anyone now and i used to stand up for it and joylynn that was from deborah carlson okay the next one says deborah carlson oh well okay deborah clarkson maybe it's true i think that was a continuation of claudia rustan's comment okay thank you deborah carlson this school board

074i'm a proud parent of two oprl high school students one is senior and the other a freshman and both are swimmers the senior is hoping to salvage some sort of final season this year and the freshman has been looking forward to finally being on the team our kids all kids need extracurriculars and sports for social emotional mental as well as physical well-being this is so abundantly clear now more than ever i am also an elementary teacher and my students as well as my sons are hitting a real low point with significantly decreased motivation they are missing their friends and now their activities have all recently been cancelled or put on hold my students my sons and their friends have all echoed that the fun part of school does not exist like this year this will

075become a permanent sentiment if a decision is made to implement the suggested cuts the board needs to make the responsible decision and look to cut elsewhere or better yet approve the cpi increase i would greatly pay an additional eighty dollars per year to keep all the opportunities a great school like oprs has to offers diverse student body alyssa ryan please do not kick everyone while they bought where they're already down kids need more than just academics to be successful thank you michelle healy hello is the parent of a 10th grader at oprf i believe the board needs to approve the cpi increase of two point increase of 2.3 percent my son swims on the oprf team and the cuts might close the pool and shut down sports which i do not want to happen i

076strongly support these programs and believe they are vital to the success of our school and our school community danielle valerie hello i am a proud alum and the parent of a caring freshman the swimming trials being put on paws because of kovit while the other high or the other area high schools were able to complete tryouts and let students know if they had made the team or not has been stressful enough but to now hear that the swim program may be eliminated and the pool's closed have created a panic in our household my freshman is a straight a student member of the jazz club in marching band and first and most importantly a swimmer please reconsider taking away this vital athletic program to say eliminating swimming would be a disappointment it's a gross misunders it's

077a gross understatement i believe the end of our swimming i believe the end of our swimming program will be the end of our school's reputation if this happens our family would have no choice but to send our students to a different school i can't help but think that i would not be alone in that decision and that current and future swim families will feel the same i hope you will do whatever it takes to retain this vital part of our school that i so desperately want to remain proud of and continue to support these things are the best those things that are best include swim team thank you for your consideration pete prokopowskis whisk sorry i understand that the board was considering keeping its tax levy flat for next year but is now considering raising

078it to 2.3 i'm strongly in favor of zero increase during this period where many of us myself included have lost our jobs many others have reduced hours now would be a great time to actually reduce the levy please at least hold it left until 2021 reverend eric warringer dear boy i write as the o park homeowner and parent as well as the pastor of a historically back black lutheran church in the former cabrini green public housing projects in chicago i'm also a member of the chicago chapter chapter of the democratic socialist of america recent recent estimates have placed approximately 40 percent of americans into 30 days of eviction or foreclosures due to covet 19 pandemic our economy is weakened and likely faces a prolonged recovery with expiring supports from absent federal government and oak port

079property taxes are re are a recessive tax that impacts low and middle income homeowners and renters most decisively those who are most vulnerable during this time while cuts and postponements of services at the high school are painful taking the full levy will mean continuing losses of diversity and equity in oak park as home ownership ossifies in the upper middle class and up and upper classes who are often white and more and more oprah's are forced to leave our rent to bear the cost of increasing taxes while our families physician and pastor can afford these increases many of our neighbors cannot i encourage you to consider how the opioid how the oprf will share the burden and pain many of our neighbors are facing in this time in order to protect our school district we must

080make difficult decisions now that will ensure the availability of our village to those who aspire to live here and those who already live here and will be able to make their face difficult choices with another tax increase in the face of the pandemic economy please ensure that property taxes will not inflict more pain on an already vulnerable part of our community lisa reed dear d200 board thank you for showing fiscal restraint and not raising the property taxes to the allowable cpi i saw a presentation that shows the potential cuts why would we need to cut since you are maintaining and not decreasing the budget what areas are going on since none of these activities except for novels are happening each year does this mean we have a surplus this year thank you for showing fiscal

081restraint megan malagoli patterson i am a 1995 oprf graduate and aunt of swimmers from the classes of 2019 and 2020. i am also a swim parent while my freshman swimmer is currently attending a different school after a move to river forest fell through it has never been off the table until now as a husky myself i wanted him to be able to swim and attend classes with his current club teammates to experience all the things that still drive my love of being a husky alum those things that are best in oprf are the reasons people flock to our community year after year elementary schools that feed into high schools with top-notch education and spared curriculum a diverse community and a stellar sports program a sports program that includes the decorated swimming diving and water polo

082program a program with coaches and students who have excelled year after year learning the proposed budget cuts to the husky swim program extracurricular clubs and key special education programs struck a nerve what i remember most about my time at oprf was the sense of belonging and pride that came along with putting on my soccer uniform stepping into the stepping onto the stage during a production planning how we would support the community and talk gamma meetings every friday morning or simply cheering on my friends at the game and more importantly swim meets or water polo match sports and extracurricular activities look entirely different this year but we are finding a way to make the upside down as normal as possible to level the ground for our kids and steady them through this uncharted territory for all

083of us has been enough of a challenge now at the start of the season kids whom i've known for more than a decade and watch this still at the sports level within a team within a team millennium are facing yet another loss the loss of the thing they love most a sport they train hard for 12 months of the year and when the world suddenly shut down with no outlet to fuel their passion swimming doesn't come with that bat with a bat a ball or a pair of cleats you can't dance or pass or kick your way to a fast 50 or record-breaking 100 fly swimming requires the same dedication and one thing that our kids live for the water swimming has been noted to be the least risky sport in the covet environment the

084moment our kids located in the pool our swim club was back in the water and it didn't matter that some of us had to create a bubble and drive hours back and forth to get these kids ready for their high school season whatever it would look like we have been safely back in the pool since late june without issue while outbreaks and scares span across all areas of schools from baseball to soccer aquatics have found a way of keeping to move forward safely this is from the same parent set us stacia thompson eighteen thousand per year property taxes no kids in school and has one opr graduate hello please maintain the zero raise in oakport property taxes and do not pass the business office edition of property tax raise property owners in oak park are

085already over taxed in comparison with even higher north source suburbs with schools that are higher have a higher academic performance scores at 23 264 spent per student at an unheard of rate of 14 students to one teacher ratio and with only 3 399 students opportu spends more per student than all other illinois high school the oprf ranks 29th in the 700 illinois high schools despite the resources dedicated to students this appalling there are too many administrative staff paid high salaries who are simply not producing african-american students still have an increasing performance gap compared to their peers despite the many programs administrations and other resources devoted to this less than 20 percent of the student body in the in any other model these programs would be eliminated or revised and in all cases the current staff

086buyer for consistency not for consistently not meeting goals the lopsided and all-consuming focus on race specifically blacks actually increases tension incidence and poor performance by this over-served population to hold all students accountable equally with the same school resources available is also also reinforces accountability deeper cuts need to be made to the already overinflated budgets and superpolis programs parties outings administrators teachers over time etc more money is not solving anything property taxes must go down for the betterment of not only the high school but importantly olive oak park homeowners are increasingly opting out of oprf and enrolling their children in fenwick saint ignatius and other high performing academic driven private schools the answer for the trend is not lack of resources it is the poor performance record of the school despite an embarrassing amount of resources

087thank you should i jump in drilling uh huh okay sue riba tyrone good morning it has been brought to the community's attention that due to budget cuts the recommendation to save money is to close the pools at the high school this is very concerning and should not be a part of the overall budget cuts the pools are a large part of the high school community including boys and girls junior varsity and varsity swim teams diving team water polo team and synchronized swimming team not to mention that every student who attends a high school has to pass a swim class which is a necessary life skill the ability to teach children how to swim alone should be their sole reason to keep the pools open and activated families came from all over chicagoland and moved to

088oak park specifically for the schools and for what the schools have to offer not only academically but also for the extracurricular activities including sports to close the pools and to remove any additional sports for budget purposes only hurts the school the students and the community in which we live and call home my son is currently a senior and has been a swimmer his entire life he has utilized the high school pool first with top swim team out of the ymca and most recently as a member of the husky swim team over the past three years now going into his fourth season the lessons he has learned as a husky swim team member has been key to his development both emotionally socially and physically these are valuable skills and cannot be taught in the classroom besides

089the sense of commitment he has gained over the past four years with his teammates and coach he has he also has had to wake up every day during his season and face a cold chicago winter weather to make it to 6 a.m practices and then swim again after school in the afternoon this has taught him the meaning of hard work and being a part of something larger than himself a team practicing and working towards the same goal all while maintaining a 3.5 gpa the drive teamwork and overall dedication is something he will carry with him throughout his life this is all because oprf has maintained their pools and has a competitive swim team last year the boys team placed 4th in state i would say that the sense of brotherhood and commitment to his sport

090is felt by all of the swim team members and would be devastating if the pools were closed and the children were not able to continue with their sport besides this drowning ranks fifth among the leading causes of unintentional injury deaths in the united states more than 3 700 people drowned in illinois alone in 2017. i believe as educators leaders and parents in our community it is our duty to continue to teach swimming in our high school to our students and neighbors who do not have this skill therefore it is our responsibility to keep the pools open and do everything we can to continue to promote this life skill thank you for listening as it may seem like just a line item on a budget to be cut but remember our pool is much more than

091that at oprf it's a community and without it life lessons as mentioned above will not be taught or experiences including the life skill of swimming thank you my name is georgia saganos as a teacher and someone looking to potentially move to oprf district as a parent i have deep concerns over the proposed cuts to several programs the high school is considering with respect to the special education and swimming diving programs to take these measures would severely impact several current and incoming students to oprf a district that is known for its excellence in both of these programs my students who would eventually be students at oprf would lose these enrichment opportunities such a decision could potentially motivate families to leave the district and or pursue alternative education for their child this would result in an even

092further financial loss to both parties and that is unacceptable dave and deborah lane i was made aware that there is a chance that oprf might close the pools due to budget issues my daughter is on varsity swim team the bond that are the bonds that are made during the season between all of the girls and all the grades gives her confidence and leadership skills she can't get anywhere else the friendship made in the friendships made ensures she has a group where she has where she always feels included the social advantage is crucial in these challenging informative years swim team also teaches her important time management skills to balance workouts with without getting her homework done and keeping her grades high the fact that oprf is the only school that has not updated the pool facility

093in the area is let alone an embarrassment and now there was a threat to close it completely it would be a huge mistake to remove the swim team as an extracurricular activity sphero borgikos d200 administration and boe thank you for your time i am compelled to write to you for multiple reasons today first as an as an immigrant i have had several interactions with fellow american citizens who have accused me of being a terrorist based on my accent so i was stunned to read board member baron's awful opinion piece in the wednesday journal and hope you'd announce his thinly veiled hate speech towards one of our community members and fellow immigrants i find it amazing that during an academic and fiscal crisis at the school and just one month after attending the board retreat on

094racial equity mr barron found time to defend white supremacy while con concomitantly threatening a refugee with his xenophobia i also read the article about the executive director of racial equity who wants to circumvent the public procurement process to sole source a contractor to perform his job forty five thousand dollars for a consultant to tell the executive director of racial equity that there is a racial equity problem which is the entire reason his position was created is absurd made only more incredulous by the apparent violation of the rfp requirement couldn't these funds be better spent on student activities that address racial equity most troubling is that this consultant's fee is contemplated concurrent to propose cuts to special education activities sports clubs and the elimination of the swimming pools at the school to fill a 1.7 million

095operating budget gap less than six months after approving a 30 million cafeteria renovation that is now swelled to a 40 million dollar boondoggle i noticed that life-saving swim lessons in pe and aquatic varsity sports are the target of cuts but the football program is not even though that violent sport serves only males and has been scientifically proven to cause brain damage cte eliminating five non-violent aquatic sports three of which are girl sports does not seem to be in compliance with title ix but adherence to data and compliance with rules do not appear to be in your goals for this year as last month you voted unanimously to water down the science curriculum while our country is in the midst of an anti-science revival during a pandemic all of these decisions leave me stunned many of

096our students are an academic financial social and emotional crisis and your solution is to take away the very things that bring them joy health life-saving skills jobs and connections to the community i feel this administration and school board have truly lost their way and completely abandon the students they are meant to serve tagarista i could not be more disappointed please cut administrative costs not student services life-saving swim lessons non-violent gender equity sports and special needs activities good evening tonight we hear our presentation in response to our board's request to find 1.7 million dollars of savings in order to not raise taxes on our community on slide 9 of this presentation our administration has come back to our community with the following recommendations reduce special education programs reduce the number of clubs reduce the number of

097sports eliminate the summer sports camps close the pools switch to online novels and textbooks every single one of the bullet points on page nine impact students not one single bullet point suggests an analysis of our current cost structure there is not enough analysis of all school expenditures in the presentation for our board to make an informed decision my guess is that this presentation will unnecessarily stir up banks in our community add to toxic toxic social media posts as we clearly should not cut these programs the community uproar could then provide some cover to our board members to then change their vote and recommend voting for a tax increase we should not let this happen instead such a presentation should spell out very clearly the district spending we are doing now compared to like-sized schools with

098similar resources on a per-pupil basis such an analysis should happen before even asking for any student-focused cuts as a reminder our school highlights that students perform better and live healthier lives by participating in sports clubs and activities these involved students of all backgrounds do some of the best community work and are engaged in thoughtful community members yet while our students have been out of the school since march in the middle of a pandemic and receiving more f grades versus the last two previous years student activities that could help our kids are the ones being cut we shied away from in-school learning during first semester due to covid by not even giving families a choice again it appears we are shying away from doing a meaningful analysis on the true cost structure of our school as

099an additional reminder we just spent approximately 40 million dollars on imagine project one project one was at least four point two million dollars over budget and we are learning tonight it will cost three hundred thousand dollars a year to staff to the new resource center our community is already over taxed and we have plenty of resources yet we have subpar fieldhouse a subpar fieldhouse subpar tennis courts that are currently being used as a parking lot pool facilities that are embarrassing and an insect problem however when we need to find 1.7 million dollars our administration is quick to propose more cuts to these student activities really sure the tax increase per household may be small but the presentation offered tonight is incomplete and does not enable our board to make an informed and lasting decision the

100recommendations tonight shifts the burden to our kids without looking at our elevated cost structure and is clearly not student focused anne ferraro thank you for time this evening we are the parents of two children at oprf our daughter is involved in lacrosse and field hockey and our son is involved with golf and baseball programs these sports have meant so much to them and can't imagine not having them available what upsets us most is that there is that here we sit in a pandemic our kids can't even attend school much less any other social event we are all so concerned about their mental health and yet we hear of these possible cuts during this time this is one of the main things our kids look forward to to be a part of something they work so

101hard for the things that currently make them happy are going to possibly be taken away from them this fact alone is not fostering anything positive in regard to this to the student's mental health children involved in sporting extracurriculars look forward to practice their coach their team our children have created so many strong friendships from these activities and being a part of these teams has created more of a community from them within oprf some of these some of their best memories of high school have come from their involvement in extracurricular activities with all that is going on in the world we are now going to take that away from our students we also must look at the fact that being involved in sports extracurricular activities has a huge role in doing well in other aspects of

102life and academics we fully understand living within a budget and adhering to that budget however we do know that we would never cut sports extracurricular activities that have such a positive impact on our youth we are asking that you do not make any cuts to the extracurricular activities that our students enjoy and thrive because of thank you for your time david and megan button we submit the following com comments urging the board to reconsider and reverse its decision to not take a cpi increase excuse me we are all suffering through unprecedent unprecedented and trying times and it goes without saying that the pandemic has strained every facet of our lives our daughter is a sophomore to oprf and our son recently graduated from oprn the strain on students oak parks and river forests kids and

103on teachers and staff has been devastating the pandemic has revealed just how critically important sports and extracurricular activities are to the social emotional physical and educational well-being of our students strangling the finances of oprf and reducing what we all now see are vitally important programs is not the answer and doing so in order to give oak park and river forest households an estimated monthly savings of 6.67 clearly is not the answer especially when the anticipated cuts significant to oprf and students will have long lasting and ballooning consequences based on the data presented some of the anticipated cuts also may be irreversible whether they are intended to be or not once shuttered it may be too costly or infeasible to reopen the pools this board's loan decision to not take a cpi increase and force the

104pools to close uh jeopardizes the existence of our four of four no cut pro sports a training and conditioning facility used by other sports and a facility used by the entire student body and greater oak park and river forest community indeed water sports are one of the fewer the few lower risk sports that a number of students were able to participate in earlier this year the pool and opr aquatics have been critically important to our own kids social emotional physical and educational well-being as they have been for countless oak park and river forest kids in the past the pool and oprf aquatics will benefit countless morrow parkers and river foresters but only if the pools remain open we strongly urge the school board to reconsider and reverse its decision to not take cpi thank you

105catherine christmas i am oprf class of 88. i have one child who graduated from oprf last spring and one who was a sophomore i was so upset to learn that the board is considering closing the pools again the imagine group concluded that oprf aquatics programs including pe swimming multiple teams and community swim programs contribute greatly to our school and our villages now my understanding is that you are considering dropping all of these positive programs in order to save a hundred thousand dollars a year in maintenance costs let's review the monetary values this decision suggests our school places on the following the value of a life-saving skill a typical oprf graduating class is about 850 students approximately a quarter of the kids in each class more than 200 oprf grads per year cannot swim a single

106pool length the majority of non-swimmers in the us are minorities and this dangerous inequity is usually passed down through generations this summer alone lake michigan saw more than 50 drownings if kids don't learn to swim by the time they finish high school it's highly unlikely that the level that they'll ever learn closing the pools to save hundred thousand dollars annually suggests our school and community do not think it's worth a mere five hundred dollars a hundred thousand dollars divided by 210 kids to protect a non-swimming husky for life and increase the odds that he or she will go on to teach their own kids how to swim the value of the value of a team and a student athlete between jv and varsity of multiple aquatic sports for both boys and girls you will be

107shutting down more than a dozen teams if you close the pools that suggests not even placing a value of a couple hundred dollars per athlete per season for a school that values sports participation so completely that it completes in sports that it competes in sports known to put kids health and safety at risk how is it possible that it places so little value on aquatic aquatics athletes how is it that oprf would jump right to cutting a dozen aquatic teams without extensive public debate and the relative costs of these teams versus other sports teams or other non-academic programs what is the cost of insurance for other sports programs what kind of lawsuits are we willing to risk for sports what are the personnel costs per athlete for each sport at the school i would personally

108hate to cut any sport but the fact is you are considering cutting all these aquatic teams simply because you've chosen to categorize them as a maintenance cost yet there are costs beyond maintenance that need to be considered these two cost value assessments the value opr places on teaching a life saving skill and the value oprf places on its aquatics student athletes are even more dismal when you consider that both pe and teams will be dropped if you close the pools the pools aren't the maintenance costs unless life safety and student athletes are a maintenance cost i'm confident that if it comes down to the trade-offs above we can find a better way to cut a hundred thousand dollars than to hurt so many kids now and into the future many in the community fought to

109keep the dilapidated parking lot despite the ongoing maintenance costs associated with it ultimately that parking lot was prioritized over a new pool seeing as it will be underutilized for at least a year and a half due to school closures perhaps that's an area where we can cut some maintenance costs as our community recovers economically from the pandemic thank you for your time and consideration next one stacy sorg it is with concern that i write this after reading the potential to cut sports programs in order to make up for shortfalls next year i'm an oak park resident of 21 years and have three athletic boys unfortunately over much of this time there is a lot of angst and argument over aquatic sports in general my older boys a freshman and a senior have been competitive swimmers

110and water polo players their whole lives partaking in the facilities of oprf a majority of that time in club swimming in high school to say that swimming has been the lifeblood and lifeline of a lot of their lives wouldn't be an understatement particularly in this pandemic i do believe athletics is the key to mental health and involvement in many teens and community members lives suing for us at oprf with the fantastic and dedicated coaches and mentors that the programs have provided us over the years have been instrumental in shaping the values of my boys lives to cut aquatics or any sports for that matter at the high school would negatively impact kids and community members lives in many significant ways there has got to be another way then defaulting to what seems like a fallback

111plan of the high school for many years to get rid of the pools we are excitedly looking forward to the growth plans in the athletic area and specifically the new aquatic facilities that were painstakingly crafted over the last five years thank you for your thoughtful consideration of this matter and for your work on behalf of the school community if i could tag team here um kelly doyle i appreciate you taking the time to read this it is very disheartening to hear that in order to make the budget work you would consider cutting student activities and closing the pools as you probably know student activities provide students on an outlet which fosters positive relationships a sense of belonging learning and joy during this pandemic the importance of having extra activities has been spotlighted as something students

112have been missing most although many students are participating in a few activities that are currently being offered many students are looking forward to the return of all activities many students are hanging on and being resilient in hopes they will be able to return to those activities soon i urge you to find a way to keep student activities because the students deserve them additionally i would like to touch on the school pool closures aside from the fact that many school groups swim team water polo synchro sized swimming cross-country track and that the community also benefits from the pool so do all this all of our students freshmen and sophomore physical education students use the pools as a teaching space juniors and seniors enrolled in adventure education use the pool as a teaching space and students in

113adaptive physical education use the pool as a teaching space some may wonder why the physical education department is so passionate about having the pools as a teaching place i will explain have you ever been on a walk next to a river with someone who doesn't know how to swim and is fearful to be next to it because they wouldn't be able to save themselves and fell off into the three feet of water have you ever had the opportunity to see a high school student enter the swim unit not wanting to get in the water because they are scared and never had the opportunity to learn before if not here what if not here is what happens they hold on to the side of the pool not well willing to let their feet leave the bottom

114and cling to whatever they can to keep their head above the water even though just standing their heads are above the water in the shallow end edge after weeks of learning practice and support by not only the teacher but other classmates who engage in their learning process that student that once clung to the side of the pool is now comfortable in the water and may even actually enjoy getting in because they now have swim skills in my experience i've had several of those students that are not only comfortable in the shallow end they can even jump into the deep end be fully submerged and use the skills they learn to get to the surface and to the edge safely all by themselves fast forward and forward a couple of years when the class and the

