001[Music] call the role yes sir Mr breaker here Dr cross Dr carw president Mrs Layman here Mr neie here Mr Roth president and Mr red here pleas join me in the pledge of el us to the of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible liberty and justice for [Music] all this is the time set aside for audience presentations the Board of Education will take all presentations under consideration and respond at the latest by the end of the next regular Board of Education meeting your comments will be limited to 5 minutes participants are expected to conduct themselves with Civility and respect and follow the guidelines outlined in the board policy Dr sander Dr fiser and Dr official followed by Brian hello again so I wanted
002to start up tonight by clearing up a few misconceptions I've heard floating around the first being that I want to be here or I have extra time to do that CU I promise you I don't I don't want to be here and I have a lot more important things to be doing with my time I get no personal gain out of this except for the satisfaction of knowing I'm the voice for hundreds of people who can't come up here and safely speak for themselves without fear of retaliation and that's not even students anymore it's parents and small business owners and teachers and everyone else that's sending me messages this community has already chased away so many amazing humans amazing teachers amazing business owners because of its oppressive bigotry and we need to recognize the damage
003that Morton status quo has done to our community and decide to change and it has to be a culture change from the inside out which brings me to the second misconception that the people coming to these meetings don't belong to the Morton Community that is a lie that you've been fed by those that are hoping to forward their own agenda the people coming to speak at these meetings were not paid actors they're residents of Morton they have kids and families and friends that have been affected by that prejudice Morton culture and as for the part the board should be playing in that culture it's been almost three months now s since the Michael Saunders emails are made public and yet this board has not done a single thing to address the issues it's brought forth
004not a single thing you didn't even change the email policy you just suggested people stop using it for personal use as if that was going to help any of the gay or black kids in our district so I'm once again here to hold you accountable for the things you're not addressing concerns that have been brought up for 3 months at the last meeting you basically all agreed that the current hotline reporting system does not need address even though it consists of asking students to report Their Own Boss to their boss would any of you do that would any of you email your boss and saying I think you're a bigot and I think you're hateful and I think you need investigated of course you wouldn't so we're expecting kids to do that and then it
005was argued okay well if the reporting system can't be trusted tell a trusted adult how on supposed to find an adult that's trustworthy the culture of this District makes it impossible for the teachers who are Advocates to be public about their advocacy and I am not assuming that because of my position on this subject the teachers are telling me that they want to be an advocate they want to be publicly available for these students but they can't because of fear of retaliation or getting fired so what possible reasoning could this board have for not investigating a better anonymized recording system to protect its students what possible negative outcomes do you see in having a recording of all the instances of bullying and bigotry in our school oh but that's the problem isn't it because if
006we have a recording of it then we might actually have to address it so instead we're just burying our heads in the sand and pretending like it's not happening so second why haven't we hired an outside Council to evaluate how the district can be more inclusive probably the same reason as number one if we have it on record we actually would have to address it so last why aren't we hiring her more diverse staff and providing ing current staff with the training that has been proven to decrease suicidality in lgbtq plus teenagers 38% 38% of lgbtq students will have attempted suicide in the past year 38% most of them site the unsupported school and home environments they have to live in as the main driving Factor if any of your children had a 38% chance
007of trying to commit suicide in the next year would you do nothing those are at home would you sit by no knowing your children could be that statistic so why aren't we helping the children that are that statistic I'm really really struggling to understand why we can't seem to align our goals on this one so please explain to me what it's going to take to convince you that kids not wanting to kill themselves is a Cause worth fighting for because so far science statistics medical experts testimonials from students in your own District don't seem to make you want to address it is it going to take a dead kid is that what's finally make us stand up and take action because let's be real there's only two sides to this argument my side says Hey
008the current way of doing things makes gay trans and black kids suicidal and we should probably change it and the other side seems to say nah we don't care speaking of doing something about it to make sure no one forgets next election just how little you did to address these public concerns if you go ahead and search Ashley Fischer for Morton School Board you'll find copies not only my speeches those recommendations but also all of your email replies I'll also be rep reporting ing or the video recording from last meeting or one of you two there were mocking speakers within range of a camera microphone 30 and for those at home who want to show their support and want this District to change and be an inviting safe home to all children no matter their
009color sexuality or gender there will be petitions posted that you can anonymously sign to show the school board they you're currently not representing all their constituents because if you consist on continuing to put your heads in the sand while innocent children are suffering you can be darn sure this community is not going to tolerate that and I will not tolerate that history is giving you an opportunity here to do the right thing the question is are you going to take [Applause] it okay Brian is up and followed by Michelle my name is Brian growth I'm uh here tonight as a proxy for Jamie desany Sheridan apparent in the district um good evening my name is Jamie desany Sheridan I'm a parent uh children in the school district some that have graduated some that are currently
010enrolled um I have attended I meaning Jamie has attended Morton schools from kindergarten through third through senior year I own and pay taxes on two properties in Maron for the past 26 years I work with Children and Families the last 10 being and foster care administration I'm a trauma and for trainer for all levels from line staff up to Administration I write policies procedures trainings to implement the best practices for those vulnerable populations including lgbtq plus youth have worked with FBI and local law enforcement on human trafficking cases but most of all I'm a mom and I believe that makes me well qualified to speak to you um a highly unethical state law federal civil rights violation occurred last month to a child and stopped me in my track so tonight I would like to
011address the bullying happening happening in Morton [Music] 709 if you want to deal with the bullying problem in Morton someone who works in Social Ser as someone who works in Social Services I suggest a top- down approach I've testified in courts close to 100 times so I don't speak on something unless I can back it up with as the kids say the receipts so let's evaluate the situation the problem is you social contracts say that children rely on adults to protect them and teach them and I'm going to give you some life real life examples of how you've all failed you failed to stop bullying you failed to protect those who are bullied you fail to P punish those who are bullied and you have shown your true colors as bullies what kind of leadership
012in the school district can we expect to deal with such a significant issue when you yourselves take part in it daily I'm concerned about retaliation against my child who's set to graduate and I don't want uh anything to jeopardize that but I also know that if I don't document it it didn't happen so let this be my documentation I'll not be using names however for credibility let me relay a first a few firsthand examples from my own children my child's fourth grade teacher admitted that she would give him marks on his card for infractions that she allowed others to get away with and would stand outside the door and watch for him to talk to other talk regardless of other students behaviors because his intelligence challenged her quote unquote despite a formal complaint to the
013principal and her admission in a meeting nothing was done to correct the situation my child my child didn't attend uh excuse me let me skip ahead here because I know we're going to be on the time constraint in November 2020 my daughter was exposed to co and we made the decision to quarantine at our home in California and when she started showing symptoms due the state's higher coid restrictions we follow the guidelines and submitted the report to the school so so that she could take part in a healthy quarantine and continue classes online my daughter emailed all of her T teachers with no response for 4 days in a row to get the Google meet codes to her classes on the fifth day she received an email from one teacher that read we were told
014by a certain administrator not to give you the code when I reached out to that administrator he replied that he was given the directive by the principal upon contacting the principal I was told that too many parents are taking their kids to Disney and calling it a healthy quarantine so we are going to let her have the code since your house is close to Anaheim principal went on to set tell me options I had expressed and frustration about the situation on my own personal Facebook page and said if you're so concerned we can just put her in an alternative school without your permission the principal Cann not tell me of any students who were denied access to their classes while in attendance even those at Disney quote unquote ultimately educational law prevailed and my daughter
015was allowed into Google meets because bullies tear down others to build themselves up regarding the incident I mentioned earlier I'm protecting the child's identity but can speak on my advocacy on behalf of this child because of issues related to physical health this child was behind one and a half credit needed for graduation an agreement was made in July by this child's parents and principal that would evaluate the need for Apex classes after the first quarter provided the child met four stipulations set by the principal the child met and exceeded the stipulations and the parent checked back in after the first quarter to arrange the classes the principal replied with a 12-word sentence once pass due fees are paid then we can talk about Apex in May 2022 the state passed a law stating past due
016fees could not be used as a mean to withhold education thank you Brian Michelle and Michelle will be followed by Tammy the principal was in direct violation of the state law in one email the principal did not at any point referen the previous four bullet points but instead the the principal resorted to bribery when a complaint was made that the school was violating the child's right to a free and appropriate public education Dr smok replied that the principal had the authority to decide on apex classes and initially ignored the fact that the principal had demanded pay for even having a conversation this constituted a violation of federal civil rights with no remorse it wasn't until I pointed out State legislation that Dr smok admitted the district had no policy regarding the state law but that
017they would now follow it and until a US Department of Education investigation was mentioned that the child's educational rights were acknowledged let's talk about how boys allow buling my stepson who is biracial was told by another student that he wanted to F your dead mom just one month after my child's biological mother passed away unexpectedly the offender was questioned and denied it my son was not questioned any further than his original report I found out who the boy was reached out to his parents who in called the school and made their son admit what he had done because my son gave me specifics the boy couldn't deny the boy went to the school and admitted everything including using racial slurs the school couldn't be bothered to protect my son so I had to do the
018work for them because boys protect other boys my daughter hadn't been questioned about the incident and was left feeling the way many victims feel as though she wasn't believed when I finally reached out to the pr principal I was told that my report was detailed enough my report was detailed enough that I didn't need to talk to my daughter and the issue was resolved why did it take me calling them over a month later to find this out in addition I was told by a former School employee that the offender is a repeat offender and has never received consequences for his actions because bullies protect other bullies now I'd like to share a few firsthand examples from voy requests District staff some who are still employed and others who are not a foyer request was
019submitted for endof year reviews with teachers at the high school one statement was repeated consistently being that policies are not upheld consistently I think several of my examples support this another foyer request R revealed emails between Dr smok Dr sander and Mr saers were they mock uh of the citizen and emails entitled the pop calling the kettle black saying these thing things like this is Rich and how ironic is this the kind of people we consider professionals or we consider boys in the last school board meeting someone associated with the School District administration uttered theatrics on a live mic regarding speakers who speak out about injustices in the school district if this is how you behave in a recorded school board meeting how can we expect equal and fair treatment boys use their position to
