DeKalb CUSD 428 Board Meeting 6/6/2023

001regular meeting and start with a roll call please Sandra harness here Samantha McDavid present Steve Byers president Ariel Owens present Christopher boys president Stacy Ramirez president uh Welcome to our first regular board meeting in our newly renovated uh Board Room unfortunately due to some unfortunate circumstances we had to renovate this building so you all benefit and hopefully at home you can hear better I'd love to get an email if you can um we are going to start first with public comments 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 three minutes and criticism of individuals is not in order do we have

002any public comments tonight next is board correspondence is there anything that anyone would like to share 10 video meetings this is our last board meeting I attended CEI meeting I also attended a differential meeting fourth grade great work has been done there and look forward to hopefully seeing more of that work come forward to the board anyone else I attended field day at Lincoln oh I bet that was wonderful thank you okay then we will move on to subject C the energy star certification um Administration do you want me to read this Tammy or would you like to read okay Administration is excited to share that DeKalb High School Clinton rosette Middle School in Cortland Elementary School have earned the U.S Environmental Protection agency's energy star certification for Superior Energy Efficiency this recognition is awarded

003to buildings that outperform 75 percent of similar buildings Nationwide this recognition represents the diligent work of our staff to save money and reduce operating costs through industry best practices and careful attention to energy performance each month the energy star certification is the only energy operating costs I'm sorry Energy Efficiency certification that is based on actual verified energy performance Studies have shown that energy STAR certified buildings have lower operating costs and increased asset value are more marketable and command higher rental rates contribute fewer greenhouse gas emissions to the environment by earning this certification the district is publicly showcasing our commitment to environmental responsibility and demonstrating that the district is doing our part to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and preserve Public Health today and for future Generations Administration will be pursuing certifications at our other buildings and

004will share the information of other energy star certifications are received thank you [Applause] next we have presentations with the first one being the state of the district end of year data and this is being presented tonight by Miss Parker I'm on a miss a Monaco net Parker and Miss Jessica Nall before we start welcome to the new board members I know Monica has had a chance to meet you I haven't I'm Jessica null I'm the coordinator of Assessments and we're both very glad to be here and we also are fairly informal people despite the way we're dressed this evening so if you have questions as we go the data presentation always has many slides and I tend to talk very quickly so if there are questions in the moment I think we'd both much rather

005answer them and then we can Circle back if we need to but please feel free to ask questions as they come up okay all right so this will be close to each of each school year uh we do this so this is end of year you'll see it for the next four years it's time for us to reflect on what has worked and of course what hasn't worked the contents of this presentation um which is also available for public review is um it will serve as an underpending as we continue to try to find solutions to issues and as we Implement different strategies for our district growth okay so you can come out I'll go okay sounds good this will be the same format for anyone who saw it in the winter um it seemed

006like it was a good way to present the information that we have in a way that's easy to digest and understand so hopefully you feel like that's the case if not going forward we're always happy to make adjustments that things are more easily understood for a wide variety of audiences there might be green we start with our suspension data for this school year so it was a suggestion from the strategic planning committee to present things in this way how many of our students have been suspended this year either in school or out of school versus how many of our students have not been suspended at all this year so as you can see 92 percent of our elementary school students were not suspended at all this year 76 percent of our middle school students and

00775 of our high school students and then with a lot of this data the next slide Compares it to last school year so during the last school year the numbers were slightly lower in terms of the numbers of students and the percentages of students who were suspended and again that's any type of suspension in school or out this presents information on the type of suspension so whether students were suspended out of school or in school only one thing that's interesting is if we look at our elementary school data most of those suspensions are out of school that's not necessarily because of the severity of the infraction although certainly that's that can't be the case but because there is no physical space in most elementary school buildings where an in-school suspension makes any sense so in

008case that data is confusing that's a little bit of an explanation and this is last year for one thing you can see if you look between the two years is that we're working hard to keep students in the building where we have some measure of control over how they're spending their time even if they're not able to be in class because of behaviors or other things that we can still provide them with instructional materials and have staff available to answer questions and things like that so that's certainly I would say that's an improvement if we're going to have students not in class at least they're under our roof so we can hopefully keep moving them forward this is our student suspension data compared to our district demographics so the percentage of students who were suspended

009that falls into each demographic category is in blue and the percentage of the population that that student group makes up is in red what you would expect to see if our suspensions were distributed evenly across all students is that the red and blue would be parallel to one another and what you see in this is obviously that's not the case for us with African-American students over represented in our group of students who have been suspended at least one time um and you can read the rest of it with white students underrepresented in the percentage of students that have been suspended at least one time and this is Trend data this is data that we have seen um for a number of years so if we go to the next slide this is last year's data

010it does look like it's getting slightly the Gap is narrowing slightly we sell a very long way to go this is our attendance data our district average is um seven percent and then each School building is represented I don't think it's really surprising that at the bookends we have lower attendance rates as students have a bit more autonomy when they're in high school whether they show up or are not able to at the Early Learning set at the eldc young kids get sick kind of a lot attendance data and this is by grade so again the same type of breakdown where you see Elementary School students really helping us with that average and our assessment data which will start with map growth which is the benchmarking assessment we give three times a year to all

011students this year as a reminder we started giving this assessment to our first grade students and next year we'll be giving this assessment for kindergarten through eighth grade so we'll have a really good look at longitudinal data K-8 using our map test for benchmarking this is the growth data from last spring so last year at this time to this year at this time map gives every student that takes these tests a goal that they think they can reach over the course of a year it is different by students so it doesn't expect that every student will grow 10 points necessarily it expects that every student will grow the amount that a student who has demonstrated their level of mastering is likely to grow so the percentages in Orange are the the percentage of students who

012met that goal Not That Grew an arbitrary amount but that met the goal that Matt said they would grow one thing that's interesting about this is in order to have a growth score you have to have been tested and DeKalb last spring and this spring so this would only be our group of students that have been into Cal for at least four of those testing periods the black percentiles is the national growth percentile which I really like because as we said last time we did this presentation the Orange is just like an on or off switch you either met the goal that map said you are likely to meet or you did not the black actually measures the amount that students grew so even if you came right up close to that line but didn't

013quite cross it your growth still gets counted whereas for the orange percentiles it doesn't that makes sense so this is our math growth information the reason it starts in grade three is because our second graders did not take it last year as first graders next year we'll have more information and this is our reading growth so again number of students who have met their growth and the national growth percentile then if we look at just how students did on the map Reading in English assessment this is how our students in grades one through five did district-wide can I ask a question on the previous slide at the map growth reading so on the map one it makes sense to me why most of the black bars are higher than the orange bars because some more

014students made some growth even if they didn't make their um like projected growth goal but on the reading it's kind of reversed by what does that does that indicate anything am I like trying to find something where there's nothing it is it does look strange right but if you think about what goes into the orange one any student who was right above the line would count but perhaps there were far more students whose needs in Reading were not met necessarily so they weren't making progress or they were demonstrating negative progress so if you have a bunch of students who don't get any taller at all the fact that some kids get taller by the amount you would expect is outweighed by the fact that these students aren't getting taller okay does that make sense I

015think so yeah it is confusing data which is why we're happy to answer any questions as we go but it's something that we want to make sure we're keeping track of and the orange and black I think are both super important because we do want every student to be able to to grow a ton especially as much as Maps as they're able to grow so we would like that number to be very high but we also want to make sure we're looking at the black numbers because if the students did came close but didn't quite make it or if they grew a whole bunch we want to measure that which the percentiles in Black do okay I guess to piggyback off of her question um just looking at these whether you're looking at the black

016bar or the orange bar for the majority of these the larger percentage of our students are not hitting these goals based on what I'm looking at if I'm interpreting this correctly I think probably what you want to look at to answer that question is actually these charts that are coming which will have the red yellow green and blue boxes for the next for many more slides to come and that'll show you if you took the test and didn't consider growth where did students fall and these are the ones that we consider when we're saying okay what are we doing to make sure that these students are getting where we want them to be because we do not believe as a district that increasing map scores is the goal of public education we don't but we

017also know that if this is our benchmarking assessment it is giving us some measure of where students are and where we want them to be we would like every student to be in the green and blue that is an additional question from my end on that so when I was in Middle School that's kind of when Matt started to First really get rolled out how seriously is map I guess taken nowadays because I know when I was in Middle School it was I'm gonna click buttons because I get to go hang out in the library with my friends for the next 45 minutes of this testing period if I finish it ahead of time I think that's a that's an objective question it depends on who who the child is I do know that our

018principals have done a phenomenal job of making the test more relevant especially at certain grade levels seventh and 8th graders they know that um their spring to Spring Grove may be an indicator of what classes will be chosen for them because they can wrap their mind around that concept for others um students it may just be giving us information there are features now that are what was not available um then that if a student does just click click click click click it stops them it alerts the facilitator and we do have an opportunity for students to retake it if that's the case so they get recognized as they're fully and the answer is too fast basically absolutely you could possibly read that right questions yeah and I will say one of the things we found

019is that it is hardest in the spring to necessarily believe that that's reflective of students ability because we wonder if effort dips in the spring when it's nice outside so one of the things you'll see is for growth it is a spring to Spring measure so it's an assumption but it's probably a good one that students are distracted or dipping in their effort as much from one spring as they are to the next does that make sense yeah reality too is that standardized testing do not define success all across a lot of it is determined about you know by district and obviously by how we determine success to be right standardized and I think we've had this conversation in a number of formats but it would be wonderful if we focus more on qualitative data

020it 'd be wonderful if we had a better picture and a fuller picture of all students we're working toward common summative assessments so we can speak to some of that with things that are um that come naturally from our curriculum instead of tests that are aligned to the common core but are apart from our curriculum however we always want to keep in mind that the state of Illinois is ultimately judging us based on standardized tests and that there is a a very good correlation between iar results and map results and again I think it's it's a fine line right we philosophically would love to Simply have a portfolio of information about every student that we can use to help them figure out how to get where they want to be in life this is one

021of the tools that we have that can allow us to find out things about all students at the same time you know we're we're on the same page on that for sure so this is I think the information that you're looking for about how the students are actually doing that related to growth but just how they do on the test again everyone being in green and blue is um unrealistic that's sort of like the old Lake Wobegon all the children are above average is not actually mathematically possible we would certainly like to see a distribution that looked more like half of our students were in the green and blue and we are working hard to figure out how we can change our tier one programming to make that a more realistic goal map Reading percentile

022groups here are the map Reading percentile groups over the last 16 periods fairly stable here are the map Reading percentile groups broken down by grade and the map Reading percentile groups broken down demographically and by students who qualify for a free and reduced lunch and those who don't if we look at map reading in Spanish I will probably do more explaining because this is our data District wide it grades one through five this test in Spanish reading is only taken by students who are in our dual language programs so either one-way dual language or two-way dual language and this year it was taken in first grade for the first time so first and second grade students who took this test to see how well they read in Spanish have been in our dual language program