115student from your freshman pe class wants your help to get ready to test for the life card test to be a lifeguard at the local pool in the summer wow now that is what the teaching space is all about students and teachers working together to teach life skills and students feeling empowered to try something jennifer hautman dear district 200 board members i strongly urge you to consider budget reductions that do not eliminate sports clubs and activities or close the school as a parent of a sophomore student athlete i was disheartened to read of the potential eliminations as my son's strongest connection to school has been involved in the cross-country swimming the positive coaching and peer connections have kept him i'm sorry i lost my i don't know what happened here it's almost like it skipped

116a page or something it looks like it deleted something i i don't know what happened i don't even know kayla was this one that was sent to the board as well uh gail i'm sorry i i changed the font size i forgot that everyone else was in the same document well i'm going to go back to that where let me let me put it back to the same font size we were on page 36 i'm sorry my apologies yeah thank you it was jennifer hopman's that we were reading you're a midway through jennifer hoffman's yeah so i'm putting the font size back and we should be on page sorry okay so uh age 37 with jennifer hoffman yeah sorry about that you see a gail yeah i see i see okay i just don't know

117where i was with that um so i'm just gonna start with this paragraph in regards to the pool is the only one of four indoor pool facilities in oak park pre-pandemic it was being used not only by oprf students but the community this included the west cook ymca swim team as well as the park district of oak park these community partners would displaced as would be the boys swim team girl swim team boys put water polo girls water bowler and synchronized swimming additionally the swimming unit for pe classes would be eliminated obtaining access to a pool is costly and not always possible i believe swimming is an important and lifescape d is an important life and safety skill to which everyone should have access this year has been hard i sincerely and strongly strongly urge

118you to pursue budget productions that are not so negatively impacted to students so we can keep those things that are best kevin campbell first i would like to start off i am very happy and proud to be working with opr fhs so proud that i make the 80 plus mile trip round round trip each day to come to work i'm a physical education teacher here that averages eight to nine swim classes a year so i see about 50 plus students a semester that either scared to get in the water or have zero idea how to swim at the end of our unit i see 50 plus students that are confident in themselves to be in the water these are my classes these are not the classes of other teachers so i multiply so multiply that

119by eight or nine these pools do not only serve an athletic purpose they are always allowing us to teach students how to swim how to help in emergency situations and how to exercise properly in aquatics you are also talking about cutting sports camps department funding such as special education and shutting down facilities all of which all which are serving one common interest our students who not only take advantage of these opportunities to better themselves academically but in some cases physically your possible plan talks about staff cuts yet this will also only hurt our students there will be less staff for students to utilize what are you accomplishing there at the end of the day all these possibilities i have talked about will only hurt our student body christina lorenzo thank you to the board for

120asking the administration to do their best with the 300 000 budget increase rather than the standard 2.3 increase property tax increase so many oprf students and families are hurting this year and can use all the relief they can get please use the reserves if needed to avoid cuts to student services and extracurriculars the ex the reserves exist for a rainy day and it appears to be boring outside thank you for your service to the community kim hoyle hoy to oprf board of education i understand and respect the role of the board is to make tough decisions and you had your fair share of those over the last years while i personally support option one regarding the tax levy should you decide keep to keep option three and require the administration to cut 1.7 million in

121cost my request is that you take the pool closures off the table for consideration i know you understand the benefits of keeping the oprs pools in use all students swim instruction number of kids in swim plus dive plus water polo teams community use etc and i'm sure you know all the history of the quest for investment in the new pool in new pools i hope you agree that closing the pools now for a hundred thousand dollar annual annual maintenance benefit to balance the budget would cause so much unnecessary turmoil in the community and bring back this and bring this issue back to the forefront of discussions rather than leaving cool replacements embedded in future phase of long-term capital improvement plan thank you for your thank you for your consideration pete and michael and michelle batra

122we are writing today in the hopes of our family's voice can be heard about how unfortunate we are we feel the closing of the opr fools pools would be first and foremost it is used as an opportunity to teach water safely safety during pe which is critical which is a critical skill that could save lives our daughter a current sophomore is a member of the swim team and is it has brought her much joy the swimming program is excellent and wonderful ways for students to feel connected to their schools as well as form lasting friendships i feel extra curriculars not just swimming provides these kids with a sense of community a strong work ethic and swim pride and school pride haven't these kids lost enough already please don't take any more away from them i

123appreciate your time mark harmon dear bor board of education i am writing about the topic of tax levies versus budget cups for the next academic year i think we all agree that the primary stakeholder in any public school is the student body without students there is no school district it is a district 200 board duty to make sure above all else we are doing everything we can for our students at some time during 2021 when the students come back into the building in some form are we going to tell them that there are that we are cutting extracurricular teams and clubs no more fields trips sorry special education we need to cut your budget a little sorry students we know all of you haven't been in the building amongst your friends mentors and peers for

124almost two years but we need to take away the things that connect you to this building and this institution the activities that help you build relationships and anchor your success here these are the very things we know make students connect quickly and deeply in a four thousand person building that can otherwise be overwhelming for 13 to 18 year olds do we really think taking these things away from our students is a plan that embodies those things that are best but further after the multi-million dollar imagine project are we going to cut community rental via reducing overtime for building maintenance in the short term there may not be demand for facility rental in the community but that is expected to change in late 21 22 when these cuts are in place after your decision to continue

125construction in the face of the pandemic you cannot think these types of cucks make any sense we cannot have to do better increase the tax levy work diligently on gradually changing the cost structure of running the institution by running reducing the budgets of our two biggest cost centers continue to improve the infrastructure using the excess reserves prudently while taking advantage of some of the generous resources available in our community if you concentrate that on in the future you will be able to remove tax levies for several decades without negatively affecting your students thank you for your service be safe next miss kristen and kevin freaker by way of background my wife and i are 25 plus year residents of oak park and we have a junior and sophomore at oprf both of whom are opif

126swimmers and water polo players as outlined in the 20 2011 decision impact presentation circulated to families in the community by athletic director john stelzer and his staff the oprf administration has requested that opr school board was requested by the oprf school board to present a list of 1.7 million in potential potential cost reductions on the surface this seems like a reasonable and appropriate request to the administration by the board given the anticipated revenue shortfall and reading a.d stelz's preface email however which provided context for the presentation i would first like to point out and dispute his assessment and rationale for the proposed cost reductions at the high school in his email a.d stelzer indicated that the school administration and in particular business office will present on to the board on thursday night what those budget

127cuts should look like and they would affect programs staffing and facilities closing the pools as well as possibly cutting sports i have attached the presentation here for your review please be reminded that this presentation is being provided to the board in an effort to have them reverse their earlier decision the business office does not want to make these cuts for my reading of the levy decision presentation the board has made a reasonable request to the administration to provide options of where savings and programs could be made at the high school so while i'm sure the business office doesn't want to make any cuts the board is not directing where these reductions would need to come from the business office is the board is simply requesting that the business office do their diligence and provide potential

128scenarios to account for the budget shortfall which again seems reasonable with that in mind i find serious fault in the business office assessment slides 9 through 11 outlining possible reduction ideas and cost savings without the benefit of understanding the research that may or may not have been done by the business office to come up with these ideas and associated cost savings the proposed ideas and cost savings summarized in this presentation does not seem well researched or created it basically appears as though they took the easy cost to obtain and quantify and then trying to scare oprf families into attempting to blame the board at the reason for the re as the reason for the reduction if they were to be carried out it is not us it's them it's a not it's a damn approach

129which is inappropriate for example the business office is proposing potential cuts to clubs and sports offered reasonable so let's see an itemized list of all sports and clubs the cost to sustain that's time okay the next one is for anne from ann harmon oprf class in 1991 parent of a sophomore eighth grader and twin sixth graders dear d200 board members i am writing as a parent of an opr fa sophomore eighth grade eighth grader twin sixth graders and a proud alumni of oprf class in 1991. we all agree the students come first please do not close the pool to reduce any sports teams or clubs reduce special education program spending or eliminate summer sports camps my family family was very disappointed it's an understatement when we heard the ideas could be considered this is not

130the time to take away from students all students need sports clubs field trips and camps more than ever our son is on the opr fhs swim team and water polo until shut down he feels more connected to the school and has made many new friendships being a part of such a vibrant team all of the coaches are so dedicated to teaching young women and men these five core values leadership integrity respect responsibility and sportsmanship it would be a major loss to opr fhs students teams and community if d200 shut down pools and made the recommendation recommended reductions going back to my years at opr fhs i took swimming and physical education classes i was one of the four siblings to go through opr fhs our family didn't belong to the country club or private pool

131or take swimming lessons these pools helped me and my siblings learn to swim and be more comfortable in the water physical education swim classes are an essential life-saving skill beneficial to all opr fhs students these programs and pools are vital to the success of our student school community please do not shut them down thank you for your time and commitment to d200 as a d200 board member the next one is theresa bolin as a current and future parent of an oprs student i am highly opposed to shutting down the pools and the swim programs i don't see how we could go from a discussion a few years ago of spending millions and dollars to completely overhaul the pools to being in a position today of suggesting we shut them down completely i think swimming is

132a really important sport for the school to offer along with providing the opportunity for students to take swim programs during pe class i am highly opposed to taking the pools away from oprf swimmers jack henry my daughter is a senior and my son is a sophomore at oprf both have had a great educational social and athletic experience thus far i am particularly distressed to hear the pool could close due to these budget cuts my son is on the swim team and will be on the water polo team when that resumes he needs to swim when he is not able to swim at the high school he has been able to find lanes at soaps at local pools and swim lap to swim laps this is helpful to his overall physical and more importantly mental health

133the team aspect of oprf swimming however can't be replicated by individual swimming he is so looking forward to working with his team and competing it really is vital to his overall health happiness and health i know these decisions are difficult i just want to advocate for my son and all the swimmers at oprf and all students who get a chance to swim there i can't imagine a school of that size without a pool it would not be right jane i mean jamie kobachar dear board members i would like to encourage you to change your decision on keeping a flat tax levy for the next fiscal year while the pandemic has certainly had an economic impact on many property owners who are members of this community the relative increase in annual taxes is still minimal i

134am concerned that this decision will result in cutting programs and services that are vital to our students and the reason so many of us may park our home in addition these cuts will likely disproportionately impact disadvantaged students and their families who do not have the resources to seek these services ig swimming lessons sports and other clubs outside of the school additionally i understand that some possible cuts could include clubs and programs that provide additional income to faculty and other district employees while these cuts may seem reasonable when simply looking at the financial report they directly impact the lives of people we trust to educate and care for our children no doubt these are tough times for all please consider how this decision will impact the lives of students faculty and community members when you meet

135later today mark redattory and renee redatory the board in this administration have failed oprf community at a time when we desperately need them to make decisions in the best interests of our students unlike other schools in our areas in our district oprf decided to go fully remote leaving our student body not only to struggle with learning online but also struggle with peer development now the board has before it a proposal that will only make things worse for our students by adopting a flat tax levy for the next fiscal year the board is also being asked to cut extracurricular activities that represent an essential outlet for a student body that has no this has had to shelter in place for months and make no mistake about it these programs are tiny part of a massive more

136than 100 million dollar budget on which oprf operates they include reductions in community outlets for a special air population a mere forty thousand dollar savings shutting down the pools and ending five varsity and club swim sports a mere hundred thousand dollar savings and reducing other clubs in summer sports camps a mere 165 000 savings the proposal before the board makes no sense fiscally nor is it backed with any facts or data which are requirements for any decision making by this board special needs students need to participate in as many community outings as possible these outings not only help students build self-confidence and acquire new life skills but they also integrate these students into everyday society we should be looking for ways to increase community inclusion not decrease it these outings are not fun field trips

137they are growing experience for an underserved population this board and administration have not even figured out a way to provide these students with critical in-person education and now we are considering further ways to impair their development closing the pool would mean the end of the swim program that has been part of the fabric of oprf community for decades and the elimination of an important community asset on the chopping block are oprf's boys and girls swim teams boys and girls water polo and synchronized swimming closing the pool is not limited to the hundreds of students who will no longer be able to participate in a water sport but also the student body they use the pool as part of their gym class rotation and what about the students who do not know how to swim the

138world health organization and cdc this drowning is a major health problem public health problem it accounts for seven percent of injury-related deaths the pools are an asset to this community they give students who can't win the opportunity to learn they provide access for special air recreation and they give hundreds of student athletes a forum for their sports the hundred thousand dollars in projected android cost savings is nothing compared to the value that the pool provided our students and community marty bernstein i appreciate the board's decision to not include cpi in the upcoming tax levy after the board's decision to reject the cpi and upcoming levy the administration this action the administration's asking what to reconsider the board must empathetically stick to the stick to the original decision the board's instructions to eliminate 1.7 million and

139spending needed to be followed the administration must understand that the high school needs do not exist in a vacuum separate from the other taxing bodies in oak park and river forest and levying tax to the maximum allowed need to stop covet 19 is already increasing financial pressure for the many people beyond yearly tax increases kinder chipwick tip rich i have been asked scale your cursor is okay i'm sorry asked to share my thoughts on the proposed budget cuts with you you need to have a high performing successful high school to have a thriving community the proposed cuts special education athletics etc would greatly reduce the appeal of the high school to a serious detriment to the students and the community some of the proposed cuts seem logical return books when done or use the online

140books for a sample reduce some but not all field trips i understand the area has a strong swim community but it appears to be ongoing contentious issues as it only serves the few full disclosure i have a swimmer in our family if the pool continues to be a cash glut then perhaps negotiating an outsourced full option for the high school use to reduce costs versus eliminating it personally i mean permanently i don't know the balance sheet well enough to make the suggestions of what should be done to meet the shortfall i understand there are questions regarding the use of the cash reserves what i am certain of is our family will seriously evaluate why we live in this community that the proposed changes continue we didn't move here to pay for private school but to

141rather be an active part of the community including the public schools we pay some of the highest taxes in the community not just illinois but superior schools the expectation with what is special education is there for children who need it and athletes are a large robust part of the school as well as the extracurricular activities i think the boy knows this but we need to hear extra voice then i will add my thank you karen laura husby the impact the oprf girls and boys swim teams have on countless numbers of opr students cannot be emphasized enough this no-cut program is extraordinary in its development of not only great swimmers who have gone on to compete at division one universities across the country we read this one yes i read this one already as well wendy

142did you read that um no no uh wendy kunster good evening d200 board members i am writing to you from a unique perspective i am an oak park community member an opr alumnus a parent of two current opr students who are both heavily involved in sports as well as two future oprf students a current full-time opr special education teacher as well as the current oprf coach and i ask from all of these different perspectives that you reconsider your decision to seek a flat tax levy that may result in the proposed budget cuts being presented tonight as a special education teacher a reduction in the use of activity buses for community-based instructional outings and community-based vocational instructional outings as well as an adequate budget to support these outings will greatly negatively impact students ability to address

143and achieve their iep goals objectives research supports the fact that students with moderate to severe disabilities learn best through participation in age appropriate real life skills and activities in natural environments repetition of these skills and activities and generalizations across multiple settings is also instrumental in student success as they transition to post-school environments as a coach for 15 years at oprf i have seen countless examples of how sports have played an integral role in the well-rounded development of high school students my experience now as a parent of two current high school students only strengthens its belief and finally as a community member i ask that you reconsider a decision that not only affects our current oprs students so many future oprs students down the road please reconsider your decision and choose option one so that current

144and future students can experience what is stated in the opr's strategic plan mission a dynamic supportive learning environment cultivates knowledge skills and character and drives equity and excellence for all students robin basney my daughter's ages 11 my daughters ages 8 and 11 swim for ymca top swim team the program also utilizes the oprf pool for children with sensory issues and difficulty with team sports swim not only offers exercise and strength but a focus on personal best effort that work ethic helps them in every area of growth please reconsider cuts on behalf of the class of 2027. megan uh reichert good evening i am writing to ask the board to please make the choice we are all aware there are innumerable benefits to participating in extracurriculars has different reasons why extracurriculars are important to our particular

145student in my case my daughter who has adhd and often feels inadequate academically gains much of her self-confidence from being a swimmer he's been a swimmer for seven years and has eagerly anticipated being on the oprf team in addition to giving her confidence swimming improves her focus and her academic achievement this is common not only with students with adhd but for all student athletes i know my daughter is not alone in gaining self-confidence and feeling a sense of belonging and in learning resiliency through being on the obrs swim team she is not alone in feeling part of a wonderful community a community that will be heartbroken if you close the pools i also know that families from other sports teams and other extracurriculars will feel equally as heartbroken if their children lose the experience or

146activity that they love they've worked hard at and that they feel passionate about this summer it was difficult for many swimmers to find a pool to train in so my daughter along with her peers found creative ways to stay in shape all with just hope the opportunity to swim this year through the hard work and dedication of the swim coaches the swimmers were fortunate to get the chance to be on a team the athletes showed great determination and resilience and worked hard even through the stress of a pandemic swim season please don't now after this already difficult year a year when kids feel like they've lost so much a time when kids feel isolated and lonely please don't consider shutting down any sports or extracurriculars kids will need these sports and activities more than ever

147next year and in the years to come thank you for your consideration carol mattis dear oprf board i know money is tight please vote to save the oprf pools we as a community need them for the health and safety of our children and the community teaching swimming and water safety at the high school is critical and should continue to be a part of the curriculum especially since swimming and water safety are so well aligned with opr's stated commitment to addressing racial equity inequities in our community statistics show that a disproportionate amount of black and brown children cannot swim as a result these populations are more at risk near water pay attention when you hear news of drownings in illinois and you will notice a disturbing racial trend oprf can and should help combat this trend

148by keeping our pools open and our swimming curriculum in place for all our students as a community we also need these schools all oak park park district pools are all outdoor pools the river forest park district does not have a pool dominican and concordia have closed their pools and converted the space to classroom use the only remaining indoor pools in the community are private pools ffc and ymca that are inaccessible to most residents swimming is a low-impact sport that can be enjoyed by young and old alike it has numerous positive physical and psychological benefits plus injuries are rare looking at a cost benefit analysis it makes no sense to defend swimming while while simultaneously lavishing funds in space on sports like soccer football baseball which have a worrisome history of injury and contribute nothing to

149students from a safety perspective note that swimming is often prescribed to help rehabilitate athletes injured in another sport our high school and our community should have a pool please vote to support safety racial equity and mental and physical health at oprf please vote to save our pools todd kusabi let's keep our focus on what is important for our children water safety is among those priorities we teach it in our pe classes competitive swimming diving and water polo are also among those priorities these skills and experiences provide safety confidence building and goal setting skills for children to use throughout their life not only is using a pool a necessity for our children we must also persist with our comprehensive master plan a piece of which envisions modernizing our nearly 100 year old pool the funding is

150suddenly an issue and a surprise to us then let's please have a thoughtful capital planning process rather than seemingly sudden and misplaced cuts kitty conklin good evening board i have a few questions about data presented in the deck that is do we know how long her first public comment lasted it was short all right uh karen go ahead we'll give her two minutes for this okay i have a few questions about data presented in the deck that is attached to item 5a in tonight's agenda packet i request answers to these questions either during tonight's meeting or via email afterward on page six of the deck it is stated since the 2013-2019 tax year the district has levied 48.5 million dollars less than it was allowed to receive under tax cap law one could you please

151provide the details showing how the 48.5 million dollar figure was calculated two is any compounding calculation used and arriving at this amount three in which years since 2010 did d200 not levy the maximum amount allowed by law or for the years in which d200 did not levy the maximum allowed amount how much was the property tax levy reduced thank you for your service i look forward to your clarification around these questions john hostie there is no reason for any cuts or an increase in the tax rate you will have a new real estate reassessment base to work from as well as over 50 million in cash reserves use that money first you have no problem dumping tax increases on us in the meantime test scores continue to decline spend another few hundred thousand dollars on

152another pool study alexis and joshua murphy your opr e200 board of education we are alexis and joshua murphy and our daughter sadie will be an incoming freshman swimmer in 2021. we have three more children who will be attending oprf after her we are writing about your decision to take a flat property tax levy for 2020 and cut 1.7 million from the budget rather than take a full levy increase of 2.3 and leave the budget intact we have seen the proposed list of cuts which include reducing special education spending eliminating field trips reducing the number of clubs and sports offered and closing the pools we fully support district 200's focus on racial equity while some board members have favored the flat property tax with budget cuts in the name of equity we feel that cutting co-curricular

153opportunities in order to temporarily achieve lowered taxes is short-sighted and antithetical to the district's equity goals while also kicking the financial can down the road in regular years the district should be seeking to increase the number and diversity of co-curricular opportunities in order to better support racial equity and co-curricular participation as children return to school after bearing the brunt of a global pandemic the district should at least be trying to preserve the same opportunities that students enjoy pre-pandemic after everything the students have been through this year it seems especially cruel to start cutting away at their future opportunities when the alternative is well within your reach there are special equity issues surrounding the high school pools which serve as an important resource which serve as important resources not only for oprs students but the community

154at large minority youth are five times more likely to drown than non-minority youth and self-report much higher levels of low swimming skills learn to swim programs run by community organizations at oprf pools promote greater greater racial equity and the vital life skills of water safety and swimming oprf pe swim requirements are another important public health and safety intervention among youth who may arrive at oprf with little prior swimming experience due to opportunity gaps and access to swimming programs finally the oprf pools support gender equity and access to sports participation supporting an equal measure of girls and boys swim dive and water polo teams these teams are historically no cut further enhancing access to sports participation for all students at such a large high school our children including sadie at age 13 have beautifully followed all

155social distancing and masking requirements and all travel advisories since last march without complaint they do this in support of all healthcare workers including their father who they lend day in and day out to russia university medical system to do his good work taking care of children with heart problems including those suffering suffering from copenhagen and m-i-s-c now once have they complained aaron okay i think i will pass this on now to the next reader okay this next name is missing we will see if we get it for you but the comment is i'm writing to ask you to reevaluate your proposed cuts especially to a vital service like special education which supports an at-risk population of students learning happens in and out of the classroom it's critical that the outings the outings excuse me are

