Board Meeting - 10/25/18

001the Illinois State Board of Education and the lead sponsor those who excel to honor individuals who have made a significant contribution to join States public and Mountain Club elementary and secondary schools excellence meritorious service and a special recognition award represented in seven categories classroom teacher school administrator principal student support personnel educational service personnel school board member community volunteer and barely for education nomination for tools or evaluated by selection committee comprised of individuals who represent a variety of educational it is our honor to have our own Michael Steven represent Oh [Music] [Applause] my own warrants Lanphier i so versus of our student council has been working on some tearing ideas that we have volunteering at retirement homes or arguing something other country we are talking right now to other subpoenas for that a tradition of excellence

002already have questions for them that would ask them that soon some student concerns are with the 12-day absences policy whether it be people with religious holidays or those who have been hospitalized we're not entirely sure about the policy and would like to ask you already know and understand that we've also plan to talk with the head of the food service to possibly talk about have a salad fruit bar available for students as that's been requested another issue we've been looking at people scanners one instance or the going outside for lunch scanners or students are saying scanners are a little slow it's hard to actually go to lunch and come back in time for school and the second is when it comes to going to class when we're late whether it be a second under minute

003scanners often don't work and we are sometimes is even have to meet tenants late for class and we're concerned about that as well another issue not really against an issue but more of a request would be with possibly being able to use our IDs pay for color printing we have been talking about that last year and thought that might happen but sure and then lastly graduation as well as the college students here for me personally I thought it was very good I felt that we had a constructive dialogue and this arouse I think home for actually explaining it so the work left in the dark because that's how it came about originally on behalf of students I'm saying that we would be in the because this is [Applause] and admissions counselors our poetry slam team

004textures glam team will go to their region about on November 3rd congratulations also goes out to our music students who urged spots in the 2018 Olympics music Education Association district 1 ensembles and will perform and through district 1 vegetable next month English teacher Lauren yawns fiction work daughter was published to the shoreline of infinity the science fiction quarterly magazine we did 22 certified staff members just completed OPR House annual beyond diversity workshop it's a part of our ongoing racial equity professional development we are I wanted to stay at know the state we have changed our structure of our agenda to have our announcements prior to public comments as a way for our community to and my selfish reason is to ensure that our community is able to hear our students report because we're all here

005and so I just want this will be and we are at the point of public comment and I know that we have audience and just wanted to remind that this is not considered dialogue with the board and I also just wanted to read from our policy about public participation and this are the guidelines that our expectation it for ourselves because you all that public comment is is seen as a time to make comment and not a dialogue with the board for tannerite comments are limited to three minutes and unusual circumstances and when an individual's made a request in advance individual allow speed for more than three minutes we're going to observe the board president's decision to shorten public comment to conserve time and give the maximum number of individuals an opportunity to speak and observe

006the board president's decision to determine the procedure all matters regarding total participation not otherwise covered in board policy and I don't need to talk about civility and respect with us that something remember that issues with I'm stating about the number of public comments or two reasons long that were very full agenda this evening and I know there are those here that want to hear the discussion and decisions that board has placed before you this evening and I also want to ensure that we are able to hear as many people as possible so while we're not going to limit it to under three minutes we have 28 people that are signed up I will ask that if your comment has already been made that perhaps this will into the business of the business meeting of the

007board and also if that's okay too there's a written statement that once you give it to our clerk and this evening I'm going to ask that we allow our students to speak just because I would Ryan Brennan hi hello good evening I'm sure we could start the timers it stars oh hello good evening animal were members of district 200 Iran Brennan although I'm not a senior hero purify this will be affectionate class I in the class of 2021 this is a comprehensive and thoughtfully put together a proposal that just as the graduation attire attire change and this addresses the situation's of Erath as a school fails to see this is regarding situations such as various incomes the various families I tell PRF and also the conversation of gender expression or gender orientation as well for

008a student to conform to the strict to tight regulations that are currently in place is not only in comfortable for the student but puts them in a place of pressure to conform additionally it will have this institution about PRF look to be as depicted as an impersonal institution that cares more about the tradition that is outdated exclusive and just very binary to be burned instead the students that graduating themselves this puts this tradition above the students and their wants and needs I'm having this little evil vrf feeling 100% represented and accepted it's fulfilling for the school as a whole and it's something that as a high school of a wrap owes to its students probably went to graduate students without feeling like the value scholars that they are is the implementation of this proposal think

009you have a good evening [Applause] hello I'm a senior at McGrath my name is pilot for 135 years improve has had a unique distinct and beautiful graduation ceremony unlike any other school we as a school to pride ourselves on being unique and not conforming to the ideas and standards set by other schools we pride ourselves in being individual here in our craft and switching to caps and gowns will strip us of those values that we have been taught since we became students here four years ago having such a distinct graduation ceremony is a testament to how unique we are to school we have already made several changes to the original tradition like switching to a simple black white and navy color scheme in comparison to always in black suits and girls in white dresses these

010new changes allow for each student to not only feel included but to also express themselves through their chosen attire students are now able to wear any formal wear they want as long as it fits the color scheme choosing caps and gowns will be an added expense for students and will only be amplified when we consider what will have to be worn underneath them as well typically at regular graduations formal wear or at least nice clothing is required to be worn under the gown therefore not only are you paying for the $27 cap and gown but you are also finding and potentially having to pay for something to go under it well I completely understand that due to societal standards pressure the traditional attires still requires students to dress a longer gender binary but that same

011decision is acquired when deciding what to wear under the gown you will not be covered in that gown throughout the entirety of your graduation day whether you're getting ready at home or going up to dinner with your grandparents afterwards you are still sadly being forced to make that choice this is something that is not going to change whether you are wearing a cap and gown or not this is the sad reality of life that students that don't conform to the gender binary face whether it be at school family functions social outings or no matter what the decision is here on their graduation day this is with this being said I think it is so important to recognize the values that we have been so lucky to receive from a pair of such as the importance

012of our individuality and having confidence within ourselves wearing the traditional attire allows for everyone to express their creativity and individuality in the ways that the cap and gown would not permit graduation to UNC moving UIC will take away a rich part of our history that up here up is known for I recognize that one of the main problems with the Open Graph stadium location is the seating however instead of just moving in to another place - why not strategically maximize the amount of space that we have my sister graduated from over here just last year so I can speak the graduation setup and layout with confidence first of all every case given five tickets regardless of their family situation my family just needs three tickets getting people only the tickets that they require might allow

013for who might allow for other students immediate families to go to their high school graduation at their own high school additionally I noticed last year Mexicans graduation that there's a lot of unused space that I firmly believe can be reasonably filled to the left of the graduates there's about 300 seats for handicapped loved ones hover to the right where there's an equal amount of space there's just two benches designated to the highest daughters to the Booster Club 300 students worth of space is filled by just one family that was able to buy their land chip from rusty this is clearly a waste of space a valuable space that could be reallocated towards larger immediate families while UIC does take the space problem away there are countless other reasons why USD is not a viable option

014first follow-up i've been cheaper for the district to ever go to which in the US see it is not only cheap it is not cheaper for the family there is not only an $11 parking free feed but getting there is not as simple as getting to Opie reflect we give it a every morning well of course you could take the train you probably don't want to do that your graduation attire to Smith's before you have to receive your high school diploma or obviously you can drive but as we know the Eisenhower traffic is very unpredictable and that isn't the stress we and our families need to take on of when celebration of four years of hard work it regards to transportation I think we can agree that staying it up here up is much more

015convenient and possibly cost-efficient wrapping up the main reason that we have so many other students don't want to graduate at USC is because we're simply not graduating from UNC I want to appear at Friday night football games right in that Stadium every month i grill when we got to escape a couple math equations we left right out those doors and onto that turn last year last year after the park than shooting away back to the Sun hit art school like never before and we walked right out to that turn to share our condolences with each other it's one unit and began to be the responsible adults that okay Rockets raised us to be from me since sixth grade Chuck's tell cross-country workouts have been in that Stadium and honestly more importantly we need family could

016not get a little soccer game right up there in that field last week our memories are here and no matter what moment shall we bring to you I see it can never add up to the beauty an immense amount of memories we hold in this school most importantly we should not let this debate on the venue an entire overshadow the accomplishments of the class of 2019 whether we are walking down the football field in traditional attire with our beautiful school in the background are moving in to UIC basketball court with the caps and gowns we should not allow debate discussion to ruin anyone's graduation thank you so much for your time my name is Nico Gonzales Stuber and I'm a senior here at opra I've come to express concerns regarding the changes to graduation I

017attended the meeting last night hosted by mr. s where these changes were discussed I was hoping to gain some form of closure about graduation but unfortunately I was still left with questions something that has been especially frustrating is the lack of student outreach on the ceremony changes my class has seen several years before us have the opportunity to vote on attire yet that option has not been taken down yet that option has been taken from us this disappoints me because I feel good young people of voice and encouraging them to speak their mind is crucial especially in today's culture and political climate the concerns about the lack of voting were brought up last night and we were told that there is no vote on the change because it will be in favor of keeping the

018traditional attire and that is not what the administration wants I asked you what message are we sending to the students Okara by taking away their voice on their own graduation only because what the majority of students want is not what the administration wants when mr. rouse left the meeting many students still felt unhappy so we stayed to discuss the matters further we couldn't we quickly came up with alternatives to the graduation changes many students felt there could be a compromise but enduring caps and gowns but still have the ceremony ago Kiara graduating from UIC while in new caps and gowns would just not feel like an au pair at graduation if you choose to further ignore the students opinions on entire changes we should at least be able to go on the venue to change

019another idea brought up was the abundance of space on the football field the students were confused on why we could not simply find a way to add more seating on the field itself to increase the number of tickets available frankly it's a football field there is a lot of room to work with we also discussed why every student receives five tickets for graduation when some just don't need it many said they only need two or three and the extra ticket should go to those who have larger families there should be a way to keep the ceremony at Kolkata by how do students only take the tickets they need so they are more available to others all of these changes of the ceremony just seemed to be a quick fix without truly thinking their solution I

020asked the board in the administration to please listen to the students opinions on the matter because aren't these changes supposed to be about our communions there are so many compromises and alternatives that could be made at the end of the day this is our high school graduation so we deserve to be students cost-effectively and how they identify they're performing genuine fluid or transgender might not feel comfortable wearing the designated outfit or their sex and although they can't wear anything in the color scheme the traditional traditional is where women wear long white dresses and boys were suits which is really and it means a lot of students feel uncomfortable and last year we had a bunch of students not walk because they didn't feel safe and comfortable than what they were wearing and their graduation attire

021I feel as though it is our school and so we should have a say in it but if we put it to a vote and a varsity noon senior body class does go to it the students who it affects the most talked about comfortable wearing anything they're always going to be the minority and the students who aren't affected by it most are gonna win because there's more of us but aren't extremely affected by it so some are cost-effective because is a guarantee that every single person in America has a suit in their closet which are expensive and I don't have a white long dress in my closet which causes me to go buy one the dirt also hurt it's fine I also think that you can wear whatever you want and it allows students to

022feel more let me have choices and link they're not constricted to something and also a persistence of diversity and also lets us have unity because our school has been enforcing equity which is so important and they've been stressing it which is so important but if we don't have caps and it's not unified so good evening everyone my name is Naomi so we're all seniors and we're also for cap and gowns so although we might not all agree on the graduation attire Kappa Theon's will alleviate many issues if someone wishes to wear traditional attire they can wear it under their cap and gowns and our intake pictures without the cap and gown afterwards this also allows trans and non-binary students not to be forced to come out when they are not ready to although the traditional

023traditional attire is valued greatly in our community if I select many students we can treat it we can create new traditions of individualism through decorating our own cabs and if OPM claims to be Pro lgbtq+ but then ignored the issues of lbgtq plus people we are [Applause] if you have also with USC or also having graduation maro perak even if we add more space and we have a ton more speeding and we somehow were able to accommodate as many people as us you would be able to if it range that doesn't matter so you only get two tickets so it's just a lot safer for people to have to go out to UIC because if I only had two tickets [Music] [Applause] I will just a buff for our town hall which will be all

024about answering questions about imagine I did see that public comment here and that evening will be the opportunity to go beyond making a comment and my name is Amanda Massey I live in the 100 block of South East Avenue can you hear me in the back okay acknowledging that all decisions of consequence should be based on fact our group OPRS pragmatic solutions has conducted research and compiled and analyzed key data or for your review a few members of our group will assist in presenting this information to you tonight you have important decisions ahead that will impact our school and our community in a very significant way and your decisions should be based on fact and actual needs not once the reality is that d200 can no longer fund expensive once the lasting legacy of America

025to me should be that are limited and education dollars should be used to improve academic outcomes for all of our students and to best prepare them for life after graduation so that each and every student steps confidently into their future that mission that legacy aligns with our community values with the magics proposed plan we were considering demolishing a structurally sound southeast corner of the building to construct a 10-lane competition pool would dedicated divert well the luxury for any high school this pool will also offer 10 practice swim lanes imagine refers to the pool is an eight-lane competition very well but high school swim wins can be 10 at 7 feet wide so imagines proposed pool is actually a 10-lane competition pool with the diving boat it's a large pool by any standard well the imagine

026group says the pool costs only 2.5 million dollars the cost for digging the hole in the pools mechanicals and liner yet in reality the entire 66 million dollar price tag for sequence 2 is an Associated pool cost as this pool that's double the size of a high school competition pool can't be built without demolishing and rebuilding the structurally sound building based on the 2014 custom and estimates of 80 to 87 million dollars to build a 37 meter pool the same size as this forty yard pool it's cost prohibitive to build this pool within the existing building that was the finding of the 2014 pools site committee yet that's not true of the other elements in sequence - as they can be accommodated by renovating the existing building they don't require the building to be demolished

027there is no line-item consequence 600 seat Aquatic Center and no cost has been released it appears to be hidden in a category called community / shared spaces many of the imagined cost estimates lack transparency we haven't had time you have to go through the new cost estimates being released in tonight's meeting but we hope that they are presented clearly and transparently in fact is OPR and the fact is OPR M doesn't need this size pool and Aquatic Center they are expensive once and our limited education dollars should not be used to fund wants of schools of aquatics teams and the wants of private swim clothes are limited educational dollars must be used to support our true needs of our school all the students [Applause] despite repeated requests by the community over the past few years

028and as recently as a couple of months ago to you the D 200 board to review and update the school's outdated swimming requirement no action has been taken the self-imposed mandatory swimming requirement is being used to inflate the need for pool water it is reasonable imprudent for a school tube to conduct a comprehensive review of a program before undertaking a major and expensive replacement project despite claims to the contrary the pool is a key driver of the 218 million dollar proposed facility plan our report centers on the school's physical education swimmer environment relative to other areas schools when we learned that the imagine group had conducted research into the PE swimmer requirements of area high schools and also collected data on recent Chicagoland high school pools we fired the information and used it as a