023for you know less than two years or less than three years and they may be students who speak English at home so one of the reasons that the data looks the way it does is these students are emergent bilinguals who are learning to be literate in both languages but we would expect that that they aren't necessarily in four equal quadrants in the blue green yellow and red and the same breakdown reading percentile groups over time and again to my point you can see in Fall of 22 that's when we started testing first graders so that's when we started testing students who had not had nearly as much Spanish instruction and may not speak Spanish at home um and this is by grade level maybe I'm strange if I find less encouraging that it's it's a

024place where we don't see that our students who are not low income um are at a significant advantage these are our fast Bridge early reading assessments so that our kindergarten data is represented as a reminder we won't have this going forward as a benchmarking data piece because we're moving to map and again there I think there are benefits and drawbacks to every benchmarking system but moving to map means we'll be able to have that growth percentage that growth marker for students at a much younger age and again not that we want getting used to a test to be a goal of education but we feel like we'll have more accurate data in first grade if we're giving map in kindergarten so we may be able to better pinpoint what can we do to help move

025these scores and get these children to where we want them to be so um this is how our kindergarten students did on letter names this spring percentile groups this is District wide for letter sounds letter sounds in Spanish for our two-way dual language kindergartners and now we've got math assessments from it so math percentile groups grades one through five district-wide grades one through five and two through five over the last six testing periods again that would be grades two through five for last school year in grades one through five this school year by grade level by demographics I'm not going fast to um prevent you from asking questions simply because there are many slides so please feel free to stop me or um at any point and again this is our math percentile groups but

026by income level she obviously is a stark difference this is our fast Bridge early math data so again if the kindergarten measure that will that we are sun setting to move to map for kindergarten this is number sequencing number identification so those are our two math measures for kindergarten so when we're looking at kindergarten data yes I mean that's I guess this is the spring so this is showing what they knew at the end of the year um it doesn't necessarily give us I know we have other ways to look at what they're kind of coming in knowing but it really gives us then an idea of where we need to like how much acceleration or where we need to provide supports smooth because this would be indicative then that next year they're going to

027be less ready to start reading potentially or to start doing more complex math depending on where they sell you yeah yes I will say especially for our elementary school students and especially for our younger Elementary School students we have profile sheets that the teachers spend a lot of time filling out that does provide the qualitative data that I think especially if you're looking at a kindergartner I feel like that is incredibly useful and I'm so appreciative to our teachers that they take the time to fill out this document about every single kid because you know how kindergartners are as a mom right on one day they might know all of their letters in 25 seconds and on one day they are so I mean I get it at home with my second grader it's a

028very different and and we're giving them a test they may be taking in one shot one shot it's one snapshot so I don't ever want to hand wave any data or explain it away I do feel like moving to math will give us a little bit of a better idea because it's not simply um how many numbers can you identify it's literally like point to the numbers and tell me what number this is this says that could be dull um but again I think those teacher profile sheets especially at the elementary level to me that's that's super valuable and the profile I didn't realize that we did that but that's um I think encouraging especially in kindergarten where playbase does more appropriate more developmentally appropriate you need that qualitative data to really students are at

029yes I think it's great at our elementary schools especially because with with the number of students that a teacher has they can really provide a comprehensive by Spring a comprehensive portrait of that student as a learner and then they can walk down the hall and hand it to the first grade teacher and say you're going to love this child and here's why and here's what worked best with them and we know that that happens in all of our elementary buildings it's a lot harder to rely on that kind of information when you're talking about secondary teachers that have five or six classes but we we do we are very happy that we can provide hard data and Soft Data at the elementary level to have every teacher be as prepared as possible to greet the

030kids that are coming to them provided they came from within the same school or I guess just with the same district we do side of the two buildings we do um okay so this is our sixth to eighth grade um same information same benchmarking assessments you saw from one to five but this moves on to our second big schools um so map Reading percentile groups grades six through eight over the last six testing periods broken down by grade level demographically and then low income and not low income here we have met breeding in Spanish these would be students who are only a part of our one-way dual language program because two-way dual language has not yet rolled up to our Middle School I have one more question um like on slide 43 or I think

031there was another one in the reading when you see so that's encouraging that by eighth grade the red is getting a little smaller incrementally slightly right am I or am I just looking for something positive or is it like is that encouraging to see over time from sixth to seventh grade to our students I know it's not the same cohort of children but if you're asking for something to be optimistic about yeah um yes I would say what another thing that to be optimistic about though is when you look at that data and again perhaps I'm particularly sensitive to this because my student my children are this year we're in fifth grade and third grade and second grade so when covet hit they were in preschool kindergarten and second grade right so one of the

032things we know is if you were not yet reading when kovid hit yeah yeah and you're supposed to be learning phonics and other fundamental building blocks of reading through the computer screen there's a reason we don't teach kindergarten on the computer screen it is very difficult right so um I'm super proud of our teaching and learning team who that has said what we need to do is rethink a lot of the ways that we're doing literacy so that we can have even better scores when kids are younger right are getting to Middle School um I'm optimistic about the effort and the changes that are being made is what I'm optimistic about it's difficult for me to say that yes the eighth grade looks better but it because it's not the same cohort of kids I

033don't want to I understand okay but not necessarily comparable that way no I mean not in this case because obviously a lot of the fundamentals for this cohort of students that are representing the sixth through eight they received them that was prior to covet versus the children earlier where the data that we were looking for the K through or the first through fifth those are the children that have been affected by the not having that initial contact or the first two fundamental years of Elementary School exactly I mean I think my kid didn't know that the person that was in front of her could see her right like it took a while to be like oh yeah I'm not on a screen anymore Charlie if you're watching this I apologize I think the littler you

034were the more of an adjustment it was to come back back to school into doing you know that is not hard data that is my own personal experience but again I I think we have plenty of things to be optimistic about and play based is a huge part of that and the shifts that we're making in elementary literacy is a huge part of that um it's going to take a while before our data looks the way we want it to but everyone is focused on it we're having discussions around the data constantly we are not hiding it we are bringing it to the district and saying here's what here's what we are planning to do to make this look better so that all of the charts regardless of how it's broken down demographically regardless of

035how it's broken down by your parents income level every child demonstrates that they have the skills to build whatever future they want for themselves right that's what I'm optimizing about that that's our Focus that's your focus as a board and that's our Focus as a team right you know across this District um that isn't that is not the part that helps me sleep better at night but if it works for you no I want to hear okay we're not hiding the hardbacks yeah um our community our families to see all of these numbers and the data to know where we're starting from really because every school system in America is restarting we have restarted so we have nowhere but up to go from here we're doing some amazing things but we do expect for data

036to look better and I appreciate all the information that you are you know that you are providing in regards to the support right that our elementary educators are you know actively working on to obviously you know support the children and you know some of the challenges that they're experiencing because of those years but I think it is important to note them because I think you know from an outsider perspective if you're not really understanding the data you know you may think like hey that this trick is a mess well sometimes we can't forget that covert is still a thing right and it's still very present and very real to how it affected our children and the aftermath right of of how that's going to look when it comes to their educational success you know in

037the upcoming years right not right during covet but really post um whatever that looks like for people right and it is important to note that um so I appreciate you sharing that and for numbers people it is also important and I should have said this several slides ago probably all of this data is based on the 2020 Norms which means before covet hit how did students do when they took this test my guess is when they renorm it it will look different and map is trying to adjust they are making they are adjusting the way they go about testing they're trying to make it more accurate not so that it's easier to look like you're doing well but so that we get a better representation of what students no one can do so they're trying

038to do their part but it is um it is important that we that we say here's how we know that we've got a ways to go and with our elementary changes with our win period at the middle school and with the the things that are being put in place at the high school to make sure we're supporting all I don't think anyone's hiding from it I do think that we're we're trying really hard to say how can we think differently about what we're able to provide so that we have a whole bunch of blue and green I mean I'm a fan of orange black myself but the blue green would be nice too um all right so here we go I think we did this already is that right yeah so please feel free to

039please feel free to keep stopping us this is our map Reading data for students who have been in the one-way dual language program only and the caveat here is we are only testing students that remain in the one-way dual language program if you are unfamiliar that means that students who were English who were emergent bilinguals who were receiving El services and in our one-way dual language programs who have passed the access test and are no longer in need of intensive Services because they are not yet proficient in English they don't get tested anymore does that make sense so sort of like what is the what is the average fever of people who still need to take Tylenol because they have a fever which I don't like that's a terrible metaphor because it's not a sickness

040to be able to speak both languages but it is something that we're moving toward where every time a student demonstrates uh greater Proficiency in Reading they are then removed from being able to take this test so keep that in mind these are the map Reading percentile groups for the map Spanish assessment and then by grade level again here this proves my I think this is an illustration of my point that once students have passed access they're no longer tested and the low income not low income breakdown this is the math math percentile groups district-wide and grades six through eight I got an email question about this slide from one of our teachers so I want to make sure to explain that our eighth grade students who take algebra are included in this data so their

041percentile groups um which are generally high are included for our eighth graders they're just it's the percentile on the algebra test and not on the math uh six plus test which is a different test so they are not included in that growth data that you saw the orange and black graph because they don't have a growth because they didn't take the same test last spring which I know is confusing but if they are super strong and math they take a different math class they have a different math test so you can't compare how they did on the map test last year to the math test this year because it's a different test they are included in this data which is good to know so when you look at breakdown over that's been true we've always

042included the algebra students this is the last six testing periods and this is a breakdown by grade so yes our eighth grade bar does include our students who take algebra and take the algebra test this is the percentile groups demographically sentile groups by low income and not low income that is all of them remarkably what questions do you have now that we have gotten through them all how do you take this data and then how does this affect because you I think you also included for us updated School Improvement plan was that with this or School Improvement what is all building set goals yep school Improvement teams so how does this um translate to like School Improvement so goals good so we um every year we we um when I say we School Improvement teams

043at each School level with building leadership um they use this data to update um their goals they also use it to monitor how close they are to their goals um because again like she alluded to earlier this is one of our benchmarkers this is in a way with written into most of the school Improvement um plans and so that is why um we included the Sip plan so just let you see that every single school um where no matter what category the state has labeled them or assigned them to all of our school buildings as school Improvement plans and they use this data to monitor their uh the effectiveness of their strategies and then that builds into our strategic plan that helps us monitor our strategies that's the next presentation so the schools each get

044their own presentation and their own um spreadsheets of data as well so they can look at this anytime they want and see how it's everyone doing district-wide but it's much more meaningful for Jefferson or for Clinton rosette to be able to say what are the sixth graders in our building doing what are the eighth graders in our building doing and then they can break students I mean one of the the nice uses of the data is to be able to say here are the students that scored between here and here how are we going to extend these students who did really well so that we know that we're pushing them to do even better and then you've got examples at each school can individually make their plan like Lincoln um Where Your Children Are uh