156given proper context and that the impact is understood these are not fun field trips that are simply extras some of our students require hands-on learning opportunities that are vital to their success post-oprf these outings are part of the core education of some of our students helping to reinforce crucial skills that are applicable to their success outside oprf these services are core to spend and we shouldn't propose cutting them ellie rate i'm a sophomore at oprf and had been on the girls swim team for two years in march of 2019 i had a major surgery done on both my legs leaving me in a wheelchair for two months and crutches for three one month after getting off of crutches i made the jv swim team as a freshman i couldn't run couldn't lift weights couldn't kick

157a ball but i was one of the fastest swimmers on jv if the swim team had not been there for me i could have seen myself giving up on recovery one year later as a sophomore i made varsity swimming and water exercise is one of the only options for students who are physically challenged it is low impact has a wide intensity range and promotes muscular recovery and gain i am lucky that my injury was temporary many people are not so lucky give them the option to move and work out without fear of injury and keep the pools jim peterson my son is a freshman at opref and an aspiring swimmer we are 20-year residents of oak park and understand the difficulties financial emotional and beyond that our community faces as a result of copen i've

158heard that the board is considering a flat tax levy for the coming year which would have a negative effect on all students and staff rather than making cuts to educational and recreational programs i believe that this is the time to dip into the d200 significant reserves to make and make up any funding gap for the coming year i don't think it's fair to ask our community to pay more taxes at this time but i don't believe that programs and opportunities should be cut use the funds that you have at your disposal and help get us through to the other side of this pandemic roshni richetti i am disappointed to see special education outings in the chopping block especially since the relative cost compared to the other items discussed as minuscule every accommodation for these kids

159is hard fought and they deserve all of it and more moreover where are all the savings on overtime pool sports summer on overtime pool sports summer from the pandemic reflected obviously fiscal responsibility is important but stripping our school of its exemplary opportunities will strip our community of its greatest draw the schools kimberly jensen will check all kids should know how to swim and the high school has provided that skill for years as a parent of a swimmer as a swimming alumni of the high school and as a daughter who was whose mother learned how to swim at oprf the pool is a necessity figure it out to save the pools because it's one of the most important features of opr fhs j.p coghlan greetings board members my name is jp coughlin and i am a

160history teacher club sponsor and coach in the building i'm also a lifelong resident of the oak park community and proud graduate i know that times are tough and any ease on the tax burden of these two great communities is always appreciated however in looking at the proposed program cuts i think this would be a big mistake the elimination of summer camps especially for the youth of the community would be a really sad day i spent my summers growing up in the field house in the in the field house participating in sports camps and it was there that i developed important relationships with my future coaches most importantly i found my role models and the athletes working those sports camps i was always the proudest kid when the star basketball player would be taking the ball

161out in a close game right in front of the my front seat and as he was waiting for the ref to hand him the ball would drop what's up cogs it was a 17 year i was a 17 year old kid but it might as well have been michael jordan saying hi to me now as a coach i try to employ as many of my athletes as possible often taking no pay myself to work out to work on girls junior high basketball camp to hear these young girls marvel that one of the varsity players like my instagram post brings similar memories to mind these camps allow us to build relationships with our future athletes and their families but most importantly we get to show off our best asset our amazing students and while i know

162nothing about swimming i taped the home swim meets this year so they could be live streamed for the parents at home i was blown away by the positivity togetherness and energy by our athletes during a pandemic it breaks my heart that it is a possibility that this might not happen next year due to due to budget cuts please find a way to keep our pools open and our swimming community together we can do without snacks and meetings i cannot imagine this high school with less sports and less clubs summers will never be the same without the endless streams of students of all ages coming in and out of this high school finally perhaps now now is finally the time for the board of education to consider alternative revenue streams through sponsorships through athletic department i

163can tell you as a softball coach our relationship with nike the past few years has really benefited our program and most importantly our athletes further expansion of these types of sponsorships should be considered and explored thank you as always for your time and consideration robert and chris valari after sending both my daughters to opr and now my grandchildren it seems that my advice to my children who remain in oak park would be to move to riverside where the taxes are less and the pool remains open to the high school consider changing the model of the high school those things that are best to something else martyr marta siegel block given the financial reserves that oprf has and that we are in the middle of an economic crisis the idea that we either have to raise

164taxes or cut special ed funding is shameful and blatantly manipulative doris wang in light of this recent news of potential budget cuts that may affect oprf swimming and dye programs as well as other extracurricular activities are disheartening to say the least from a personal standpoint the elimination of programs such as the boys dive team and banned orchestra may be detrimental to the mental and emotional health of our son he is currently a freshman at the high school and not doing well during the during the pandemic and remote learning the only thing keeping him somewhat connected to the high school is orchestra and the prospect of being a part of the dive team with the recent adaptive pause all of our indoor winter sports it has brought another round of setbacks to our son's mental well-being

165if the next few years of his high school career does not have dive and orchestra in his path he may never fully recover from the misfortunes that the pandemic has reeked on all of us please understand that the reputation of opr fhs also stands on the array of sports extracurricular activities that are available to students eliminating such sports and activities will devastate not only our children but it will forever tarnish the high school's highly regarded reputation linda carlson as you consider budget cuts tonight i would encourage you to not cut sports each year the board wants to know how many students participate in extracurricular activities because you all know the vital role they play in the success of our students and our school community so i don't understand why this would be up for discussion

166all budget cut decisions should be all budget cut decisions should be student centered and cutting extracurricular activities and our critical classrooms such as pools are not what's best for students regina gunn the oak park and river forest high school offers amazing opportunities for each and every student to grow learn and thrive the opportunities provide students with well-rounded and in-depth extracurricular and physical education experiences these experiences teach everything from relationship building and mental health to personal health and safety these are life skills that will help our students go on to live healthy and successful lives while breaking barriers of race gender and ability discrimination research supports the fact that students involved in extracurricular activities ie sports and clubs are more likely to thrive in their teenage years in an article by schaefer of 2019 it has

167proven that participation in extracurricular activities improves mental health academic achievement and can predict success after high school therefore extracurriculars should be the last to be cut two oprf offers a plethora of activities so that each and every student can find something to which they belong because we are a community with a plethora of different individuals cutting these programs or closing the facilities only hurts the students they hurt the opportunities that these students may not have at another point in their lives in a publication by seth whedon of carthage college in 2018 the author states that there is long history of discriminatory practices related to swimming and water access across the u.s closing our schools and refusing to build a new more financially manageable facility only perpetuates this discrimination i sincerely hope that the school board

168and administration can remember who we are all here for who are who us teachers bend over backwards for each and every minute of each and every day the students and there are references and links to those references included in that remark ashley dunn dear members of the district 200 board i'm a resident of river forest i'm a parent of two competitive swimmers ages 9 and 11 who both learned to swim at oprf's husky swim camp i'm gravely concerned that the board is considering closing rpreef's pools and eliminating water sports to help cover the district's 1.7 million million budget shortfall created by the board's preliminary decision to seek a flat tax levy for the next fiscal year while i agree that equity one of the primary drivers for the board's decision regarding a flat tax levy

169is an important goal for our community i am worried that the proposed cuts for aquatics will actually work counter to this goal oprf's pools are home to the husky swim camps in the summer and also the park district swim lesson programs in colder months these swim lessons are a vital part of ensuring water safety in our community while private swim lesson facilities are are proliferating in our area none are as financially accessible as these programs further the swimming requirement for pe at oprf serves as a critical means to ensure that all district 200 students learn basic swim skills to promote safety in and near the water further oprf's aquatics program offer opportunities for hundreds of kids to participate in high school athletics each year many of whom might not otherwise participate as swimming diving and

170water polo are typically no-cut sports also these sports are offered equally to both male and female students if lprf cuts these programs many students with the means to do so will continue to participate in these sports through expensive clubs or even consider educational alternatives such as fenwick which offer aquatic programs this will only further drive inequities in our community lastly oprf's aquatics program makes a point to give back to our communities and promote good citizenship through the provision of swim lessons at husky swim camp and team service projects the district 200 students involved in oprs aquatic programs don't just strive for athletic excellence but also learn to make the world they live in a better and safer place i respectfully ask that the board maintain oprs aquatic facilities and program for the benefit of our

171entire community and to explore other ways district 200 might be able to address its budgetary needs other approaches to consider could include establishing a well-managed pool rental program to generate much-needed revenue exploring how to maximize the use of both pools and corporates and corporate sponsorship of oprs aquatics facilities thank you for your consideration gail well the first one doesn't have a name on it but we'll you know what why don't we take just a five minute break um because we've been going for two and a half hours and i think people probably need to stretch their legs this seems like a decent place to pause so why don't we come back at um 902 um gail how many public comments do we have left um we are on page 58 of 79. okay yeah let's

172take a five minute break so uh uh 903 thank you foreign you so you so all right if board members who are here could turn their cameras on so that i know that you're back i would appreciate it i'm here sarah no camera but voice i'm here camera and voice here and thank you to everyone who's reading our comments for us tonight thank you yeah i'm here sarah while we're waiting to start members of the steering committee you should have received an email from gail camerton please take some time to read it thank you okay so i think we have gina matt tom if jackie craig and ralph are back if you could just let me yes jackie is here thank you yeah i've already uh toned in sarah oh i'm sorry i didn't have

173my headphones on properly so i couldn't hear very well okay is here they're on here great why don't we start up again please okay so uh the next one is i'm i'm not sure of the name yet but the statement is i know that finances are type but i urge you to please can reconsider a choice to defund certain athletic programs and aquatic facilities i'm a student and an athlete at oprf and i cannot imagine what school would look like for me without swimming a water pool it's a giant school and having that one team that i come to every day and who i share with in hardships and successes is so vital to my ability to feel like a part of the school community i it has been extremely important this year especially as

174swimming was the one way i would consistently interact with my peers in person and i don't know how i would have gotten through first quarter without it what is more athletics aren't just about community and relationships the programs that opr of swimming especially emphasizes values of servant leadership being an active and benevolent member of your community as well as work ethic honesty and integrity i know being a part of a sport was super important during my transition into high school it forced me to step up my time management and to want to perform my best in class so i could be there for my team swimming has helped me build confidence and has a super super important part in my ability to cope with my personal mental health struggles and everyday stresses of being a

175high school student i really hope that you can find a way to keep this interest of the students in mind as you make your decision matthew kudo water is a magnet for children said rowdy rowdy gaines who has won three olympic gold medals in swimming but we've found a cure for drowning and it's pretty simple and then he lists a reference link the idea that oprs should permanently close their school due to temporary budget shortfall is disconcerting as of right now oprf has two schools which are not which are heavily used not only by a sports team but also by the student body as a whole through swim clashes and other activities swimming education is important in these latitudes of midwest where it is too cold half the year for the outdoor pools indoor swimming

176pools represent the best opportunity for oprf students to learn a vital life skill one that is taught to all opr fhs students because of the availability of the school's old but functioning swimming pools furthermore for low income and small and some minority students it is their only practical opportunity to decrease the vital life skills with the demise of concordia's indoor pool a few years ago and reduce availability of oprs of oak parks hospital pool due to the pandemic the availability of indoor pool in the oprfhs area oak park and river forest area during winter months has reached an all-time low oprf east and west pools represent a significant mutated community asset even as they are old my own experience as a opr fhl student attest this attests to this i was born and raised in

177oak park and was a swimmer from a young age i first swam at opr as a sixth grader during my swim team practice however as an opr freshman i observed many of my class classmates who were clearly unfamiliar with bodies of water larger than a bathtub some had so little experience swimming that they were still afraid to put their heads under water while standing in the shallow end there's a physical education class is required for all students at a time help mitigate this lack of experience that many students have and currently have upon completing high school gym class upon completing high school gym class swimming i cannot claim that these fellow students of mine developed it into aquatic athletes however they attained enough competence in the water to enjoy water-based activities more importantly they learned

178enough to keep themselves safe in and around water something they clearly had not experienced prior to the high school furthermore oak park river forest enjoys a thriving competitive swimming computing community and has for decades 20 years ago the demand for competitive swimming was so great that parents were willing to pay 25 an hour in 1999 for swim lessons just so their children could make it to past trials to join a swimming pool it's time okay okay the next one is alexander west dear oprah board members i am writing you to you to express my concern and disappoint with the proposed budget cuts and resulting facility closures i will not pretend to know the complexities of the budget shortfall and the symptomatic are and am pathetic to the difficult choices you are now faced with but

179i do know the decision to close facility is at odds with what students need to in the year ahead the pandemic has eroded students ability to stay connected and develop a sense of community in the line while no one is responsible for this reality the board can and must find a way to begin to undo this damage when the public health situation has improved closing closing facilities that were a core feature of the pre-covered world that i and others enjoy learn from and took for granted will have the opposite effect please reconsider this decision carlos hi maria and the father of two current high school students and one upcoming eighth grader making the proposed cuts will have a huge impact and too many students and members of the community i am asking you to approve

180the 2.3 percent increase in cpi and will focus my argument on just one thing the important skills of learning how to swim closing down the pools will rob the entire school of learning how to swim this will disproportionately affect students of color class perhaps or per the cdc article and then it gives it link in the united states almost 4 000 persons die from drowning each year drowning is responsible for more deaths among children one through four than other cause except congenital anomalies for persons 29 ages 29 years or younger drowning is one of the top three causes of unintentional jury injury death previous research has identified racial ethnic disparities in drowning cases three to four to describe these differences by age of descendant and drowning setting cdc analyzed 12 years of combined mortality data

181from 1999 to for those aged 29 years among non-hispanics the overall drowning rate for american indians alaskan natives was twice the rate for was twice the rate for whites and the rate for blacks was 1.4 times that rate for whites disparities were greatest in swimming pools with swimming pool drownings rates among blacks aged 5 to 19 years 5.5 times higher than those among whites in the same age group this disparity was greatest at ages 11 to 12. at these ages blacks drown in swimming pools at 10 times the rate of whites browning prevention strategies include using barriers like fences and life jackets actively supervising real life guarding teaching basic swimming schools and performing by standard cardiopulmonary pulmonary resuscitation the practicality and effectiveness of these strategies varies by setting however basic swimming school skills can be

182beneficial across all settings i ask you to please approve the 2.3 cbi increase and keep the pools open thank you amy hansman good evening i'm the parent of eighth and fourth grade boys and remember forest on your notice today that it is possible that the pool at opr will lose funding i am strongly opposed to conversations to improve the pool no i'm strongly opposed to eliminating or reducing access to the pool at oprf it saddens me that the conversations to approve the pool have transitioned to the threat of losing it this pool is a community asset allowing kids access to recreation physical exercise sport and life skills its removal would negatively impact the young members of the of our village by eliminating access to at a young age through swim clinics and camps and remove

183sporting opportunities at the high school age for so many kids it also provides vital access to swim lessons for kids who do not have access to pools lakes at home or whose families do not swim while this isn't a man majority of kids it is important that all kids have access to this skill thank you fawn choice the curriculum of the team and site program significantly focuses on community-based instruction defunding the community budget and eliminating the use of activity buses would violate iep's interview with the best practice of our diverse learners kenneth lehmann i commend the board's initial decision to maintain on flex flat levy expecting new growth accepting new growth for the coming upcoming year this reflects the realities and the ground consequence to the pandemic and its effect on the typical e200 taxpayer

184it was disturbing to see reprinted alleged correspondence by athletic director that directly cited the business office as wanting to undermine the board's initial decision if this publicly decimated uh disseminated document is real it suggests that this district administration has little regard for the taxpayers wishes as expressed through their elected representatives it also suggests that the influences of niche stakeholders may be holding hostage decisions made for the general good of our community and d200 students i encourage the board to reaffirm its decision and to make completely clear that it expects the d200 administration to abide by the board's decision and not actively try to work it against it in bad way julie seibert for the board of education district 200 i am a 1999 1991 graduate of oprl i am writing to you to ask you

185to consider maintaining the current programs in sports that use the opr pools as well as continuing to keep the pools open for the use swimming water pool water polo diving and other activities the pools are used for is such an important part of this community and the children in it there are hundreds of kids in the opr area that are involved in sports that utilize the swimming pools including three area swim clubs that feed into the local high schools children that will mostly attend school at opiura due to the rigorous training nature of swimming this is usually the whole sport that children are able to maintain in middle and junior and high school with the antenna swimming at oprf on the swim teams to remove these programs would be a crushing blow to the children

186of this community that have worked for years at their sport and are looking forward to swimming as an opr husky to be transparent the real the entire reason my husband and i chose to move back to river forest after all these years living in the city is the high school my experience of high school was extremely rewarding and has left me with the desire for my daughter to have access to this incredible school as well the extracurricular and sports programs that oprah have are truly one of a kind if not the most important part of why i think this school is so special and for me being part of the husky community and water polo teams was the absolute best part of being at oprm could i ask someone to continue yeah you're on julie

187um i'm just trying to see where you are i know i know where she is i'll take it up yeah i saw it really i just didn't know where the team experience that comes from a swim program is one that is hard to put into words and certainly not one i've seen replicated in other sports programs should this part of the high school sports options be removed it would seriously question whether we would stay in this community this is the sport my daughter has chosen and she deserves to swim at a high school program that will support her growth please do not remove these pools and programs that use them from hundreds of children in our community if the pool is closed not only will the high school programs likely be in trouble but all

188the community swim programs as well with the serious shortage of cool space in the opera communities we will be lacking in this area with so many members of our townships rely on for their children's growth and development thank you for your consideration katie oscar we are sensitive to the toll of the times we are disheartened with the objective to control budget cuts via cutting clubs sports and programs for our youth when there is 100 million dollars in reserves haven't the kids suffered enough this is not a threat but a gloom reality that if these cuts take place we will be moving we cannot justify our property taxes any longer with changes like these in the community if these significant programs are taken away from the high school and community the entire high school experience is

189being derailed our children grew up with activities like swimming soccer and theater to make them well-rounded individuals this kept them on track it was socialization friendship exercise commitment dedication maintaining good grades physical mental health all wrapped up in one if these programs are cut we will be forced to move where they are offered for the better of our children thank you for considering these detrimental consequences nan will lickey i believe we need to think about the future of oak park and river forest communities what drives new young families to join our village has many factors but we all know excellent schools is high on the list new families are how community thrives grows and is prosperous families are not going to want to live in a village where the high school does not have vibrant

190and diverse sports and extracurricular activities available you'll know the huge benefits that sports and clubs provide for children physically socially and mentally it is often where teenagers learn how to persevere challenge themselves and create lifelong concepts and look at their world beyond the classroom for my child swimming has been where she has found her home at operf and she has had the wonderful benefit to learn and grow in all these ways i have mentioned through her sport we would be devastated if the pool is closed and swim on water polo were no longer available sports and clubs create that school spirit that gives back to the community and brings people together it is what helps to make a thriving community desirable for families from all over to want to join and take part in i

191strongly believe we need to be able to continue to provide robust extracurricular programming and fund the staffing needed to support this cameron mclaughlin yes our pools are old closing them however would be a terribly inequitable way to solve budget issues as a pe teacher at oprf i have taught many boys how to swim some of these boys could not move their bodies five yards in water if it meant their lives some of them were horrified of getting in the pool even when the water level only reached their belly button 90 or more of these boys were african-american i'm a good teacher but having pool access was what allowed these boys to learn to swim reducing or cutting sports and their facilities will do irreplaceable harm to opiraf i think you will start to see in

192exodus families from opera nora scott we are parents of a current sophomore on the opr swim team and the oprf water polo team as well as a freshman swimmer starting in the fall 2021 who is looking forward to being on both teams as well writing to strongly urge the board not to close the opr pools we are having trouble understanding how closing the polls is even being considered as part of possible budget cuts as the pools are so vitally important to so many teenagers and parents in our school community and have such a positive impact on our kids physical and mental health swimming and water polo are extremely important to so many oprf students including our son he and so many others focuses all of his extracurricular time swimming which means he has spent countless

193hours in the pools for practices and meets always striving to improve his times to help his teammates the teams provide a way for him to not only physically stay in shape but they also provide a way for him to feel that he is part of something special at oprf the swim team has been a way for him to meet new friends learn from the older swimmers develop a strong work ethic be resilient in the face of obstacles and be guided by wonderful coaches who are role models for our kids as adults we know that it is so vitally important for teenagers to feel that they belong that they are part of something especially to school as large as oprf and these teams provided just that opportunity for our son and so many others who have

194been on these teams for decades and so many more who will be on these teams for years to come these teams and all oprf sports and clubs are truly essential for the mental and physical health of our kids they've been through so much this year with so many things being cut from their lives please do not consider closing the pools as it would result in something so incredibly important to them being taken away katie diamond dear d200 as a parent of three children here in oak park i applaud you for making a difficult decision to not increase our already unaffordable property taxes i'm upset to see that special ed funding is being used as a pawn by the financial board to scare parents and the school board to increase our property taxes children who require

195special ed services desperately require these services and money should be allocated from the 100 million dollar cushion d200 system there is a better way of funding these very important services for the most vulnerable and underserved children in our community teddy scott based on my reading of the 2020 levy decision impact presentation not all of the available possibilities are being considered the presentation identifies a number of possible areas to target the desired savings however the presentation fails to consider using funds from from the reserve fund which was reported earlier this year to have a balance of 100 million dollars while i understand that the board has previously decided to tap into the fund for much needed capital improvements at the school i suggest that the fund needs to also be in consideration as a solution to

196the current situation in addition i believe that it would be a mistake if the board failed to consider deviating from a balanced budget while i understand that a balanced budget makes sense under a normal economic environment i do not believe that adhering to that type of an approach makes sense right now we are currently experiencing the economic effects of a once in a century pandemic hopefully there will be an economic snap back in the short term but even if there isn't i suggest that we need to invest in the core assets of our community which would be our school and our children to me this is more of a reason to consider using the reserve fund to address the current situation thank you for your consideration suzanne mcfarland members of the board of education board

