DeKalb CUSD 428 Board Meeting 5/19/2026

001The admin will call this meeting to order. Shauna, roll call. Bailey. Here. Nick Atwood. Here. Steve Byers. Here. Jose Cortez. Here. Christopher Boyce. Here. Arthur Bob. Here. Dante Bynum. Maria Bella Rodriguez. And now for the pledge. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right. Next portion will be public comment. Shauna, do we have any public comments? Having no public comments, we'll move on to board correspondence. Do we have any board correspondence? Sure, I got a couple things. Um, I wanted to ask the board and the district if the next time that we come around to the retirement for my last board meeting, I think we should try and kick it

002up a little bit. Maybe like cater some food or something cuz I feel like it just needed a little bit more to show a little bit more appreciation for our retirees. Um, so if that's something we could think about, guys. Maybe you know, get some El Heemador tacos in there or something. I don't know. Um so that that is something I want to ask. Um I did go to the honors night at DHS. It was really good. Shout out to the crew. They were swamped with like a million things going on, but they were handling it professionally. And um HMS has their eighth grade I forget what the term promotion set the term I'm looking for promotion tomorrow, and I will be there as well. That's all for me. Had a chance to attend the

003uh Beyond One Bar Transition Center graduation last week. It was a good turnout. Great to meet the staff over there, and our new graduates. So, great to see everybody. Thanks everybody who came out. I had a chance to go to DHS for the badminton state finals in the opening ceremony last Friday. I also got the tour of the high school from Dr. Larson, and it was incredible. It was the first time I really got to go through the entire facility, and like looking at like our career technical facilities, like it is you can do anything in that building. Like it is an incredible place, and like I'm really excited for our students to have that. Um I also want to shout out to Peter Gough and Mark Sykes. They gave me a tour of the

004athletic facilities, and just seeing all the work that goes into the opening ceremony, and and hosting that event, and it went very smoothly. Like it was a really great way to showcase the district and city at the same time. So, just want to make sure I gave them a shout out cuz I was blown away by how great it was. All right. Hearing nothing else, um we don't have any student board correspondence. So, we'll just move on to a quick recognition. Our mirrors department, you know, our business department for another year running has been given the certificate of excellence in financial reporting just because they do such a phenomenal job at making sure that we are a financially solvent and well-run district. So, I just want to thank Amir and his entire department for all

005the amazing work he's been doing. >> [applause] >> And then, moving into the consent agenda. before we go into it, um we do have an item on there Okay, I apologize. Okay, yes. So, one of the items on there, well, this is different thing that I'm talking about. Um, this is one of the rewards is listed as Burlington store partnering with the Adopt-A-Classroom. That was actually from last board meeting. What it actually is for this board meeting is the Kelly Williamson family and Exxon Mobil are supporting Malta Elementary School. So, we just as a board need to know that's what we're accepting, not the Burlington >> [clears throat] >> issue again. And then, first I will What we'll do, JJ, is Do we have We'll make the motion, get a second, and then you'll make

006the motion to Okay. So, at this point in time, it is recommended the Board of Education approve the consent agenda items 3B through 3L, board minutes from 5/5/26, personnel action items, personal or reclassification, financial reports, accounts payable for May, payroll for April, approval of the salary increase for unaffiliated staff, 2026-2027 employment contract, Cortland Elementary Assistant Principal employment contract, Dean at Huntley Middle School, acceptance of gifts and donations from the Kelly Williamson family and Exxon Mobil. Do I have a motion? So moved. Do I have a second? Chris, I'd like to make a motion to remove one item from the consent agenda. >> All right, and which item is that? >> That is the employment contract for the Dean at Huntley Middle School, please. All right, do we have a second on Mark's motion? Well, I

007can remove for a second. >> Oh, here, here, here. All right. And then, is there anything else we would like to remove from the consent agenda? >> Yes, I would like to remove item H, the approval of salary increases for un- unaffiliated staff. All right. In that case, now that we've had those two items removed at this point in time, do I have a new motion to approve the items on the consent agenda with the Dena Hanley Middle School and the staff raises for unaffiliated removed at this point. So moved. Second. All right. Shauna, roll call. Nick Atwood. Yes. Steve Byers. Yes. Jose Jurado. Yes. Christopher Boyce. Yes. Mark Shriver. Yes. Ben Conard, Ben Byrnes is not present. Kristen Bailey. Yes. All right. Now we'll move on to the two removed items. The first one

008will be the approval of salary increase for unaffiliated staff 2026-2027. First we'll have a motion and a second and then we will have discussion on the item. Do I have a motion? >> [snorts] >> So moved. Second. All right. Is there any discussion on the motion on the floor? Yes, I would actually like to um convert, I guess would be the term, that item into a standard agenda item to where we get information and then a vote. So the information would be on the second next meeting, give them time and opportunity opportunity to present something to us. And then us uh our opportunity to digest that information and then vote on it on the 16th. The only question I have and he's not here. Oh, I'm here. You're you're you're head right into the screen,

009I didn't see. Um if we vote to approve the raises on the 16th, is there going to be an issue making sure that the pay is right in July? So might be a question for Detra, but uh it's assuming [clears throat] it's regarding sending the contract. So annual increases are for the fiscal year um that of course starts July 1st for us, so there will be time. Um the if we do the two meetings, it will be the June 2nd meeting and then June 16th. Thank you. I couldn't remember the next one, June 16th. Uh that'll be a tight window, um but we'll do what we have to do. Okay. So, I guess So, I don't think that we would necessarily have a motion. I think what we would then at this point do is

010seek consensus to have that as an agenda item on the June 2nd board meeting. And information and postponement of the item till the next meeting. For first >> But we'd have to ask if you have any information that would be to you guys to what we we need to talk about what we're looking for. Right. So, I would even though I went through the process a few years ago of like the the this getting a written my raise approved, I didn't understand how it worked. So, I'd love to understand like what the raises are based on, what tools are used to figure out all the different raises. Is there anything that the board wants me to explain this evening? I did have a question cuz I looked back to what we did 2425 where the

011raises were based on CPI as it pertains to the budget and this year they were generally 5% or 6%. So, just some background on how we got to the figures that we got to with compared to how we did it years ago. Are we in order to do that at this point? If you are prepared to answer that, I guess I will jump in very quickly for admin just to say that it was actually the board before you guys came on that gave our administrative team kind of the directive when we switched from one-year contracts to multi-year contracts, we wanted to start to see that I guess I don't know if I want to say goals, what it would be, but essentially we wanted to see their evaluations and are they doing things kind of

012what we were looking for tied into races. And tied into performance. Yes. Performance is the word I was looking for. Where we kind of said the reason everyone kind of just got a flat raise the first year is we're like, well, we just rolled this out. We can't sandbag everyone in the district with a well, you didn't know this is what your raise was based on. And then this year, why you see a discrepancy between administrators is it was based on their evaluations. So, that's at least why you see some people here, some people Yeah. And I just want to clarify it's not just administrators, it's unaffiliated staff. >> Right. Yep. So, yes, there are um So, 6% we have a retirement track. Those that are have provided us a notice that they are retiring

013from the district up to 4 years um in that period of time they get a 6% increase, which is allowed by TRS and both IMRF without without a financial penalty. So, that is a has been the past practice. That is the practice when you're in the retirement track you get a 6% increase. Um the other increases you see, they're either 5%, they're 2.9% or you see may see no increase. Um the 5% because we are basing it on performance, the board made the recommendation that we look at uh what the outcomes of the evaluation are and then base it on that. So, for those that got a excellent or a um a high rating, they got a 5% increase. Anyone who got a proficient or meets uh meets expectations, they received a 2.9%, which is

014CPI. Anyone who did not meet the mark, they did not get an increase. We did not have individuals that did not meet the mark, so you won't see any of those zeros out there. Um we do have some in the other two categories. And to reiterate what Chris said, uh we actually annually we [clears throat] had contracts that came out every year or employment letters. Everybody got CPI and that's when it was recommended by the board that we should be looking at performance so that people are earning their increase. So, we came up with a proposal, brought that back to the board, and the board um accepted that that it would be based on the outcomes of the evaluation and then how those percentages fell. So, that's where the 5% came from um and then

015the two 2.9 which is CPI whatever that may be on any given year and then no increase for anyone who did not excel in their evaluations. I have a quick question about CPI. Um is that generally just Oh, no, I know what CPI is. I just is it standard that that's not tied to your performance at all? So, in the past, the past practice has been that the increase is CPI. So, we have a document called the unaffiliated benefit summary that we bring to the board annually um that gets approved and at that point it determines what the increase is. Standard, it has been CPI. So, CPI has just been been the base period for any and everyone. Does that answer your question? Yeah, I think so. Historically, like you're you're always getting a cost-of-living

016adjustment essentially. Correct. >> Yeah. Well, and it's not really cost of living. >> It's right cuz it's yeah. Yeah. So, the CPI that we use also in this case would have been 2.9, it's it has to do with what we use for the tax levy. So, so that's why it was always tied to it cuz it gave us an understanding of using whatever the growth we would have had at the tax levy for the next school years salaries. So, yeah, so even though like let's say right now the monthly [clears throat] CPI is 2.9, we really take into account what the state gives us for the tax levy CPI. And in previous years it's been that the increase will be CPI up to a maximum of 5%. So, even if CPI magically ended up being

0176.4, we would not exceed that 5%. This year it happens to be 2.9, so that's how we establish that scale of 5% for those that had the higher evaluations and then CPI what it actually is in a given year for those with proficient evaluations. So, there's no one getting like 4%. It's either 2.9 or 5. It's 0, 2.9, or 5. And we had no zeros. This year. This year. And who who is is the last board established the CPI or 5? Correct. It was in the conversations during this same time of year when we brought forward the increases. So, is there I'm trying to find in here, maybe I'm looking in the wrong place, where it says each what each employee's So, we have that data and happy to share that out. I believe the

018board does have it for the purpose of protecting our staff, we did not disclose that because this is a public document. So, we did not want individuals to be able to assess what the outcome of the evaluation was. No, I don't necessarily that. Okay. I guess you would by what percentage you get. I'm >> What percentage of the You look at last year's amount and this year's amount and then calculate the difference. It's a it's a matter of mathematics. Right. That it absolutely is. >> 5% or 2.9 cuz salaries are public. So, you can look at last year's salary and this year's salary. That is absolutely correct. But in trying to support our staff members, we we felt that was the best way to present it. But we're happy to provide whatever we need to.

019The board has been provided the details. If you didn't get it, just let us know. We we can reshare that information. Okay. I also think it's just important to throw out there right now because we have a very large group of unaffiliated staff looking [laughter] at this right now. Nobody at this table is planning to say you're not getting a raise. We have a board that has four new members. They just haven't gone through an unaffiliated staff raise yet. They're just seeking to understand the process a little more before we approve stuff. So, just want you all to know and have your minds at ease with that. Thank you. >> [laughter] >> We from the the human resource aspect thank you for stating that. Just trying to understand. Thank you. So, I guess it's I

020think if we got that that information that you were just saying, if you could resend it cuz I Sure. I lost it. That's just You know, the dog ate my homework. I don't know, but I can't find it. We have detention for that. Don't worry about it. >> [laughter] >> Um then if we could get consensus to move it to second >> [clears throat] >> a second, that'd be great. All right, then. So, I just want to clarify. The next board meeting for action or for information? Or do you consider this as as information? So, I guess here's my question for all of you. If they get us the information this week and we can kind of digest that information, do you guys feel comfortable coming back to the June 2nd board meeting info action

021for that item so that we can move on it quicker and they're not spending half their summer worrying about what we're doing >> [cough] >> with their [clears throat] salaries. I'm I'm okay with that as long as we get the information. So. >> Yeah, I'm good with that. >> Is that doable for you guys? That You got two more weeks then, so We will make it work. All right then. So, at this point sounds like we have consensus from the board for that? Yeah. Yes. All right then, having that consensus I think we still there's still a motion, so we have to No, there wasn't a motion on this one yet. >> No, you you did you did move and we did second and now Okay, then Shana, we do have to do a roll

022call just to I guess kill it and then it'll come [laughter] back next meeting. So, Shana, roll call. Postponement is the But the motion is Motion to postpone until So, we could we could do a motion to So, I guess now yes, you do a motion to postpone, someone second it and then we'll all vote yes on it. I move to table this agenda item until next meeting June 2nd. Or action you motion to postpone it to the next meeting. Yes. All right. Shana, roll call. Steve Byers Yes. Jay Jordan Yes. Christopher Boyce Yes. Mark Sherwood Yes. Anthony Bryant Kirsten Bailey Yes. Nick Atwood [snorts] Yes. All right. Now on to the next one, which is the Dinwiddie Huntley Middle School. Do we have a motion? So moved. Second. Do we have discussion? Basically, I'm

023just going to abstain on this is the only reason why I pulled this because this was part of the many contracts that or the the new hires that the board approved that I wasn't necessarily in favor of. The employee the employee itself I'm okay with. I'm just saying since I did vote no on that, I feel I should abstain on this, so All right, hearing from no one else Shana, roll call. Jose Diaz Yes. Christopher Boyce Yes. Mark Sherwood Abstain. Anthony Bryant Kirsten Bailey Yes. Nick Atwood Yes. Steve Byers Yes. Already then, on to presentations. And while I love hearing from everyone in the district about how things are going, we also want to be home and in bed maybe before 9:00 tonight. So [laughter] >> [snorts] >> Right. Home and in bed, right, right.

