001i all right so um the entire board does nothing but much about the service that you do us and the kindnesses that you do she makes us for us tonight um always compiling data that we need making copies when we need it um signing us up for stuff sitting here right when we screw up i now can no longer say i've never sworn at work meaning 12 years i managed to never swear to work tonight thank you thank you for everything that you've done and i'm lucky to call you friends as well so we will we will miss [Applause] yes now on with the show i would like to invite mckenna kelsey and dennis caron enough to tell us about this great [Applause] so uh um it's a weird time of summer a little bit
002and that we have had a number of our athletes go off to college already believe it or not i don't know about college athletes would have summer training um also a couple planning vacations the dust finally settled after the first round of grad parties number of kids at that and kids are industrious so there's a lot of kids working and nobody lets them out of it because they can't find employees right now so um so we are short a few of our team members but i'll introduce those that are here along with our whole coaching staff and besides coach kelsey who really serves as the assistant head coach for the boys program with me and does just a wonderful job also you know when she's our head volleyball coach for this coach and again the
003boys program uh since she started coaching with the turtles sprints and then um really kind of everything sort of do together um along with our distance coach coach bronco meeks uh mike darial who coaches our jumps coach freeman who's a volunteer assists with distance uh kelly fernbach who's our whole vote coach first year doing that uh kyla plate who does our throws along with coach mootwell um i've said this a number of meetings we've been at coach wells in hospital right now recovering from really a horrible automobile accident that happened to him as he was driving to get his car tested in the morning and so you know your thoughts and prayers with him and all of us in batavia he's doing better soon to be released we believe and things are moving moving along
004much better direction later coach schubert votes our high jump and then coach kasmerich who also helps with robes we coach our program as you know most of our assistants coach boys and girls and then we have head coaches of both programs and so coach kelsey and i are always with the boys program so um just a little clarity for you there um so our team this year um if i could go back a little bit i'm gonna go back to 2020. because this is what i'm going to thank you for you whether you know it or not trusted us back in 2020 and early 2020 we were one of the few school districts who actually began to allow coaches to work with athletes uh we had to go through packing you know i want to
005start the meeting but it was it was not easy these athletes were all part of that experience um but what i think happened in bataga i think all of the young men that are here i can attest to and i think what has happened here over the last couple of years at the beginning it wasn't evident it was an awful lot of work and a lot of really i'll be honest exhausted coaches and sometimes athletes uh but we were able to keep things going where a lot of places were not and we're seeing the ramifications of that now there's a number of programs i'm just finding out about programs dropping fall sports already before they've even started that's not a problem not at all uh we don't have a problem with numbers in track never
006have i had i believe 150 uh boys out this season so we also have huge numbers but a part of it is we've always been allowed to be together and through this entire pandemic we were together if we weren't together we have leaders some who graduated sadly we didn't get to experience this able to meet with the guys and lead and find a way to make it happen despite all the craziness that was going on around them the last couple years so really this is in a lot of ways my thank my thank you to you is for allowing us to be with the kids when a school district swore and the other thank you that would be honestly to our coaching staff our coaching staff didn't hide uh didn't hide their homes wasn't afraid
007to be around children believe that was their calling that was the most important thing for them to do and every inch that you gave us we we took maybe a little more but you know uh you know exactly what we were allowed to do so um what's come out of that these last couple years has been a wonderful thing that culminated in the first state track championship for batavia high school and history of our community all of these athletes most all of them had the opportunity last year to experience uh though an unusual track season but a state meet experience where we really had had a great state meet but i think i came away from it a little bit frustrated and thought and hopeful that we could have done a little bit more a
008little bit more and so this season early on you know i i coach another sport football and i want to bring that into it but i always often will tell that team you know at some level you've earned or deserved the right to whisper or talk about yourself and say two words stay tight stable and they actually were talking about this this wasn't a surprise to us we were the top ranked team in illinois most of the indoor season maybe second one indoor environment outdoor season on numerous times we were first or second and going into the state meet we were right number one in illinois we've never been right number one i will tell you that we feel like we've had the best track team in illinois on probably three or four occasions in
009the last decade if we go to an invite we're going to win we can fill all the events we've got coaches to cover to coach the athletes we have athletes who filter the events we have unselfish team members who understand what uh what it means to make a team and we've been able to i think be highly productive in track and field here batavia for decades now in fact the last two seasons we've one we call the triple crown which is winning county conference and sectionals really in all cases by pretty sizable margins and so we knew that we had a very good team but state meet is fraught with uh craziness and disaster and things that you don't count on and so you never know what's going to happen when you get down there
010we haven't had a true state meet in three years where you go for two full days and you have to have that whole experience of staying in the dorms running prelims on friday and dealing with again we've dealt with horrible weather and you got to come back you know 12 hours later and run in the morning and so it's really not and so again there were bumps in the road but um you know i know uh vinci here on a number of occasions kept telling the guys on the team just stay the course we'll be okay things are going to happen mistakes will be made won't be perfect and so um when we get to saturday if we've got enough stuff left over we think we can win this thing and as it turned out
011that's exactly what happened so but important to understand that as we talked as a team and again with a group of seniors like these who've kind of been through the battles together the last couple of years uh our senior leadership was so phenomenal i would thank you know coach kelsey probably in march uh april we began talking about this idea all right that we could win and in that conversation what came out of it was let's go for this let's not worry about things around our next we might get second or third in an individual event or not win a relay but if we divide and conquer we can score more points and so let's go for that instead so we've all talked about it sounds good to us in fact it meant for some
