DeKalb CUSD 428 Board Meeting 11/14/2023

001now 7:09 and with that we are going to um do a recall to order of a regular meeting uh Jackie can you please start with a roll call Amanda harness Andre po Steve buers Ariel Owens Chris for Boy Yes JZ uh present dant vam here Jenna Zimmerman here all right uh the next thing uh we are doing is public participation and recognition of public common members of the public who wish to speak to the board should complete a request card prior to the start of the meeting this section of the meeting will be reserved for comments from the public all comments should be limited to 3 minutes criticism of individuals is not an order Jackie do we have any comments n no all right so then uh moving on we will then move to see

002board correspondence do we have any I got to go to the winter sports promo night last week on Thursday which was a lot of fun and then I went and saw the play at the high school Thursday night as well which was very well done any other updates for board members I did not make it out to visit anywhere since last board meeting but I did have a excellent conversation with some of the folks at Barb Food Mart that I'd like to bring to the H board members team here at some point awesome um I visited Courtland last week though was awesome and I actually attended a training uh through the Illinois Association of school board um it was actually uh to provide us with information about the resolutions uh for the committee report and

003the things that we will be voting on at the triple I conference uh this upcoming uh weekend Friday and sat we will be there Friday Saturday and Sunday um so we have to uh go over the resolutions you all should received this package back in September uh at your home address if you all open up this a resolution book um what they wanted is is basically to go over what they requested for us to go over is basically like the uh presenting to you all the the uh resolutions that uh are being proposed or that were proposed by different different districts throughout the state of Illinois and what we wanted what they wanted us to do is basically briefly go through each of the uh resolutions the new resolutions that they're seeking that were presented

004and then vote on whether or not we seek to agree or disagree with what the um resolutions committee uh obviously um agreed on based on what was presented to them by that particular board so um the first resolution is the local state federal uh it's it's listed actually on page 10 of this particular package so if you all open up your package to page Chris all right under page 10 and you will see the very first one it's the industrial construction uh the submitting District was District 107 the statement of resolution be it resolved that the Illinois Association of school boards shall support and encourage legislation that prohibits the construction of industrial facilities near schools industrial facilities have negative consequences on schools that are three-fold number one the health and safety of all students faculty

005and staff number two the learning outcomes and students and students and number three the learning environments of students they presented a lot of information under that however um the if you flip to page 11 on page 11 you'll see listed the resolution committee analysis the committee discussed how industrial constructions does not affect most iasb members and some small communities depend on income from industrial facilities with space only available near schools which would ultimately harm small communities that want the facilities this shall remain under the local control the committee also noted that it if it is truly a health concern for children their Environmental Protection Agency EPA should be brought in to deliberate zoning so the resolution committee recommends that they do not adopt it as a Statewide resolution do we agree or disagree with with

006the recommendation I agree agreed agel okay all right uh the second one is um listed under school resource officer funding uh it was presented by District 33c uh the statement of the resolution the Illinois Association of school boards shall request that the Illinois legislature consider legislation providing Educational Funding to all school districts to offset the costs of a school resource officer um the resolution committee analysis the committee agreed that the presence of school officers SRO help protect the safety of the children and that their their needs to be more funding to help offset the cost of hiring the SRO even with grand money to help cover the cost school districts are left to pick up the remaining cost of the SRO and it could use additional funding the resolution committee recommends that we do adopt

007it as a state sure are we in agreement with that okay right the next one is the bus driver regulations the Illinois uh this was presented by District 404 statement a resolution that Illinois Association of school boards shall support changes to the federal and state Schools transportation regulations that return licensing requirements and Driver trainer liability back to pre February 2023 levels at minimum allow local training and testing for bus drivers and bus driver candidates and increase the transportation reimbursement rate from the state of Illinois to 100% regul regulations that need to be changed improved or eliminated altogether include the local in District or Roe behind the wheel and classroom requirement hours should be accepted not just those from nationally recognized trainers that are only available in commercial driving schools or programs and number two remove

008liability that is born by the new driver trainers concerning the drivers uh the drivers they certify uh the resolution of the committee is the committee agreed that the bus driver shortage is affecting most school districts and trying to find a way to help alleviate that it is important the committee uh felt that helping to ease the requirements and training to become a bus driver will help to improve shortage that districts are facing the resolution committee recommends that we do adopt makes sense do we agree with that all right and then the next one is employment history review this was submitted by District 110 be it res that the Illinois Association of school board shall request the Illinois legislature consider using the Illinois Department of Child and Family Services DCFS child abuse and neglect tracking system

009uh can as a mean to fulfill the employment history review of Faith's law um the committee the resolution committee analysis the committee understood and agreed that finding a way to help districts Implement Faith law is important but they felt that this was not the right system to use uh to fix the issue the resolution committee recommends that we do not adopt I'd say I'm for adopting it it's not we don't have a lot of information on the system say it's not the right fix but I don't know much about the system that they're talking about so what they're saying uh if you read the actual like the rationale of the district what they were saying is that they were trying to use a specific system for reviewing but what they're saying is that they already

010have a system in place for reviewing the the things so the Employments the employee the employee the review the history employment of the particular applicants so it's just a different way so just a different process but they already have a current process in place and they just didn't feel that this system the the new one that they're actually recommending that they was suitable for the entire districts all districts across the state of Illinois to follow that is not to say that they did not agree with it with a background check being done but more so the way that they that what they were asking of was not necessarily it would not be feasible for us to be able to do it um or expect or expect it for all districts to be able to do

011it in this manner and again remember these are State U resolutions for the that that would be implemented across the state of Illinois so what about the rest of you they recommend that we do not adopt um I just want to clarify so I see in the analysis where it says they don't feel like this is the right system where does it reference the other system oh well they were they actually referenced it in the in the actual training yeah the training that's fine then thank you no problem and the training is actually um available for everybody or anybody to go into if you just go into the iasb website um the training should be available I think it's pretty should be available I know for me it was because I attended and I actually

012signed up for the training but if it's not I could see if there if it can be obviously something that we can forward to all or that I can forward to all is this a so this is a they said that they agree to not adopt all right so that was actually that was four that was four okay let me see the next one okay all right so yes the last one is the alternative uh safe school funding this was presented by District 228 be it resoled that the Illinois Association of school boards shall advocate for additional funding to be provided for regional alternative State schools to allow for an elementary appropriate program additional funding and approv certification programs additional funding and approv certification programs for board certified behavior analyst bcba in school districts an

013additional flexibility with student discipline to help Local District provide the safest learning environment possible we also ask that the that hold on we also ask that the state legislator review SB 100 and make any necessary changes to allow for more local control as it relates to student discipline postco especially at the elementary and middle school levels uh the resolution committee analysis the committee discussed the current iasb position statement 2.33 that already states that iasb will Advocate using evidence-based funding uh to support funding for alternative schools members also discussed a possible review of s SP 100 which encourage encouraged limiting student suspensions and expulsions and established a parent teacher advisory committee that would develop with the board uh with the school board policy guidelines on people discipline the resolution committee recommends that they do not adopt

014because that's something already that's in the works with um with the policies that they're seeking to implement at a Statewide that's already something that's already in the works interesting and then um so oh before we move on so where are we at with that one I'm fine with that if there's something else already in the works I mean it's from what it says in the district rationale is districts want more funding to help with more of the behavior-based issues that we're having and a little bit and looking at s SP 100 which requires a agressive discipline and a little bit more flexibility on that I think would be helpful in our district and more funding would be helpful but to not adopt would mean we wouldn't do those things but if there's something else they're

015already working on in that that I don't know about that's not here well what what they stated is that a lot of if the if you look on the following page on page 14 and yeah 14 uh if you look at the uh in that particular page there's actually a whole list of other resolutions that also didn't even make it to they didn't even uh process or they they didn't ask for us to present to you all is because some of the these are already either policies that are are being assessed to be um updated and to already be implemented with changes or there's already a request for funding so this this will be an addition to it so what they stated is that these are implementations that will be coming forth for the following

016school year to be implemented but since they're already seeking to implement things for this year then it's not not something that they actually recommend at this point because there's already something in the works so we that something that was approved last year already so do we agree okay all right all right thank you with uh so with that said um any other board correspondence updates no all right student correspondence okay so um you can do your presentation yes you get it up got a presentation first presentation sweet um before or after the last meeting we had two mini board meetings at the high school and and we were able to talk about some positive things like we recognized the um like the pizzas for the students of the month or something like that and we're

017also trying to get a student speak out for the second semester um some other things that we were looking at on the more Improvement side are trying to get Vape detectors at the high school just to eliminate some of that problem and then uh some lunch Improvement ideas that I'm going to show you right now okay okay so we're going to talk about efficiency seating variety and stuff at the bathroom so first up with efficiency uh when we walk into the lunchroom to get like the stuff that is provided by the school there's many students who are in these lines that have to wait uh like 5 to 10 minutes to get their food and it takes up the time that they could be eating or because the time is already limited as it is

018so trying to eliminate this idea of um crowding by establishing the um lines in the actual serving area as well as as well as adding maybe more servers if that's possible would eliminate some of that efficiency and then continuing with the large amount of people um the seating has also become uh short and slim as we have more higher numbers in our school so um the students have seen that adding more seats could potentially uh allow more students to fit as we get more students going into the next years uh or larger tables would also help with this seating problem um and then if there is not possible to get more seating we could possibly look into having smaller lunches which would therefore have less fights which are always good to not have um another

019concern from the students on a form submitted or form sent out to them was that there's been reports of sick sicknesses and cleanliness I understand that um there was audits on the food I was able to talk with the the um service the service people from the high school and the district to talk about this but I just want to put it out there that the students may not be talking to the adults about this but I have seen that um it might be a coincidence or not but they have maybe some type of food poisoning or there's been hair or bugs in the food um moving on to variety uh this was one of the bigger things that the students have recognized stating that um more variety options for especially vegan and vegetarians could

020help provide a more enjoyable palette as well as different foods from different cultures they specifically specified the burrito um the other thing that would improve is that the moods would be happier as students are eating what they would like to eat and it is good um the other thing was I know that there is uh rules that you have to comply for the amount of food but looking at the elementary schools compared to the high school amount of food one slice of pizza is the same for both things and I'm not sure if there's anything we can do for that but I believe the snack bar at the high school could provide more of those Entre to get uh that amount of food as we are older I guess to yeah um next for bathroom

021struggles uh the one of the bigger things is as teachers don't like us going to the bathroom during classes they um want us to go during lunches but the problem is that if you go into these bathrooms they're often overfilled or there's many people lering often from smok or just hanging out so uh one option for just being overfilled in general is to either open another bathroom or have an increase of monitors that could monitor the behavior or loitering in the bathroom or then the smoking could be um solved with like smoke detectors and stuff to encourage kids to get out of the bathroom and not smoke in school or not smoke in general yeah yeah um the snack bar we have had many various things saying that they like the snack bar um the