024That's the expectations. >> [cough] >> All right. So, first one will be from Armida and that's the presentation of fiscal year 2026-2027 with the tentative budget. All right. Thank you. This is uh the time of the year that we start to talk about budgets. It's pretty heavy uh in terms of budget season. So We started as early as December with the tax levy adoption [clears throat] and then we moved into the budget calendar in January. Uh then in March we also had uh we went back to adopt the tax levy adjustments. Uh so we've been busy. We've been talking to our school business leaders to our uh building leaders, to our department leaders. We've been talking about the budget, what they what they have planned for next year and what they're looking for. So, we're

025going to go through a little bit on the timeline. We're very early in the process. There is a lot of numbers out there. It will be difficult to um call this a final number because uh from to from today all the way to the September 15th that we're expecting to actually adopt the final budget, things might change. So, this is our timeline. So, we're providing a very high level what looks like the budget as of right now. Uh this is what in general what we're thinking we're looking and but we're going to work on the final numbers. We have some work to do. And there's a lot of moving pieces, not just at the local level but also the state and federal level. So, uh normally we would come in August 4th, we bring in

026your the tentative budget that it will be ready for public inspection. We give about 30 days, uh and then we actually come in uh on September 15th or the second board meeting in September. We have the budget, we have a public hearing, and then we put a adoption vote. Uh at that point, the budget is adopted, we send it to the state, uh we send it to the ROE, the county, and it is formalized. So, understand that budgets are planning, so it is just a road map for us. It will allow us to uh kind of stay within the limits, but at this time there's a few pieces that we want to kind of talk about. So, where do our revenues come from? So, I have here um our uh a a small kind of

027chart showing what the local uh local sources, property taxes, and others. Uh so, that's made the local property tax is about 51%, and then we also have the state. On the second uh part of the chart, I kind of broke it down a little bit, so it gives a kind of an idea. It just a few years ago we were we were seeing that uh the piece of pie chart for the local property tax to kind of shrink, right? But now, we're kind of seeing that grow back. Uh we're 51%, and that's because [clears throat] the state is not uh chipping in as we thought. They're doing a lot of proration, and in there I kind of showed uh something that we call the MCATs or the mandated categoricals. So, I I I took apart

028that uh piece of pie there so that you guys can take a look. Every year that number is going to keep uh kind of getting smaller because we're seeing the state trying to prorate that down or to kind of eliminate what uh those mandated categorical are. I'm going to talk a little bit more detail in a in a further slide there, but understand that that number is kind of shrinking, which is forcing the local property taxes or the local sources to kind of chip in and make that uh kind of jump into uh fill in the reimbursements. So, the local sources Um Well, you're if you're going to redefine it, I'll wait. Yes, I will do it. Yeah, there's a a kind of a slide down to kind of talk a little bit more [clears

029throat] about it. But, yes, so local sources, we're looking at about 89.4 million. That includes our property taxes, uh corporate uh personal property tax, student fees and donations. They're kind of a smaller uh portion of it and really uh because our low-income uh our free and reduced status students actually have waived student fees, that number of uh portion of sources coming from the student fees is kind of on the smaller side. But, uh then there are the state sources. We always talk about EBF. That is the biggest, the largest uh portion of it. Um it is about 57 million out of 63 that we get from the state. But, anything uh past that 57 million is actually something that we call mandated categorical. So, we're going to talk a little bit about it. In the

030federal sources, everyone thinks when they think about federal uh sources, they automatically think of title grants. So, I kind of had a a way of showing that yes, title grants are big. They're important. We do use a lot for activities for it, but that's about 2%. The other federal sources of revenue are actually our food, our national school lunch program, uh and other grants such as IDEA, Medicaid, and so forth. So, So, can see in total uh 6% that we get out of the federal, only 2% here are title grants. There's the question. Um Are we still getting extra money? Uh we are not. Uh it is No, we're not getting grants. No, I know it This might be a little bit uh on the older side. Okay. So, I don't know if this is

031working on the next slide. Do you want to mirror? Broken. One [clears throat and snorts] job. All right, cool. So, with the revenue considerations, uh like we mentioned, under the local sources, we have the local property taxes. So, from last year, that went up about 6.5%. Uh and CPPRT, that's the corporate personal property tax replacement. That's uh is the state collecting money uh for uh the for corporations, businesses in the area, uh and then flowing that back to the district. Uh this is expected to increase about 2.7 2.2 2% from last year. We always look at that. You'll see school districts talk about it because that shows economic activity that will happen in the uh in the area. So, if the state considers a 2% increase, uh that's usually a good indication for us. So,

032we're always going to show that. Uh it is about 1.9 million, so it's not like the largest chunk for local funds. However, uh it is very indicative. It's kind of important. Quick question about the local property taxes, 6.7%. Um is this based on We don't know what the collections are for this year because people are currently paying their taxes, but I know pretty much everybody's tax bills, at least in DeKalb, went up about 10% or so. So, I'm trying to figure out how we came up with 6.7% when everybody's paying about 10% more. So, I think that 10% has to do with the tax bill that the uh property owners get. The 6.7 is our um uh our property revenue local property taxes revenue. So, uh if you take away the um what we had

033last time, 62 million, and this year we're going to get 67. Uh when you take the difference, it'll be 6.7%. I can give you the calculations. Yeah, I I I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I Sure. Sure. Uh we do receive about 99% of that uh collection uh because um DeKalb uh property owners pay it on time or they pay through escrow. So, collection-wise, we actually get what we uh asked back in March. Uh so, investment rates um that is a big part uh we do go through investments for our reserves. Uh so, that is uh something that we always look into. Last year was about 4%.

034[clears throat] It's been going down uh 3.5, and then just this Friday uh investors started to get a little bit worried. They're risking they feel like the economy is not uh shaking up as they were thinking, so it's becoming a little bit more risky. So, they started asking for higher yields. So, just last Friday that number went up to 3.65 to 3.7. So, but in my projections, they're still at 3.5 back when we were doing the budgets. When it comes to state funds, that's something um Springfield has not finalized their budget, so then we're very early still May. Uh we try to adopt our budget as close to the real numbers that are coming in. So, uh we right now it's early. Springfield will adopt their budget by the end of May. However, we're seeing

035kind of the districts and ISBE pushing different kind of funding than what the state is showing. So, right now ISBE is asking for about 350 million EBF and include a property tax relief grant while the state is only showing about 307 uh with no property tax relief grant. So, again, there's a little bit of uh differences on what funding they require. Uh there's also something that is coming to our lens is the mandated categoricals. Again, I will have another slide for it, uh but uh something we can uh we're that we're going to see from uh the message that we're getting from Springfield end of May. So, uh EBF tier funding, that information comes in August as well. So, but we know we have been in tier three last year. We don't know if we're

036going to move down to a tier two or we're actually going to go deeper into tier three, but again, in our estimation, uh we are expecting either very, very small increase or none at all. Transportation funding, this is part of the mandated categoricals. We already know that must there may be a prorated down, which means a loss of revenue for us. For federal funds, we do have some information on title grants. They are lower than last year, but we still don't know about Medicaid uh because it's something that the federal government has been talking about cutting, and uh we are also monitoring the National School Lunch Program, which was uh which was in discussion last year of having some uh cuts on it as well. And we're also monitoring any other federal grants out there.

037Again, with their with the federal calendar, uh their their fiscal year starts in October. So, that's why we get those numbers very late, too. So, I would expect everything uh when it comes to the federal government, the grants, uh we will finalize those numbers uh by August. Do you know when the state assigns our tier level? When when we can expect that? >> is in August as well. >> August. Okay. Yeah. But, once we know what the Springfield will finalize with their budget, it will kind of give us some idea uh if we're getting uh like a prorated down or if we're getting a little bit more. But, what the district will be assigned the money will come in August. Uh so, EBF, so >> [cough] >> evidence-based funding formula, that is uh the core

038funding from the state. Uh just back in before 2017, uh business uh business managers would wake up and there was a prorated down on their core money from the state. The formula before that, it was based on the head count of students, but not necessarily uh what that student was doing and what services was required. So, uh the new formula put a lot into perspective, put a lot of points uh to kind of look into uh local capacities uh and also uh the services that are being provided. Uh so, once they changed that formula, DeKalb actually was a kind of a uh took a lot of it was very advantageous for them cuz you can see back in 2017, we're looking about 22 million. And as we go down the years, we went up to

03957 million. So, uh the tier three number that we had that we were last year. You can see that we moved up very quick from tier one to tier two to tier three. And what that shows indicates um where the state considers the district. So, the the higher the the tier is, uh the higher level of adequacy. So, last year we looked at uh we were assigned a tier three with 93%. But, this uh the state really looked at us as with a very high uh financial adequacy, which means that the local capacity from the district was getting higher. And uh if if you want to compare it with another district out here, for example, St. Charles is at is at 108%. We're looking at 93 and maybe even higher this year. So, that shows

040that uh in the formula, the state is looking at us saying that we have the local capacity target. Uh our EAV is growing. The the the we are low in priority for them. So, that is uh kind of a concern for us because as our EAV grows, we're also kind of kind of abating that back or underfunding or under-levying. So, uh something to consider uh our EBF shows uh that our local capacity capacity is growing. Our target our um our adequacy financial deficit is growing, but we're kind of not seeing that because we really I don't think we are that close to a St. Charles district, right? So, so we're going to look at this tomorrow. >> Just real quick. By [clears throat] by moving tiers the number up, which is the funding down, Correct.