012people maybe running at sectionals but not running on a relayed state are running in a prelim but not being in a relay in finals we had a number of guys who shuffled around and did things like that and so this is really a team title as much as anything that i've ever coached in many years we won't say how many it's been but it's been a long time and so this is a a team title as much as any that i've ever seen and a testament to these um young men and the athletes have competed so i'll introduce everybody and the athletes that are here under dasalva against a team that was a state team our alternatives anthony roberts jack klein jacob yancey and nathan well a couple of freshmen went with us in our
013relay flat spots phenomenal group of underclassmen we're going to be very a good next couple years so i'm excited about that uh who also is now with us tonight is pole vaulter nick fortino who qualified for finals in the pole vault jacob homan who was on our 4x1 placed in the 400 and was at our state championship 4x4 scotty parker who left i believe right now he's probably getting processed into the military at this moment and so that's up scott scott's done rotc i believe the last two years every month and often during the week and did all that while he did a great job in school and you know never you know miss things with us and just a phenomenal thing and we're very proud of scott and i wish him the best spencer
014pratts who qualified for state in uh discus i electron who qualified for state and high jump and so those athletes are with us today they're all in the finals or competing at the state meet to score points for the team and then i'll introduce uh davidson here this evening gabe bankers who's a junior qualified for state in the pole vault and very excited about what he's going to be doing next season as well so gabe could stand up i gave bankers um then um i believe it was it's your first year track right here so a couple guys tricked him into coming out this year my partner you guys and it was a great addition to the team just a really hard worker and things came along he began to find his stride and i
015think we're really excited to get another junior about what he could do next year i ran out all of our relays throughout the season and was on our 4x100 relay and then ran in the finals on our state champion four by four relay through her piece of true quote standouts uh quit low so q uh this interesting story hard to explain a lot of it but we had a lot of decisions to make going into the state meet with the vets and what he could do because he can run everything really from a 400 to 3 200 meters and is our best athlete and so many of the things that we do and it's just really just a great athlete he qualified for state in the end for us uh at the sectionals in the
0163 200 meters he was ranked number one in the 800 but when we all talked about the state meet and what was going to be in the 8 and 3 200 doubles things it was the best event for us to have a chance just missed getting in the fast feet and placed second in his heat at uh in the prelims which is very difficult to place out of but battle extremely hard to try to get points for us out of that 3200 meters in the finals on saturday so q and then ran prelims on friday in our 4x4 because he was the freshest guy that we had and ray on that got us in the finals but then he'd run the 3200 on saturday and so drew ran into 4x4 finals on saturday this is
017what i'm talking about i want you to think about what it's described to you that's not an easy thing for athletes to do or to make those decisions or you don't have to like them but to understand what we're trying to accomplish and that was really a phenomenal thing so quinn will please stand up okay uh next young man joan fallon uh jonah i believe tomorrow will be named the kane county track field athlete of the year uh jonah was um capable again of running on all of our relay teams he did throughout the season uh trained with distance focused on the eight and the four but then when it came down to at the end of the year competed primarily in the 400 meters of what she took second in state in the 400
018and then anchored our four by 4x400 relay to a state championship to describe the emotions of what happened in the final minutes of the state meet are what was amazing imagine in any other sport hitting a game-winning shot to win it hitting a home run a walk-off home run to win the game that's exactly what we were able to do because of jonah jonah had to hold off i believe one of the top 400 800 runners in the nation right now and dan wacky and held them all and lockheed got to the times the yard behind him and couldn't keep up with him he ran the split of his life and um well i believe wacky's team just won the new balance nationals last for this weekend's weekend of which he anchored the fastest time
019in the country so that's who jonah had to hold off sorry for his team to do what they had to do at that meeting so not only did we win the meet in the final event but won it with it it was uh chaos for all of our guys and we had a big group so very excited so ken connie trackville athlete of the year jonathan jonah so next young man um we talked a little bit about bumps in the road and ups and downs and our 4x2 had a mishap happen in the prelims which i know mr buckley happened to just be involved around near when it occurred however he had another event triple jump which going into state he was ranked for had jumped pretty well but really had put a ton of
020time into perfecting his crap the last couple of weeks worked very hard with his coaches and was feeling good going into state league in the prelims in really crappy weather horrible weather because the isuias dominated the field one end of the finals at number one which paid big dividends and great weather the next day against a bunch of jumpers from around the state who were equally talented he was going he was in second place going into his final jump and on his final jump pr by over a foot and a half which is i've never heard of that ever happen had the jump of his life and won the event on the final jump on his final jump of his high school career again in front of a huge group of batavia bulldogs and a
021great crowd that was there and um somewhere i've got video and i'll share i just have to add it out somewhere so it was buckley's who phenomenal the statement jayla uh just a phenomenal uh athlete person young man going off next tuesday for western michigan to start football so we're excited for him in that endeavor as well and then finally kind of a guy who did absolutely everything for us as well i went to the state meet with this last year i don't believe vincey you're on any of the relay teams last year this year mc was on all of our relay teams as a really a key cog for everything that we did in every meet with every lineup that we put together on our 4x1 our 4x2 and our 4x4 uh really worked
022hard all year so you know i know if the forum wasn't his favorite event but i know that he also believed that if he ran his best and worked his hardest at it it could take our team to another level by adding additional debt so he was out of 504 by 14 that won the state on saturday on our 4x1 that took fifth it was on our 4x2 that was state ranked first or second all year long as well so uh senior vinci salami so uh really great representation of our track team overall are these six young men and all the others that i mentioned to you here extremely proud of this team the year before 2021 squad and the 2020 squad they didn't get to even have statement who may have been one of
023the most talented teams i've ever coached so um thank you guys for the legacy you've left i know all of them mentioned some of the guys that came before them down at the state meeting some of their video comments and we're very proud of them i'm extremely proud of our coaching staff and honor to coach with such unselfish coaches who've really dedicated themselves with these guys will uh testify to the children here in battage it's a passion of theirs they love what they do but it's easy to do when you coach kids like these [Applause] the trophy up front come on guys do you guys think everybody get around them [Music] right here thank you [Applause] we have a lot of celebrations that come through and this is a unique one for me personally because