020abuse power another foyer request revealed that Dr crawl and her co-leader asked Mr Saunders to use District resources taxpayer funded resources to print moms and prayer Flyers to put on their table and send home in backpacks Mr Saunders gladly replied he would using position on school board to support the use of school spaces and taxpayer funds to promote religious organization activities which I would point out the religious organization has rules against what happens when the top of the chain is the biggest is the biggest offender of all boys at the top create boys and support boys I'd like to talk about how bullying and abusive power in Staffing situations former staff report that their marital status was held over their heads to keep their positions divorce frowned upon in the district one former staff member
021said they waited until the school year was over and they had resigned their current position to file for divorce because they feared they would lose their job as they had seen others if they filed for divorce during the school year one former teacher was told to either return to his ex-wife or quit when he refused he was let go and his contract paid out to avoid a lawsuit a vague statement was made by a board member to the media that led to this teacher being blacklisted locally this leads me to my biggest offense of all although I have permission to share as many details as I want including names I'm going to be considerate and share the basics in February of this year a former teacher suffered a mental health crisis during non-school hours and
022proceeded to attend to his mental health appropriately instead of supporting the teacher and offering the services the district claims to offer for mental health the teacher was segregated chastised intimidated and browbeat into finally signing a resignation letter in March in public statement written by The District's attorney when the teacher requested FMLA to appropriately address his mental health instead of supporting the teacher the teacher was told if he didn't release all of his protected health information which he was not required to do he would be terminated the protected health information was then shared without his consent amongst the school board the teacher's wife was pressured by Junior High staff and the resource officer to get a restraining order against the teacher which he refused to do as he was not a threat to anyone the teacher's
023wife was questioned that her place of employment by the resource officer about the teacher and the incident which is beyond his duty and unethical Tammy is up followed by Julie Peterson I'm continuing Jamie's statement the teacher's child was monitored by Junior High staff and the resource officer to see who drove drove him back and forth to school as his information was used to ultimately report back to Dr smok there are so many more ways that that the teacher was bullied including showing up to his house unwelcomed and unannounced threatening to withhold pay of his colleagues if they talk to the teacher there are emails to prove all of this you know why kids bully because adults bully but there's but no one wants to have that conversation adult bullies aren't interested in Solutions and compromise
024they are only interested in dominance power control and breaking the spirit of others to build themselves up and getting what they want since I have provided some insight to a problem you profess not to know how to resolve I'm opening the door to the conversation and I guarantee it will become very uncomfortable for you as it should I'd like to rep reply to my proposal and Dr smok you know I am nothing if not persistent so I propose this independent auditor to evaluate the working environment in Morton Unit School District 709 independent audit of all staff who resigned during Dr smok's term implementation of Dr Ashley Fischer's proposed plan for the bullying hotline to include review of how all incidents were handled in the last 12 months and to include ability for students to report
025staff education of all Administration and teachers on trauma informed care specifically in regards to drug exposed abused and neglected youth mental health first aid and sexual orientation gender identity and expression and cultural Humanity or humility I apologize I have written a training that I'm happy to share regarding trauma informed training you definitely need it being upstanding isn't sticking together a bully is too weak to stand alone you need each other so I ask you are you weak or are you strong do you condemn the actions of the bully or do you support them I also call for the resignation of Dr smok Mr Saunders and Dr crawl and any of you I might have struck a cord with either stand up against the bullies or be one of them and this is separate this is
026me just saying I am so disturbed by you Dr crawl and you can't even look up as you write down at your paper you are the biggest bully here to believe that trans youth don't have a right to go to the restroom and make that your issue is disgusting disgusting resign now Julie followed by Heather good evening I am the parent of a Grundy student uh and I am also the step parent of a student that attends Morton High School uh I am also a mental health professional I am a therapist uh and I am also the product of of having two Public School teachers for parents uh so in my public school education um allowed me the foundation of which I uh built uh two master's degrees and foreign travel and allowed me to
027have a very eclectic worldview so I a huge supporter believer in public education and I respect all of the work it takes to run a school district um I stand here tonight because I want to amplify concerns that have been happening over the past several months starting with the board meeting that happened on September 5th uh and I think we're going to hear more tonight about some of these concerns but what I am the most concerned about is that we haven't seen a lot of action for this for the district to take a look at the complaints that have been happening I haven't seen a lot of Investigation uh what I really call for is that we look into best practices uh for the district when it comes to lgbtq students when it comes to
028trans students when it comes to students of color I think the district needs to take a closer look about best practices and policies for public education for respecting the rights of these students um I took a look at the Morton census uh as as we likely know Morton is 95% white predominantly Evangelical Christian uh and PR predominantly affluent in terms of income and and household uh income and so what I am concerned about as well is the fact that we are not concerned about protecting the rights of the majority the demographic of Mor isn't going to change but what we need to do is make sure that we're listening to the lived experiences of people that don't represent those demographics that's what the biggest problem as I can see is we don't have a problem
029where there's reverse discrimination it doesn't in fact exist we don't have uh any threat to the folks that are predominantly Evangelical Christian in this community no policy change will imp impact anyone's religious beliefs there's been a misconception that this is a topic where we need to talk about religion at the Schoolboard meeting that is not correct we need to be talking about the separation of church and state at the Schoolboard meeting and I think that is where we're getting into trouble what I will say is that there are many resources for Best Practices the Human Rights Campaign has excellent information on this topic the Trevor project also has resources for public schools uh and there are a a number of other districts in the community that are starting programs that protect students uh both of
030color and uh of lgbtq status we need to post safe spaces in our schools to let these students know that there are places they can go to be seen and heard and finally my stepson recently endured a bullying incident he was wearing a shirt that said black Futures matter a student came up and pushed him from behind in the hallway where he uh was completely taken aback uh unfortunately uh there was not disciplinary action taken against the student uh there was a a statement made by uh principal Ripka that simply said well I don't think the students understand the full impli implication of their actions uh this this is unacceptable um and these things need to be investigated we need to have an outside audit come into the district to see if we are upholding
031the rights of students the way that we need to be doing so um I think that if we're living in a district where a student can be shoved and it can be seen on camera for a a statement that black lives matter or black Futures matter there's something wrong there's some kind of underlying problem in this District thank [Applause] you Heather and then Amy and Michelle will be on next my name is Heather mcmean I'm the co-president of Pur Illinois now and we have members who live in this district and I don't need anyone's permission to speak up and stand with them and for their children for several months now we've been bringing you awareness of egregious rights violations for which what you should have done was to receive those complaints at least pretend to
032show concern and then show some response that has not happened now now at the last school board meeting a man named Nathan Fay got up and committed a crime against me a crime called slander a lot of the things that he said you will find out eventually were not true but also he professes to be a Christian last I checked you know passing false witness bearing false witness against somebody was a violation of the 10 commandments wow what an impressive Christian he is but more importantly it shows that you all will work together and and try to intimidate and silence people you will allow engagement in character assassination and then the conversation some of you had about me I can't wait till you find out that that was actually a a crime you committed against
033me called Lial yeah I was wrongfully terminated from Western two of the people who did it were defendants in a lawsuit against them for the wrongful termination of a woman I helped file complaint complaints to the police about for her boss on my floor threatening to kill her twice I'm damn proud of that work I am proud of standing up for my black students and my gay students and my women students at wiu and I was retaliated on for that but that's okay I'm going to set that aside because this isn't about me but it shows your tendency as a boore to take retaliatory action which is a crime in the state of Illinois and you are going to learn to do better by your students because you cannot continue this way we noticed all
034the wonderful flowery things people are saying about the people we have called to step down or be removed and uh that's a tactic of authoritarianism and that's when bullies kind of decide to all get together and validate the person they're so sure has has done nothing wrong without even doing an investigation first that's called a a title violation you should have asked what people know and given them a chance to present evidence before calling them all liars yes and you keep bringing up more and more people to validate what a great guy is and I'm sure we'll soon see a whole plethora of awards around the community for Michael Saunders and perhaps for you I read some of your emails about the trans Community you as an MD me as a former paramedic and I
035hold my masters in community health Ed you should be ashamed ma'am I cannot believe the level of ignorance with which you operate as an administrator at this school you're not the worst problem but you certainly are one that especially picks at people like me who fight for the rights of women to be able to speak and serve and then you use those rights to stale other women and girls and children in the back yes what is up with that now there's rights violations going on that you all are just not going to deal with so I'm going to tell parents who are dealing with these one of the tactics they've been using using is to just want to have a conversation don't fall for that put all your complaints in writing demand a written response
036put all complaints about rights violations also to the Illinois State Board of Ed if there are IEP problems and you can go to the Illinois Department of Human Rights you can call the hotline for the Illinois AG civil rights hotline and for the egregious complaints against black students well we saw you I I saw you trumpeting all the test scor and everything in your predominantly white school that's richly affluent because you don't allow very many children who have IEPs or children who are from broken broken families from challenging traumatic backgrounds to have any chance of excelling here and you engage you allow to your people to engage in a pattern of conduct that deprives them of social emotional learning that traumatize them for life that violates their rights and allows them to be targeted for
037gender and race seconds any parents who have concerns that their children have suffered these things it is not too late to put in your complaints but do it in writing never accept calls from the principal or your superintendent because we know they lie to people's faces they've certainly lied about us and to us from here on out I hope you are all held accountable because your school is traumatizing for the marginalized students they deserve better from all of you the feds need to come in and restructure the school and investigate how you all have been operating as its administrators Amy and Michelle and then we'll be followed by Dan my name is Michelle gaty and I'm acting as proxy to Miss Amy par Amy is a parent of students in the district she filed a
038formal complaint that initiated an investigation this case of discrimination and rights violations alleged against Morton 709 W Grundy principal Michael Saunders for his treatment of an elementary school black child with a visual impairment and IEP for other medical issues includes being repeatedly barred from using the regular restroom segregated to use the bathroom in the office reminiscent of the time in history when black people had a separate bathroom and drinking fountain segregated at elementary school black child with a visual impairment and IEP for other medical issues locker from their classmates and required the child Place their belongings in Miss Williams room completely barred from having a locker like or with the other kids and depriving them of social emotional interaction s was segregating from engaging with peers during the school day at school events and before