022only things are is that the cash and card options are not available to this day and that it's often just the money that gets put on Skyward so the students who may not know where to use it uh believe there was sent out some information on how to use it so that could help with that as well as maybe trying to implement cash or card to try to get few more people want to help the district get more money and then two to make it more convenient and then with opening sooner uh I've recognized that it has been opening sooner since I've been able to talk with the um plun people and yeah I've had some positive feedback about that um some other ideas from students is just separating trying to make the lunches as

023even as possible to not have one lunch have tons of kids as well as not have little amounts of kids in one so that just it reduces the risk of fights and stuff like that um once again Bape detectors we are the students are excited to try to get these as we recognize the problem that is at the school and then lunch weeks could just maybe like different themes of different cultures maybe yeah just some different types of food to encourage that uh thank you does anybody have any questions comments concerns thoughts feelings thank you than you a lot of positive things going [Applause] on and so the board understands and and the community understands as well my shandis and the mark manager have actually met with Jenna and the team at the high school

024last week and some of the um updates and new ways of doing things are already in the in marks so uh we just wanted to make sure that Jenna's voice Jenna and the students voice has really helped us to understand that so I appreciate that thank you and I did see a survey that came out I don't know if it's in relation to that but I saw a survey that went out last week so great job all right um the next thing is the subance of gifts and donations um uh recommend oh well it is Rec it's an a recommended action item that the Board of Education accepts with gratitude the donation of $187 wor 37 from the decal Education Foundation and also that the the that the Board of Education assess with credit to

025the donation of winter coats from operation North Pole from our PK through fifth grade students so thank you very much for the donations thank you all right so uh moving on consent agenda um it is recommended that the Board of Education approve the past board meetings uh meet meeting minutes from 10:17 as presented um items a uh B through G is there a motion second R call Pa yes Steve buers Ariel Owens yes Christopher Boy Yes sty yes bam yes all right you just voted to terminate and accept reservations in one vote that was all together you should be ashamed absolutely ashamed I'm ashamed I'm ashamed you're talking about a person's job and resignation letters and you lump them together moving on the presentation um diversity equity and inclusion plan it is going to be

026presented it was submitted and presented by Miss Parker director of diversity e and inclusion and the social justice committee look at those shirts good evening board members students parents staff and Community I am Dr trab sha principal at Huntley Middle School commendable efforts were taken by the Cal School Board of Education and adopting the diversity plan on June 5th 2018 the initiative born out of a comprehensive Community needs assessment led by esteemed individuals such as DRS JQ Adams Dr James Cohen and Dr Sharon Stevens have been a crucial step towards fostering an inclusive and in Equitable educational environment within our district we would like to acknowledge the diligent work of Dr Jenny Huber Andrea Mitchell and Dr Lisa Becker the co-authors who presented the original diversity plan to the school board their dedication cou coupled

027with the overwhelming and unanimous support from the board reflected a shared commitment to address the diverse needs of all stakeholders for the last 20 years many individuals have tirelessly worked to address systemic inequities that persist within our school district it is worth noting that the original plan while meritorious in its attent lacks specific Equity levers and measurable action steps notable strides have been achieved in specific aspects outlined in the goals such as the successful launch of the two-way dual La language program in 2020 and it's apparent that there are areas where Improvement is needed specifically several goals have had defined metrics but there was limited evidence demonstrating the effectiveness of the steps taken to achieve this goal K experienced an unparalleled impact from the global and National events significantly influencing the successful implementation of the

028district's diversity plan the plan's outcomes were influenced by various social and political factors acknowledging the swiftly changing national and local context the social justice committee recognizes the imper the imperative to adjust and adapt to the 2018 diversity plan this modification aims to better align with our initial goals and address newly identified gaps in light of evolving circumstances understanding the challenges posed by leadership turnover in the past it is heartening to note the positive impact of superintendent Dr manura Garcia Sanchez who joined our district in 2021 her engagement and support for the social justice team Have Been instrumental in fostering consistent meetings and renewed commitment to the principles outlined in the original diversity plan for those reasons the 2023 diversity equity and inclusion inclusion plan is dedicated to Dr manura Garcia Sanchez in recognition of her

029leadership and tireless efforts to address Equity gaps within the school district we have other members here um and if you would like to join us feel free to join us um I also have to recognize that uh we have several previous school board members that contributed to this 20y year two decade process um but sitting currently on our school board Ariel Owens dacy Ramirez and Andre Powell thank you very much they have are either past members or current members of the social justice committee so um Dr n stop up we are going to take some questions if you have questions but I wanted to give you a highlight of just some things uh that change well there's a new name uh it's currently called the diversity equity and inclusion plan because we felt that the

030diversity plan was not encompassing enough of a of a name uh what have we done differently as you know the Illinois State Board of Education released an equity Journey Continuum for all school districts and so we had to align this plan with the equity Journey Continuum we were way ahead of the game um Dr manura Garcia Sanchez has been um a lot of superintendents have reaching reaching out to us and you all had already done so much work um the equity Journey continuing narrative and all the plans we had already done so what we had to go back and just do some tweaking to align it because there are about 25 data sets that they are looking at to determine what our score will be from year to year and we wanted to make sure

031that we were looking at some other same data set we also have Illustrated Baseline data and and uh Dr n will give you more information about that but we attempted to answer the following questions where are we now where are we going how will we get get there who will drive the work when will we get there and how will we know when we have arrived I'm sure you haven't had a chance to read through every page of the diversity plan yet um as you do please keep in mind that we wanted to keep it relatively High View understanding that there's a lot of data that supports all of the action steps that are in there we wanted to start with essentially where is our vision for where we want to be what is the

032data suggesting about where we are right now and then the action step for how we hope to bridge that Gap um so if there are other questions that come up as you're reading it please do send them to Miss Parker um we will work to get you answers or to or to further clarify things but I feel like it um encapsulates a lot of the work that's going on in as few pages as possible it is 50 pages long so we were really we're trying to you know balance providing all of the information with a a relatively high level view of where it is we hope to be and we are making this presentation just again to let you know um that because this document was already adopted at this point it it's just information

033we want to be extremely transparent as we have promised to our community to our parents we will upload this in Spanish and Arabic um as we have had our diversity plan so we will upload this as soon as the translation's finished and it will be on our district website you want to talk about this in some of the specific data that we um listed in there sure so we we did pull data from a number of sources some that we created um specifically for the plan like our belonging survey and some that we've already had in place so as you know I I may be a familiar face to some of you because I already present the um districts the state of the district data on student achievement attendance and things like that so we

034did use a lot of those data sources um data related to our discipline and the differential the disparity that we see between different groups of students um so you'll see some of that data we do have five Essentials data in there as well so we try to provide the most holistic picture that we could of where the district is and and how we know where we're at um because obviously the qualitative data of how our students feel and whether they feel like they belong in this district is very important to us but we know that quantitative data is often a way to tell a fuller picture so we want to combine both I guess the other the only other thing I would say is um the if you are confused in any way about the

035bicycle there is um there is a a further explanation within the text of the plan um and you can find it probably on page five or six I don't remember off the top of my head so I apologize for that but essentially that as we are working toward Equity one thing to keep in mind is not that um we want to provide everyone with the same resources and supports but we want to provide everyone with the resources and supports that are a fit for them so there's a great Equity graphic that has been circulating among these types of um documents and presentations that shows people all using a bicycle that is the correct fit for them them or that is adaptive in some way so that under their own power they can get where it

036is they're going so we we took that bicycle and we decaled it up a little bit so we wanted to obviously reflect our racial diversity and also our um gender and sexuality diversity um we have our new logo on there and we're delivering corn so that's you know what could be a better use of our of our basket um again I I think it it may be best for you to take the time to read through it um and ask any questions at a later date in in any way you prefer so anything else want have any questions what does go to objective for increase enrollment of diverse populations in honors and advanced programs by systematically eliminating barriers for students look like in practice that's a great question so a lot of times um in

037some other districts I've worked in as well as IND decal we have pre prerequisites for things like our AP courses and we want to instead of saying you have to hit all of these requirements in order to get into an AP class we want to make sure that classes like AP or dual credit bearing classes uh that were recruiting students and saying we know you can do this that you may maybe you'll need different supports than other students but you know I I am old these days but when I was a student at theel high school the same faces were in all of my AP classes and what we want to see is that we want every student to feel empowered that they can take the next step and take classes at that level so

038that regardless of what happens what regardless of what the future holds for them after high school they will be as prepared as possible because they've taken the rigorous course work um so a lot of times that looks like you know are there study Labs where students can drop in and get help with papers um even just seeing students in those classes that look like you not being the only student who looks like you can I mean I'm maybe not the right person to deliver this particular but it can make people feel more comfortable and like they in fact belong and they have every right to be there just as other students would as well so so I guess my question off of that would be is every student in our district if they meet the

039prerequisites has a right to be in that class are we not lowering the standards of the course so um that's a really good question and actually that that that's a question that we receive quite often because people often hear removing barriers as low lowering standards removing barriers is taking the fence out the backyard but not giving people permission to come in your backyard um and what we know is that just because you tell some prodct body that they are welcome don't mean you are also providing access for them to get there work started uh under previous uh administration at the high school already to do things for instance of checking the way that we uh allow students to be in honors for instance in most cases in honors across this nation we use a lot

040of teacher recommendation so we look at a 70 to 75% teachers recommend a kid a kid gets get get being honored but what we know is we are inherently biased as as human beings and if a teacher recommendation is 75% of it and not necessarily that students's drive that student's ability and what we also know research has shown us that just because a student has not made uh let's say straight A maybe there's a lot of factors at home that don't allow them to make straight A but they have the drive they have the motivation or in words like grit they have that grit to still make it happen um we also look at parent recommend more than we had in the past because a parent knows their kid they know they know what their

041child is capable of what their child is not capable of so more recently in the last three years if a parent says I know my child can handle this and I intend on work working with my child getting my child outside tutoring and so on and so on we would then acquest and say yes let your child have this opportunity cuz we don't want to continue to throw a barriers but that's a great question any other questions all right thank you for your time thank [Applause] You instrumental but not enough your [Laughter] T-shirt and I just want to openly commend all of the work that you each are doing I know I I mean I've been part of this committee since I joined the board so I have witnessed firsthand all of the work that

042has gone into this uh this handbook into everything that you all are doing so thank you for all the work that you each are doing um I have seen you all at work and we do that very often so again thank you aside from obviously the the everyday uh hours that you invest into into helping us educate our children you invest hours outside of that to do this type of work so we know it's important and um I'm grateful for sure to be working collaboration with it will caveat this is a very long agenda tonight so do not feel required to stay for the rest of the meet all right so with that said I'll moving on it's okay it's not that all it's not that evening thank you so much we know how busy