024i've watched all of y'all run for years and following the team and going to as many meets as i can so actually witnessing what the process is um makes me admire you all that more i mean you guys were phenomenal you acted like a team and that is exactly the type of children that we want coming out of our district is willing to look at the long-term goal makes personal sacrifices and work together to accomplish a state championship so thank you very much and i'm happy to observe it thank you i want to say something to you surprise surprise but uh first of all i want to say i got chills coach graham you were describing the event um two things one is i travel quite a bit for my job especially throughout the state
025and i'm always very proud to say where you're from ortega and for a while there it's always a football team but lately you get a hell of a track team which they guess you should be proud of that and the other thing is what i'm struck by coach was describing your mindset and the sacrifice the team made is you know a lot of what we do as adults is we talk about building trust working hard communication and you know the story of the sacrifices you made for each other inspires everybody in the community and it's going to serve you very well so you should definitely hold your head high for what you've accomplished and what lies ahead so thank you [Applause] thank you congrats congratulations um [Music] is [Music] i don't want the number of
026papers until i didn't even hear it and and based on our previous meeting i was able to cut some things out so that's really good news wow all right good evening everyone hearing from you but since around two and a half hours yeah you know i'm always short you know um good evening uh to begin with i'd like to share some news with you on the bea front uh beginning next friday july 1st and continuing through july 6th eileen matos from hc storm and myself will be attending in person the 2022 national education association representative assembly which this year is being held at sunny tropical mccormick place in chicago usually we get to travel somewhere fun to go to the nea convention this year chicago's fun but it's not like going somewhere um but we
027will be joining thousands of other nea members from across the country both in person and virtually at the same time for the first time they're doing the combined sessions uh to determine policy approve bylaws and amendments and further strengthen nea's legislative platform to quickly name just a few of the things we'll be doing during the representative assembly then later in july myself and four other bea members will be embarking on an amazing leadership journey for iea the illinois education association in one of the more enviable locations to be at in the middle of july bloomington illinois joining me will be our new bea vice president drew ray newly appointed bea treasurer heather breon amber gersa and scott baer the majority of our time there will be spent working with sherry jones the director of racial
028and social justice for the iea and who in fact will be a featured presenter at our district's institute day on september 2nd where she will be facilitating what we know will be an amazing professional learning opportunity for our entire district staff not just teachers and administrators but hopefully for all employees which will be centered around the topic of implicit bias implicit bias training was the number one most urgent training need identified by our own district's equity team and thanks to this team's efforts this will be happening right away this fall it is important to note that this will not be a one and done presentation either ms jones will continue to work with bps throughout the school year next year helping us implement next steps in regards to the topic of implicit bias lastly i
029would like to share just a little bit of personal news for me with you at the end of may i was contacted by iea president kathy griffin and asked if i would co-chair a brand new statewide iea committee on mental health and wellness this 20 person committee has been charged with providing information and online resources to help educate iea members about mental health and wellness using an equity lens working with isb to secure grants for students and educators in supporting mental health and wellness providing trainings both in person and virtual to help end the stigma that surrounds mental health and educate members of their rights in the workplace when diagnosed with a mental health condition and to also advocate for and make recommendations to iea's own resolutions and legislative platform that support overall mental health
030and wellness of students and educators it will be an honor to lead this important committee on a statewide level and to be able to bring some of that work back to bps with me and keeping my message shorter tonight i wanted to simply close with some final thoughts to help everyone in our community understand what it is that when anyone is talking about dei what that clearly means of course we all know by now that dei stands for diversity equity and inclusion the diversity portion of the equation is not simply about race we have had many many speakers this past year addressed the board speaking to the fact that based on race students and even staff have been left to feel marginalized underrepresented and unwelcome in bps please do not get me wrong race is
031a key component of diversity but it is not the only thing that diversity represents diversity refers to people's race gender religion sexual orientation ethnicity nationality socioeconomic status language ability or disability age or religious commitment i need to be very clear with you that the bea is and will continue to be a staunch advocate for every one of these groups that we find in our school system not just for one of them each one of these categories has its own importance and those who identify in any one of these areas need to feel like that they are validated heard seen and belong the e and dei equity promotes justice impartiality and fairness within the procedures processes and distribution of resources within our district it is extremely important to note that there is a clear distinction between
032equity and equality equality is the acknowledgement of the disparity and resources and opportunities that individuals experience on the other hand equity allocates additional resources to ensure everyone can achieve the same outcome regardless of their privilege or differences tackling equity issues requires an understanding of the root causes of those disparities within our district our community and our society that is why the implicit bias training we are having on september 2nd is so critical we cannot even hope to get everyone on the same page of educational equity until every one of our employees recognizes that they can harbor unintentional biases that can impede the forward momentum of our district in working towards a more equitable school system the bea wholeheartedly hopes that each one of you as members of the board will be able to attend the
033upcoming implicit bias training as well and there's also a session on september 2nd on educational equity that we hope you can see as well i found a couple of visuals that ring true to me when it comes to seeing what this work really means and i'm going to ask holly if she'll put up the first visual right now so this is a visual that kind of paints a picture of equality versus equity the task is the same everyone is being able to be told you get to get an apple off the lowest branch of the tree and everyone is given a crate to stand on to get it that's equality everybody gets the same thing what equity does is provides the additional resources to help everybody attain that goal so you can see the two
034people on the other end needed additional resources so to me it's just a really great visual to show equity isn't necessarily equality when everything is equal everyone still might not get what they need okay so that's the e and dei and then lastly inclusion which is the i in dei ensures that all people no matter their background are welcomed valued and are a working part of a system it is important to note that inclusion is achieved when diversity is represented throughout an entire system not just included and integrated as the visual shows not simply checking off a box to say we have inclusivity here because these subgroups are represented they must be freely moving and working throughout the system to reach full inclusion and you can see that on this visual outside groups were in
