CUSD428 Board Meeting 4/19/2022

001and then amanda's not going to be here tonight um [Music] is she going to be in she's too sick mean it's crazy is that right now okay we're going to go ahead and get started we start with a roll call amanda harness ramirez president seymour chancellor i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay first off we have public comment uh 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 criticism of individuals is not in order and i

002will time you on three minutes if you go over three minutes i'll let you know if you keep going i'll just give you a gavel to kind of get you along but i'll give everybody three minutes of time and first off we have megan jackson and the subject is sros good evening i'm here tonight to support to show my support for the additional three resource officers i was a bit surprised at our responsive response our board gave to the topic at the last meeting i encourage our board members to spend some more time in our schools given the information that the district is working on a plan to address student behavior any building level employee can tell you that even with the best detailed behavior intervention there's always a spike in behaviors before things become

003better i encourage you all to pass the additional sros we need them in our buildings during the implementation of the district command this plan will need time to work and our current sros needs support as well as our staff and students need to feel safe our sros want to build relationships with our students and the additional support with the additional support they can do just that thank you thank you next up is steve omburg and the topic is the proposed increase of central office employees thank you as a taxpayer of multiple properties in farmland in this community i have a few questions for the board members superintendents and those who are proposing spending an unmandatable amount of money have you as board members superintendents and people proposing expenditures spent a full day in each of

004these district buildings to gain first-hand knowledge of the needs of the students staff members and principals prior to deliberating on the proposed expenditures for those proposing these expenditures have you gained input from all stakeholders prior to presenting these changes have you written the job descriptions for these proposed positions to ensure that the knowledge base will meet the demands can you draw a straight line from these expenditures to student growth and personal well-being and academics have teachers and building administrators input been harmonized with these proposals if you personally answered no to any of these questions that i recommend going to the trenches to gain an understanding before voting thank you for your consideration thank you next up is terry chris and the topic is increase in nursing staff hi my name is terry crist i'm a

005registered nurse school district i've been here six years i started as a helper to our certified nurses back then things were a little bit different than they are now now we have so many more increased needs of our students when i started here i came from a hospital background as well as a nursing home and i was shocked that there were kids that had two meetings i was shocked by the number of diabetic students we have um and since then the needs have just increased i sent you all a letter that i hope you've all had time to read i was going to actually read that out loud now and i decided that it would be better just to kind of just kind of wing it and i want you to know that we need

006these positions um as far as the nurses go covered there or not we all work at 120 we want the very best here for our students and we will not stop unless we do give the best care that we can be proud of we're going without breaks we're spending hours at home working the certified nurses are helping us out we're helping them out the shortage is real um covet posed some additional problems besides just colvin and contact tracing and that type of stuff but people put off going to the doctor for medical needs they put up one of the dentists getting vision exams our children were suffering so we've been tracking that information we've been helping parents to set up appointments you know parents have lost insurances things like that i work very closely with

007my social worker and you know i will sit there and help a parent make calls to make appointments to get them appointments that they need to get through the system you know if you've called kishwaukee lately or northwestern you know you have to push this button push this button push that button and our parents aren't all that educated to be able to get through the system so i'm happy to say that the majority of the nurses were all there to help these parents as well as the students get the care that they need kyle has done an excellent job of being a coordinator for us however he does not have any medical background um i kind of joked with you if you got it that i said well you know i could be a car

008manager but i don't really know that much about cars and kyle's had to get kind of some first-hand information from us who had to teach him as we go back when i started here i said that we needed a healthcare coordinator or a director of nursing who knows what we do every day and now it's even more apparent in the very beginning of covert i had a student who's going to be starting with me who had a tracheostomy uh kyle's like what's that gonna involve you know so i had to explain that to him and even then he was like here this child wants to come in the middle of covid with the respiratory problems compounded by a tracheostomy i'm like yeah here's what we're going to need to do so i mean these positions

009are very much needed there's even more and more 504s and ieps because kids are needing more and more care they're needing more and more interventions um between that and just the number of procedures that we do it's it's incredible so i employ you to vote positively for all the positions that we need thank you monica vidal and oh wait i'm sorry oh cotton okay sorry we'll do a colleen clark or did you switch it uh oh yeah i'll go first okay and you're monica no you're counting okay okay sorry that's okay so what is need need is commonly defined as circumstances in which something is necessary or that requires some course of action synonyms for need include obligation call demand necessity and requirement so how do we determine if the students need extra support from