039and after school was walked out of the school each day before the normal dismissal time segregating the child from peers and depriving them of normal friendship emotional support and resiliency repeatedly repeatedly deprived of their rights to PE segregated to isolation in an office giving no physical education depriving them the means to regulate emotion via physical activity segregated from fun days at the end of the year the school carnival field trips and celebrations deprived of the academic support to do the work then punished for being unable to complete it independently academically punished for not standing for the Pledge of Allegiance directed by saers not to wear any more pride shirts with love wins on the shirt so they won't offend those who are anti-lgbtq thereby normalizing lgbtq Plus othering and bigotry and sending a message the
040allyship with other marginalized students is unwelcome in the school repeatedly had their IEP ignored or violated my child's biological dad was murdered June of 2021 during and after the murder funeral grieving period and trial my child deserved reasonable accommodations and support but instead their coping mechanism laying their head on their desk was repeatedly punished or portrayed as laziness or disrespect effect during the 2022 2023 school year Mrs frish often sent my elementary school black child with a visual impairment and IEP and other for Med medical issues into isolation deprivation into the hall or office or Sarah Williams class simply for putting their head down Mrs Fred would send them to princi M saunders's office or to the resource room to study independently without support these teachers and this principle repeatedly refus to provide my suffering
041grieving traumatized lonely child compassion Services resources and support much less basic human kindness Mr Saunders clearly didn't want my black child at Grundy targeting and subjecting them to traumatizing isolated segregated unequal school and academic environments depriving them of their rights teaching them that they are unwanted incapable dehumanizing untrustworthy unwanted as he was kept pushing us to push them out of that School Mr Saunders texted me frequently even I as I was fighting cancer and an infection that almost killed me asking or suggesting that my black disabled child be kept at home rather than the school uphold holding their rights um and providing an appropriate supportive safe learning environment I support the calls for principal Saunders to step down or be removed for the school and superintendent to be inv investigated and I want other parents
042whose children are being subjected to similar racism ableism segregation isolation and Abus of authority authority to know they are not alone I encourage all to submit written complaints and I hope the US Department of Education Office of civil rights will investigate the Morton 709 School District leadership policies procedures pedagogy and practices to save other children from the cruelty and abuse my beloved traumatized black child has suffered all right Dan Dan will be our final speaker thank you school board for the time today I want to first state that I completely am against bullying that's going on in anybody who's being bulling should be stopped um but the calls are not against Diane Michael or Craig that people are really mad at people are mad at Jesus they can't get Jesus so they will get anybody
043they can that loves him in John 15:1 18-21 if the world hates you keep in mind that it hated me first if you belong to the world it would love you as its own as it is you do not belong to to the world but I have chosen you out of the world that is why the world hates you remember what I told you a servant is not greater than his master if they persecuted me they will persecute you also if they obeyed me my teaching they would obey yours also they will treat you this way because of my name for they do not know the one who sent me blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil on account of the
044son of man it makes no sense that these people are after Michael because he doesn't even talk to the people about Jesus it's school it's funny because it's illegal to fire Michael because he's a Christian religion is a protected class stated in the the title 7even of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 firing him would have grounds for a real lawsuit but even if they can't get rid of the Christian leaders if they get rid of all the Christian leaders and teachers in their schools they can't get Jesus out of the schools Jesus is everywhere and Jesus loves all the kids in the schools he will reveal himself to them through nature other students and any way he wants to but you can't get rid of Jesus if you're hating Jesus why are you doing
045so I don't believe there is any fact or logic that will convince all the people in this room I think the only thing that can deliver us is God so so I'm going to pray to God God please fill this room with your spirit please bless everyone in this room with your peace your joy your strength and your wisdom please open everyone in this room's eyes to see The Truth May the spirits and intentions behind the words become visible for all to see please deliver this school district to show us what to do please give us all of his insight into what we do not understand and in all things may your will prevail in Jesus name amen thank you for the time thank you for that um we'll move on to administrative report starting
046with the superintendent report okay good evening everyone I've got a linky report it's been several weeks since we've been together so we have kind a long way longer than normal between board meetings uh so so bear with me first I just want to uh remind everyone we just had Veterans Day uh just on Saturday and I'd just like to thank personally all those in our community all those in this room if there's anyone else in the room I know we have Mr Neely and Mr Rudd Dr sander Don raker behind the camera as some of our veterans and I just wanted to say thank you for your service we appreciate you greatly so thank you uh tomorrow is School Board Appreciation Day and I just like to thank our school board members for all the
047time dedication and heart that you put into the job you do um it comes with some joy and it comes with some anguish and I just it's always amazing to me that people will raise their hands to do these jobs uh with everything that it takes not just what it takes in this boardroom but what it takes outside of the boardroom so thank you very much for your service to our district as you can see we've got got um some appreciation shown by some of our students around the district elementary um a lot of elementary school kids um said thank you for your service and I just want to uh say it myself thank you very much for everything you do it's a pleasure to have you all on our leadership team and I thank
048you for your service uh I want to [Applause] congratulate I want to congratulate our Morton High School volleyball team for an outstanding performance at State over the weekend uh they placed fourth place I think they would all tell you that at the beginning of the season if you had told them that's where they would be standing at the end of the season they would have been in disbelief I saw all all the matches at State at the Red Bird Arena and I can tell you they fought harder than anyone they they didn't have the height that many other schools had but they had the heart and they were always within just a few points of actually upsetting the other teams so um they even uh gave the former uh or the repeating uh Champs a
049run for their money in in their match so just congratulations to Morton High School volleyball team we'll get to meet them at the first December meeting so we'll come we'll have them come and we'll congratulate them personally for that along with uh Morton High School marching band They also competed at a pretty big uh competition in Grand Nationals in Indianapolis this past weekend uh they finished second in their class at Grand Nationals which is a huge deal it's much larger and much more competitive than even just what we compete with in in Illinois they placed 18th out of 92 schools across various classes there that's the highest placement that our marching man has ever met met and it's they received the highest score that they've ever received in Grand Nationals at that competition and the
050directors would tell you historically this is the best season that our band has ever had in its history and so I want to we'll get to congratulate the leadership the the student leaders in the band also in the same meeting in December but I just want to publicly congratulate the students our co-directors Katrina Fitzpatrick and Craig Hatter plus there's a whole other team of leaders that are are back in them up as well so just congratulations to [Applause] our so a lot of great things happening um a couple other just updates the uh reminders the bid opening for the MHS renovation project is going to be on December 13th that has caused us to add a meeting um a special meeting just to approve the bids so we'll open the bids on the 13th then
051we're asking the board to gather probably just for the one agenda item of approving those bids so we can do that before the Christmas break and we can start to get contractors uh ready and prepared for that project so we're asking for a special meeting on the the 19th we'll plan for that uh realizing the late notice on that you know we may not have all board members present but I know we'll have a I believe we'll have a quorum present for that so thank you for adjusting your calendars for that uh we have met with the Architects as as they put together the bid documents we've gotten to see some 3D renderings of the Interior Space and although they haven't quite completed those yet with color and different things I think they want to
052tweak them and make them really uh nice they are fantastic so you get a view of as if you were s s uh standing in the middle of the lobby that we're uh proposing and looking around at all sides it's just a it's overwhelming how beautiful it is and how how spacious it it it will be when we get there so as they finish up those 3D renderings I will share those with the board and um it's been just a great process with the High School administration working through a lot of details all the way down to how many tables will the athletic trainer have and where are they located and how our bathrooms are situated there's so many details associated with that but uh Architects have done a fantastic job they have a great
053team behind them as they put those bid documents together so very excited about that that'll be on the 13th um parent teacher conferences just concluded we this year you're probably aware we had split conferences where our 7th through 12th graders uh had their or parents and teachers had their conferences in October at our normal time but our elementary just finished theirs in in h November last week and we are in the process now of um surveying parents and faculty about how did that go with them being split do you like them so we'll we'll share that information with you um I think it's starting to come in I'm not sure if we've closed those surveys yet but um we're starting to see some results there we need to know that we need to know how
054everybody thought it went because we're preparing for the next year's calendar and we need to know whether we should do that again so that's kind of what we're in the process of and Dr sander is leading the calendar committee so he's U anxiously awaiting the data on that so the committee can be informed we doing these the same way next year or not so that's a little bit about that food service update um you know as we have taken on the self-management of our cafeteria program just would say that it's going exceedingly well um crystal lonus is doing a fantastic job as our manager uh we're always tweaking things and and trying to improve things it's nice to have complete control over the program uh we are uh going to we are in the process
055of surveying our students and asking them so what do they think so we're surveying fifth through 12th graders getting their opinions I'm sure they're going to be blatantly obv honest with us um no doubt about that so we're going to we're going to take their feedback and see what we can do to improve things and it is it is kind of nice now that we're in control of that more that we can make those adjustments so we'll be doing that along the way committees um we are still in the process of figuring out our formal negotiations committee but Dr sander and I have met informally as a pre-negotiation meeting with the mea leadership and our goal is to start knocking out some of these um kind of smaller issues they could be contract language issues
056or some things that we mutually want to agree on a different way of moving forward so we're working on that we had a great meeting this week already and making progress on that of course we will share every all the details with the board along the way and we we've agreed even in in this room room we've met and we agreed that we haven't agreed to anything until the board has seen it and the whole mea exec board has seen it so just so you know we're working on proposals behind the scenes to try to expedite the process for the Board of Education whoever's going to be on that committee so we're making good progress on that we will share some of those details with the Board of Education in close session because that's a
057negotiations topic so we'll share some of those things with you another committee that met was the extracurricular missig committee Dr sander met with them and and Mr neie M Layman and so was there a just maybe a brief update on that sure um so we met uh at the end of October and I we had three items on the agenda that we really wanted to uh cover and the first one was involving students in best practices and and anytime that you're working with students you know communication you know that's what we're trying to focus on and so one of the products that was put together at after surveying um Miss Ripka and Ashley berer put together a um survey and they sent it out to uh all the the students that were involved with Athletics