045hired or contracted with NIU to bring in tutors to help our students at the high end to work with kids who had already done really well and push them even further and they had great success with that and in other buildings they're able to say we're going to have this intervention period and win I think uses map data to sort students and say Here's these kids that have showed us this is what they need so they're getting even more targeted it would take forever obviously to talk about every building or every student but they're able to do that at data teams and say this student appeared to be doing well and then there is no growth for this period of time what happened and a lot of times you can then bring in you know

046this SEL side of things so they really they're able to use it to paint a fuller picture of the student and help them to determine what would be the best course of action to help that particular student grow as much as possible you already hear the question wonderful thank you thank you we're going to go right into our strategic next is our strategic Plan update by our cabinet members jump in okay um so attached to the board docs are the longitudinal tracker documents for each department and the diversity equity and inclusion department is first and then I'll just click for everyone else for everybody else um so consistent um Community conversations events increasing parent representation on the district committees as well as District events increasing and standardizing Community Partnerships coming up with our system systemic

047way of having mou signed for Community Partnerships transforming what was once in-person email meetings every month to growth-minded and uh collaborative professional learning communities for all of our principals and assistant principals and Deans and then um more uh doing more application of restorative um disciplining practices where all things that we uh celebrate for the thei Department worked on um those were strategies that were written in our strategic plan we also always make sure that or any other plan like our diversity plan is aligned to our strategic strategic plan so those are the strategies that we are super proud of everybody in the DI department and then of course we collaborate with every other department we continue to have edges of growth and one would be our PD for school staff and students that is uh

048a goal that um although is written into our diversity plan um a while ago it has yet to be realized and then are being ready for cultural coaches I believe that when our strategic plan was first written I I think that there was a misunderstanding of what parent universities were actually and after we received more professional development we realized that we weren't quite ready so that's still in the edge as well for us nice all right I think technology all right technology so uh we've been consistently meeting our goals so some of the highlights being one-to-one Technologies so we're in our 10th year doing one-to-one in our district and our seventh year being recognized as Google as a a Google reference system um we continue to fund and try to solve the digital divide and

049digital Equity within uh DeKalb so we continue to identify families and students specifically who need to have access and then we try to provide meaningful ways to get them set access so we're working with a local state and Community Partners in order to combine our efforts and try to tackle this in a meaningful way for the community cyber security is uh forever going to be something we're trying to handle in education education is still the number one sector in the industry worldwide that is attacked consistently uh typically this is because it's we're an easy target the funding's not the same as a Fortune 500 company um but yet we have nation state actors who want our data so we spend a lot of time energy and effort implementing Enterprise class security methodologies in order to

050protect our data and our students as well as our staff so those were some of our biggest successes and on edges of growth within our department we've been working with some of our newer staff members to sort of teach them up and get them ready to take us for the roles within cyber security network engineering and areas of salt and that nope we have teaching and learning thank you Ben so it says at the heart of our first goal and everything that we do so it is very important to us when we look at our different areas that we are benchmarking using data driven decisions is very important in an area of one of our home areas within our plcs we use it as was discussed in the data presentation for course selection acceleration remediation

051also used within the plcs we have brought in new curriculum resources as you may know this year for the implementation of next year for our algebra geometry and Algebra 2 core selections that our secondary students will use so that's very exciting do we go through all four of them or are we just going to I just highlighted yeah yeah okay I was just making sure because we're going down the slides but for Community engagement as Monica had said we collaborate quite a bit between our departments so when um Dei has had their Community conversations we've always had a teaching and learning representative there to answer any questions for parents we've also invited our parents to be part of our school Improvement teams and we continue to have ptos ptas a little John they call it

052I think PTC apparent teacher Community is um what they renamed there so uh really looking to get our parents involved in um that's on track as as best as we can at the moment for educational opportunities outside of the school day um that's been a little bit of struggle after before school but right now during the summer and and I know because I'm looking at all these timesheets that I'm having to approve there's a lot of work going on and I think just during the school year our teachers are staff we get burnt out right so now we're a little bit refreshed we you know know that we can come to a professional development for four hours and we get to go home and maybe be at our pool or just kind of rest for

053a little bit until the next day or next week so um in collaboration with outside agencies we've worked with NIU quite a bit with different um like uh Jessica was just mentioning on black Roe um yep so quite a bit of organizations that we're working with from collaboration with student services as well absolutely and so celebrations that we wanted to highlight was to make sure that our parent involvement through Title One Nights those have been pretty well attended some of our edges of growth for we've had bpac um for a number of years I think since I was uh um an ESL teacher in the Middle School which was like 17 years ago and so all right so [Laughter] um one of the things is it's supposed to be a heavily run and driven by

054our but a lot of times we are doing the getting as that we really need to help our parents advocate for themselves and and run that um bilingual current advisory committee thank you for the next one um our next one is financial stability with the equity lens and we've done quite a bit of work to make sure that resources are being allocated appropriately to support our schools our community our district our department some of those interdepartmental programs that we work with we've also one thing that's not added on that slide is this year we've added multilingual supports we had the multilingual instructional coach at secondary that was not able to fill so Billy and I realigned reorganized and he was able to use the position so working to make sure that those positions work for

055us and being flexible within what our needs are we also assist the buildings with similar capacities so for human capital of Recruitment and development and retainment of our staff we've offered quite a bit of professional development to our building administrators as well as our staff one in particular Dr Garcia Sanchez courageous principles I don't think there was one principal or director that felt that that was an amazing leadership development opportunity for for us um so as we're doing that and as we've been talking with Mike our grant manager we've now sorted out Title II Monies to be able to offer opportunities for our teachers as well right now at this moment we have Sarah Schaefer our steam manager and a fourth grade teacher from Cortland out in New Mexico thank you to all of you

056who approved that PD that they're attending now so we're really looking at beginning again I think pre-covered it kind of um we weren't there anymore we're kind of like where's the money but now with our title two monies we've been able to use those funds to be able to send our staff to not just indistrict professional development but things that are outside of our district and we really want to develop teacher leaders so that they can provide our the rest of our staff with some great professional development as well we've also provided supports for our International teachers in partnership with our HR department so that's been able to help support our existing International teachers and our incoming we've also have our manager support similar to what Billy had described helping different groups of teachers grade

057levels and our mentoring program we worked in collaboration with the Recruitment and retainment committee we have developed a common lesson plan template for our substitute teachers because that was feedback that we had received so that will be implemented complete with orange folders and hopefully that's the longest one our department a lot going in thank you all right so for the facilities Department facilities and safety department in regards to student achievement we were focusing on reducing class size and as you all know with the acquisition of the NIU building that will address those those needs and so we were able to accomplish that with the plans that are in place we were able to hire the security manager and a lot of information and projects are still underway in regards to the recommendations from the security

058audit we do uh need to determine the best way to communicate that information appropriately to the board into the community so that will be coming forth that's why the the thumbs up rather than the check mark at the end some of the things in regards to our celebrations besides the hiring the other thing we need to be aware of is the projects that we are working on through our work order system some have been challenging because of our staffing shortages but we are in supply chain delays but that is a heavy focus into the summer so we can accomplish many of those Safety and Security items that have been pending that we want to get done throughout the buildings for Community engagement and marketing this is focused a lot on our facility use in the

059district so that we can open up our buildings for our community to be able to use our buildings we were able to hire a facility use manager who's also our Auditorium manager last year he's been focusing a lot of efforts on improving that system we have we have a new software system that will be designing and implementing over the summer so in the fall we'll be able to train all of our staff in regards to utilization of that it'll also be a better device that could be used so that our community can be able to see and request space within our Millions a lot with a lot less issues as we have with our current system in place human capital or a recruitment development and retainment that that area in our department we were focusing

060on our safety Institute days that we were able to add at the start of the school year and we're going to be developing on that ongoing uh the training days for staff and moving forward also the biggest hurdle we've run into is just time there's a lot of things that require training and professional development in our district based on the variety of positions we have and we have to notch out time to make sure that we are focusing on the safety security training that's so important in our district that's an update from facilities and safety well I wasn't sure if it was completely um just kind of hit a couple of the highlights which encompasses I think a lot of the four different areas one of the biggest accomplishments that has occurred this school year

061through student services is through the leadership of our SEO coordinator Sarah Bates kind of quietly behind the scenes has been working on developing a comprehensive SEL plan for the district that is in alignment with our strategic plan and support some of the ongoing goals that we have as a district but is doing so in a very strategic way moving forward through an mtss framework so goals are going to be have been developed to reduce the rate of chronic absenteeism increase percentage of freshmen that are on track increase positive responses on the five essential survey as well as reduce incidence of exclusionary discipline um you know I said Sarah kind of has led that work but it's been a lot of people at the you know District level and at the building level that have really

062put in a lot of time and thought and energy to get us to something that is a plan that's going to be a launching jumping off point for us um and coordinates our work so we're not um doing things in isolation and we're being mindful of gaps that may exist um I think the other celebration or I'm sorry that they kind of continued work there are there are various subgroups that are going to continue to Monitor and help make sure we're implementing the work that goes towards achieving those goals um the other celebration I think I want to highlight is the development of Partnerships and like some of the other directors have talked about really just getting out in our community and either identifying new opportunities to partner with Community agencies or really anybody who's

063got a good idea to bring forward but also looking at our existing Partnerships and how can we strengthen those and tap into those resources and so I've come and spoken to the board a lot lately about school psychologists and NIU school psychology department has been a great partner with us but as well as our counseling department their special ed Department Family Service Agency and honestly Mental Health Board and their support the dialogue we've had with them throughout the year about what we currently have as Partnerships with various agencies but where we would also like to go based on our students needs um we've worked with Tails and and common bonds to give students that were at risk at the high school an opportunity to engage in um activities and and that are tied to social

064emotional development but also learning how to care for something such as a puppy and the lessons that are learned that process um next year where we've kind of launched our lifting up LLC which is our trauma-informed partnership with our First Responders that will notify us when there is an incident that may result in trauma towards one of our students a lot of that work up to this point has been getting the database set up next year we'll act well actually over the summer we'll have that enacted and we'll we'll see how that works for us um and then last but not least a lot of um effort went into putting on different uh parent and family engagement throughout the year so we did three student services family nights one at the high school um we

065did one at cats Park most recently and then we did one at the bowling alley and really the idea was let's bring in families that have students with special needs let's get them a little bit of information let's have some food and let's allow them to network with one another and just have a good time the attendance for that the feedback was really really positive so we look forward to continuing that next year okay thank you I can start them I think this would be the next one okay based on the right uh so for the business our main focus has been communication with the community on how our district finances work and what type of uh tax relief we provide to taxpayers um so one thing we always want to try is get a

066web-based dashboard or even go out to a community and kind of talk more about it and explain uh you know what are some relief we provide the experience so that would be uh it could be in form of tax abatements boundary structuring Etc so one celebration for that is that at the decal Chamber of Commerce uh under the leadership academy we uh we had a session called your tax dollars at work so so that's so we're gonna continue to do that we'll work with directors of communications to either share that through a website or also just to go out to a community for it the other main focus would be is um sustainability of budgets and Esther also something as there has been a big provider of funds for us but it is ending this