010social workers nurses sites and counselors and are these needs worth three million i live each day trying to determine the social emotional needs of students in my school today i want to ask you the board members some questions about need does the student carrying his deceased father's funeral portrait around his classroom need extra support to the children who have been in multiple house fires woken up in the dead of night to vacate their burning homes the ones who can't concentrate on academics need extra support thus the student whose mother killed herself and who knows all the tragic details need extra support does the student who comes in to tell you that a family member has been touching them in private areas at night while they are trying to sleep do they need extra support does

011the student who just entered foster care who started over with a new family and was plopped into our school need extra support do the children the children that come in with concerns of not having running water or working toilet and ask you for help do they need extra support the elementary student who just told their classroom teacher they don't want to live anymore and have a specific plan on how they're going to kill themselves do they need extra support does the student whose father was traumatically killed on wednesday morning need extra support when they return on friday the kindergarten room cries all day and no one can seem to determine why does this student need extra support the student who just had their life threatened by another student do they need the sport the student

012making threats perhaps they need support the first-grade student who shared during morning meetings that his dad hits his mom and mommy cries do they need support the student who doesn't realize he has a black eye when you ask him what happened to his face who has been getting hit by others on his way to school do they need support the girl who just started their menstrual cycle and has been unprepared for this life change do they need the extra support at school the elementary student who's confused about their gender and feels as though they do not belong in their own body do they need support the student whose family members contact the school for help because their lease has expired and they are not homeless and do not know what to do does that student

013need support if one of these situations was happening to your child would you want them to have the extra support during their school day would you want someone to help them the majority of the families that i've spoken to are happy and thankful to have the extra support for their kids while at school all of these situations are examples of students who are not on a caseload this is not an issue of equity or quality this is an issue of logistics what should a building do when there are multiple immediate needs occurring simultaneously with only one staff member as the primary person responsible for addressing social emotional needs not every building may have the same needs but it comes down to this one person cannot be in more than one place at a time emotional

014support does not occur on the schedule that fits with the availability of one staff member typically can you hand it off next up is monica and follow-up support takes time student service staff and special education staff are constantly being pulled away from other duties to give extra support in these situations which leaves us scrambling to reschedule students on caseloads and the students not a caseload to be left without support they need to thrive in school and life to clarify to be on a special education caseload the child needs to be labeled with a disability children who have experienced extremely stressful or traumatic events do not necessarily meet the criteria required by the state to be labeled as disabled in a true mtss model less than 10 percent of the student population should be labeled as

015being disabled however students who are not labeled as disabled can be referred to tiered services through mtss to receive the extra support they so desperately need while at school to be able to support both our students with disabilities and receiving services via ftss more support team members need to be added just to remind the board and perhaps inform the public of the support staffing situation in elementary schools is as follows psychologists are split between two or more buildings and struggle to complete many of their duties currently at the elementary level three certified nurses are split with one serving six elementary schools another serving one elementary and one middle school and the third serving the other middle school and one elementary school out of our eight elementary schools brooks and tyler each have two social workers

016or counselors while the remaining six elementary schools have one social worker we have heard at the last few board meetings that this call for additional help is needed it has been a consistent message from parents community members teachers and administrators so i ask you today will you respond to the call for more social emotional support will you make this investment in what our community is not only asking for but needs now more than ever thank you next up is mary lynn buckner and the issue is communication coordinator yes thank you so i'm here to advocate for the students as well um honor about 2008 uh the board did we did have a communications position position at that time and that board at that time deemed that that was a superfluous position that was also about

017the time when the board cut a lot of teachers thus bringing our class sizes up to what they are now and so we need we need positions that are going to be boots on the ground with the kids uh just as the related service colleagues we're talking about we need those positions what we don't need is a communications coordinator and the face coordinator when i saw this tonight on the board communications coordinator like okay maybe that's the face no so you guys are talking about having a communication coordinator and the face coordinator to the tune of close to two hundred thousand dollars our kids are drowning we need people on the ground in the building um people who are going to directly import directly impact the kids and as the gentleman so eloquently put i