029starting point for conducting our own research we included all of the schools and imagines two distinct studies in our review of PE swim requirements but imagine didn't include all area schools in its swim requirements study schools such as Fenwick which have no PE swimming requirement weren't included and imagines review the schools imagine included appear to be random for America for example imagine did not include all of the schools in OPRS own conference the West Suburban Conference some of those schools have known cool and no swimming requirement okie Arif pragmatic solutions included all of the schools in the conference and we also broke the data down to the silver division which is OPRS division within the conference our review included 50 schools compared to imagines 26 schools imagine use general terms only such as less than

030a quarter a border or more than a quarter to describe each school's respective swim requirement but that's begging really doesn't tell the true story a quarter is nine weeks our information is specific to the actual number of days of swimming required and presents a more accurate picture of the school's respective requirements we compiled the information of area school swimmer requirements into an easy-to-read chart called and you have an evaluation of required to swim curriculum for suburban Chicago area high schools it clearly shows where OPRS phys ed swim requirement is in relation to its peer schools at the October 3rd imagine community conversation co-chair Mike Porter stated that the imagined groups research of swim requirements at area high schools showed that 70 percent of the schools had the same or more PE swimming required as opra

031excuse me okay 25 I'm just continuing in fact okay RF require substantially more swimming time than its peers in every category requires on average three days more three times more days of swimming than its peers in the Western severe conference and two times more days of swimming and its peers in the silver division now review fifty schools of EF requires on average twice as many days this what meanest the other schools and imagines an overview of some requirements OPR F requires 60 days to the schools we have copies of the evaluation for you and the collective it is also an aggregated chart in addition to our research error some basic facts about programs swimming is not a state nor in federal high school graduation requirement many schools have no swim requirements or a pool on

032campus Booth's a luxury the construction cost and applause 14 operating and scheduled repair costs are often too high and unsustainable for many school districts based on the Park District's research each other don't learn to spend like third graders though they are less likely to ever learn how to swim realistically the focus for in high schools money program should be water safety based on the responses to her boy requests over the last two years we have learned the following ok ro spends nearly a million dollars a year on te swim sellers and it's Adele's that figure includes no bull costs the merits of the swim program are unsubstantiated a request to obtain exit becomes dementia the profits the swimming proficiency came through the piece web classes came up empty the Floyd findings aligned with the statement

033made by then school board president during the 2016 pool referendum campaign he said well the classes conduct your pre testing there is no exit testing the time is now for you the district of the school in the schools [Applause] my name is Gina sanella I live at 162 North Scovel Oh pyramid has never presented a transparent comprehensive review of the cost to operate and maintain a long stretch pool what is the cost what does it cost to operate maintain a standard size high school competition pool given the realities of our tax burden community all costs construction operating maintenance must be considered in our weight as a value to the students the school the community into its taxpayers deep 200 commissioned a statistically significant survey in 2016 to assess the community's interest in the Denver Post

034pool plans and related questions that they grow report concluded that our pool at the high school is not a priority for the community there are however two viable pool solutions either one of resumed the D 204 a rational choice that would be in the best interest of all stakeholders today and tomorrow Oh para rheumatic solution supports two solutions neither requires total demolition of the structurally sound South End of the building and both would create space within the building one solution is a standard sized pool in the East port south gym area the rational pool solution solution was featured in the legged 2016 pool plan the standing 2013 report and the right report in excuse me the white report thousand three the solution is a joint the other solution that would be a joint pole partnership

035between the 200 and the Park District to create a year-round aquatic resource and Richland Commons with the school of the community the price tag for either pool is under 20 million dollars there are two high school swimming programs worth mentioning this discussion is for both is one safety first students in high schools you swim program which is best practice includes a test option for students who already know how to swim a school official says that half of their students don't test out and are required to take one specialist swimming minute ranges from six weeks excuse me three to six weeks depending on the need students who tested out choose another PE option Stephenson's and entire TV program is choice based and I'm Monica she and 626 pair host the other high school PE swim program

036that's relevant to this conversation is Glenbard north while it has no pool on campus it does have a PE swim requirement all students take one session of swimming three weeks in length usually one's freshman or sophomore year the PE swim classes are held during the school day a bus takes students to the park district or that's one mile away from school the same program could be replicated here with a joint pool partnership with the Park District original comments a summer school option had also be awkward well just even saying plan marburg peace when the programs are logical reasonable and cost-effective if D two-hundredths when requirement is to be forward thinking it should incorporate a test out of option and reduce the number of days of required swimming any required high school PE swim program should

037be based on water safety given all of this information doesn't match ins proposed 10 lane competition pool but it's dedicated diving well and it's substantial ongoing maintenance costs as well as its 600 CE Aquatic Center a lot with our community's values and is it the very best use of our limited educational dollars based on the pecos survey the community's answer is No relatedly it is a false narrative that much of the cash reserve can be used to fund any facility plan the cash reserve is already spoken for it's going to be drawn down substantially over the next five years as its earmarked to offset the school's deficit spending according to D 205 year financial projections released in October 2017 every dollar spent from the cast reserve for any facility improvement moves our community one dollar

038closer to an operating referendum based on the projections report and a statement by the school's chief financial officer at in 2017 school board meeting and operating referenda it is already a possibility in 2023 in fact going back to a prior now old parent requires substantially more swimming time than its peers in every category it requires on average three times more days of swimming as peers from the west suburban Conference and two times more days of swimming that is pierced and solar division when they land on their research leave three schools that we're waiting to get confirmation on their swim times and as soon as we do we will email you that those findings and we all thank you very much for your timing inspiration [Applause] good evening my name is su stock of the Maranatha

039a pair of senior and I did send written versions these comments that have been I'm glad to share them in this meeting as well my comments are reference to the graduation attire I want to first thank the board dr. Greg Adams mr. rouse and the many dedicated staff and students for the steps of the camera has taken towards the inclusion of transgender contender non-conforming and gender fluid students over this past year as the parent of a trans student I am aware of the wonderful support they have received but also our than many micro aggressions my child has experienced during their time at OU Cara related to their gender identity as the parent of the student who spoke to y'all from this podium at the board meeting where the vote to adopt the inclusion policy was

040taken I'm really grateful for the care the attention and the validity these issues have received and continue to receive but the work is not done I support the language of the agenda item and ask that the tradition of binary gender identification at graduation be discontinued this is an antiquated tradition that simply no longer makes sense especially the light of the policies and procedures that were adopted in the spring it is akin to asking all students to declare their racial or ethnic identity but giving them only two options african-american and Caucasian and so if your salvation if you're a multiracial guys luck you've got to choose one of these two options and then we would require them to our government that would demonstrate that identity out of those two options to think about it that way

041seems ridiculous we would not do this for race we do not do this for race why why do we want to continue to do that for gender my childhood ride you ate this spring this is a request for a parent as a large institution to change raishin tradition but it's also very personal request as this will greatly impact my family my child will likely not attend graduation they are forced to publicly identify themselves as either male or female although student voices are incredibly important I do encourage you to not decide this simply by putting it to do to a student vote to do that with just pass upon the responsibility and as a student I already said earlier when there was a majority rule vote by definition minorities this out rather I advocate for the

042administration of a pair enough to take a stand and to extend the policies and procedures already put into place with the earlier board above this eliminating the practice of requiring binary gender identification and graduation would be hugely symbolic and important stuff please adopt the caps and gowns [Applause] hi I'm Laurie climate 245 north Kemalists start with a very brief comment no make it a little longer absolutely not three words are you crazy maybe four you must be crazy okay so now that we're theoretically 218 million dollars for the total of the five sequences not including the cost of borrowing for inflation that does not even get us any new or renovated classrooms for academic or vocational or technical use or players those improvements along with the associated 15 million dollar cost which is technically part

043of the 20 million that would phase one a new sequence one estimate those have actually been shifted to sequence four so any new or renovated academic vocational or play arts classrooms are in the distant future that brings the cost of the project from the first two sequences down to a level that can be funded for reserves and from non referendum funding sources so much for OPR FHS educating and preparing its students for college or careers the boy they sure will have nice PE facilities okay I've been pretty negative so now I'd like to offer a constructive government since Oak Park is home to so many iconic buildings designed by having architect friend right may I suggest that this project deserves to have its own iconic architect forget about the no names you've been working with

044large very rare but they're right of the mill you need to think of something that kind so I suggest going with studio gang led by Illinois's own gene gang she is perhaps best known locally for theme I kind of impact with a link down on North Columbus Drive and also the one the tower which is being built your back these are the largest projects ever awarded to an American architectural firm and in value order so if you're going to do it do it right and do it proud making a statement building one that will draw tourists from all around the world and great tradition of park architecture the studio gang designed both Park River Forest High School aquatic and Sports Complex thank you [Applause] good evening my name is Monique done and my daughter is

045Grace gun she has then stood before you once before she is that one of the leadership conferences that the school is supporting my asked her to give me words that she I could share on her behalf and she said no she didn't want me to speak for her so I get to speak for myself as a parent who has had the opportunity to have a student graduate from oper F and I'll have my second and last dude our child this year graduated from OPR F and I had to say that I understanding in support of not only the caps and gowns but also the change in the graduation venue most important to me is the change in the venue I do support the caps and gowns because not only does it provide variety and stole

046my support all the other reasons that have that have gone forward for supporting the caps and gowns but let's not forget that though it's not in traditional park to have caps and gowns caps and gowns is a tradition that dates back as far as the 15th century and it is important to realize and recognize that there are many parents of students who graduated in caps so that's another important tradition that could be considered more so I want to speak about the venue change last year was the most stressful the most stressful experience in trying to make sure that my daughter had a very memorable experience and my graduation that she had those who loved her around it created stress because of the limited amount of tickets even with five that only provided opportunity for my

047family of four and maybe one of the grandmothers to come and I have a brother who was determined to travel all the way from Colorado and I was not stopping him from coming and so my stressor was another stressor was that how am I gonna make sure he gets in the graduation you're calling around whether you know people in old Park or not that don't need their tickets you know it's all dependent upon that we have to think of certain things such as well should this grandma come or should this come I come my husband's mother has dementia so we should not have to think about well she won't remember it anyway it's not about that it's about honoring her presence that still is with us and so the fact that we had to even

048consider not having her there because of that reason alone because we're so limited in being able to invite our family and celebrate with them you know whether it's a if it's at you I see any people's family can come if it's here it's very it can be very limited even more so than only her mother my child's mother of five can come mother and father can come her sister can't be there you know so it really created a lot of stress and the thing about preserving through the tradition while it's respected it shouldn't crush another person's memories then we'll have to live with forever that her grandmother was not there and this could be the last decade and it that good last year that she lives those type of things that it's just it should

049not be that important to try to preserve a tradition and crush the memories of those who are graduating some of those who are supporting the keeping the tradition of having it at Oak Park while that's beautiful and thank god it did not rain it looked beautiful but it's not thank you [Applause] good evening relishing the role of being here I'm Amy Hill I'm gonna wait North Lombard Avenue I am the history division the head and in that capacity I want to thank you for acknowledging history teacher Mike Steven who is one of many fine fine history teachers we're very proud that he was recognized by those who excel but primarily I'm here as a parent of two graduates and a freshman and I'm here in support of the change of graduation and tire for the

050reasons you heard and I just want to try to send one point home to which I know matters to you we're weighing values we're we're weighing competing values in this discussion and to the values that are in somewhat at odds our tradition and social justice and in my mind weighing those values it's an easy win for social justice I was persuaded probably two years ago this has been an ongoing conversation as many of you know going back to the days of super rich who was the first to say girls could wear pants and it's been a long conversation like many of our other social justice conversations and and I'm very excited about the prospect this could be the last year last year could have been the last year when we will be putting our transgender

051and non-binary students in the very awkward and uncomfortable position of having to out themselves at graduation and on a day that should be devoted to the celebration so I urge you to to go with social justice over tradition in this particular case thank you [Applause] hello good evening I appreciate never to need to really speak to you and there's been a lot so this is about the adoption of having caps and gowns at her graduation and there's been a lot already said about it the bottom line is that there is a segment of the student population that wouldn't have the same rights as others and it's our duty to be inclusive of all of them of them memorable movement with you that moment when you walk across the stage and you get that diploma and

052they your family can be there and applaud you and celebrate you and you can walk proudly and the end really the bottom line again is there will be a settlor of the student population that won't be able to do that or if they do they won't be doing it as cruelly they express and feel for themselves so they are our minority they will not be a majority right now and they're relying on you to be their voice and so far you have all been there voice I'm so proud of our high school and and the strides we've made to have this be an equitable safe empowering environment and here's another opportunity to actually prove that that's who we are which is why we moved here which is why we stay here and why I'm here

053so thank you so much [Applause] Kevin the party Kevin apart from 715 Thomas under mr. rouses new policy it's okay and wear a hat in the school but I don't agree with that policy so I'm going to take it off into the deference to the volunteer board members who spend a couple hundred dollars a year on your work I know that because my dad wants that dr. Jackie's seat I know how hard you work I want to speak on several things one of the graduation requirement I think the attire should change the caps of gals on behalf of poor students and also the transgender issue I think that's an easy call I think but you should keep the tradition of holding it at a campus not someplace that's eight or ten miles away but or

054we can bind to our own institution and my friend John Phelan who I considered to be they justice either of past board members I know what's going to speak right after me as in same issue and we talked briefly and he may drink with me on those two issues also I will speak on the 30th with regard to your 218 million dollar issue here I believe that will have to be financed in three different tranches and it will take up to 40 years and all most of us will be dead I know why would because helping 190 years old that you can't possibly put that number together because your debt limit is 152 million or whatever it is at the moment and you can pull some tricks at the start but then you're going to

055run out of that bag of tricks isn't that call them in a in an email to you you're going to have to get serious about priorities and what it is you want done because you're not going to be able to get all this done you have to have some financial limits you have me handsome this race that you have to have some priorities thank you very much [Applause] good evening my name is ginger Coulomb you see and I'm a social worker here at OPM though I am reading a statement today on behalf of a parent who could not be here I've had the pleasure of working with and getting to know this parent student very well during my time here at OU prf the parents name is James idle burg and she is the parent

056of a current bokya of jr. she says I am writing to you in support of the proposal to adopt a new dress code for graduation attire at OU prf the current dress code is outmoded discriminatory and out of step with community values and need an out of step with community values and needs to be updated our school strives to be at the cutting edge with course offerings technology training policies and activities if there were faculty whining the face of students who are so uncomfortable with it that they choose to miss their own graduations that this district continues to impose this dress code at a red comment that a dress code that allows male or female students to wear either a a suit or be a dress or pantsuit is fair to everyone I'd like to