067clear so we submitted the last uh Amendment just for the next school years so um we're gonna be spending that but you know what's the sustainability for next so we're looking at how the budget will look like and how best to keep our needs for the students continuing with this financial growth so go to the next goals pretty good for me in terms of one of our strategic plans to develop a smooth transition for the New Direction which I think we've been very successful with that so I'm glad to have Amir here and uh so really I'm passing the Baton you can do 10. there you go yesterday from the demographer so it's yours now so thank you Amir it's been a pleasure working with you and to get him ready to move forward and

068you know continue great work here in the district for our students and for our community so here's my time to say thank you to the board and to everybody here as well I'm going to miss everybody I'm ready to move on to retirement definitely but it's going to be different for sure and this being my last board meeting just want to say thank you and I will walk away without crying so I've been doing a lot of that lately [Applause] thank you for everything that you have done and continue to do right so HR you know we're in the business of people so we're struggling because there's not people to work anywhere but we are absolutely doing our best we are building our Partnerships we are tightening those and we are really trying to make

069sure that we are making decal no known in a positive way and and touching the people that want to be here so we are working towards um continuing to diversify our Workforce it may not look exactly like we wanted to but it's incremental steps and we are making some huge gains there we are learning of new candidates and new um interests of people working with us that we never knew about before they're excited about the work that we're doing here absolutely through student services and teaching and learning and they're excited they want to get on board they want to be part of the change and they want to be part of the success that our students are experiencing as far as our development of human Capital One of the um HR has been very manual

070and we've got to get away from that because we need to create as much efficiency as we can in the work that we do in the time that we have to do it so thank you to the board you have provided us the support that we needed to enhance dance our technology and to also add to our technology so that has definitely been a benefit for us um we have been working to retain staff that is just as difficult as it is to recruit staff um staff leave for a variety of reasons but I have seen that this year we have really been impacted with people making changes in their families so whether they're relocating or they're moving on for other reasons or children have moved on and they're empty nesters and they're ready for

071the next phase of life we're seeing a lot of that so um our retainment is not as great as we'd like to see but life goes on for people so we have to be accommodating and supportive of that as much as we possibly can um one of our big focuses in HR has been our onboarding process because we want people to come here and have that very first best impression possible if we set a good tone there our ability to retain them and for them to tell others about their great experience increases for us so through the use of technology and through our very skilled HR staff they have been working very close with our staff to make sure we are hitting the mark and giving them what they need we still have gaps and

072as we identify those gaps we build capacity and then we're able to provide better results and then in the end able to retain our staff I cannot figure out where we are oh here we go good I need to get to my celebrations so um a big celebration I want to share is tonight on the agenda we are asking or it's part of the um purchase orders we are asking for enhancing yet another system FMLA is huge for us um because life happens um people are experiencing a variety of medical conditions whether for themselves or their family members we've got a growth sparkling we've got lots of babies being born but we have to manage that FMLA FMLA is subtly um regulated and we don't want any missteps there if there are there's severe penalties

073that come with that and we don't want to go down that route so we are looking at adding a better management system for our FMLA so that our staff have a better experience so they know what's expected of them so we are able to better plan and forecast what our needs are as far as Staffing and just so that we have better record keeping and that we are creating efficiencies in that work area of growth for us is continuing continuing to offer relevant and timely PD as it relates to HR HR is all about compliance so whether it's um working with our safety colleagues or working with um even student services or our teaching and learning departments we want to make sure everybody has the same information they're well educated and they're well equipped to

074do a good job so finding the time and making sure that we're offering the right and relevant PD to support them is important to us so we continue to problem solve around are there any questions all right thank you thank you um next is our consent agenda and it is recommended that the Board of Education approved the consent agenda items a through f as attached is there a motion second will call please buyers yes yes it's for boys yes AC mirrors yes Santa Bynum yes Amanda hernis yes um not to move us backwards but I should have said thank you to all of the cabinet members for preparing that it was a very thorough presentation we really appreciate that I know that was probably a lot of Target to go in and build that out

075so thank you um this is our old business I um subject a is the request to bid grounds building demo and rebuild and this is an action item brought to us from Tammy Carson it is recommended that the Board of Education approve Administration to prepare project designs and go out to bid for the Demolition and replacement of the district bulk salt storage building in the district grounds equipment building is there a motion second roll call please Steve Byers no Ariel wins yes Chris for boys yes Daisy Ramirez yes Santa Bynum yes Amanda harness yes Samantha McDavid yes subject B is the Food Service renewal fiscal year 2324 uh with Aramark and this was brought to us by Cindy Carpenter in our mirror doka and it is recommended that the Board of Education approved the contract

076renewal agreement for food Management Services for the period beginning July 1 2023 through June 30 2024 with Aramark Educational Services LLC is there a motion to move second roll call please Ariel Owens yes just for boys yes Jason Ramirez yes Santa Bynum yes and a harness yes Samantha McDavid yes yes subject C is the PLC work Institute Workshop out of state travel um and this is an action item brought To Us by Billy guermo it is recommended that the Board of Education approved the out-of-state travel request for up to 10 administrators to attend the professional learning communities Institute July 12th through the 14th um 2023 in Madison Wisconsin is there emotion someone yes subject D is the um diligent board docs professional development conference out of state travel and this is an action item brought

077To Us by iditra Salas it is recommended that the Board of Education approved this out-of-state travel to the diligent modern governance Summit is there a motion so moved second roll call please yes Amanda harness yes Anthony David yes Steve Byers yes Ariel Owens yes Christopher boys yes subject is the iasb Press plus issue release um 111 and this is the second reading and then it is the um being brought as an action item by Dr Garcia Sanchez are there did anyone raise any questions or concerns it is recommended that the Board of Education approved the ISB press plus issue release 111 as attached is there a motion so moved second will call Please Santa Bynum yes Amanda harness yes Samantha David yes Steve Byers yes Mario Owens yes Christopher boys yes please souvenirs yes next

078under the future Elementary School business is the action item new Elementary budget and design and this was brought to us by Tammy Carson it is recommended that the Board of Education approve Administration to continue with the design and planning for the new Elementary School based on the estimated 70 100 square footage an estimated project budget of 33 million eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars is there a motion so it's okay roll call please David yes Steve Byers yes Aria Owens yes just for boys yes JC Ramirez yes antibina yes Amanda harness yes and then uh now we are on to new business and administration subject a is the overnight field trip for an FFA convention and it is brought To Us by Dr Donna Larson for information and action I'll let her explain it and

079then we'll read the notion perfect um perfect timing it is next week so June 13th and 14th and our DeKalb FFA chapter was invited to go to their Illinois their State Convention so at this time they'll do breakout sessions learn some leadership skills and then also vote on their actual um leaders for the FFA chapter for this year it is recommended that the Board of Education approved the overnight field trip for the FFA convention convention on June 13th and 14th 2023 is there a motion I I don't understand yes because for boys yes Santa Lionel yes is the overnight field trip DHS Outdoor Adventure Club and this is information Dr Donna Larson right so I stayed up here second second overnighter now that the pandemic is over we are venturing off to a lot for

080opportunities for our students so Outdoor Adventure Club um used to go to Devil's Lake for an overnight um previously before the pandemic and then it was brought to our attention that the students wanted to Adventure this opportunity if you will um and this will take place in August so it is a two night overstay um club members the fee is I believe 50 and I think about eight students have talked about committing to gold and three chaplains thank you all right thank you uh consensus to bring this back for Action yes yes subject C is summer hours for 10 month administrators um and this is on for information in action Billy guermo and Peter Salas hi again everyone so many of you if not all of you know that our elementary principals are 10 months

081so how that works is after student attendance they are they stay with us for 10 days and they continue planning for the next school year however this school year we actually we talked about the great professional development rate that we provided them we took three days from their five days to be able to provide professional development for them so they didn't get the planning that they usually get and they do have five floating days but they also use that for hiring staff that they need to hire that they haven't hired yet so um reason I'm bringing this to for information action is because we had some Title II FY 20 three monies there we um had I don't want to say leftover but we were looking to expand prior to June 30th so with that

082I'd like to request these additional hours for our town of Administrators any questions okay it is recommended that the Board of Education approved the per diem summer hours for 10-month administrators to be used prior to June 30th 2023 is there a motion so moved second roll call please see fires yes Ariel Owens yes Chris for boys yes Jason Ramirez yes it's a Bynum yes Amanda harness yes Smith David yes thank you subject D is student discipline number zero six zero six two three it is brought To Us by Kyle Curtis it is recommended that the Board of Education approved the expulsion of student number zero six zero six two three for the remainder of the 22-23 school year and the 23-2024 school year is there emotion we'll call click area Owens yes yes Christopher boys

083yes Stacy Ramirez yes Santa Bynum yes Amanda harness yes and Anthony David yes Steve Byers yes subject e is navigate 360 service agreement informational brought To Us by Kyle Curtis all right good evening um as I spoke about a little bit ago um we have been in the process of developing a SEL comprehensive plan and part of that process had us take a look at what what do we have in place from um kind of personnel but also what are our gaps so what should we be doing that maybe we're not hitting the mark on and then do we have the tools to be able to do that um over the last I would say a year and a half two years we've really addressed I think some of the Personnel including most recently two

084additional um deans of restorative Behavior um now we're shifting our lens a little bit to look at some of those gaps and how we can help fill those gaps or get tools in people's hands that can help us better improve either access to supports and services for our students or to assist them in their their role that they're performing as a staff member um navigate 360 is kind of a broad company that offers a lot of services currently we utilize them for our behavioral threat assessment training and we also use them for some of the Alice training that we do in our district we've identified a few other aspects or products that they offer that we would like to move forward with more specifically there are three different kind of main kind of areas we're

085looking at something that can help us a little bit more with our positive behavior supports which would include not only a digital tracking form that is easy to easily accessible for staff as well as students when it comes to kind of those positive tokens or positive reinforcement but also on the flip side of that a way to for us to streamline and digitally house our office display referrals so right now it's a it's a duplicate form that somebody has to fill out by hand it has to go to somebody that has to get entered in our system is going to make it a more efficient process and hopefully improve the communication from the administrator who might process with the student to that staff member who wrote the referral to kind of communicate here's what was

086done here here's kind of next steps um the other kind of aspect that we really like about this product is that there is a component of restorative discipline or restorative um activities that can be used in that discipline or consequence process so what we would be looking to do is to a dean of restored a behavior and assistant principle or principal when they sit down with the student and say hey we have to here's how we're going to go about restoring the harm that was done this actually gives some tools and some resources so that student or maybe that student and their family can engage in to help with that process instead of kind of creating something that we we don't really have available um last but certainly not least is also you know our