197of education i have been a lifetime i have been a long time member of the aquatics community in oak park i am very concerned about the possible shutdown of the oprf pools i was a swimmer and water polo player at oprf a swim team and water polo coach at oprf now my children participate in local swimming and water polo program i have first-hand knowledge of the benefits of these programs these programs create a long-term connection to fitness learning to work hard toward goals pride in one school and community and lifelong friendships students involved in sports tend to feel a much stronger connection to their school and generally have more academic success at a time when student enrollment is growing it is important to provide more opportunities not less for all students aquatic safety and learn

198to swim programs both during physical education and for younger kids in the community are so important learning to swim is valuable is a valuable life skill it would be a disservice to the community to reduce access to water safety and swim lessons being financially responsible is obviously a priority of the board it is however short-sighted to reduce the overall quality of the experience of attending oprf by reducing programs for students without a strong high school the community faces reduced property values and fewer incentives to live here one reason that many of us choose to live here is because of oprf and the amazing opportunities offered at the school i was looking forward to the day when my children would be enrolled here i now have serious reservations about the direction that the school is heading

199at this time similar and neighboring communities are investing in their student activities nearby high schools in our conference have built new aquatic facilities because they understand the value of water safety in sports swimming is such a valuable skill the health benefits from swimming are great it is skill it is a skill that can be used for a lifetime being involved in school activities can help determine the direction a student takes i believe it would do great harm to cut programs and consistently provided positive and successful outcomes for so many thank you christine keyes hello thank you for your time this evening i am a parent of three children one of which is currently at opera and the other two will be attending soon our children all swim and play water polo these sports have meant

200so much to them and i can't imagine not having them available what upsets me most is that here we sit in a pandemic our kids can't even attend school much less any other social event we are all so concerned about their mental health and yet we hear of these possible possible cuts during this time this is the main thing my kids look forward to to be part of something they work so hard for i can't tell you how many girls i knew yesterday that upon hearing of these possible reductions were so very upset and scared the things that currently make them happy are going to possibly be taken away from them this fact alone is not fostering anything positive in regard to the student's mental health these athletes look forward to practice their coach their

201team just like all other sports or extracurricular activities my daughter has met some of her closest friends on these teams by being a part of swim and water polo at such a large school has created more of a community for her she's stated that these times with her team are some of her best memories of high school with all that is going on in the world we are now going to take that away from our students we also must look at the fact being involved in sports extracurricular activities has a huge role in doing well in other aspects of life and academics i fully understand living within a budget and adhering to that budget through ups and downs we have to do that in our own household i do know that i would never cut

202sports or extracurricular activities that have such a positive impact on our youth i'm asking no begging you you do not make any cuts to the pool or other activities that our students enjoy and thrive because of thank you for your time i'll take the next name okay will raid i swam varsity for four years at oprf i was the class of 2020 now i am swimming in college at harvard university a top 10 ncaa swim program however the successful competitive swimming that has resulted from swimming in oprf pools is far from the only reason that it is imperative to save the pools jim swim for freshman and sophomores at oprf is a life-saving class based on my experience i'd estimate that in my gym swim class i one in four students was unable to swim

203across the pool and one in seven students were unable to stay afloat at the deep end for more than five seconds by the end of the gym swim i estimate that 18 out of 20 students were able to swim across the pool and 19 out of 20 students were able to stay afloat in the deep end for more than 20 seconds students learned to swim at oprf who would never get the chance without gym swim students are busy and swim lessons are expensive learning how to swim in support of one's high school education ensures that those who can't afford lessons or don't have time for them to be safe in the water swimming is a life-saving skill for a school devalues equity as much as it does eliminating the pools goes against its values because

204students from poorer families will be hurt more by the removal of the pools also opr f's boys swimming and diving girls swimming and diving boys water polo girls water polo and synchronized swimming are low-cut and no-cut sports for a school that values inclusivity losing these teams would and uninclude dozens of students who may find their only friends in high school through water sports without their sports they will feel alienated from oprf and have a lonely four years of high school additionally the oprf boys and girls swim teams have produced dozens of state finalists in the last decade the girls team produced four state champions in the last decade and the boys team produced four at stated 2020 the highest state team finished of any sport in oprl for a school that values husky pride removing

205two of the most successful programs at oprf is extremely hypocritical athletically the boys and girls swim teams are undoubtedly strong but it's their academic success that sets it apart for example the 2010 boy swim senior class produced two scholarship cup recipients perfect gpas throughout high school equivalent to valedictorian and five acceptees into top 20 universities even the swimmers who don't achieve at high levels academically drastically improve their time management and self-discipline as the swim teams have the most rigorous practice schedule in the school ellen ephron penmental pimentel i am a parent of three oprf graduates 2013 2016 and 28 18. while i no longer have a personal interest at state i continue to value the experience of my own my own children received at the school as well as the value of the premier high

206school in my community i feel my experience both as a parent in the community as well as a former member of the imagine oprf group gives me a lot of insight into the value of our high school i was just made aware that the board has made a preliminary decision to not take a cpi increase in its tax level i understand that this cut would not would not only be a one-time effect but with compound losses of tax revenues over time i urge you to reconsider yes when i look at my property tax bill i am dismayed by how high it is and yes none of our children will be personally none of my children will be personally affected if the high school has to cut programs or services but i still strenuously disagree with

207the cuts that will result from this decision and their ultimate impact on our community two of my children have already graduated from college one is working and the other started graduate school in august and the third is a junior in college my husband and i have often discussed how their experiences at oprf both academically and extracurricularly have set them up to succeed spectacularly both in college and beyond but as it was both those types but it was both those types of experiences that were necessary to their success well i do not doubt that all will be done to save academics at oprf even if these cuts go into effect it is often the ex curriculars that go under the night my kids participated in a wide range of extracurricular activities from orchestra to jazz band

208to the debate team and operation snowball they also they were also athletes on the girls and boys swimming water polo teams and the boys cross country and track field teams they were good students but also good athletes i would argue that their success academically was strongly supported by their involvement and extracurriculars including athletics these were fundamental in their life experience and to cut them is to make the academic inter enterprise as a as a whole weaker for kids who may struggle with the academic side i believe that extracurriculars and athletics can even be more important giving them an alternative avenue for success as they loop back and support academic growth by establishing different types of supportive relationships and trust with teachers coaches and gaining self-confidence in life while our tax burden is tremendous we need

209to be sensitive to those who struggle with the cost of life in our community mark manas minzy's 27 27-year oak park resident you have more than enough of our money and your reserves 100 plus million do not raise our taxes allowable 2.3 hold the damn line and cut expenses sarah mailman members of the d200 board of education please do not cut any funding from special education which educates our school's most vulnerable population the majority of our school population can learn skills in a classroom setting that will be relevant to their life after oprs post secondary or other our special education students also need to be learning critical crucial skills that would be relevant in their life after oprf and in many cases these skills not only can not only be taught in the classroom some

210can only be cannot be taught in the classroom sorry about that some of our students require handling learning opportunities that are vital to their success post oprf please understand that these outings are part of the core education of some of our students not simply extra activities if we would not propose to take away biology or math then we should not be proposing to take away any real world experience or special education students thank you molly and jason was were cowards we are parents of a child attending oprf and we are deeply concerned to learn that cuts to the school budgets are being considered especially when all of our kids and teachers are reeling from months in a pandemic school closures and the inadequacy and inequity of online learning our children have had to endure so

211many educational setbacks and deprivations especially children with special needs the cost of special education students has been well documented and the repercussions are incalculatable we employ you not to make custis bed these students have been disproportionately and then it's cut off then kill whisker i have been a physical education teacher over 13 years here at oprm i have loved every each and every year while i was initially hired as a dance specialist i have gone on to teach other classes such as yoga self-defense and swimming i am grateful to have grown out of my comfort zone and evolve as an educator i ask that you look at ask that as you look at the budget cuts i encourage to consider keeping the swimming pools open closing pools does not just affect swimming based sports and

212community members it also affects the physical education curriculum the pools are used eight periods today by the entire freshman and sophomore class each year not to mention another 500 juniors and seniors this is about much this is about much more than learning to swim we teach students how to apply physical wellness and navigate through anxiety and stress there are many benefits to swimming and water activities including injury prevention rehabilitation and cardiovascular fitness students of color who enter our classes have as a higher percentage of non-swimmers receive the opportunity to learn skills in the water that can keep them safe and confident it is transforming and inspiring to hear i ask that you carefully consider what is this best for our students when you discuss cutting things from our budget ray you said luciani hi board

213members i am writing to encourage you to hold off on increasing taxation and stick to your original decision you are in the we are in the middle of a global pandemic people are hurting now is not the time to threaten our children and families cease with the 65 million dollar pool idea and use the 100 million in funds that you have already taken from families to ride out the storm together with us it is time for unity on a grand scale thank you travis cox part of what makes the oprf district a desirable district that people want to move to so that they can send their kids to opr fhs it's the prestigious culture that has been built over the years i am not from the oprf community but i still always i still always

214heard people from the district i grew up with in conversations talk about how they were going to consider moving their kids to oak park they want their children to be a part of the husky culture and a part of the success that oprf represents another main thing is always mention when people hear the oprah is the opportunity that the school gives to children and also the resources that are provided another thing that is mentioned is also the athletic success that oprf has achieved oprf has become an athletic powerhouse in the past couple of decades and that has attracted the best athletes in the area to want to go there to play and to keep home grown and kept homegrown from going to private schools to play sports and just like college and professional in high

215school athletic success brings additional revenue as well as the old adage says if it ain't broke don't fix it that should apply here in order to keep up the prestige culture and success academically athletically and culturally there has to be consistency and stability that the district has always had the people in this community where husky pride proudly and strongly i don't think binding the hand that feeds us will be the best ideal decision to make when factoring these decisions continue to remember what has formed husky pride and what has helped maintain their prestige when making the decision greg dr lou casey good evening the purpose of this email is to express support for the board to not raise property taxes we are in a global pandemic and economic crisis please make the cuts needed to

216maintain the budget without increasing residence burden i hope prosperous times will visit our communities in the near future then the items cut can be revisited thank you for reading my email no response is required as i imagine you are quite busy paige barley i'm extremely concerned about the potential for budget cuts that could affect oprf high school though i understand there may be a need to cut a cost somewhere else at what point does it stop being at the expense of our children this is unacceptable i have a son who has been on the swim team at oprf and the only thing that he has looked forward to once cobit ends is to return to that team though it is a sport it is so much more in a school of this size it is

217a home a camaraderie a family a motivation friendships stability and a builder of self-esteem this is what you want to cut at oprf high school touted as a top high school in the state it is not that i believe there is another way there is another way you need to find it not on the backs of our children not after being isolated at home for nearly a year learning at home nothing to look forward to except the normalcy they had prior to the pandemic their school their friends their teens i beg of you put the children first julie sosa as the mother of a special education student i am saddened by the prospect of reducing bus service for outings how can our young adults learn appropriate behaviors and social norms without practicing in real world

218settings our kids have so few outlets for peer interaction where their challenges can be understood and addressed please don't take this away from them arlene pedraza i am writing to ask that the oprf high school pools not be closed due to a projected budget shortfall due to a proposed flat tax levy closing the pools will only save one hundred thousand dollar only annually but will impact all pe students who take swimming during sophomore year as well as all female and male athletes on the oprf swim teams water polo teams synchronized swimming and all the other elective water courses and activities the community will also be negatively impacted as hundreds of swimmers take lessons offered in the opr pools during the school year and summer students and children who have no other way of learning to

219swim will lose this opportunity the tops club swim team will lose its pool oak park is known for its excellent schools opr high school should have a pool to remain competitive with other schools in our area taking away our taking away our pools will have a significant negative impact on our students athletes and oak park and river forest community do not add to the loss that we have all experienced during the pedent during the pandemic by also taking away the pools ambrose amber stitzel pareha dear oprf board members my name is amber stitzel preha and my address is 623 north kenworth avenue in oak park i'm an oprf alumna 1990 who competed at the varsity swim and water polo team for four years and was 1990 water polo player of the year in the state

220of illinois i am also the parent of two current oprf students sophomore and senior and an eighth grader at brooks who will attend oprf next year all three of my children are competitive swimmers who swim from academy bullets swim club and oprf i'm writing you to urge you to take the cpi increase of 2.3 in order to avoid having to make 1.7 million worth of reductions in programs and staff including reducing the special education program spending reducing the number of clubs or sports offered eliminating summer sports camps closing the pools and switching to online novels none of the options will be beneficial to oprf students nor to the community in fact they will actually do harm to many students staff members and the oprah community at large for example closing the pools would likely lead

221to the elimination of all water-related pe classes at oprf the operaf boys and girls swimming and diving teams the oprf boys and girls water polo teams and husky swim camp that one change would impact thousands of opr students athletes and community members each year for those students athletes and community members such a change would be devastating similarly cutting other club sports or summer sports camps and or reducing special education program spending would extreme would be extremely harmful to a vast number of opr students athletes and community members in closing i hope that you will reconsider your preliminary decision and will put oprf students and community members first by taking the cpi increase of 2.3 percent best regards colleen hulen in the united states is there a freshman class ninth grade that has detracted curriculum with

222any level of measured success yes or no please provide data thank you laura menace i am running to ask that you not cut sports and activities these are crucial to our children's mental and physical well-being if my daughter had not had cross-country this fall i'm not sure that her mental state would be as positive as it is right now even with that it waivers she also looks forward to her clubs that she participates in through zoom these kids have been through so much with this pandemic please don't take away more from them hopefully the threat of the virus will be gone soon and they will be able to see each other in person only to what to find that our that their clubs activities and sports are gone i think we can find another way

223jeffrey c record hello i am writing regarding the 2020 levy impact our daughter is currently a senior at oprf and we have lived in oak park on and off since she was born over the past 17 years our property taxes have increased well above the cost of inflation and changes in local property values i support the board's desire to be good fiscal stewards however this is not the year to be looking into program cuts coming out of covet there are a lot of positive areas to build upon and a number of areas to improve there will be learning deficits to overcome mental social health challenges to address curriculum scheduling and teaching methods to be revisited and facilities changes to be made each of these areas will require investment in improved educational outcomes and increase equity

224i believe that once the state of illinois enters phase five the board should start a holistic review to plan for education in 2030. some new programs will need to be created some changed and some likely stopped i will be fully supportive of program cops cuts and changes when aligned to a proper strategy i am a finance professional profes a finance professional and have led many annual budgeting cycles most of the cuts proposed in the 2020 levy decision impact would be considered unacceptable by the ceos and cfos that i've worked for the areas proposed substantially reduce value generation they are not focused on changing how the district does things nor on reducing back office costs they are materially changing oprf strategy one area i am particularly concerned about relates to closing the pools they are used

225by four athletic teams one school sponsored club physical education classes and an outside competitive club swimming team plus lessons in camps over the summer the pool is regularly used from 6 a.m to 9 p.m plus throughout the year of all the possible reduction ideas this one impacts the greatest number of individuals in the most material way i respectfully ask the board to consider deferring the proposed cuts that will impact our students until a time in which a proper long-term strategy has been developed and a determination has been made into how each of these areas fits justin mayer how was it decided that the special education budget would be one of the areas that should be reduced for a community that prides itself on equity and inclusion this reduction goes against the pride that pride the

226students with disabilities in the district need more opportunities to contribute and grow not less i believe these budget cuts will be a detriment to the progress that has been made in equity and inclusion our students with disabilities deserve equal opportunities please do not reduce a special education budget jennifer floden swimming diving water polo are an integral part of life for many oprf students and eliminating the pools to meet us budget shortfalls seem short-sighted and unfair to those in these sports especially those that are looking to earn scholarships or continue with their sport post high school while i have only been a parent of an opr student for one semester the fall swim team provided a much needed athletic and social outlet for my daughter one she hopes to continue through her time at oprf she

227was excited to become a husky swimmer and i would encourage the board to reconsider eliminating the pool to accommodate a budget shortfall misty d taylor budgets are value statements the cuts of the special education program in the proposed d200 budget are shameful who are we oak park sped services directly support an at-risk and vulnerable student population spend resources and programs are already overstretched and underfunded in d200 to cut funding from this area is an affront to the students and families that rely upon these services to equally access public education if it is a matter of the proposed line item expenditures please consider reallocating and prioritizing those funds within the sped program to mean full support of its students sped is the last place you should be looking for cuts in the d200 budget clay reagan

228as you look at budget cuts i encourage you to reconsider closing the swimming pools this topic continues to come up every year closing pools and not just does not just affect swim teams water polo teams synchronized swimming and community members it also affects the physical education curriculum you will be removing two academic classrooms the pools are used eight periods a day by the entire freshman and sophomore class each year not to mention another 500 juniors and seniors this is about much more than learning to swim is about learning to use lifelong physical activities like swimming to reduce stress and anxiety there are many benefits of swimming and water activities that our students would not have access to if it were not for our pe classes it provides a unique opportunity for our students of color

229who enter our classes as the highest percentage of non-swimmers i ask that you carefully reconsider what is best for our students carefully consider excuse me what is best for our students when you discuss cutting things from our budget removing our pools should not be the answer robert wilecki reclosing the pool as a parent with a sophomore at oprf with two more children heading and that way over the next 10 years i think that closing the pool shouldn't even be considered the health and safety benefits provided the entire school community shouldn't should make closing it a non-starter in addition swim and dive was one of the only was one of only a few sports that could be participated in safely with many benefits gained during a global pandemic we should be investing in ways to preserve

230activities like that not knowing what the future may hold as opposed to cutting them tom husby let's keep our todd husby let's keep our focus on what is important for our children water safety is among those priorities we teach it in our pe classes competitive swimming diving and water polo are also among those priorities these skills and experiences provide safety confidence building and goal-setting skills for children to use throughout their life not only is using a pool a necessity for our children we must also persist with our commitment to a comprehensive master plan a piece of which envisions modernizing our nearly 100 year old pool a lundin i am not sure why this topic came up so last minute without any public knowledge or discussion i'm concerned with the vague language specifically says close the

231pools but doesn't say which sports why is a school doing a hundreds of millions of improvement projects and then this swim is the only class and sport that prepares kids for a lifetime of safety and fitness they can still do in their 90s why is this even still debatable where was this discussion when planning the fancy new cafeteria and when football wasn't even safe enough to have this year and it gives kids concussions and brain damage for life i'm very tired of the half truths and half disclosures going on in the school communications this is my ninth and last year at oprf and just not impressed with this last minute surprise and lack of details of forthcoming information rebecca clarkson i'm a mother of two children both of whom will be attending oprf within the

232next three years i am alarmed at the proposed budget cuts for our high school especially given that avoiding these cuts would be a minimal amount to each household for our in our community the proposed cuts will hurt all students including the most vulnerable those who rely on special education services will be deeply impacted those who get much needed physical activity for both physical and mental health from sports will be impacted those whose sense of self and self-worth that relies on activities outside of academics be it sports clubs the arts etc will be impacted all of the things on the chopping block pools clubs student resource center field trips currently helped to make oprf the unique and culturally diverse experience that it is i strongly oppose these cuts and encourage the board to reverse the decision

233michelle steinman please do not cut the pools and cut sport programs during this public health crisis swimming has been a real morale lifter for my daughter who will be an incoming freshman in 2021-2022 the recent tier three mitigations that required all indoor sports including swimming to stop practices directly correlated with her grades significantly dropping the benefits of swimming in other sports programs are too precious for our teenager's physical social and mental well-being to lose participation in extracurricular activities including swimming in other sports is well known to positively correlate with academic success please consider other ways to meet the budget margaret lewis dear board members my name is margaret louis i was on the girls varsity team this year and i had a blast if you close down the pool everyone will be affected by it

234i have been swimming basically my whole life i even swam at the high school when i was younger because tops had practices there i get that money is important especially to support a big school like ours but what will you replace the pool with a basketball court spaces for other sports i believe that by removing the pools you'll be spending more than you think you are saving it won't be 1.7 million or whatever the amount is but replacing then remodeling will cost just about what it would to fix up the pools swimming is important to the school it's educational it's fun we'll get awards for the school and be proud of it i think the school puts more time and effort into football don't get me wrong i want to go to football games but

235people seem to think football is the only sport i know this is a hard decision but please keep in mind how important this is to the people around you i've heard multiple times swimming isn't a real sport do you know how frustrating it is to hear that swimming isn't as popular as football or basketball but it still matters whether you think so or not i want to be in a school on the high school swim team until i graduate in and that concludes our public comments okay um so we have our first um item is approval of the november 5th 2020 minutes i move to approve the minutes is there a second i hope second uh uh any revision to the minutes that anyone noted all right gail i think this can be a voice

236vote is that correct that is correct all in favor yes uh any opposed all right our next item is uh impact of not taking cpi on the levy is there any board member who feels that they need to actually have a presentation on this [Music] all right um i i'm supportive of uh just moving straight to questions um i am so angry i was going to go first but i'm not going to i am going to see the floor to one of my colleagues so that i can take some deep breaths um but this is a naked manipulation of this board and i'm incredibly disappointed so take it away board who's next may i ask a question sure when you say uh i heard what you said are you thinking i i just need to

237ask are you thinking that we as administration intentionally did that i don't know what happened but i do know that i have an email from our swim coaches uh from who are administrators whipping up a frenzy of our community over cuts that are fictitious and that i don't believe this board has any intention of making we are not going to balance the budget on our students so who wants to ask questions i'll go tom and i i will match your your statements and probably your anger so let's start there um i think this the district's uh move to publish this list really is a backhanded move again on the backs of our students uh what was what happened was uh we asked when when this was presented uh we asked the board to look at

238areas where we are overspending and get back to us and using it as part of what the goals that that we have to look at all areas that we're spending it wasn't to whip up a list of student-centric issues and uh put them out and try to agitate the community so i'm i'm in the same place so i want to see the letter that you're talking about sarah to know i will forward it to you it came to my husband late this afternoon and i am happy to provide it to my colleagues i would like to to see that letter and and i'm adding this just to kind of paint the this is not to to ask but in in today's presentation to kind of put it in perspective we're going to see a request

239for 45 000 to spend to renumber the building okay uh so i don't see how there's nonsense going on here and um my questions really are i want to see the letter okay um i would like to see any other communications that have gone out from the administration related to um this issue of cuts so i i would like to make it broader than that to to understand how we got to here uh second thing is from a policy standpoint this was voted upon and why is it brought forth back to the meeting because we don't just re-vote on something we had a discussion about that not long ago and when something was brought up to revoke it it's you don't just re-vote on a topic so why is it bringing why are we bringing