057take a moment to explain why this is not the case if the dress code word wear anything you like if it is black or white then it would not impose such a burden on non-binary and transgender students but by framing the choices in terms of gender specific clothing students are forced into choosing how to present that day the uncomfortable gender stereotypes they can fit in box a by wearing a suit and then be identified as male or they can fit in Box B by wearing a dress skirt or pants suit and then be identified as female there is not an option to say both or neither because whichever they choose there by the terms of the dress code forced to conform to one set of patience or the other for transgender students who for example

058are not out to grandparents or their teachers or others in attendance at graduation they have to either be forcibly outed by their choice or hide themselves in cap and gown they do not have to hide anything and they don't have to meet anyone's gender stereotypes for students who identify as a gender non-binary gender fluid having to make the choice of which part of themselves to leave behind a graduation is demeaning and depressing for some portion of this population just being faced with the choice of no good options can cause a panic attack in these cases a choice of dress or suit does not provide a chance to express their individuality in argument I have heard four ask you a cap and gown it forces them to hide their true cells or skip graduation these are

059not hypothetical students these are actual current and former opf students and for what reason is such a burden being placed on these students for our idea of a nice photograph for those who object that the word impose does not apply here because students have in the past voted on the issue may I point out that allowing a majority to make the rules that only adversely impacts a small minority is not any kind of democracy a vote by only girls that the boys must wear ties wouldn't be considered fair and this isn't either I urge you to consider what the compassionate decision is what the enlightened decision is and whether denying students the right to celebrate their own selves and identities at their graduation for the sake of photographs can be justified all right one sentence

060left but okay thank you very much [Applause] my name is what you guys know what my name is look at 600 Thatcher her for us John Phelan and I come up to talk about tradition I'm here to talk about venue I'm here to talk about a tire and to provide a little context a lot of you know me I don't get up here of much even though I used to beat her all the time and I only come when it's important and I want to make sure that I express the importance of the traditions that we've been talking about tonight because it's easy enough to see things happen on the field to watch the ceremony and sitting or that looks nice but it's hard to understand the pride a few who walk off and thirty

061years later you know 40 years later 35 years later for me to really appreciate that how much some people in this commitment do you feel how strongly they feel about the institution they grew up in and a lot of people come back here so then that pride of the community is an asset of the community and it's political capital and you're going to spend it as you make decisions and there's a lot of things you're going to need to spend it on as we change with the times so transition in the venue menu is not somewhere to spend that political level I'm a father of six children I've had three people grant three children graduated from the high school go through graduation I have to make those decisions all the time and what that's been

062true for people for 50 years who've had to make those decisions and there's room to make more room in that on that football field that somebody said and can change the orientation of the graduation do a lot of things but to to make a different decision and move us to a different place when in fact that is the place where even the students who had come on first because they are the most important have said how important it is to them it is I don't see the justification I don't see the compelling reason for making that change to that kind of the tradition spending that political category turning to the entire I'd very much like the traditional attire and I know that for well over a hundred years this isn't just a short tradition but

063but it's been a source of pride ever since this issue came up I've been seeing pictures sent to me by the classmates are still keeping it in other than so it's very important but there's a much more compelling reason to consider that change I like what I heard about where black and white you know whatever you want as long as it's black and white that made a lot more sense to me they've gone to caps and gowns because we don't Parker probably think we're different we've gone through this ceremony different many years and that makes sense and just to give some context to how important it is I just want to share a story that I heard from the guy who as a project manager of Europe visiting one that was opening this project manager

064hired all of the industrial cleaning staff from the hospitals and the schools and other institutions around to come in the night before just scour the park and clean it up and he got a panicked call the morning just hours before the opening because this the staff who didn't understand and appreciate it they've gone and clean the haunted mansion they cleaned away the classroom fix the broken window the the part had opened without one of its primary attraction so I just come up here to make sure you understand the depth of how many in the community feel about these traditions as you consider whether to cast them aside thanks for your time looking for this and after [Applause] good evening I am Queen Catherine I 155 North Humphrey I'm speaking about the graduation attire I am

065a mother she was really chill drew and I live in a home with eight children all of them come through here every youngest is now a freshman my son went through graduation last year and he is transgender he was out and and transitioned by the time he graduated so it really was not an issue for us as far as attire but there are so many other children who it can be an issue for and I never speak on their behalf my son who is not here today was having a hard time deciding whether or not to go to graduation last year not because of his outfit but he was concerned about other people who he is not so outspoken and he had a very hard time making his his space here but he did get

066through school and we were very proud of him and he wanted to graduate more than anything so the day was very important for us and our family and it was upsetting to me that he considered not going to graduation because of the people that he knew who could not express themselves or be themselves on that day so I think in my opinion that caps and yellows would be much better for those who have anxiety about what to wear and who they are and it is after all a day to celebrate your achievements academically and not a fashion statement [Applause] good evening I'm one of them grandparents who talked about and I'm very supportive a grease gun grandmother and I had the opportunity to be able to graduation last year it's a last minute for my

067mother to be able to come because someone came up with a ticket it was poor doing when you're on that field because you can't see which way the kids are coming because I come every which way they can't come up on the stage because they have specialties up on the stage so you saw everybody can't see their kids when they're graduating I think thinking that moving is time for change it's time for us to open up our minds it's not our time anymore it's these kids time now and so we should listen to them and you know make a change it's probably changing sometimes he helps it makes a difference and then we talk about expense it saves expenses having caps in cabinets most of these kids don't wear the clothes of a hat did

068they have in the closet so parents won't have to go out to buy but once we can't afford not to get anything thinking we're building him at home for the ones who have extra amount of clothing see parents want to go out and buy anything pay $27 or whatever it is for me having gown and you save some money you also say one flowers I don't know if the roses cost but that's the savings and put it toward the another change as far as what you're going to have seating at it's a number of us like my son when coming from Colorado he didn't meet his ottoman with his wife because there was a it's a bit up or give last-minute tickets until the chance for him coming it should not be like that you

069should be able to be at as many tickets as you watch except University where you can do that act it would be great to have that and where you can see your kids March up on the stage and take good pictures of them some of them prolong this I did or anything and everybody else [Applause] hello my name's Michael stack 629 North Grove Avenue 22 year resident impairment and apart and first thank you for all you do for the appreciative sincerely my focus my comments are going to be related to the imaginable part of the forest concept now first thing I like to say is I'm not a part of a part of chromatic from pragmatic solutions but I am concerned with the cost and the public's concern that addresses athletics over the expense of

070academics here's a great distrust in the community as a result of the previous capital improvement process that tried to bypass the mowers regarding the current well-thought-out plan that state lack of trust is brewing I submit that you must present multiple options and their cost to the community including options that reduce the overall cost and may eliminate certain athletic programs whatever they may be please work to improve the communities and understanding and trust in a popular forest [Applause] good evening everyone I'm here to speak about the imagine proposal I want to get the board to consider this opportunity carefully we can only consider it can only make improvements of this magnitude once prioritize accessibility epidemics and community spaces like libraries the cafeteria and Student Center along with important long overdue arts and athletic improvements tailored to

071complement and support those priorities in economics and accessibility in a building of this age that's extraordinary important please be careful with the resources this larger project will require it will impact every family in every business and many of our small local businesses are also residents of the community I have three questions will d'abord require alternative plans with smaller athletic footprint incorporating a 25 metre pool will the board require a comparative analysis of building an entirely new facility this will enable the community to compare renovations versus replacement costs finally will the board put the final plan to a referendum [Applause] hi if you be my name is Lynn kalinihta and I'm the co-chair of the imagine of Earth workgroup that is creating a long term facilities master plan for our school there's been a lot of

072false and misleading information about the facilities plan being spread via letters online comments fliers and social media lately you may even hear some of that misinformation repeated tonight I want to take a moment to provide some accurate information and to suggest that residents visit an imagined ERF org to find more accurate information here are a few examples of some of the misinformation being spread the false claim there are no stem labs and stem lines included in a planet the truth is that the essence stem stands for science and all o prf science labs are replaced or renovated during the plan the false claim is that the imagined plan includes an Olympic sized pool which I just read again in the paper today the truth is if the plan replaces two pools with one pool that

073is signed to support existing programs and return diving the campus this does not require an Olympic sized pool and an Olympic sized pool would be 49 percent larger than the pool that we are proposing another misleading claims that the cost the two of the five phases hasn't been disclosed in the blye mat line item expenditures lack detail detailed cost information is available at Mangino prf gorg it was posted in September of 9th and more detail was added on October 4th then in response to community questions we had costs estimated for sequences four and five and those were made public this week another false claim that the cost of implementing the entire plan would be two hundred and fifty million dollars that number was and continues to be presented as fact the actual cost is 31

074billion dollars less than that all same facilities needs are not clearly defined true a 56 page document detailing identified needs has been available and imagine OPF org since September 9th and finally the miss pleading claim that there's an emphasis on extracurricular activities over the scores with schools core mission of Education this plan starts with the new librarian tutoring center and goes on to renovate or rebuild virtually all of the general classrooms and science labs in the building including 76 classrooms in sequence one alone that's in addition to new or renovated arts CTE special ed and PE classrooms imagine sees all aspects of student's education as important and our plan reflects that what's more extracurriculars take place in the same spaces where classes are talked this plan provides flexibility to accommodate both extracurricular and curricular use

075of those spaces because extracurriculars are important to students academic success and it's important to their sense of connection to our school in short you can't believe everything you need right now in letters online comments fliers or social media and I hope that you members of the board will encourage residents to come to their own conclusions not by prejudging but based on accurate information that's available at an imagined imperative work thank you so much Brian Magnussen hi my name's Ryan Magnussen 11:34 cells grow whenever the imagine no PRF war group that is creating the long-term facilities master plan for our school prior to imagine I had not been involved in any local civic efforts I decided to get involved if I voted no it's the last referendum I felt called to this work in my professional

076background in strategic capital planning and real estate development I've approached this work with integrity and a sincere obligation to do what's right for my family my neighbors my extended opf community I'm very proud of the work that we have accomplished from almost day one there has been an effort to label myself and this group as not representative of this community and to mislead the community about that work being delivered to that end I've been disappointed but not surprised by the recent claims about the master plan being spread on Facebook op eds and in flyers along the own platforms I want to take a moment to provide some accurate information and to suggest that residents business imagine a PRF that work to find more you may have read this claim only one plant option was presented

077to the community here's the truth imagine solicit and community input at every stage of this process multiple plan options were presented on the April 16th revised plans were presented on May 19th plans will further refined and presented over the summer coming board meetings and have ultimately led to a single proposal as it is presented today all of these prior concepts were posted and continue to be available at imaginal peer network you may have also had this claim this will be the third most expensive school project in America here's the truth the master plan does not represent a single project the master plan represents many projects all of which may be funded in their own time regardless of our proposed timeline it combines projects into five potential sequences funding and constructing elements in a single sequence

078does not require the district to fund the remaining sequences just like replacing a roof does not obligate you to replace your kitchen even as you need to be both in closing I am proud to have been a part of this group of local taxpayers known as a magical period I recommend the board adopt this plan and I'll leave this the board with this quote by Teddy Roosevelt it is not the critic who counts that the man who points out how the strong stubble or where the doer of Deeds could have done better the credit belongs to those or actually in the arena whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood who strives valiantly who err who comes short again and again because there is no effort without error and shortcoming but who does

079actually strive to do the deeds to know great enthusiasms the great devotions who spend themselves in a worthy cause who had the best know in the end the triumph of high achievement and who had the worst if they fail at least fails while daring greatly so that their place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat [Applause] good evening i'm kathleen roldugin 7:37 island I'm the parent of three recent prejudice former employee of district 225 year resident of Oak Park with the conclusion of America to me and the painful truth it exposes a lack of equity and the family your ship inside the walls of the school the disconnect between the proposed imagine OPRS boondoggle and what we should really be trying to imagine for this school in

080this community is agonizing if the true intended outcome of the 200 million dollar-plus plan is to ultimately change the demographic part so then we're no longer challenged by issues of equity then by all means push it through however I'm hopeful that the good people of this community and the word recognize the need to prioritize and see that may not be possible to get everything we want we may have to sacrifice to get those things that are best it makes no sense to rebuild and restore the exterior of structure until its core is reevaluated and restored let our community decide what sort of future it sees for itself let us vote on the change we want to imagine thank you [Applause] [Music] [Applause] I'm Tiffany Tory before the river force resident and proud parent of a

081freshman and I'm a member of the imagine team when you're what a marathon you're standing at the starting line and you don't think about the finish line you don't think about what's gonna happen over the course the way you start marathon is you take one step forward and then another and create momentum not enough to carry you through all 26 miles but enough to set your direction and became the race and summit is with this border and the long term facilities master plan we find ourselves at the start of a long journey it's not been 50 years since our community made a meaningful capital improvement investment in this facility you're not going to overcome the results of 50 years of inaction and gear or two or one zoning office all you can do is start

082it will be for other future boards to keep the momentum going we imagine submits this final recommendation in November please take that first step adopt the world tour Master facilities plan that you asked the imagine team to develop imagines master plan addresses the entire facility the updated Aquatic Center is just one aspect and frankly it's not remotely the most interesting one there are some in the community who really think that the entire imagine process is about a pool and the board is going to have to deal with that segment of the in that procession but there are others in the community who used offer the pool as a strategy what they're saying to you is don't act don't invest do nothing when we go out and we talk to people with a PTO meetings and

083from the farmers market and just around 10 people in our community wants to know what's in the master plan and when they award the truth where they actually hear the details of the plan they understand the long-term consequences they supported they want to know the facts and they want to hear those facts from this board so all of us in the imagine team encourage the community to attend next week's town home to hear for themselves or the plan is what the plan is done and all of a sudden imagine team encourage the board to take the first step forward to adopt a plan to set a direction and to begin the journey that was surely last many years into the future my son whose article is on page 21 of the Tribune today he was

084a 2006 graduate and I think he I applaud a part for um you know starting out his writing chops here so I hope you'll look at that article but that's not why I'm here I'm here for moms demand action I don't know if everybody knows what moms demand action is it's a work for sensible gun laws or bipartisan cover really concerned about this issue about arming teachers and I know my co partner has emailed every one of you this week and we were hoping that this issue would get on the agenda and they see it's not I'm sure you're also familiar with the Illinois Association of School Boards they are meeting next month and there's a resolution where student safety protection that they are proposing arming teachers and you may not I don't know how

085this district feels about it I felt very strongly and moms demand action and I continue all sorts of information and I have business cards so that you can email me as I see here that you will give me a response in two weeks and I want to know who I give this business card to so I get a response because I want to delegate to go down there and say we do not want teachers in this school and you might think it's not going to happen but from being involved in moms demand action which it's nationwide and we have chapters all over the state there are a lot of rural sound down south school boards that are in favor and actually they are the IASB is in favor of one of the resolutions that they