043you all are we appreciate you thank you so much all right um okay so with that said we are moving on to Old business uh this an action item it is recommended that the Board of Education uh Board of Education approve Administration to go out to bid for the renovation of Ed Brooks Elementary School to create additional offices in the main office suite is there a motion I have a question for our and T of course so when this project was originally brought forth we took it off and then part of the transition program rationale was that we had additional funds from canceled summer projects for next year so where is the $88,000 coming from if we move that to the transition program yes so because uh we were uh it was being requested by

044Brooks Administration uh we looked for other sources of fund which was s grants we wrote it in the grant it hasn't been approved yet so far but there is a cushion in the department budget for Tammy to uh include this $888,000 expense right works for me thank you thank you so we're good any other questions um no okay all right so again it is an action item um it is recommended that the Board of Education approve Administration to go out to bid for the renovations at Brooks Elementary School to create additional offices in the main office suite is there a motion second R Ro Jack yes Ariel Owens yes Christopher Bo yes St M yes vam Andre pal yes all right next item Item B DHS student council winter retreat overnight trip this is an

045action item it is recommended that the Board of Education approved the DHS student council to travel to Chicago Illinois to stay at the highed hotel or camber hotel to participate in team building bonding activities on December 2nd and December 3rd 2023 is there a motion so move roll call uh Ariel Owens yes Mr yes Stacy yes V vam yes Andre po yes Steve buers yes all right item C deel High School course revision for great civilization one and two it is an action item it is recommended that the Board of Education approve the DHS course revision for great civilization one and two is there a motion second roll call CH Bo yes St yes B Andre po yes Steve buers yes AR Owens yes all right item D revision of Schoolboard policy number 460 um

046it is an action item it is recommended that the Board of Education approve the revision of for policy 460 as attached is there a motion second roll call D yes v b yeah Andre Paul yes sters yes Ariel Owens yes chrisopher boys yeah um okay so future Elementary School business future Elementary School update thank you so first we'd like to go over just some um updates on the progress with the new elementary school I do want to mention that we do have Scott Johnson from Richard L Johnson Associates our district architect as well as Chad Alexander from lamp Incorporated from our construction management team should there be any specific questions for them um to start out with though I just want to go over some of the things that we have been working on I

047just had our first meeting tonight with with our landscape committee and that involves some of our community and our neighbors to the properties to involve their get their input in the landscaping and design of the uh new Elementary property in December I'll be meeting with the playground committee which will also involve some of the neighbors and community members in helping to select the playground equipment that we're going to be uh putting in place out there so more information to come on that those items but as a reference I just wanted to share with you a few things there are the boards around the room you're welcome to see a more close-up look um but this is a rendering of the uh new elementary school as you'll see that the color that was selected the purple

048that was selected to represent the school is now incorporated into the front of the building there uh this is a side view of it and a little look at the back with the with the playground this is the site plan that has come forth again just to show you how the property will be laid out with the drop off zones and the parking lots um as well as the playground and then the expansion of the property and then not going into detail but here is here is the actual layout of where classrooms and offices and and common spaces will be and then new building so all of those are included in there and then the other thing I just wanted to share out tonight was some of the color schemes that have been selected by

049uh group and again you're just seeing a glimpse of it so uh but being that the school color was selected to be purple um that the main office suite will be in the Grays and purple scheme so those that is a sample of the carpeting as well as the lvt which is the tile flooring that will be used in the spaces that should have tile we did make the decision yes can I answer your question so I see lots of different colors throughout the building would it not be cheaper to just buy the same color carpet there would be some cost advantage to that but it it's being that this is an elementary and we do incorporate various colors into all of our schools there was a decision made that it was important to make

050sure we incorporate it and make it feel like an elementary um as you're going to see not everything has all of these colors like you're seeing for the lobby in the cafeteria this is what's incorporated into different areas of the building the colors so these are all of the colors but again they're spaced out differently the media center also has all the different colors but again it's just the carpeting carpet selection the Kinder and first grade areas will have uh the blue the the teal green and gray combination second and third grade Wing has red lockers I want to spell that out because there's lockers that line the hallway of the third and uh second and third grade wing and then their color schemes will be that the gray with the yellow the blue and

051the red part of the reason for this is then what it'll be is I'm not sure which way it is but um the second grade will be like blue and yellow and the third grade side will be uh red and blue so just some ways to incorporate and then when you're in second grade your color is this and when you're in third grade and you can guess that by the time you get to fourth fifth grade you now get to have the purple which is the school color so when you get into fifth so Lockers in the fourth and fifth grade Wing are purple music classroom also incorporates all the colors and then the support offices uh will have marks and call Mark colors being the the teals and the blues and greens so that's

052just kind of a quick overview on that and again more information will be provided as we get further down the road yes sir can I go into the next part or are we not there yet the bid yes we're not okay we're not there yet so we have had now four Community conversation events uh with the topic of the new school we have made sure that we send old snail mail we still did SN snail mail to all of the houses surrounding their so if your house borders the school at any way across the street or in back on the side we make sure that you got a very specific invitation to come to the community conversation because we want to start off on a good foot with our neighbors as has always been stated

053um at our last one we had students vote and K and families come out and vote and purple one and we were very excited about that um we are we are going to start the process for suggesting Nam from the new school in January so we're going to wait till the new calendar year gets here and we we have already started the process we'll really be Google survey we're going to include some links in in in our social media include links in um our news news uh Outlets we want community members we want parents students everybody will have an opportunity to submit a name when they submit the name they will also submit a y of course and in a paragraph form y and if it's connected to anything we're going to do some research

054um this uh the social justice committee as well as uh one of the Committees uh the new school design committee will do some voting both committees will pair it down and then those the top two names will come before the board and the board will have the final decision about what the names is so far the northern what was it the North Star Elementary School I love the Northstar Elementary school is what is continues to resonate I'm so do that talk a little bit about programming you can see in the layout there that there's a a steam uh classroom in there so we are looking to make this a steam school and within that we have to make sure that we have all our staff trained and Project Lead way so pltw um Sarah Schaefer

055Amy broad Corp are steam managers they are making sure to get trained as trainers so they're doing the train a trainer model so that they can train our teachers we actually have um a couple teachers who we're going to Pilot with already at Lincoln and Brooks um because some of our students as we um have to accommodate for the new school are probably going to come out of Lincoln in Brooks so we want to make sure we have students that are already experiencing this um to continue to experience that in the new school um so we're sending a couple staff members and the principles to a pltw in St Louis Missouri which I will actually with your permission um bring to information in December that is going to happen in January from uh just to

056add from a programmatic standpoint we've had various groups looking at um all aspects of um some of the specialized programs we're going to put in the building um so right now we're looking at um adding uh classrooms of our soul program um that that potentially could change but that's kind of the direction we're heading right now um and so with that comes design of uh room layouts um flexible you know furniture that can be adapted to meet students needs um we're also taking a look at furniture that would go in our restorative room um as well as our calming rooms and then um a committee that's going to look at our playgrounds and um with an eye on um being as inclusive as we can uh for all students with all um um Mobility needs

057um so excited with um the feedback we're getting from those that are in the classroom that are help driving some of these decisions any questions I have a question for director Parker so this was something that was brought up at the city council meeting by one of the aldermen so as we just went over the Dei plan as well what is the realistically this building is in a very centralized part of town that is very much heavy on one demographic within our community a lot of black people live in that neighborhood so what are we doing to ensure that we don't essentially segregate decal by just building a new school in that neighborhood so I'll tell you like I told um Alderman at uh city council meeting um I don't I'm going to be completely

058honest it's not something that we can fix in our school district it is a Citywide and a systemic issue because our city is aggregated and if we continue which it has been for about the last 27 years it has been this District's um goal to have more neighborhood schools so that the schools can be you know walkable and so until we desegregate our city we are going to continue to contend with that as a school district but we do have some we do have um ideas of how to mitigate um some of the issues that come with that because it is a steam it will be a steam school we will have to draw from various areas in our city but first and the majority of our population will be from that from the north

059Florida area thank you any other questions question no okay thank you very much thank you thank you all right uh the next item is Item B under future Elementary School business um request to bid new elementary school this is an action item um if you have any oh first is a action item it is recommended that the Board of Education approve Administration to bid the new elementary school project along with the eight alternate bit packages is there a motion so move not yet yes Chris so I guess what I'm confused on is I think it was either in May or June we had my whole you know millions and millions and millions talk because the parking lot and the roof were why I felt we were told we were going from 29 to 33 million

060to begin with now we want to jump from 33 million to 35 million so the millions and millions and millions are starting to come out and we haven't even broke ground yet and we all know once you start a renovation project we're going to break ground lamp's going to go in there and say oh shoot we need to do this too so I'm just very concerned with another 1.9 million that we're already asking for and I guess what are we doing with an outdoor classroom that's going to cost 4 $475,000 well all of the alternates have been brought forth based on discussions from the design committee as well as Administration and through the um Architects and and engineerings and the construction management identifying some opportunities that we had determined at a committee level would be

061worth exploring from a price standpoint none of these alternates have to be accepted but there would be options that we could consider through this whether it could be through the um the the budget specifically for this and then honestly if if the roof comes in and it's something we want to still do when it's going to be over that 338 then we could look at life safety money that we potentially had that time just like we would on any roof that we would have across the distri I guess more of my concern with the roof is that was already something that was a part of the discussion to increase the budget the first time so why is it still an alternate if we were told hey we need more money because the roof needs to

062be redone why are we now asking for more money again for the roof to be red on if my memory serves me right it was actually going to be a deduct alternate it wasn't going to be an ad so it was it it was in it do you want to step up and speak on this chat going to be can you step up because otherwise the audience at home can't hear you this is Chad Alexander from lamp Incorporated our CEO it was it was always an alternate to give flexibility because when you're dealing with members of you you've got you don't you may come in where you're a million under that and if you do then you've got flexibility to take that alternate to go ahead and do it so we really have the alternat

063for flexibility and and to to have the opportunities to maybe pay for the amounted funds if it's necessary but um as of right now the way it stands we bid out a few projects in the last few months and we've got a pretty good handle we feel like on the numbers so we have reason to be optimistic about that but again the alternates give us flexibility and hard numbers to make decisions off of where say we did come in under budget and then in three or four months you want to negotiate that it's better off you get a number on a hard bid um than try to negotiate it I feel does that make sense so really the quantity of alternates is already all about giving us flexibility because there have been some things that

064have been added um the median out in the roadway that that came about um which is probably close to that dollar figure as far as what we've got to do out in our normal road so things like that come up and we still have some some cushion within the budget to allow for things to come up um some allowances and contingencies so it's not like we're right to that number so I guess on top of that what what is this Outdoor Classroom going to be that we're going to be outside and it's going to cost almost $500,000 when we first started the design of it it wasn't at 500,000 but when again some other pieces were incorporated into it current pricing was determined the committee still wanted to move forward with seeing what the price