041it's kind of a a blessing and a curse at the same time. Because it's saying that our community is is solvent and it and and it's thriving and and all that fun stuff that is a good thing to say about our community. But by that means that the rest of the state is not helping as much as they used to when we were not thriving. Right. So yeah, so they we are not the priority funding for them, which means that we could lose opportunities in priority in funding from the state, but also a lot of things we don't we we don't think about it, but all right now the state is at let's say $2.2 billion deficit, right? So and they're looking spaces to cut. Education is only 10% of the budget, however, it's something

042they look into. But when they start cutting, they the ones that they are going to look at cut will be the tiers that are higher or that are lower priorities. So and us being tier three or maybe tier four this year, we will probably be the first on the chopping block before they go into those underfunded schools, which are normally under tier one and tier two. And and this I think this chart is very good. It kind of gives you kind of like a pot of money when all the that the that the state has where the tier one will get 50% of that money and every district in there is able to you know collect from it, right? And then you have the other bucket of 49 and here we are at tier three

043where only about 0.9% of that funding that we can grab from. And that might make sense because if you look between the years, oops. Is it zoomed? It's zoomed. >> [laughter] >> I know what I did, it's zoomed, but so So back here, if you take a look back in tier two, we're getting about 578,000. You can see that those the arrows, that's when our numbers start kind of going down. So, we were tier two, we were making about 500. We got back a little bit lower by 294. And then once we hit tier three, we were like 137,000. And this year, we might be a lot lower than that. So, again, that indicates the priority that we are under. So, I guess just two things that I want to clarify before I understand with

044evidence-based funding, the formula doesn't necessarily work, I guess, and correct me if I'm wrong. But if I'm right, the formula is just we still have a base bucket of money the state gives us. The EBF is just we're only giving you X amount more than that bucket every year going forward, correct? Like we still have a very big bucket of money they're giving us. They're just saying, "Hey, new money is going to be allocated towards these other districts." So, it's not necessarily that we've just so I'm clear, lost money. We're just not getting as much more as we would have if we were at tier two or one, correct? Yes. Yes. And however, we are on the lower priority. And I think that's also something to consider. And this will be connected to the next

045part of funding with the state, which is the state man- mandated categoricals. So, just Just like the title says, mandated categoricals are state-mandated activities, but that are not funded, or at least are getting reimbursed from the state. But what we're seeing is the state is prorating that down. They're asking us to run these programs, but they are not reimbursing us fully. So, uh you're going to see school districts kind of fighting this because we've seen a massive losses or loss of reimbursements. And I kind of gave a kind of a good chart here that shows our special ed transportation. We were getting reimbursed about 81% and every year they looked at this. They didn't touch EBF money, right? Cuz kind of what Chris said, like you have you have a base every year. But they

046went to these mandated categoricals. These are mandated uh state legislation that is asking the districts to do and they're not funding it or at least they're not reimbursing as they used to. So, we're seeing special ed transportation growing from 81% in '24 we're expecting 60% in '27. It becomes an exponential issue because uh as we lose reimbursements our cost is growing with our contracts as well. So, every year that that deficit keeps growing and then we have to dip into our local taxes. So, that becomes an issue. I have a quick question. I don't know I don't think that you covered this earlier. What metrics uh is the state using to determine our tier? Like which tier we fall into and our solvency and etc. Sure. So, uh there is many points uh that uh

047that they use uh in their formula. So, the formula is actually very kind of detailed and and that's what worked great with this uh new funding formula because it was taking into account uh from enrollment, from uh staff to pupil ratios, uh to uh local capacity targets, and also equalization between other uh districts. So, so the the formula is a little kind of complex. Uh they do have kind of these many tabs charts with many tabs that they go through, but it's that complex formula that actually I think it gave a very good adequacy level back uh uh back when for example our we were taking advantage of our local capacity targets, but right now um uh we're we're getting into a higher tiers, but we're really not seeing that because we're not taking what

048the local maximum capacity is. So, the formula is a little complex. Uh it is it used to be very simple. It used to be head count, you get 2,000 dollars per student head count, but that wasn't solving the issue because our mayor for example had many services that he needed from, you know, EL, low income to special ed while the state was only giving them just a head count for that student. So, so we were we keep we kept going we keep providing a lot of services with very little money coming in from the state. So, that formula worked out really well. Uh however, the state is looking at changing that because they're seeing some district that just cannot get up on their feet for example where they're tier one since 2017 and still at

04960% for example adequacy. So, they're looking to kind of tweak that formula a little bit, but that's more of the Springfield side, not the ISBE side. So, Are they are they looking at the the town and county as what like for that for adequacy? It's not just the school district, right? Yeah, there there is equalization factor, right? So, if for example uh DeKalb is >> [cough] >> unusual from [snorts] the area, then there is an equalization factor that they have, but for the most part they do look at our EAV numbers and our rate setting EAVs. Uh so, they can see how much we really can have capacity to collect. That makes sense. So, Okay. The just to understand the chart you put up there, that one. Um tier one is 50% tier two is

05049%. So, you get the 99 and then three and four fill the 1% after. But, the the asterisk says includes tier one and tier two districts. So, that mean that of the 99% tier one gets 50% and then if you're on tier one, you still get a part of the other night 49% as well? And I'm getting a big head shake there. So, if you're tier one, you're getting a lot of money. Coming back. Okay. And we were tier one at one time. Yeah. Looking at those numbers on the other slide. For sure, my first year was Yeah. We were getting Yeah. So, from 2018 to Yeah. Yeah. I'm full of millions. Thank you. Thank you. Uh so, let's talk about expenses. So, where the funds are expended? As as we know, salaries and benefits

051are going to be the highest, but mixing the purchase services, the supplies and materials and the capital outlay. We also have the new ELDC construction. So, right now we're in the architect and design stage. So, we're still kind of incurring some very small amounts, but the kind of we're going to be seeing construction bills coming in next year, but the biggest bulk coming in in the following year. So, I have it written what is estimated for us. We're looking about 7.4 million where we are going to be start that that kind of uh the initial construction stage of the ELDC building. That is mixing with the numbers there that you see. But, we're looking at about 165 million of expenses. And so, what is that composed of? Our salary increases, we talked about the teachers

052mentioned our non-affiliated contracts are they are performance based, so they go from no increase to about 5%. Our contracts, we're looking about 5% for teachers. 2.9% the the FSA and the FSS and our office professionals at 4%. We have looked at benefits. We talked to our um uh uh to our uh providers of with the benefits and there is a lag in time, right? So, whenever they whenever there's claims out, it takes a little bit longer for uh the insurance to kind of kick in and pay off. So, right now with the numbers that we're looking at, it's still early. We're going to get those numbers finalized in August, but we're but a educated guess was a 9% increase for that as well. So, not the crazy amount we looked last time. We were we

053were 38% increase, but thankfully, we're kind of settling down to a more uh normal kind of year. But, so again, crossing our fingers cuz we still don't know what the new claims will happen between March and uh uh uh June, and then we'll get those numbers actually finalized in August. Uh our transportation contract is up by 4% this year. Food service is 4.1%. Crossing guard is kind of a smaller, but we're looking at 2% increase on that one. As you can see, all of our contracts, almost [clears throat] uh none of them actually uh are close to the the the P-Tel CPI. Again, these are the tax levy CPI, the December 25 number uh of 2.7% so we're all our contracts and our cost of doing business is still increasing. This is kind of a

054kind of kind of the view of where our numbers are. So we are at a deficit but that has nothing to do with a structural deficit which would cause a little bit more different way of tackling our budget. This is only a temporary is very intentional. It is kind of a little bit regulated and and very watched that. So we're looking about 2.5 million and that's almost exclusively has to do with our ELDC construction. All right, so what are some budget considerations? I guess I just want to make sure that's repeated for all of the public watching. We are in a deficit because we as a board and district have intentionally chosen to construct an ELDC and it is not because we are running any rampant insolvency. It is purely because we are spending a

055lot of money on a building and we've intentionally chosen to take from reserve funds on that. Correct? Correct. Thank you. Yes. Yes. >> [laughter] >> It's an important point. >> And that is a We cannot stress that enough. It's not a structural deficit. Uh so what are considerations for our budget? So we will have adjustments until August when and I will be bringing that forward but what is our considerations for our budget? Inflation keeps growing. We have to we're looking more into it. We'll see how that affects what our contracts, our supplies, and we are everything that we do for our activities. Uh there's another concern. The federal assistant eligibility could use could reduce the number of students classified for free and reduced lunch status. So that may affect district allocation for EBF, for title

056grants, and for every other. But again, this has not happened yet, but we're kind of seeing that um Springfield is has their budget in in end of May. So, we're going to look into it. We're seeing some movement, some support for early childhood education, and educator pipeline programs like the teacher vacancy. However, because of the deficit, we're still monitoring how that will really pan out. Um transportation again, and special education expenditures are probably the most financially stressed categories categories because of the proration of reimbursements. Uh for our district purposes, financing of the new LDC, we talked about that uh in the next 3 years we're going to be spending um out of our uh for cash financing. Um and um there's uncertainties both on state and federal. There is any other questions? Uh the rest

057are simply something that is being talked about, but is nothing has been uh concrete uh at least being formalized. So, I guess just the only thing that I just want to make sure that we're all very cognizant of as we move into more of the budget process. I know we've kind of highlighted, "Hey, we're potentially losing some federal or state financing." And I do understand that the way we have been abating and levying does have long-term impacts. But one thing I do want everyone to also be reminded of, in 2020, our budget was $100 million. We are looking at a budget this year of $165 million. So, while I know there are a lot of things our students need, I also want us to be cognizant of just for easy math, let's just say all

058of our families in D Cal were making $100,000 a year, which they're not. If they got raises that amounted to them going from $100,000 to $165,000 a year, and they still came to us just as individuals and said, "I still can't afford my bills." We would look at them like they were crazy, just to be honest. We would. So, I want to make sure that we as a district are also being cognizant of people are hurting right now. We also want to make sure that we want to do amazing things for our students, but we also need to make sure we're keeping in mind we can't cry broke when we've increased our budget by $65 million in 6 years. So, I just want to make sure we're being cognizant of that. Any other questions? Can

059I just Yes. remind us that we were coming off of back from COVID, so things were very different in 2020, and then coming back in with all of the new nuances of what COVID brought to us. So, that could also I just want to make sure that that factors in as well. Not that I need to remind everybody, but again, everybody's still talking about their property taxes they got, and the district was as is case with every district around the state responsible for 60% of your average property tax. So, people took kind of a hit this year. So, when we're looking ahead, and I said at the last meeting, I I'd really like to see some savings. I know there's needs, but maybe some things we can get rid of at the same time. So,

060let's be conscious of that as well. All right. Anyone have any other questions or comments? I do want to just for the district's perspective, you know, I agree we need to be cautious. You know, I'm curious, are we are we putting anything back into the fund budgeting for that? You know, since we're taking so much out of the next few years, are we putting any money back in to try to regrow that, or is this budget not include anything like that? So, um >> [clears throat] >> So, the construction uh was about 7.4 million, and the deficit is at 2.5. So, we have been conscious about our budgets. Every department leader has gone through it. We've been kind of going two or three really looking uh you know, even with the inflationary pressure. They have

061looked at anything that they can defer so that the cushion is not as hard as let's say the 7.4 million, and really it's looking at 2.5 right now. So, um so, there will be nothing going into the fund probably in the next 3 years. Uh however, uh we again, we're being cognizant of it. Uh we understand it. Everyone uh knows the situation of the district, uh and uh you know, they're trying to to live as much in their means as they can. And just as far as like the the tax rate, you know, I I recognize we eat up a large portion of the tax bill, but you know, the home values have gone up. Like our rates have gone down or or stayed flat for many years now, and it's it's not it's not

062an easy consideration for people like, "Well, I'm not liquid just because my cat my house is worth more." But I mean like, you know, my house since we bought it 6 years ago is worth like $140,000 more than I paid for it, and I'm paying a few hundred dollars more, $400 more in taxes a year. Like, it's not a lot of consolation, but it's not like, you know, we're just trying to seek every bit of everyone's equity, you know? So, there's there's there's more to it than just the amount we're getting, you know? People are wealthier quote unquote than they were a few years ago even though we're getting a little bit more in taxes, you know, just for whatever that's worth. >> On paper though, you can't turn the spigot on and >> That's

063what I said, they're not it's not regulated, but it's still wealth that's been generated in part because of all the good growth that we've had in this community. All right, time for >> [clears throat] >> strategic plan. Thank you, Arumire. I know everyone is going to have the greatest CliffNotes version of this one for me, right? >> [snorts] >> Good evening, everyone. Um you have the strategic plan, so I'm not going to read it. It's 51 pages. I would not be able to read it to you anyway. Um I just wanted to uh let you and our community know that we are we do have a new strategic plan, which is our comprehensive road map uh to advancing our district priorities so that we can make sure we are increasing student outcomes. I just wanted

064to explain to you a couple portions of the strategic plan um for the sake of our community as well. We do have still have the four strategic priorities, which have corresponding levers. Each of the priorities pretty much uh to say it in layman's terms, it tells us what we need to focus on. It tells us how we need what we need to do to achieve our vision. And then the levers, which are um under each strategic uh priority, is basically telling everyone what actions the district will take to get where we said we want to go. And then under each lever, there are multiple strategies, and um I would say that we are most proud, the strategic planning committee, of those uh priorities. I mean, I'm sorry, those strategies, because they really help us to

065have measurable outcomes. If you um I I mean, not pattern I I I still say DeKalb is the best school district in the entire universe. If you compared our strategic plan to a lot of other strategic plans, it is a lot of theory, a lot of hyperbole. Um, this is real time. Anybody can pick this document up and a teacher in third grade or a uh instructional assistant that's helping in our school program or an administrator of the building can pick the strategic plan up and see how their role actually um ties into advancing this district. This plan became um it was refined as a result of many many meetings, four writing um retreats, and then um several meetings with the strategic plan committee, which we ended up with 19 goals in two different areas.