240this forth even on the agenda because it was voted upon so i'm i'm going to interject here first of all uh this executive cabinet did not put out any letter i just need to say that regarding this issue the only thing we put out is this board agenda which we sent to the board i was sent to the board last week the other thing i feel compelled to say is we left last week the meeting before last when the board approved the levy we left with the understanding that if we were going to level our expenditures with our revenue that that would equate to approximately a 1.7 million dollar cut and that the board needed to know what those cuts would be now i hear you say we're asking for reconsideration our recommendation at that

241time was to levy to cpi we wrestled with whether or not to uh put in a recommendation maybe that's where we you know messed up but the board asked us to know what those cuts were going to be and so we thought we were actually doing what was requested by the board we had no knowledge of the letter that went out until i received a copy from board president spivey can i ask a question sarah um i i too am experiencing quite a high level of frustration this evening and um for a number of reasons um but one of them being there was a slide that showed that what the tax increase would cost per household and we have asked repeatedly that you give us all the information that we need to make an accurate

242and good decision but that information i don't feel was shared prior to tonight i don't recall seeing that maybe it was there maybe it was i'm i'm willing to concede that it might have been but i don't recall it being honest on a slide in that way that would have like helped us to have that conversation differently but in addition to that um it did it does feel very manipulative um and i what what i want to say about that is the focus of my goal in life is to break down the idea of othering that's the focus of my goal in life is for us to not have keep bringing more barriers and especially in public education to create ways for us to not other the people that we work with and i feel

243very strongly that our team of a board member board team and an administration team like i feel like this set us up to be at each other's throats because the community just gave us three hours of public comment about this in a way that just digs in even further that it's us versus them and that is not what this is about because our board there's no way i i do not speak on behalf of the board but my experience of the people on this board is that they would not do something at the expense of students that's my experience of this board that we would not say we need to do that pool thing or we need to not do sports and so the options that you came back with although i understand that we

244did ask you for options the options that you came back with are options that are not feasible options to me and so it's like were there any other cuts that could have been made were there any other areas that could have been looked at have you has have you whether were evaluations made of your leadership teams in a way that you could look at like where what else can possibly be done because i feel like all the things that were presented in that presentation about cuts that could be made just really created exactly the thing that we don't want to create which is like less opportunity for students and and and more opportunity for us to be at each other's throats and that is that that is heartbreaking and sad in addition to all the

245other heartbreaking and sad things that are dividing us right now so i just yeah um you are absolutely correct it was not intended no yeah um okay so i just wanna i can i just address the intention piece of this tension and impact are two totally different things right like so the intention may not have been to cause the community to go into an uproar because they're concerned about us not making sure students have what they need that was not the intention the intention was not to harm no but the harm that we just had to hear from multiple people who then invoked um equity as a stance for making sure that students have certain things in ways that i i find like challenging i just i know the intuit that was not the intention

246but we but whatever the intention was there's still an impact and that impact has caused harm right and so like as a result i'm like um i'm coming out of my skin here you all like i'm going to walk aboard to think that this administration was not impacted by those 100 plus comments either because we were um i do need to say we put we actually put the information in this presentation because we have said it multiple times we said it back in the fall when we said maybe we should put off construction we said it again when we said maybe we should go out for debt and when we put the information in the presentation it was felt like maybe us maybe if we see it it will help us see the where we

247are as a district we were choice the last two years to make significant reductions in our budget and so we've each year the last two years we've tried to cut approximately 1.7 million we understand the impact on this district we were trying not to cut the teachers in the classroom for kids what we gave today was things that we need to start considering because as we move forward and it was said last in the presentation two weeks ago if as we move forward we are going to have less and less and we have to make cuts now if we missed the intent of the board in doing that by making the recommendation that we did then we take on this for that but we were doing what we believed we were asked to do versus

248the recommendation we believed we were bringing forth items for us to start consideration none of us want to cut those things no but if we don't start having the conversation about it we'll be sitting here in may or when we bring the next budget and the boy will be asking us why are we just now having this conversation i just feel like there was what we said was where could cuts be made we did not say make cuts to student programming and then also there was also a conversation about is there any other option besides doing the full cpr this the full levy and that and so but no com not we got nothing back about that all we got was we're going to cut oh with the this is what it would look like

249and this was this is what would need to be cut so although i hear you dr pruitt adams it still feels manipulative and i i just need i need us i need us to not do it this way i need us to not continue to do things this way like this way is just continuing to deteriorate what we're working to build which is trust respect understanding community i mean honestly i i here's here's where and just before we take the vote because like my my mind is still no right my mind is still no like my vote i don't know if this is coming back to another vote but the the because of all the reasons that i stated before having to do with um i'd i am not in the tax bracket of some

250of some other people in our community i am in the tax bracket that i'm in and as a single mom with a daughter in college like whatever we're talking about doing has a huge impact right so and and the people who are like me who happen to also be in my tax bracket in this community that don't have dual income homes and are looking at all of these things that are really going to create you know could particularly potentially create hardships plus the people who are out of work the pandemic all of the things it's like how do we i cannot justify us increasing the amount that people have to pay and i there's no justification for this and so now i feel backed into a corner because now that now that now that all

251of this has come it's like well we absolutely cannot say we have to not have any of these programs i can't as an educator in good faith like come back to my educators my my students my people in the community like my students that i work with right now that are going to be at the high school next year and say you know what yeah no i just you know i just didn't think it was a good idea for tax purposes to to not make sure you had what you needed so the i guess the question that i'm asking is are there other options are there any other options we can resist this is all we've got now this is not all we can always go back we were asking the board to reconsider by

252asking the board to reconsider cpi tonight was not saying if you don't this is the list that's going to go this it clearly says in there these are things for consideration to kind of give wrap our heads around the board at the end of the day you made a decision if you choose to stick with that decision and send us back to look at something else so be it we thought as i said we thought we were doing what we were asked to do if we missed that then we accept that can i jump in for just a little bit because i'm kind of weird my colleagues gina sarah and tom have been but with a little different perspective so i teach a master's course on public budgeting and there's a whole section on how

253administrations respond to requests for cuts and it says the first thing they do politically if they don't really want to deal with the cut and they want to get more revenue is put politically sensitive stuff on the table and publicize it so that the general public can create the heat to reverse the decision that sort of anti-cut budgeting 101 from an administrative standpoint it has been done historically throughout time and i'm not going to get into the specific intention of the individuals who put this together but i will say if you look at these items and you live in this community or you work at this school you've got to know once these things became public there will be one or two people who'll be upset and anyone who said they they wouldn't realize that

254is either incredibly naive from a political standpoint or is spinning us that's just the truth so i i do feel that this list is a manipulative list and what i to use gina's phrase and what i didn't see in this list and what i don't think happened was any systems review of our administration our administrative costs uh the the size of our staff i mean we have what thirty four hundred thirty five hundred students now we used to have four thousand our staffing increased or decreased with the decrease in students has there been any sort of analysis or do we just replace positions as folks retire without thinking about whether or not that position is truly needed what i was hoping for was a slightly more thoughtful approach and certainly not one that would focus

255on programs for special needs kids or you know the pool my goodness you couldn't pick a more politically contentious topic for this neighborhood than the pool you just couldn't so i i do think there was some politics going on here and and it's not just sort of a wild stab guess i mean literally this is an entire chapter in a textbook in a course i teach at the master's level and and this is straight out of the textbook so i do think the administration needs to come back with a more thoughtful review of its overhead and its cost and in particular its administrative costs and should lead with some cuts that don't impact student services as the first thing that's put on the line thank you ralph uh others matt or yeah i guess i'll

256just chime in i mean honestly gina ralph tom sarah i mean you've said everything i had written down during that three and a half hours of or however long it was um i don't know that i i don't i don't need to build on it i think we've got a long way to go to be able to work together to manage what is going to be an incredibly difficult financial period over the next three or four years and we've got to start now because it's not going to get any better it's only going to get harder and we're better off facing up to it and putting not just what i think are those easy things on the table or maybe they were political things i i don't i don't want to go there but we

257need to put everything on the table and we need to understand where we're spending our money and how we can how we can reign it in because we're we're just going to have to i'd rather us i'd rather as diet on 1.7 million dollars than us have a heart attack over a referendum that doesn't get passed that's it uh sarah i'd like to weigh in if possible um i am just going to build on what's uh been said i um wholeheartedly support the comments that have already been made and uh appreciate um in particular uh gina's point about the us versus them which started at the beginning of our public comments related to um the the comments of of mr barron and uh how that has taken up uh time and resources and um trained

258i know uh for some of my morale um so i'm trying to rebuild and with this issue uh of course there are politics and uh and ralph i appreciate what you're uh the course that you're talking about and my notes referenced all of those same points the pool has been a lightning rod for debate but we've made decisions and to hear even um you know the discussion going back to the fall about uh the construction and the how much uh we've lacked some transparency or there's been a failure to communicate in in certain ways uh so i don't know how better to say other than how it was said that this board has never been about prioritizing cuts on student need before looking at other avenues and so i too was expecting something a little

259more nuanced this evening that uh actually goes back to requests that have been made all over the last couple years what you know we we continue to add administrative positions we have not gotten rid of any what does that mean which ones do we need which ones can be um collapsed into other positions in terms of our uh clubs we've talked before about the clubs that we have that have small participation rates can those clubs be combined not eliminated but combined because some students are in five clubs and we have five different sponsors now and in the past it has been said and i would happily find the minutes from however many years ago but there was a comment made that there is a concern of uh losing stipends if we eat combined clubs so

260that's a resource um opportunity right there that we have not looked at with with any true um just digging in and i want to refer back to what tom asked during the november 20th committee of the whole meeting you know that has to do with the finance advisory committee and our fund balance and how we truly look at um auditing on a grander scale and evaluating what we're doing as opposed to putting out um information with the words possible suggestions and then underneath that having things that are so politically charged that we end up with a situation where um it feels very uncomfortable hearing community members saying things about the board is trying to take this away and the board has already made a decision and the i we need to talk further about how

261we clarify the intent of our board um to gina's point about students come first that so just uh maybe be the recap on the comments or at least first round um two weeks ago i asked is it realistic paraphrasing now to to be able to come back to us so quickly and um and what i meant by that is to come back to us with something with 1.7 million of cuts that had some nuance and some level of of uh you know and i just didn't believe there would be and there really isn't because this is not a scalpel this is a sledgehammer on some things that i don't think as we all know um didn't really have a viable opportunity that we would go for um the the comment that of all the comments

262i heard tonight someone said something about ride the storm out with us and you know we have built up this immense cash reserve that is not just rainy day it's like a 100-year tsunami you know for quite a while and so as much as we know that it's not good practice to have so much money and some of it is spoken for in terms of our capital needs down the road and with with project two and so on um it's collecting far more dust than interest and i think the simpler solution is that yes we have an imbalanced budget for a year of 1.7 million whatever it may be and that we have come back with something that's a more you know nuanced uh analysis that looks at other districts what others have done to

263be able to you know what kind of thoughtfulness can we put into that with some more time because this was i think just a needless time pressure when we've got so much money in the bank i mean who you know so so that's where i'm at and and and frankly i was i was supportive of a zero percent change and not even taking new construction i'm not proposing to push for that right now but the way to reduce actually reduce the impact on people is when new properties come online then that new revenue that we collect is spread out over a broader base and and it does not mean that those new properties don't pay taxes okay it just means that it's spread out and so it's a math equation on a mass scale it's

264not these new properties so i've heard that mentioned by someone else in in public life locally a few years ago and that's not accurate so that's all i've got at this point anybody else yeah can you still it's time can i just want to look back to the thing i said because i'm not sure it was captured okay and because we have when we put together the goals the superintendent goals and the board goals there's a very deliberate goal there that says we will look at all of our expenses and we will look at them against benchmarks against best practices and from that we will get information we know as a district that our expenses we are not resource poor okay we are not resource poor uh we have a a high tax burden and

265a high spend but the purpose was to look in that goal is to look at it and look at it based on evidence-based information and then say okay here's where we are overspending and here's where we're underspending and and then take action where we are over spending not to just come out in a week pick the most toxic uh you know politically sensitive areas and put them on a list so i think those are two drastically different approaches and i'm that's why i'm so surprised sarah can i yes do one more thing sorry um i guess i'd like to build on tom's comment and matt's comment and i didn't say this last week i think it was late i should have uh you know i i don't i i am completely in support of what

266ralph raised last week or two weeks ago which was look we can't have operational uh you know we can't cut 1.7 out of taxes without looking at our operations to cut that that's we just do but i think i made the mistake maybe maybe we sent the wrong message in saying that look in two weeks we want you to come back with a set of cuts you know maybe we have some role in setting ourselves up for this a little bit but i think we have to take the approach that tom has laid out there which is to use the evidence based funding and really consider those buckets and consider what we need to do and we need a little time to do that and personally as matt says i think a while not you

267know a little bit against my thought of having the operational cuts to go with the tax cut but we can afford a little bit of time because we do have the luxury of the fund balance and so if we can make a commitment as a board and administration to find that like in our goals like where we are let's let's find it but let's not force ourselves to do it in two weeks because then we just end up we just end up here you know pushing back on one another if we're going to work together we needed time to work together so i mean that would be my my two cents all right can i add one more thing sarah and i have one more thing and just like yeah picking back up what craig

268said we can't hear you about like can you hear me because my piece is about now yeah is um us working together um i just want to piggyback on this idea of working together because there's another the community piece is really really important here um and we um the the call for please make sure we keep everything and please don't raise my taxes these are two things that can't always go together like i understand about the referendum and all the other ways that this conversation might have to get pushed but we're there's there's no there's no one thing not affecting another thing what the community is the information that they're giving us about how they feel what what decisions we know um are right as fiduciaries and the responsibility that we have to the students

269which is first and foremost none of those things are in opposition to each other and we keep setting it up that way and i i would like us to not set it up that way like i would like for us to understand that like somehow there is some level of win in this for the community but more importantly for the students and how do we come up with that in a way that doesn't keep tearing us down to you know everybody you know the decisions that you're making are the worst decisions the decision making the best decisions it's not about that it's about like what's best for students and us getting back to that like let us figure out how we all work together and stop siloing this idea that the board is over here

270doing this district's over here doing this and the community's over here doing this and we're just going to keep harassing each other to death until something changes it's not going to change that way that's not how it's going to change it's going to change by us being like committed to finding a new way to work together and how to do this kind of like what craig was saying so i just and everybody has said it but i just want to double down on that fact that like let us come up with a way that actually works is it going to be painful i said this at our last meeting likely we're going to have some pain because we're in a pandemic it's not going to be easy for everyone so you know let us just

271be let us let us let's just find a way that's all thank you thank you that we know this was a discussion item we were not asking for any action i believe we've heard the board we will stick with um i think it was option three and we will go back and revisit um and i'd like to say something so when we had our employee benefits discussion not long ago what was it a month ago one of the things that came up was that our new broker was able to find different um options for us that we think will probably save half a million dollars next year i mean i don't i don't i didn't hear any discussion about that um or other possible savings we're going to have um you know we could we

272could keep administrator salaries flat right like there's a lot of ways that we could come up with some of this money uh and i just would like the administration to please be more creative and not at the expense of our community or our kids i really feel as though this could be done much more thoughtfully so please when you come back to us come back with something more thoughtful thank you our next item is um the prom contract for 2021 yes i believe susan johnson is here to speak to the item uh this we're just giving you a summary of the changes that have been made is susan still here or greg are you doing it i'm here okay um hi everybody so this is our this is our prom contract for this year and

273we've had this uh we've brought this to our attorneys and they've gone back and forth on it and invited it they've put a an impossibility clause in there that would account for any any issues should we need to cancel with due to covet we want to make sure that we book a space and have a space available in the event that we are able to provide a problem this year my my biggest concern is that we get to you know we get to the point where vaccines are out and somehow we're able to have a problem and if we don't book a space now we're not going to be able to get one then um so this is uh this is at the marriott it's the exact same price as we would have had last

274year which was a decrease from our previous prime contracts that we had had at the hyatt they we paid our deposit last year they forward it to our next year so this year's deposit is forwarded from last year so it's not we're not putting any more money into it at this time so if if we do have to cancel this year they've worked in all those you know caveats in there thank you questions okay thank you thank you next item is purchase of telecom innovations group remote phone solution is this coming forward tonight trade line is this one of the ones we were going to this is one we need to bring forward but we wanted to do the ones where we have guests first oh okay yes sure the ones that we we are

275going to pull the following items though we are pulling the project one update presentation and we are pulling the policies for first read the other items because of the process of bringing the item and then asking for approval later are time sensitive and so we will need to do those today yeah and so um and just to so that it's clear for the board and the community the reason those items are being pulled from tonight is only in the interest of time not because of anything anything else going on with them correct so the next item is the equity audit follow-up uh coming forward tonight to make this presentation is dr levar ammons uh he has with him representatives from b young and associates who will answer any questions that the board has this our

276next steps will be to seek board approval at the december 17th board regular board meeting at a cost not to exceed 40 400 and this item is in compliance with strategic plan priority one racial equity and board policy 7 colon 12. dr ammons all right thank you dr pruitt adams can everyone see uh my screen that i'm sharing here all right thank you yeah sure so so uh good evening board and before we go into our conversation tonight um i just wanted to uh number one acknowledge uh from our last meeting on this topic that um you know i heard your concerns and and also the concerns of the community around the proposed equity audit um and i just want us to be mindful not to uh be misled by by language per se right

277when i'm when i'm when i'm saying this equity audit is a study of our school culture and learning environment uh we're certainly moving forward with this with this audit uh with the notion of making sure we move our institution into action um that is loud and clear uh we certainly understand the frustrations uh from the board from the community from our students right uh black brown and other marginalized groups who want to see change in our institution and that is uh the goal and the objective of performing an audit so we can really understand uh our systems this this audit isn't uh a proposed audit is not about uh finding out if if racism or our issues of race exist uh in our institution uh just by virtue of of being in america of course

278we have to navigate uh race both uh in explicit uh forms and and implicit so uh that understanding is there but but this audience is specifically about um our systems design and really understanding uh our policies procedures uh our equity initiatives uh also uh our practices and how that impacts our ability to move the institution forward to create more equitable outcomes mr ammons we did have um we already have had a presentation on this uh since this is coming back i'm wondering if perhaps it would be more useful for the board to hear from um here from the vendor i don't know board members and yeah i was just kind of just setting that up just so we can go ahead and hear from from the vendors so this is a relatively short a relatively

279short presentation and we'll certainly open it up just for some more questions but we'll hear from from the vendors here uh in just a few moments so uh of course it says uh dr pruitt adams mentioned uh i do have the team from b young associates uh b young is here uh mr taran cephas as well as dr alexandra escobar and of course we'll look to address the board's concerns as we we discussed a little this a little bit or in length last last month and really just you know look at the uh pro the process itself to get some understanding from the vendors and uh talk about our deliverables and of course the recommendation is to have this uh hopefully approved at the regular board meeting so with that i will turn it over

280now to uh dr uh dr escobar and mr cephas just to talk through the process a little bit and lead us into some questions uh sure uh okay thank you hi everybody uh we know you've seen this presentation we wanted to shed some light on the anonymity and the homogeneous interviews uh first with the district and then uh with the the groups we've set up where we would be talking to the facilitators would represent the groups that we're talking to and those facilitators of course would be a black facilitator like me who would be talking to uh black or african american folks uh then we have latinx uh a white facilitator talking to all the white groups that we have and then uh we've set it up for the asian facilitator to talk to the

281aging population uh we speak to these four groups because the the the the really good part about it is that the facilitator reflects the groups and so a lot of times you get the information that um you probably would normally hear and this is where the data begins where that data uh is used to to either find out what's working in your systems what needs to be improved and so it's like hearing the voices of people your stakeholders and what happens also as we talk about this process is that we look at things and you'll hear about it uh all this data builds up to a lot of the things that you you are looking for in your deliverables uh and so i'll be very brief and turn it over to uh dr alexandra i

282apologize so i think what we wanted to take advantage of this time um with you tonight and this evening is to reiterate kind of what sets us apart from maybe other equity consultants is really giving voice um to specifically students um families and staff in your organization that often don't get heard and so being able to provide homogeneous settings and and facilitators that have shared experiences offers a completely different lens to the conversation um and and bringing those conversations to light and to contrast them with all the initiatives and the systems that you do currently have in place really will solidify and affirm um the work that you're already doing but also push you um to strengthen some of those systems and so it's important not only to engage in conversations about the perspectives and

283unique lived experiences of all your stakeholders but also looking through your different policies and practices and to what extent they are successful at closing achievement gaps which is what we're what we're we're striving for we're striving for comparable outcomes for all students and so that that's what's that's that's one of the things that sets us apart and so we wanted to have that opportunity to answer any questions specifically to the process um and i think i wanted we also wanted b to highlight how it's a systems approach and so b i'll give you a couple minutes and then you can tag me when you're done b you are muted unmute d there we go sorry i honor your long meeting and how tired you must be so we want to make this as quick as

284possible and i know you did see some of these documents from lavar at the last meeting but i wanted to just give you an understanding of the process that we use to conduct our equity audit process and this is what we call our journey and right now you're in the center of this model where the leadership the board and the superintendent are making a decision whether to move forward and that's necessary before we can move around this process so we begin with the audit which my colleagues have shared how that operates and within those audits conducted with those four different racial groups at every level of your organization and interviews with the leadership and the teachers and the support staff we are looking at the systems where are the disparities where are their barriers so

285we focus our questions in ways that we engage the people in the focus groups in interviews but allows us to then take the responses from all of those various levels of your organization and begin to look at opportunities where we can move to the report being able to assess your systems and i know that you're most interested as are we what's working and what's not working i've been an admirer of oak park for years i've been in this field of social justice and racial justice for five decades and oak park was always ahead of everyone else in the state and you are now you have excellent excellent initiatives a strategic plan many things in place but still gaps in achievement that i know none of you want to continue so our goal would be to