086want to lobby for the threat for guns to be in the school and one more thing my daughter my oldest daughter who graduated from here is also a teacher she's at Trinity High School so who do I give them my cards to to make sure that I get an answer in two weeks you've given a card to miss Hamilton miss Mack government in it's on the agenda for this special board meeting the meeting where you need to see it is before that could you mean I knew a statistician I have a counselor here this is my fifth year recently my family recently my family and I moved to Co Park I want to acknowledge the long traditions that serve Noble building purposes here at OPM have such that such that students families staff and community

087members experience our school as a family my contribution tonight would be to ask the board and the community to consider if caps and gowns best represent the vision and mission of our school specifically with regards to creating the most equitable experience for all students is our current Greta tire policy one which serves our community in a way that is most equitable do caps and gowns serve our community in a way that is more that our current policy what is the most compassionate response to students who are at odds regarding this issue I would like to submit the caps and gowns maybe one way for the greatest number of students to experience graduation in a way that provides space support and a framework through which individual students identity can be expressed more freely than the current

088policy thank you for your consideration [Applause] my name is Kim nebula I am a resident 45 year resident an imam died at both Kara's class of 91 I asked the board as in years past to allow students to have a vote and be allowed to share their voice and regards to the graduation both in regards to the entire and the venue this should not be a bias debate and vote based on a minority if all students have a vote then their voices will be heard in life your voice may be heard but the outcome may not be as you hope you are expected that's life this is what these students have to face that they go off tune to college you can't expect universities to change traditions think about West Point just because it doesn't

089fit your needs as a community and as a parent I chose to come back to OPR for one reason not because of the elementary school but because of OPR F and the traditions and the pride that I feel till this day about standing on that field at UIC that means nothing to me that means nothing to any of these children standing on that field and what it means to be an OPR F husky and I understand that youth there's only five tickets allowed but again that's life that's how it is every school does not have unlimited tickets no matter where you are so please allow these children to have a voice and be heard if you take away the voice and the vote of the student body at large what message are you sending to

090these children and what message are you sending to these taxpayers who came back here not only my but my parents are alumni some graduates of this school I have four siblings who are also graduates and pride themselves on the traditions of opra I've heard both sides of this position and I respect an emphasis on empathize with both sides of the debate but as in 99 but as in 1991 alum and a person whose apparent graduates throw Chiara this tradition that you call it that is outdated it has nothing to do with fashion and it has nothing to do with taking a great picture it has to do with something bigger this is a unique community this is why you have people like myself that come back and want to bring their kids and raise their

091children here so if tradition has no meaning then we should all just go away go away forget about tourism forget about Frank Lloyd Wright and Hemingway traditions have great meaning and should mean something and my daughter who I'm speaking on behalf of of course is calling me at this very second so myself and so in so many open ERF obviously alums who aren't here to have a voice I say I really do please let these children have a voice all of them will have a voice I don't want to see this locked up to youth to the board members out of all due respect thank you [Applause] yes these will be our last two comments all right I didn't run fast enough for those one big last speaker of the evening my name is Melanie

092McQueen president of Apple and I have a comment more to our attendees um first I wanted to say and I'm tradition is important there is something to be said about your house you know with the boys but it's so but I have to say when my daughter graduated back in 2014 and shocking and hurtful oh my god think this may be my mood again so that part of me didn't want to see that but there is also something to be said about graduating where you've been raised for the past four years and hopefully making that space here but if it also makes sense that it should be someplace else and that goes along with the cap and gown thing I support but the board decides and lastly before you take my seat I think it's

093extremely important to mention which I have not heard in the past few meetings that I've been in I appreciate seeing the imaginal PRF team a brand news that new faces that are stepping up and doing things in the community thank you and I also appreciate other groups that challenge that want to do research and make sure that things are being done right for the community we're always looking for more leaders more people who are going to stand up and volunteer for their community and we're starting to see that I'm so appreciative to see our students who are coming out larger in numbers about things that they care about it's really amazing so I just wanted to say that and whatever the board decides I was crushed when we lost our boat and my daughter cooking

094they're camping out but if these kids win and this is truly what it's supposed to be then of course support it support whatever the board decides thank you my name is Andrea Martinez I spent the vast majority of my life since 1973 I want to make an observation I'm concerned about what the cost of Oh Gareth imagine Helene who were residential homeowners there I read the local papers there have been distressed signals emanating from the local property market I believe that former Village Board President David Pope who's in the audience even correct me if I'm wrong called the Wednesday Journal in an article published within the last several months that part middle-class homeowners in Oak Park the property tax burden has risen so much that the point of no return for them is approaching the

095Wednesday Journal has reported that local real estate agents of said the property tax burden is so high for houses the Ofuro Park are in the low end of the theoretical market price range the mortgage lenders won't underwrite mortgages for them because the total cost of ownership including mortgage payments and property tax payments is too high relative to the theoretical market value of the houses they were talking about houses that are that cost maybe three hundred thousand that have currently ten thousand dollars property taxes also they noted during the summer they have residential residential real estate prices had experienced a minor decline recently and that prospective buyers are talking to them about the property tax issue there seems to be some resistance among buyers and budding houses that are priced more than five hundred thousand dollars

096I'm very concerned what this means for middle-class homeowners going into the future as someone who's been around apartment for decades I have seen what people what the effect is when property taxes increased at rates far in excess of income growth and inflation just since the year 2000 according to the Wednesday Journal property the property tax revenue from art has increased a hundred and seventy percent in order to stay a resident in Oak Park for a long period of time and not be first Ave you have to be pretty lucky in happening that grows you know in excess of property taxes I mean just in the last 18 years the property tax property tax rates have probably grown at least seven to eight percent a year when I moved to Oak Park with my family 1973

097we are items portion of our agenda and I will just say now for everyone's information that I am going to pull items H and I or individual consideration contract with UIC for graduation venue and a graduation attire but ask if there are any other items members oh okay so I moved to approve the following considered ohms and check disbursements and financial resolutions dated October 25th 2018 be monthly treasurer's report see gifts and donations the resolution recognizing the National Hispanic recognition program Skype I'm sorry students eat personnel recommendations including new hires stipend positions F no C notice to remedy for tenured staff member francisco Arriaga g course proposals j0 graphic paper bid k policies for second reading policy for : 60 contracts and person purchasing l policies for first reading policy to : 150 committees policy

098for : 80 accounting and audits policy 5 : 30 hiring process and criteria policy 6 : 240 student travel policy 7 : 50 school admissions and student transfers and item M opening closed minutes September of September 27th and October 16 2018 and a declaration that the closed session audiotapes of January 2017 shall be destroyed and asked for a second is there any discussion or comment and it will ask for a roll miss Cassell yes mr. Arkin yes mr. Crosby yes miss 5e yes mr. Barron yes mr. eisely yes and dr. Moore yes thank you and I will go back to item H and move to approve contract with UIC for graduation and ask for a second second and now we will open it up for questions comments Fred okay statement I wanna read one thing

099that I've come to realize after three years on this board is that we rely on data to make decisions and the memo recommending the change of graduation venue there's no foundation or background data to make this decision I've asked the following questions to go directly to the rationale for the change delineated in the memo and had not received an adequate response the questions are over the past ten years how many unfulfilled ticket requests that we received there's no data how many times since 1970 hasn't moved from the stadium because of rain once in five the last five years as all of the answers what other venues were explored none please provide the number of tickets offer each family for family and graduates for the period of 1970 to 2018 for both indoor and outdoor the

100answer to five tippet the current currently we each family gets five tickets outdoors in two if it rains each of these cushions goes directly to the reason you put forth in the in the recommendation memo and have not been sufficiently answered with data no alternative solutions have been explored our our current class of 781 is substantially less about 20% less in the classes of mine and my siblings who graduated in the early 1970s each of those years even in the ears with with ringing like my brother in 1975 graduation is occurred as in the Magnificent celebration of our students graduation at UIC will not be special or grand just another high school graduating in their rented facility there Philip facility contract in article 13 has compliance regulations I don't know if these have been explored

101or negotiated but on their a brief view of their website states that UIC requires everyone goes through a metal detector no bags verses or backpacks diaper bags or camera bags all bags are searched no professional cameras no outside food but we in the old popular forest community take pride in our traditions we should not be so cavalier to discuss dismiss them so readily holding graduation in a community symbolizes the passage from teenager to adulthood in the facility where the comma compliments a compliment men have occurred we have no Nexus to UIC graduation at that venue not have the grandeur or majesty of generations of ceremonies at the opr of stadium just watch the final episode of America to me is see how truly beautiful and special that ceremony is holding graduation at UIC will not

102save the district money it will either cost the district or the families more money to travel to UIC and pay for parking holding graduation at UIC will hurt the opr of business community has spoken to the chamber of commerce into several numbers they would not support such a move as it would damage the business community and especially our restaurants who host many family celebrations in conclusion there is no data or background to support the reason laid out in this memo it would cost either the district or our families more money money it will damage our business community and therefore I will vote up against the recommendation because I see no compelling reason to make this change so while i'm not quite as adamant as Fred I do agree with his conclusion I think that having

103it at USC would be impersonal I do think there's something to be said for having it in our home institution I also think that there are ways that we could possibly improve on the currents are wanting to make it more accessible certainly the rain is a constant concern but I think you know if it's an act of God that's not too bad but at this point in terms of exploring other options for seating we certainly could add more people to that space I think we could also perhaps improve the view for folks I didn't think that that was a great argument about being able to see your student better at graduation but we could provide some sort of projection of our students as they're walking into I mean there are ways that we can improve

104on what we already have I know that if it doesn't pass tonight that means that this year's graduating class won't happen UIC is an option I know we're on a time constraint there but I'm just at this point I don't feel that we've explored our options to an extent that that is would be necessary for me to support this very good pressing in detail some of the concerns I [Music] very much dad I don't feeling strongly about this as I do the other graduation issue but and I do think that the concerns about his face is valid that the concerns that we heard from parents and Senate family members I do have concerns about our elderly and I do very much worried about the weather and what it's going to what's going to happen that

105there is rain but based on what I've heard from the public I guess that that is a chance that people are willing to take and I hope it doesn't ever go badly but if it does then that would probably be the point at which people will be more willing to to reconsider the tradition so at this point with the information that we have and based on the information I've heard from other board members in the public I will support other than the only thing I really went ahead to what fred has said which when everybody is saying so wrong is that you know that there are a whole host of issues with having it here at the high school but I don't think we've really explored the issues with us tea and Mike my belief

106is that there will be a whole host of issues associated with transporting everybody to UIC you might get some of them so I am all for and supportive of keeping it so I wouldn't echo you know I was initially when this first came up last week in you I know that had been discussed but it I understand the urgency that we're facing we do want to this direction and I understand the administration and these staffs the challenge internally but I think the bigger picture for the community and for the students in tradition which is double-edged word I'm supportive and one thing I think a good thing to come out of this is the realization of some of these issues that we can address perhaps expends sieving find ways to accompany more families and so so

107those reasons I'm also in support of maintaining of here I will just add that these are big decisions for our board and our community and there is a lot of passion on both sides and I am feeling that the need to err on the side of understanding that change is hard and too much change is disruptive and I will say that my feelings about this are not I'm not going to I can't speak to living here for 45 years or having generations of family members be as a part of this community and I'd like to hope that that is not the way that we establish who has a valid stake in the game it is about our school community and doing what is best for our students and through that lens is how I'm thinking

108about these decisions I will say that I do think that we need more information you know just hearing tonight I'm not I you know I'm not sure that the same rules apply you know of course if there's a graduation you have a professional photographer so it's not the same as a sporting event or some type of production but you know just thinking about logistics I think more time is needed I don't think it's a bad idea I think that we give short shrift sometimes to what happens to asking folks if it's 95 degrees to sit outside and particularly elderly and disabled and speaking as someone with the chronic illness the Sun for me is damaging and I it takes two days to recover for me after sitting outside but that's a choice that I have

109made and you know kind of record with I'm hoping to lobby a little bit earlier this year to you know I may be if you see me with an umbrella everyone will know why and it won't be because of rain it'll be because of Sun and I just the last thing I want to say is as we've talked about the five tickets and having forced children that graduated from this high school there's some that get more tickets and you know it is about being in the know and sometimes getting lucky and getting a ticket at the last minute but to assume that that that everybody gets what they need or tough luck is a dichotomy that is false and something that does not sit well with me as we talk about this being a inclusive

110community so I am erring on the side of wanting more information but I think that consideration should be given to what it would mean to having a venue that would allow for families to not have to to make a decision on who's there and in terms of grandeur and tradition our students are the focal point so wherever our graduation is held that's well and it will be majestic and I don't want to lose sight of that as we talk about long-standing traditions I want to keep our focus as a port on doing what's best for our students but I think at this time that more information and to move forward at this point without exploring some of the other options that we've talked about would be short-sighted and once again we'll pray that it doesn't

111rain so with that mr. is it gonna rain no no no mr. kasky no reluctant no and now I move to approve the graduation attire recommendation as presented and asked for a second and I will open it up for questions and or comes so I don't think it's a surprise that I'm in favor of moving forward with caps and gowns for our students I wanted to make a couple of comments there's been some discussion among the board members and meetings in the past about why the board is deciding this and I don't disagree that this probably actually is an administrative decision but I do think at this point it's important for our war to take this on and you know be the leaders and advocates of this for a couple of reasons I think we

112do set the vision for the school we are called to do what's in the best interest of all of our students and I think the strategic plan that we have approved and discussed many times is founded on this notion of equity and this is our chance once again to speak up and say that we've equity above any interpretive traditions which the word tradition I find to be a little bit of a loaded term so this is about equity it's about gender equity it's about social economic equity and this is our chance to once again stand up for that I also do think that it is very important that you know our students have a voice we talk about that a lot here on this board but I don't agree with this idea that the votes

113of some should you know dictate the rights of all of our students at all times especially the students who are most vulnerable and I also have some problem with the idea that we've made some accommodations to the dress code and so that should be sufficient and you know to just say that if we make some changes people should just take it and be happy with it that doesn't I don't agree with that and I think even if I'm personally not affected by this and my loved ones are not personally affected by this I have enough enough empathy to understand what they're going through and put myself in their shoes and I think that's you know again another reason for us as a board to take this on it's important for us to show that we

114have that kind of leadership and empathy in our leadership I thought the students had some really really great ideas tonight about ways that we can make this tradition our own whether it's decorating the get the caps wearing the traditional garb under the under the gowns and the student chooses to and take pictures we can create new traditions so of course I'll be voting in favor of moving forward with the cast again yeah I'll start off by saying echo what what Jenny said in the beginning I I firmly believe that this is not word work this is an administrative issue back in 2016 this this item came to us as an informational item we did not vote on it I'm gonna move that we table this I think that he asked administration to complete a process