065would come in at so again it's just an option because because the uh the design Committee involved uh staff from all over our district in different capacities and when it was brought up as an option in in the those committees it'd be great if we could get all of this and come in at under 33850 great we'd love to have an outdoor classroom and a roof and all the things in are alternates but again that'll be a choice to make at that time because stranger things have happened we've bit out large projects and they come in way under our budget and would rather have that opportunity to say yes or no at that time than to say oh now we've got money we have some availability and some cushion now we want to see what's

066going to cost because then a change order could cost substantially more than what it would from an initial bid spec basically looking up front at everything that we have available so that we can possibly get a better deal absolutely because once we are under contract what change orders that come forth they cost additional funds whether design CM architect as well as you're kind of at the mercy of the subcontractor that currently holds that that bid contract and then it's a matter of well if they say this is what it is sure we we've argued those costs before but in reality it's it's one company telling us the cost not potentially a number of them which is what we get at the time of the bits okay I think it would be uh just beneficial to

067see kind of what so we understand the outdoor classro a little better more information on that one specifically we know what a roof is oh yeah but um having built an Outdoor Classroom for my Eagle Scout project I did it for like a 100 bucks I got you this was probably way cooler I don't know but when when the bids come in we will be coming with details and knowing that that is something you'd like some more information we can come in with more details and drawings and some things so you guys can make an educated decision at that point of is it worth the bid amount that comes in again depending on the the complete project cost yeah any other questions Chris okay taking a walk questions good no nother no questions for me

068so I got it pulled up right here this is from our meeting in May where it talks about the fact that $500,000 is budgeted for roof replacement and $450,000 for Bus drop off and 200,000 for the outside classroom Pavilion so why are you asking for more money above the 33 million because clearly it says that those were a part of your plan and they were not a part of your plan they were a part of our plan the reason we are asking at this time to put it in an alternate is because of changes that have been made throughout this process with the design team and administration based on the needs that have been determined by that group and when the actual costs have been put to paper we knew we didn't want to come

069forward to you and say now we're looking to B this project and the budget is now 3.5 I or 30 35 million versus 338 to add the roof into it so we instead wanted to come back with options at the time of bid and at the time that the bid results come in CU right or wrong when the time comes that we actually sit here and then get everybody's opinions into this and decisions from all of the experts around the table beyond our architect and our CM the numbers adjust time has gone by things cost more they find out what things are going to cost based on market conditions and we did not feel was appropriate to come forth and say now we want approval to do this bid including the roof at 35 million

070and assume that that is part of the base bid we wanted to make sure we kept it under knowing that the roof had some flexibility and regards to the timing of doing it and potentially it could be something out of life safety funds that's a different fund to pay for it versus the fund that would be coming to cover the 33850 so again to present options and for transparency reasons those are the reasons we wanted to separate it out so then it's an active choice on our part based on where bids come in and your part not just ours thank you all right okay no other questions right all right all right um it is an action item it is recommended that the Board of Education approve Administration to bid the new elementary school project

071along with the eight alterate bit packages is there a motion so move second roll call Steve buers yes Ariel Owens yes Christopher boy no Stacy yes Vante bam yes Andre Paul yes all right thank you all right new business um item eight student discipline it is an action item it is recommended that the board of educ uphold the suspension for student number 11423 as presented is there a motion move second roll call V bam yes Andre Paul yes Steve buyers yes Ariel Owens yes chis for boys yes Dy yes right um Item B approval of estimated tax levy 2023 text year this is a action item as well um it is recommended that the Board of Education approve the proposed tax levy request for the 2023 tax year for publication is there a motion salute

072SEC second are we I think he's doing it yeah I think pres pres yeah but after you know what I have seen this presentation and I for some reason thought you had already presented it to us because I've seen the presentation I apologize um go for it AR but so the T so uh in October uh in October meeting we presented some background information on how the tax levy is uh is calculated and uh some information about it that we provided and also the the calendar for uh for the tax ly so right now we're coming in uh in November to just show you what the recommendation for the tax rate will be uh we will uh once the approval happens we go through a uh publishing to the newspaper gives a chance and a

073date for a public hearing and the actual adoption will come in December at that time uh I will uh again check in with our County assessor's office uh for any new numbers any changes uh adjust as as needed and then come in as a for adoption and and then we will be going to the county with the uh with de rate and uh have the full adoption with certificates Now understand that the tax rates are are established and will be continuing to be reassessed there will be an appeal process in the January and February so really well all the tax rates will be settled uh somewhere between late March and early April taxes will then you will get first installment probably Tex sometime in May and then the second one in uh between May and

074November um okay so how are these calculated so we keep uh especially for me I'll have to check in all the time with our County assessor's office for any how much is the assessment how much are the properties are being assessed at their FA fair market value this gives our a BAS for what the tax rates will be and what tax rates will be collected so uh we constantly check in with the County Assessors even the numbers that we presented back in October have changed because the the assessment the assessors keep looking at typ of properties and uh revalue those uh amounts we need that information because that's how we uh we look to calculate what the tax rate will be there so there is these three factors that we keep talking about is the

075equalized assessed value which is our eav or our fair market value that's our tax base where everything is based from and the only way that we can have uh uh the the growth between the years is to get an extension out of our CPI and out of new construction so CPI is the cost of the inflationary cost of living uh which right now it's about 6.3% however school districts are kept they are limited of how much CPI they can take from a uh something that we call a pel law the pel law will get will not allow us to go any further than 5% or CPI whichever is less so we haven't been used to seeing CPI so high so we haven't seen any limits or caps to uh the CPI that we can take

076uh this this is kind of a new grounds for our economy to see inflation go so high we normally have seen cpis at 2.6 or 1.3 so that pil law will kind of uh get us to the the lesser amount which would have been let's say CPI of 1.5 instead of the 5% uh we need this CPI to to be taken for tax levy because it helps us with a cost be it from an Affiliated from colle bargaining units from contracts that we're signing through the years and um any other uh fixed cost that the district is running so let's take a look what is our tax basis how it looks like so I wanted so I'm showing a little bit of a historical perspective here we have separated it between different types of property

077from residential Farm commercial industrial um mineral and railroad which are a little bit less uh and you can see from year to year there is a a a big growth in for one particular sector so if you look at an industrial growth we started at 64 million at about in the year 2020 and we have grown all the way to 323 million uh of tax sprays so what does that mean so I create I have a pie chart here to kind of give some idea of that tax base you you're seeing that homeowners residential homeowners are actually getting a little bit smaller on that uh tax based portion of the taxes to pay so they're at about 44% and we're seeing the commercial and Industrial kind of taking a little bit over you kind of

078want to do that you want a very nice spread out between everyone kind of chipping in and paying for the taxes so the less we see the residential percentage better is for especially for homeowners and you want the Industrial and Commercial to uh uh have a bigger uh slice of that Pi so that they can ship in more into that tax Bas okay so going back to uh uh I had a percent change right at the bottom below the total eav there is a percent change between the years so we haven't seen we have seen a little bit kind of a steady rise between 2020 to 2021 we we have 3 19% 11 uh 12% so kind of steady and then in 2023 there is a full reassessment a a recalculation of all property uh

079assessors uh and we're seeing a jump of as high as 26% uh on top of it there is this new growth so to kind of explain what new growth is those are properties that are will be entering our tax roles between now and March when when the tax rates are established so we need to know that new growth so we know who are the the new uh taxes the new taxpayers that are rolling into our tax base so I kind of had a breakdown here uh it is very high for previous years um it was as uh last year was 50 million currently we're at about 180 million now this will affect how our tax rates and how tax rate collection uh uh uh will be calculated so we're seeing that the major new construction

080this new money coming in for in our tax rows mostly coming in from uh meta Facebook which is 157 million there is a caveat here they are part of a ezone abatement which is about 55% for a 20-year period so even though they're coming in as a tax uh taxpayers coming in in the new tax roles they're really going to pay half of that so that's kind of important to know whenever we have this industrial growth and just to clarify for those watching of that like 157 Million number we get what is it 1% of that essentially 157 well it's uh so right now so this 182 million is actually new grow so it's not the full mattera right so this are uh maybe the second building that is being uh getting into the tax

081RS uh what we would be taking is our rate uh it is a third of the value uh and then take some exemptions and that's how you calculate so it's uh it's by 100 we call it by Mills or by 100 so if it's uh our current rate will be like 5.98 so I can get more into details on that level but uh so how much are we getting from meta is is that the question yeah essentially how much is that big number actually equating to in our budget so last year we collected 68,000 uh and then this year uh since we're seeing kind of a bigger growth I I'm expecting a little bit more but again it is 50% what they would normally receive would have not really contributed it's also important to know

082right that obviously with the these these evaluations being assessed at a higher rate and that means properties are obviously assessed at higher rates which ultimately also means higher taxes for that as well that are to come for property owners because their properties are now assessed or valued at a higher rate it's the same thing with the higher the bigger your tax bases the even though the percentage we're always trying to lower the percentage rate on our on our taxes that may even though uh it may help there may there will be savings there taxpayers may not see a negative or reduction from previous year because their their market share keeps their fair market of their houses keeps growing and that means your tax base keeps growing it's kind of me saying a 5% out of

083a 100 uh dollars is less than 4% of 150 so uh the higher the tax your tax basis even the percentage gets slower you're still growing in amounts so I'll try to maybe hopefully the other sides will kind of tackle that and give a little bit better perspective but here's that visualization if you look at the chart The Columns um the the bar chart there uh you're seeing an a a a big growth of uh economic growth coming in uh particularly from industrial zones so uh jumping in much much uh higher at the 2023 year okay well here's our tax rate for then this is only the school district right so uh those that are a little bit more familiar on your tax bills you will take a look you'll see that uh the school

084district is there but there's other up to nine taxing bodies that can contribute that take part of that tax bill amount so we uh we have uh we have tried to mitigate a lot of these taxpayers uh uh tax paying U residential areas or other uh taxing um tax bases and we're seeing that the total tax rate we keep trying to go lower and lower and in 2023 we we we made a promise back in October that we'll go a little bit uh lower than previous year so we're at about we're looking to see a 5.9 8.15% tax rate so even though the tax rate might be lower remember you may not see this in the tax bills because your fair market value of a house might go much higher so the your your house

085has been assessed so how much money is that that we as a district are going to leave on the county table so that our taxpayers actually see it you know on their bill how much are is the district leaving on the table this year correct so for me to get into that calculation remember uh the the value is almost 30% we're growing your your fair market value of your houses or your your commercial uh properties as has grown up up to 33% so for us to kind of have a little bit of an impact and mitigate some savings for the tax SPS we have to go in and kind of look for a calculation that will get us to a lower uh a lower prop uh property tax rate so to get that 5.98% we're