035the exclusion part then they were kind of asked to be a part of the structure for integration but to be fully inclusive they had to be moving within the system itself and be an integral part of that system thanks holly that leads me to my last point for tonight further on in tonight's agenda it is noted that there will be discussion of an executive search firm as our district moves forward it is imperative that district leadership mirrors the steps we are taking to become a more inclusive and diverse district this work cannot simply be a checking of boxes the bea again is eager to partner with the board and the district in every capacity of any upcoming search and hopes that any potential candidates considered will bring diverse perspectives experiences and backgrounds to any leadership
036position in bps just on a closing note i will not be with you all in july as that is when i will be attending the iea leadership conference so my messages will just be submitted in writing for july and as always and closing thank you all for everything that you do and have a great series committee updates i'm not sure who all's had uh committee memes uh i'll start with aaron nothing from me nothing okay nothing anybody ah chris i got something we had a special cac meeting um in order to address our subject area leadership teams um that was predominantly uh part of our discussion because we wanted to get those up and rolling for next year we did we determined that we would have three teams this upcoming year math and ela which
037are anticipated to be permanent teams and then the last one will be social studies because uh we are in the process of integrating the new illinois social studies standards into our program so that is going to be one of the assault teams next year and um we outlined how they will meet in our how often they will meet and how each team will be comprised and we're working out the details on how they will actually function so awesome thanks but they are in the process and hopefully we'll be up and running come this fall all right the next item on our agenda is our consent agenda which is our opportunity to approve a number of routine business items all in one vote all the details of each item in the consent agenda is included in
038the board book so mr pierce if you would take us through that consent agenda absolutely 5.1 and 5.2 is the approval of the may 24th 2022 regular and closed session meeting minutes 5.3 is our monthly personnel report 5.4 is the authorization of our monthly payroll and bills 5.5 destruction of our closed session recordings from december 7th of 2020 5.6 designation of authorized depositories 5.7 is the certification of hazardous bus routes 5.8 is the approval of our insurance benefit contract renewals 5.9 is the approval of our contract for cisco smartnet flex 5.10 approval of our microsoft volume license renewal 5.11 approval of the contract for email security services and 5.12 is the authorization of our intergovernmental intergovernmental agreement for our cooperative boys and girls swimming and diving teams and then finally 5.13 is the approval of
039the incentive are there any items for clarification or removal from the consent agenda all right then i would entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented move by myself second by lock all in favor all right any opposed all right the consent agenda is approved as presented the next item on our list are reports and i'm going to hand that over to dr hitchens right and i will hand it over to tony unless you have questions about the foyer request for this month or the treasurer's reports budget all right i say but we get to talk budget one of my favorite topics the upcoming budget for the 2023 fiscal year this is the preliminary budget so it is our first pass at the budget's our first look at what our revenues and expenditures
040might look like in the upcoming school year in terms of the approval process you'll see the preliminary budget here this month next month we will post what is called a tentative budget on display for the community to see and the board will adopt it in august we will hold public hearings on the budget for also for the interfund transfers that are included as part of the budget and in this year what's different about our budget is that we'll hold what's called a truth and taxation hearing it's atypical for us we don't typically do it because we do not usually anticipate a levy that is five percent more than our prior year but unfortunately this year with inflation being as it is our levy will in fact be more than five percent and so we have
041to comply with the law we will have to hold a truth and taxation hearing along with our budget hearing they don't necessarily have to coincide with one another but i figured since we're adopting the budget it basically makes certain assumptions about what the levy is going to be or what the board expects the levy is going to be we may as well do them at the same time just to get them out of the way we do anticipate though that we'd adopt that levy in november or december as we're required to statutorily by law after those hearings are conducted in august we would adopt the final budget in september at the regular meeting in september so that's the process overall this budget given our first look we anticipate a surplus of 1.5 million dollars although
042of a six hundred thousand 000 of that surplus are in non-operating funds and it is for either debt service or capital projects which just based on the timing of when we've been receiving federal relief money or esther money uh we're able to book a surplus in the capital projects fund so uh if that surplus looks better than it really is in actuality overall our revenues are increasing uh by 0.6 which is good given what we're facing but our expenditures are increasing three percent so the growth of our expenditures is significantly outpacing our revenues that does cause concern so we have been enjoying surpluses for the last several years our financial condition has significantly improved but our expenditures are growing at a faster rate than our revenues and we will need to be cautious in future
043years on a side note which is also included in this preliminary report uh staffing is uh increasing in terms of its uh relative to its our enrollment we're going from about a 8.1 ratio of students to staff to a 7.7 ratio which is which is excellent and on average that will have positive influences on class sizes across the district not that there won't be class size issues of course but on average um those class sizes are improving and significantly that's a pretty big difference from year to year and perhaps i would say venture to say the best ratio we've ever had in the history of our school district but we will have to be careful of that moving forward as i mentioned those expenditures increasing and enrollments continuing to decrease in future years so we
044will have to be cautious again i add that this is the first pass at the preliminary budget it will change in the coming months as it certainly already has and so those numbers are certainly subject to change too so i'd be happy to entertain any questions you might have all right we'll be talking about this for the next however many months three months four months um so the next item on our agenda is building our future together yeah so building our future together and so here we are um after many many years of discussions on this particular topic and we're reaching a point where the board of education has a decision to make and so we've offered here an outline for a conversation for the board this evening and this is a conversation for the