286use these in-depth focus groups where people are comfortable and are open and trusting to be able to provide us with the data to come back to you with a report that will talk about what's working and not for and not working in terms of your strategic plan your your many many three pages of excellent initiatives so that you have an assurance that things are going to change this model is what we call a systemic model because once that data from the focus groups gets built into your systems you can then begin to implement in very different ways and change the system and we have done this in a lot of school districts in fact we've written a book recently that outlines how this process was used in two illinois districts where we diminish the gap

287and alexander is going to share with you an example taken from our book you are muted alexandra thank you if you uh lavar can you go back just for just a second on the on the journey because i think one of the things we wanted to connect before we talk about the sustainability of this model and the outcome on student achievement is that the importance of integrating right integrating all the the feedback that you will receive from this report from the multiple sources of data and how to best integrate it within your system so that cultural responsive education is strengthened and so your strategic plan is is furthered through this lenin and through this feedback and so on the next slide you can see that in the book that was written we're able to highlight

288um this was data from 2018 from the illinois report card and you'll see that district 202 um worked with the young and associates and took on the whole process of of engaging in an equity audit and really starting to transform and strengthen systems that were in place and systems that that had to be created in order to start closing that achievement gap and you can see here on this chart the comparison of how they were able to start closing and continuously closing the achievement gap by race in comparison to other school districts and so we wanted to be able to highlight that i know that while we don't have a slide the other a school district that is shared in um in the book is berwin north which is an elementary school district who had

289very similar results and so they have year after year they have consecutively closed the achievement gap across racial groups in comparison to their surrounding school districts and the fact that they're contiguous to oak park uh you know i think has a great link here because uh it's a community that we're familiar with and we're concerned not just about black african american students but our latinx students and the focus groups will also be with your asian students and white students so the comparison gives a great opportunity to see where we can make adjustments so to to summarize our deliverables basically are uh the report will give you an outline of everything that we have done and then basically we get the strengths and the areas of improvement or the barriers through those focus groups to allow

290us to use those perspectives to review the systems and practices but we feel that if we simply use best practices to analyze the initiatives it's not alive it's not from the people that you're serving and that's what our focus group process will do and of course then that leads us to the report of the effectiveness of your current um systems and uh and the recommendations that we'll make so that's basically an overview we are anxious to get your questions uh to let us know what your reactions are yeah first i want to say thank you for sticking with us this evening i know it's quite late for you as well so we do appreciate that um and i know that i have board members with questions so who would like to go first i'll go

291first if that's okay sure um i guess um one of the one of the things i want to understand is there's two questions and we'll start with the first one and just to help me understand which is what is what is it that that that you as a consultant are bringing to this process that we as a community in school who who you know i i think i'm sure there are you know sure there are lots of places where we have our own blind spots but what is it that we can't do on our own that you're bringing here as a consultant good question i'll i'll give a quick answer and then see what others how they want to respond well what you can't do is what we as outsiders who have been in this

292field for a long time are able to do by gathering these focus groups and having somebody of the same race and ethnicity be in that group and and create a climate where people will be willing to talk about what their experiences are and how these systems that you've created are impacting them and so that has to be done by people who are not part of the system and you've created excellent initiatives so i think this gives you that outside perspective which we've used in numerous school districts to help you decide what's working where you want to make some changes okay okay second question right craig i did have a second question um the the second question was um we've been on this journey for a while um and at least i have struggled um with

293lots of things i'm sure ever we all have when you have you know you showed us some results which help us understand that that we can make a difference but you know given where we are in this journey would you expect those kinds of improvements from us as well oh absolutely or you okay so you think that even even where we are and you can debate where we are i could debate that all the time but you still think looking at it systematically from the outside would would really maybe help push us past some some challenges do you want to respond i think i was gonna i wanted to hear both parts of the question but i think specifically having uh been working with b young now for the past few years um engaging in

294these very confidential um settings and and really listening to these stories i think it it it takes a little while for them to even feel comfortable sharing all the experiences that they have good and bad because i think there's a level of risk involved of whether or not they will trust that things will not get back and i think because we don't work for the institution and because there is a shared experience through ethnicity and race it it really allows for things that don't typically get heard to be heard um so i think that's something that is offered and that i don't think you've had in in previous partnerships with other consultants and regardless of how much work right has already started and this journey that you have been on the reality is that equity

295work does not have a finite destination um i think this is lifelong work um and so wherever you are in that process i think being able to pause and give voice to the voiceless and those that live in the margins really will strengthen um any action plan and any next steps that you have in order to really close and address that academic gap across racial groups i would add to that craig that what we will be providing based on what we hear can is measurable which is how we've been able over the years you looked at the results at 202 we actually did the audit five years previous so we're looking at how does what we recommend as you implement it how does it sustain and that's crucial for you to engage in the process

296to know that whatever we're going to recommend that will help your system will be sustained and and the fact that we were able to diminish the gaps um is one of the things we're most proud of okay thank you very much sarah i i'd like to uh um just weigh in okay um thank you all for uh the presentation and again reiterating this late hour and your willingness to uh hang in there with us um i am going to say that uh the some of the comments that led to this additional of you know presentation and uh had to do with our starting point and um i appreciate uh certainly the need for voices uh to be heard and certainly understand uh the power and necessity of affinity groups and i'll just say that of

297all the places that i've lived this community does not have issues with expressing where we are and what we need uh i can i will point you to the documentary that was done i can point to a report that was done in may 2003 which is on our website called the learning community performance gap oak park and river forest high school and analysis of african american achievement at oak park river forest high school um also my first year on the board and i'm bringing this up not to to a horn but we did a town hall board town hall on uh school climate and all the stakeholders were a part of that i guess i'm saying all of this student voice which has led us to initiatives has led us to having a racial equity

298policy and that policy the guidance was to be able to evaluate our initiatives and so while i appreciate um your uh lauding our initiatives as excellent i think while why we're here is we don't know that we don't know which ones are working and which ones are not but we do know that our community has cried out saying that changes have to be made and the information that we've garnered just last night in a ccb meeting there was a public meeting so i'm not speaking out of turn but a community member who's a part of that committee said that i attended this high school 20 years later and we're talking about the same things so i say all that to say that we're and this is directed uh at our district and uh and our

299board and decisions that are courageous that need to be made that have to do with not losing any more time and we have to be ready to talk about our initiatives that we currently have that is what is outlined in our racial equity policy and i just my feeling is that this proposal as outlined is too many steps behind where we need to be and not utilizing the community and staff and affinity groups and information that that's been guarded in focus groups and surveys that we've already done i and it's i i don't know what the miscommunication is or maybe it's mine but we're i feel like we're at a different starting place and this is what um i am reiterating in terms of what i feel our district needs at this time thank you

300jackie uh tom are you actually i'd like to go right after jackie because i i think my comments are gonna dovetail on what she just said um i'll also probably introduce or some of the things so gina will probably it to me it's about action if this doesn't lead us to action why are we doing it and so coming back to what what jackie just said yeah we have this prior work from 2003 and we have we have just a number of places where where work has been done but action hasn't results haven't been achieved and maybe the right action so as i look at the work and i'm looking at the template that that there's a template document that lists a bunch of things and as i kind of synthesize it it looks like

301the every line but the bottom one is just not just it's a swot analysis of the district um from an equity lens which you know i think we'll see elsewhere and then the last line is recommendation focusing on key initiatives and i think that's what i believe you know jackie was saying which is what are we doing that we shouldn't be doing what do we need to do more of and how are we going to look at this prior work because if it's been there in front of us why haven't we been able to do things in in those areas so so that's that's that's one question or topic area and let me let me just throw my other one and then i'll leave i raised this one of my other questions i had for

302the group was um in case someone doesn't remember we are in a pandemic and the ability to do focus groups and such is i mean i imagine these are not going to be in person is that correct no it's all by it's all on zoom and we've been doing it since the pandemic started and we're having excellent results i guess i just wanted to hear because i mean i think just you know the level of comfort the ability to read and see what's really going because you're really trying to gather not only body language is is 93 of a conversation right and so how are we going to gather that 93 on a zoom camera well we're we've been doing it for a few school districts and they have been saying at the end that

303they felt extremely uh trustful of the situation and the dialogue between the the people on the zoom call is is intense of course either terence or alexandra who have been doing it every day for the last few weeks do you want to add to how you see that yeah and like i said i mean technology technology has you know it's it's pros and cons and i think depending on the the climate of the district and kind of the initial conversation some some focus groups take a little longer to kind of get in a groove but um it is they've been very fruitful i think in in most cases we have more to discuss than the time we're actually allotting for because there's so much information that's being shared and so the benefit of being able

304to use technology is that we do get to record the session so we can be present and engage in these conversations and then go back and kind of put our reports together to hold everything in confidence and making sure that whatever data and patterns and trends start arising are not identifiable terence could you speak to a couple of the groups you've done lately sure yeah uh some of the things that i found out is that uh the groups are already charged and the fact that we are virtual and we can see each other you're not missing much of the non-verbal communication at all i mean the the level of enthusiasm hasn't changed as a matter of fact the last couple of focus groups i've done people have asked uh why can't we do it at

305least every three months or every month uh they've invited us out to to to fellowship with them after the pandemics so we see the excitement from the engagement and uh the students have asked me to share with them some of my fraternity steps and we talk about music and how that relates to diversity in the climate of today and so we get them very engaged and we don't lose anything by that at all does that respond to the question that addresses the second question and i guess the first one which might not have been a question left which is related to jackie's couch which is how do we you know i mean it how do we know we're at the right starting point whether we need to go back and look at historical information or

306we need to fast forward and get right into programs well that's what we we will have in the report and every every recommendation we make is based on actions because it doesn't make sense to gather this many focus groups and interviews and really get people to open up without coming back to you with what actions have we heard from that we build this around the number of of audits we've done over the years but everything we will give you will be based on action built on where you are now and where you can be which ultimately will have an impact on the achievement of your students which has to be one of the most concerning aspects you have about uh your district there are so many positives but the gap between black and latino students

307and white students is extreme and that we know we can have an impact on i'm sorry i i just need to just speak briefly um in support and i am sure you meant no harm no disrespect but um the way that we are discussing achievement disparities is feeling so much uh like a deficit model and ascribing um a certain uh ideal uh to what achievement is or even what our issues are around achievement um and i'm speaking now as a board member as a parent of four children who have graduated from this high school all black children and achievement in and of itself is not our issue and i i did highlight that in some of my questions and i i i'm just going to circle back to please as we're discussing this the the

308the onus that is put on our children when we say that they don't compare to our white students is detrimental to everything we ascribe to as a district why we have a racial equity policy in place and i'm still hoping that there is a um a listing of what we consider our racial equity initiatives which has been uh a request since the policy was put in place and how those are going to be looked at to address our issues of belongingness climate and certainly uh achievement but overall it is the well-being of our students and that they feel ownership and love and know that they belong and can come back to this high school feeling as though they matter and that goes that transcends the the way that i feel we're talking about achievement right

309now so i i just i feel like i have to speak for my children and all the children in our district that we represent that we have how we have tried to change our um talk about achievement uh jackie actually can you hear me yes okay uh i definitely i definitely can appreciate that and one of the things we know about this work is that you know i heard somebody say it's a starting point it feels like a starting point it's not uh it's evolutionary and some of the a lot of the things that we get out of the focus group addresses just what you're talking about we're going to hear some things that you personally have addressed and we've seen those things come to fruition uh in addition to all the other things and

310so uh we hear you we respect what you're saying and i just wanted to say that we are going to be engaging in those areas and when you get into the focus groups you just you you witness it you experience it and it's all about valuing all of our students uh because we're talking about achievement that is one of the goals but the the uh inclusion the respect the ability to hear the voices of all these students it's all about giving them the greatest respect and honoring them that's what our work has been about for decades the opportunity created many opportunities and and many wonderful graduates i have friends whose children have graduated from this school for for decades but the reality is there is also that ability for everybody to know that they also

311can achieve at a higher level for everyone and it's valuing that that keeps us doing this work for so many decades and achieving uh the opportunity to not only have everybody feel welcome and valued and loved but also know that they can achieve it as higher level as possible so thank you i can answer the question then are you are you saying that you what you are going through the metrics that you will be able to provide to us are going to demonstrate how we do that well the not the metrics but the but the recommendations that come from what we hear will help you will help guide that yes and what will be what are some of those metrics what are some of the things that you look at that would help us guide

312that well it's it isn't what we look at it's the questions we ask in the focus groups that allow us to take that data and then look at the systems that you have in place so we have a lot of systems in place right now so i don't i don't want to um if this is not about like i know that i i know your association and that you do great work so this is more about our system and not you all so let me just preface that um the the questions that i have about our racial equity analysis tool we have a racial equity policy that actually leads out a framework i'm not sure how much time you all have spent looking at what we already have in place we have a commitment by

313our board as well as by our administration to continually use an equity lens for everything that we do this is not a um and we have a very vocal community we have a very vocal staff we have very vocal students who have said i do not feel like i belong here this culture doesn't feel welcoming my teachers have said this this and that these are these are the things that have happened and we have done numerous things to address those we don't have a like my biggest concern with this and i i said it before and i will say it again is we are not we don't have a lack of information focus groups are i i am highly concerned that focus groups are not going to tell us anything new that the information that

314you all are going to gather from people is information that they have already told us for at least the past 10 years and that your recommendations are not going to look much different than the racial equity policy that we already have in place the racial equity analysis tool that i don't like i'm still struggling to understand how that is used where it's used when it's used and i feel like the the work that needs to be done is work that we already have access to without having someone else come in and tell us what needs to get done because we already have the information that we need we have the data we have the conversations we have had conversations with like the i i'm not clear on how more focus groups are going to actually

315give provide us with them from with new information new information feels like a moot point at this point we have we have a lot of information so based on all the things that we already have in place the questions that i have are based on your work just about your work um the gap diminishment that you talked about what i i'm curious what it looked like in the data there was that you started that work with them in 2005 did that organize did those districts move through your entire full educational equity journey and are you only presenting us right now with just the first part of what that would be yes we would need so in order for us to achieve some similar gains we would potentially need to move through your entire equity journey

316equity what is it called the equity educational equity journey well our recommendations would give you actions to take you through that journey so with that journey then would we need to continue to contract with you additionally for to move through that journey or the the recommendations you give us take us all the way through and around that entire loop our goal is to provide you with the information that will allow you to take every step based on the teams you have already in place the programs you have in place but they would be put into the perspective of what people are experiencing right now yes at district 202 to reduce that gap to the way we have it took about five years but we weren't there all the time we you our goal is to

317identify ways in which you can use your own staff even more effectively based on what we hear so we contracted so if we do this equity analysis with you all equity audit then is this a commitment for you to work with us for five years to move us through that process or you're just i'm trying i'm just trying to understand like because what what i know for sure is that this is this is a long game right this is definitely a long game we've already been in the long game and there are things that i feel that we can already do that we're not doing that you know require you know more long game work but i'm trying to understand if you all come in and do this piece with us how ongoing is it

318are you giving us some reports at the end of what would be another eight weeks and then we have those reports to do with and move through the process as we will the district has those reports to move through the process as they will well we're working directly with the bar i mean the goal would be with lavar in the role he has that that we would put everything in the context of what you're able uh to accomplish uh it's i guess i'm hearing and i've been we heard that from your last meeting and we hoped we were giving you the responses that will help you understand that we we're no we know you are not just starting this journey you've been on this journey a long time uh but we also know that there

319are ways in which getting this rich information at at at this time with a new equity director and all the the uh the strategies you put in place your equity policy this is a way to just bring all that together and create the action to make it so that you have the answers to how is how is this tool or that tool working for our district but we're not but if we can't even get like i i don't know i just i don't know if that's that it kind of i'm curious i'm curiou i'm curious how gina if i could and just speak to you you mentioned the uh the long game the long-term game right uh as bee just mentioned uh this process is just at the very beginning of finding out what we'll

320need going forward as an institution so an example being when we talked about our long term lavar i'm sorry can i just interrupt you for a second i'm sorry we had a number of community people and organizations that are highly skilled in the work of racial equity put together a policy right and that was just done in april of now that policy has a lot of pieces in it that we could be implementing and i don't understand why we're not just why why can't i'm not clear why we need to do an audit right now when what when we haven't really fully implemented parts of that policy that could be effective measures that we could be using already so i'm i'm not seeing the need for us to do an audit at this moment when

321we have a policy with a lot of pieces in it that a lot of people contributed information expertise experience and time to to create that is not fully implemented so i i'm not we you're auditing something before we've even really given it a chance to start to work well i guess what what we believe is that with all of that in place to get the perspective we would get from these focus groups at every level including the board including all of the administrators and families and students and the sports staff and your teachers and separated by these four different racial groups you would we we would have so much information that could then begin to answer those questions why you know why isn't the action taking place i think it's just that our focus group

322piece we've like when the racial equity policy was created i'm sorry to interrupt you but when the racial equity policy was created there was a quite a bit of focus work group focus group work done in that there there were you know like affinity affinity conversations are had in our community there had in spaces so i'm i'm just feeling like we're missing something and i'm not i'm not feeling um although i value and appreciate the work that you do i'm not feeling like we've done our part on our end yet to get to the place where we can say now can you tell us if this system worked because we just put the policy in place april of 2019 and i would like to see i would like to see the racial equity analysis tool

323i would like to see the questions that i ask about what equity lens was used to evaluate this piece of material answered i would like to see some of those things before before we move into something else but thank you all so much for being here i really do appreciate you staying late we're just accustomed to being here till midnight well when i guess bottom line for us is that we look at organizations as systems and system work is really about shifting the conditions that keep the problems you have in place so what we're saying through these focus groups we could help you understand when and where and how to take the action because you do have the policies in place but what we know there is within your organization at all of these levels

324people who have are sitting on information that's helpful it's not some it's it's not just the writing of the policy but this is the fuel that can help the policy get to work and that's what we have found when we've done this in other districts including those that have been on the journey you've been on it a long time but uh there's it's and it is a journey uh and we we believed that we could help and i understand that you feel you you don't need what we have to offer and we we understand that um ralph matt i'm sorry yeah can i just ask a kind of a follow-up question so i i read through the proposal three or four times and how much of your work is going to end up reviewing the

325actual implementation of program we've put in place whether or not we are implementing with fidelity whether or not um [Music] it is being implemented in accordance with best practice whether or not it even is best practice do you have those aspects as part of your review in your audit are you going to literally look at the implementation of program designed to attain more equitable outcomes from a racial standpoint to determine whether or not we are implementing them in accordance with best practice and or faithfully well we believe that best practices don't work always in every organization and so we believe that the people that you serve can give the best answers to that rather than just looking at best practices so yes that would be our goal to uh to develop the questions so we

326would be able to use that data to give you that kind of information that's what we have been doing and then would you follow that up with so part of your moving to action to what we're looking for here would be recommendations on how to either move away from programming we've implemented that doesn't seem to be effective in our setting and replacing it with certain other specific types of programming or ways to tweak what we are doing to make it more effective is that part of what you do that all of the above yes i think there's a perception that focus groups uh only gather data which would be a waste of your money uh we gather data from these focus groups when you look at the depth that we're looking that word where not

327only the depth but the breadth of those who will be asked and invited or volunteer to be in in these groups you're getting the most important information possible to help your school district move forward uh it it i i have just seen this work so many times for so many decades there's not a district that we've worked with that hasn't had the results we're talking about and it's hard to do unless we took each of your initiatives um and laid them out right now to say how we would do that which we couldn't do but when we have the data from all of these levels and compare the view of black students with latinx students with white students with teachers of those different races uh that's when you have the the most important richness with

328with which to examine whether these strategies and initiatives you've created are really taking the action you want but if you don't believe that that the data from the people that you hired that you serve the families who send their children here if you don't believe that their insights will be the best source you could use to examine equity as we as we as we divide decide define it in terms of providing everybody with the opportunity to move forward at the greatest speed that's where your greatest and most important source is to examine what you've created with all the good will and and experts that have helped you put them together here's the test you do your can your people and their experiences help you create the action that you want out of your equity plan

329a plan is not the action we can get you to the action thank you um the hour is growing very late and we still have our probably meatiest agenda item well down the agenda matt did you want to ask any questions at this point no thanks to all for your insights and questions and thank you for the presentation um are there any other burning questions out there okay um my understanding is this is coming back at the regular board meeting is that correct that is correct okay all right thank you so much for joining us this evening we appreciate it okay thank you thank you for your patience tonight we appreciate it you're welcome the next item is the ff e contract memo uh bringing this uh forward is mr rono c anderson executive director

330for facilities and operations and i believe joining him are members of fgm architects at the conclusion of this presentation we would ask that this item be moved forward to the regular board of education meeting on december 17th this item is in compliance with strategic plan priority one two and four and board policy two colon 142 colon 220 and four colon 60. good evening board um during the planning phase of the project one the district budgeted two million forty eight thousand seven dollars for the furniture fixtures and the design for their bethany fgm proposed um expense is part of the project one budget and not additional expense this will begin the design phase of the furniture and fixtures located in the renovated areas and the building edition for project one this proposal allows fgm to provide

331design coordination assistance um to the district and the furniture vendors during the design procurement and the installer phases uh we will select the furniture from vendors listed on the state and national purchasing contract in accordance to the illinois government joint purchasing award lowers beer a low awarding to the lords responsible bidder or the highest ranked offered price fgm would um evaluate the bid the bids and the vendors and will provide the recommendation to the administration and we'll bring it to the board for approval proposing to charge the district a not to exceed amount of fifty thousand dollars at an hourly rate um found in the exhibit a of the contract you have any questions about that questions from the board no not for me thank you okay and this will be coming back in a

332couple weeks as well right yes next week for approval okay thank you the next item is the room renumbering and wayfaring signage this two is being forward by four by mr anderson executive director of operations at the conclusion we are asking that this item be brought forward at the december 17th board of education meeting for approval this is in compliance with strategic plan priority one two and four board policy two colon one forty two colon two twenty and four colon sixty based on the imagine project feedback um the district determined that the room number number and waveform signage project should be undertaken we feel that it's appropriate to do it this time um because of the completion of the the south cafeteria and the student resource center uh rather than renovating portions of the building