066The two areas are the academic achievement and engagement and climate. That's it. See? Wasn't that quick? Wow. All right, now we're going to jump right into any questions about this? So, I'm looking through the climate goals. >> Mhm. And I'm trying to find anything on um safety and security for the sense of safe security amongst the students and the staff. I believe that that's going to be tied into the five essentials. Um You're talking about the actual I'm sorry, some of the actual goals. So, we don't have a very specific goal because we would have would have had 57 goals instead of 19. Um, but it is inferred when you get into um the climate um Mhm. um the five essential goals. And I'm trying to remember what they are like right now. Uh it

067would be goals 14, 15, and 16. So, pretty much, you know, if if uh staff families feel that we have involvement, and then um collaborative teachers and then the supportive environment. Goal 16 would be part of that. There are some specific If you keep If you read down into some of the strategies and drill those down, we have um more conversations about that. Do you have an idea for the graduation rate if we account for students that dropped out or left for technical schools and things like that what a more accurate percentage would be? >> So, the uh that is the most accurate because it does take into those different data points where if you just stopped showing up to school or if you let us know, um I'm a teen mom and I'm going

068to take another route to get a high school equivalency. Yep. So, not to hammer down this point yet again, but as a person who works at a different school district, have community have friends in different communities around northern Illinois, all these goals are great, Mhm. but they don't look and go, "Oh yeah, the climate at the DeKalb High School or the middle schools or the DeKalb School District is great because of the five essential surveys." They say "It's not safe to send my kid to school there." Mhm. Right? That there's gangs roaming around throughout the school. Mhm. Right? That the teachers are of are getting threatened on a daily basis. All those rumors are roaming around there. And none of these goals >> Right. Yeah, they're rumors, but none of these goals say, "Yes, we

069acknowledge there's an issue with that specifically. That the image specifically we're going to try to change that." And that change the image, but say that yes, our eyes are on that and we know it. It's in there. I don't I I have no question that it's in there, but you have to dive in pretty deep and nobody who's reading what she's writing is going to dive in that deep. >> Right. Because you write goals based on your needs assessment. So, if they if the rumor is not a need, the rumor is just that a rumor. And so, there is a one of our marketing and engagement goals and strategies is specifically about what people the story that they tell about DeKalb High School, about DeKalb School District as a whole. That is more of the

070issue, but to write a goal for a problem that does not exist would be would would not be appropriate. But I hear you. I hear what you're saying. We just wouldn't write a goal. That's not the way that you write a goal for strategic plan. Strategic plan is specifically addressing needs that you know are present, and then you write your goals because you're saying I want to get here. What we would be writing a goal in that case would be saying, we know it's not like we don't have rogues of gangs running around any of our schools, so we wouldn't write a goal about it. But, definitely there are strategies in here to which Rita's department of communications department and multiple others are recognizing that we must do things to change the narrative. Yes, so

071that's Yep. That would be a goal that I could see that maybe you know, I mean cuz realistically, that affects everything. You know, and to be brutally honest, I mean, NIU does it. They change they literally change their crime stats to affect the way that the community of NIU looks. Mhm. Now, I am so against that. We're not changing any statistics to do that. But to actually have a goal to say that we are going to attack the image of the of the district cuz our image the district image is something that will drive people in or out of our community. Yeah. And there are multiple strategies. It didn't need to It didn't need to be a the collective group, not a monocle net. >> [laughter] >> I'm smart, but I'm not that intelligent. The

072collective group of the four different writing sessions, which were all day events over the course of the entire school year, decided what was appropriate to be a strategy and what was approached to be a goal. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. Anything you want to add? You good? Yes or no. I don't Yes or no. Okay, she's got something to say. You know, she's a communicative person. Just quickly on the CliffNotes side, I mean yes, reputation reputation management, making sure that we are as a unit understanding where our strengths are and that we're promoting those strengths. That's very much a part of this plan to the point where y'all might want to give me another position at some point. >> [laughter] >> Good plug. Great plug. All right, so we're going to jump into the updates. So,

073I'll do I'll do the update for facilities and safety operations first. Um she was not able to make it. So, progress was made on the preliminary plans for the new ELDC building. And plans are now underway to upgrade the work order management system. And then the new director of our facilities and operations was hired and the transition process has begun. So, those are three highlights for that department. The area The primary area of focus for next school year would be to stay on track for the building of the new ELDC with the construction schedule, as well as to really use an asset essential system to ensure that when work orders are completed, that they're completed in a timely order and that we are doing a good job of maintaining records that that was already fixed.

074So, you know, I'm not fixing the same thing 11 11 times. I maybe I need to buy a new one instead of fixing it 11 times. You understand that, Art? Okay. And And also have the update for Peter Golf. Um we have a lot of new uh uh activities. Um one of the goals for that department was to increase activities down to the fifth grade level, fifth and sixth grade level. And in some of our elementary schools, we have activities from the third grade level when up, which was an increase from last um time, last year. And then their uh other highlight was just of course because of the I would say world-renowned facilities at DeKalb High School, more people are reaching out um having different tournaments like the badminton tournament that you attended. And

075um that is allowing us to um get some uh some increase in like concessions and things of that nature. So, those are the two things he uh wanted this year. Any questions about those two? Just to speak on that briefly, I think it's great that we're putting more investment in the elementary schools and trying to get more like afterschool activities and clubs for them and sports cuz you know, there's a lot of great things about DeKalb, but there's not a lot for young kids to do. And so, if we can provide that structured opportunity, you know, I'm fully supporting of that. And you know, if we can get more folks involved with mentoring those kids and and sponsoring their activities, like I think that's great. So, I appreciate hearing that. Okay. The The Improvement and

076Innovation Department um the strategic uh plan was a big thing that uh we helped to facilitate this year. It is more coherent. And um from the people who tend to look at the strategic plan, which are the leaders cuz they have to sign their school improvement plans to it. Um we are setting in systems of not just aligning systems, but providing that true accountability. Some of the questions that we had in previous school board members had in the past was how do we know that people are doing what they said they're going to do, and how do we hold them accountable? This is a road map to do so. Um one of the other things is that the majority of professional learning communities for this year had at least three professional um professional practice cycles.

077And what that really means is that they um used um inquiry-based ways of looking at some issues that they had. They met and then they also reported out again that accountability piece has increased for professional learning communities. So, it's not just you know, myself and you know, Minerva sitting in the room, you know, eating bonbons. That never happened, people. But, you know, now there's more of accountability to make sure that that cycle happens and that people are reporting out on what they're doing in their PLCs. For next year, we're going to lead a comprehensive district-wide because it is time. You should do one every 10 years and the last time we did a needs assessment, it was in 2017 and we paid somebody a lot of money. I'm not going to say how much we

078paid them, but we paid them a lot of money to do something that there are people within this district to do. So, we're That's going to be a big project. It's going to be large scale. It will require town hall meetings, community conversations, surveys and things of that nature and our students, families, staff will will bring in their perspectives. Do you know when that's going to start or like when does >> Next school year. Like for through the whole school year? Like how long does that run? >> it's a year It's a year-long process, minimum. >> Thanks. Yeah. I can go. Sure. Yeah. Juan. All right. So, for a spring update, we have many district AI integrations increased across the district. I'm very much different platforms from our district data dashboard to Google inviting us

079to an AI pilot and many of our security platforms have also integrated AI into those platforms as well for real-time detection response. The technology department worked with all departments to to ways to streamline and processes, leveraging more of the interoperability between Skyward, uh cumulative and desperate systems. Um and also two members from the team uh got primary certification in Cisco networking. Um so we also had some good momentum with human capital recruitment, development, and retention. And areas of focus for next year, uh we have really strong momentum in regards to our AI integrations, especially with the pilot team. So working towards more targeted professional development for all the staff in regards to AI as it relates to the classroom. Um as well as working within the network security team and exploring more AI-based uh mitigations

080that we can integrate uh to help support and secure the district. And then uh adding more systems that have hooks into cumulative again to increase that uh interoperability and automation between our centralized services and outside systems. So. Thank you. >> Ben, Ben. Sure. Have you worked with um curriculum to >> [clears throat] >> kind of educate our educators on ways to avoid the improper use of AI in the classroom? Yeah, so um I've worked specifically with Billy and Sarah on some of this stuff, but we do have the AI guidance that's been pushed out and shared with all district staff. Uh we also do this through PLCs and such two days, uh relying on structural coaches as well as again members who have been part of the AI team uh when the district started sort

081of our our progress with this, and then we're going to be relying on members of the AI Google group as well, uh who are going through that professional development right now to continue those conversations. So. Okay. Thank you. Anything else? Good evening. I'm Amy Crooke. I'm the Multilingual Programs Coordinator for preschool through 12th grade. I'm Jill Springer. I am the Elementary Humanities Manager. Introduce yourself. Amy Broadcorp, Secondary STEAM Manager. I'm going to speak first. Um It has taken us 3 years and we have worked diligently to uh change our elementary literacy core curriculum from what was considered a balanced literacy curriculum to what you may have heard of as a science of reading curriculum. It's an evidence-based curriculum. Um I want to stress that this is not anything unique to DeKalb. This is something that's

082being called for nationally and just about every school in the country is doing this. Um what I really want to emphasize is that these shifts have been significant and our teachers are being asked to teach in ways that they never taught in before. Um and so we're really sitting in a time where we really need to continue to support them with resources [snorts] and with professional development. Um do you want to talk more about the specific shifts? Sure. So Oops. Um I will speak to the interdisciplinary units of instruction that we started creating a few years ago starting with third grade. This year we've rolled up to fifth grade and we're utilizing data to target which grade level we need uh to focus on next. So looking at our data we'll be transitioning to we'll

083be finishing up fifth grade next year and transitioning to second grade to beef up that instruction with these foundational skills. The other highlight I have for you is that dual language is rolling up to sixth grade next year. So we have been working on sixth grade curriculum for the past year. We started working on seventh grade curriculum. We need to be about a year and a half in advance as we're writing our curriculum so that we're ready to go in the fall. And then in the STEAM world, um so we have third through fifth grade all third through fifth grade classrooms are doing PLTW this year. Sarah Shaffer and I um trained all the teachers, so we've got that going. That's Project Lead the Way. We have our sixth grade teachers got trained this year

084and will be teaching a module of PLTW at sixth grade at both middle schools next year, so we're really excited about that. And then next year we will also be training all our second grade teachers. So now we're going down to the second grade so that they will be trained and they can implement a module of PLTW starting the following school year. So that's in our Steam world. Questions? Okay. Thank you. Good evening. Um excuse [clears throat] me, in the world of student family services, uh I've been in front of the board talking a lot about our new ELDC and the plans for that, but I kind of want to highlight other work that's been going on in parallel throughout the year at the ELDC, [clears throat] which is really to work towards their model

085of service delivery to kind of ultimately create more inclusive learning environments for all students. Um it might not be as flashy as setting out like designs for a big build new building, right? Um but I do think this is the work that is kind of a underneath the water as the iceberg would say the analogy. So most of the impact that we're going to have on our kids is going to come from the work that the teachers have been putting in this year led by Shannon. So uh we've been happy to be along the for the ride with that um with ultimately the goal of having um more options for students who are at risk and um less restrictive learning environments for students with disabilities. Um in addition to that, we really leaned into community

086engagement. Um we've been really proud of the partnership that we've been able to continue and build upon with family Service Agency. So, I did put some um information in there just in terms of the impact that they've had across our district and the schools. The other one that's not on here that I want to highlight is Greater Family Health. This will be our second year, full year in partnership with them. One of the big things they do is they help us with clinics to make sure that our families have access to physicals and immunizations prior to our exclusion date, but then afterwards as well. As we look in the next year, we're going to be kind of focused on a lot of things. ELDC's going to continue, but we really want to continue to lean

087into those community partnerships with more of a focus on NIU and continuing to work with them in the ways that we already are, but looking at those new ways to partner to not only help our department, but across the district. >> [snorts] >> So, next up is Human Resources. We live in strategic priority four, which is human capital recruitment, development, and retainment. Um as HR, we support everything that happens in the district because the people are the ones who makes the make the wheels of the bus go round and round. Accomplishments and things that we've continued to improve on include the compiling of data and ensuring its integrity for reporting, updating Skyward to be more reflective of the life cycle of our employees. So, over the years, technology has advanced and we've moved into better,