086looking at leaving on the table about 16 million where about where about 12 million will come from uh the property tax relief Grant so in here um I had under new growth for the calculations to work we had to adjust about 49 million from the new growth coming on a industrial to mitigate some savings so out of that 49 million that's coming in in our tax rols we are not going to capture that amount so that the tax rate can work for us so going to bring in a resolution to the uh to the board sometime in January and February to kind of allow this form of under Levy because the growth is so big for us to even get that tax rate we have to leave about 49 million of which is seems to

087be mostly from meta which already has a tax abatement so the impact to the district even though might be permanent might be uh a little bit um uh it will be a little bit more permanent uh it is part of that abatement so we won't feel as much but we have to kind of play a little bit of a balancing game there so this is how the calculations are done you're looking at the new growth we taking away at about 49 million where we're not going to take taxes from leave it on the table as manura mentioned uh and then we're seeing about 3.4 million that we are not going to be able to collect uh on top of some property tax relief grants so this is the only way we could have afforded and

088we have done this in the past uh in the past few years uh we were able to afford this type of mitigation tax relief uh taxpayer relief uh savings through a grant from the state uh every year we've uh almost every year we've received some form of uh relief Grant from the from the state and this year it's kind of nice that we have an overlapping of two grants coming in about 6 million each uh I have B I have been bold there about uh 6.72 from previous Grant and a 6.4 million that is coming in we're going to get it approved from to the board we'll present it today and then get it approved by December and then submit it to ISB and hopefully we get that uh Grant uh that way we could

089mitigate some type of taxpayer savings uh for our uh for our district boundaries okay uh so any question on this so if you notice here on on the third column this is what uh would have been our if everything we allowed all the taxes that we would have allowed we would have been at about 7.48% of taxes coming uh from the district we were able to lower that at 59815 so again even though you may not see it in the tax bills there is probably a lot more savings by going so low uh much lower on our tax rates and I'll give an example here I have a tax bill example uh we keep using a market value home in 2016 that was about $150,000 and in this District we always try to uh have

090that as a reference so that we can see one particular home how it evolves throughout the year and it gives a kind of a nice uh reference point for us so not a lot of not a lot of you might see the same uh the same uh tax bill uh it's very difficult to calculate and you may have already gotten some form from the county that your property has been assessed much higher from this year uh so if you look at it uh we're seeing that even though we went down by the tax rate at about 5.98% from previous uh year you might see a change of about $400 in your tax bill so about 40 $45 $40 into um every month uh again that's counting a value increase of your property between 15 to

09126% so um not a lot might see this amount uh not a lot of people might not a lot of property owners might see this amount but this is something also to kind of see kind of a silver lining here if we would have taken that 7.1% of the tax rate so if you see uh that we're getting 5.9 calculation it would have been almost $800 more so there is some Savings in there uh even though it may not look like it because between years we have grown and there has been 33% increase we're actually trying to mitigate uh that right any questions so far so this is really the tax rat that we are recommending so yeah so and that's pretty much that's pretty much our relief strategies has always been uh kind of

092taking into uh forms of abatements and uh applying any type of state grants we receive so that say there will be some savings for property owners uh in the future uh there is a lot of things that we we have to take into account such as high inflation uh labor shortages uh our collective bargaining units that are fixed costs so we always look at those fixed costs and the way to kind of mitigate that has been through a batement and uh onetime uh grants all right any questions so far so so we would like this for an approval today we publish it to the newspaper there will be a public hearing on December 12th and the board meeting on that day uh and then we will actually go through a option I will check with

093the County Assessors if there is any other uh changes into the uh values okay so again due to due to time sensitivity this is an information action item um if we don't have any questions then we can move forward with the recommendation um it is recommended that the Board of Education approve the proposed tax levy request for the 2023 tax year for publication is there a motion so moved second roll call Andre Powell up Steve buyers no Ariel Owens yes Christoper boys no ders yes Sant B yeah okay is there a particular because I don't know what to did this pass or didn't pass so I don't know what newspaper for public he this is not a so just so that everyone's clear we're saying that we can't publish it in the paper and that

094is part of the process that we must do for the state so if we don't do it then we're not informing the taxpayer of what we're going to be moving forward so this isn't this isn't what we're asking you to decide on the percentage or the funding this is what we're asking you is it okay to publish this information in the newspaper so that everyone else can be informed correct yeah and then they can bring their discussions and even uh they can bring their discution on December 12 and that's when the actual adoption Happ that's when the happen so this is not the ending number uh recomended I think the issue that a lot of us are having is there were emails that went back and forth about the number there was never an in-person

095discussion about this number so we don't have the board on the same page with so this presentation has occurred over the last few months it's the same presentation um that hasn't changed the number hasn't changed over the last months I'm not sure where the I'd like to see us uh do more for the taxpayer but you're saying we do that later not today so correct we uh what par how would that look like so that um you know um it's kind of it's kind of difficult uh because what recom so this is our recommendation um what would be how would that look like basically because most of the conversation would happen today for example uh we got these new numbers uh as of November 3rd so now even though we had if we even had

096any discussions which we probably couldn't do it anyway if it's not public uh the numbers would have changed and everything would have uh uh been uh we would have started on uh Ground Zero basically from the from the beginning begin so what is some is there some form of recommendation I should be aware I guess with all of this new money coming in I would like to get as close as possible to holding our current taxpayers harmless for the fact that there was increased Economic Development okay so we do have an obligation for the fixed costs that are coming in so even though the pel law stops us at 5% actually our contracts our bargaining units are way past the five the 5% inflation are has been 10% food prices food contract has been more

097than 10% so we've uh we have absorbed a lot of U and if you look at even by going 16 million we cannot guarantee or we cannot uh uh we had a growth of 33% so even taking hit on our uh resources is still will not be able to to uh go towards what uh you are uh asking so basically we're when we're looking at sustainability we probably are not going to be we're looking at sustainability and long activity we're not possibly we can't obviously sustain it right doesn't a lot of this money also double in 15 to 20 years because those abatements drop off well in 15 to to 15 well 15 to 20 years but right now we're talking about right now and where we are at we are also in the process

098obviously renegotiating with a couple uh of the unions that we obviously that that work in the district we have a lot of things that we have to make sure that we're able to sustain and if we're not able to sustain that then we're going to be obviously looking at deficit we're not going to be able to pay people correct and there's another thing if we kind of move away from the prescribed or that there's a kind of a balancing act that we're doing if we do take more out of the industrial Zone that we don't collect then we will shift the balance and it will hit commercial and residential and farming Property Owners so we have to be very careful not to move away from the prescribed uh process because that uh may affect our

099taxing uh Property Owners so um so as we assessed and everything that we have at the table what are the questions that we have to bring so that we can continue the discussion whether we have it today or not because we do have to meet the standards uh of what the state is man dating for us to I want to interrupt but we're checking because I think it may have passed I think Andre's abstained is a blank vote and so may have been a three to two so we're calling Steve to get clarification if that was actual Move Motion based on the based on the votes up stains okay so do we wanna should we move on then to the next I'm sorry I'm just trying to make contact with Jenna if she'd like to

100to go home and do some homewor we know it's getting late we don't want to keep you up thank you so as we wait for that Jackie would it be okay for us to move on to the next item then unless they have more questions do we have any other questions any verifications the only comment I have is that the difference between a 6.0 and a 5.9 is not really significant enough for me yeah and but remember the economic activity that's happening it has grown by 33% so we can never catch up to that 33% no matter how uh that that works so uh and we also have to take into account how economic cycle happens so even though right now we might be seeing Boon uh in economic growth nationally uh inflation is kind

101of tapering down so you know we have to keep the process what's prescribed simply because there's a few things that might uh hit us very hard let's say the following future do we need to hold a special board meeting to have this conversation prior to the December 12th deadline I guess when we find out if it moved or not to pose that because obviously we need to have a more in depth conversation and we need to prepare other numbers if that's what you're asking us to do and more importantly what we need to do tonight is make sure that we can post this now this is again a recommendation it's not the it's not the final decision but we need to inform the public body of what we're thinking so that they can also give

102us information so this is a good time that as you seeing it in the newspaper and you're feeling like you want to contribute to the conversation or have questions then everyone here and everybody at home and everyone every every else can send emails and that to the board members to consider a different understanding but we do need to be able to post it on the paper so that's what tonight is asked for told Steve said we're just double checking that so the and so my question then is does the board want to have an additional meeting a special meeting prior to the 12th because on the 12 we have to we have to meet the deadline um so that we can you all can have the conversation and determine what that might look like or

103or yes personally I am okay with the recommendation that is set for so I'm okay whether we have it or not I'm okay with the recommendation today I was like to meet meet okay okay I'm sure so we yes looking and thinking about where we we are at probably we will move forward then we're having another meeting additional to or prior to the December 12th December 12th date um where we can have further discussions and then and you'd like some recommendation if keeping it I think we just we just want to see what how hardcore the district would spiral if we gave the taxpayers a little bit of their own money back because we currently have like 70 million dollars in reserves so it's not like we're bleeding money left and right that might be

104true but remember we're only 80% adequately financially uh from State we are adequately um Financial adequate sorry 80% of that what we should be so there's that additionally part of the new growth if we move away from a describ remember we might be helping the industrial zones but it will shift the burden towards other the the commercial and the property tax owners the residential so we have to be very careful if we're moving away and creating these artificial boundaries um well that and then we also have to make sure that we fall within the boundaries of the expectations from is and and the governor's office so we don't just decide that we can just leave money on the table there are parameters that we have to follow and we have to make sure that we

105are abiding by those parameters too are we are out of compliance not just can we have a 20 to 30% savings that we supposed to required by this board to have every year but that we also in addition to that can pay our bills can't pay our staff and are thinking about future need so it's all of those things put together not just as simple as somebody's asking us to lower it and therefore we want to leave as much money as possible we do right and so this is this is where we're coming at and this is a number that makes sense based on what we know we will be expending and what will be coming up so I um I'm fine with doing a meeting we'll do what we need to but we'll probably

106we will have to bring in uh all of those parameters that are required by the state of Illinois by ISB to be able to run the school district because we don't want to be out of compliance with them you know that opens us up for a lot of other things as well also Amir um as we move on to having that meeting with it be possible for you to also include for us uh obviously the things that we need to consider because obviously whatever it is that we we adapt we're looking that long term right this is not just something that is going to apply for this year because this year we already adopted it but for for next year obviously this this becomes obviously the rule of the law right the expectation but I

107think as we move forward it is important for us to also take into consideration the fact that s funds are going to run out it is also important for us to take into consideration that we have negotiation of some certain contracts that we have coming up and that we also take into consideration the fact that we are no longer a title one school right I mean title one district and those funds although we are a tier one I should I apologize a tier one school and although we are obviously we're functioning out of a year back taxes that's how taxes work looking obviously at the following year it is important for us to take that into consideration so for would it be possible for us to also include that into the upcoming presentations please absolutely