018don't even know him this morning today but can you draw a direct line from that position to the kids direct line and i would i would say no and i would say that those positions are completely unnecessary at this time it would be nice to have we can't afford nice right now we're we're in dire need we need we need help with the kids thank you thank you [Applause] so he can join us do we have to make a motion to do that i don't know what the rules are since after covet or since covet i'm just going to go ahead and make a motion for a board member to join us remotely excuse me can you speak up please sir i will i'll make a motion for a board member to join us remotely

019second roll call yes hey i'm gonna put you on speaker here next to me at the meeting okay all right yep yep so we've got uh jeremy joining us by speakerphone okay do you want to go on mute while you're not talking sure okay all right okay next up is a four committee reports and correspondence does anyone have committee reports or correspondence i do um in the last since the last board meeting i attended a meeting with the social justice committee i was also invited to participate in the principal interviews for the high school which were great this upcoming thursday i also have a meeting with the seo committee and or there's an seo committee meeting and then i also within in this week i also plan to reach out to the principals to which

020i am a school to which i am a liaison to make sure that i plan a visit i participated in the safety committee meeting myself and amanda and at that time the contractor who's doing our safety audit pretty much was the substance and the source of the meeting and uh he was very professional in that he took a lot of questions from the people that were there on the call asking what the process was his opinion towards some of the ideas and concerns that people in the meeting had that took up the better part of our hour it was a good and productive meeting we're going to follow up and continue with the things that we didn't talk about in our next week okay um i attended a meeting um with jeremy and also with

021the city manager mayor cohen barnes and police chief byrd minerva and a couple cabinet members to just kind of talk through a little bit more the the need or or the the recommendations for adding arrows i think it was a good discussion um i know jeremy couldn't be there as long as he wanted to and i i did want to ask i don't know if this is the right time but i will our next meeting be our organizational meeting okay anybody else did you mention jeremy did you have anything to share um no well yes i guess the synopsis i think that samantha just gave was was good the you know i'm gonna have more questions i guess when we get to that spot on the agenda in terms of you know there's some things

022that i think we need to research in more detail and i'll probably reserve those questions for when we get to that portion of the meeting okay sounds good thank you anybody else okay all right next up is acceptance of donations from niu napdfs niu partners with the national association for professional development schools among other schools and they hold the annual conference this year the conference was in chicago and they used niu student teachers to support the work that's done in that conference here at d428 we held a reception to support those student teachers sorry those student teachers and the niu education department and to celebrate the work that they did for that conference they provided us with a lot of valuable items that we will be sharing with our students they accept donations and people

023share a variety of teachable items such as books and microscopes and markers and list goes on and on all the things that were left over from the conference and i do donated to us as a partner in district and those are the items that we in turn can give to our buildings to give to our students so they'll have books to read at home at night they'll have science projects equipment and other things that they can use to learn from there were student teachers that were present that day some couldn't make it but since last monday when we held a reception three of them have applied for jobs for next year so our partnership is showing to be very positive now does that feel nice um so we thank niu for the contributions and we'll

024be getting those items out to our buildings for our students thank you thank you all right next up is acceptance of donations from enchanted thank you backpacks it's just over you are thank you and balancing okay um so the board in the district would like to thank enchanted backpacks for donation of supplies to littlejohn elementary school thank you very much [Applause] jackie you said consent agenda items it is recommended that the board agenda or sorry that the board approve agenda items a through i on the consent agenda is there emotion so moved second rolco samantha david yes ceremony yes jim nelson jeremy yes jason ramirez yes david seymour yes okay uh next up is fte request for school year 2022 23. this is information and action mr sales good evening um on our board docs

025you are able to see both the cover sheet and the fte request they are also on the screen for those of you that are present inside the boardroom so at our previous meeting we brought forward the same request and per the board's request we provided more detail and went back and just did some work on it it is a large ass and we recognize that it's a large ass but we feel that that was the right thing to do to bring forward all the things that we see we need to support the teaching and learning of our students as we do that we are happy to entertain questions from the board this presentation is broken down into three parts the first part is district-wide requests those are positions that affect the district as a whole

026there is a facilities position the communications position and some teacher positions but they are itinerant positions meaning they are not assigned to a building they are assigned to district wide work beyond that there's elementary requests and there are secondary requests i'm happy to go through this document however the board would like all right welcome any questions um so i guess my question is on the last board meeting i asked if we could do a like like pair down like like to just like like the um like bare minimum that we could request then like what would be a step up from that and then let's be a step up from that and then like what like this is pretty much like everything right this is like our dream list so i guess um and then