088faster, stronger systems, but it doesn't always tell the right story for the life of our employees. So, we've been doing a lot of work of cleaning up data and making sure that it does paint the right picture. Secondly, improving the posting, hiring, and onboarding process for our candidates. We want to ensure that when people have decided that D428 is the place for them, they have the very best experience coming through the door so that that great experience continues to happen. We have a better cycle of posting, interviewing, and hiring so that we can garner stronger and more qualified candidates. Our third accomplishment is employee relations and accountability for all of our stakeholders. We address concerns and establish boundaries that support our collective bargaining agreements, our district goals, and all of our initiatives. And that's a

089ongoing that's ongoing work that we do so that that continues to breed a positive climate and culture for the district. Our areas of focus are continuing to streamline Thank you. Continuing to streamline processes that tie into the needs of all of our stakeholders. That includes our candidates, our new hires, and our current employees. And then finally ensuring the HR onboarding process is detailed and seamless for all staff. We have a good structure in place for our teachers. We've now started to build even better structures for our our DFSA assistant members, also our Fed office assistant members, and we just need to continue to strengthen that experience so that when people come here they understand what the rules of engagement are and how HR and all the other departments of the district are here to support

090them. Any questions I can answer? I have sort of a random question. We get the personnel reports every month, you know, people who are being reassigned, different things, new hires, etc. All the moving around action. >> Yeah. Yeah. How many people come in and out of the district in like a given year? Can you ballpark that number cuz it seems to be like, you know, we're hiring new folks and you know, new retirees and things like that. It just seems like there's a lot of people moving happening It is. And I I would I would not give you a number because I'm going I wouldn't expect you to have it but it just seems like Wow, you guys employ a lot of people >> And we do have that data. I can capture that and

091I can get that get that and share with all of the board. We do have a lot of staff moving in and out for a variety of reasons. Turnover happens because of life happens. >> no perspective on that. Just curious the number. Sometimes we get qualified applicants just not at the right time. So when we do get those applicants, our applicants and candidates, we want to get them in the door so that we can start building the strongest staff pool that we have. So I can get you that data, but it is ongoing. Um prior to me arriving at the district, the stories I hear are they hire people and people stayed and people stayed. COVID really changed that. I joined D428 [clears throat] during the time of COVID. So everything was very fluid. And

092since then it's continued to be that way. Some things that contribute to that, um the state of Illinois ISBE has now um created a process where teachers that have tenure, it's called teacher or tenure portability. Teachers that have tenure can move to another district and can expedite and take their tenure with them. So back in the day when teachers got tenure, you would see them in a district till they retired. Well now they have that option to move around and and have that safety net with that tenure. That has encouraged folks to want to do just that, move around, whether it's for better opportunities or because districts are offering great programs or it's the passion of the work they want to do. There's many reasons behind that. Um also when we look at our support

093staff, D428 is becoming a place where people truly want to work. And they don't just want to work here, they want to work here, make a career, and stay here. Um so now that we're more desirable, when we do have those openings, people are like this is my chance. Yeah, I think we've seen some people coming in that are, you know, tenured folks that, you know, normally they would maybe be going somewhere else and because they can do so well here and so many supports for them, they're coming here. Yes. Thank you. Teacher? Yes. One more. Sorry. Um you mentioned uh the climate and retention. And I know the survey exists and I'm just maybe forgetting seeing it. But the the survey to the employees about their leadership teams and what what in the military

094we call them command and climate surveys. Mhm. And it's literally asking the soldiers how they feel about their commanders. Mhm. We have one of those, right? So, we have the five essential survey that captures some of that data and that's through the state through ISBE. Um, we in the past have had a true climate and culture survey. The board opted to discontinue that. So, that is no longer in place. Um, not not something we did away with for any particular reason, but we had captured the data that we were looking for and built it into our strategic plan and other goals and initiatives and we're working towards achieving some of those goals and improving um, the areas that had gaps or lack. So, the five essential surveys will capture if this if this staff Well,

095it goes to staff and families, but just specifically is staff in this case that I'm asking about. Um, have faith that they're being led by the right people or in the right ways. That five essential surveys will catch capture that? Well, it doesn't ask it in that way. >> [laughter] >> Not that abrupt, I get it, but I mean, it's a matter of interpretation, right? Yeah. So, the question's not pointed like that, but it asks in a broader sense. But, administrators for each building and we have many here that can speak to it. They do get a good strong idea on what their staff, how they feel the building is progressing or not progressing as well as them as a leader. Do you guys agree or anybody have anything different to offer? They're nodding yes.

096The questions are around collaboration. You got to come to the mic. >> [laughter] >> Sorry, I opened my mouth. Yeah. Um the questions that come up are around collaboration between admin and staff. And it goes out to any staff that is in front of teaching, so assistants and such that might be in the classroom teaching, they fill out that survey out. And then there's also the collaboration of staff to staff. So you get two perspectives of how they feel towards their leadership and how they feel amongst peers, and you want those high numbers, and then you can dissect it with your staff, which I will be doing next or on Friday. Not next week, on Friday. Um as to these are the numbers we have, what do we do with it, where do we want

097to go, how can we build this up, what were some good things that happened in our building, so. And then You're thanks, Jen. Thanks. Um at a district level we get that survey reported like once a year, right? I think. From the the five essential surveys that Yeah, okay. Thank you. Mhm. Other questions? Okay. Thank you. All right. For uh business and finance, uh our focus has always been community engagement, telling our story, telling our financial goals. Uh we're getting better at it. We're looking uh just this year we were able to get the FFC meeting to have a community facilitator who kind of brought that lens, brought in what questions the community brings in or ask, and be able to kind of facilitate that meeting. So we're looking uh we're looking to expand more,

098and hopefully keep this model for the next years as well. Uh the next uh the Beyond One Barb Transition Center uh we uh we are on track on purchasing it. We finished the survey, and we're looking uh to uh uh close on June 1st. Uh when it And then uh also the this spring, we also talked about the financial plans for a new ELBC AHMS renovations. For the next year, um we have we have many meetings um on a potential interactive display of our um financial dashboard uh monthly. We've had many meetings with it. Uh there's still some things to tweak uh but we should be able to start that uh next year, hopefully July, uh but we're very very close with it. So, that's kind of our focus for next year. And our next

099focus will also be beyond sight with our school leaders uh to provide that support of the business office. Permit a quick quick question. I'm very curious about the monthly uh district financial dashboard. What sort of information you foresee being on there and available? Sure. Yeah, and so there is so many models out there. So, we're there is uh one that has um multi-years. Uh there is one that has uh the you know, uh the kind of what the monthly report that the board provides but in a very chart, graphic, interactive uh where you can go back and forth between funds. Uh so, so we're looking at those models. Uh we kind of have a good idea. We just there is some tweaks um uh in terms of technology. So, but uh yeah, I I believe

100it will uh we can share what we've seen some other uh school districts that have it. So, you can >> Yeah, I'd be curious what what what we're modeling it after and do we have an approximate anticipation of when this is going to be up and running? I Yeah, and we What the goal is, I should say. Sure. Uh our goal was to, you know, get it as soon as we could. Uh it's just I will I would say maybe July would be the best uh kind of maybe start the year with that as well. >> Got you. Got you. >> [cough] [clears throat] >> Thank you. All right. We're going to get into the end of the year spring I guess before you start real quick, I just want to say s- all of

101our other administrators, since the building SIP goals part is done, you guys don't have to stay for the rest of the meeting if you don't want to. You're getting permission from the board to leave if you would like. Because they get up so early in the morning to be here. Yes. Did you have questions about the building, please? Thank you, President White. I had a quick question for you. Thank you, President White. Yeah. Do you want a 5-minute break? All right. Everyone's very favorite part is the data from the end of year testing related to, of course, academic achievement as well as discipline and attendance. Just a couple of things I wanted to mention that came up already this evening before we get started on this, which I promise will be brief. First, JJ, you

102asked you mentioned something about NIU and data, and I wanted to commend you for your perspective that we should always be reporting our data accurately regardless of whether it paints us in a positive light or whether it raises concerns. So, please rest assured that one of the things that I really like doing and that I know that Dr. Parker supports me on and the rest of the district as well is that we are always going to point out the areas of celebration and the areas where we know we need to do a better job for kids. So, thank you for saying out loud that you also agree with that perspective. I appreciate that. And President White, I know you asked about high school graduation rate. So, just so you're aware, we always attempt to present

103all of the data as closely as possible to what you'll find on the Illinois report card. And so everyone knows when students are in DeKalb, if they leave the high school and we can't say with certainty exactly where they're going, they are on our roles and they count as one of our students until such time as they enroll in another school district in Illinois or we can say with certainty they've moved out of state. So we we are for lack of a better term at 8:26 p.m., we are on the hook for those kids until somebody else assumes responsibility for them. That will always impact our graduation rate and frankly it's probably okay because we should be following up with kids and saying, "Where did you end up going to school? No one has requested

104your records. What are you doing?" So that in case they are not in school, we can reach out and attempt to help them graduate from high school in a timely manner. Does that make sense? Mhm. Okay. So um looking at our data, I promise I will move through it as quickly as is appropriate. We've got the same um format for the very last time. So going forward because we have 19 new strategic plan goals, the BOI, MOI, and EOI presentations won't look exactly like this. Each slide will be one of our goals and then the best data we can come up with to approximate where we are with relationship to in relation to that goal. It will be maybe briefer. I'm probably still going to make these for my own benefit because I like them,

105but also because I think it's really important that we look at for example our in our suspension data, to what extent are our students of color overrepresented in our student population that is experiencing exclusionary discipline. Again, we have to look at the areas where we have to continue to improve. This is relatively flat and has been since I've been here. And it is worth noting that the group of students is no longer the same actual human beings because this is the end of my fifth year working in DeKalb. So it's not the same kids. So it must be a system that is in some way targeting some kids or providing some kids with experiences that are different than others. Every system works the way it was designed, so we have to take a look at

106the design of our systems and say why is it impacting different groups of kids differently. I have to ask a question. >> Go ahead. You know I'm always happy to answer any question you have to the best of my ability. >> Very true. Um I agree with part of that statement of being they're different kids, so it does show that it it's not just the kids, but we have again, like has been probably said in a when it comes to various different aspects of schooling, we have them for 6 of 24 hours. So, our system might not be the issue that keeps those numbers the same. I agree with you. It is not a DeKalb schools problem, it is a larger problem than that. It's not just a DeKalb issue, but we need to figure

107out how we can play a role in making things more equitable for our students because after the 6 hours when they're not in our building, they're still our neighbors and we still need to make sure that they're having good experiences at school so that they make better choices out of school. So, it's we all have to work together on that. And I just want to make sure to highlight our part in that and that we may be able to look differently at what we're doing and see if we can make the numbers move a little bit in a positive direction. Does that make sense? Yes. Okay. Thank you. Good answer. It's 8:29. Real quick. >> Wait, let me jump in really quick cuz I don't want to forget at the end. I just want to

108officially request that like we find a way to have these presentations because like you, I think they're incredibly important. I think that the public needs access to this information. So, even if they're changing, I don't know what that looks like for us, but let's figure out a way if we can Sure. to still have this. That I'm going to I agree. Okay. Well, I All right, I'm going to take my time then. Um you're going >> [laughter] >> Um the next two slides represent our attendance. Please note that it is each school over a two-year period. So, you'll see on here on this one you've got DHS from last year, DHS this year. Blue is this year. This is the report of consistent attendance, which is what Illinois is now looking at rather rather than

109chronic absenteeism. This is a percentage of students who have attended 90% of school days. So, you can look through this. Jefferson, uh large jump. Our elementary school data may be um more variable because of course our elementary students are attending different buildings than they did previously. Uh in the spring assessment data, the orange and black charts of course represent growth. I know you're all familiar with those at at this point. The black bar represents the national average. Anything above that average means we're seeing really good growth in those grades. This is math. Um so, we've got um our middle school math students growing a a great deal, which is great. Also, second grade. This is growth for the number of students who met their growth goals for reading. So, again, the I really think we

110do need to call out eighth grade, not just because I happen to own one of those children, but also because that's really outstanding. That's, you know, 2/3 of our students met their growth goal. 50% is what you would expect. So, um something great is happening in our classrooms, which we should all be really excited about. Um then we've got our Oh, just a reminder that if our district looked exactly was the largest in the country, incorporated all of our students in the country, you would expect to see the chart on the left. Because these are the percentiles, it's not how many questions they got right. It's where would they where did they fall compared to other students in that grade. And the chart on the right represents charts like you might see in this presentation.