058and uh Fine Arts and so we had 72 responses and the information was great that they got back and and so it was uh communication focused and so they put together a nice little info sheet um that we can incorporate into what it is that we're going to do as a final product um so that was that was a really good Takeaway on that um the other one was a survey and this was uh Chris Carter and Jordan Williams uh they put together a survey that consisted about 33 to 34 questions I think the junior high has used A variation of this survey in the past and so the committee went through and they looked at a lot of the questions it's something that can easily be adapted um that we could post out out
059there on our website um one of the goals of using this is to uh streamline the communication not waiting until the very end to have you know bring information forward that would have been helpful if we would have done that during the the midseason and so that was a big takeaway so we've got a really good template that we can easily adapt as we move forward and then with that um a couple of other things that were brought up wasal and the nme for sports and so uh Mr Jones is going to be working with Stephanie Brown I believe on on looking at the social emotional side and incorporating some of the things that we're doing with nme into our practices uh with uh the students how it relates to extracurricular activities and then the
060third thing is is that we have two templates and so the ads are going through that uh trying to convert their existing uh hand books into those two templates so we hope to have a meeting coming up here soon I haven't set a date on that but um once we get both the handbooks pretty much uh in draft form then we can revisit that and see about how we we can display things like the survey and and all the best practices for students Miss Layman Mr NE do you have that's a good review I think you covered it well I mean these are Big steps um as we look at the survey and get getting information about coaches and how we can do a better job looking at kind of our Preamble we'll call it
061and that is as we've talked before how important it is that when we look at Junior High and junior varsity those are developmental programs so we have stated that and I think we've been heard on that and I think there's agreement and I would really appreciate Scott's comments relative to the seal he went to a seminar and some of the things he heard there plus some of the other things that are taking place within the district really was we need to step up our Pace in that regard and that was kind of touching to us the way he outlined his comments to us so probably said more than you wanted into this time that's perfect it really mirrors what we're doing on the academic side of the house so it's really blending both both sides
062all right thank you for that update got one more item to talk about before we get to ELO school report card uh presentation from Dr terer I just want to recognize um principal Ripka D Ripka was just recently announced to be the high school principal of the year for the central Illinois Valley of the Illinois principals Association that's a 4 count area and I just want to congratulate her she's not here with us tonight because she's at the game ball run dinner so I'll reann this when she comes to the next meeting probably in December but I just want to let everybody know um that we're very proud of her accomplishments she's very deserving she's an outstanding leader in our district and just want to congratulate her publicly before it gets out uh from other
063means so I going to let you know first um this this award will make her eligible to be the Principal theer for the entire state so there's a process associated with that but I just wanted to let you know know that she's um been announced for our region so congratulations to her before I move on any questions about all the things I know I ran through a lot of different things you might have had a question along the way I realized I just kind of bulldozed right through those items if you have any questions about anything that I've talked about comment on the negotiation committee since Dr Cross isn't here we'll put him on that committee In fairness I mean we did Andy last month so a good point play second thank you Dr cross
064for volunteering it's appreciated all right with that go um first off before I start on the Illinois school report hard I too want to thank the board uh for your service uh colleague and I who came the same year were talking about how much today we were talking about how much things have changed in the last 30 years I guess it's been so and Tom's got a head start on me but um it's just amazing when you've been here that long to see such change and I and you know it truly is because the board has always been insistent on a growth mindset and so I may not always look super thrilled when someone says well what are we going to do to improve what's you know how we're going to improve but it really
065has paid off and I can attest to that for 30 years and that's in large part to not only this group of board members um but also the other board members for the past 30 years so thank you for your service uh with that the Illinois school report card uh tonight I want to focus on some uh comparisons to the state of Illinois uh back in August we looked at just our overall meets and exceeds and some of our growth uh in the areas of map uh so tonight what I want to do is that it's that same data but now looking now that they've released the Statewide data how we kind of Stack up against other districts in the state um so one of the things that is uh part of the public eye
066is the summit of designations um and as you know we have two exemplary schools um Lincoln and Grundy we have one that is like a point and a half away the high school and then the other three uh are commendable schools which are all exceptional schools um here's how those designations are calculated you can see in the top half for elementary and middle schools um 75% of the total indicators are academic and um 25% are based on uh quality and Student Success indicators and if you dig in a little deeper you can see the big uh factors are growth in both English and math that makes up 50% of the elementary and Junior High Summit of designation and if you drop down the chronic absenteeism makes up for another 20% so 70% of our total
067designation is based on our growth and our levels of chronic absenteeism at the elementary and Junior High um Proficiency in ela and Proficiency in math and Proficiency in science are much smaller percents that only accounts for a total of 20% uh then there's some other um small percentage as well at the high school they use different uh even though it's divided up 75 25 they use different metrics in there and you can see at the high school the biggest metric is the graduation rate which counts for 50% of their designation um their uh proficiencies in in terms of ela Math and Science also adds up to about 20% between the three of them uh and The Chronic absenteeism uh accounts for 10% and so between graduation rate and chronic absenteeism that's about 60% of the
068total uh score and then there's some other very minor ones as well uh I will point out because our English learning uh progress to proficiency uh group of students is so small uh we don't get measured in that and so that 5% gets redistributed across other areas and I'll kind of show you that as we go through this so if you're wondering why I thought he said 75% but it's like 8.6% that's because that bit got redistributed amongst others so anyway that's how the designations are balanced uh Short History lesson uh the the whole goal of this new designation system was to look at a school and a larger perspective than just do kids meet and exceed and so you can see growth in there you can see attainment in there you can see attendance
069in there uh climate survey in there so there's a bunch of other things to give you a broader picture the actual process for calculating this is the first step is you get the raw data that's the performance data it then gets converted on a scale of 100 to zero to an indicator score and then that indicator score uh gets um weighted by those percentages that I was just showing you so you know 100 in the academic uh proficiency for ELA then gets dropped down to if you get all of the all the the biggest score you can in that then it drops down to 7 and A2 points or in our case it's like I said closer to 8.6 because the way it gets divided up then they add all those index scores up and
070that becomes your summon of designation um and then of course the final designation uh like I said all of our schools are exemplary and commendable and the difference between those two levels is exemplary is in the top 10% of all the schools in the district and commendable is not uh but otherwise the other criteria having no subgroups under 5% or I'm sorry having no low performing subgroups or having a if you're high school having a graduation rate of greater than 67% is the same for both Exemplar and commendable so the only difference again between our exemplary schools and our commendable schools is the exemplary ones did uh their total score was in the top 10% of the state so just kind of a FYI so a really cool um new graphic on the Illinois school
071report card this thing is awesome if you haven't hit this thing I wish Dr cross was here cuz I know loves the scattergram I don't know if this competes with the scattergram but this is right up there uh if you go into and this is not on the District page you have to go into each School page individually these are the high school graphs um if you go into the school page you'll see one of these two it's under accountability and then um I think Summit of designation you'll get this picture the picture on the left shows all the the the areas that make up these uh Summit of designation and the box sizes replicate how much of a factor they are so you can see graduation the big one right that big purple box
072in the center uh that's the biggest part of their designation and the smaller ones represent obviously smaller percentages and then it shows you the points uh for each and so you can see I was I guess I was mistaken it's not 8.6 it's 8.04% is what that actually inste of 7 and a. half% for ELA proficiency it's 8.04 and you can see at the high school they got all their points for ELA proficient they got all their points for math proficiency they got all their points for the graduation rate you cannot get any better in any of those three areas and they got all their points for the science proficiency those are the biggest score you can get as a matter of fact all of our buildings every building got the highest score you can
073get in ela proficiency got the highest score you can get in math proficiency and got the highest score you can get in science proficiency every one of our buildings did um the so at in terms of proficiency levels were as high as you can get uh in the state of Illinois now that's not to say we can't do better we can't have more kids meet next year I'm not trying to infer that it's just in terms of what the state calls successful uh We've hit it now the cool thing about these pictures and and like I said the one picture on the left the boxes represent um by the waiting the picture on the right are the index scores that's that score out of 100 you can see again the 100 out of 100 and
074in the one areas I just talked about for graduation Ela proficiency math proficiency but the really cool thing about this is you can uh select one of those boxes any of those boxes and see where we shake out compared to the rest of the state now I would have loved to have talked about this all night but I know probably some people want to go home at some point so I only picked one area to talk about uh and that's chronic absenteeism and so if you would uh actually select uh The Chronic absenteeism box and hit that you're going to get this graph and this is all the schools uh in the state of Illinois and where we shake out and you can see that uh for Morton High School uh that's where we fall
075uh and those ranges represent the index scores um and we we fall right to the you know towards the upper end of that spectrum and again you can do that for any of those uh assignments so if you're looking at some of the different schools and want to see where they shake out you select that you can see compared to the rest of the state here's where we fall um just to talk a little bit about chronic absenteeism and then we can come back to that picture if you want um this I guess before we get into this the details on chronic absenteeism this turns out to be the most confusing graph a person can ever make in their life I'm almost I almost deleted it right before the meeting started cuz it's meant to
076show you how chronic absenteeism has changed over time but as Dr smok astutely pointed out you did it backwards it's the right on the far right is the oldest data and on the left is the the newest data and I know usually in America we read left or right but was trying something different and something fun trying to go right to left um and the other thing that's a little quirky is um you want to get um a bigger number is better it means less chronic absenteeism and so you can see on the far right that's pre Pandemic those were our levels for chronic absenteeism and then on the far left is after the pandemic this past year um and then I put on the right side those don't represent the percents of our chronic
077absenteeism that's actually the formula used to calculate the index score for chronic absenteeism and so an easy way to kind of look at that if you're really math curious the high school you can see is like roughly right at 60 it has an index score of 60 their chronic absenteeism is 20% so 20 * 2 is 40 subtracted from 100 to 60 that's how you get the index score what's the definition of chronic AC I'm glad you asked because that's going to advance the slideshow even faster um the students who Miss questions I keep asking I just keep booking through if you want to get to the end just say what was our overall percentile rank as a district I get to the last slide like right now um so the the definition this is
078this is kind of an um this has been around for a while but I don't think most people caught on to what the change in uh definition is this is students who have missed 10% or more of the school days per year with or without a valid excuse so if a family goes on vacation if a student gets sick and goes to the doctor frequently uh if there's any combination of of doctor visits hospitalization sickness uh vacations if you miss more than 18 or 17.6 days in a school year you're counted as chronically absent um so chronic absenteeism isn't like the TR andc we grew up with where you if you show didn't show up to school and didn't have a valid excuse you were considered truant it's just strictly absent who's been absent that