087board policies and which is um you know School coded says that we have to do certain things around student Mental Health you have to be able to provide suicide and depression awareness and prevention teen Dating Violence uh prevention and then prevention of bullying just it's an unfair to say that we're not doing those things but we're doing those things at a very building level um so it's dependent on the people in the building which unfortunately changes from time to time um it's not coordinated and what we would like to do is say as a district here's how we address these things and we do it consistently across all 12 schools this is going to give us the ability to have a curriculum that doesn't necessarily have to be created it's readily available there are online

088modules and things that we can have deployed to either staff Administration students or families in a much more simplistic way digitally um all of that said there there's a relatively high cost to adding these packages they're in total would be around would be 87 274.64 cents for the annual subscription we have looked at our grant funding and this is something that we'd be able to cover through one of our through our idea grant that we is also tied through the SR funds that we received um so we are looking for the board to support and moving forward with with this um kind of initiative I guess through funding through our idea AG Grant after this year we would reevaluate is this something that's working for us as a district do we need to scale things

089back do we need to eliminate it or or are there more features that maybe we want to consider adding if the dollars are there um without are there any questions during the initial year do you know do they offer like if you if you do they do multi-year contracts for a less reduced price that's a good question I have not explored that with them but I do think maybe I would talk to looking over at Tammy because I know they've got a little more experience with this system is maybe we can partner together and talk about if we move forward with not only a long-term contract but maybe packaging some of these things together yeah one year to start with to make sure it's actually what you need but any other questions how does this

090system and I know this is a random question but like how does this system currently like align or speak to the current systems that we already have in place that our students normally access or families access by systems do you mean like Google Skyward like do they speak to each other at all like where I'm you know working with a student and I you know have to you know let's say communicate to you let's say that we're both in a team right like how does that correlate or how do those systems speak to you like would you be able to see it if you're at a school verse versus another school um at a different swimming or is it like kind of like a school based by base system I should say yeah I know

091it talks so like obviously with our odr system it's gonna have to talk to Skyward and it's going to have to so there'll be connectivity through systems that way um I I don't know the best way to answer your question to be honest with you without getting into the the details of getting this up and operational however I do know there's various settings that we have so if you're an employee at Huntley Middle School you'll have access to the Huntley Middle School suite and not necessarily Clinton Suite so there are ways that we can filter things um and there's administrative access versus teacher access versus Family Access and I think I'm just more talking like from a family perspective obviously you want to make sure that it's accessible to them right if we are going

092to be offering any additional support or Services um and then even from like I know you know when there has been situations where sometimes people are like oh another system to add to the to the mix of the systems that we already have and in some cases you know like Google will work with you know the systems where they kind of speak to each other in regards to like their lives type of thing right um in regards to the data that we're entering and things like that so I was just wondering if they at any point talk to each other in regards to like having the most accurate data um up to date you know all the time type of type of thing and I guess looking at the technology aspect of it as well

093are we going to have to build a new infrastructure to host this system or will it just flow into this cloud-based hosted so that's why the cost is the way it is because it's not on premise so there is a cost savings to it that being on premise as well that is realized to this period of time but in terms of these systems communicating that something in between student services the technology department will work through but we have used navigate 360 as a platform before um and the integration was not terrible um so I assume we will get through this together and uh very comforting but long story short um yes these systems do work they do talk and there are sapo agreements in place already for student data privacy and things like that okay

094what do we are do you have more to say on that just one quick to follow up on you you even mentioned like access to families so there's there's probably a digital access you know component to this but it is um the resources for families are available in up to 150 languages oh awesome so it you know it's something that we could use to like send videos home if that works for our family but it could also be hey we're gonna have you come in we're gonna talk about what happened but we're also going to go through some of these resources that could be good um I'm getting ahead of myself but family nights these are some of the things that we could pull in as informational things for families that doesn't require us to

095go get a speaker or somebody else so the language piece I wanted to make sure to add 150 languages is um which is awesome and again I'm not against it I think it's a great opportunity right for us to offer additional support I was just you know wondering because that's often a question that people ask like oh another system or another survey or another this right like how do they how do they um merge one another and that's I guess what I was talking about in regards to speaking to each other and been kind of kind of got what I was going with do they speak to each other um because sometimes they're not live all the time in certain programs and I think that that causes some confusion sometimes and or a delay in

096processing information and who's getting what at what time right so thank you um I don't know if I have a question actually I was just thinking the part you said about um the way that it this potentially could help communication between Administration and teachers in regards to student discipline and restorative practices is really exciting to me I think that's a gap that we have right now that we've heard a lot and so I hope that this will help fill that Gap this doesn't work that's still a gap we have to close so any other questions for Kyle consensus to bring this back for Action yes thank you subject f is professional development with Monarch education Consultants LLC and this is information okay we have seen the manifestation of Dr Garcia Sanchez's vision for the last

097two years this school year we have received testimonials from veteran School leaders principals assistant principals and Deans as well as new people in those positions um that said that they had never received um or they had never been conceptualized that they could have professional learning communities amongst themselves testimonials also include because we do feedback from every monthly meeting testimony also include that one from the first time in their career here in Dekalb our meetings went from being in person in email meetings you know what I mean but this all could have been the email to them actually being able to tie what we did in our in our professor learning time to their own professional growth they were able to hone their skills and they grew as leaders more this year than they felt that

098they had in many years myself as a former School leader in this district for eight years I never got anything like what the principals are getting now so um as a result of principals telling us what they need principles assistant principles and Deans we were able to do um a series of professional development not one and done because we know that never works right but we we realize that professional learning opportunities included them learning how to appropriately use cultural responsive methods to recruit and retain a staff to administer um assessments to their staff to understand where Equity gaps existed we use anchor texts such as the unconscious um the leader's guide to unconscious bias and Equity through Excellence this year we've although we have had texts before I can tell you with certainty they were

099not used as anchor texts it was we showed up to meetings it was hey tell us your favorite Court after you know the three chapters you were supposed to read that did not happen but we actually had a leaders leading each other so leaders um did research and read some of the texts themselves and then came back and taught each other on top of professional communities um what did we find out at the end um of our year principal assistant principals and Deans told us that they still would like to have more professional development in the area of the difficult conversations pqs rounds data Dives and pocs how to actually facilitate a professional Learning Community like the one that they have the privilege of being a part of in their school buildings so we are

100attempting to align our strategic plan and diversity plan because we have to address the gaps that have been noted in our state mandated Equity learning Continuum if you don't know what that is the state of Illinois has published on our district report card where we are as compared to every other school in um Illinois and um there is a section called elevating Educators and we know that we need to focus on that we also need to address the disparities highlighted highlighted in the Dei portion of the human ex survey so the human ex survey that we took as a district now twice there is a drd Dei questions I think it's about 80 of them because they pulled out and they were able to show us our results um and then we also um know

101that we need to we needed to pursue professional Partnerships why because although I believe I'm amazing um there are people who know a lot more um about um moving from case studies which we've been studying and researching articles and books to moving to what Equity looks like and and how we move to Justice in the school system one of them is being able to evaluate as a leader where those Equity gaps are and knowing exactly how to address them in your building for that reason we um looked at our sr3 money that was already there and um D I had already asked for a certain portion of the Esser amount and with that portion we would like to contract Dr Cheryl Watkins the consultant for Monarch education Consultants she will come in and do six

102sessions beginning Friday August the 4th and then going throughout the entire year and as you can see I'm not going to read it for you but there's a lot involved in that performance questions I will say I'm bringing this to you because um over a certain amount of money we bring to the board but I'm not asking for any money at least just for because I've never had any of these sessions before is this pretty comparable just price wise to what one of these would normally be this is more economical than others that we um research we have I spent an entire year trying to find an economical cause I was just breaking down an hourly rate for those in-person sessions I mean like holy cow oh yeah you know Consultants aren't you know they

103will very well any other questions great and sends us to bring this back for Action yes oh next up subject G is the 2023-2024 school year parent student handbook update and this is also brought To Us by Miss Parker and it is informational okay so I am here representing the parent student handbook committee as well I just want to give a quick shout out to all the members of the parent student handbook committee um for the first time in the history of the parent student handbook committee we had uh we expanded our membership to be more inclusive on to represent our variety of stakeholders meaning we had Parents um very consistently attending our meetings we also had some school board members consistently attending our meetings as well as in previous years the meeting happened once

104a year it was usually in May and it would be four secondary administrators making decisions and we our previous process was we paid a subscription to the IPA model we would line the IPA model up next to ours and we would just go through an amount maybe a six hour meeting and we would scratch it up and then we would have somebody retype it and then we would come and I'm really there was never really a discussion about it we just it just got adopted but two years ago we said that doesn't really make any sense considering this is a guiding document um and so we did a overhaul last year and then this year we decided that we really needed to get um eyes outside of the district on it as well so [Music]

105just to let you know it is a fluid document what does what is our handbook it is not policy let me be very clear our handbook has never been and will never be policy um that is not in the purview of the committee on only the school board of course can adopt policy superintendent recommends it in school board adoption but it is um it provides uh underpinning for us to have a positive culture and climate it's really usually the place that parents go to or students go to if they have questions about our procedures um how do we get here this is how we got here I think I went over a couple of times um this is important because again this is the first time although it wasn't School Board policy I believe I

106was in a meeting with Dr Garcia Sanchez and we were talking about it and I'm like hmm I've been in the distance 2007. we've never done that so then we said well you know it's inboard policy we should be doing it so this year we had our parent teacher advisory committee um which is a school board committee it uh it is regulated by school code so we did have an open meeting here in this room on May 22nd where um we reviewed the school uh the handbook as well as we had opportunities for public to come the public to come in and make comments as well so there are some major updates um and I'll just go through them really quickly um reminder that all of our major updates um either were recommended by our

107district attorney we had two when I said district attorney District legal council not the district attorney of like you know um we had two legal um legal counsels look at our document so they got it in September like the beginning of September and all the way up until just this morning they are still making sure that what is in our handbook lines up with what is in school code and that we are not putting ourselves in a bad situation by having things in writing so some of the major things is we used to have a separate High School appendix that no longer exists and that was because of high school Independence would sometimes contradict what was in the other piece since we are a unit School District it didn't make sense for us to have

108a separate high school so the high school things that are important have been pulled out and put into the other piece um we had to legally uh we had a death and family accidents cold that was a little different and so we had to change that also we had we did not include Civic events because it wasn't a law prior to us adopting this you know the last one now it is so we have it in there we also um just check updated some of our language because it said that parents had a opportunity to not provide consent and that's no longer true they have to provide consent for us to build Medicaid and then just certain things like additional language um about care epilepsy and Diabetic Care is now that is now there um

109we also remove language because in our previous handbook it said that um we said that hey if your kid wants to go on a field trip and there's no one to go with your child and your child requires medication to your field trip we want you to go on the field trip that's not right you cannot force a parent to go on a field trip you know we have a lot of working parents and so now we have had to change that um some of our life's language was removed it was it was a misnomer that it was actually a scooper policy it is not a school board policy and so because it did not align with policy it didn't make any sense to have a page and a half about life we do have