115that is fair and equitable and reflective of the desire of our senior class I don't think all possible solutions have been vetted I don't think the students voice has been heard I know that there was a meeting yesterday Tom hall meeting but I think that the timing was problematic it was a 5:30 in the afternoon where some kids were involved in activities and it was also on a day where they were careful there were parent-teacher conferences and was not schooled another school day so there were a lot of kids that weren't in the building I think I think I have a lot of confidence in our students and I think that our students can come to a with pose pose the issues opposed to the problems I think that our students can come up with

116a very satisfactory solution to the to this dilemma and I just think that we need more time and I think that they need to be heard I agree with with the points that John Phelan made I don't think I could say any better I think that that the issues of financial hardship and the struggles that are non-binary students have can can be addressed and resolved and I just liked to see more work done therefore I mean emotionally be table this is there a second to that seven yes so relative to the Federation I'm actually quite I I was of the opinion that this is a board decision because from my perspective the Ford has already spoken on this matter of policy in terms of that we in terms of gender equity and I've been happy

117for it to be brought to the board but I think that the decision here is got to be consistent with the other policies that we've put out there and sometimes you know traditions our front cross ways with some other things that we want to change but I'm actually very supportive of the caps and gowns so I would echo what said you know that last year we made it was sprint so I learned together but on protecting those who are more vulnerable and speaking up for those who are in the minority so I know there's some visit dilemma here in terms of process and it was a traditional seven voice so you know is to Fred's motion to table you know mixed emotions about whether it's a table this or whether it's a move forward at

118all you know is right or I should say what we would agree to do the right move here so I'm supportive of caps and gowns and I just feel like that's a pretty straightforward decision to be made and as much as I respect the tradition that's been voiced I think there's like I said oh there's a double-edged situation and sometimes people can or traditions can unwittingly and sometimes over time I'm more aware of how they can cause harm so that's where I stand so I second in Fred's motion to table that's discussion I firmly of the opinion this is not board work and it should not become board work and I'm leery of setting a precedent like this because I think Craig is absolutely right this is a matter of procedure and we've already got

119policies in place that address this very issue well I certainly am understanding of the folks who are advocating for maintaining the dress code I am supportive of caps and gowns as well for the reasons cited by Jen and others so eloquently but I also would like to see if perhaps the administration could work with students a little bit and I don't know what happened last night in that meeting you know we weren't there but see if there is some sort of compromise that would make our students feel included but also feel heard at the same time because we do have very different opinions I also wanted to say some one thing about the recommendation the port of administration's recommendations that we move to support the administrative recommendation that arcs me a little bit because I

120always support our administration so it just the wording of it I also have a little it's this you know get stabled or whatever happens I want to be clear this is not a vote of no-confidence or administration right which is not so I also agree that this oh you know we this has not been board work and we we put forth policy and I think a me home kind of got my attention because this is really a debate of tradition versus social social justice and I think we've been pretty clear in our policy what it is that we're supporting with social justice so personally I would be I would be supportive of the caps and gowns because of that but I don't agree that that's our vote I will start by saying that I appreciate

121the I am in agreement that and we asked a question last week why is this being brought to the board this is administrative work and we would give in a response that it will bubble to the board regardless and I think tonight is certainly an example of that and so it was late at our feet or and our hearts however you want to look at it to make a decision and I am I share the frustration that it was brought to us because it it is not allowed for the even a communication to our students that this was a change that was being considered and the reasons which are compelling and necessary and speak to all the work that this district has done towards equity and and social justice issues and so I want to

122start by saying you know I I think it is clear the the great pride and desire I have for our student voice and student leadership and I think that the board has been put in a position to make a decision on something that it's not our work but here we are and I'm not willing to I don't think we as a board should kick the can or pass it back but be very instructive in how we are not only talking about how we view our policy and our desire to move in that direction but that our statement tonight solidifies this and so there's no need for anyone to leave wondering what's going to happen if it is in the interest of our students and that is the lens I continue to look at these issues

123and you know I've prepared a statement and I there's no need to read it earlier today and in the last few days and some sleepless nights the questions are started bubbling up for me were ones of a wonder and this was you know to Fred's made a question I wonder how many students have not participated in graduation because of being you know uncomfortable or afraid they were going to have a panic attack or not wanting to be outed and I wondered how many students were too proud to say that they didn't have the money for graduation attire and didn't ask for help but because of that did not and gave another reason and those two questions alone for me showed why we have to be the voice for the minority of our students who would

124not win a popular vote and and I want to speak just briefly on even the aspect of voting and I only have information from 2016 but we've talked about let the students decide that year there are eight hundred five seniors four hundred forty two of them participated in the survey on determining graduation attire so as much as we are talking about student voice 442 out of eight hundred fifty-five percent of the class and I will tell you back here was the first year that students lobby for caps and gowns in my tenure on the board and were very organized in their approach and went and asked how you know can we do a survey can we pull the students and we're told by administration that it was a board matter which was not true so

125that responsibility was put on us and there is some discomfort with change here and I we struggle with with making change in a way that trying to keep everybody comfortable or everybody happy and in this instance if we are truly about the safety and security of our students I think that we go with caps and gowns for all the reasons that have already been stated and the initial vote that was taken in 2016 where the option of students being able to wear black or white female or male as opposed to dark for males and white for emails of those coordinate 42 students devoted 184 voted for capsule yeah and 134 voted for the dark suits and hundred 24 voted for the traditional white or dark attire but there was another vote taken because the feeling

126that no none of the votes garter 50% so we can we can play around with numbers and optics and surveys but if we're really about equity for our students I hope that we can understand that as much as tradition matters to a lot of people our traditions for some of our most vulnerable students are damaging and that's not what school is supposed to be about and our graduation is our way of shining a light on the accomplishments of our students and as much as our tradition has been the tradition of moving your tassel over will be something that the classes if we adopt this new procedure will be something that will be I'm sure we'll have every family member and all of our students bursting with product and the picture that will appear on the

127cover of the Wednesday Journal of students throwing their caps in the air I guarantee you it will be just as beautiful as the red roses and the white and the darker so I'm hoping that our board will move forward with the decision as evening and that we return after this to the work of the board at the policy level I feel compelled to speak to clarify several things one it is true this was potentially and I'm saying potentially in the work of administration however as the superintendent when we come forward with items that I believe that are as critical as this to not have the board insert their voice in the decision or the direction support was not meant to be disrespectful perhaps we should have put that item as a discussion because we're asking

128for support we didn't say approved so maybe our wording was inappropriate but you know in a email exchange for the board member a board member said we need to give our community a voice in this if the administration had come forward with the decision and I think this boy knows what my recommendation would have been then I my feel would have been it would have been void of the community voice it would have been Boyd of the board's voice and that we might be sitting here tonight saying well that was not brought before us so we need to take a step back and have a discussion so it was not meant to be disrespectful it was not being to put the board in a situation to have to vote and our mind as an administration

129it was respecting you as the board and respecting this community's voice just as we did when we publicly came forward to present and talk about the procedures for are transgender or non-binary and are non-conforming students because administrative procedures are also done by the administration and do not require board approval but because they were topics that we heard we spent and how to hours are most talking about this and imagine and for me it all comes back to equity and and I know the boy so the boy wants to table it so be it if the board wants administration to make decision so Peter but I'm sure the boy those the decisions and I will push on it is not that we don't his duty was that is why we're here because we here student voice

130and there are students who are suffering because of tradition and I'm the first to say it is the most beautiful ceremony I've seen someone say that but I don't want anyone to leave thinking it was intentionally to spite any students who did not have voice it was intended to get the boys to those who were not being heard it was not intended to be disrespectful and should we go back and have a conversation with students that's okay too but I felt compelled to say why this was before it was under our goal to improve and we reprove improve opportunities and access and to remove those barriers that exist or our students and I've expected me to say that publicly so then our intent was not as interpreted because it was not in voice mr. Barron

131these are the silliman to table yes no mr. eisely no yes no yes no dr. Moore No [Music] Miska Feld yes mr. baron yes mr. eisely yes no yes yes dr. Moore yes I'll be there the right students take okay thank you very much and I would ask you to be respectful of the work of the board as we were respectful to you please don't do this this is not the Trump rally and I will say that now we are going to respect this work and be examples to our students that's it okay we are at our discussion items and our first one is the tax efficiency report by David Pope and I apologize David Souter coming into an atmosphere like this thank you very much for your time I really appreciate it sound better

132okay you can tell I don't come to these hallowed halls for alphabets so I appreciate the opportunity to be able to be here also want to extend my appreciation to all of you dr. Ward dr. Pruitt Adamson is our board for your leadership I know that a lot of the issues that you deal with are not easy is reflected in some of the conversations that so far this evening and time that you spend while I reflect on the fact that sometimes it may appear thankless is actually greatly appreciated by so many people here in the community so thank you for your time I'm here to be able to have a conversation which in the light of the hour I will attempt to make brief but I relate to the report that was recently published when

133we presented to the village board the taxing bodies officials in task force report this is a report that was in response to a charge that a committee that was established as an ad hoc committee to look at and taxation and the of decisions that made by all of the governing bodies in the community had had on that taxation levels here in our community over time and what some sensible thoughtful recommendations might be going forward it's notable I think that the recommendations that are contained herein are not directed specifically at any single jurisdiction but it's really a way to be able to think about the implications of the tax burden in the community as a whole then how we can work in a coordinated fashion to be able to ensure that we're providing the greatest opportunity

134for all of the residents here our community to the continuum of community so that the committee itself was established and composed of seven members two of my colleagues are here tonight John hedges and Karen McCulloh who if I say something wrong I'm going to invite to come up here grab me by the scruff than that can pull me away and they can jump in it and clarify things and then we had a number of other members as well who were able to support the work of this effort drink regular Judy Griffin brine change and Jim Peters so briefly a few quick takeaways the executive summary lays out the fact that the recommendations fall into four main categories budget discipline efficient delivery of government services referenda discipline and then education and information for the public and

135elected officials the background calls out a few specific points that are sort of most challenging that relate to the overall level increase in our community in taxes and the fact that since 2000 will be significantly outpaced increase in inflation inflation since 2000 is increased by 43 percent and total apartment levy has increased five hundred and thirty nine percent this does call out the specific levels of increase by each of the jurisdictions but it's important to understand that there is some voids in that data because there are transfers that have occurred over that period of time between different jurisdictions so it's really maybe a little bit less important to look specifically at single jurisdictions the Park District being an example that during this period the village actually transferred responsibility for a significant portion of operating costs

136to the Park District and so hence the these villages levy responsibilities related to a provision those services what naturally or should have gone down and the park districts should not up so just we could sort of take some of that out we had similar situations between the village and district 97 related to no get that thinking noise as much between the village and district assembly related to about 4.5 million dollars that the village provided in funding support and also changes in the way that crossing guards were handled similar situation with district 200 and the construction of the high school garage so there are those sorts of interfund transfers that occurred across the governing body so if we collective with just look and see that we're outpacing inflation by three times over that period that ends

137up being problematic we also have one that looks simply at the municipality and show that the village of park in comparison to Berwyn apartment for sports park is rising at a rate that is significantly higher than our surrounding communities so we look at the set of recommendations which I want to sort of touch on briefly and then really give you an opportunity to be able to ask questions the key ones have to do with maintaining budget discipline and some examples there that are the ones that sort of get highlights in the local press and are the ones that we should probably be thinking about most specifically are a recommendation that all of the jurisdictions maintain their or limit their level of tax increase and that's actual dollars to inflation meaning CPI or less and do

138that from now through 2030 and the idea is for every one of the jurisdictions to be able to live within that level of the increase so that we can take the trajectory of increase which has been dramatically higher than Sagat and level Ladell to CPI for the next 12 years and give us an opportunity to be able to have the community catch up the core rationale behind that is that the people who are actually being most negatively impacted are the people who are least equipped to be able to respond to the tax increases that have been occurring in the community and that is individuals at the lower end of the income spectrum and then another form of homeowners and in form of renters where these increases are being passed along and folks being pushed out

139of the community so I really appreciated work that this board has done to put the view of issues we looked at through an equity lens as a priority and I think that this speaks to that in critical ways that individuals who are most vulnerable and most at risk are being put in a position where they are being forced out of the community and are not able to take advantage then of all the types of services that we have at a wonderful institution like dice some of the other core elements there include constraining salary growth and specifically setting total compensation packages that is required to be able to attract and retain qualified employees but not above that level also in a similar respect than publishing information regarding both the higher end and the attrition statistics for

140all full-time positions I'll give you an example when I was at village we had a situation where we had two openings for firefighters and we put out a Job Description we ended up with more than 400 people reporting for those positions and you know a significant majority of them were qualified respective partners you know part of that has to do with a parking a wonderful place of work but a part of that also has to do with the cumulative comm package that is available if you're a firefighter at a park and if we have 400 or 300 or 50 people who can perform a job at the level that we deem appropriate you know whatever that qualified level is it may not be necessary to be providing to an F or three or three and

141a half percent annual increases both in terms of base pay and in terms of steps and Alain's for example in the various ways that this gets calculated across the different jurisdictions to be able to bring that person in and have them be hired and then perform the job that we're asking them to do there's also references to encouraging the prioritization of spending this is something that obviously all the jurisdictions do do through their budget processes and intend here is to be able to try to encourage the corporation of additional information and be able to also feed that information back down to the community reducing excess fund balances this is a sort of a recognition of the fact that when jurisdictions under tax caps you know make the sort of logical decision to accumulate a certain

142fund balance and to spend that down over time that there are costs to doing that because the rate of return that can be obtained by those jurisdictions from investing those dollars are dramatically limited and so you know if you take a jurisdiction that has X dollars you know over a period of time and there when they invest that especially over the investment climate that we've seen over the course of the last ten years limitations that exist under state law for how the jurisdictions can invest it so they're investing that you know 0.3 or 0.5% when in fact if that money had been left in the pockets of individuals and the community it could grow pretty significantly through their own investment and then would be available for higher levels of contribution toward other projects and things

143that one might want to do at a later time utilize common assumptions and metrics for planning and budgeting purposes across all jurisdictions this actually goes back to something that was initiated back in it's probably been 12 years the creation of an integrated coordinated finder financial planner across all the jurisdictions predicated on the idea that we would have a similar set of assumptions around things like eav growth CPI reassessment values so we can all begin to be on the same page across all the jurisdictions about what the implications of respective levy increases might be over time and to see that more effectively and then also establish a citizen when a village wide financial oversight Commission which would be able to help pull together some of that information and then provide that information back to reporting way

144to the jurisdictions and in large the other areas are efficient delivery of governmental services which is the specific point in there that was raised was the question of whether or not the communities should consider the consolidation of jurisdictions in the event that that might generate or could generate savings and efficiencies that's a question that is on the ballot this November and we'll see what the reaction of the community is if the community says no then I suspect that that won't go anywhere if the community says yes we think that should be considered if there were efficiencies then my guess is the next step would be to conduct further study to be able to see whether those efficiencies would actually exist or not and if so what the magnitude of that might be and then to