045board of the board by the board and so this is just an outline of that conversation and you are certainly able to take it in any direction that you may want to but we just thought that this was logical in terms of of that at least the concepts that should be addressed in this conversation so first and foremost uh the review of the process in history i know you've been hearing this for a long time and uh but on many cases this process started before several of you were on the board so just to give a brief recap the first time we really started talking about this was in 2016 we kind of mentioned it as an aside the board of education but we work didn't start in earnest until about 2017 when we formed
046our first facilities committee to really take an in-depth look at the way our facilities function and what our current and future needs would be so that was five years ago that committee worked together for the better part of a year more more than a year and established some recommendations in terms of what were clear and urgent priorities for facilities in the school district but in so doing realized that there were a lot of projects uh that were puzzle pieces of a larger picture that we couldn't quite fit together and we were afraid that if we moved forward the plan as it was without more professional assistance namely architects that we could throw good money after bad where we could get projects out of sequence or work on certain aspects of our buildings knowing that other
047work would have to happen and we might actually have to tear down some of the improvements that we made to actually correct the larger hole so of course after that recommendation the board of education agreed to hire professional architects to do a real whole a pro holistic approach to a master facilities plan that started in 2018 it really started in earnest in 2019 we formed another committee of citizens that took a deeper look at this at our needs it took looks at programmatic needs in terms of how we use spaces today what enrollment trends would be how we might use spaces tomorrow how much space we would actually need to do these sorts of things and what the what was working what wasn't working and really related it to the educational needs of the district
048not just here is the current condition of our actual facilities so what we did come out of that plan we basically realized that the master facilities plans we did one in fact operate eight continue to operate eight schools despite declining enrollments it makes sense as a community continue to operate six elementary schools one middle school one high school but also looking at those facilities the condition of four of them where we're not as good as we would have otherwise have liked they certainly were in poor to fair condition need extensive work and to make them meet our current and future needs we would have to and many more likely than not actually tear them down and rebuild them so um and looking at that we started looking at funding sources and options and looking at
049what money was available to us to actually carry out that plan and we realized that you know there was different approaches there's option a which is we would let the property taxes um go down because the bond levy that we have for that are currently paying for our facilities would expire and the board has no choice about that without passing another referendum which means that we'd probably have something in the order of about 40 million dollars to put toward our facilities over the course of five years which is not nearly enough compared to what we identified in terms of of needs we looked at option b which would theoretically generate about 180 million dollars of money toward those improvements but would continue the tax so taxes would continue forward for another 20 years at the
050current bonded interest rates and that would um get the vast majority and i wouldn't say vast but the majority of the work done that we wanted to in the next five years and we looked at option c which would generate something about 250 million dollars that would do the vast majority of that work that we had identified but would increase taxes by 50 percent over our current bond and interest levy so i wouldn't increase the total tax rate 50 percent but the bond and interest portion of that tax rate so that brings us to our results and recommendations from community engagement so having considered those that plan and the funding options for it we went back to the community and said hey you know what are the expectations in terms of what we want as
051batavians for our schools and what are we willing to pay for and i'll let lisa give you a description of the results of it right i know that this is such a big decision for the board and you've been elected by the people and you have no intention of putting something on a ballot that the community does not want so there it you have to be think big when you think about getting that feedback and so we did have a consultant help us with this who has this expertise and put together a citizen committee and there was a bea member on that committee that was the one staff member and then tony and i and mark's served as advisors as well to do whatever work needed to be done behind the scenes just to get
052the tasks done but really it was a committee of citizens and their job was to get as many people talking about this as possible and they presented this to you so i'm not going to repeat everything that they said they just were here last month but what they you know what went out were emails uh several revisions to the website social media not only ours but holly got all other different the batavia women's club the rotary club batavia main street the chamber of commerce the city of batavia all these people are retweeting our information we went and spoke at the city council we got um the committee members went and emailed everybody that they knew and so they made phone calls we we had principals make phone calls we had direct mail we had the
053batavia magazine that goes in your mailbox the batavian batv signs and banners we did literally everything we could think of in order for you to hear from the most number of people does that mean everybody engaged no does that mean everybody heard these things no they didn't we heard from a couple that said i never knew any of this was going on we had a lot of these things and so i would any we heard it from a couple people and i said well what could we do differently to make sure that we reach you so um one recommendation from the committee was to make sure whatever we do moving forward it's that big of an effort keep going and keep engaging so they said there will need to be a lot of communication about
054whatever it is that you decide and the committee of citizens took all the information from the open houses from the community engagement sessions that were interactive and from the survey and they met and they discussed and they deliberated and they said that you should their recommendation is that you would put option b on a ballot um and there's a lot of information in that report that they gave you as far as what the what is the community thinking about the districts and about what the role is of school in a community um not just which option it wasn't that easy of a survey it was pretty complex and the survey was adjusted statistically to make sure it represented the whole um community the whole um school district so even though well women took the survey
055more than men so 71 of the respondents were female but what the statisticians do is they correct for that and make sure that um those scores are not weighted as much as scores of the people in different bands when they took the survey so what you're seeing is their best guess of how batavia if everybody in batavia respond in the batavia school district responded um how they would have answered and the so yeah they recommend that you are very clear with the community about the state of the economy and that um we can't give you a project list because we don't know when things go out for bid or the bond market at the time we um sell those bonds so they are what they're saying is make sure you're very clear about that with