079much of the day or that much of the year I apologize um and so that's the definition uh below those bullet points represent some of the things as a district because we've had some conversations about chronic absenteeism on how to uh you know try and reduce The Chronic absenteeism in the district uh one way that we are working at is we do these quarterly notices so at the end of quarter 1 if you have five absences uh you get a letter just and it's a nice hopefully it's a nice letter I think it's a nice letter I saw the letter I took it as a nice letter maybe not everyone does but it's essentially says it's you know important that you um are at school that's how you learn and we want you to be
080here um and so you can see the break the divisions for each quarter five uh after quarter 1 10 after quarter 2 and so forth uh we have a school that does a wellness wall um when students are absent they post it on the wall and just you know so that you recognize that we miss you you're not here and we you know want you to be here uh there are a few schools that are doing social media campaigns uh sending out flyers to families putting posting uh different things on Facebook about the importance of attendance uh today when I was meeting with the broadcasting group it is my understanding that not only is Miss Ripka principal of the year but I got the vision that she has set for the broadcasting group to make
081this movie on why you should come to school and if it works out like the broadcasting folks talked about today that is going to be awesome she might be up you know Stephen Spiel berish we might not have her as a principal anymore but anyway and then of course the last thing which you know has always gone on is home visits you know just a chance to talk with parents oneon-one and just the importance of being in school so that's chronic absenteeism um the other one of these I wanted to show you and remember you get to this picture by on that Schoolhouse graphic pushing on any of the things uh if you're on the high school page and you press the uh overall score uh it shows you where Morton High School Stacks up
082with all the rest of the um schools in Illinois and that vertical uh black line is the 10% cut off and you can see more High School uh is just a smidge to the left um now one of the things um that I did when this for this is a cool graphic you can't help but do stuff with this one of the things I did is I sent an email to each of the principles and just shared you know based on where your school fell if you wanted to be moved to exemplary in the future here's some areas uh that would help U Move the needle on the summit of designation not that the summit of designation is the end all Beall uh but certainly uh it is you know here's some ways you can
083move to the your your needle further to the right and get closer exemplary interestingly I believe at the high school they had a 60 I wrote it down somewhere 67% return rate 69% return rate on the five essential survey I think they only needed about another 2 or 3% more and they would had enough points to be exemplary so um when you get that email from the school saying hey can you fill out the five essential apparently it's a big deal so and there's a couple other you know small changes that would have got them over the hump so anyway I'm only showing you the high schools because like I said they were super close uh and at one point in the preliminary data they were actually listed as exemplary until the state recalculated stuff
084so the five essential I'm trying to see if this will go ahead again on the survey now you're dragging us down Tim but has way on the survey it's just based on not the results of the survey number of yeah have 100% bad surveys get a better score right or 50% gr be less yes um so the Scatter Plots um I show each year uh this first one is the and I'll spend a little bit of time explaining the first one then we'll zip through the next few uh this is I Ela scatter plot the xais is the um per pupil instructional expenditure in dollars so so you can see left to right is what the per per pupil expenditure is and the up and down is the percent meeting or exceeding so this would
085be our third through 8th grade students the red triangle represents Morton uh any dots above us uh are schools that scored better than we did and all those dots below us are the scores that didn't or the schools that didn't score as well as us um and then if you're on the live site you can hover on some of those dots or you can hover on any of those dots and see which schools like for example there's that dot in the upper left uh that spends less money and has great results and if you're really curious who that is you can hover on that dot and they'll tell you who it is or you can go way to the right and see that school that's spending almost $119,000 per student and is barely getting 10%
086of the kids to metrix but or the red triangle so that's Ela and again that's just I this is just the high school just the 11th graders just sat uh again you see our red triang red triangle um not many dots above us which is outstanding in just Ela uh this is I um again our red triangle uh there's a few dots above us but not many and the last of the Scatter Plots this is the SAT um in math for just a high school so those are the Scatter Plots and again you can find those uh on the main site and you can dig into that if you want to see other schools and select you know what schools are out there you're interested in um this next part is new this is something
087that uh ecra this company that does um a lot we've done a lot of work with helps us analyze data and so these these are percentile rankings uh for our district for this year and just kind of as a clarification every District in the state counts as one entity so if you're Deer Creek student body of I don't know maybe a couple thousand thousand you're one school district if you're Chicago Public Schools you're one school district doesn't matter that you got 300,000 students in Chicago public schools you only count as one school district and so these percentile ranks are based on taking every District in the state lining them up from the uh best Ela proficiency to the worst Ela proficiency uh and then you get your percentile rank so it doesn't matter that some
088of the districts are much larger than us and some of them are much smaller than us each district counts as one and so you can see percentile wise um you know because the question always comes up or it's really not question but it's really hard to grasp like when you look at our percent our percent of proficiency in ela uh this year was 60.9% and in math it's 47.9 and it's hard to understand how can that be successful if only for math 47.9% of our students met the Target on I we're at the 90th percentile uh in the state so there's a bunch of other school districts try they're trying to figure out how something lower than 47.9% is okay and so you can see our percentile ranks the first three uh columns are 2022
089the state value is the middle value in the state that represents the 50th percentile so that's can give you kind of an idea of the spread of the scores uh so for example um the one that's perplexing to me is like Ela participation our participation rate this year was 98.7 The State value is 99.1 and that puts us in the 35th percentile I me we're only off of that thing by like uh 400 or 410 um so it's a pretty tight spread there is I guess what I'm saying um not all the percentile ranks do you want to be high uh as you look at this for example the Community College remediation uh you want a low percent of students that need remediation when they go to Community College you don't want your high school
090students to need Remediation in order to be successful at Community College so the fact that our percentile rank is incredibly low you can see uh this year the state average was uh 19.8% of the students that went to Community College needed remediation and for Morton it's only 13.6 and that puts us down at the 30th percentile um so again these are just some percentile ranks I'm not sure if there's any of these in particular you want to talk about or yeah is there a way for you to find like schools meaning consol uh unit district 3,000 students um you know what does Acra have that information where you could drill down and do comparison let me email EA cuz I had emailed them earlier today about uh you know is this data going to be
091like super skewed if Chicago public schools are packed in there because they've got 300,000 students and we've got 3,000 students they're just going to you know skew at something fierce and they explained uh which when we get to that slide I'll I'll remind uh for school data Chicago Public Schools was taken out otherwise it would there're 20 some per of the schools in in the state of Illinois but for district data because every District counts is a single entity um they are in the data um so let me find out I would assume they're comparing for US unit districts against unit districts but I don't know that for a fact so I think these percentile ranks would be all unit districts I don't think like a ro Bean which is a K8 District here in
092the area would be a part of this but I I need to verify that your scatter CLS based on number of students um in well it's good right because the like this cost per average for student there's 12 dots to the right of it and there's 100 to the left it is yeah that the the dollars per student is based on student right saying that's not a average it's weighted per student so say district 150 has 14,000 kids they get counted in there 14,000 times we get counted in 4,000 times no has to be right because otherwise the average the average would be in the middle of the pack they take the number of dollars that district 150 has in their Ed fund right and they divide by their number of students and that's how
093they get their dollars per student but it's but in the scatter plot it's weighted though right by the size of District well the think so vertical line isn't in the center of the the vertical line would be way in the center of the pack correct so the bigger districts have a bigger weight on it well the x-axis left to right is how much dollars per student you're spend yeah sorry if I'm not my problem well for crying out loud no one's made me to go back on per student doesn't matter how many I'm saying obviously the if this line these have to be weighted higher than this for the state average yes so so whatever district 150 or Whatever Gets counted a lot more has a lot more weight than we do yeah I see
094what you're saying I'm sorry the state average your right is based on the dots arm and then you go to the next graph your next charts it's just what it's like the Senate one one district has one vote correct just like other questions makes this more relevant really probably because bigger districts probably include more inner city which has less [Music] you so this actually proves that we're doing better I did learn a lot about CPS today they got their own website it's pretty awesome you're welome yeah thanks um moving on uh these are just some percentile rankings uh that are um based on some other metrics that are found on the school report card um and again it one District counts as one so CPS has an average teacher salary that gets plotted on the
095thing um so you can see um and you should have access to all these in your uh board folder uh with the exception of the next slide I snuck this one at and after I gave it to Valerie because I just couldn't help myself any questions or conversation on this one yeah this one doesn't have a lot of meaning when you consider Chicago and the suburbs and you then consider the school districts in Southern Illinois and what have you to have an average salary is definitely I'm not sure what value that is north of I80 and but yeah you're right but go down to even the rural schools cost of living is great way different across the state um this one I tossed on there this is the surprise slide uh that didn't make the
096cut um and I put this one on there simply because of the chronic absenteeism um because I was just curious percentile wise uh I I'm just amazed that our chronic absenteeism is as high as it is I just wouldn't have guessed that um you can see as overall District our chronic absenteeism this year is 15% uh the state average is 21.6% and this is another one that's good to have a low uh percentile and so you know we're towards the bottom of this which is a good thing but I'm still surprised our chronic absente ism is so high and then you can see treny which is the you know I'm they're gone without a valid cause is is much lower I don't know if there's anything else on here that's of interest um these are
097the school uh percentile ranks uh and these are the ones where CPS was left out of and um I took for our elementary buildings uh their Road represents the average of the four buildings not the average of all students but each building added together divided by four that's the percent of meets and exceeds in 2022 and in 2023 and then that is their average percentile there four percentile ranks added together and divided by four and so you can see our elementary schools um our Junior High um and our high school so again it kind of gives you some idea of you know when we look at you know for example at Morton High School when you see 43.7 um well I guess that's what that's two years ago so uh when you see 55.9% of
098our students U meeting or exceeding on Ela is that a good thing well it puts us in the 95th percentile which is pretty good pretty good really for the district um of course the next slide is math uh exact same data but now for Math and and then this is our overall rankings over time since 2016 2017 um you know the 22 23 percentile ranks We're on that first one for our dis that first slide I was showing you for percentile ranks but then this is historically how we've done since 2016 um and then the last slide is kind of a review from August I've added a little bit to it from August you know we talked about you know what are what do you do with this data um what happens with this data
099I me show it to the board we have a conversation about it but then what do we do with it in terms of improving how we operate as a school district and so one thing we do is we break this data down into smaller groups and as I shared um I've sent out emails to each of the buildings just talking about in terms of a summit of designation what are some things that would help improve the summit of designation not that that's the end all Beall but it is a big metric for the state of Illinois so it's something to consider um there are reports in uh I there are IA reports that show how our kids do by standard and so we have began uh at the district level uh with the instru coach