145make a more informed decision about whether or not to pursue that road referenda discipline is the point that I raised previously about refraining from running referenda through 2030 and then the last area is educated and informed voters and elected officials this is really about helping to ensure that we have electrician you know I recall what I was billet resident we went through any number of budget hearings cumulative budget operations of capital in excess of our dirt Emily not and we have no one show up and so people do show up for a lot of issues that are very you know things that go to sort of their immediate quality of life or they what they see as issues related to the character of the community but they don't necessarily show up for a lot of

146them nuts and bolts dollar related decisions although I won't say this board experience but but the idea of being able to engage with the community in ways that can help people to understand the consequences of the overall spending the decisions that are being made I think is also something that's very important so those are sort of the core areas you have the report I don't want to take too much of your time but I do want to make sure that Gary and I are also to be able to respond any questions thank you so much for your time thank you well I appreciate the work of the task force and agreed there's value and looking at things holistically I know as a taxpayer it isn't that this I'm paying my tax bill 2d 97 and

147this I get one tax bill and actually I grew up in a place where tax levies there was one tax levy and it was distributed according to the different entities we are a different functioning entity so there's some merit to this I as I look at the recommendations I think there's a lot in here that I feel is a value I'm looking at you know certainly budgetary just discipline prioritization we've talked in you know in my tenure about the need for Standardization of of the key measures you know that indices so that when you're setting projections that you have that so I think all of that is good the one challenge I would say I have is as a board here and we're going to be talking levy in a few minutes we've been on

148a strategy and I've been since 2013 and we've been operating since 2013 our taxes from this district have been held steady because of our fund balance we are our 2019 levy is flat with our 2013 levy and if you look at the accumulation we've forgone over 37 million dollars of potential tax increases and saying now with the plan for a you know a a referendum out in the early 2020s now if you say ok now it's got to be 2030 well that's a different game plan and we've been operating so it we've got to figure out how to gotta figure out how to adjust you can't just say oK you've been playing a game to go to you've given holding your taxes and now you've got to hold them through 2030 so there's adjustments that

149need to be made but and we've been planning we've been operating under a strategy of trying to keep our taxes flat for a considerable period of time not know but flat ok you know I was fortunate to be able to serve on the finance advisory committee for this body and in 2013 and you know appreciate the work that the board has done since then I think one of the rationales for the selection of 2030 is to try to to somewhat break the habit that many of the jurisdictions are in which is that idea of you know increasing levies over a longer period of time rates that significantly outpacing beyond so and that that tends to be driven by increases in spending that are out outpacing see for the I so well the levy has been

150held flat since 2013 the spend in this jurisdiction like most of the jurisdictions has been increasing at a rate that's significantly helped Asus PPI and as a result you end up getting into a situation where at some point you know a decision gets put in front of the board and then also ultimately in front of voters to say because of that decision to make those expenditure increases that are significantly outpacing CPI we're going to need to either get a referendum or we're going to need to cut the following things and those lists always tend to be the things that are sort of most significantly supported in the community and it's a little bit of a game of chicken and we're trying to back off of that game of chicken and get to the point where

151the actual increase in the spending line independent of the levy increase in the spending line begins to track that see pipeline and that's something that I think all of the jurisdictions have and that's and some of that I mean you know if you look at it I mean I gave the example of a firefighter I think we could do the same thing for you know a teacher you can do the same thing before a police officer you can do the same thing from Public Works employee in the community that if you have an employee who's you know a hundred thousand dollars a year it's gonna retire one hundred and thirty five thousand dollars a year it's gonna get a 75% pension on that which is going to be a hundred thousand dollars again and that's

152going to be say a 20-year pension on a 34-year career that when you actually do the math and you man in the cost of health care but it's a retiree health care and everything that goes along with it you're ending up with a comp package that's north of two hundred and fifty two hundred sixty thousand dollars a year for every year worked and then when you actually look at an utilizing that I think it's a three hundred are two and thirty day year instead of one hundred and seventy-five day year that ends up being over three hundred thousand dollars in there which is where the collective package of benefits goes back to this point of can we get people to take that job for the rate that it's at right now and not have to

153add in a two percent or two and a half percent or three percent or three and a half percent increased and if the answer's no and people leave then you're actually hiring new people in under a completely different pension system which has a much lower cost structure associated with it you don't want to lose people because they're good folks and if they want to keep working but you want to be able to have those types of folks here but if a two percent increase in the last four or five years of your career is going to make that much of a difference you know when there are people clawing at the door to be able to take those types of jobs you know I think those are the sorts of hard questions that need to

154be asked across all of the jurisdictions because they're the sort of hard questions that right now adage of Parkers are facing about whether or not they can afford to remain in the community just a couple of comments so I well you know I agree in concept with you well exactly what you're talking about even as you mentioned in the report in practice this will be that would be painful and you know and how to thread the needle between managing the momentum of the types of goals and things we want to achieve in school at the same time as manner that issue is it's difficult and it's certainly something on the mind of this board on a consistent basis but actually to go back to one other point I know that you know you were pointing

155out expense growth and and while I know that we can do better at expense growth I went through our expense numbers because I thought this would come up and since 25th 14 and I'm sure some people in the audience will correct me on this if I'm wrong I have is growing at about 3% in terms of experience in terms of expense expense growth not something much bigger which tends to get reported and if and that's that's extracting debt service which our debt service has been going down to zero if you don't extract the debt service it's been one percent so as Tom said I'm just reinforcing the fact that we've been on this for a while and really trying to do a good job at it you know for us to go from 2005-2006 25

156years to 2030 without a referendum seems a little bit drastic in terms of what we're trying to accomplish I understand the intent but if the detail I'm a little concerned with how do we support that we've made and I hear what you're saying exactly I think that's really important I think if we can look at it more so through that lens of sort of what real supply and real demand is then we're going to be able to get a better handle on how much latitude we've got on the expense side because right now for many of the jurisdictions the real supply of labor to be able to perform the jobs that were asking people to perform is more plentiful at the pay rates that we're at and so I'm and I do think that this

157board ends up unfortunately to sort of paying for some of those decisions in prior years I think that the you know you mentioned the 2005 season you know and that decision to do the phase and then a couple very closely thereafter with increase that was negotiated into the next contract of 5% annual increases for five years when you add in steps and lanes it becomes more like eight that that dramatically increased the base and now the question is once that dramatic increase in the base is there how much is it going to continue to extend and that really ought to be influenced by just understand what the relative level is supply and demand it's such a good waste and I want to thank you for the work that you've done and I enjoyed going through

158it I got like two pages of questions but I won't ask you questions the first is I agree with you on constraining costs and expense growth I mean that's the key we know that all right we also know that the majority of our costs are related to human resources it's not - right so it's all the jurisdictions okay if we know that and we know and we've been talking about it as a board you know we can't say a lot because we're involved in the contract negotiation but but we were there we know it I think that and I'd like to hear how you you research in how you got to this report I will say that I am an anecdotal person on a very data driven board all right and I want to thank

159dr. Moore for pushing me in that direction of appreciate but narrow this down to two questions the first is you know are your position on our fund balance all right I don't think we have a position on your fund balancing appositional fund balances in general okay but we're the core the 900-pound gorilla in that room right so in here there's one point on page eight where you say you talked about spreading capital improvements through the car over the over the life of the capital improvements the cost over the life of the camera that's with the use of death okay so as you know or we're looking or we're gonna get a report in November imagine a program and there will be some you know they asked for some some capital improvements so I would ask

160what your advice would be in terms of how those improvements should be funded should they be funded from our from our reserves to be funded with that today we'd be funded with a balance somewhere in the middle of the two yeah so I think it - whispering behind me it depends a little bit on sort of what yeah which improvements of what the nature of it is right but but but all 2013 finance advisory committee actually wrestled with this issue somewhat and I don't think my perspective has changed very much the question of what what portion of that fund balance is available based on current commitments that you've already made on the operating side as I think a reasonable question to ask but assuming that there is some additional portion that has not yet committed

161as a result of you know existing contracts and given the fact that you're in the middle of negotiating one of them I'm guessing that you know you've got certain assumptions about you know potential rates of change but that may not be you know finalized at this point let's assume that there is some measure of the fund balance that could potentially be made available for capital investment from as I sort of think about it that fund balance was was able to be built up based on tax contributions from individuals who are in the community currently and have been in community over the course of the last X number of years I would be concerned about the idea of significantly increasing debt obligations that would add to further tax burden in the near term if the intent

162was to still preserve fund balances at a significant level and what I mean by that is having already taken the money from a group of people who are in the community today if we attempt to take yet more money from that same group of people who are in the community today to be able to pay for improvements that could be paid for by paying down the fund the fund balance and the dollars that have already been spent or that have already been collected but have not yet been spent it would seem to be potentially negatively impacting those folks who have already made those contributions in a way that would be harmful to them if alternatively the choice was to give some of that money back which I know this board has in essence sort of

163done by not taking the levels of increase that it could have taken conceivably under the law that you know there has been some measure of sort of response from this board to the fact that that fund balance was built up sort of on the backs of folks who have you know for snow in the community I would just be concerned this discussion at the village board table when I was in office that if we had a fun balance that was significant and then we put additional debt on folks and we were going to go and tax them before head and that fund balance was above levels that were necessary to be able to mean you know the objectives that we had that that would be exceeding the demands that we should be making on on

164taxpayers so I mean I guess my short answer is I would use a significant portion of the fund of the available funds and I think that's the part that's important to define what is the portion of the fund balance that would in fact be available I don't know the answer to that you all are going to be much better equipped to know the answer to that based on what your operating assumptions aren't going forward but I would want to use that first before that putting more responsibility on current existing taxpayers okay one one last question for me if you can we're not the only community and communities in this in this issue the property tax rates all over the state of Illinois are hurting everyone so I ask what what have you done any work

165or would you suggest any work around the community to direct our lawmakers to provide adequate funding of school districts and help us reduce costs by by other means such as prevailing wages etc in 2003 we we received a roughly 12% of our revenue from state aid alright in 2019 you'll see you know we're gonna get about 5% all right our Ellen Oy State Constitution states in the article 10 section 1 that the state has the primary responsibility for financing the system of public education all right with the law that was passed which which provides for evidence based funding it's basically because because of our adequacy factors we are going to be frozen for some time in terms of state obligation so much my question is how do we get our lawmakers in in the state

166of Illinois all right to quit passes pushing those dominoes over into the local government governments because it's the other things that are on and I think you mentioned the possibility of a pension shift to local communities how do we how do we get that to stop David before you answer I'm going to just say that this in my opinion Cliff Notes version of the answer because I think that the questions that Fred raises about the policy and the law aspects of this are perhaps better served from an educational standpoint with our what I know them with our try board so I the question is compelling and necessary I think that the taxi body's efficiency task force supports the idea that when the state of Illinois says that it should be the primary funder of educate

167that it should in fact be the primary funder of education you know we didn't spend a lot of time talking about that we didn't spend a lot of time talking about policy advocacy but I do think that we spent time talking about education education includes the element that you just raised which is an important component the the fact that the state has not done that is part of what contributes to the challenges that we face but really most of the challenge that we face collectively as a community is driven by our own decisions that are within our own control so the in 2000 an average household paid about five percent of its income towards property tax burden now it pays over eight point four percent of its income toward its property tax burden and when

168you factor that into you know with the decisions that were made at the federal level regarding the change in deductibility state and local taxes that burden actually rises collectively above ten percent so dollar amounts that are available to people in our community to be able to pay taxes it is a much larger bite of income that's required to be able to meet these obligations and so I I don't necessarily put a lot of stock in Springfield being able to figure things out anytime soon and so I think that the intent of this report is to say what can we do here locally to be able to a you know acknowledge and recognize the challenge that is being created here especially for individuals in the bottom one two and three quintiles income quintiles and how can

169we as a collective set of governing bodies work to be able to reduce that that challenge in the future this would be really brief remarks no questions at all thank you to the entire task force I know that there's a lot of effort that went into this it's a boil it down and then to give us an expanded version and so there's a lot here that helps provide historical context that's what level for a lot of newer I'll let the folks as well as those who are going to come on board so very helpful resource and so thank you and how we have later discussion that I'll be able to elaborate on some of the points that this brings to light I'll appreciate that's great thank you all so much for all of your work

170really appreciate everything that you do [Applause] 20:48 this presentation brief the purpose of tonight is relating to the levy is to provide two options as a process of the consideration of the Board considers the lobby the tentative live you will be discussed in November and the final levy will be approved in December so what I'd like to show the Board of Education is able to see it also is two options there's obviously many options in between these options but I'm basically showing mortgage each of two options for the 2017 tax levy the tax extension the total extension was 66 million six hundred fifty seven thousand dollars and the breakdown by fund is that spreadsheet the two the two loving proposals the first one is a zero increase levy proposal so the aggregate total extension would

171end up being the same number 66 million six hundred fifty seven thousand there were some adjustments that were made amongst the funds and I'd like to go through those per second first of all there the Board of Education had an extension of five hundred thousand dollars last year and the life safety fund my recommendation would be to move that five hundred thousand into the operate and maintenance fund it could still be used for life safety work but it gives you greater flexibility with that money so the money could be used for capital projects but those capital projects can or donate they could be or not affiliated with a life safety amendment so that's what that would give you greater flexibility with that money and then the second movement would be to take the liability insurance

172fund million dollar tax extension that's the torque fund and move that into the education fund for a couple reasons first of all the torque fund has very healthy fund balance reserves right now and secondly generally speaking it's it's the preferred a lot of the preferred method of charging a lot of expenses that a lot of school districts a charge to the tort fund is to is more accurately charged into the education fund so it's a the education is a pure fund as it relates to some of those expenses there's some discrepancy on what's considered risk management's what's not consider risk management so it's since you could charge the same expenditures in the education fund it just seems advisable to move that money into the education fund both moves would give the district greater flexibility you'd

173still be able to spend the money on those exact same things if you wanted to but if you don't want to you could spend it on other things the second option is to provide great two point one percent increase that's what the Consumer Price Index was in 2017 and that would be the maximum increase the district could have incur they would be able to get a little bit more more money for new property but the the base increase to be two point one percent and if the board approved to two point one percent taxes tax levy increase my suggestion would be that additional money be placed into the education fine with all the other fun stains in this is a this is a historical increase of CPI since tax caps came into play in the

174early 1990s again this would be the second year in a row in 2.1 percent over this time period the average is about two point two seven percent so this is a little bit lower than average but it's certainly higher than it was the for the four years prior to the last year the purpose of this slide is that as you know eighty one eighty one percent of your money comes from real estate taxes so whereas other school districts maybe it's twenty or thirty percent because eighty one percent of your money comes from real estate taxes the decision you make on the tax levy is going to almost exclusively drive all your revenues the point get was just was brought up to work board members just a few minutes ago was yep I think Frank Ron