111So, we want more blue, less red. Just Just a quick reminder. Here are the map reading percentile groups K5 district-wide. And then it it's the the breakdown you're used to seeing where I've got um over time, keeping in mind that the data was re-normed this summer. So, we've got new norms for spring of '26. This is the last 5 years how we've looked in the springs of the previous 5 years. This is by grade. This helps us look at where might we see areas where we need to look at the curriculum and identify areas that need to be strengthened, which is incredibly helpful. Could you explain the re-norming, just how it affects data, perhaps >> Absolutely. Yes. The previous norms, so um the norms that we were looking at up until this school year represented

112data for how students performed before the COVID pandemic. They were the 2020 norms, which means the data was gathered probably the 5 or 6 years previous to that. Yeah, 5 or 6 years. So, what we were comparing our students to was how did kids normally do before COVID hit. And the entire country experienced learning loss as schools were shut down um starting March 17th, 2020. Um and because of that, we know that students learn differently now than they did before that time. So, MAP took the time to re-norm and say, "We can't It's not really fair to compare them in this in the way we have been to the tests that were taken prior to COVID. We need to compare tests taken today to tests taken since that time period began. So, these are the

1132025 norms. Does that make sense? So, they're basically accounting for a seismic shift in what happened to education when that occurred and the fact that these kids didn't have the same experience with learning before when they had to go to home and and learn remotely and that kind of thing. So, we're still being measured against their peers. Just it's looking at it in a What did they How did they account I guess that's probably too into the weeds. How would they they for something like that? How would they account for the changing >> yeah, how do you how do you Is it just how they're performing then as opposed to like >> Yes, they literally MAP has millions of um students taking these tests all the time. So they have millions and millions of data

114points from 2020 on. So they just said the norm for kids if you're in eighth grade, your normal score, the 50th percentile score, if you lined up all the kids that took it from how well they did to how poorly they did, the kid standing in the middle has a different score in 2025 than the kid standing in the middle if you had done in 2020. So they That's all they did. They didn't use any methodology that included um expected outcomes. This is their actual batting average for how they've done previously. Which is not necessarily a predictor of performance to come, but it's describing every time they stood the any kid stood at the plate in the last 5 years. Cuz one of the reasons why I asked like it looks like, you know, if

115you look at all the data like by and large like we're improving a lot in a lot of areas. There's a lot less in the red as you would say. So like kids are getting closer to you know, proficiency or however you want to define it. And so it's it's not going to be something that's just a data aberration. It's like, you know, now that we're looking at things differently and we're comparing them equally amongst each other now our kids are doing better like in as as compared to the their same group. I think that clause at the second half of your sentence is really important. Our kids are doing better because we're comparing them to the correct group. They don't know more than they did necessarily last year. So it these charts don't equate

116exactly perfectly to what the state of Illinois considers proficient. Which is a really difficult thing to get your mind around. But yes, compared to everybody else, when we're comparing to the correct group, we we have less cause for concern because we're being more realistic. And is proficiency is that more like an IAR? Yes, absolutely. So the MAP and that's more like just individually you. Like where you're at, how you're perceived. Okay. That's a benchmark that doesn't change based on where any how anyone else else doing. Okay. Theoretically, you could have 100% of kids being proficient. That seems incredibly unlikely, but you could and because the bar doesn't move based on how your neighbor does. This does. If your neighbor was, you know, the entire continental United States. Sure. Good? >> Yeah, good. All right. I

117want to let the record show I'm not the one going slow. Sorry. It's the time to ask. >> I know. I'm glad you're asking questions. It's fantastic. It's absolutely the time to ask. Um here as you'll see we can we still have opportunity gaps across um our race and ethnicities which we need to address and across our um students who are coming from low-income households and those who don't. Really important to note that um while 56% of our students who do not qualify for free and reduced lunch are above the 50th percentile, which is great. That's not our whole district. 2/3 of our district falls in that white column. So, we need to make sure that our systems are serving those students because that's who we are. Um this is our 6 to 8 data

118and I'm going to invite Betsy pick them up and cut me off whenever you want to explain the data. Betsy is our secondary manager for humanities. You want me to talk about I can just talk about >> Sure, yeah. Come on up. >> Okay. I only have a little bit prepared, but I'll walk you through all of it. So, the first thing that you notice when you look at this is that we are really close to that 25% 25% 25% 25% in grades 6 through 8, which is the first celebration. There's a lot of celebrating, so I am going to talk about. I'm very excited. Um [laughter] So, this is us over the last five uh testing sessions. I don't really want to dwell on this because like what Jess said, you're seeing a change

119in those um norms for the for from the first four to the last one. So, I actually feel that this kind of minimizes um what you're going to see coming up. So, I I want to kind of gloss over this one because here's here's the the chef's kiss. Um these are our sixth, seventh, and 8th grade scores compared to their peers um in the new norms. If you see 6th grade, it's kind of like a reverse stair step, right? With that red specifically. And 6th grade in the 9 years I've been here it has always been that case. We've always had the largest chunk of red in our 6th graders. The most important part is that by the time they get to 8th grade that number has really shrunk. Um, we're down to 16%. We're

120below the nation in our bottom 20th percent. So, we have fewer kids in the bottom 20th percent, 25th percentile, than the nation does, which is phenomenal. So, I like to really think about this as reading is developmental, literacy growth is developmental, and in 6th grade we're really building those higher level reading skills for our students. They provide a foundation for them to accelerate their growth in 7th and 8th grade. And this is a trend that we have seen in our district for at least the last 8 or 9 years. So, that's nothing new. What is new is how fat the blue and green areas are. I am so excited about that. Our teachers and our students worked so hard this year um with a new curriculum. So, this is as our teachers are learning their

121new curriculum >> [snorts] >> they were able to push our students to move into the blue and the green. And the blue and the green is significant because like we were just talking about proficiency um and Jess has it on here somewhere, but that bar for IAR proficiency sits right between the blue and the green. So, it's not good enough for our students to be at 50th percentile if we want them to be proficient. They have to be higher than that. So, I'm really excited to see that blue and that green growing. Any questions about that? This is This is big stuff. Okay. Um, and then our opportunity gap, this is the other thing to talk about. What Jess and I kind of went over the data really quickly between last year and this year,

122and unfortunately our gap is not diminishing. We were really hoping that it would be because the bar has been raised. The kids are all moving up. But, what it's turned out to be, especially in the case of low income, is uh versus non-low income, is that all of our students are coming up together. So, you will see um that red for low-income students last year was 43% and then those students now it's just 33% of students in grade 6 through 8 they're in low-income status um are in the red and then they've bumped up. Also, students who are not low income bumped up. So, we still see the gap is there, but we're elevated when we experience that gap. So, I mean, we're working on it. >> So, I wanted to ask about that cuz

123I noted in the slide here, you know, that's a tremendous achievement. And that's like one of the biggest issues we face is the achievement gap between low-income and non-low income students. What did you do? How do we How do we replicate it? We we we did a lot this year. We really did a lot this year. Um so, one of the things was the new curriculum, Amplify. Um and Amplify did have a number of really great things about it. So, it had the fact that um it provided a really good structure for both students and teachers. So, when students walked into the room, their cognitive load was reduced because they knew the pattern of the lesson cuz it was wash and repeat, right? You just do it over and over again. Um and then teachers

124also had the structure, so they weren't trying to create everything, which is why these pre-made curriculums are so important because our teachers should be teaching, they should be focusing on instruction, they should not be having to create their entire curriculum, which is a lot of pieces for all the differentiation too that has to happen in the classroom. So, they were able to focus on their instruction. They were able to say, "Here's my base, here's my platform, here's where I know my kids are going to need extra help or extra lessons. I'm going to work on those." And so they were able to focus on that. The other thing that comes with Amplify is the rigor of the text was higher both in what we were asking the students to do with it. Our students wrote

125so much this year, not just in language arts. I have to give that credit to social studies and science as well. There was a big focus in social studies and science on literacy as well. Those teachers did a great job and that undoubtedly has helped our students as well. Um and then the texts were just harder. I mean, just flat out harder. They read Narrative of Frederick Douglass in eighth grade. They read A Raisin in the Sun in the Sun in seventh grade. They read Odysseus in sixth grade. So, the text was it was just up. Everything was up. And our students achieved on all of our common assessments above what the publisher anticipates. So, they anticipate 50% is proficiency and our students consistently came in at 70% or higher. Like our average was 70%

126on those assessments. So, we had good indications that things were trucking along. The other thing that we did was with our tier two instruction, which happens during win time. Instead of just giving kids a reading intervention, we looked at their map scores and we said what strand do kids need the most in. So, reading instruction is split into three. It's informational text, literary text, and vocabulary. And then each one of those had an evidence-based um intervention for it that the teachers taught. So, students who needed vocabulary went to the vocabulary section and they received that instruction from the teacher. Students who had needs in informational text went to informational text, received that instruction, and we really focused on that first semester and we saw huge gains Um, those students in those strands, which then led

127to higher math scores. What about the data that you be so targeted? >> Yeah, it was it was the teachers really did a great job. Um, Great. I would love to see all of this like in an article or something. Like a survey of here's what we've done and here's how we did it. Sure, I can work on that for you. A white paper? Yeah. >> [laughter] >> Whoever wants to do this. Um, so this is that proficiency bar that we were just talking about, too. And this is both third grade and eighth grade. Um, but you can see the proficiency bar for the IAR is sitting up there in the blue. And so it's if we want our students to be proficient on the IAR, they have to be higher than 50%. 50th percentile.

128Um, which makes that really difficult because then we get the IAR results and everyone's like, "Your kids can't read. Only 34% of them, right?" But you have to recognize where that bar is at. Any questions? Any other questions? Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much, Dr. Zimmerman. Uh, we also take the reading test in Spanish. The students in the dual language program either two-way at the elementary level or one-way at the middle school level. This is among the hardest data to understand because, as a reminder, half of the students in these bars do not have Spanish at home. So, we're it's difficult to draw comparisons between, for example, the Spanish reading chart and the English reading chart. But, we do have the most equitable data in the district here. And when you look at this

129and look at how our students were doing, um, in middle school, I think it is safe to say that when you have a system that works, it works for all students. So, we don't need to be concerned that if we make changes to our system, it it won't be good for the kids that are already doing well. It can be very good for everybody. Um, we've got 6-8 reading in Spanish. These are students who are uh, multilingual learners. Once they are have passed the access test, they are no longer a part of this cohort. So, this data is also a little bit hard to understand over time >> [cough] >> because it may [clears throat] not be the same students as they phase out of the program. Right? Yeah. Um so, I like to double

130check with AJ so I'm not making things up out of whole cloth. This is the Spanish reading percentile groups district-wide. I always feel like the eighth grade Spanish reading test um data it can be misleading because these students take so very many tests all at the same time because they also have to sit for the access test. So, they may very well be be over-tested by spring of eighth grade. Um they're also taking three math tests three times a year instead of two math tests three times a year. So, important to keep an eye on it but also important to understand in context. In math, we have a lot of good news as well. Sarah, do you want to join me um as we talk about how we're doing in um math at the elementary

131level? Where would you like to start? Um right here. Okay, so I have been um with this district for 4 years now and uh as you can see the trend is that we are improving the spring of 26 again our our red is at 33% which is a good trend to see that that is now happening from that direction. How do Uh you can just do this if you like. And then click on. Or you can use it down there. Oh, nice. All right. And so, um >> [laughter] >> Oh, more water? And so, again like in slide um at the very beginning slide 10 and 11, it was the black and orange slide. Um generally what we normally are seeing uh for fifth grade is at fifth grade we're seeing this huge dip that

132happened and this is the first year actually that fifth grade was doing very very well going into sixth grade. So, that is also something I haven't seen in the four years that I've been here is a fifth grader is ready to rocket leading fifth grade. Fourth grade was an area though that we noticed. Fourth grade across the board I believe five of the schools slid backwards. So, our incoming fifth grade students is going to be an area where we really need to target and drill down and see what was happening with that and how we can intervene. A couple different things that are changing with math is that we will have five of our schools piloting ixl which is another digital program. Right now everybody's on success maker which is a tier two. >> [cough]