100is starting to take a look at those um to see Are there specific standards that um need to be addressed we also in um October I shared the board presentation with the elementary teachers that I shared with the board uh I think in August um but I shared with the elementary teachers and we talked about specifically you know our third grade scores have been going down and we talked about here at the board meeting that the third grade class last year is the class that would have had kindergarten in 2020 missed half a year and then had that really rough first grade year and so started the conversation with them about okay these students are now fourth graders uh what do we need to be doing for these students to get them back where they
101need to be uh and how do we make sure that this downhill Trend doesn't continue that it really was because of Co and not just because of some other changes and so in November um the grade levels got together and had some conversation about uh that and the principles met with the grade levels and so tomorrow morning we'll spend some time going through that conversation uh with each other and then look at some next steps for that so that's some pretty explicit ways in which we're using this data uh to move forward um obviously we've had this focus on standards so that we um make sure we're teaching and spending our time on what's important what's we're supposed to be teaching and not just things of interest not the things of interest are bad but
102you know we do want to make sure we're focusing on what's uh we're supposed to be so that's kind of that instructional uh efficiency and then of course the sixth through nth grade transitions um that is just a as you know a big deal you go from being a sixth grader two years at the junior high and then your high school student that happens pretty darn quick and so for some of our early releases uh we've had our sixth grade teachers meeting with our Junior High teachers uh talking about not only how does curriculum align between sixth grade going into seventh grade but then also what are some of the expectations U we've talked about you know iPads how iPads are used or how they're managed uh this past month we talked some about homework
103what homework looks like what that expectation looks like is it consistent or does it make a logical sense when you go from sixth grade to Junior High so those are some of the things going on there uh and then obviously uh we have this focus on individual student needs uh through our mtss program where um you know I think we share shared last year some with the mtss program that spreadsheet that we have for every student in the district at the elementary that has on there their map scores their bass scores their uh how they're doing in the classroom and we meet uh I we I'm not there but people meet uh to you know go through those and identify the students in most need of help and then create a plan for how do
104we help those students and then in uh five weeks six weeks they meet again to see did that plan do anything did it make a difference if not should we adjust that plan if it did should we continue that plan or if it really did should we now stop providing the extra help because they've caught up and so again those are just some things just some examples of what how this data fits into all that so uh with that are there any questions I'd like can you go back to one of the earlier slides where it showed the ratios on the school designation scores yeah probably like slide two or one I can do that this one yeah perfect I and I made this point last year when we talked about this but it be
105is repeating I think the ratios on how this is calculated how are we rated as a school or as a district and I just want to make the point again that this isn't how we would recommend it right that only 7 and 1 12% of our complete rating is in English language uh proficiency bla proficiency only 75% is math proficiency but only 15% is how proficient we are in those two major areas and that 50% is graduation rate when and I'm going to put you on the spot here Dr terer what is the percentage you need of graduation to get the full points you remember that number yeah it's pretty low yeah it's well it's yeah 10 or 70 right yeah I think not to get full points I can get you the number the
106point is most schools can accomplish all the points there so if you're being rated and most schools can accomplish those points but your rating on how well your students perform on the key topics science math and English are only add up to 20% of how you're rated overall um English language learner or English learner progress at 5% which is a small population an important population but these aren't the ratios we would want no uh to try to judge how we're doing as a district but there are the ones we have to live by so I just want to make that point that I uh and you know I think you showed with um the topic of the the climate survey that that's participation based and and so we do all this work our kids perform
107at such a high level but then if if people don't participate in a survey that we can't force them to participate in we don't get the points and we meet we miss a designation level that we could have met very frustrating I just want to express that um to me it's frustrating that we're not really this isn't a great way to judge the performance of in my opinion so the other thing to note with the proficiency uh for those of you that have been in education forever it's kind of the same deals the No Child Left Behind where today the threshold for getting all your points for proficiency is here like at 40% or some crazy low number that a lot of schools jump over that hoop but it ratchets up every year so 10
108years from now when they're expecting 60% to meet or exceed all of a sudden getting that 75% will be a little more of a challenge so it it will start to R it is it ratchets up every year you know I think the I think the number before we start seeing an effect will probably be another couple years three or four years but so to that end like Dr smok said you know it's we don't look at they go we got all the points for proficiency I guess we're we got it figured out in English and we have it figured out in math we certainly know what those percentages are and we certainly know those percentages can be better and there's certainly ways that we focus on making those percents better even though those type
109of things won't affect our Summit of designation I think the graph what shows it year to year right yeah for the last six years or whatever with a couple Co years missing we keep going up yeah and that's independent of what the testing is that's saying how do you compare because each School we're comparing ourselves to is taking the same test or to the same standard correct and we keep elevating oursel and so that's that's a positive note and that doesn't mean that we can't I Craig was complaining someone of his grumpy board members said you'll never be good enough me but the point is I'm saying we no matter where we at we need to continue to improve so like your last slid said what steps are we taking to get better and that
110needs to continually happen and just I it's you guys know that but I'm just saying that that's our job to make sure that happens and then my other comment would be I think the chronic absente is that I think for bort we should be semi concerning agree I mean that's we wouldn't expect that in this District I guess so it's and if that transfers over to the work room exactly and I guess one final comment um is that I think it's the data more impressive knowing that each district is cting equal independent of their size no we got our work ahead of us yeah so on that we as Dr Keeter indicated right out of the gate you know we have a growth mindset here it doesn't matter whether we don't like the system for
111designations we're looking at the data and asking ourselves how can we do better and that's what we're going to continue to do so thank you Dr here any other comments for Dr snot before we move on I think that was great information and appreciate that and the growth mindset is what's so important when we think about our our role it's truly to make sure every kid student um is growing and I not sure we didn't get into some of the details but when we think in terms of 25% of our students probably are in the low income is that correct in in the range so it was reported earlier that we're such an influent that we don't have to worry about about some of those students that kind of struck me kind of hard yeah
112good point okay other questions com we'll move on to the president's report and with that I'm going to start with a statement on behalf of the board of education so on behalf of the Board of Education I would like to make a statement relative to the number of public comments that were made at the last few board meetings first of first of all with respect to bullying and harassment our stance has never changed we are intolerant of any disrespect or mistreatment of students and all students are to be treated with respect and dignity we will respond to every report of mistreatment of students board policy 7 180 has been reviewed and approved by the state of Illinois and we have taken steps to communicate with our faculty and staff to ensure that our policies are
113followed and incidents are reported we will continually provide professional development on this topic for our teachers and staff according to our Administration team the term bullying does not always Define the disrespect that we seek to correct in our students and we are not experiencing an increase in those in these behaviors it has always been a continual effort throughout the years to educate our students in how to treat one another respectfully and how to behave when we disagree with one another we review all our policies on a regular basis we are making an honest effort eff to review some of our pertinent policies in order to make improvements where needed this review has included considerations for suggestions from those speaking in the audience presentations when amending our policies we must ensure that they abide by the
114First Amendment and are neutral with respect to all groups and topics we will continue to review our policies and discuss them openly and we will continue to ensure that they are properly followed there have been a number of times during audience presentation ments of our meetings where false inuendos and mistruths have been spoken publicly the board will not be responding or reacting to inflammatory and unfounded accusation statements but a lack of response should not be construed as accepting the Mis true whenever corrective action is taken with an employee that is done privately the board and administration will never divulge conversations or actions with her employees that are discipline disciplinary or remedial in nature just because the public does not hear about such steps does not mean they do not did not occur the board acknowledges
115that mistakes have been made relative to our policies we have worked to correct correct and remedy those errors and finally no administr no administrator or board member will be resigning and no administrator or board member will be removed so that is our public statement moving on to the balance of my report um just to note just to compliment some of our successes the volleyball was they got their fourth in state and they had five sets I think and they lost by a total of one point between all five sets so that's pretty impressive that they lost four of them by two and one one by seven so the Cross Country Joe Zeller will probably probably be hearing from him tomorrow because you didn't mention him they did well at State the boys and girls both
116and congratulations again to the band for their success um just to note that the we put out a video on Veterans Day congratulating or thanking all the veterans I thought that was extremely well done it was just neat to say thanks to those who have given us the freedom to live in this great country so um and then thank you to the teachers and the admin that got the thank yous and the students who wrote the thank yous but I'm assuming the teachers and admin might had something to do with that because probably when I was in school I'd probably say there's what a school board so and and just to Echo Tom's comment just a second ago the school report card it's great to see we have continual Improvement because that's truly why we're
117here to educate educate the children the sports and band is excellent but the education is the core of what we're to do and so it's great to see the continual Improvement and we need to continue to focus on what we can do to ensure that continues so that will be it with my president's report and now anything for agenda building yes communication that's one of our goals says right here that we'll have two-way communication providing timely information I get lots of uh communication from constitu the biggest thing that I would like to let the administration know is two-way communication they're very appreciative specifically the surveys um about the uh about the teacher conference yes parent teacher conferences being back and forth so they're happy that they're two-way uh communication for that regardless if they agree
118or disagree with whatever comes out they are appreciative of the two-way communication so I want to make sure that I did mention that uh car you more communication awesome the athletic communication surveys more communication awesome the communication gets put out every Friday the the Potter post the videos for the video team my point is the communication back and forth from my constituents they are very very satisfied and happy with the communication they might not always like what they hear but at least they're hearing it so I want to make sure during the agenda time that everybody is aware of the communication and the goals that we are hitting thank you well said anyone else on that same vein I've been thinking about um you know since we have had such opportunity to um hear public