027it's to the tune of just over 3.5 million dollars so if we're only like i guess what i was asking for is like a prioritization of what's you know necessity versus what's what would be nice to have in addition so um i don't have that so our secondary requests i'm going to go on reverse order now our secondary requests are based on court student course selections enrollments and statutory regulations from the school code the elementary requests some are similar to those requests and then others are so that we can decrease loads for teachers such as our bilingual itinerary teacher and being able to provide equity throughout the district for where that bilingual where those bilingual programs are offered and then at the district level very similar again based upon school code regulation and the needs

028of the district based on needs of the work that needs to be done for example the maintenance position as was mentioned uh by someone um there were some positions that the district had previously and then they eliminated but we are we are still we still have the same needs and we're still spending that money but we're spending that money by outsourcing it so by being able to bring that work back in district we can regulate the cost that we are spending so this is our priority list there were greater requests that did not make it to this list as we looked at how we could absorb some of that work into other positions or redistribute that word this is our list so let's say our the administration sure cindy how much did we budget for

02920 to for ft request or next yeah typically what we do is we have a baseline of eight fte that's really just a starting point you know we're looking at our long-term financial projections yeah and then we adjust once we know our needs so that's really just a starting point so you said eight yeah and like what's like what's the price range um i would say that's about a half a million okay so that would be a more typical request as the last few years our requests have exceeded that because of the needs we want to hire more social workers so the last i would say three years we've exceeded that age you will see requests for reading interventionists and reading specialists those are based on students achievement and the need for additional intervention support

030in the classrooms so i failed to mention that so one of the major issues here is the cost of the price tag however i understand that some of these positions can be funded through do we have the documents or a document that would indicate which of these roles can be funded via essay yeah it would just depend um because really esser would have so how we're responding or trying to um mitigate october 19 so it would be specific to that so anything related to i would say social emotional supports you know getting students back anything related to learning loss additional chat we need to help support those students in those areas so um it would really depend again those are temporary temporary funding so it would be something we could fund initially we do have

031some room in that grant we just submitted it so the state's in the process of reviewing everything but there is a little bit of room that if there were some of these positions we could support for so even if we if we were to pay people using us or funds we'd still have to be able to sustain that long term beyond our availability of veteran funding yeah would you happen to be able to offer some ballpark area as to what esser might be able to contribute because we're also looking at our needs for facilities and some of these esser funds we could use for that as well use of those ones because let's say we need to we're using them already for that for a lot of the um heating ventilation projects that we're working

032on that we're doing that we have a lot of to do but now these funds are a perfect use for that to help with that and those are a lot of districts are using their phones for that so so we kind of have to balance out if we're looking to run a patient's building let's just say to provide more space for students so we can provide more classrooms to decrease class size we could use some of those funds for that so it's kind of an offset so it really you know if we can maybe do a half a million or a million i'm just throwing a dollar out and we have to look at it towards maybe that purpose but we do want to leave some thoughts on the table for those projects too depending

033on what we're in the process of the facility assessment and when that is completed we'll have a better idea if we're looking at really every square inch of the buildings that we're using now how they're being used and if we need to do any expansion or even contractions and find space for classrooms as well as for people too so it's sort of it's a balancing action thank you um does somebody else have questions sarah can can we discuss just quickly was there a communications position or something on that list i'm driving right now i don't have this yeah no it's a you know the community there's a communications coordinator position listed for a hundred and five thousand dollars a year well 145 eight with um we're talking about this one's like about a three maybe

034three and a half percent bump in our annual budget um and then when we get to the other piece obviously we're looking at a much bigger piece of the pie but some of the things that just jump out at me here top of mind and i'm not sure if everybody can hear me but um we're making pretty massive leaps here right in expanding our uh our our payroll and our you know number of employees at fts and you know most of the time what i would see and what is typically recommended is more of a uh overtime implemented strategy so like for instance what what number of school counselors i see we have eight of them in here um how many do we have now the request is actually for school counselors school social workers