110ice information if you were here a few years ago you remember that um but we had to remove that and then our code of conduct was actually hyperlinked into our handbook if you use if you ever tried to look up something in our old handbook it just was very cumbersome now it's everything is hyperlinked you can type in one word and it'll pull you right to that page instead if you have to go through 116 pages to get to it um we also we had to remove the language um disruptive and inappropriate and that is because there are I guess a couple of cases that went to the seventh circuit that that didn't Jive very well in those particular places so they said no just use the word must not disrupt the educational process so

111we're going to use that wording as well and then we also and we have been using expulsion in advance and social probation as possible consequences but it wasn't actually listed actually listed in our handbook and now it is um and then um search and seizure has always included superpowers but we didn't have in that certain seizure my place so we put it there and then we also added what should happen if a search has to occur it was happening in practice but we didn't have it in writing um and then um we had to thoroughly cover what parents rights are as far as being able to look at all of their students records that has changed from 15 days to 10 days now and for them to be able to inspect surveys that also was

112thoroughly covered again that's because of um school code being changed and then we had to increase our charges for our technology Chromebook agreement update and that is because uh things cost more money than they did a long time ago right um I think one other thing that's in here um is we did remove the word excused in our attendance section for makeup work so what's next we're going to increase representation we found out that I have some amazing former students who have reached out to me via email who will be in high school next year and said I heard that you uh proud places for Parker all right in charge of the handbook I want to be part of the committee next year because I don't like this I said well come on come walk

113so we're going to have eyes like 8th graders through 12th graders to be part of the process next year and then of course this document is about almost 30 a little bit more than 35 000 words we have to get 35 000 words translated into Spanish and Arabic um really really soon it takes a long time to get that done so um the sooner we uh by next time if we get this approved we have to get that um done and then of course as we did last year we had um three meetings in the beginning of the school year where we shared in like this with parents parents had the opportunity to come to New Hope Missionary Baptist Church and then we did two virtual meetings where we allow parents to ask us questions

114about any of the changes in Miami are there any questions of course there are of course can you speak a little bit more to um the changes around excused absence and what school code that kind of stems from kind of what that means for holding students accountable for doing their work and being in class we've had some questions about that and we just want to make sure that we understand it and that everyone knows is um so it's it's Illinois it's I ilcs five slash two six dash one and I actually did speak to um for about for about half an hour today um uh some people who were part of the communication and cleared up some misunderstandings um in the future we'll just have phone conversations to clear um understandings but this the results

115uh any modifications that we do that particular modification was removing one word in our attendance section we legally have to say that we are going to provide makeup work we have to say that it was as a result of us on September 13th of 2022 we decided that we would um bring in legal counsel to look at it and in our handbook when she saw that were both legal uh lawyers said why do you have in there that it's only for excuse absences and we say well because you know that's the bare minimum really it was like well legally that's all we have to do and she said yeah but that's bare minimum and what happens is if you put it in writing you are not liable if someone as a parent comes in a

116good example that we had this school year was we had a parent that was battling cancer um did not have the strength and energy or no you know to call in so then that child was not allowed to make up that work because it was not excused because a parent didn't have the wherewithal to call in so what she said was you are making exceptions anyway and so for you to say I'm not going to make exception in writing you are now liable if you refuse a student makeup work and so um it's we we are trying to increase access to um dignified educational opportunities that was a that was an antecedent when this when our committee started having this conversation in September the conversation went from September and then January 6th on January 16th

117meeting um that was the day that we as a group decided that we would remove the actual wording there are people here that nodding they were part part of that conversation um and let me be clear of what we're talking about the parameters of what that will look like will happen at the building level a district committee cannot make decisions about the parameters of the practices how it's going to work out the only thing we did is out of 35 000 words was remove one word because again our legal counsel said that we um her exact words were why would you do that why would you the question was why would you um say that you would not make an exception because that's what you're saying you're not going to make exceptions and we do

118know that um unfortunately is a high school student I get mono for three weeks and so right away I would be out of my days I think I was a sophomore I got mono I would be out of my days that means though that that last week I would not get to do any of my makeup work even though I really do have an illness so um having spoken to some of some of the uh every coordinators uh today we do understand that there are different Coatings that can be entered and then when you one run reports you can run reports that cuts and skips would not even be part of it it would be for students who have unexcused illnesses unexcused family crisis and things like that I guess the concern that I think

119myself and other board members might be feeling is where legal counsel says we need to be more vague so that we have less liability but by being less clear about what the definition is are we not opening ourselves up to more liability because now it's up to every building to decide this is what we do with late work this is what we are we not already like you said we're already making exceptions teachers already have the wherewithal to know this was a reasonable reason they were not here today well there's other students where you know that they're just walking down the hallway and they're not there with this change we're now inviting they have the right to be able to do their work just like the student that was already in the classroom so as

120as I stated it would be coded and we have we have what we call attendance codes and so when you run when you look up a micronet a monoclonet would be absent in its uif you know right away that a Monaco net was sick and unexcused she wasn't just cutting [Applause] so I guess in if I'm reading this and I'm a parent so I'm just going to read it as a parent and not a board member if a student is absent or suspended from school he she will be permitted to make up all missed work including homework and tests for equivalent academic credit if an elementary and middle school student is absent or suspended the number of days to turn in makeup work will be equivalent to the number of days the student was suspended

121or absent from school so K through 8 has the number of days they were out no matter why they were out they were out because it was excused unexcused or suspended they have those same number of days now we're moving to high school so I'd like I'd like to clarification on this if a high school student is absent or suspended the student will have until the end of the quarter in which the excused absence it says excuse there okay or suspension occurred to submit makeup work so we're saying we're going to allow a high school student to only make up work if they have an excused absence or a suspension not any absence so is that what we're saying there so that is the number of days it's two separate things there um and you're

122looking at the new draft that's attached to this yes so yes the high school students um it's it's it used to be a time I'll say it like that um that we would see more suspensions at the secondary Bluff for sure and so we specifically have to address um suspensions verbatim that's what school code tells us that's why it's separated into two different paragraphs and so that's why it says it like that now as far as um let me I'm sorry why are we giving them till the end of the quarter so if they're on day one out for five days you're telling me for the next how many weeks they can do whatever they want and they can turn in their work on the last day that's what it's saying in here okay let

123me read it again if a high school student is absent or suspended okay again a high school student is absent or suspended the student will have until the end of the quarter in which the excuse so now we've thrown excused in there in that sentence absence or suspension occurred to submit makeup work so again if day one of the quarter they're absent for five days they have till the last day of that quarter to turn everything in well in fact it says though I understand that in practice we have given them in my and you can speak up if I'm wrong and to like the week before the last quarter but if I was appearance and that is but I'm just we need to be careful with words then because if I'm a parent and

124my kid was out for five days at the beginning of the quarter they have till that last day of the quarter to turn in that work that is true okay it is that has been in that has been so why are we doing that why are we setting ourselves kids up to fail in my opinion by not setting expectations so we're telling elementary school kids you only have the number of days you're out to make up your work but for some reason we moved to 14 to 18 year olds and say oh you can just do it when you want but that's not that's not it that's not it that's not the language it's trying to do and I know that it sounds like what the with the vague piece of the liability comment that

125was said however we're looking at some students that and we're trying to give opportunities and to make it Equitable for everyone as well as the teachers that there still is an accountability piece at the end of that quarter so that they don't fall further behind but what does that student need outside of the five days that they missed then they come back and they're trying to catch up and as well as our teacher workload of okay now I have to catch them up on the current work but I'm still going to create a plan not just say now you have to let but creating that timeline piece of working with our kids of okay what do you need for that so aside from just the language then at the high school we also created a

126testing makeup Center and tutoring center too just individualized for our students outside of even IEPs and 504s but of our students that let's say they are gone for 10 days um and just to give that piece for our teachers to feel a little bit more less workload too of okay now I have to turn around and grade this within five days and the check-in system not now you can do whatever you want and you still have till the quarter to the to that end of the quarter it might look like that if we need to talk about and again this is good of anything that we need to modify or suggest or talk about in terms of putting more language into support that system because but I understand I mean I'm just thinking about too

127if you think about it from like maybe a teacher's perspective so now we should open this up right to any student being able to turn in any work well so that's where the criteria comes in the line of you have to check in and we need to scale back and look at that Content Mastery what are the standards that the students are trying to show for Content Mastery and how does that look for the student that her parent has cancer or the parent or the student that's just down the hall sure but can we when I get into that word because you said you were removing excuse has been removed from the first paragraph that paragraph well it's all one paragraph So that section is going to remain excused because you won't if you're an

128excuse you won't have until the end of the quarter so so but what I'm saying is you said you were a removing excuse but in every sentence it just refers to absence except that last sentence about high school in other sentence it had excused in front of them but it's no longer there I'm still confused at what you're saying so because as a high school student is absent or suspended the student will have until the end of the quarter in which the excused absence so are we saying we're not going to allow them for unexcused no so if you go back to the other I don't have it in front of me I know I was trying to look it up but if you go back to the I don't I don't understand if you

129go back to the other part of the it just doesn't mean it's not clear it's not on here I think it was in the hand oh I don't think it's interesting I guess maybe this sum up what she's saying obviously we as board members like we've got every code policy handbook thing that we could look at at our disposal as you mentioned parents and students only have this one resource to go to and if we're clearly confused on what this is trying to explain and not understanding how it's going to be implemented how are our students or parents supposed to have any idea how this applies in person so again that goes back to when we when we adopt this then we have those conversations with parents we have open forums right here in this

130room parents are invited in we also do hybrid meetings we also do virtual meetings and we explain to parents what what it means and we break it down for them now does anybody else have questions about this portion because I have a different thing I want to ask a question about if we're so let me yeah yeah let me finish what I was saying about that so you will see the reason why you don't see excuse in the other portion of it is because that's where we move in the beginning portion of it it just says absences it used to say only excuse absences right here it's saying in the high schoolers no matter if you're absent or suspended the student will have until the end of the quarter in which the excused absence or

131suspension so that is confusing that excuse should not be there if you're saying it's no matter what your absence is or suspension in that last sentence what it is saying is you're only going to allow them to go to the end of the quarter for an excused absence or a suspension not an unexcused yes that's a good thing we can make it put that first sentence says any absence yes so that's where I'm saying you're going to have conflict with parents okay it's I'm and I'm reading it and I've read it I'm like that is not clear and that's where you're going to have a little bit of content okay okay so it needs to The Verge needs to clearly define whether you remove the excuse and you're allowing all absences till the end of

132the quarter or you say you know high schoolers have a number of unexp unexcused days to complete work and those that are excused absences or suspension have till the end of the Court that's just not clear all right I have a meeting with our attorney okay cool you're a Chris oh okay I just had more of a just clarifying what exactly removing this would entail it is if you're looking at the handbook it's page 102 it's number three it's all School assigned disciplinary consequences an example detention Crows Landing Saturday Etc will supersede extracurricular practices in and in parentheses it just talks about do they want to eliminate it because they feel it's doubling punishment so I'm just I'm trying to understand are they saying that they want to remove it because then if you had