108just so that we can take full account of like obviously the the things that we have to also consider that no longer will be part of our our overall budget the money that's no longer available to us okay absolutely and I mean just to add more to that this will be a permanent hit to our finances and there is a Contin a u a continuous effect that we call uh compounding effect of this inflation moving forward so there is a long-term ad serial effect to our finances on top of a debt we do have debt uh of up to 100 100 million 120 million we uh including the new uh including the construction for the new schools so even though we might have a fund balance of 70 million you have to think also that

109we are paying still the High School Portland and the new elementary school so we have to be mindful of a lot of this future effect that will happen I just we we need to do a big picture so that everybody understands I guess just a question to cover in what's going to be a lot of the other requests coming up we have a lot of FTE and additional staff request for the rest of the meeting do we have the money for all of those well uh if you approve this yes that's where all the all the items come in so uh question should we move on or okay thank you'll move thank you all right item c um it is a also a property tax relief Grant fiscal year 2024 cycle this is an information

110and discussion item all right great news uh we even though we were at tier two and I was worried that we are not going to get a another round of uh taxpayers relief it is afforded to us because ISB is using 2021 data so kind of happy to announce that we are ranked so the uh ISB ranks us uh under what who is most eligible and we are number 21 out of possible 32 people that are eligible for this uh property tax relief the only thing I'm going to bring up here it's about 6 point uh 6.07 67 million and we have to upate 6.4 million which means that the district will have to pay 420 out of their fund balance which is more than happy to do this for us to get get that

111abatement from uh the or the Grant from the state so this is just information we will bring it as an approval in December we will apply to ISB uh the deadline is January 8th and uh and then from there uh we will do an abatement resolution I will bring it to the board we'll send it to isby get that approval and make and uh we can get that abatement that we are already counting for right here um if you can see the 6.4 million which gets us from 82 to 76 so good thank you any questions consus to bring this back yes thank you all right item D which is Society of health and physical Educators National Convention this is an item that was submitted by Mr Billy woro and Kelly sery hi good evening

112everyone um so I have the privilege to be here with Kelly Zerby she for those of you who don't know she's our PE teacher Elementary PE teacher at Jefferson she's our district PE coordinator and Midwest teacher of the year in [Music] 2022 so I had to Hype her up a little bit because she wants to go she's actually been invited to a National Convention a shape National Convention um which we would honorably um like to accept um her going to represent our district so I'm just going to let her talk about it a little bit hello everybody thanks for having me um the shape National Convention is our National Organization I'm the current president of the Illinois Association in shape is our national umbrella um they they kind of travel around and do the conferences

113in different places last year it was in Seattle and it was over spring break so I got to go and two years before it was in New Orleans so it regionally travels so it's really nice it's in our region this year it's in the Midwest region um so um as as a guest there as a presenter we did get a couple of our um presentations accepted and is very hard to do because thousands and thousands of nationally recognized health and PE teachers do submit proposals so we we do have three on the dock at me and a team of professionals so we have a couple of presentations to do there um as a national teacher of the year I do get to help lead a few things and network with a lot of other people

114and the National Organization is also finalizing the new um physical education standards and in this District we do the national standards on our report cards and send that home to parents and we have common assessments at elementary level so that's something that will be really really important for me to be in the room to hear the final the final um kind of submissions and where everything's going to be with all the newal that's going to be involved so I would be happy attend to attend those meetings and learn from all the best around the world so I would be really really honored if you would let me go thank so the fisal impact um I already saw yeah I was saw the eyes looking over here um so the fiscal impact really all we're asking

115for is $266 for mileage reimbursement because she um is President right she gets to go um at their cost so that's always good awesome consensus to bring this back yes yes thank you thank you all right the next item is item e cabby conference Billy over with my chair um we bring forward the cab conference as I mentioned I believe it was last last week that we we missed the na conference being stuck by a blizzard from the West Coast so our building principles could not go to that conference so this would be um another opportunity for them to really um expand their knowledge of rolling up our two-way dual language and this is a great conference specifically to help support building principles and what is the knowledge and Foundation that they would need to

116facilitate and Lead uh two a dual language at the middle school level this will be funded by title two title title three excuse me consensus to bring this back yes thank you all right uh item F out of state travel midw management Summit yeah uh one of our system analyst twos Jeremy Hernandez would like to attend the uh mid Midwest management Summit in Minnesota he will be driving to the conference is from May 5th to May 10th uh total cost is $2,600 um and basically covers the management of core portions of the systems in which the district uses on a day-to-day basis so uh good training for for our uh engineer questions are we a Microsoft or a Google District we are both so in the classrooms and core infrastructure rely upon Microsoft Services uh

117services but for our students the platform of choice is Google we are Google reference District questions us to bring this back thank you thanks item G FTE request 1.0 Office Professional uh is presented by Mr Kyle gtis Miss te Alis good evening um I get the uh privilege of being our District's um what is called a youth in care liaison and mcken Veno liaison uh what that basically means is that I'm the district aison for anybody who is considered youth in care which um historically has been referred to as foster care um and students that are in transitional housing um historically has been referred to students that are considered homeless um a big part of that role is to ensure that students have access to education and working to break down any bar barriers that

118they may have to be able to access that such as Transportation uh supplies uh clothing um and miscellaneous really just anything that we can do to help uh for those students and and their family um in the uh board presentation tonight what I included was some information just about how since 2015 our numbers of this is just students in transitional housing have um fluctuated but ultimately grown over that um N9 years year 10e period um of note if you go back to 2015 we had about 100 we had 186 students qualify um as under the mckin vento act that year um what we noticed if you kind of like look Ahad to 2020 which we all know kind of what happened that year um with the pandemic is we saw our numbers actually decrease following

119the pandemic um that's misleading because we actually knew nationally there were more students and families that were um in transitional housing since inperson school um had ceased in a lot lot of districts across the country the ability to identify them find the eligible and give them Services was significantly hindered so then what you've I think seen since 2021 is a rebound and unfortunately a significant increase compared to levels that we've seen in the past um there's a couple reasons for that um I I think there's a lot of variables one we did centralize our registration um which I think is a a huge in a very valuable thing because it allows us to um really anytime a family changes an address or registers in the district it allows us that chain of communication to have

120some conversation should they indicate something that suggests they're in transitional housing um the other couple things that have happened inflation um you know evictions um which were on pause for a long time are now um kind of happening again um we've also seen a lot of you know um students you know uh Missing across the country right we we don't know they were in this District prior to the pandemic and they haven't really popped up in other places well we're seeing students get reintegrated back in the educational system our numbers have gone up so last school year we had 262 students um qualify under the mck vzo act as of I think it was last Thursday when I pulled the number we had 215 already this school year so I think we're on Pace to

121to be around that same Benchmark um I say all this because the the a lot of the work that is done to make all of this happen to ultimately get supports the families really is a lot of clerical support a lot of communication a lot of documentation a lot of um communication to other districts um I have an amazing Administrative Assistant who um helps me do a lot of those things right now in addition to a lot of other things um that she supports our department in um quite frankly our capacity to do the best we can to make sure that things are efficient and available to families um given Horizon numbers is an area that we want to improve on and so what we would like what we're bringing forward today is a request

122for one uh Office Professional three uh which would be in the fedas the fedas uh uh Union group um the role of this individual will be to support youth in care um as well as mcken vento and other um kind of supports that we have to support families and students that are at risk um in doing this it'll make us a more efficient and and kind of capable system when it comes to the number of students and families that we encounter on a um honestly a daily basis that are either new newly eligible or needs something for their child um okay um also within this board document you will see the financial impact um including the hourly rate annual pay and um benefits which is a range um meaning that the employee has a to

123select their benefit package and that's why we show it as a range are there anything questions or anything you want to add any questions us to bring this back yes yes thank you thank you all right um item eight business office restructure right uh so in an effort to get the central uh central office business office more to provide more support towards schools uh be it with their budgets be it with coaching on how their accounts monitoring their accounts monitoring the bank activities we are proposing to do a few uh restructuring in our business office uh one from creating a financial control from a financial controls analyst to Bringing to become a budget manager uh so we have three uh positions that we'd like to update uh so the budget manager will will be a

124coach almost enance uh onet toone services to departments and also school buildings we will provide a higher level of monitoring and more accurate record keeping uh within the schools this will close the distance between the central office Business Services to the school uh offices so uh we uh we we would like to present this to the board uh for an update uh additionally uh a our trans transportation and manager we we didn't have a transportation manager one of our biggest contracts transportation services was run by an office was aaon was a Office Professional we would like just like many other districts to create a transportation manager uh under an unaffiliated group outside of collective bargaining which means that she can uh or whoever is in that position uh can provide a higher level of service

125and manage the contract uh in more more macro and micro level additionally we're also asking for the payroll specialist to be updated as a payroll coordinator um with 1,56 staff payrolls we currently are running uh only two people are doing it one as as a specialist position and the other one as a coordinator we would like them to both be at an equal position to run P rolls independently uh but also with equal capacity we're looking at about uh the salary increase at about 24,000 uh including the benefits it goes at 27403 again this is an update reformatting restructuring of three current positions so these are not actual new positions this is just restructuring to sure that me demands or needs uh but obviously with the new restructured uh requiring a difference of of pay

126to meet obviously the expectations based on correct it will be additional duties it will be additional uh uh the position will be much different than let's say what was current uh what is current we're bringing it as an information right now but uh December 12 as a adoption or approval what do these three people think about the restructuring uh they're definitely happy with for it because we think that we it just gives a more enhanced uh monitoring to with a more support to our schools to our departments it's um they're they're very happy I think that that is something um that it will help us in the long run to uh really close that gap between the central office and the schools uh the buildings and for the transportation manager they will still be handling

127the duties that they were doing before as an Office Professional correct what yes so they will this will be additional duties a bet a better management under one uh under a one position uh which I think will provide a way uh a much more enhanced support specifically the first two positions um the what's currently known as the financial controls analyst but updated to a budget manager that position will provide greater oversight to our current building office professionals they have responsibilities when it comes to paying bills and to making purchases and handling money and we really need to close the gap in some of the errors or some of the practices that are in place so this is to give that person greater oversight to support the buildings the second position um which is currently a

128Office Professional three but then updating to a transportation manager that job has a lot of requirements outside of the work day and that is currently a um a union position so whether it's our students getting on the bus or getting off the bus if they're in idents that happen in the community or on the buses themselves that person has a lot of responsibility and it just doesn't really fit within the realm of the Union position any other questions consensus to bring this back yes thank you all right item I FTE request DHS dean of students um this is an item that was submitted by Mr Montgomery director of teaching and learning and Miss teer house good evening as you know that there have been a lot of new structures and systems put into place by

129our high school to help support our students um one of the most recent changes was to have our guidance counselors as an example roll up with their students so it's a um allows them to have better relationships with the students get to know the families better and we would like to have that also within our Deans currently our Dean ratio is um one Dean per 76 students that's a lot one Dean per 76 students the state average is at one for 545 students that's a lot so that's a lot just that by itself but then also add the many other important leadership roles that our Deans do they are a great conduit for our families they also team with our student services so if we allow them to Loop up with the student services then