056the community don't over promise but they did recommend option b i don't think we're there yet so the timeline is that tony that is my i think there are a couple logistics that tony can go over i'm i'm accidentally moving the agenda as we're talking sorry um there were a couple things i don't know if you noticed that but sorry that was me um tony you have the rest sure yeah uh the one thing i want to caution is that option b as it existed and what we've contemplated up till now it needs to change as a result of what's going on in the economy is that the bond market has increased dramatically quickly compared to where just talked about this and so that limits just like when you go when you buy a house
057and interest rates go up you can't necessarily buy as much of a house as you or the other otherwise would have the same thing that happens with bonds and uh the other factor is is that you know with the lumber prices increasing and other construction inflation costs increasing you're not going to get you're not going to be able to build build as big of a house either and so those two factors uh are significantly changing the scope of what we can accomplish with the money that we have available frankly the money just doesn't go as far under these economic conditions and that's the way the economy is today now who knows what the economy will be like when we actually issue these bonds and that will change the plan to some degree it could be
058better it could be worse maybe we'll be in a recession and interest rates will come down and maybe even construction costs will come down it's very difficult to say but either in either case it's time to move forward we our bonds are expiring in 2025. the opportunities you have to pass a question or ask a question of the community and have that timing such that the taxes wouldn't go down is either in november of 2022 or april of 23. our all indications are your best opportunity to pass this question are in november of 22. and to do that to put that question on the ballot you'll have to actually pass a resolution to do so in july so in a month from now you'll have to make that decision um to put the question on
059the ballot basically and just a quick question how confident are we that we can do the necessary work that is you know the emergency stuff like roofs things like that with the money that we will have with option b even if costs are increased i mean obviously we won't be able to do everything that we would like to do but i assume that it will at least give us the ability to do the things that we really need to do that we've been putting off our first objective obviously is to keep our students and staff warm and safe and dry and yes that we'll absolutely do that we just won't be able to do as much of it with the other things that we want to do is improve spaces for educational needs in particular
060our special education spaces they are more often than not in less than desirable areas of the building or areas of the building that are not designed for their programmatic needs and then other programmatic needs for electives you know building trades at the high school as examples our libraries uh collaborative spaces those sorts of things those will have to be scaled down with the with the money and the inflationary costs that we face i would also assume that with this inflationary pressure that if we do nothing the amount that we're able to do with the little money that we would have left is going to be even worse so the longer you wait the worse it gets i mean absolutely yeah so the option of doing nothing actually looks worse in the scenario so people may
061say hey you might want to put it off but i think that might actually put us in an even worse situation because the thought that we thought we would be able to do with option one um also scales back significantly well that's what i'd say yeah chris brings up a good point that uh when the economy tanked in 2006 that's exactly what we did part of the reason why we're in the situation right now yeah you're your buying power for both drops exactly so so all the things that people thought we might be able to do we can do about half of let's say but at least we can accomplish more the other thing is the and this is my opinion from what i've seen in the past because i do these things occasionally is
062if the bonds fall off and you decide to wait your opportunity or ability to bring it back to the table becomes exponentially more difficult so you you know from a board perspective we're kind of between a rock and a hard place right you know and so you try to do the best you can at a certain point that's the position i'm taking and i'm looking at it yeah so so at our next meeting the resolution will be on the agenda i'm assuming we will have a discussion and we will choose either to pass that resolution or not yes so all indications are from i'm gathering from the conversation that you're having is that something indeed you want to move forward with it and that that's the case we'll continue to work with our financial consultants
063to craft a question and a more definitive financial plan and up then and be ready for you in july and simultaneously begin to um figure out how we can continue to get the word out when it comes to information about this potential referendum as you know when you pass this question in july people will see it on the ballot of course in november and that's not does it does that's not a lot of time at the next meeting can you put on the topic and this is for everybody to kind of agree or not what is the role of the district and the board from that point forward so that it's clear educational you know what can we do to help put that information out and what are we allowed to do as board members
064as opposed to private citizens certainly we can include that yeah i think that's a really good discussion just because there can uh it can be confusion on that confusion and you can trip up a process that can make it very difficult for everyone i've got three questions for twenty you've already said i just want you know one more time i'll be brief too um but it's okay modification option b allows us to um move forward with our operational goals which include safety security and comfortable all buildings correct okay the assumption is however under option b as we've discussed extensively that we would uh demolish and rebuild louise white and hc storm schools i bring it up because for me everything's been going on world security has been i think on all of our minds and
065so that's something that's very important to me i know the b encompasses making our buildings more robust in that manner simultaneously though i would add and i should have probably added earlier under that budget as i the board may want to consider um increasing spending on the capital projects budget in fiscal 23 so that they can address more of the safety and security needs in particular at alice gustafson and jb nelson schools even before we separate as we identified in that master plan is those schools ought to be decommissioned unfortunately financially that's not going to happen at least not in the foreseeable future and because that's the case we have some renovations to i would say moderate to major renovations to those schools to bring them up to security standards that we expect everywhere so
066um is that something that would come from iraq or capital projects yes um a little yes yeah the answer to that is yes so will you bring us a recommendation from them as to what shifting we should do and what projects that should encompass in the yes and if you are considering that along with and you do pass this resolution for this referendum question we would move quickly on that because we would want to get those projects out to bid this fall late fall early winter so that they could start next summer as soon as school is out so when would you bring that one that part to us the budget capital projects increase we i certainly could bring that to you in july well why don't you it would just make sense yep yes