133a detention at the same time as practice you would get to go to practice instead of detention or what is it meaning when it's saying supersede extracurriculars means just what you're saying that if you have after school detention which is pretty rare nowadays um but if you have to do something like that then you would not go to basketball practice you would take care of that first unless the coach and the person who assigned the discipline at a conversation and something else has worked out which I guess the bigger part of my concern is that this just includes all School assigned disciplinary consequences so if we gave a student an out of school suspension are we then also expected to let them show up for football practice that day oh no of course not if

134they're out of school suspension that's part of the um that's part of the communication with parents we put it in writing on an officer discipline referral we also do follow-up um we have to do legally follow-up communication that includes a last paragraph that says your child is suspended I'm just not understanding why would we were going to remove this section then because it doesn't seem like we want to get rid of your disciplinary measure being before extracurriculars which are privileges not rights right and as you can as you know I believe I was the attorney's notes on it if I remember correctly she said it was redundant that we already had said it somewhere else so we were just removing it from that section okay that's that was a lot of light up from about

135100 and 50 pages down to like 108 pages we found out that we were saying the same thing in eight different places thank you are there any other questions consensus to bring this back for Action yes thank you thank you um next is subject H DHS summer school Staffing request to 1.0 instruction assistant FTE request and one certified special ed teacher information and action Kyle Curtis and teacher sellers sure all right so coming before you with a request for two individual assistants to support the High School summer program off are going on right now as well as one certified special education teacher to um supervise and also support students with IEPs that are in a Edgenuity Credit Recovery class it's something that students with IEPs have been able to access in the past however we

136didn't necessarily have the right Personnel in terms of training which a special ed teacher would possess to accommodate modify as needed and so in talking with Dr Larson and her team just about how we can better provide the support that our kids need over the summer this was an idea that was brought forward when we looked at Staffing as as the high school kind of planned for this summer these were things that came up a little bit after the initial Staffing request as needs that were going to have to be brought forward and so they were I believe posted as anticipated positions pending board approval this is just coming forward to get the board to approval for those things um it just it cost uh four thousand dollars for the special ed teacher for the

137summer term for the two assistants it's an hourly rate of 14.50 So based on however many hours they were throughout the summer that's what the calculation is based on do will you seen that summer school has already started will you be able to staff that's pretty quick so that's where the um the anticipated posting allowed us to kind of move forward with that and so the answer to that is yes nobody's been yeah so that's why it's information yes any other questions it is recommended that the Board of Education approved the higher of two 1.0 instructional assistance and one certified special education teacher to support the DHS summer school course offerings is their emotion second roll call please Christopher boys yes face your mirrors yes Santa biome yes yes Samantha McDavid yes Steve Byers yes

138Ariola yes subject is b e s y so extended school year FTE SLP request 1.0 FTE request information action Kyle here it is Alice similar story different uh position so um as we kind of geared up for extended school year this year looked at the students that were going to be that qualified that we're going to be attending the number of students that we're going to require speech and language Services exceeded what school code said one speech path could could handle which would be 60. so with 74 students we needed to add it to additional FTE for that and so we're coming forward to the board asking again it's information and action to add SLP for extended school year at Cortland for this summer term four thousand dollars for the position and it has been

139posted as anticipated and we do have a pool that would allow us to to fill it any questions and this is to stay in compliance right correct yeah it's recommended that the Board of Education approved the hire of one SLP FTE for the 2223 extended school year program is there a motion so moved second roll call please I have a harness yes Samantha McDavid yes yes Christopher boys yes do you see lawyers yes yes thank you um subject J is the reclassification and this is informational teacher Salas so fidas is our office professional Union and within that um her their contract uh which expires in 2025 there was a provision that the District administration and fedastic Leadership will work together in developing job descriptions so as we move forward and trying to get that work

140done we realize that job descriptions in the past had been designed by classification and not by position there are three classifications that are identified in the Finas contract and that's op1 op2 and op3 op standing for Office Professional what we need to do is develop job descriptions based upon the position so if it's an elementary secretary or if it's a bookkeeper it needs the job description needs to identify the work of the position and then identify what classification is associated with and doing that work we realized that some of our classifications were off so based upon responsibility duties and tasks that are done on the job there were inconsistencies as far as equity and positions as well as in the tasks that were done so this proposal is requesting that we reclassify certain positions from

141one classification level to another at the pre-kn elementary level we like to reclassify the Office Professional from an op-1 to an op2 we do have two larger buildings that have two Ops there One op would remain in op1 and then the second one would be classified as an op2 at the middle school level we have an op1 that's a 12-month position that serves as the bookkeeper that position is what we're asking to have reclassified to op2 there's one at Clinton rosette and one at Huntley at the high school there is a school secretary that provides service to the to the full building namely the administration including both principal assistant principal and Deans and supports families as well as a number of other aspects of the building asking to reclassify that from op1 to an op2

142and then here at the education center our front desk receptionist which also provides support to HR reclassifying that from an op-1 to an op2 that person provides support to the entire District as well not specialized but district-wide so the request is to take 13 positions reclassify from op1 to op2 it does have a fiscal impact of thirty seven thousand six hundred and twenty two dollars that is for a total cost for all affected positions over the um over a whole school year no consensus to bring this back for Action yes thank you thank you subject K is speech and language uh teletherapist Sunbelt Staffing SLP information Kyle Curtis oh we didn't organize this correctly so uh we the so this is looking at the 23-24 but we uh speech language Pathologists are a tough um

143a position to fill right now and um over the last couple of years as a district we've really struggled to fill those through our kind of normal means somebody applies we bring him in for an interview we hire them that happens but not as regularly as we need to fill our openings so we've had to work with various staffing agencies and the school year actually we worked with Sunbelt Staffing which works with vocavision which is a way of teletherapy for speech speech and language services and we contracted with a therapist who did a really nice job for us she worked a lot with our Outreach students as well as our students at private mobile schools who have services we continue to look to fill our openings however we we have been unsuccessful at this point

144and we need to go back to looking at contracted services for next year and so with that we have the ability to bring back the speech and language pathologist who's worked with us this past school year bring her in for the full school year next year and we'll be able to expand her role and kind of serve a greater number of students than we were able to utilize her this last school year um so the SOP would be contracted to work 40 hours a week for the entire school year at a rate of 102 dollars an hour in total the contractor would be 146 880 dollars uh any questions so just to make sure I have an understanding this contract will not have them being in person whatsoever we're paying 146 000 for her to

145be on a computer screen somewhere else talking to the students or uh correct there's more that goes into that so there is um you know uh boots on the ground so to speak so there is somebody that's going to have to be kind of logistically making sure the students get where they need to be help troubleshoot things of course we don't want to leave students unattended but the actual Service delivery will come from a speech path who will be virtual did we feel obviously we've brought it back up for recommendations so we have seen that it's worked well with our students then it has I mean I'll uh for a lot of students um in person is always going to be the best right but I think because of the pandemic because we've had to

146shift we've had to push ourselves out of that comfort zone there are certainly students that virtual therapy is not going to be the best option for and we have as a district have to be responsive and aware of that and then put kids in front of speech paths that needed however we have seen this be an effective way to deliver services to kids in lieu of somebody in person I will say every time I talk to a staffing agency I start with my preference is to have somebody in person do you have anybody and if they do great if they don't then we'll start entertaining a conversation about teletherapy um it has been proven more effective than I think than I cynically would have thought maybe four or five years ago and just sorry one

147more follow-up question um obviously we've been going through staffing agencies have we attempted any dialogue or Contracting with Northwestern which I'm sure has a fully loaded staff of speech therapists and Pathologists that would work through them Northwestern Medicine yes um I have not had conversation with them about that that's a good thought um is the contract finding so that if somehow you're able to hire someone after the start of the school year that we would be able to ship to in-person services or we'll definitely need this either way I'm gonna be pessimistic with my answer we have three openings right now so I'm very confident that we're going to need this person hypothetically speaking um my experience with Contracting agencies is they're always a way to get out of that contract it's just maybe at

148what cost or if they're able to reassign that staff member to another District so to speak they've been they would be more open I think being flexible in three positions the services are very high yeah and just for comparison we had three positions open from October of this past school year through the end of the year right yeah any other questions um consensus to bring this back for Action yes yes thank you subject L is the gas an electric procurement and this is informational Tammy Carson and our miracle it's okay okay so we have our ananya advisors which she is going to present I'll let you go this is fancy hi guys I'm Becky Thompson with ninea energy we uh there's some new faces so I'm here basically to inform you about energy and I

149know you're so excited right like it's been I know you've had a lot thrown at you tonight so I will try to keep it high level but so that you understand what this means and how it impacts the bottom line the operating budget and why we're all here for the kiddos right um so um I've been working with the district for almost three years two years two and a half years uh and we are third party advisors so in the state of Illinois you have the option to purchase your natural gas and electricity outside of the utility so ComEd and Nightcore they're always there very are the pipeline they own the electric lines um if you have a power outage there's still who you call but the actual juice itself is traded on the Futures

150Market much like corn or soybeans or other things you may be familiar with and so this proves to be a really good option for public entities because pricing is really volatile with utilities we all pay at home and it's gotten kind of crazy out there in the last year especially so when you have a finite operating budget that you have to work within having the ability to procure your energy Supply at a fixed rate at a discount to what the utility can offer offers many benefits that you're able to utilize right so we've been working with you guys for several years now I've been doing we kind of sit on your side of the table and represent the district for all of the Retail Energy suppliers that are out there in the market help guide

151you through the procurement process identify any threats or opportunities that are out there because you all as we are hearing tonight have a lot of things going on and as much as Tammy I think would love to watch the energy Market every hour of every day she maybe has one or two other things that she's focused on at the moment so just briefly to get everyone on the same page I'm just going to share where we're at today um so we have both electricity and natural gas um we have purchased them in tandem with one another but they are two separate contracts purchased differently um and so I'm just going to kind of share where we're at and what's going on in the energy market right now and considerations of looking to the Future um

152to be completely Frank we're here proactively just more to bring everyone up to speed your contracts for both your gas and electric are not up until June of 2024. you can purchase these at any given time you do not have to wait until say a month before expiration so it allows you some bandwidth to be opportunistic and identify some opportunities in the market to maybe take advantage of some cost avoidance or potential savings so there's a lot of details on here the what you really need to understand is that your fixed rate right now for electricity is 5.7 cents per kilowatt hour comparatively last summer we all paid in our homes over 11 cents so your current fixed rate when we last went to Market was at some of the lowest prices of all time