333are proposing a room remembering of the entire building with enhanced weight fair signage we've actually fgm to provide a proposal to develop a comprehensive renova plan for the entire building which include which would include the um the new rooms and the way for society for the design the room's reno the room remember and signage that falls outside of the scope of project one will be funded through the building maintenance budget it was already budgeted um fgm is proposing to charge the district a not to exceed amount of forty five thousand dollars an hourly rate found in exhibit a as well uh do you have any questions about that yeah craig yeah um with the architecture tell me what a room renumbering project is i mean what what is the architectural work involved with renumbering rooms

334good good question and it's and it's it's a bit of a rare bird actually because this this isn't something that is is typically done all that often but it's something that as we understand it was born out of the the master plan the feedback gained by the imagine uh committee particularly from the students that they engaged was that the building is very difficult to navigate because the existing numbering system really doesn't make sense and there is there is a a lack of of wayfinding signage that that certainly um doesn't aid uh in in the current uh in the current building in terms of the of the numbering system so what what this would do is it would look at the entire building and we would develop we would develop really kind of multiple renumbering options

335that would be weighed by key stakeholders in in the district administration and and and staff and then essentially the district would would select one of those along with a wayfinding uh system package to to be implemented and and the idea being that this is this is an ideal time to do it because project one touches approximately 25 to 30 percent of the rooms and they will be receiving new room signage and so the feeling amongst the district administrators that we've been working with on project one was that now would be the best or now would be an appropriate time to renumber the entire building because with landing so many new signs and all of the spaces that are affected by project one either being renovated or they're being built new like the infield classrooms in

336the northwest corner of the building south cafeteria student resource center expansion of special education etc etc if you land new signs on all of those spaces now and then you move forward in a few years five years ten years with the renumbering you're going to have to put new signs you would you would likely be pulling those signs those newer signs off and having to put new signs at that time so is it something that that could wait absolutely but but we understood it to be one of the priorities coming out of the uh out of the master plan yeah so i'm sorry josh you're you're misunderstanding my question okay um my question is is why what is it that in in the training of an architect is needed to renumber the building why do

337i need to hire an architect sure to do renumbering um you i mean just i i understand ours i understand that i understand that but i'm trying to understand is there something architecturally from you know skill wise that's required here it's it's it's not necessarily something that another um another profession another design professional couldn't couldn't endeavor to do we just we do it all the time because anytime we do a project particularly a school project we are providing a room numbering system that that is that is typically used at the outset by the school or by the school district per se so so in this this is a case of instead of you don't have a new building that we're doing for you you have an existing building that has an identified problem with its

338existing numbering system and so we would be looking at it from a from a holistic sense and and and bringing forward options that would make that would uh improve the the student experience in terms of being able to more easily navigate the buildings but also coupling that with a wayfinding uh system as well so so is it is it something that is it something that architects are um are are better at than than than someone else for instance if you went to the if you went to your signage vendor that the district currently uses when you order uh half a dozen new signs is is it something they could do i don't know i've never i've never heard of a signage vendor renumbering an entire building because one they typically don't have access to software

339where they're going to have all their floor plans for you for your building and that they could then put forward options in terms of what the district would consider it's so um obviously we have those tools we have those tools because it's it's part of what we do on a day in day out basis okay i understand i know this is this suggestion is the business of the district and not the board but um you know i love this for a crowdsourcing project for a bunch of students in the community i love this to get groups in the community who are enthused about doing something that it lives along with the school and bring them in and let them develop options and then maybe you guys can review it but save forty thousand dollars and

340involve the community and doing it that's that's my two cents that may be crazy but i just wanted to throw that out on the table sure not crazy i like that can i pay back on that too craig because um the thing one of the things is like you know having been a parent recently who travels through the school and having been a student there 30 years ago who traveled through the school and trying to figure out where 272 is or you know like honestly i i i feel like there are a lot of people who would be like i think i they have i think that to craig's point i think that there are folks who have been in that building for 30 years who could come up with a numbering scheme and uh

341you know that piece of how that's laid out that would be thrilled and excited to be engaged in that process i'm not necessarily one of them i just would like to be able to find room 272 thanks all right other other questions or thoughts um i will echo craigs and in fact i previously had someone text me this evening saying that they want to do it um who's just a community member so point made um matt i think we've got 14 cents two times seven here potentially it seemed enthusiasm also the work that was done by the one or more teachers with the signs for the husky graduates and also the incoming freshmen we've got a lot of talent in the building and i'd love to incorporate as many of the students in this as

342well so another resident recommended that to me tonight so i i think that's absolutely the right track to be on i had to step away for a moment so i'm just trying to make sure that i'm caught up are we talking the design and the weight fair and then somebody else making the numbering and posting it i just wanted to see what i missed i don't know that we'd actually gotten that far in our conversation in terms of who does what but i think the idea of having um students or and or community members work on this is a as a as a fun interactive project and then figuring out how to make the signs would probably be a separate piece thank you um i just weigh in and say that uh um from my

343perspective um and josh you said this kid this weight yes and i think that given uh our current uh conversations even of this evening and where we need to prioritize resources it points in my opinion directly to um allowing our uh correct suggestion to to play out but it doesn't have to happen certainly doesn't have to happen uh right now and so i would i would want us to put a pause on uh a an expenditure an expenditure of this um type and i also had a question uh ron you said that part of the um cost of this would come out of the b and g uh budget that's that's been remarkable i could you elaborate on that because i'm unclear what that means the maintenance the maintenance budget the the partner's not in

344project one because the thirty percent of the building that's getting renumbered as part of project one will come out of project one funds and the remainder balance will come out of the maintenance fund the maintenance budget would that be well we won't know until actually it goes out to be it so when we're saying forty thousand dollars we no more than forty thousand that's only for the new what's considered under project one and this kind of reinforces my feeling that if we don't know the cost and there are certainly uh some things that we need to attend to perhaps that money could be maintenance budget might need to go elsewhere at this time thank you other comments or questions all right thank you very much and thank you for your patience and staying so late

345this evening you're welcome thank you okay uh i'm not sure where we go next are we back up on the uh telecom yes i was talking and didn't realize i was muted i'm sorry so the next item is the purchase of the telecom innovative group remote phone system um at the making this presentation is oh shoot i'll skip to the wrong item i'm sorry making this presentation is chris uh christopher thame executive director of educational technology and cindy sador chief financial officer at the conclusion of this presentation we will be bringing this forward at the next board meeting for approval this is in compliance with strategic plan priority 2 district policy 4 colon 10 and 6 colon good evening everybody thank you for your patience and uh letting us get to uh this agenda item

346tonight a very long night um i we have been working on this issue for some time and some of this is bubbled up in information that we've reported out as we were attempting to solve our remote phone functionality problems here in the building both for faculty and our support staff and administration there are many areas that this impacts essentially we have a cumbersome method um by which uh a staff member faculty member can um reach out through as a platform that will place a phone call and that phone call won't be identifying their personal number it's not coming from their cell phone however it's cumbersome for the faculty support staff it's also cumbersome for the families and the students that may be receiving that phone call because um they're not getting a number that they

347can call back and then they have to call back into the office number that goes to a voicemail the staff member the faculty member then retrieves you have this game of phone tag back and forth so we've been looking for an effective cost efficient solution to this and uh rather than tell you more about it i'm going to show it to you so i'm going gonna switch cameras over here what you're looking at right here this is um the uh i'm actually in a classroom right now coming to you from 425a and uh this is one of the classroom typical classroom phones and my tell system if you remember back to march um we had just entered into a transition in our phone system the very first week of pandemic was the week that we

348implemented that system the company that we went with was able to do that on time and on budget and so we have a completely new phone system in the school and this is one of those phones along with that let me show you this is my uh my cell phone and just like any um cell phone uh there's an app that goes along with it either for android or iphone and what that does is it emulates my office phone so on here i can dial a number just like i would on any cell phone but i'm doing it through the app because i'm doing it through the app i'm actually dialing um as my office number so when i dial from my phone here you see it's ringing in the room and it's coming up

349as me as chris theme so that way um the the number is in sync and if i go back the other way it's saying that it's coming from this classroom so um on both directions i don't understand so you can see that that a number does go through to the office phone and it's appearing as me you can place a call it doesn't have to be inside the network and place a call out to any outside number um and it's coming up as if you were calling from your own office so you have true inbound and outbound operations um within this phone app we're seeing not only with uh faculty needing to reach out to families uh but also in our special ed department uh of vast need for this and beyond covet the value

350is really in we're seeing more and more requirements for that type of office functionality outside of the office space any other solutions that we're looking at you're talking about a licensing cost per phone that that is the same as if you were implementing it the first year which means you're repaying that cost every year the cost that you have before you is for the implementation and it's a six dollar charge per uh phone number that we keep under this licensing for every year thereafter so it's a considerable savings especially if you're looking at these numbers as being ones that would be just have a cell phone distributed to them um like if if it was the special ed department they needed that back and forth functionality but they weren't um it's not wise that they're

351using their own number in those instances uh this is a considerable cost savings uh as we go forward to pass confident so at that point i'd like to open it up to any questions you might have on this questions from anyone no questions but thank you chris for the demonstration for this technology challenged person it made all the difference as well as your outstanding uh rationale and recommendation very much appreciated chris this is craig um any con what about security concerns people spoofing from the app or anything like that how do you manage that it's it's essentially um you've got a it's a vpn client essentially with it but it's a phone functionality only um so it's going into our voip system so the secure access is through that app through the credentials that are

352specific to that phone so during the installation process of the app that's where the security connection goes into place i don't want to go into more detail in a public forum other than that but the encryption occurs at that point the connection occurs at that point and then it creates a secure tunnel between the app on the phone and the phone system that we're using here at the high school so nobody can essentially tack the line and spoof the phone because it's a it's a device to device vpn exactly honestly it was it was easier in the old copper days to hack the lineup okay thank you so christopher just following up on that question um do we does the the cell phone user need to have wi-fi in order to use the app or

353can it run over yeah um either wi-fi or cellular the demonstration that i just did um i'm not even on the wi-fi right now i'm not on the wi-fi at the moment i'm using my cellular network in order to place that call but it's using internet data services on that line and i'm sorry just i think one last question we're buying software licenses no hardware is that right correct no hardware this is all integrated into our current phone system but it's all for licenses and then the labor contract in order to have them do that first blast um so that we can get 330 individuals that were identified as needing this and are we supplying the cell phones to those individuals are they expected to use their personal phones this would be something that they

354could access through their personal phones um but there is a web interface on this so if they said i would prefer not to use my own phone they can use their computer and use the same functionality so it's not it doesn't require a cell phone in order to be used can be used on any mobile device any windows any macintosh device as well thank you any other questions i just want to say thank you to you chris and your team and you're like an umpire people only notice you if things mess up and i haven't noticed the umpire lately so thank you very much for all you and your team too yeah and i agree i agree with jackie's comment it was very helpful to watch it in action so thank you for that okay

355um i think we have another tech contract yes the next i'm gonna find it again uh the next uh item is the purchase of technology for hybrid classrooms uh also bringing this forward is christopher theme as a conclusion of the presentation we would like to move this to the december 17th board of education meeting uh mr thane thank you so um on this next one and we'll continue on with uh showcasing a little bit of what we have in this room um in a hybrid environment you are taking a remote um those who are in remote attendance those who are physically in attendance and you are trying to create as seamless a possible an experience between those two points um zoom is designed any so you know as we've seen if you get two computers

356next to each other you have um interference between the microphones and the speakers they're really designed for that sort of insulated physical experience i'm sitting alone in an environment that's enclosed i'm on my zoom session it's picking me up i'm hearing etc um in a hybrid environment we are breaking down some of that insulation and so because we're changing that method of delivery of instruction we're needing to look at how we are structuring the supports for that delivery and that um we've been doing a lot of searching talking to a lot of districts um i of course d 90 d 97 um we're constantly checking notes between the three districts in addition to that i reached out through an illinois educational technology leaders organization and the districts that are associated with that organization have been

357knowledge sharing as well as those that are investigating hybrid those that are in hybrid what are they finding are the pain points and what have they done um to kind of mitigate some of those pain points i also talked to the um to technology administrators at loyola academy and over at dominican university and got their input as well um the other thing that we're up against is uh the fact that we're all looking at this um and there's documentations and uh the cost on some of these systems can be pretty prohibitive um just when i worked at dominican university back in the 90s we had some of the first classes where we design classrooms with microphone speakers monitors in order to hold classes in conjunction and through the college of dupage to schools up in

358minneapolis and other area universities um and in order to do that i'm seeing a lot of this the that experience coming back even though i'm looking at it considerably some years later so i'm going to go from that explanation and talk about one of the most important pieces is when we think about hybrid we think about video but really one of the most difficult things to navigate i'm going to just zoom out here a little bit turn this monitor so i'm seeing what you're seeing and i'm going to get over to our student stations i've got two student stations here so both of these stations are in our zoom session right now and that's as a receiving what's visually on the screen this is great so if the teacher is sitting over at the desk

359they're doing their presentation through the zoom session or through the google me session and i'm seeing that up on the screen that's great the moment that i run into trouble when i am trying to talk and what you may be hearing at this point is a little bit of an echo if i go over to my other station and i have my unit over and i'm going to because what i have on here is [Music] how quickly so um the other problem that you experience if you're dealing with audio on multiple devices in a room let's say all the kids were in here with a set of headphones um they're going to hear their teacher physically in the room and then a fraction of a second later here in the headphone very distracting now if

360they don't have that way of hearing through the headphones how are they going to hear the remote students that's the audio solution that we're looking at right now and i'm going to pan over here so i can show you the let's see this is the audio solution that we're using in this room so what i'm talking to you through is this little device right here it's got the speaker and it's got embedded microphones into it so when you're talking i'm hearing you very clearly i can hear you throughout the room and it's picking up the microphone now i've done some testing in a variety of different rooms different environments you have different physical things that come into play some you may have um fans that are a bit noisy what i found is that this

361does a good job of cancelling out the fan you don't hear it on the other end it does lower the sensitivity a bit but it does work in those areas where you have the fans going as well you have a lot of hard surfaces so there's a lot of sound bouncing off the walls in an ideal situation you're baffling the noise off the hard surfaces you're um changing out the lights so that they are not cooling that there's a whole slew of things that you would do if you're really making this a long-term hybrid solution but this at least gets the job done now i'm over in the far corner of the room um i'm gonna lower my voice so that i'm talking it more you know i'm a student i don't like talking up

362and i'm over at this desk here um i i may not really feel comfortable talking louder than this and yet you're still able to hear what i'm saying if i'm looking out the window and i'm talking you can still [Music] so for what this is the fact that you've got a single base unit that's picking up the audio delivering the audio and especially at the price point that we're looking at for these units you have a really cost effective way of getting this job done um and what i'd like to do is uh go back over here and this camera has some basic pan tilt zoom functionality what that means is that i can zoom in as i'm doing here and i can pan up i can go side to side and i'm going to

363use that to show you the different components that are included in what i uh what you have in those quotes that are in the packet so there i've got my workstation and that workstation has one cord plugged into it as a power cord that has nothing to do with the equipment one cord is plugged into this workstation a new usb and then everything else that you see here is plugged into it so when i did the demonstration of the um of the phone app i was using this document camera here that's plugged in it's all comes into a hub so the camera um the speaker and microphone system the um document camera and then items that we have in-house we have some we're only looking for supplements supplemental amounts of the document cameras we do

364have quite a few of these we already have monitors so once they plug that cord in they get an additional monitor teacher gets an additional monitor they get a mouse and they get a keyboard obviously we have those components uh in-house and we're not looking to purchase additional on that all of those pieces plug-and-play no additional software there was no installation that had to be done i just had to plug that cord in and automatically zoom detected the microphone it detected the document camera and the camera that i'm using um to display and show and also you know we in the hybrid environment you've got a limited amount of um of space on the board that you can walk in front of but if i was going to use the board to it is good

365enough that i'm able to see what i'm writing up on the board too and with an integrated camera um the resolution is spotty at best um and it's it's really difficult to use not to mention you can't pan up and down or zoom in and out with a camera that's embedded into your device you have to actually physically lift it up and point it to what you're trying to show so i hope that that gives um some uh an example at least you've gotten some practical insight into what all of that technical jargon is within that proposal that you have in front of you let's open it up any questions on this any questions for anyone i have a rudimentary corrupt question chris so i apologize if this feels that way thank you for all

366this and and that was way cool i feel like i got another burst of energy um what given that it's hybrid and that there will some be some students remote and some in the classroom teachers won't be wearing masks correct because then students can't see their background you know and i meant to do that i apologize let me i'm putting a mask on and i'm going to do that same audio test i'm walking over here into the corner i'm not talking loudly i'm looking out the window um i am uh hoping that you are still hearing me okay yes turning back around whispering okay but i do now but what what about is this has this been made clear to our families and students that the experience in the classroom will be one of uh

367still different than what returning to the classroom means in terms of teachers i would say yes we try to do that in every presentation that our teachers will still be wearing masks and that it will be different that it won't be like pre-pandemic classrooms we stress that and yes i'm saying that for the hybrid students as well that um the expectation that right now virtual has meant that no one's wearing a mask but hybrid means teachers will be masked and the sound quality is impeccable um i just i wonder how we get to the if there's a way to ensure that students who have issues with you know auditory learning are able to um have a way to understand what's going on um i you know so in our classroom technology integration planning group um

368one of the members of that group is our assistive technology coordinator lisa vincent she actually reached out to me on that subject she's in touch with the person that she relies on most to help students with auditory issues um we did some testing with this unit and she had closed captioning on and it was able to at various registers pick up my voice at various places within the classroom turn that into a closed captioning that was right um the only part it couldn't was when i was doing the whisper test that was the only time that the closed captioning didn't work but we're going to continue to work with her and with that with that group to evaluate the technology in that and if we need to figure out some enhancements to this um then

369then we'll we'll figure it out but so far it's looking good and and chris if i might end i don't know if this uh kind of hits two or what dr moore is saying i know like for our speech and language students uh ms francois blue has bought some of the clear masks so that they can see what the teacher is saying so that's also an option all right any other questions i just had a quick one um curious chris to what degree is your um focusing on this as the preferred option uh an outgrowth of what existing schools that have already gone this route before their experience is this partly you know based on that yeah it's it's very much based on that um in uh what i'm hearing uh and i expected this

370from what i remember running into audio is always your biggest issue video is actually a lot easier to solve than the audio component of it um and also when i was looking at the price point and what the capabilities of this system were there are systems that are all built in that have tracking cameras um that could follow you up and down as you're walking up and down the the whiteboard um but they're caught they're really cost prohibited they're really you know so this is a solution that comes under the price point for all of this that we that you would spend just for an integrated camera with speaker system embedded into it um so that's why i was leaning in this direction it had all the functionality and a lower price point well thank

371you for that explanation and i think the potential for this post pandemic which is an optimistic thing to talk about for student conferences all sorts of potential applications right associations that meet at the school so i feel like this is more than a short-term deal yes definitely so thank you i would say though that since given the sensitivity of the mics i think teachers should be really explicit with their classes about that because i could see a lot of hurt feelings because unintended conversations are overheard having been in courtrooms with audio it's trust me i've been there it's embarrassing um all right any other questions from anybody thank you so much chris that was fun i didn't think i was going to say that on midnight i've been reading but about technology you know less

372it's fun we pulled the policies under policies for first read so now we're at the superintendent search process and i will turn it over to you yeah so i just wanted to give everyone an update on the community as much as the board so we are issuing an rfp for a search firm that i think is going out tomorrow um and bids close mid-december is that am i getting that timeline right gail um so over winter break so to speak not that we board members really have that but um we will be have the opportunity to review the applications from the search firms from the bit you know the bids that are submitted and we will then rank them and determine who we want to interview gail had sent out a doodle um for i

373think january 10th and 11th and those are the nights that we anticipate doing the interviews um we don't know that it would take two days it sort of depends on how many people submit you know how many folk submit bids um how if there are any you know clear outliers that we can sort of call early on um you know it we're hopeful it'll be one night and we're thinking you know 30 minute interviews um 20-minute presentations 10 minutes for questions from the board and optimistically we would like to actually make our decision that same night i think that that's realistic but again we have that second night sort of held in a band if we feel that we need it that would then put our timeline for the actual search the meat of the

374search project so to speak would be in february and hopefully we would have applicants to start interviewing by you know march um to be able to make our selection in april late march or april gail can you please fact check me did i get that correct yes you did sarah harry so i don't know if anyone has questions this is really just meant to be an update about the rfp process um but if anyone has questions i'm happy to try to answer them and unfortunately gail's here too thank you i just had a request for um could we see the uh will you be able to see the rfp that's going out so there's there's all kinds of rules around rfps um it is going out in the morning are you saying you would like

375to see it before it goes out yeah that's what i was saying i don't know what if there are rules that prohibit that i can just i guess look at it on yeah so i honestly gail i don't know i'm used to the cook county's rfp process which is very much like non-disclosure agreements i don't know if that's the case for rrfps necessarily um i do have a copy of it and i have reviewed it if that helps anyone um their level of confidence but if we can share it i'm more than happy to i do know that it's sent to sort of like go out automatically tomorrow um so i don't know that we can pull it back at this point if there are revisions since it's so close in time it wasn't a

376question of confidence it was uh but i i do think that the board is the uh employer of the contract that it would be helpful for all of us to be on the same page gail could you would you mind finding out from carolyn since she's sort of the keeper of the rfp if that's something that we can do i'll send an email right now okay i don't know if she's awake but if she is hopefully we can facilitate that all right if there are no more questions um i think that's our last item for this part of our evening other than future agenda items i can think of some i don't know if anyone has anything that they want to bring up right now after this we will be taking a break because it's

377been over two hours since our last break it's been three hours actually all right i would like as a future uh agenda item to be able to uh revisit uh and perhaps educate ourselves and the public about uh the public versus private aspects of being a board member and uh what what it means to uh to talk about and have uh the trainings that we've had and as a board what we ascribe to i would really this uh the incidents of the last week um and a half or so uh and matt's um public comment this evening just leads me to believe that it would be helpful for me to to be able to um to talk as a board understood um that that is a topic that i have discussed briefly with dr poot