067and then the other components of that would follow quickly thereafter okay uh and the other two parts i had were oh you did not say that it was a two-part question he said three questions he said the other i keep interrupting him i'm sorry that's right uh this is uh i'll be interesting how you answer this question but you know we just talked about the budget in general in general relative to past years the district is in a relatively strong financial position right now healthy position i should say yes and part of that is because we made certain sacrifices on capital projects that was a component of it that was yes is that fair statement okay and that b if that's one that we're considering i'm just going to read from the conditions would allow
068us to live within our means as a district now we know that things are changing and you know we might not get as much for money as we were hoping you would get but that's accurate statement yeah okay those are all accurate statements yes i would say well then this last one lisa but i mean based off canvassing on holly's hard work the feedback we've gotten there is support in the community for b at this time he's confirming i just have one last quick thing the writing of the actual verbiage that's pretty much automatically happens by the lawyers we really can't change any of that i mean you don't even want to get involved well right for the people who are watching it may seem weird that we see and approve fair enough the question
069one time but that's because we really aren't the experts and we can't understand and it isn't just written by the lawyers because they feel like it in a certain way it is prescribed by law okay so how the question looks there's certain components that they can change but um there's a lot of it that's prescribed by law and sometimes it just feels awkward to the average voter and so oftentimes that question has to be explained to the voters and that's one of the key components of helping people understand like what does this question mean and what does it mean in my pocketbook what does it mean for my child's school and what does it mean for us as a community but they are very awkward questions i've also seen situations where people write it for
070the constructive of a new school building and they thought they could add furnishings as a part of that and it wasn't written that way so then they couldn't use the bond money for furnishings which which is why it's a big scary problem that you might be running into and i wanted to explain to the audience that they understand that we're although we're seeing it for the first time we understand the concept and it's all legalese and right we won't pick apart the verb exactly good point chris all right so tony you're going to bring us um those recommendations from the capital projects group and you're going to include the question the resolution on the next agenda and i will also include kind of the do's and don'ts of what we can say and what we
071can't say thank you in terms of publicizing that question all right any other questions on that all right final item on our agenda tonight is talking about an executive search firm yes this is my um tenth year of super intense tendencies starting this uh school year and i am retiring at the end of that school year please hold your applause um right right so i um it's time for you to um invoke uh board member 101 which is you get to hire one person in the entire organization everybody who's here you get to pick one person and that is what you will be doing during this school year i it is not something that you can most schools do most school districts do without the help of some expertise because um if you just interviewed
07210 different candidates everybody has a different idea of what they would want and you're supposed to be representing what this community wants and what the staff wants so a search firm could do things like hold focus groups and get some information from all your different stakeholder groups give that to you so that's the way that people have voice in the process um among other options what i did for you is pulled some proposals from different search firms one of them is um your iasb so the illinois association of school boards they do a lot of work not as much local as the other three organizations the other three um one of them you used uh 10 years ago when you hired me that would be school exec connect one of them is the other two
073are being used currently by local districts we do have a high turnover of superintendents in king county between the last two years and the upcoming year or two you'll see about two-thirds of the superintendent's turnover and so those other two firms hya and rain associates are being used locally right now with two neighboring districts and they are all willing to come out in interview this needs to be a public discussion and public interview i would say four might be a lot to bring in and we do want to negotiate and look really closely at their proposals and say well i like this but i don't like this we don't need these services and you can add and remove and so it would be hard to do those with four all at the same time so
074um i'm going to stop talking because this is really your decision but that would be my recommendation that you give me some parameters to go and talk with one or two of them and invite them back for a face-to-face interview with you guys can we do the face-to-face interview in a open session so i would like to put out there that i would like to hear from at least two an interview too i'm a person that's an occasionally in position it does no service to say i can't even break it down to two from this group so i would like to see two um you guys look at that wait yes now we're down to two yeah i agree with that i would agree with that um i know lisa shared all this with us
075i will be completely frank that while i was out of the country i did not read all the um but i don't know if other people had a chance to and if you have some leanings as to where you are thinking we could sort of tally it down so sue just said her top two okay did you write this one all right i'm i'm very passionate about my i actually just have one who um the school exec connects okay so sue said hya in school is technical i wonder why they didn't i didn't see batavia as a reference who it was it was um 10 years ago 10 years ago with our current champion i mean that is bad marketing isn't it like step one hey do you remember we hired lisa that should've been
076the proposal victory might not it might not it's dangerous again that was actually really nice dinner you said that uh did you have any preferred is hya printed out yeah yeah right here oh thank you that was the one that um referred saint charles yes they just did the saint charles search okay i have heard a good amount of negative feedback about that individual i don't know how much it impacts this about that search firm or the superintendent oh yay thank you just so with which hype he was talking about the superintendent not the students i've heard good feedback about the search firm from the community well from people that hired them okay don't they have a warranty so that if yeah you have thoughts um my generalized thoughts are one that um i i
077really appreciate kind of how school exept broke down the information and presented it in a very clear visual way as opposed because that helps people like us who may not be in the process to understand and parse the data as opposed to at least one of the others that my head was hurting the same thing i was trying to read through it so that that kind of bothered me about that um my opinion of my two would be hya and school exec connect if i had to pick a second i would pick or send you two i would pick the h-y-a yeah i think part of where i have the consensus part of my hya is i actually i have the same two also um so then my question is timing and um paring it
078down to figure out what we actually want from them as lisa mentioned um so they they give you like here's everything we could offer right so maybe the next step would be the interview everybody look really closely at those two highlight the things they like and maybe want to subtract but once after the interview then we just really focus in on one of them and and do that negotiating of we don't want this we do want that and just figure they said in their thing they'll match any offer right yeah but i thought it was you got everything for the sex yeah and they they said they would match any comparable offer so right so why would i take stuff away if it's still gonna cost me got you i would do you know what