130they can really work in tandem with them we're also looking at exploring what other systems and structures can we do to best serve our students and our families um but they also excuse me help support teachers I said our students our families with our student services they also help with building leadership committees and our aaon to District committees such as mtss Cod of hand um code of conduct excuse me our handbook many student programs celebrations eighth grade transitions class advisor support um supervision and many other duties and responsibilities that you would assume under the position for the dean of students So currently right now we have three at the high school correct correct one of them is for freshman sophomore they're by Alpha slice thank you for bringing that up they're currently divided up by

131the well oh excuse excuse me they were by the alphabet that changed too sorry Donna you're good so cohorts so can you come to the mic because they can't hear you at home I just wanted like obviously to Dr lson could we just hear about the impact from Dr Larson and de skills and set since they're on boots on the ground over here Mr scales put right on the spot um no So currently we have a freshman Dean sophomore Dean Junior Dean and then our the yep seniors is an alha slice so two deans are covering just the processing pieces of the referrals um and then the one the third Dean um is covering the student data piece so still they meet as a PLC or try to at least once a week to go

132over the referrals the up like the updates with the referrals so that the dean that specifically is working with the student services teams our psych our counselors and social workers that they're all up to speed in tandem like like trying to um come up with a common time to meet to let the team know to support the student and identify plans that way so we have processing between the two of them and then as well as the support team on how they're supporting that so then assuming obviously that this was to be improved that this will cover your your obviously your fourth year students So that obviously there's a group of or an implementation of one thing per school year in rotation correct y so I'm I'm gonna be quite honest here um obviously we

133have nearly 2,000 students if not at least 2,000 students at the high school with one individual um you know to be able to support our students it has the changes that have been made at the high school over the course of the last year have really mitigated a lot of things there the Deans are now in in the areas where students are there's a lot of other things that are being mitigated we want to continue to do that as you can tell from the report that was shared uh in order for us to do our due diligence and support children where they are and keep them from getting involved in other things that aren't academic or aren't u in part of what high school means we need to be able to provide them with that

134service and support that the Deans and counselors and other individuals will be supporting them so um to I wholeheartedly ask that the board support um the support that is needed at the high school for the any questions I have a question that's not necessarily related but I see here on the information we have one Dean at Clinton rosette middle school but do we not have any at Huntley is that accurate that is accurate that's correct okay that's correct they have two assistant principles and I know that uh in our last visit that uh Chris and I had a Huntley I know that Dr uh sha had mentioned that obviously that some conversation about that um and I did uh bring it to Dr uh mon gcia Sanchez uh to as a obviously as a topic

135of conversation just so you are aware um so there was obviously some recommendations that she brought forth that I will be bringing to you as well so so conversations have had have been had previously with with h with Huntley and we will continue to have those conversations as a as a plan is developed and rolled out and then we will ensure that uh Huntley is supporting is just as um importantly they do have a large population at the middle school and we understand that their additional supports need to be there we just want to make sure that we have a good plan and place to to ensure that it'll work and so of understanding the C correctly so it's like I come in my freshman year scales is my Dean will I have him until

136I graduate or am I passed off to a Dean every okay that's the intentions is to move forward in a cold and that's normally I know that that's my that that's how the cohort model also runs right now in the for the counselors for example like they are rotation and obviously like you all explained it's definitely a way a great way to build relationships and obviously create that that be int being intentional um in collaboration with obviously your psychologist counselor and your D okay thank you any other questions would this be for the next school year or would they start in the spring semester what's the goal we would hope to post this if the board chooses to move it forward for a vote at the next meeting that we would post it as soon

137as possible okay obviously we would wait until we have an absolute highly qualified individual that's a good fit at looking just to fill to fill yeah are they going to be sharing offices or is there room over there there's room over there Dr Larson you don't office right I would love to turn my office into account room it already is it already is yeah no we will we will have the space any other questions questions no consensus to bring this back yes thank you thank you right J uh FTE request additional 1.0 unaffiliated request uh registered nurse uh Mr uh calgar and M I'm the Silent Partner silent partner good evening again um uh our health offices are staffed with various levels of support um our certified School nurses hold Appel and are um supportive

138of the Whole Health office but really focus in on um evaluations for special education 504 case management and direct service to students that require specialized instruction um our health assistants are really intrical in that first aid response um as well as a lot of data entry uh first aid reporting and logging of student visits in the health office then we have a group of registered nurses and our registered nurses are a little bit of a jack of all trades so they can provide the first aid care but they can also they also have the training in um experience to be able to provide more medical procedures such as um Diabetes Care G tube feedings um some of those more complex um medical medically fragile needs that our students have our registered nurses are are really

139the support for them um it's for a number of years our district has really struggled to fill all of our openings but primarily it's been at that certified school nurse level however what we've seen over the last couple of years is Although our staffing levels have have really gotten to a point where we want them to be um where we have challenges is when we have absences and um I tried to lay out um over the last couple of school years the number of absences that we've had and really what I want to highlight is that can be for a lot of reasons it could be you know um illness it could be a family illness it could be short-term leave could be long-term leave um there's a lot of different reasons why we are

140seeing a high number of absences unfortunately there's not a big pool of registered nurses that are filling um those openings so what that causes us to do is to figure out coverage plans kind of on the spot to make sure that all of the needs are met not only for the building but for the students in those buildings that have specific medical needs we that that is a system that is Hit or Miss I'll be honest with you because if we aren't we have too many absences it's very hard to provide that coverage one way that we think that we can help address this is by hiring one additional registered nurse this registered nurse um will be assigned to various buildings as staffing needs arise so they could be in multiple buildings in one day

141to provide coverage they could be placed at a building for more long-term leave coverages um in the event that we don't have any absences this would be some somebody who would be able to assist with training and support um within our health offices um so it is um as opposed to you know bringing in a sub for a day having this person be on staff for the whole year participate in professional Learning Community communities with our staff and have the flexibility to fill in as needed um would really provide us better um not only coverage but um to be honest with you a better level level of comfort when it comes to making sure that our kids have access to the right level of training uh training professional um during those unexpected times um which

142unfortunately are happening a little bit more um frequently than we would like so um what we would like to propose is that um the board consider adding one additional registered nurse FTE for the remainder of the 23 24 school year our goal is that that's going to help us um eliminate those days where we have no coverage or very minimal coverage in health offices if we see that it's an effective effective strategy then we would come back and we would ask ask for the support for the next school year um but we want to make sure that this is the solution to what we think our um our our issue is right now um and therefore we're really looking at for the remainder of this school year to start and then we'll let the data

143drive if we think it's a a need moving forward any questions I guess a bigger concern I have looking at these absence numbers throwing another staff member is not going to change that I mean we can talk about the high school just on Friday as an example that 40 people decid they don't want to come to work on Friday like adding a whole another person to the fry isn't going to I guess help this kind of situation we already have at these numbers two people per building I we could add staff members all day long because well somebody might need a sub at any time yeah and I think what I I'd feel comfortable sharing with that is you we have had some conversation dialogue and and like I said kind of to start there's

144a lot of reasons why we have our absences and so what I want to be careful of is um I don't want to paint the picture that people just aren't coming to work because they don't want to come to work and I I don't think you're saying that either um but what we're seeing is it's a multi-layered reason of why we keep running in these absences and when we have an absence in one building that requires a registered nurse we pull from another building to bring that person over which leaves a gap over here when we have two absences and we're pulling from um possibly two buildings so it really is for us um it really does seem to be a layer of protection that gives us the coverage that we would need in the

145event that our absences um are impactful to day-to-day operations excuse me so again the goal then is um to assess to possibly like for just this remainder of the year and then assuming that if well obviously at the end of the school year assess whether or not the the position is needed full-time or or at that point whether or not we need to not renew for the following year correct yeah and the person that will get hired for that position would be made aware of that correct okay that it's an end of the year position okay just through the rest of the school year any questions now consensus to bring this back yes thank you all right uh item K CS uh es contract for speech and language evaluations all right um we currently have

146a contract or service agreement with the center for special education services otherwise known as CS we um the board did approve a contract in early September the point of that contract was to address our site shortage and so what CSS can provide is some um clinicians that are able to come in and provide um evaluations uh for students and then they provide that information to the teams to share out and ultimately it's our staff that provides Services um as the board is well aware we have really struggled with our speech and language Pathologists and filling our current openings so we started the year with a deficit um meaning that we didn't have all of our positions filled we still don't have all of our positions filled but we have made some improvements in that way

147with teletherapy um school code requires districts in Illinois to consider two things one slp's case load can never exceed 60 students the other one is that districts must have a workload model that also IM um is it's kind of that mechanism to figure out what an adequate workload for our CSN is or um sorry for our speech paths are um taking those two factors in mind one of the things we we really can't do right now is lower case loads because we can't hire the SLP what we're seeing is the workload numbers are continuing to rise as they normally do during the year as new evaluations come in as more meetings happen is more students qualify so what this um request would allow ow us to do is to have the flexibility to pull off

148evaluations for some of our uh slps that have the highest case loads they would still be attending meetings they would still be case managing they would still be providing direct service to students however the time that they would take um in in half the schedule for the evaluation component um we can help alleviate that which would drive down that workload number um I think this is a really important thing um and if you have the chance to talk to some of our speech pass ever um you know one of the concerns I have is burnout and we know in certain short staff and we ask them to do more with less um they're all on board with helping out but over time we know that's not sustainable um and so what this is going to

149allow us to do is to kind of take a little bit off the plate of some of our um slps with the highest workloads we are still going to work to try and fill our open positions because ultimately I think that's where we're going to feel the most relief um but this will allow us to to to help um they what we're asking for are 50 monolingual evaluations and 20 bilingual evaluations um there it has costed out in the U board doc 70,000 for the monolingual and 34,000 for the bilingual um the we do have the flexibility within this that say we don't need 70 evaluations this year which I'm pretty confident we will um that we can roll those over into the next school year um and so uh with that I would recommend

150that the board consider um approving this and we do have it um info in action as the um workload numbers are at a point right now where we'd like to implement this as soon as possible and with that all opening up to questions so is the Hope go is the goal then um Kyle that if we hired a speech language pathologist that this will help um like that they will cover these things or is it like in placement of this or as we cover that position like what is the goal so the goal is basically to try and pull off some of the work in terms of special ed evaluations that our speech paths who we currently have on staff not contracted but our our staff um that way it reduces their workload so it's

151a more manageable Cas case yeah okay um so then if we were to get lucky and blessed to hire language pathologist in the next for the remainder of the year then these these uh or this obligation will still stand with this company Excuse me yes the obligation still stands however um we would have the ability and hopefully yeah hopefully we're okay next year um but we know there's a national shortage so I think yeah it would be a good safety M it for us okay all right any other questions no questions consensus to bring this back vote wait this is an action information action item you're letter K right we've been sitting here for hours we're getting there all right this is an information action item all right it is recommended that the Board of