119statements um you know ever ever since I've been in the district and attending board meetings I've just just often wondered oh how do people get responded to and sometimes it's public but most of the time it's an email or a letter um and I was just wondering if um there was any record that might be helpful to us or a way we could make sure you know that we have um responded so that you know even if someone the future isn't impressed enough to remember the response there would be um you know just a record that oh this person we take names and email addresses so we can communicate back but you know is there a record that they were actually addressed in the manner that that was addressed so that um you know that
120would be something they could request in the future if needed or you know if there were further question questions about you know did the board actually respond because we do want people to know we responding even though most of our responses have for the reasons Mr breaker mentioned have to be confidential has that been discussed before or we've never discussed keeping like you're you're talking about having a certain place where you could go and find all the responses that the board has made to public comments is that what you mean we don't have that that would have so that's something that the board wanted to do that have a certain location where we could go back and find out what how did we respond to this or that you wouldn't be relying on the superintendent
121or someone else whoever responded tell you that that you could find that in a certain location I mean that's that's something we could certainly do I'm just thinking we want to be accountable and make sure that you know our statement that we will respond at the latest by the end of the next regular Board of Education meeting you know we would want to make certain that that was done and so just how can we make sure we're actually ourselves following our policy um and just knowing that people are taking their time and coming and preparing and we want to want to give thoughtful responses and be responsible that no one falls through the cracks even if maybe we address the issue and three people brought it up we want to make sure all three receive
122a response could you possibly review that with your superintendent groups to see if they have any procedures that they follow maybe someone has something and we could I think often times in the past we've seen the responses that not necessarily historical I think is what she's after well I Valerie keeps a record of everyone who comes and speaks correct um I because I see people logging in and giving their information I think you know even something as simple as just email dated or note letter dated um you know then we could find it in the future and since you know so many things right now um are being requested it might just make it easier to find specific requests or um things like that if if no one else had think it would be helpful
123no you're just talking like a log that they can go to look you know person x uh statement y with answer z is what you're looking for and then it's just going to be a a nice log that they can refer back to that's what you're talking about yes and if there's no answer because it's confidential then you can put confidential off to it and that's the answer is it's confidential so I I I think I understand what you're saying and that way you can refer back to if person X says on September 5th we asked for this but you didn't give it yes we did here's where it's at that's kind of what you're looking at right right so you're holding the board and the administration accountable for the people true and then if
124as a board member you're are questioned you can say well there is a log and we can ensure that that was followed up on gotta because our board policy says we will get back correct so so right what's the evidence of that right what's the evidence we we've got evidence from two weeks but three month say 3 months ago you know it still get brought up what happened September 5th okay well we answered that you know the following board meeting in a long statement that he had put out well we can go back and say refer to statement correct could have said long eloquent statement but and some of the answers back to them whoever it may be is that we understand your question but this is a Personnel matter and right and some of
125the comments do not require correct I mean some of the some of the comments are not don't require I mean they're asking a question they making statement so exactly true the rhetoric will yeah certainly um and those I agree C president board president statement would be helpful for those who maybe didn't realize that we understood their comments as rhetorical to know that the response was covered in the public statement okay anything else thank you D Tom I think it's been said I really appreciate tonight most of all the comments about all of the information and feedback that we've gotten from teachers and even parents this past couple of weeks has just been kind of touching and then thank you for the podcast and recognition in the video of for the veterans it's a an important
126thing to do to thank our veterans for their service we wouldn't be here if it wasn't for the many many people that make make sacrifice standing up for democracy so that whether you want to agree or not people can come and make their comments and we take them seriously um but if it wasn't for Veterans Day if it wasn't for veterans English would be a foreign language there you go that's that's a short vers you know what I'm trying to say and thank you for still serving thank you and I think your podcast I just want to reflect for a moment you d drove home the point that it's not only the veterans that have sacrificed their families have sacrificed and sometime that sacrifice goes on for years and you don't know all the sacrifices
127the families have made made for that freedom and think you understand good point Thank you moving on to discussion items starting with the School Board conference selections pretty proud of me I figured how to use the app so I can find out saw this go first um I'm planning on introduction to collective bargaining so I can tell David how to do it uh what your superintendent wants to know but can't tell you I think that should be good seems like he tells me too much uh setting District goals and strategic planning monitoring District performance Trends and collective bargaining and you can't make this stuff up legal questions that's what I'm signed up for currently I didn't realize you're were supposed to sign up well I don't know if you signed up I just put it
128in the app thing or whatever yes so put it in the app yes gotcha all right so yeah because everything on Friday is like sign up and pay for it it is you can do that I mean well I mean the district will reimburse you for it I mean it's one of the the colle the bargaining ones so I'm looking at um work together for kids um delegate assembly on Saturday of course and then depending on who's going to be on the committee I've got uh effective meetings productive boards Trends or Trends in collective bargaining uh I'd like to find out more about chat GPT because IIA seems to be the biggest thing going on right now and then I've got um uh productivity Google productivity as another day and there's another Google one that
129I thought because there's I'd like to start combining calendars um just combining the seventh grade basketball calendar into my personal calendar was a chore so there's got to be easier ways to do this I have world world board scenarios art of school boarding which I did last year but I thought it was really good so I kind of want to do a refresh of it um let's see economics and policy in Springfield that will affect prek through 12 and School Board evaluation working together better generational strategies and you can't make this stuff up I think you said that one and open meetings act and fo you okay what I'm signed up for our new administrator's new board how do we get started uh Foya and uh om updates uh what your superintendent wants to tell
130you but can't then I have uh safety site assessments and then I Solly swear I'm up to good your board oath and action and then model of excellence in agricultural education well be interested to hear that I am interested in going to the Practical uable climate Changers um your board's voice navigating board policy policy um in transition legal requirements for Trans students and then um I saw a labor neg negotiation through a team approach I was hoping it wouldn't be over my head since it isn't a Basics I'll look into the speaker a little more on that one and then there is one that I'm hoping I will be able to make it to Saturday called creating trauma responsive communities on Thursday I'm going to try and sit in on the equity Symposium collective bargaining
131sessions Google and I'm going to be tied up with for a lot of different events but I'm going to try and squeeze in and out as much as possible Thursday afternoon we will be having our Board of director meeting I think we're going to probably talk about resolutions a little bit later is that correct um yes that's next and yeah I'll save the comment I wanted to make for that but it's going to be interesting okay I'm going to be looking at the intro to collective bargaining um the Illinois records act compliance and best practice I uh there's a policy and procedures uh presentation that uh has I may try to get to that one as well um then we've got uh safety uh site assessment and so um you know keeping up with the
132crisis management and then uh trust and transparency and communication so that's what I my I'm most intrigued by the uh what your superintendent wants to tell you but is to I'm dying to know what those things are but probably of that um I always gravitate toward the law workshops and learning more about that I saw the collective bargaining one I'm kicking that one around but um we've kind of done our own style here in Morton it's been very effective but that doesn't mean we can't learn from what other people do so looking at that one there's one about unfunded mandates and I don't know if you saw that one I don't know if that's just a complaint session or if there's actually something that there's some ACT potential action on that um there's some on
133finance that's caught my attention there's a technology Google one maybe you mentioned Jerry that I've I've looked at so haven't quite narrowed it all down yet but those are a few that I've been looking at there's two Google ones okay yeah one with the technology that i' kind of like to hit as well but there's other things I'd like to hit so I don't have it narrowed down either but yeah there are two Google okay you get a chance in the Google one stand up and say I hate Google and I like [Music] Microsoft if you want yeah if I want thanks for that I thought you were I thought you were ordering me to do that okay seem like we have a fairly diverse group set of classes we're attending that's a good thing
134so I think Dr smok you indicated we will be getting a presentation on AI yes and I'm looking forward to that December that's our December meeting yeah I knew it sometime I just couldn't remember when no no no I was at a one of the division meetings and there was a whole session what a school district was doing there and came back and we chatted about that so we got Don sterm Courtney Edelman and D Ripka are working on that presentation I haven't seen it I'm I'm going to be as surprised as you are when we see it I'm looking forward to seeing what they have to say I think it won't be all negative I think they'll talk about some of the positives and the way it can be used in a positive way
135and then the concerns that we have so looking forward to see what they report on there I know it's here to stay so yeah I know they're tracking on it especially uh Mr Sturm so so just a reminder what it's been our practice when we've come back from the conference to report out a little bit of what we learned a a couple sessions and you know share with the rest of the group so just kind of keep that in mind take a few notes and be ready for that discussion when we return that will move on to the conference resolution discussion so there's five of them and and you probably saw in the the information I think it started off page 10 that's that's all I really looked at to be honest with you I
136looked at I read through them and so really uh Mr red wants some direction right because you're going to go to the delegate assembly and you'd like to know where our board stands on these five different issues that are going to be brought forward and in that in the writings it describes the purpose or what the reasoning was that these different things were brought forward and then at the end of it it tells you kind of where the IB stands in terms of a recommendation but of course we could have a different opinion then where they stand so I don't need to do all the talking on this but you should we just start at the beginning and work through it so before we go too far okay there's five and you talked about where
137the iasb stands so the first one is uh industrial construction um is iasb Sands do not adopt if you agree with the Do Not adopt then I need a thumbs up that you're agreeing with the Do Not adopt not agreeing with the resolution okay so if you agree with ISB iasb it's thumbs up if you disagree with iasb it's thumbs down are we clear on that got it same thing if I get smashed by you know whatever and I can't make it then my alternate Dr cross gets to it's was last that's right so then now you understand that when you go through do the check mark it's you're agreeing with ISB or disagreeing with ISB it's not agreeing with the resolution okay all right so now now we can go forward all right so
138you mentioned the first one it was proposed to prohibit construction of industrial facilities near schools um because the health and safety for students but these are local decisions I think if you read the the reason why the ISB says recommends not to adopt they feel like you know industrial construction is up to the local community and some small communities depend on these things so the proximity of schools could be very close in a small community to Whatever Gets developed so I again I don't need to do all the talking maybe you've been more familiar with it than I am but well I think to yeah I think we should just either give it a thumbs up and if you don't don't agree then we can discuss so I all right so everybody gave a thumbs