079i mean but i'm assuming if we took stuff away from someone else that would lower their bed the other one's about the same right but if we took services away because we negotiate and say well we don't need this so right no i mean i i get tough negotiators too oh i could they all look like they're in the right area where we just swapped oh yeah they were all they were all pretty equitable okay no that's what i'm just saying so are we talking inviting them back to the next meeting because we would like to get this ball rolling it is uh superintendent hiring season it is super intense season yeah i would um do you want to do a five o'clock workshop or just uh during the recording i would actually prefer to
080if we could do a workshop workshop workshop workshop rj sorry not just because you feed us well i didn't hear did i hear from chris and aaron we all had we all had okay okay okay thank you all right so workshop next meeting yeah yeah 19. let's just make a day of july i will see if they are available at that time all right perfect do we want to consider possibly adding a second meeting at i mean either for july or australia i would i'm here i am open to that i mean just i i just know we have a lot of stuff on our plate and it's a little less pressure so perhaps if we you know if there's some stuff that we want to get to consider it i mean i'm not saying
081that we have to decide right at that now but are we open to the idea i think there's a logic at the july meeting of doing a work session for the interview and then having a follow-up work session in august to discuss our final selections because i also know that we had the meeting before this where we were talking about other stuff that we wanted to discuss too so that's why i'm saying we may want to throw a different one in there and we normally do a training during the summer anyway so perhaps that's the training but yeah but i would argue too uh august does work better because then i'm back at work and july is going to be a little muddy yeah i'm fine with august yeah i think august is right august
082for the decision no so it will make the decision oh a different workshop yeah so we're going to try to do this in july we're going to do our workshop decide on and do our interviews for july is interviews and got it yeah got it i think to do our due diligence we have to make this decision asap oh yeah yeah yeah and then you can approve the contract in august but we can start doing some of the groundwork with whoever you sit you know whoever collects to go over your socks all right any other questions on that topic all right then we're gonna move to uh superintendent comments i um wow yeah uh kathy scaffidi doesn't like spotlight but thank you for putting all this together and every couple weeks and everything you do
083in between for them i know that they we all very much appreciate what you do for the board meetings and cindy we love you but you got big shoes to fill yeah that's it for me all right start down with erin um i just would like to add to our state champion some unsung heroes and it's the parents oh god yeah i mean chris craig several all the rest of us up here those parents are out there driving their kids to all of these practices at all hours of the day all kinds of temperatures and weather and i just would like to express a little appreciation for their efforts because we couldn't do it without them so as as maybe silly as that seem i really do appreciate all of their efforts and making our
084students successful and that's all i have tonight thank you enrique i like to appreciate aaron's appreciation of you all very nice of you so thank you um [Laughter] i think this is really neat i was so excited about this so thank you to the state track team for stay tracking the state champs for thinking of us for this because i know i had little to nothing to do with that but that's that's really neat and i don't know graduation was amazing so i hope all the graduates are enjoying their summer so far it sounds like they're all a lot of them already doing things and working or going to school i can't believe they're going to summer or camps and things already so that's amazing and i'm really looking forward to the next couple of
085meetings that we're having because we're really starting to dig in and get some stuff done so it's exciting yeah it is that's all thanks great um obviously congrats to you know everybody that was involved in the state championship parents and everybody else i mean one takeaway i had is just like you know i'm not involved in track or running unless something's chasing me and that doesn't happen nearly enough so it is you know you always think about it from my perspective it's like an individualized effort right you know i'm running for this medal or whatever else it really was refreshing and interesting for me to hear about how really everybody put themselves aside over the team yeah you know and and kudos to the coaches and everybody involved that worked whatever math and metric they
086had to understand that certain sacrifices might move them ahead than others you know to and to educate the uh team which they probably already knew that this is their goal and this is how you achieve that goal you know you win the war not the battle kind of thing that's why you have a math teacher director yeah i got you um and then you know just as as was said earlier you know it summer might seem like time off there's a lot of teachers doing work to help students do things and and you know literally they're trying something new on the marching band this year and starting it again because just about half the band are incoming freshmen oh wow this year for the marching band that's cool so it's great it's fantastic so to
087everybody and all the teachers that are working with kids on things over the summer thank you you know for all the parents that are driving them back and forth to those things thank you so um and i just want to say i appreciate the discussion for the work session we had earlier fantastic it was very discussion oriented and it was refreshing to see so thank you all right thanks kay thank you kathy thank you ted i'll be brief but echo what everybody said uh the meeting we had before this meeting was exceptional i'm excited about the progress we're gonna make having the track team here was again i did get goosebumps and just i think we can learn a lot from those kids uh as a community so we're proud of that and i agree
088this is unexpected but very cool and i'm also very excited about the work we're doing i feel like we're really moving forward here it's uh for a while there i felt we're moving slow now we're really making giant steps forward so that's very exciting so i'm looking forward to the decisions ahead and then again kathy i know it's been brief i've worked with you but i really appreciate it so thank you for all you did and cindy we're looking forward to getting to know you and working with you so thank you i will keep it short and sweet thank you everybody i am just very happy to be a batavian and that we're all working together even though we have struggles i feel like we're a team so thank you yes can i have one
089more thing after you're done okay todd i wanna tell you how excited i am about your new opportunity to coach here because to me it takes two things that are so very important to not only me personally but the rest of the board as well as our community and brings them together in such an important impactful way and i want to thank you for putting batavia on the map and your leadership in in those efforts so um i didn't want to forget and please don't take my looping back as anything like that but i'm i'm thrilled for you thank you for representing us in that way and going last there's never anything good i can add so i'm just going to say uh that is everything that we had on our agenda for tonight so
090i would entertain a motion to adjourn so moved second we find meta second my mind sir long day she's holding it it's nap time give her eyes all right