152Education approve the service agreement with csps is is there a motion so Mo second roll call Andre Paul yes Steve buers yes Christopher boys yes D Mir yes yes thank you all right just bear with us we're almost at all right item help FTE request and update technology department hourly it support specialist proposal all right so I'm bringing you a phenomenal student centered opportunity um so we currently have four hourly it support Specialists and their day today is basically Logistics with Chromebooks on a day-to-day basis a break fix shipping receiving that sort of logistics um between the uh summer hours as well as you know the holiday breaks where they can work additional hours we are capping out almost all of our students at those 600 hours in which we are uh basically saying you

153can work beyond that Beyond working those 600 hours they then do qualify for benefits which is why they have been stuck at 600 hours so we have phenomenal employees who are working for us doing Logistics we would like to able to offer them something more than just being able to do Logistics but also exposing them to it careers um but in order to do that we do need to expand the number of it support Specialists we are looking to expand it by two additional it support Specialists I would also like to be able to offer them additional hours by doubling the hours to 1,200 and doing that that does allow them to qualify for things like imrf which is a pension um and potentially uh they could also allot to take other benefits with the

154district as well if if it aligns now again these are high school students potentially college students um if they've kind of gone through our program and are working or attending school locally that they can come back uh and continue working for us as well so this is to also expand the pipeline for the department so this is traditionally how the majority of the staff within the district and the it Department have become um our full-time FTE including me and Sebastian um so the pipeline Works um and we're just looking for a better way to kind of expand it bring more students in expose them to it careers um there is a shortage that is occurring especially in cyber security and AI skill sets that we can expose those students to um Beyond just doing break

155fix Logistics and things like that so uh that is the proposal um there is a cost associated with it um but I I think it's a win-win when for the district for our students and uh for the Department I go ahead I understand the adding two new positions I'm not understanding why we want to make those all benefit eligible positions if these are college students and high school students so what happened with the Affordable Care Act is it limited positions to that were 600 hours or less that we don't have to offer benefits because we want to increase the number of hours it would make the position qualify for benefits however the caliber of um individuals that we're hiring our students whether they're our high school students or college students um they may or may

156not take the benefits probably a strong may not but because we are increasing it asking to increase it Beyond 600 hours we have to have the opportunity to extend benefits to them so I guess why not just add four positions and then those four would then make up 2400 hours in total versus yeah because there's there's still only so many FTE within the IT department to oversee so if we start expanding it too much then you start to dute the number of people who can actually you know expose the students like cyber security AI because those are very much kind of one-on-one conversations at times especially if you're going to have them doing anything in an Enterprise level you're going to want complete oversight of what uh we're clicking on and and taking a look

157at um so that's that's kind of why this is more of a a slow grow um we've been at four for man it's got to be close to a decade um so student population has has grown our FTE population has has also grown with the district um and we're also looking to also uh expand the devices that are going to be offered to things like student teachers uh to Subs to uh more staff who are who are coming into the district so that everybody's functioning off the same platform on the same devices and get a little more Synergy to the whole platform and the cost associated with the benefits it's if elected um so we have a a fin a fiscal responsibility to cost that out with not a great expectation that a significant number

158of those those six would take would what benefits but if they do there is a cost okay thank you currently are they tapping into the service the the benefits right now no say that again are they like tapping into the service we don't offer it we don't even extend it because 600 hours you did explain that I apologize D thank you all right do we have any other questions no cons us to bring this back yes than thank you thank you all right almost at the end um item M DHS student council overnight fil trip I will keep that short and sweet okay so our theal student council they are members of the North Central District uh a part of the Illinois ass Association of student councils so we are hosting or not we are

159the NCD is hosting an overnight in bar Wisconsin so this is an overnight uh field trip request March 1st to the 2D so it's just an overnight 10 to 13 students will be attending the cost is 160 per student um each student will be paying $45 and then student council will be covering the rest there's two the two advisers are also attending so permission to attend any questions questions no questions no questions consensus to bring this back yes thank you all right differential committee um meeting minutes this is an information item brought To Us by Miss e Alis so differential committee met um for the dcta contract differentials are provision there um anyone within the district that wants to recommend a club or activity has opportunity to do so at various times throughout the year

160for the contract we're required to meet at least two times a year as a committee to review those submissions and then um make recommendations to the board we did have a number of recommendations that came we reviewed them and they're basically um the n a significant number of them are based on student safety so when we look at our Sports and athletic teams we have some girl teams and some boy teams and then we even have teams that have mixed gender when that is the case we have to be cognizant of the the coaching and supervision respons responsibilities to ensure there's enough oversight for the students because we are having more numbers of students come out to participate in different um comp or different sports and athletic opportunities that has increased the need for more

161individuals for supervision so that is the reason for some of the recommendations in addition to that we have differentials that may be um that they run um as a test so to speak for a period of time and then a recommendation comes back to the committee that it has proven to be successful it has significant student involvement and based on that they are asking to make it a paid differential position so attached are the uh differentials the overall costs we are um calculated out to be about $32,000 based on those um each one of the submitted entries and the total cost questions I can answer any questions consensus cons consensus to bring this back yes yes thank you all right um the ISP Illinois needs assessment air contract this is uh this was submitted by

162Dr trab Shaw and Mr Montgomery upon release of the new designations from ISB the contracted services that we are required to have with this it'll be paid out of Title One why we put it in before we had the contract is it's mandatory that we do it it will be paid out of the title One funds that Huntley Middle School receives um we just got the survey yesterday this this morning maybe it was this morning it's been a long day to fill out we filled it out so we should be getting the contract soon but we needed this approved so we can move forward with it okay any questions cons this is bring this back yes thank you all right uh item P 20242 25 Academic School calendar so this is an annual agenda item

163that we bring forward uh through the dcta contract there is a professional Relations Committee that committee um works with the salary credits for our dcta members that pursue additional credits and education and also the school calendar so we work collaboratively to build a calendar for the upcoming school year that is inclusive of um all of the requirements for our students teaching and learning opportunities as well as professional development for our staff um taking in consideration a number of other things like the state now has reinstated the election day as a holiday and keeping in mind other holidays and celebrations and things of that nature we have built a calendar and brought it forward for the 20425 school year um based upon that we're asking for the board to approve that it's for information information item

164yes sorry any questions no questions canus to bring this back yes thank you all right item Q IP uh press uh plus issue release one uh 113 first reading that's me that is I'm almost done so this isn't the final thing it's getting closer um I will say this uh so this is our usual read first round I'm sorry thank you thank you thank you uh it's um it's our first read so you the board gets two rounds of reading all of the new uh the laws any that has been changed any policies that have been changed so you have an opportunity to read it the first time next time we'll come back with the next meeting and I will ask if there are any questions or if a second read is necessary if a

165second read is necessary we will allow for another time and then in January uh we will come back for a vote to accept the new Poli policies into our policy handbook it's important as you know to read through and make sure that the policies that are being provided to us actually meet and uh align to our vision our mission and then the priorities that we are set forth in the district there have been times in the past where we may have to make um some adaptations based on the verbage that is provided to us so please note that it doesn't have to be exactly as is and we don't have to accept all of them but I do need to make sure that when we vote that it's clear amongst all of us to accept

166them as they you know as um we see are needed here in the district okay we use press plus across like many many most of districts across the state of Illinois to um to help uh guide us uh in our policies okay so this is a you have attachments so you have your first reading thank you thank you any questions no all right can s sister bring this back yes thank you all right and then now we are my now it's last portion which is the superintendent report yeah all right make it easy first and foremost I would like to take a moment of silence yesterday we were notified of the loss of a student in our district and as as sad as that is um I want you to know that it's um that

167it's hard as a parent to lose a child and we um want to be able to support the family in every way possible and support the staff that knew the child and the students that became friends with that child I want to uh thank the crisis team led by thiser and by Kyle gurus um that supported the high school in many ways um the child has also attended at Huntley and we reached out and provided Services as needed at Hunley U that student was with us for a long period of his time um across Malta we were at Tyler eventually at Huntley and then at the high school you know we sent out a letter and I wanted to make sure that everybody here and everywhere else understands that we are trying to be as

168Vigilant as possible that you should also try to be as vigal as possible I'm not trying to tell you how to run your household but just be mindful and if you need help if you need support there are services that we can provide and at least guide you to the location of providing support services to you and your family if you need them or if the student needs them losing a student losing a child is very difficult for everyone and I just want to make sure that um we've taken the time to consider what that looks like and feels like and give our sympathies and our condolences to the family and to the friends and and the staff that work with that child um over the last years thank you um having said that I'd

169like to be able to um mention that the Illinois Association of school boards annually recognizes tomorrow November 15th as school board members day this year's theme is learn together and Lead together which is exactly what it takes to keep moving our district forward on behalf of our students I'd like to take this opportunity to specially thank our board members president Daisy Ramirez Vice President Steve buers secretary Ariel Owens members Christopher boys Vante B Amanda harness is not with us today and Andre Powell along with our student board representative Jenna Jenna Zimmerman who had the lead because she had to go do homework for their service thank you so very much for everything you even though you are elected you are volunteers who devote a tremendous amount of time and effort as our Frontline advocates for

170providing a vision for the district and a pathway to success for our students as we learned together we lead together and together we are making a difference I'm grateful for your service and partnership thank you all very much thank you so having said that I'm gonna turn it over to Tammy for her final update on grounds I hope hopefully a better update just a short update uh the third structural engineer that I spoke of at the last meeting did finally come out last week after some more nudging to get it scheduled he said he would have his report in 10 days so I'll be following up with that on the 10th or 11th day to make sure we get it the goal will be that based on that report we have the final decision from

171the insurance company in regards to what they are willing to cover and regards to their repair or replacement and I'll be back in front of you in December at the board meeting to provide that information as well as it all goes well to also present the uh uh request to approve the bids for the grounds building bid that has been put on hold pending the decision on the insurance I'm coming thank you thanks I apologize I neglected to thank the administration and the DS and counselors over at the high school who did a aming job continue for and I'm GNA say like Dy said with that said we're going to I'm I'm done with my part and I'm going to transition all with that said um let me turn my mic with that said the

172meeting uh it is now 9:35 and the meeting will adjourn I just recommended that the Board of Education will adjourn is there motion all in favor who second going back to close session did we need to discuss that other stuff or discuss everything we discussed it in P everything that we discuss we're moving with what oh no I just didn't know if this was discuss no just sent an email with an update with that uh with updated with everything that we discussed in the meeting and then they did provide us with those folders for us to provide to all of you if you have any questions you can always send them to us all right it is now officially 9:36 and with that um the meeting will adjourn um it is recommended that the Board

173of Education will adjourn is there a motion all in favor i i i y okay thank you thank you everyone