153and the district had the the foresight to enter into a long-term contract which was outstanding because it was at a discount as about fifty percent of what you had been at if you had just been on the monthly market rate same kind of thing with natural gas you have about 31 cents per therm last summer we all paid a dollar twenty a therm yeah it was super fun right um so again the the district went to a long-term contract with this it expires June 30th of 2024. um considerable cost avoidance as a result of entering into this contract um and fruit up those operating dollars so that you could focus on other areas so this is my favorite slide this is uh had everyone here on the district on the back um collectively that's about

154470 thousand dollars just in the last 12 months that you've employed it as a result of entering into this procurement process and locking into those long-term contracts they were each three-year contract so this was do the math it's a pretty considerable savings for for your taxpayers so let's talk about the energy Market oh you're so excited for this [Music] um this squiggly line represents the Futures market so each color here you see here represents one two or three years into the future of what natural gas prices are going to look like so in this kind of purchasing strategy you're buying today what you're using tomorrow so think of it like you have a 500 gallon drum or diesel that you're putting on your property and you're buying every gallon for three dollars right so every

155gallon that you use is three dollars so every day at the gas station some days it may be 250 and some days it may be 350 but because you have that fixed volume on your property you're always paying three dollars right so it's the same kind of thing energy markets move every minute they're a constant moving Target the arrow here represents where the prices were the last time that you entered into contract and you can see what has happened since and this is for a variety of reasons that we have all lived through you may be familiar with something that happened in 2020 um maybe a pandemic that was unprecedented what's the word that we heard four million times uh so that certainly had an effect but really uh this is the result of supply

156and demand disparity producers were not making any money for a really really long time when it came to energy so Wall Street had an appetite to stop investing into natural gas production specifically then covid hit so then there was no demand whatsoever so all of the oil rigs you may have heard of shale fracking out east that is a fancy word for natural gas production here domestically in the United States um we've all but stopped that during covid and we can't just like turn the spigot back on it takes a while to get everything ramped back up so where we see these big spikes after are where production hadn't quite picked back up after covid but demand returned and in a big way manufacturing return everyone went back to work and then we had a

157war how in where we don't rely on Russia for a lot of natural gas but the rest of Europe does they had sanctions in place to no longer purchase natural gas from Russia they decided to buy it from the world's largest exporter of natural gas which because of the Shale for acne that we all now know about we are the world's largest exporter of natural gas okay so I know that that's a lot of backstory but I just want to kind of create the atmosphere of what we're dealing with the market of today is vastly different of the market of 2021 when we last did this and these are all the kinds of threats and things that we have to consider when we're making these purchasing decisions because there's no beating the market it's just

158timing it for your school district at a time that helps eliminate some of their risk so the reason that I'm here now talking to you about this a year in advance is that diff that we see there at the end which made no sense except that we had the warmest January in like the last 30 years remember I mentioned supply and demand we have excess Supply right now so the reason that we're here to discuss this and bring you kind of in the loop as to what's going on is over the course of the next 12 months there may be some of these opportunities that allow us to be proactive in the procurement of your not your next contracts to allow us to take care of these dips before another one of those blips maybe

159occurs that was a really quick energy lesson any questions about how all of this works so the next one same squiggly aligns different Commodities so this is electricity electricity follows natural gas because electricity has to be made using mainly natural gas now we in Illinois we have a heavy Reliance on coal we also may be hearing about how those coal plants are being retired and shut down and solar is not quite there yet to replace that production so natural gas and electricity have about a 90 correlation what that means is when natural gas prices jump electric says how high so if we were to Overlay these graphs you would see that they were pretty comparable to one another again you can see where you were in the last time you signed the contract was beautiful

160timing because it really just went up from there and the unfortunate thing about being in this supply and demand kind of funky place that we're in right now is we're really weather reactive so if we have a hot summer it's probably won't look great um we have a mild summer maybe things come down just like they did after this winter so that's just we want to kind of share the landscape with you um so where are things going another really fun energy graph for you guys at nine o'clock at night I'm so sorry um this is put out by the Energy Information Administration does the federal government to pass their main job is to predict take no factors into place today where they think prices are going to go if anyone has ever done any

161trading of any stocks or anything that squiggly Green Line we see at the top and then this Wiggly green line at the bottom is what we call the spread this is the biggest spread I've seen in 10 years what this graph tells me is that they don't know where things are going to go they're like well it could be really good or it could be really not good this would be the equivalent of a meteorologist saying tomorrow could be 30 degrees or 100 degrees truly this is what it is um the blue squiggle the light blue line that says sto forecast is short-term energy Outlook forecasts they're like okay if everything works out the way we want it to which is how things generally work right um this could be where prices are so they

162could be around this range but what this basically does is if you were thinking when is a good time to act or do you have that crystal ball this tells us that even the federal government whose job it is to predict where things are going to go has very little confidence and we're things are going um so I know I'm full of great news for you tonight so from there what do we do with this information right um the first step is the strategy of discussion uh meeting with the administrators talking about these kinds of factors relying on our information we're giving them regular updates I always say if I'm calling you pick up the phone because I'm calling you for a reason um and then I believe that it may be moving to possible

163consent or recommendation at the next meeting to Grant Administration the ability to act quickly giving them pre-approval to enter into a next contract so if it does present an opportunity and a quick drop rather than waiting until the next board meeting giving them the ability to go ahead and take advantage of those opportunities as they as they become available thank you any questions consensus to bring this back for Action yes fantastic thank you so much thank you um subject m is the intergovernmental agreement with the Illinois Department of Health Care and Family Services informational with Amir doka and Kyle Curtis this is uh just very procedural it's not a new contract it's uh they change the way we claim reimbursement from them so they're asked for an updated uh interview so just to give a

164little background on what this is this is a Medicaid reimbursement we work with the student services uh for any type of services they provide for Medicaid eligible students the business office then goes and claim it to the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services so again this is just a procedural any questions and sends us to bring this back for Action yes yes thank you and then subject n amended intergovernmental agreement with the city of DeKalb this is information and action tonight in this oh go ahead Dr Garcia Sanchez this item is being presented to the board for information and action as it relates to school Building Safety and Security we've discussed this in closed session and do not recommend that it'll be discussed and open for security reasons at the requests of law enforcement

165um is uh I'll just read the recommendation on it is recommended that the Board of Education approved the amended IGA with the city of DeKalb is there a motion second uh it's Chris's turn Jackie Samantha David yes Stephen Byers yes Ariola yes Christopher boys yes Stacey Ramirez yes answer Bynum yes yes all right next in the superintendent updates um you might have more to say but I'm just going to do this part really quick first so we can end on the I know okay I just gotta make sure everyone had a chance to look at that evaluation tool and then we have consensus to move forward with that yes yes I have a question about it if I could of course I've you know I was evaluated as a teacher a couple of times and

166I've never seen a the weighted rating that's at the end uh typically each standard would be just this kind of sub categories would be where the weight of it comes from and I noticed we have one that is significantly higher than all the rest and I just asking for clarification on that like certain standards are weighted like their priorities compared to the other ones yeah so uh [Music] it's the level of standard that is is more like it's like a priority for the national standards so it's waited a little heavier is that what you're asking yes but it's like significantly heavy but then it's only got like two subcategories it doesn't seem like it's actually that much I [Music] I explained a little bit so it just came from from okay from the national standards

167uh your superintendents and District leaders sorry um does that change how you feel about using it at this point I'd like to have more information but before I would say I'm comfortable with it okay how is everyone else feeling because um I actually was going to suggest we schedule the evaluation for our next June meeting for the for it to be done yes like we yes that well we will do we will complete it okay we'll complete it I'm comfortable moving forward we complete an enclosed session I guess I'm looking to make sure that every or the I guess we at least have majority of people comfortable with that so the goal is to have them complete the evaluation completed by the yes and I can just I can send some more information in that

168email but um okay [Music] sounds like consensus okay so I guess I can go ahead and move forward yes you can complete it okay okay on to the rest of your update okay thank you so uh before I move into my final thing you know I always want to end on a high note so um just Improvement Syndrome from uh where we were last year to this year we based on a specific uh requests that were made by the board to me around communication and so I wanted to make sure that I shared that with everyone we've made significant improvements not only in our social media and our website I've become a monthly message that goes out on the first day of every business day of the month that has been received very well and

169I get a lot of feedback we have supported the culture and climate in different ways either through the human ex survey or in supporting different aspects of culture and climate at each individual building and then most importantly the cultural climate in each individual building has changed significantly I believe from where we were last year for a couple of reasons one is that we have an instrument here a management system that supports the principles and assistant principles at the ground level with Billy and Sarah supporting the principals and their teams on a daily basis at the ground level and I've also been a part of mainly a school visit and classroom business to support them we are evaluating principles jointly and so that not only are we informing them we're supporting them and selecting their goals

170and growing them but we also provide them with professional development and supports through the action items that are given through Sarah and Billy so I've seen quite a bit of difference and nuances in there and I've got a lot of good feedback from school leadership from principles assistant principles to Deans even cabinet mayor here to talk about they could answer questions around the additional supports that have been given to them for their personal professional growth so I wanted to say that because I know that that was one of the caveats that really brought that were really led by the board last year even though I know some of you weren't here at that time but I wanted to make sure I I updated them finally but definitely not least I want to take another moment

171to think where she had but thank you so thanks Cindy Carpenter you've been standing up so good to see you [Applause] there aren't enough words for me to express what I have been able to learn and grow from from you this past two years I feel like I had definitely a coach and a mentoring you physically and financially and learning a lot of things I hope that together we've learned something and we're able to change the course of what the district looks like and feels better and feels different but definitely you laid the groundwork for making sure that we were solvent and in in the black and you could do the things that we're doing so thank you so much for everything you've done for this District before me and that will be had after

172I'm you know after you leave and as life continues on into calm we hope that you will not be a stranger we'll wait the 60 or 90 days [Laughter] [Music] we would love to see you visit us from time and time any time that you'd like so thank you again Cindy for all your work and dedication that you've done for our district on behalf of me and cabinet and the rest of the district I'm sure the board is also in concurrence with that absolutely [Applause] it's been a long time coming it feels like it you know seems like it was gonna happen sooner rather than later now that I'm getting closer and it I'm just reflecting on my years here and the people that I've worked with and everybody that has supported me um is

173overwhelming um it's and it's all kind of coming and I'm feeling very emotional I've been very emotional for for a long time at least the last couple weeks and my team has just treated me so well all the things that they've done for me it's just this uh again overwhelming I don't deserve it I but I so appreciate everybody here and I'm gonna miss you all and and it just wasn't me obviously it was a lot of people the community those the kids the various boards I've worked the various superintendents just everybody it's always a team a team effort all the time and it will continue to be that way I know that and I've just I'm honored it's an honor to work in this District spent a lot of time here went to school

174here in DeKalb was here a long time ago and it's come a long way and it's going to continue to do that so we're all going to do excellent work and you will continue to do excellent work for our students because that's their number one for sure so thank you [Applause] for me that's it for you okay with that the meeting will be adjourned it is recommended that the Board of Education will adjourn is there a motion all in favor aye thank you good night