139up everyone that agrees to not adopt okay second one school resource officer funding um asking for um the state to provide educational funds to all schools for the cost of a school resource officer and resolution committee is recommending to adopt it bus driver regulations is about um and I don't know a lot about this maybe Dr sander does but it's about trying to make it easier for local bus drivers to get licenses that's and also involves some State funding for uh Transportation reimbursement costs so the general idea is that there's a shortage of bus drivers how can we make it easier to get them instead of requiring uh you know regionally recognized trainers uh nationally recognized and just to facilitate that process so again I don't know a lot about that I I would just
140offer up was what they're asking for now then legislation passed and it drove it to special training sessions people had to go have to go a long distance to become certified and there were many districts that did their own training and we're trying to make that simpler thumbs up thumbs up all around all right the fourth one is is so Faith's law we've talked about that before but in case you forgot that's our the required process to do background checks not just criminal background checks but to reach out to former employers of anyone we're trying to hire and to ask a series of questions about sexual harassment history or other concerns uh there's probably way more to it than that but I think that's a succinct definition and this this resolution sought to not require
141any of that anymore and just use the elois Department of Child and Family Services reports child abuse neglect cracking system um to fulfill that requirement so in other words we wouldn't ask former employers we would just see if these people are in these databases I think that's that's my understanding of it maybe it's overly simplistic but and you might say well that sounds good there's tons of effort that's put into our current system right now to do that what what uh Dr sander has to to do what Rend has to do we've also used another company to help us it cost us money actually to process this and the time but I think what ISB the resolution committee is saying this isn't the best way to do this even though they probably behind the scenes
142are saying there are better ways to do it it's just not this way that's kind of the way my interpretation of reading this passage is I think there is a better way to do it I'll just say it's not inol with this but to have a database set up where schools are required to report incidences that may not rise to the level of proof of an actual case but there's allegations there or something and even though I know there's legal implications to arming someone's chance to find a job without proof that's a whole other aspect to Faith's law that concerns me and you'll see lawsuits over time on that but it seems to me like it'd be best if there was a database at any time we came across the situation we reported it and
143you didn't require then didn't you didn't rely on contacting a former employer who's there who's working there now this could be a 10-year-old situation there's no one there that knows it because nothing ever got reported so again I'm kind of going off on my own soap box here but I think there is a better process for this probably just not what they're uh indicating here so that's just my take on I don't know if anybody else has a comment about good and the last one is alternative safe school funding basically it advocates for additional funding to be provided for regional alternative safe schools and you might think well that sounds good we need them and we do and it acknowledges that in this writing that these their incidences ofal social emotional learning concerns and behaviors
144but I think the gist of their their recommendation which is in the last paragraph is that they don't think this should be a separate funding mechanism and they just want to use the evidence-based funding process to fund alternative schools I wish I could tell you more about the intricacies of that I don't I don't I don't know that but that's their reasoning our discussion was that we already have position statements on this topic and we don't need to had yet another one and okay so our legislative staff is already focused on this okay and why didn't that make the do not present that was my thought yeah okay yeah I don't know I should know thanks for the behind the scenes these shouldn't I shouldn't know I was there also we're going to have at
145the delegate assembly the election of officers we have a new uh candidate to be for vice president and I don't recall this happening before but we're going to have someone run from the floor so it might be a little bit interesting that some fireworks just for warn we will we will have a candidate running from the floor and which could be interesting I'm not sure how we're going to deal with only let one delegate in their room pardon me other people can come but they can't be seated I don't even I thought you had to have a special P to get into it if there's room they'd let people come in but you need to have a pass to be able to sit at the tables my point is if Andy wants to go with
146you whatever is to experience whatever you you got to have the past to get in so if you want to come that's I would I think we can get you there but and maybe I've just been able to bring people in but I forgot who I was dealing with okay any further discussion on that I got to make a comment quick that I forgot to make in the school report card discussion was we went down on number of kids entering College within 12 to 18 months and they're making indicating that's a negative and that could be just an indicator of how well our trades classes are doing to entice kids to say you know what there's an alternative to college so even though on the chart it looked like it was a negative in reality
147I'm not so sure it is especially as someone employs people on the trades it's a positive so I but as a nation that's occurring right so in a big way yeah so I just forgot to mention that so good point plus Lisa didn't look ready so he trying to stall you are up Lisa for our tax relief Grant presentation thank you okay so this is um something I brought before you for the past few years so this isn't new um we've applied for it but we haven't gotten it um but I'm as I've mentioned in the previous years at some point I'm really hopeful that this might um happen for us so um the main point of this goal or the goal of this this grant is to lessen the burden on the local taxpayers
148take it away from our taxpayers and shift it to the state and we've received more money in evence based funding so that's the ultimate goal with this whole calculation on how they come up with how the ranking is I can show you my spread she at sometime and we can talk through it in detail if you'd like but essentially they have their own uh way of of figuring out who is at what level and who can basically get some use out of this funding um the application is due January so I'm presenting here to you tonight and then in two weeks um hopefully you would approve that I have to actually have the approval before I can submit it for um submit the application there's almost 50 million again this year available um and again
149that allocation depends on our ranking um within the different um districts that are on that list um some of the things to um keep in mind is that we have to do an abatement in order to make this happen uh for two years but with the amount of money that comes in and I think I have it on a future uh slide it's like a year and a half payback so obviously obviously it's something that it's in our interest to do best interest to do because we're going to reduce our our taxes for our local taxpayers so um last year we were ranked 140 so what that means is that 139 school districts were in need of this money more than we were um this year we're ranked 101 but not everybody applies so every
150year it looks different it could be all of them apply which hasn't happened as long as I've been doing this grant um or it could be enough apply and we don't get the grant or maybe not enough apply and we do this year I'm really hopeful I'm we're getting lower on that list we're getting um what I should say higher on that list right so that we can maybe have a chance this year I'm really holding out hope on that last year only 130 schools applied out of 750 in the state um and and 32 schools received the grant so that kind of gives you an idea of of where the funding Falls as far as need um and again it just depends on what other districts apply whether or not we get that so
151this year so every year it's kind of changed these numbers are a little different than they were last year um this year the grant amount is just shy of 1.2 million um and compared to last year we would have gotten just shy of $900,000 a year additional so if we get this it actually Works to our advantage that we didn't get it last year and we we're going to get a little bit more um added to our evidencebased funding if we get this so what does this mean we Abate um for two years like I said we have to Abate that $2 million but we also receive the grant of 1.2 million so our net loss in years one and two are just shy of 900,000 and then in year three and on and on
152and on and hopefully evidence-based funding Contin continues as it has been it has been very consistent and reliable um and if that happens then we will net profit one just shy of 1.2 million um and like I mentioned about a year and a half payback you know once we've established that so um what we've done is we we filed a levy in December as you know I presented we approve it we submit it by the end of December we obviously don't apply for this till January so then I would do an abatement if we are granted it we should know end of January February timeline just in time for me to do the abatement so that they have worked that out um and then you know as far as the impact of the um Ed
153fund Reserve obviously we're going to lose money in the Ed fund um I'm suggesting the Ed fund because we are doing okay in the Ed fund we are healthy in that fund but keep in mind we're going to be able to just put more money back as we go along um and and in the end the district is just in better shape by doing this so I wholeheartedly think that this is a great idea to take a little bit away from our local taxpayers any questions yes um will the ba will that affect our plans for uh the high school renovation or anything like that well it won't change it we will Abate more work Mission said we will Abate more we will be utilizing more reserves in the Ed fund if we do it
154the way that we planned it like I had suggest to take that million from our um interest income and moving it to the omm so that we can help Finance it but I'm hopeful that as I mentioned so many times that everything could kind of change and if we get more interest income and these projects are going to take a few years in order to complete all of them it might not be as negative as I am planning at this point in time but I have to think I don't know of additional funds at this point so we we can't plan on those um but overall our Ed fund is in a healthy state where this is not going to get us enough close to that 18 um days and reserves that we required to
155keep yeah it won't affect the construction who we looking for just a thumbs up or do we I'm sorry what do you need from us a thumbs up or um well actually yes you just need to approve this in two weeks I think is our approval for this Val an action item y so tonight's just a presentation so you guys can think about it and then next time approve so our hope is each year school districts achieve this get this and they get off the list yes yes right that should help our chances yes because keep in mind each school district has to do an abatement and not everyone can afford that right and you definitely can't afford that that time after time and once they received additional funds from the state they're going to
156fall down lower on that less than we are because we're not receiving that so it's it's definitely a a moving Target and I'm I'm hopeful for this year but can't promise obviously this is our third time trying yes okay in the vision 2030 meeting that I attended we were talking about more funding through the evidence-based funding Mak sure that's sustainable but looking at the facilities around the state and the needs there we need more funding for facilities clearance simple yeah and we'll be meeting again in January and then in April and then we'll be getting everybody on board to do a whole lot more lobbying the last time we had resolutions and there's a big effort to get more funding so so that we don't have to rely on property taxes all our funding needs
157on that road many times but try it again you thank you moving on to action items accept a motion to approve the 2425 proposed budget in 2023 l ative ly that the board appr the 2425 proposed budget ask presented second any discussion Mr red yes Dr crawl yes Mr breaker yes Mrs Layman yes Mr Neely yes and Mr Roth yes next we will accept a motion to approve the teacher evaluation plan updates I move that the Board of Education approve the teacher evaluation plan updates second any discussion Mr Roth yes Mr Rudd yes Mr breaker yes Dr crawl yes Mrs Layman yes and Mr NE yes the third action item would be to a motion to accept to approve the extra duty position additions I that the Board of Education approved the extra duty position
158additions as presented a second any discussion I will discuss for all three thanks for putting in what we discussed two weeks ago because it helps remind me what we discussed so this one specifically um I want to make sure I said thanks for that because I I forget a lot of what's happening and in this it's in writing and it helps so that's my discussion perfect any further discussion Dr crawl yes Mrs Layman yes Mr Roth yes Mr yes Mr breaker yes and Mr neie yes accept a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented I move the Board of Education approve the consent agenda as presented I support that I'll just make one quick comment in the consent agenda there is a item to approve a $30,000 Anonymous donation to Jefferson School so I
159don't know who to thank but whoever you are thank you for your contribution to our schools so I that's pretty impressive and awesome so it is awesome thank you Mr neie yes Mr Roth yes Mr rud yes Mr breaker yes Dr crawl yes and Mrs Layman yes um our next meeting will be November 28th here at 7:00 and then we have a Grundy teacher meeting at 5:30 so with that I'll accept a motion to enter into close to discuss negotiations and Personnel all right Mr red yes Dr crawl yes Mrs Layman yes Mr Neely yes Mr Roth yes and Mr breaker yes that will take five minutes to tear down so thank you [Music] everyone