378adams and with gail um in trying to schedule some some conversation for next board meeting since it's so hard to get us together in between times um but december 17th would be the target date thank you i appreciate it anybody else all right so i move to adjourn knowing that we are coming back um but i'm going to move to adjourn and then suggest we come back at 12 15 a.m on december 4th um to hopefully get through the next bit um so you should have no we're coming back to the same zoom link so you can just turn your cameras off take a break and come back and we will have to you know re-initiate our meeting but so a move to adjourn uh committee of the whole is there a second okay okay

379anyone opposed okay let's come back uh at 12 15 and um i'll see you shortly so okay as folks start coming back if you wouldn't mind um turning your cameras on or otherwise signaling that you're here i'm here thank you jackie gail i assume you're here because we need her okay sorry i was here i'm back are we back sorry okay i am going to go ahead and start because i think we have at least a quorum and others will come on in um so it's december 4th the wee hours it's 12 17 a.m i would like to call to order the um special board meeting of the operative air force high school board of education as permitted by pritzker's executive orders we are currently virtual due to the public health concerns i have as

380head of the public body have determined that it's not practical or prudent to hold an in-person meeting of the board of education at this time so we are currently stream streaming um on both our website and on youtube if i'm not mistaken and gayle if you could please call the roll mr kovsky here dr moore here erin here mr eisley yep mr martieri here miss harris here and miss dixon's body yeah all right um and we are going to mr yamashita i'm sorry we're gonna go into class session so thank you so much for being here it's gonna be a minute though um all right so i moved to enter closed session for the purpose of discussing the appointment employment compensation discipline performance or dismissal of specific employees of the district or legal counsel for

381the district and independent contractors and specific volunteers including hearing testimony on a complaint lodged against an employee or against legal counsel for the district to determine its validity and collective negotiating matters between the district and its employees or the representatives or deliberate deliberations concerning salary schedules for one or more classes of employees is there a second second uh could we please have a uh roll call gail mr eisley yes mr martieri yep miss harris yes yakovsky dr moore yes mr barron yes and mr dixon spivey yes all right everyone so you should have the closed session oh doctor adams i just want to remind those of the executive cabinet who are not a part of closed session that we still have to come back into open session and do the reimagine plan and so we

382will text you when we're coming out of closed session all right and so everyone should have in their emails the closed session link if you don't um please let gail know and she can resend that to you yeah i need that link okay i got the link i'm good oh see you there how do we get out of here hmm okay we're back um we're all getting so much better at doing this um we're still waiting for ralph maybe we'll give him another few seconds um well i i will attempt to find him as we proceed um all right uh so gail our next item is public comments are there any public comments for this meeting no i'm pleased to hear that um okay our action item this evening is the reimagine education plan uh

383dr put adams yes i'm trying to see who has the control of the powerpoint at this point i'm not quite sure uh chris do you have control of the powerpoint if you if you bring it up and turn it over to me i can click it um yeah i i've got uh let me make sure that sharing is enabled say it again chris sharing is enabled okay i just need the powerpoint i don't have i can go into the board docs okay i'm sorry i could bring that up if you like no i have to bring it up to be on my screen right i'm in board docs gotcha can everyone see my screen okay yes okay i just want to make sure i do have a question of the board before we get started

384because the timeliness the timing of the night we've presented this full presentation to the board before my question to the board is if you want us to do the full presentation again tonight or to really focus mainly on those key changes that have been made since the last presentation we can do it either way you choose okay so then that will allow me to skip through the first couple of slides and since our last presentation i'll go straight to that but i do want to end i do want to hear some of the other stuff as you know since last july we have really been working to prepare for the plan i do want to stress that everything we do will be designed to bring our students in in the best safe and healthy environment

385as we can we've been asked by our advisory committee so i'm going to stress this and he told me every time i speak that i want to stress to everyone the need to wear your mask when outside your household to wash your hands no less than 20 seconds and to please maintain a social distance and if you have to hug give an air hug and it is going to take every single one of us in order to make this happen so i do want to share some of the changes that have been made since our last time presenting we made a change to the afternoon schedule we added that we are working on the dashboard oh i didn't pull up the right presentation i am so sorry i really apologize for that drilling i have

386the most version up would you like me to share my screen please because i pulled up the one from board docs and that doesn't have all the changes so i'm no longer sharing how does that work for everybody we don't see it yet there you go if you could put it in presentation mode so what we've done since the last presentation and if you will bear with us we want to give credit to some of the places where these changes came from so we made a change to the afternoon schedule and i'm not going to elaborate on that right now because when uh greg gets to his portion he will elaborate and go through what that schedule looks like we are adding uh currently working on adding a dashboard to our website and that suggestion

387came from the advisory committee um mr yamashita who's in this room today with us was a real proponent of making sure that we had the dashboard as long with our other advisory members so that people can go in and understand our teachers also asked to have a dashboard so that they know where we are at any point in time that they could go into we have defined the five cases that are not considered an outbreak when we made the first presentation we talked about five cases being an outbreak and that was based upon the idph guidance and i believe it was one of our advisory committee members mr olsen who asked the question to clarify as well as i think it was mr eisley five cases have to be epidemiology epidemically connected and so you

388can have five different students in the building who have covered a five different results if there is not a connection based upon contact that is not considered an outbreak but if it is that is considered an outbreak the other thing we added that we heard from our advisory committee was and from our ada administrative team was that we needed to have an abbreviated freshman only rotation because our freshmen have never been into this building the only relationships they have right now are through the virtual mode and so we will have the first week that we will are able to go into a hybrid will be for freshmen only we were asked to clarify the non-compliance with mask wearing as a result of consequences and i believe that came from mr isaac's comment and so parents

389and students will sign an understanding of consequences as we move forward should there be a consistent non-compliance with mask wearing we were also asked to wear to note that face shields will not substitute for masks unless they are approved and i do know that we have some teachers who will be wearing math particularly our speech and language teachers who will be working a speech pathologist who will be working with our students who need that one the other changes we made in the plan is we clarified that on-site students suspected of being ill with colvin 19 must be picked up by a parent and or a guardian we also added the procedures for visiting our health services office which came from our advisory committee as well and we updated the information about individual classroom ventilation we

390uh learned i'm way off my script when we talk about the ventilation and when we initially made the presentation we talked about merv 13 ventilation systems in addition to putting in helpful filters we realized that there is another uh piece that is more efficient than putting the hepa filters in the rooms i think i covered everything there's some major change we'll go to the next slide karen do you want to talk about the metrics please yeah so we've kept uh the in general the metrics are the same as you saw last time we did clarify um there seemed to be confusion around the number of cases in the school some people thought it was just students some folks thought it was combined that was always meant to be the combined employee and student count so

391um so we've included that clarification there on the graphic but the rest of it is what you saw last time we'll go to the next slide greg you want to talk about the schedule yeah so just very quickly um three changes i'll highlight number one the um the tutoring that we had talked about before has been simplified in verbiage and it has been moved from the 220 to 311 slot to the 120 to 220 slot this basically will mean that um all of our teachers who don't have study halls during periods one through eight will be assigned to in-person content tutoring on either their a or their b day which will result in approximately 72 teachers on each day uh be being assigned to uh in-person content tutoring that will cover the the gamut of

392our of our divisions and so we're really happy about that uh shift that puts that content tutoring most adjacent to uh the lunch period so right you know as close as we can get it to the end of the academic uh periods um also we have extended the counseling activities and social groups for the entire time there in the afternoon 120 to 311 that's the second change the third change is that where office hours are currently placed you can see them from 220 to 311 down here on wednesdays every single week we have our our our teacher flexible collaboration time uh for the important tct work and for our care teams to continue throughout second semester so those are the changes to that that schedule the overall time is still the same just changed how

393we've kind of piecemealed and adjusted the work with inside that timeline okay would you go to the next slide and greg would you speak specifically because we get a lot of questions about the opt-in opt-out and whether or not people can fluctuate back and forth and about the cohort groups of siblings okay first as far as opting out and what type of flexibility and choice remains there once uh we have the survey out there for for families to make their choice um at any point during out the spring semester any family could choose to opt out of in person the hybrid experience but um the the chance to opt in is is in this window that we have right now and that is because we need those numbers to figure out how our cohorts are

394going to function we have partnered with a um as i alluded to when we were first presenting this we have partnered with a a programmer to assist us in determining uh how we are going to break down our student population into four 25 groups um throughout the uh throughout the school day and i would be happy to go into more detail about how that's going to go uh but once we have those numbers into um for right now i'll just stop with saying once we have those uh the numbers of families that we know who are going to come into the school for hybrid we will be able to use uh those numbers to uh determine our cohorts and make sure our master schedule uh can work the way we need it to as soon

395as we transition into into hybrid joellen if there's anything else you want me to add there i mean there's there's more weeds that i can get into but i'm trying to make some siblings oh yes thank you that was a very important shift very i appreciate that yeah so we absolutely do know that we will schedule those cohorts uh such that uh siblings will be in the same one siblings will be with their with each other okay would you go to the uh health and safety protocols karen thank you i wanted to pick just a couple of things we are uh with the symptom screening via the app we're about there with everything app done but that will help us we're still working through the process of getting kids in and out of the building

396but i really want to go to the weekly saliva screening we are we've looked at two different screeners we've been asked why that part is not in the plan we did not put it in the plan because we've uh said repeatedly that we first of all had to negotiate the impact as a part of our meeting with our faculty and staff and that includes all of our faculty and staff members but we are close to having it done for students it will be mandated we've looked at two different screeners we've looked at the shield screening and we've looked at the safeguard screening but there will be screening in place we will also ask why the screening was not a part of the metrics and our recent meeting with the advisory uh committee we talked about

397the most important thing is to have the screener the screener is like another piece of that swiss cheese that helps to protect the district and um kind of help us from having more cases within the building but it does not preclude it neither one of the screeners um has been not a one of the screeners years a high uh pot false negative rate but once we get all of the details worked out for the screener that will be shared with the public and um so with people will know how that works but it is not in the plan the other reason it is not a part of the metrics is once a person is screened through our system if they test that they may possibly be prone to having covet they have to go and

398have um diagnostic tests for coven 19 to put them in the metrics could lead to a possible dual counting of students and or adults and so those individuals until it is confirmed that they are positive or probable cases and so we don't want to throw off our metrics by including that as a part of our metrics at this point um i'm trying to i'm going to ask ron very quickly if you would speak to the new filters the ionized units for all classrooms please i know i put you on the stop spot but if you could explain that so for all all of the classrooms um mostly have verb 13 filters but the 35 classrooms that don't we're putting in bipolar ionization that will increase the mer the current move eight four to five levels

399so that would be one to like a verb 13 or murder 14 and um they won't only they won't they're not only going to be in those areas they'll be eventually they'll be all over the entire building so it's something that would be ongoing even after colby it would it'd be throughout the building to improve the air quality it was something that we were we were um in a process of implementing no matter what but we had to speed up the process because of copper 19 and this would this would also save us on having portable hepa filters in the classrooms which would be noisy to instruction because these will be um inside of the the actual ventilation systems where you won't have any kind of um any kind of noise because of being the

400existing system okay thank you i don't want to get into any real technical details thank you so much would you go to the next slide so our next steps are to receive the opt-in opt-out commitments from families we extended the deadline to the 14th it was originally on the 7th and we also sent out gay parents the opportunity for an faq which they should receive the responses for tomorrow the other thing we've done is we're monitoring on-site student groupings and staff we're working to determine as greg said who's in each cohort we monitor our metrics daily and then the next step is to determine when we can really go into a hybrid we've been very clear that when we return from winter break um that first week at least school starts on the 11th will

401be remote when we will not go into the hybrid any earlier than january the 19th and that is to allow those parents and students who may have traveled the opportunity uh to self quarantine once we are able to go into a hybrid we will have freshmen first and we wouldn't we have committed to notifying our staff so that they can be ready to receive our kids so they will also be notified in advance of the date for hybrid that concludes the changes we've made to the presentation in the board item it is asking approval of the plan tonight we are asking approval of the plan so that we can move forward with getting schedules done and trying to make sure that we have all of our teachers assigned to the appropriate slots we are open

402for any questions that the boy may have at this time tom i know you have some questions i think i have me yes i think you have questions right you mentioned them but i'd like i mean my thank you for the work that you did and for kind of incorporating things we discussed last time my main area of focus is it remains on the testing um and i've asked them but i mean i'll ask again um one do we have do we know what the cost of testing will be we um the cost for testing trying to pull up the total response that i had gave yesterday the cost for tests if we do um safeguard which is the one through loyola and dr campbell is 11 per test um we have approximately 3 300

403kids i'm just trying to pull that from my memory and then we most and approximately 400 faculty and staff and so the way we figured it is we would be doing staff once a week we would be screening some students almost every day at least three days a week on the old students the uh our students oh the op the r and the f so at least three days a week we would be screening students it's going to cost us i'm trying to remember greg can you pull up those numbers please yeah i i just found it and i'll pull it up right here do you want me to speak to it or please because i don't have it in front of me i don't want to miss quote and while he's doing that the

404shield screening is 20 per student uh and there's a meeting with shield on tuesday okay i think it's tuesday so in a nutshell uh we figure that with our hybrid model here with our kids rotes heading into the school we're talking about 2 900 tests that we would have to do on a regular five-day work week within the school that includes faculty and staff and students that comes to a cost at 11 a test to about 31 900 a week okay and that is assuming that we have a hundred percent of the cohorts in the school right the full 25 of our student population so it's a maximum of 31 32 000 basically a week so then you can go you can work that number from there that's completely contingent on two factors um how

405that population how our student population and our faculty and staff population will decrease we'll lower that number and then the total number of weeks that we are going to have uh a hybrid model in place depending on what our metrics will dictate for us um we'll we'll uh will affect how much you know what the multiplier is to give us our total line for the semester the maximum cost that we anticipate with this if we are talking about 17 weeks with our overall population in place would be approximately um uh 370 thousand dollars for this but we anticipate being cons you know uh quite a bit less of that because of the popul the factors i just described so i i was hope that was somewhat better than clear as mud and those prices are

406for safeguard shield would be almost double that because it's 20 versus 11. and when when is the decision gonna be made as to which of those two we choose well we already have a contract that our legal has looked at for safe for safeguard that is the surveillance screener but i wanted to be true to the process and i reached out to shield as has mr yamashita to see what they had to offer it is our hope that um once we have the conversation on tuesday with shield i will my hope is to bring a recommendation to the board on this december 17th board of education meeting okay and and then um the next question related is which i i still can't grasp which is with you with this will be the one measure we

407have where it is for the specific population of students and adults that are in our building and my understanding is it is not in our metrics and can you again say the rationale and there is some and i know i mean i've been studying what other districts are doing and you know et cetera where they're kind of leveraging it more so yeah i think it will help us um [Music] i reference the swiss cheese there are levels of protection wearing your mask social distancing washing your hands and screaming those are the things that will help us have a more safe and healthy secure environment the reason screening is not a part of the metrics is because until a person tests positive if they do screening with us and we get the signal that they are

408leaning or are probable to possibly having covet they then have to go out and have an actual covet 19 test until they have been diagnosed positively as having covet they are a probable case once they are diagnosed as having covet they then go into our cases on cider cases on campus metrics um in our conversation tuesday with the medical professionals particularly the infectious disease specialist what we heard was it's important to have the screener but you don't want to run the risk of double counting uh cases by count putting the screener into the metrics and we agreed that the screener is a precaution for us but should not be a part of the metrics mr yamashita that you want to add to that you were in that meeting or karen you were in that meeting

409yeah i guess i would just maybe amplify why uh they're not included in the metrics we we could on our dashboard add something um presumed positives you know based on um the positive tests that come up from our screening but again that's just a screening that's not a that's not an actual diagnostic you know pcr test so the danger is you know the i the identities are not being shared so we get you know let's say we have 10 kids on a monday who screen positive if we put those in our metrics and then we get um you know and then i'm informed that there's a positive case to add to the metrics i'm not going to know the identity of the student and was that a presumed positive was it a new positive there's

410just a lot of potential for those statistics to get money so it seems cleaner to do the presumed positive as a separate uh metric not included on the charts but something in the dashboard right we also don't want to count it as a metrics and have it cause us to go into an adaptive pause unnecessarily or to go full remote unnecessarily because we factored the pop probable cases into our other metrics dr prude adams so i agree that mixing the two uh data streams is probably not appropriate um the reported positives that you're utilizing right now in the metrics are coming from either the village of oak park department of public health or cook county public health for river forest these positives will have come from other diagnostic centers whether it's a physician's office or

411one of the accounting based testing sites and they will have been done with pcr the two different tests have different characteristics there is at least some sentiment on the medical advisory board to favor the more sensitive tests the university of illinois test it is currently being considered at the fda for emergency use use author authorization as a diagnostic test it is sensitive enough it is also handled by a clia based lab so that's one of the criteria they would use university of illinois is trying to get that designation so that they in fact have one-stop shopping where they screen the students and then in fact now have a diagnostic test so treating these separately makes some sense because there is a delay in getting the reported positives from the health departments if we look at

412our own test data we would have immediate information that would actually aid our case spine or contact tracing so it's much more efficient as some of the other uh one of the other districts is doing they are keeping their um their direct test results separate they are keeping them in a metric on their dashboard so that gives you an idea of what exactly they're seeing right at the front door and that can be the probable cases can be on our dashboard but not factored into our metrics in one one addition if in fact they get the authorization from the fda that will in fact now be a diagnostic test so i'm trying to get shield illinois to give us an update on that when we meet with them on tuesday may i ask a question

413that on this um maybe dave if you could maybe opine but it seems to me that the high school being the place with the biggest number of people or among the biggest in our community going in and out on a regular basis if we are able to do this well we could help reduce the overall community spread by being able to be more vigilant in screening the students and the faculty and so on and then that could then percolate throughout the community i mean i think we have a huge opportunity here to be part of a great um whatever that cycle is called is the opposite of vicious is that is a wonderful in fact very very accurate uh characterization um i've been asking the public health department since the beginning of this pandemic to

414consider some sort of initiatives to at least run some clinics where we actually get more tests immediately in the oak park area rather than having people run up to the the site up near harlem irving park getting a sampling of individuals in the immediate area certainly gives us a better handle on the disease in our local community so i think your idea is great because if we do do screening with students we are catching um you know we're you know basically contributing another 3 000 tests per week tom did you have more questions or were you i think no i think that those are answered answered my questions and i i guess i just would leave it with a comment because it sounds like you know obviously we are still in a state of flux

415we haven't decided on what tests um and it sounds like in terms of what goes on the dashboard we still need to define so as we define that and then as we gather data i guess the question is as we gather data are we then subject to to continue to refine what our metrics are based on what we learn or is it going to be inked in and we're not going to change it for the full semester okay so i'm going to try to answer all of yours i am prepared to make a recommendation for the screener but i want to be true as i said to the process and look at all of them i'm also keeping cost factor in mind when that recommendation is made so i need to say that the other

416thing the metrics we have are not etched in stone they are what leads to the start of the conversation and so as we look there there's always a refinement it's because the metrics change uh but science is what will guide us um and i think i lost the last part of your question i'm sorry that's you science will guide us is all i need to hear that's a good ending okay okay other questions from other board members there i just had another quick one i noticed the reference to lunch period and i just wanted to get clarity on are we actually having people eating in the building and how are we handling that we are having uh people eat in the building now it won't be the entire popul you know by entire population i

417mean the the entire 25 cohort won't be eating lunch some of those students will be leaving perhaps the bulk of them on any given day but for the students who are going to stay for that academic tutoring or the counseling group social work groups and so on and so forth we we we need to feed them uh and we need to feed them in-house and so we are very confident that mike picarski has uh has set up some very safe protocols to make that happen and we also have learned from our schools around the area uh i've heard from folks in the west suburban conference dr pruitt adams has heard uh from superintendents in the area that they have not found that eating lunch has been a spreading event right they've been able to manage

418that very very effectively so we feel very comfortable with those protocols man okay thanks is there an anticipation of what's the max number of students that would be eating it again on a given day i know it's still unknowns but it's like it's a smaller percentage of the overall student body coming in yeah you know there's no great way right now for me to let you know like what i mean i can tell you you know 25 is roughly 8.50 two thirds of that is roughly 500 some that's the maximum students that are going to be in the building on any given on any given day now it's going to be a subset of that that stays to eat lunch and so that gives you like the math that we're starting from um but what

419do we anticipate a half maybe three quarters of the students might stay for that and we know that we can fit you know 50 students in a space we have various places for them to eat lunch so we're going to be able to make that work um but we won't know the numbers until we go through it there's just no way to know and even even then i think the early numbers will be high because people don't want to lose their chance to be on site and if they opt out now they're done they're they're remote for the full semester so i anticipate we're going to see you know a fair number of folks maybe sign up for hybrid and then when we actually launch they'll go remote other questions this is an item for

420approval yeah um all right well so mr yamashita thank you so much for staying for so long um your work on this project has been greatly appreciated you put in a lot of hours not just a meeting but in meetings but outside of meetings talking to board members who have questions and conversing with the medical professionals on the advisory committee so thank you so much for all of that it was really invaluable especially if you understand that stuff way better than we do so thank you um all right uh i moved to approve the image reimagine educational paragraph 2020 2021 hybrid plan is there a second second terry can we have a roll call please gail mr martieri yes mr darren yes mr eisley yes miss harris yes tchaikovsky yes dr moore yes mr dickson's

421body yes uh i know it's slay but if i can make a comment please sure i just want to thank all the members of the steering committee who put in endless hours i want to thank the members of the advisory committee who put in insurmountable hours but i also want to thank mr yamashita who served also as the liaison to the steering committee and as a member of the advisory committee who was assigned to facilities but also set in for many of the medical uh professional meetings and um who actually set up our meeting for tuesday with shields so i just wanted to thank him personally as well same for me thank you yes citizen of the year award all right you guys we did it so moved uh all in favor hi hi hi

422what room do we go to next your bedroom all right guys have a great night thank you for hard work