133>> ixl will be a tier one support. So, we're going to compare those throughout the year and see which one is not only better for our students but what kind of growth that we can see that is happening from that user-friendliness for the teachers and report pulling and understanding of the reports different factors like that. We also have about 40 teachers that are going to be previewing our envision curriculum the plus version and they are going to be putting that into effect a year ahead of time before we do our upgrade to that and that is going to incorporate building thinking classrooms a lot more math games with intention and a condensed version of the topics so that fifth grade for instance will go to 16 from 16 topics to 12 topics. So, they've done

134like a really big condensed version of that without sacrificing standards and those [cough and clears throat] things as well. Any questions about math? Yes, I see a question. My brain was processing something you said like three three minutes earlier. I Excel is it just see the math Just math. >> portion that we're going to be using? Yes. Okay. Thank you. Okay. We also have data from our middle school math students who took the test. It's very exciting as well. As you can see we are moving in the right direction. All of our students This is a a much more balanced chart than we've had in very recent years and I like to always mention this every time we get a chance. >> [cough] >> This is the the way that our students are performing by

135grade level. So we have far more students in seventh grade and even in sixth grade that are taking algebra now. And and we love to see the yellow because that means that we are identifying more students who can find success. We used to have especially seventh grade and sixth grade it was just all blue. And so we were we knew there were students out there who could be in the green who were sitting in the classroom that wasn't algebra and now we're able to provide the algebra instruction and the students are doing well who are in these classes which is great and we have full classes of sixth grade students taking seventh grade advanced math which means they'll have algebra as seventh grade students and calculus as juniors which is outstanding and those students are

136obviously doing very well also. So very very exciting that placement process has changed over the last couple of years to to great success. So that's something to definitely highlight. Though we still need to make sure that we are very focused on the opportunity gaps that exist between our student groups as you can see. And then the last slide is just highlighting once again when the Illinois report card comes out and has the IAR data on it it does not report how we're doing on MAP. It reports how we're doing on IAR and those The bars are where the IAR proficiency level is compared to how the math percentile groups fall. So, just keep that in mind when you see them. It's a different number because it's a different test, and we know that we have

137we have continued work to do. We had hoped to have ACT data for you. In case you don't closely follow assessment news statewide, the ACT scores came out and then ACT retracted them and said, "Actually, we have to take another look at those. Scores may go up. They will not go down, but we cannot report them as they are likely to change." So, we like to have them for you at this time of year and we can't, and I apologize for that. That's it. The last slide? Yep. Um just a reminder that next year these 48 slides will be truncated. No, not I'm not That's not a dig. I promise you. Because they're going to be specifically tied to the to the goals, which will have very specific strategies. So, when we come up here,

138we'll be having a conversation about how we're monitoring the strategies. Okay? I appreciate all the work you put into the report. I mean, I know it's laborious to go through all this, but like this is like why we're here, you know? So, it's very important that we look at it and we understand it and we share it with the public so people can see and you know, with regard to the algebra students like just briefly like they were like 100% last year, and so I'm really happy to see like you're identifying other kids that can get into this class and achieve at this level at this level and you're helping them raise their ceiling. You know, so it's a good It's good to see that number not all blue as you mentioned. And so, it's

139a good thing. It's a good thing. It's a good thing. It's a good >> it is improving opportunities for students. And students rise to the occasion when you increase access. I think that's great, so I wanted to >> Thank you. Yes, it's like reverse gatekeeping, right? What like let's bring everybody in and make sure that anybody who has the opportunity to be successful takes that chance. So, it's putting them on the on a trajectory to experience a more higher level math when they're at the high school. So, I want to add to that we have a good number of kids taking honors geometry. >> [cough] >> Kids that were bussing to the high school? Yeah. So, um actually next year we have so many kids that are going to be taking honors geometry at the

140middle school level that we are no longer going to be able to bus them. We're actually offering it at the middle school. Um we do have secondary certified math teachers at both middle schools. So, we will have about 60 students taking honors geometry next year in middle school. And then over 110 taking algebra in middle school. And they'll be able to earn high school credit. And the ones that are taking honors geometry this year at the high school are doing very well. Yes, we've been checking on them, too. Real quick, you mentioned about the ACT scores. They're going to come back with new ones that are going to be better. That's that's good news. I mean, why do they have to retract it? You said or or have to take it back, you mentioned. I

141The word that the verb they're using, I think, is recalibrate. And I don't know. Um and I believe the reason that the scores may go up but won't go down is because you you can't tell a child that this was their score, just kidding, you have a lower score. You may have already used that for a scholarship or I I imagine there's some liability there on their part. I don't know. The fact they're coming in better, I'm happy to hear about that. Yeah, I Possibly. Accurate I I accuracy is always what we prefer in uh the number world, but um yes, it's better than they're going to come back with. I think it's a great time to get to old business. Thank you, guys. All right, moving on. Item A, resolution authorizing purchase of real

142property, 530 Charter Street, DeKalb, Illinois. It's recommended the Board of Education approve the attached resolution. Do I have a motion? >> Shawna, roll call. Mr. Blair. Yes. Mr. Azarkh. Yes. Mr. Sullivan. >> Yes. Mark Sherbot >> Yes. Kristen Bailey Yes. Nick Atwood >> Yes. Item B, fiscal year 2027 consolidated district plan is recommended Board of Education approve the consolidated district plan. Do I have a motion? >> So moved. Shana, roll call. Jose Jaquez >> Yes. Christopher Boys >> Yes. Mark Sherbot >> Yes. Kristen Bailey Yes. Nick Atwood >> Yes. Steve Byers >> Yes. Item C, Space Academy for Educators Amendment is recommended Board of Education approve for two teachers to attend the Space Academy for Educators Expedition 40. Do I have a motion? >> So moved. >> Second. Shana, roll call. Christopher Boys >> Yes.

143Mark Sherbot >> Yes. Kristen Bailey Yes. Nick Atwood >> Yes. Steve Byers >> Yes. Jose Jaquez >> Yes. Item D, differential committee request for approval is recommended the Board of Education approve the differential committee request as attached. Do I have a motion? >> So moved. Second. Shana, roll call. Mark Sherbot [clears throat] Yes. Kristen Bailey >> Yes. Nick Atwood >> Yes. Steve Byers >> Yes. Jose Jaquez Yes. Christopher Boys [cough] Yes. Now we're into new business. The first item is item A, National Association of School Nurses Conference is June 29th through July 2nd, 2026. This is information and action. Good evening. I have the distinct pleasure to introduce Kristen and Jenny, two of our school nurses that are going to talk to you about this opportunity to go to the National Association of School Nurses

144Conference. Um this is coming to you as information and action just because the conference is um just a short time away. Uh so in order to be able to get our uh travel and all that squared away, we're asking for a decision tonight. Um so last year we had the opportunity to go to Austin, Texas to the National Association um conference. Um and within that, it was like what, [clears throat] 4 days, yeah, >> Yeah, 4 days. Um we got to attend many different presentations, um really focusing on like how can we help impact attendance and make attendance better in our schools. Really diving and digging into like our chronic health conditions and how can we help our support our kiddos with um diabetes, um seizures, asthma, things like that. Um as well as a

145lot of our mental health conditions that are becoming more and more apparent in our society today. Um so it's really beneficial for us to go, listen to all these um fantastic speakers, a lot of doctors came um within their specialties and talked to us about upcoming medications and things like that that are coming down the pipeline, um as well as networking with nurses throughout the country, um and then actually getting to do a lot of um uh networking with just our Illinois Association of School Nurses. Um and doing a lot of different events and um just participating in all these different presentations, so we, Jenny and I are very excited. We're hoping that you guys will allow us the opportunity to go back again this year um to see what the new agenda is going

146to be, what they're going to focus on this year, um and how can we bring that information back to con- continue to better the health of our students so that they are in school, learning more often, help improve those attendance rates, and just really help um you know, a lot of times the kids will come in and they'll be like, "Doctor, doctor." Because I think we may be the only health that they actually see. Um and so how can we help them get to the right resources, um as well as help their parents get to the right resources. >> as help their parents, too. Yeah. So we're just looking to see if you guys will allow us the opportunity to go to the convention this summer. Oh. Would you say there was a grant paper?

147paid Was it grant's paid for it? >> [laughter] >> I have to It's ready for the board of education to approve the request to attend this conference. Do I have a motion? >> So moved. Second. Shout out roll call. Mrs. Neely? Yes. Nick Atwood? Yes. Steve Byers? >> Yes. Jose Marquez? Yes. Christopher Wase? Yes. Mark Shabat? Yes. Thank you guys so much. Thank you. Have fun. And indeed, Project Search conference 2026, also information and action. All right, so I'm going to present this one. Um, we, um, Project Search has been a staple of our district now for, um, gosh, getting close to a decade. Um, and it's a program that, um, when we first brought that into the district, um, we had a lot of staff that would go to the annual conference. Um, not

148only our staff, but our partnering, um, uh, partners in that. So, uh, Ramp, uh, Northwestern Medicine, uh, would send staff there as well. Uh, because of COVID and things, [clears throat] we kind of got away from going to the conference, but it is in St. Louis this coming year. And so, we would like to send two members of our Project Search steering committee, uh, to the conference. Um, what this will allow us to do is to, uh, similar to our school nurses conference, allow us to network, uh, with other Project Search on-site teams and administrators to learn how they have been able to keep their program sustainable over the last couple of years and look at other ways to expand it in other businesses. So, we have, uh, two staff members that would like to

149go. Uh, funding this trip would be the teacher vacancy grant. Uh, it is in St. Louis and they would, uh, choose to drive down there. Um, and so, in total, we'd be looking at expenses around $3,500. Any questions? Sorry, info action again because of the uh, turnaround. Hearing no questions, do we have a motion to approve project search conference? >> So moved. Second. Shana, roll call. Kristen Bailey. Yes. Steve Carwin. Yes. Steve Byers. Yes. Jose Jarquez. Yes. Christopher Boyce. Yes. Michelle Barta. Yes. Thank you. Item C, renewal of world language resources. This is presented to us by Herman and [cough and clears throat] Mr. Rouse. Um I don't know which side he was on. So, Phil's going to do most of the talking, but we are looking to renew our world language resources um for

150Spanish level one. One through three, four, five. >> Spanish one through three and French one through four. And French one through four. And so, Phil's going to tell you why we want to renew what we have, and then I'll tell you how much it's going to cost. Okay, yeah. Uh hi, I'm Phil Rouse. I've been educator here for 24 years. Uh happy homeowner here for the last 19 years, so I'm a taxpayer as well, so I appreciate what you're doing. Um hopefully you appreciate what we do in the classrooms. I'm the only I think I'm the first teacher here tonight to speak, so um I have exciting news about our department. We just found out this year, but for the last 7 years we've been doing biliteracy seal test. I know it hasn't been shared

151as much, but we've been owning national standards. We've been surpassing them in every level, whether it was students who are Hispanic and are native speakers or speaking Arabic or whatever language they speak at home. If they are born with that language, they're speaking that. Our dual language learners will be getting up there soon. Uh or the ones through the So, they're So, they're there, but what we're even more proud of is the kids who just started high school and take Spanish one through four are also all of those different subcategories of students in all areas, whether it be speaking, reading, writing, or listening, are killing all national standards. So, we're beating them over and over again. Now, we're excited cuz we just found out about it, okay? We've been owning for 6 years, we just

152didn't know that we were kicking butt [clears throat] for 6 years, and this year we just did it again. We just got done in spring, and we beat them again. And so, what I'm asking you to do is to allow us to continue to do the work that we are doing with the textbook series that we are using. The series that we're using is called Carnegie Learning. The great thing about this series is that it has been adapting as national standards have been adapting and been moving. AP exams have changed. There's more of a spoken component now as an individual component where students actually have to listen to their own individual prompt where it used to be just hit play CD or hit and the whole room heard the same prompt and do it. So,

153that's going to change things for teachers. That means there's going to have to be a much more a different breadth of information has to be covered culturally because it's not just going to be one area that you can prepare for. So, having said that, our Spanish 1 through 3 program, we've chose Carnegie Learning for that platform because again, it's helping us do that what we want what our goal is is to get those students. And if you don't know what a biliteracy seal means, a biliteracy seal is says that a student is biliterate in both languages and they end up getting 12 credits, 12 college credits. Listen to that. That's about 10 grand. 12 college credits for our students when they leave the Cal High School to go on and they get a nice little