175thought that the evidence based funding model is going to result in your state rather is not increasing your federal riders will have a very little increase more than likely so any any revenue growth the district would receive would be in the form of real estate taxes the schools that rely on state long arcing big increases cuz evidence based funding districts like Nicole Parker before us do not see increases as far as what does that mean that all the growth that we see in students or in expenses have to be informed by us and there's no additional funding anymore that's exactly right so if we have ten percent growth in students we just have to find it ten percent someplace new either an increase in the tax levy or fund balance reserves so if obviously the

176option one the impact would be zero so this is just the impact - it's estimated that board passes option two the estimated new money that the district would receive would be about 1 million four hundred fifty six thousand dollars of that amount it's estimated that seventy seven thousand dollars will come from new taxable property I'm estimating that the district's can about 2.5 million a new taxable property and it's just based off of trends over the last couple of years and it's estimated that the tax increase to the homeowner with a four hundred thousand dollar market value home as listed on the tax bill and that's an important point because it's calculate dr. 10x bill generally speaking your your true value of your home is higher than what the county says so on the tax bill

177four hundred thousand our market value home will be sixty eight dollars the rule of thumb if this is kind of good to know for the Board of Education the general thumb to this school district is that every million dollars of tax increases about $50 or this has been this town was pointing out this is the tax extension of the district from 2011 to 2017 you can see it has a very unique pattern where the district under lending a bit in 2012 significantly under lobbied in 2013-14 brought it back up closer to its adjusted about it was never able to capture what it was completely and then and then as increased modestly over the last two years mostly because of new property but because of the the decrease which produced deficits in excess of ten million

178dollars in each of those years the district ended up using about twenty nine and a half million dollars of funding house reserves to cover those deficits compared to what the potential growth this district could have had and they captured their fluency piling you know many school districts do most school districts the district left about thirty two million point 100 under eleven about thirty two point two million dollars less than it was 200 tax caps and so comparing so-and-so the Soudan still eats while there certainly has been an increase if you look at the if you factor out the the the decrease of thirty one point two million dollars and compared to the 2011 tax year of the 2017 tax year the diligent oak park their their tax extension increased ten point three million during that

179period which is a forty forty eight point five forty five point five percent increase Oh Park Elementary ninety seven increased by sixteen point nine million which was an aggregate increase of twenty nine point four or five of Oak Park High School increased by five hundred fifteen thousand which is a point eight percent and aggregate increase over that entire period so that's so again those are that those are the two options that percentage certainly there's there's there's options in the middle and happiest and as I'll mention in the presentation and uh the funding of imagine this decision will obviously and have an impact on that decision as well interested for the purposes of tonight this is a discussion item and can you just go through and remind of when the board has to present the initial

180and so so so at least 20 days before the board approves the final tax lining the board has to prepare prepare a tentative life so so the theory is that at the November board meeting the board would some districts districts do it differently some districts approve the tentative levy sub districts present the tentative money so I was going ever you do with past practice but but you would do that in November and then in December the Board of Education would approve the final levy and then it has to be filed at the county the last Tuesday of the month of December but one clarifying question than that is it is my understanding that the tentative must be and get my words right higher than the final cannot be higher than the tentative is that correct

181I'm not aware of that I don't believe that's the case but I could certainly find out and get in the game I've never heard that but again that doesn't mean that okay I mean I mean the only law I know as far as that increase is that if you are proposing an increase in excess of 5% and you have to post a notice in the paper and hold a public hearing that nice but it's more just the relationship between what is initially or tentatively proposed versus and once you've done that what you are allowed to do beyond that would be important yes sure Elmo's so I mentioned that we could go with either one point with different options these are the two scenarios I appreciate that we have two and a last year I think

182you said one opposed then we actually ended up going lower because we're under the understanding at that time but we couldn't go high or we could go lower but is it also true we can actually go lower we could actually abate this year are we still eligible to do the okay and so that's the one thing that you know no that's not that's what we've really discussed as a board and a nice earnest way and that's that's another option I mean we have well in excess of what we ought to have based on you know the the parameters what's recommended and so we had over 130 million at one point five hundred seven million now getting back to that we have abated the 32 million that we've been roughly there's no way close to 140

183million at one point was knowledge is that during that period you in some surpluses after those other time periods I'm helping generate a little bit out of that so so anyway so I'll just signal to my fellow board members that my inclination is to go for the the most have a zero change because we have so much money that's been missing for so long really ought not to have been there in the first place and then the we've other spending some significant spending coming up there's a serious trust issues in this community and then that'd be one way to acknowledge the pain that people are feeling and just what is right there's what's legal and what's right I know someone who had a bank I took money every month out of this person's account for

184a dozen years a couple thousand dollars and ultimately by law the bank did not have to return more than just like three months worth but there so by love versus what's right and and I'll be bringing this up but I feel like my goal is always to give as much information as possible so the board makes well before decision you do have to recognize given the fact that the district is essentially a balanced budget now that if we do have a zero revenue growth scenario and expenditures grow at any level then they will like there will be deficit spending and then so that so that that's the balance that would happen with the freeze you talked about new constructions coming online in option two and you've estimated it I think it used two point five

185million dollars and value and estimated about seventy seven thousand dollars equate to seventy seven thousand dollars in revenue is there a is there a way to get a better estimate I love I mean can we go to the Assessor and get an idea you know we know that in Oak Park we had some large projects we don't know when they come on well I'm sure you I mean there's there is you could look at permits a thing like that some of it has to do and when it hits the tax rolls so it's that's not completely a reliable thing because sometimes it like it might hit the following year but but I will say another general rule of thumb you know I think work there's a couple of things that you know is that for

186every million dollars of new property you get about $30,000 because your tax rate to about run three dollars but so that's that I mean doesn't have a huge I mean so taboo and it was five million to be 150 million that's two million it's a sixty that every it's real money for sure but because again just because it was thirty thousand per million if you look at the historical other than like when if the tip comes off the books or something like that generally speaking there's not using but I think that's something that we looked into no I'm just asking if there's a way that we can narrow our focus to get a more accurate number the second question I have it has to do with lost cost because I believe last year we did

187take lost costs again new construction inform go this can you explain a little bit what lost cost is and how that gets share so so the default lost cost in Cook County is three percent for nine buying funds and five percent for bond funds their districts tenth freeze even tax levy for bonds so the default in increase that the county would add to the tax either would be three percent but it doesn't get you any more money so so if you were at two point one percent hypothetically you wouldn't get two point one percent plus three percent it wouldn't get you any more money before tax cap certain place that lost cost had ever had a more relevant picture but the relevancy of the lost cost as you're considering these scenarios is that if the

188Board of Education one and a hard freeze then it should pass the resolution to not increase the levy and pass the resolution to have a zero loss cost factor there are some districts that I know that have portrayed that they were freezing their tax levy but they kept the lost cost factor in which make them ineligible to receive three percent more so they had to max even though they had the perception that it was increase which I don't think is right thank you thank you thank you and then my next time is just the update on imagine inside limits for information all right thank you my name's Rick young I'm with Perkins and well and so anything giving you update on the documents who received problem imagine yeah you received a series of documents first

189among that was a narrative document that just described the intents and purpose of each of those documents so you could go through and realize exactly what each of the components were trying to say so I'm not going to go through that specifically but go to the documents themselves the first of which is this flow chart and the intent of this flow chart is feedback we received both from the board as well as the community members and the port workshop and community presentation was a little bit more understanding of what was included in the facility's master plan previously the master plans been presented as a series of five sequences it could be implemented over time and I think the the perception was that you know these were all had be done completely as a solid set

190of sequence and we had explained that there is actually flexibility in the master plan that was intended to get the board the flexibility to choose when and how they implemented certain elements of the master plan and so what this document does is it breaks it down into its smaller bits of components which can be implemented as separate discrete projects but it also gives the relative relationship of how those components are affected by other components so if you look at this document you will see each of the components are given a minor designation and then underneath that is a brief description of what's included in that component as well as the overall component cost and again that is a project cost that is not a construction cost so that takes into account all the associated fees

191and other soft or indirect costs that might be with that project it also gives an estimated duration of the construction of that component well get into the detail of what's included in each component in the second document but I'm going to continue to explain all the elements of this document first so underneath some of the components you will see lines and arrows that you know point to other components and what that's intended to represent is that the component at the start of that line is is needed to be implemented there are four the other components being implemented it either has implications on where it's located within the building or construction sequencing and logistics I do have all the five sequences broken down there and those represent all the components that were in the original sequence

192and the original costs that were presented so the overall the overall combined costs for the sequence is listed up at the top just for ease of reference down at the bottom the components that are listed at the bottom of the page everything below the dash line those are components that could be executed as discrete elements that really have no implication or requirements or connection to other components so for instance components p1 through for those of renovation of existing classrooms you don't have to vacate classrooms in order to renovate them they can just be renovated in place they're listed as p1 through four because we isolated them into a series of four components because you wouldn't renovate all you know I think it's 64 classrooms in a single summer so in order to do that over

193a series of summers and give you the flexibility about how you want to execute them that's why they're separated but they're grouped for the ease of reading in this document there's also a series of notes you know in different colors the red are generally things that you just want to call your attention to specifically either notes explaining to change for instance sequence 1 & 2 there's an Asterix next to there and going back and reviewing these and more detailing on there was one line item that was inadvertently put in sequence one that was intended to be in sequence 2 so that was just a correction that was made another item is in sequence 4 and further discussions with Billy and browns we identified a component that we have a master plan that building Browns already

194intended to renovate in the next summer or two so it wasn't relevant to including the master planks that's already scheduled to be done that's specifically the interiors stadium renovations there's a couple of items in different colors we've highlighted all the green roofs that are associated with various additions those are all highlighted in green and then underneath those we have parenthetically put that you could investigate doing solar panels in blue-green groups there's been some debate about you know what would be more desirable especially in light of you know information that the park district has engaged in a agreement with their service provider that that service provider both installed and maintains the sort of solar panels for them so relatively no cost for the Park District to have those so that is something that the district could

195investigate further if they didn't want to do the green rooms but the greener of price tag because that was the initial investigation is included so I'm gonna go ahead and reference the other diagram because I don't think it requires quite as much explanation then you know take questions but if you do have a question the second document is meant to work in conjunction with that flowchart and this just gives you a spatial location for each of the components throughout the building for those of you not necessarily familiar with in an axon document like this basically think about you know if you're up in the air looking down at the building and you slice each of the floors and then separated them that's exactly what you're looking at here so each of the floor levels from

196the lower level at the bottom all the way up through to the fourth floor at the top that's you know just the floor cut in half so you can see where the components exist within the building and then each of the components are bound by a dashed line because our there are an individual element in each of the components and those components are are grouped together based on construction logistics you know similar project types and other things that nature is that would require them to be executed at the same time and then the margins under each of the components actually lists out each of the individual spaces that are included there and then the Associated letter designations so you can compare this directly back to that flowchart and then the last set of documents that

197were provided to the board were updated detailed cost estimate documents and those are broken down in several different ways the first set of summaries is based on the sequence and phase so each sequence can't have multiple phases and then it lists the component letters in the left-hand column with a series of other information including the you know square foot area of the estimated duration and the construction cost and there is an overall summary that categorizes by space type designation and then there's also a detailed listing that groups it together by those components so if you go up into this it with components II and the different elements of component C are listed there and then you go guys provides the detail as to how those costs were put together so those were the documents were

198provided to the board but really the intention providing this information was to I don't Jackie I believe you specifically at the workshop have mentioned you know it'd be really useful for the board to understand how the various components relate to each other and what flexibility the board has in implementing the various recommendations of a management plan that's what this document is meant to give the board an understanding of you know if we decide we want to you know prioritize something ahead of what the Humana team is recommended this allows you to understand what other components are affected by moving things forward or back in that manner so first of all thank you for this set of documents I I love this flowchart I'm an engineer you know in its the sad commentary and I really

199think the detail behind it the way you've broken it out makes it really easy to understand in terms of how to break the project up so I appreciate that and a couple quick questions on the flow chart mm-hmm and I'm sorry that gonna go right into detail in sequence for there is an arrow that points down correct what's it pointing it it's pointing that component F that's really just there's so much information trying to be communicated and to fit it all into one sheet just graphically things have to be or they were so you will see it is going from components I and apps there's a portion of that that's in sequence three and that goes over and then it points down so in order for the bulk of component F to be executed you

200need to have that components I had F execute first however they're you know you move on to sequence five I have to be executed in order for components B and C to be executed and the relationship there is those components all deal with the Commons and then also the comments therefore relates to the main entrance and that's the relationship tools and just one more question I have a bunch of detailed questions on this I think I'll just email all those and get some answers but one generic one so there are green roofs all over the page is that green roof cost and incremental cut meaning we have to build a roof right so is the green roof the cost of the roof embedded in the green roof I know what you're getting at and the

201green roof cost that's identified is above and beyond what it would be so it's totally incremental it is already the roof of the building yes and the reason that the green rows are are kind of peppered throughout we identify areas that we're building a new roof or an area that there was an opportunity for you know that sort of sustainable in halation so if the ports of chose we want to argue with the information that this is the estimated cost to go above and beyond just putting a roof over and I don't want to get too deep into the green roof issue but is there a cost benefit to the green roof or is it just and it's just an environmental they need to manage water better it's both there is a cost benefit over

202the years storm waters become increasingly obvious issue for the metropolitan area and counties have been implementing stricter and stricter measures about how properties handle their storm water such that any time you do a new addition you have to meet the new requirements for managing that storm water it started with you had to slow the release of storm water into the storm sewer system the next step is you have to maintain so much storm water on your site and you can only release a certain percentage of the storm water system so that the green roof helps with those costs and those the costs associated with those storm water measures that are currently being increased by the county will help mitigate the otherwise cost you would have to do to manage storm water so the cost for

203the the green roofs as it is now is more related to the increased cost it would be installed a green roof at the current time and our understanding of what those requirements aren't from counties however with the expectation that those would increase that numbers going to become closer and closer to the actual cost just to do the addition so it's it's in there no to offset future costs in essentially and essentially water removal is it yes it's it's to to manage the water on your site rather than over burdening the municipal storm sewer system okay but it's fair to say right now and we're burdening the storm sewer system with that amount of water yes okay and you just want to know where we were in what you know how to think about that yeah

204hey if you didn't install the greenroom you would have to do other measures to manage the stormwater coming off for your site if you were to do say an addition you would be required to there are calculations but you're required to mitigate your burden on the storm sewer system in some manner if not the green roof then there would be some other management would have to implement this is very much appreciated and the fact that fred is excited as an engineer and I understand it as a non engineer it speaks to how well I think it's done and I just want to say that as we're moving into our town hall to get more community input and then being presented with the final proposal during between those times will be when the board can you

205know ask the ditional questions and also if we can start thinking you know individually what we want to discuss after listening on Tuesday or priorities and things like that and I think this document helps us to I just wanted to comment that I was saying pee-eww in this in compliance with strategic plan thank you the next item is the update on potential funding or facilities recommendation this item is meant for information for void discussion no action is required it isn't appliance widget plan good morning everybody so as as the board of education gathering data for there for obviously this very significant decision as it relates to capital capital work in the school district or the next many years you're getting data and capital and different projects and different recommended sequences and your giving and my

206kind of focus is is the decisions as it relates to the financing of the projects and maybe to determine how you want to finance or how do you want to pay for portions of the Imagine plan so I just want to kind of briefly go through I'll begin sick thank but but sorry so the Board of Education is going to be receiving a comprehensive list of capital improvement recommendations from the imagine team as well as some recommended sequencing of the conceptual plan with consideration to need efficiency and ordering as it relates to construction constraints the decision process is kind of the way I see it is that that there's the first decision that comes after the management plan is kind of determining your capital commitment how much how much money here are you willing to

207commit at this point in time as it relates to the plan and then and then identify the projects within the plan you know with consideration from the wreck of the recommendation from the committee and which which projects you're going to address then at some point down the road when that is complete more than likely then then I visualized that the district will have some sort of master facility plan that will incorporate whatever remaining items Board of Education wants to have behind that are because my cell phone whatever Rob whatever parts of the plan that would still exist at that point in time and other major capital projects that are necessary and facilities then the district would be assessing its financial condition again at that point in time determine if there's available capital commitment they're doing

208the first time and if there's not enough capital commitment to address the projects they want to address that at that point in time they would have to pursue taxpayer referendum to generate the resources necessary to go to the next state so the first thing we look at as far as current capital commitment and the Board of Education is going to be considering is how much if any of the fund officers that they want to utilize for the capital for the plan and right now as was mentioned the district has approximately approximately hundred seven million dollars yeah it's not complete but somewhere around that level and that represents about fifteen months worth of fund balance reserves board policy for twenty I has a fund balances targeted at between 25% and 75% which means that if the

209board wants to go bring fund balances down to that range they could utilize between 42 and 84 million dollars of the fund balance reserves towards the plan that they so desire in making that decision however there's there's other decisions that have to go hand-in-hand with this there's issues that are within the control of the Board of Education one of them which is what we just discussed is what is the Board of Education committed to balanced budgets is the bar is the Board of Education going to take the position that they're going to purposefully run deficit budgets and utilize fund balance reserves to cover that because if fund off reserves I use to cover deficit spending then there's less fund balance reserves available to address capital projects that's the main driver of your revenue as was

210mentioned your decisions on the lighting will drive your revenues and your main driver of expenditure grows is the collective bargaining agreements which I'm not aware either of the specific details of the agreement but certainly this agreement and subsequent agreements is the major driver of your expenditures and then you also have to consider issues outside of the state to the Board of Education that you can't control these are things such as its ship States shifting a pension burden to school districts one of the one of the candidates for governor's has stated that the way to address it is the shift of the schools and in advance it in over four years that is phased in over four years and it maxes out at what's projected to be up around 90 percent of credible earnings your expense

211is on an automatic zero three three three million dollars a year so what just so you could go from balanced budget to three million stop three million dollar deficits immediately I'm not saying that's going to happen but it's certainly a possibility and something that you at least have to have on your radar and consider as you determine how long you want to bring fund oz reserves and then the second major thing that I see is far as legislation is the property tax treaties which has been presented the last couple years never passed as passed out of either just I think it passed on about seven that the house one one or the other but it never made it all the way through but if that does happen then whether the Board of Education wants to

212increase at CPI or that they wouldn't be able to and that would that would take away potential growth in your revenues this chart is kind of relevant as it relates to this decision and your tax levy decision and I just made a simple example your district basically has balanced budgets right now 82 million in revenues 82 expenses approximately so this is just a hypothetical example of the Board of Education not increasing the revenues so if the revenues are flagged at 82 and expenditures grew at a 2% rate which is which potentially is a conservative rate right again I don't know the collective bargaining settlement or how it works I guess nobody knows that how but you do have some expenditures like special education that are growing and it's significantly as well but let's just assume

213that the district can keep expenditure growth in two percent about inflation what would happen is over five years just mathematically your fund balance concerns will be decreased by 25 million dollars and you'll be running an eight and a half million dollar deficit in five years that's just mathematically what would happen if your expenditures go two percent a year your revenues don't grow at all now five years from now you would say okay 25 mil we could afford 25 million dollars in fund balance reserves and I would agree with that but I also would make this thing that that it would be difficult to say that you could live with Amen people you can't sustain deficits of that magnitude in perpetuity so the depth the magnitude the deficits to me is more relevant than none sucking

214down our fund balance reserves so this is a decision that the Board of Education is to consider as its deciding on the imagine project as well so if the Board of Education decides to commit to a balanced budget then it has 42 to 84 million dollars with a fund balance reserves then it could if it's so desired allocate towards the project if the Board of Education decides not to commit to the balanced budgets and enhance structure deficits similar to what was projected then you know then they have to decide whether there's anything balanced reserves I mean it but there may be something that could be used but certainly the amount of money of reserves that could be used for capital projects would be decreased significantly because you sure don't want to get into a spot

215where you go down to hypothetically 40 or 50 million dollars and 98 million dollar deficits or 3 or 4 or 5 million dollar deficits now you're getting at a vulnerable stage our next major decision is can apportion at a capital budget be aligned with the imagined projects and I been working with Mike and building and grounds on a concept of pushing some of the some of the projects and the current list to be spent before the imagined projects would start and deferring any payments till after they could start and there's some promising numbers right now that aren't finalized but the rabiul window you know i've your winner that can be created where some of the imagine project did right into the budget and and and some projects to be addressed through that so again if

216there is that capacity then the district could could allocate five to fifteen million dollars worth of annual budgets towards towards the managing plan if it so desired and if the capacity doesn't exist you know which is the decision that would be made with coordination with the building at my house department then the board of education should should assume that they don't have that they don't have money in their annual budget for the capital projects and they are tied to the imaginable and next major decision that the board of education you would consider is that should that be issued to imagine the plan to to address the management plan and there's basically three general options one would be the life safety by an action and all of these in aggregate total forty million dollars but but

217life safety bonds would be to address only those projects that the state of Illinois have deemed must be repaired in order to comply with health and safety issues and non-compliance by cohn then there's other types of bonds that can be issued within that forty million dollar capacity that would also you know would be on your menu of items to consider to fund projects both life safety bonds and the non-randomized would have a tax let me attach them and again the tax levy is your so you say your again under the theory or under the the mathematical an equation that one million dollars in taxes equals $50 your debt service extension base is two pointing about 2.8 million dollars so so the most you could increase your annual tax levy without going the referendum is 2.8

218million dollars so that's it so let's just let's round into three million dollars well three million dollars is about one hundred and fifty dollars so so without going to referendum the most you can increase your tax line because you're debt-free now would be about 2.8 million dollars which is about a hundred and fifty dollars per $400,000 market value homeland that's its list of as four thousand dollars on the tax bill and then the third option is dead certificates so some dead certificates are a way to get the money up front but pay it off over future years it's like if you bought a house but you have money in the bank but you want to spread out the payments be cooked because you because you you don't want to commit all the funds because you've

219used as much as you could out of your fund balance reserves right and how to be comfortable with you borrow the money now you paid off the future the negative to that is that there's interest time in it so you're paying back the principal and the interest so obviously you would use fund balances first but if you need to go more behind your fund balances then you're comfortable with and you and you consider that and spread out the payments over multiple years so if you do not issue any referendum death and obviously there's no additional but other resources available for the plan if you issue death certificates only the impact you again there would be no impact on a teacher tax line of uses because you don't love you taxes for that and the district

220we need to be able to commit up to three million dollar you have to be able to commit future budgets so you may have to adjust your expenditures accordingly and kind of the same thing with the nine referendum debt my safety by the same thing taxes yeah tax on the increasing between $40 and $150 depending on if you want to levy the max or you you don't have to bring bloody all the way up to 2.8 million you can see we're gonna pay a million dollars at the annual levy over the next 20 years I'm making this up and viral you know 10 million dollars or whatever that would generate or you could issue a combination of debt certificates in that referendum you could say that we're willing to tweak we're willing to for example

221borrowed just for life safety bonds but if we need a little bit more money won't borrow some debt certificates and pay a low amount per year that could fit within the annual budget so so one of the things that I wanted to put in this is this is just a hypothetical example not a recommended example but just a but just an example of how the pieces all fit together ultimately as you make your decision so let's just say hypothetically the Board of Education could commit the concept of future balance of budgets by by there let me practice ways the state risks an agrees that they'll bring fund balances down to six months worth of reserves then you have sixty three million dollars that you commit towards your capital commitment then let's say after discussions with

222building and grounds that you could commit two million dollars a year over a five-year period within your capital budget for the projects that's another ten million dollars that would be available for your capital commitment and then let's assume and these are all these are all just hypotheticals that the board set commits to issue life safety plans to address projects tied to health and safety risk for children and let's just say that the state of Illinois identifies ten million dollars I understand there's about five point 1 million dollars already of approved life safety work that's on the building and grounds list already delicious assume that that's ten in dollars and then with it then let's say the board says okay we'd like to commit a hundred million dollars we're at eighty three million dollars so let's

223take 17 million dollars and committed to dead certificates so you get the 17 million dollars up front you pay it off over future tax levies I've seen you over future budgets you don't love me for that the only the only tax and that component would be ten million dollars if you dropped it down to ninety million dollars and took off the life safety bonds then you're doing a ninety million dollar project without any impact of taxpayer but that's an example of 100 million sold so you identify the capital commitment when you put it all together how much you want to put towards the to look towards the plan you match it to the plan itself and what you want to address with whatever money you decide and then you start kind of things one of

224what you want to do if you want to do it and that's basically that tonight that we can start to generate discussion with the board on the concept that start to have the kind of dialogue about potential options and what does that look like so that's why you got the hypothetical just said so what if not to come up with any decision better whatever yes I just had one really quick question to answer to sentence and then repayment of those bonds in 20 30 years what's 20 years Meg's and would we ever be able to accelerate those like if we'd to say those to it than five years in Spain yes so you could so in theory you could say we're you know we're gonna borrow five million dollars pay a million dollars off a

225year there's interest in the top of that impact in terms of the levy decision and contract negotiations those two aspects it's important I think to your hypothetical is helpful to me in with the line-item aspect as well as the sequencing aspect and the timeline to be able to factor all those things in so when that discussion would happen in November we will bring the recommendation for for the long term facilities plan we would ask the board to begin discussion but we would not be asking the board to make a decision so I'm saying they're just okay thank you and then and then I just have one macro-level it's a statement is that kind of going back to the gentleman spoke before I did is that just me looking at that the school districts financial condition

226and everything like did if remember that if you if you could in perpetuity keep your revenue growth in your expenditure from with the same now that you're basically the balanced budget you never have to go to referendum right you only have to a referendum years growth starts exceeding the revenue growth so so you kind of have two paths right you know your one path where you could say we're going to pursue a CPI increase in revenue and then let's let's work hard to get our keep our expenditure growth if at all possible there's things you can't control things you can at that same CPI rate you never have to go to referendum again the other option is to say that we're going to freeze like the taxes now and there's no right or wrong answer

227percent and and and and incur deficits and and and bringing our fund balance and that would certainly unless you can keep expenditure growth at zero then would certainly then accelerate when an operating or friendo I don't know I mean you guys in some ways in many in many ways you guys control that point in which a referendum has to be done as it relates to operating but if you could if you could keep any district like yours that balanced budget sometimes I go into districts and their rates they're starting with a three or four million dollar deficit and they're not in that spot but if you're essentially at a balanced budget so going forward your revenue and expenditure growth that relationship is going to drive the long term future their district it'd be wonderful if

228we can hold a balanced budget however CPI is not in Employment Index there right and NK in employment costs typically in historically rise in excess of CPI yeah but but I would also say that there's there's there's there there are oftentimes is I mean I personal the supply and demands changed it's that there's not a lot of the discipline that supply is less than the demand and so the the cost of Labor's is going up generally in terms of teachers down south where they would competitive salary schedules there can't find teaching positions teachers and fill their positions but but but but again if you could manage that growth with the fact that they'll be savings from retirements and then things like that and you know I don't know I mean just kind of dive in

229dive into the whole plan I know you know we're diving oh I don't know oh I know you are I mean it's a friend of it is it's a huge challenge for sure I'm just saying hypothetically that if you can make them at that model can work then then every year you bring your analysis down to whatever months reserves you it stays at that level yeah Rob I think the challenge to balance our salary increases to our to CPI would be not where we are today and to be a huge challenge and that's and that's the part I don't know I mean I know that and I know generally speaking with the new 3% cap a lot of districts are we focusing on that right and with all future growth if we get new students

230or all future increases have to be absorbed by us because the state does not provide any support at all including much your special ed now you used to been reimbursed more for special ed now it's part of your after your base funding right so you're not getting additional money if you're specially branded on top of you know we've been spending five billion dollars a year on our building which we know to be right so so yes so so so so then but then the same kind of the same metric holds and then if you have it so if you can't get let's just say in places it's training a little bit higher than two right now but let's just say it's to a maybe and you can't keep it at two and it ends up

231being three or four now that even there's even a further gap right it's either zero revenue only 4% expenditures or 2% revenues so it's still either way you know that the smaller the camp you know if you can't keep the gap completely closed the smaller the gap the longer you can go out without but there's a point both their points of rear while taking these it's a huge challenge there any you know you've kind of covered a different options of sources of capital but I'm just you know grant or any other well I mean there were any other trees to be shaken but in today's climate I mean I I had actually launched two weeks ago with one of them like one of the ranking members of the house that's there's there there's supposedly some

232billion dollar type of capital plan that they want to integrate I don't know if it's going to schools I don't know right act the money's coming from you know think you hoping out money I don't know where it's coming from but there is a major capital plan that's being considered down to Springfield to fund roads and buildings I don't know if it's for schools and I don't know like my guess would be that they you know at least that they're following the way they do they have to space funding model that you guys be lined up last and I'm going on it but but but that's something that being considered I don't know how it plays out logistic area thank you thank you Oh are we able to approve the Board of Education goal for

233the 2008 the 19 school year as presented and asked for a second questions comments mr. Baron yes mr. Arkin yes yes yes so there no further items Sara if there's no further items colors baby mr. eisely the board goes okay so I move to adjourn all in favor thank you