154seal on their on their diploma. It's a beautiful thing. We love the program that we're running. We like the program that we have. We don't have any issues with support from them. They have their own learning program their own learning format and learning program, so we don't need to use Canvas. We can, which we do, but we don't need it. Okay? Because we're already paying for it through this book service. They already have their own program. And so, the things that we need, they're already adding to it. And the fact that they've added a passport program that allows our kids to go visit different places in the world that we can take them to see other cultural opportunities that I couldn't possibly cover in in a class grade that they can do that outside of

155class if they have an interest and they want to visit Peru, they want to go see what different games might be being played, whether there's a a version of Quidditch that kids play on horseback in Argentina. And the kids like, "Oh god, that's like that's like Harry Potter." And I was like, "Kind of, except on horseback and you might not." But anyway, point is is that they have that opportunity and they're getting excited and they're doing these great things. So, all I'm asking you to do is to allow our program to continue to keep using that format because students like it. The achievement is there. You're getting the results that you want. Uh I'll be coming back next year, probably, hopefully, to talk to you about our Spanish four, our AP our AP Spanish program,

156as well as our uh Spanish speakers, uh native Spanish speakers program. I can already see Jose has a reason why aren't we choosing that program for Spanish four and Spanish five AP, Carnegie. The reason we don't use that for Spanish four and Spanish five because we found that there's another one there's another book series that our teachers really like. Uh Vista is the name of that program and I'll be coming back to talk to you about that next year. Unfortunately, book series now don't you don't get to buy a book for a decade and keep it. If you did all just physical textbooks, you would. But, book companies figured out, "Hey, here's a better scam for you. I got a book series that I'm going to sell you for 6 years, no matter when you

157buy it, we're only going to support it for 7." So, we're at the end of that support line. We can't keep the book that we currently have now. So, if we don't get this we're going to have to get a different series. I'll be back to you in in a month with another quote that probably won't be as good because we're getting a discount because we worked with them before and because they don't really like hearing from me too often. So, um I mean, it is what it is. I try to work for our community because it's my money coming out of my pocket, too, that's paying for these books. So, I understand that. I appreciate that. But, I also know what the kids are getting from it. And our students love it. Um I

158haven't had any complaints. We are asking for some physical book copies. I know that looks weird in the digital world, but I'm still big believer in paper and pencil connect the brain. I'm still big believer that you should give kids an option whether they want a textbook or they want the screen. And the kids should have that option every day. So, whether they want the textbook or they want the screen. So, the textbook would be a class book series in the classroom. It wouldn't leave the classroom. It would stay there. The only physical textbooks I'm asking you for are the classroom that those that those would be taught in. And they would stay in that room and they don't [clears throat] leave. We also have some IEP students. So, we you'll see that it's a

159little bit more than 35 books we're asking for. We're asking for 40 per classroom set because we have IEP students and we do students that do request or ask for that additional textbook series to go home with them. So we do have to account for those as well. Uh but we are very good stewards of our books cuz we haven't had to replace any of our last series. Uh we haven't lost any books in our last series, which is an amazing accomplishment uh at the high school level because something always gets gone. Something always disappears, okay? Whether it's on your desk or it's in the classroom. So I appreciate your time. I hope that you look at the budget and you'll see that it's not unfair, that it is commensurate with what other programs I

160looked at actually looked at the other book series. So we spent a year looking at three other book series and we couldn't find one that did everything that ours did for the cost of what we're getting it for. So what we need, this is the best version that we can have and the thing we love about Carnegie is that they're a pretty small company. So their only focus is on language, so that makes it a lot easier for us to work with them and when we call and we say, "Hey, look it, I can't get this kid on. He just came to class today. I can't add him." He's added by the end of the class period. I've never had them not reach out within a class period and be like, "Hey, we're here. This

161is tech. What do you need?" So I got three kids that I can't get in. Well, they should be able to. I said, "Well, they haven't had an email assigned with them." "Okay, we'll give them a temporary one for now." So they're even beating our tech department in getting a Google Gmail. Now that's not down them, it's just saying that that's how quick the turnaround is with Carnegie's because they're on it. Their people are just sitting there waiting for questions. So you feel like it's a good series. Any questions? I feel like I wish you'd get a little more excited about this because [laughter] it seems like you're just not you don't have the buy-in on what we're doing here. Phil is a great spokesperson. He has a lot of passion. This is what I

162do. This is what I do. So Two questions. One, you said 35 per classroom and the first chart says 160. Well, you're looking at four classroom sets. So there's four different classes that it could be taught in. It could be taught at that Yes, at that same hour or at that same time. So we're trying to cover those class sets cuz I teach Spanish one, but then Irma Rain teaches Spanish one, Irma Ramona Rios teaches one, and then Karina and Brenda Orsutchi teach Spanish one. So there's four different classrooms where might be happening So, that we're not carting a set of books around to the classroom, makes a little bit more convenient for us. >> And for Spanish one, you're also covering the eighth grade. And some of my eighth graders are in the middle

163schools. Yeah, and they'll get those series as well. So. And so, We're trying to help you be compliant with the 2028 or 2027-2028 ruling. [laughter] Which is important to us. Please. Uh in >> [snorts] >> in the digital world, one of the things you usually buy with the program is the consistent updates. But if we're having digital world and textbooks, so the only updates they're going to get to the like curriculum per se is every 6 years. Not necessarily. The books themselves update the online the online resources hardly explain it. The online resources don't match what the book is exactly. There's a textbook that is the online resource, there's a workbook that's an online resource, there's a list of like if you were to look at Carnegie's format, if I was asked to do that,

164put it up for you, but there they have about 40 different resource parts that you could go and use. >> [cough] >> Then they have little mini readers that kids can use. Then they have I mean, so it's a really progressive system where kids can kind of you fit where you where you fit. If you're super advanced and you want to keep reading, you can do that. If you're a native speaker and you take Spanish one, I don't know why, but you could, and you wouldn't find that you were bored. At least you'd have enough resources to keep you entertained. They're they update things like videos or the speaking listening portions, things like that get updated frequently. I don't know if it's every year, but it's It's not every year, but um like we've already

165seen in the new series, we got new tests, different type of testing format. Um so, it's it's really going to be a cool thing. I'm excited about it. I just purchased quite a few headsets for my Spanish three program, so they can start the practicing process, and we're going to see what the new online what the new online speaking part program is, and then recording of that. And if it looks really great, then we might expand it to Spanish one and Spanish two, but that would be some I didn't want to spend that money right up front. I did want to use it cuz they're giving us a new bell and whistle. So, let's use it at least once. And then if that comes to we have some headsets that we would get that would

166be perfect for it. But for right now we're holding off on that till we see about Spanish three pilots this year. I'm just I just have a question as a mom. Do they also cover like writing? What's that? Do they cover writing and language as well? >> Oh, absolutely. Yeah, there's always every day is a five components. If you're a good language teacher you're going to cover five. You're going to cover reading, listening, reading, writing, and culture. Cuz that's how you learn language. And so you can't you're not going to ever get out of writing. Oh, no, no, no. It's still grammar and still kind of like what you remember but it's just in a different way. It's just a lot more bells and whistles. So, um as Phil mentioned it, we're getting a huge

167discount. Sarah and I looked at both the three-year and the six-year quotes and we were kind of astonished that I think there was $30,000 difference between the three-year quote and the six-year quote. So, we were like, why wouldn't we get an additional three years for $30,000? So, um we are positioning the six-year quote to you. It's comes in at $154,535.70. Um that does cover seventh and eighth grade as well as pretty much all the way through junior year for Spanish and then through senior year it's all of French. Um and we do have the money in general district funds set aside for this. So, that's where it would come from. Just a weird question. Why is shipping and handling $3,000? Because those books are heavy. Um I I did question that myself I did question

168that myself and I was like that's an interesting choice. Um but they they are heavy. >> [laughter] >> All right, sounds like do we have consensus to bring this back? >> Yes. Thank you. Thank you, guys. Thank you, appreciate it. Thank you. Item D is the BCK program course approved salary schedule. And that's presented by Deidra for item D. And then I'm going to go to the restroom real quick. Keep running the meeting. Next up All right. [laughter] >> [cough and laughter] >> Sorry, I think Phil got me riled up and I'm all out of sorts here. Um Yes, DCTA program and course approval uh for salary schedule credit and PRC committee minutes. So, the PRC committee um which is is part of the DCTA contract and a committee of those folks and and then

169myself met and we reviewed submissions by DCTA members for coursework that they want to take. We've reviewed those. Um we did have a really robust discussion because there are some programs that our teachers have been pursuing that the state that some states are no no longer recognizing because those programs um don't have a physical uh instructor. They are pass or fail only. They're only um self They're self-paced and they're taking tests and they're getting grades. So, we are working to establish some guidelines on what will and will not be accepted. Um so, we had a really good meeting and we made some tough decisions that there are some programs that we're not going to be able to continue to go forward with because ISBE's not recom uh recognizing them as well as other states. So,

170before you are the ones that the um committee are recommending for approval. Anyone have any questions about that? And I assume this is information so we're looking for consensus to bring this back next meeting. Correct. >> Yes. Yes. All right, moving on letter E. This is the DFS DFSS letter of agreement for reclassification. Yep. So, we have a new DFSS contract. When we're sitting at that negotiating table, it sounds good. Like it was like we we rocked this. Until it's time to apply the language and then we're like, "So, wait. What what were we trying to accomplish?" So, in that [clears throat] language we've discovered that we need to just clean it up a little bit about the process of how a maintenance um a maintenance employee can move from one level to the next

171level. So, this is clarified language, a letter of agreement to support that. All right. Does anyone have any questions? Hearing no questions, [snorts] do we have consensus to bring this back? Yes. Yes. Yes. All right. Item F, DFF DFSS letter of agreement experience credit. Very similar. Um it's a cleaning up of contract language. In the contract it states that um a new hire or someone who transfers can get credit for a work experience. Um the language is a little vague and then once we started applying it as a as a group, both administration and the union leadership, we had to sit down and say, "Now, what do we agree here? What were we trying to say?" And now we're clarifying the language so it expressly states exactly what our practice is. Any questions? Hearing no

172questions, do we have consensus to bring this back? Yes. Yes. Item G, letter of agreement probationary employee evaluations. Very similar. This is regarding the probationary um evaluation for new employees and uh clarifying that they will be evaluated to make a decision on them completing their probationary period. Any questions? >> One real quick question. >> Okay. Three letters of agreement on the brand new contract all hit the under one year mark. Is that normal with our contracts that like after we actually put the contracts into place, people figure out the verbage might have been a little bit off? Uh it could be, yes. I mean, there's no Is that saying we did anything wrong? It's not saying that now we're we're righting a wrong. Specifically with that language, we changed a lot in the DFSS contract

173because prior to this contract, we had um what were they called? Um grades, labor grades. So, the employees fell into these labor grades and their pay was this because you're in this labor grade and your pay is that because you're in this and that labor grade. Now, our positions are individualized. So, if you are a first shift custodian, your pay is this. If you're a second shift custodian, your pay is that. If you are a um HVAC tech, your pay is this. So, each one is individualized. Because we moved from the labor grades to the individual positions, that's why we need to clarify this language because before it was more of a as a group as a whole just moving. But now we have the individual positions. Thank you. So, again, it's not abnormal and

174it's just a clarification of language. Any other questions? Any other questions? Do you have consensus to bring this back? Yes. Thank you, Latricia. Yep. Executive Secretary Sanchez, do you have an update for us? Uh no update except as reminders, this is our last week of school. I know everyone is so sad about the fact that this is the last week of school. But I'm going to remind everyone, if you're coming back next school year, please remind your parents, your guardians to come and register you because you want to make sure you get into the seats that you want to be in. So, please get into the Ed Center or into your buildings and register. Uh it's better to to do it now than rather than later. And then of course, uh I wanted to thank

175everybody for the wonderful work that they have done this year. It's very much appreciated. We've seen a tremendous growth that's been shown by our presentation this evening and that's I appreciate everybody in the classroom, everybody that's working with children, everybody at the building level, everybody at the center [cough] who makes sure that they are resources to all of our administrators and our teachers at our building. So thank you so much. And then I'm going to say have a wonderful summer. Rest, relax, rejuvenate because guess what? You come back in August. So we want to make sure that you're ready to rock and roll that when you come back. Thank you so very much and have a safe summer. Make sure you read and we'll see you back in August. Thank you. Move to adjourn. Second.

176That don't forget to show up to graduation this Saturday everyone. Thank you. All in favor I. I. >> [laughter]