035so it kind of depends on what you're asking so what i can say is at the elementary level right now we have at least one social worker in each building tyler and brooks would have two social workers because they support they've either been identified as a building that has a higher need for social emotional support or they have special programs at the middle school level we have three counselors at huntley middle school then we have two counselors at clinton rosette middle school there is one counselor that also supports tyler elementary school at each middle school has two social workers at the high school level we have five school counselors and four social workers and there are some school psychologists in there as well okay so i wasn't i wasn't able to hear well enough to

036do all the math so what are we talking in terms of counselors total is that number then let's try i just wanted a number yeah we're counting let's say about um about about 21 across the district okay in those multiple ones we want to add eight more listen i hear you when you say combo positions but then i'm going to remark on the communications position referencing that i find it i'm a little challenged by this this sort of thing for instance you know i think we paid extra money for phil to be in charge of communications and now i have another communications position on the budget and we still have an open engagement communication community communications type role that is open from valerie hernandez departure so i mean we're talking about you know this was

037supposed to be part of one position and my experience now we're really outsourcing that and we just paid extra for it so when you say that these are you know counselor social emotional you know my question would be my experience has not been that when we do that we're very successful with combo positions so you know can you and then second part of that is you know you're basically you know adding a 33 increase in the number of people doing that job and that seems like a really big number considering you know the district dysfunction with fewer in the past so and i know that we've been talking about other positions in addition to that so i guess i'm just a little concerned that maybe we're flying a little too high too fast and when

038i heard this was a wish list you know typically a wish list of this is what everybody wants um you know i'd love to know where the priority is because i can't tell from this list you're making it all look like a prior that on an average year i think we approved 900 000 last year we're going to jump to and a half million um because it's all desperately needed um i i guess i'm just a little bit lost on that so i know that's a lot of thoughts that i just shared but i mean you know we're the fiduciary here and minerva it's obviously your job to be the fiduciary over this as well and and frankly this is a lot of money to our taxpayers and they're the people that put us in

039these chairs so i mean unless it's absolutely necessary to do this i mean we're talking about if we combine this with you know the other ask we're looking at a 10 increase in our budget i mean by 26 we'll be through our entire fund building projects it doesn't leave any money for any anything a change in our government status right we get a new governor or something like that administrative changes we don't know if we're going to get the same funding and so we're putting a lot of eggs in this bank it's always going to be perfect um my concern is why are we feeling like we need to jump so quickly and add so much instead of doing this the way all other organizations do which is essentially incremental increases so jeremy if i

040may this is minerva i just want to make sure that we all understand the nuances between a communication coordinator versus sel specialists and social workers and counselors so we've heard over the course of this year how dire our need is to ensure that our students feel safe that they have made connections that we're supporting them to wrap our own services so that we can remove barriers for our students and they can come to school and feel like they can learn you've heard we've all heard we've read on the paper we've listened to individuals we've seen in school what the need is and for us to try to equate the need for a social worker counselor and a communication coordinator you're absolutely right i would not i would not compare that to that but our numbers

041our data shows that we do need to be able to support our children and their families to make sure that they feel like they're being taken care of while they're in school because if we don't do this we will continue to see numbers climb where children are disenfranchised even further and the trauma that is being caused whether they're within the building or outside of the building will not be able to be addressed we just don't have enough staff that means that our teachers and other staff have to take up for that that takes them away from actually doing the work that we need them to do so because we don't have space to put teachers so that we can reduce class size the need for the additional supports will help us to reduce the need

042for the teachers to be removed from the classroom so that they can take care of the needs of the children and the teacher can continue to be the teacher in the classroom so you know the i i don't want us to to to do one or the other if the communication coordinator is something that we want to put on the side then i have no problem with that right but i don't want to cost the district the needs uh the the type of supports and resources that we need for our children and families so that we can continue to help them to move forward as a learner in the district so that we can improve student achievement [Music] emotional type supports which i think are important but they're important more so now because of the

043fact that frankly we're not doing a very good job of of keeping our schools and discipline right and so we're putting together a plan on how to attack that which i think is going to involve things you know like safety and security officer staff and things of that nature as well because if our plan that we're going to roll out this fault addresses that then the need for eight additional head count in these two types of positions might be less so again i'm speaking to um you know and obviously i'm on this particular little side committee on safety so i'm i'm pretty plugged into the situation and and i would say that these aren't the positions that are solving that problem they are the band-aid on the problem that we're trying to fix well can

044i respond why on earth would we hire eight people to fill that void if if we're going to if we're going to resolve the problem jeremy um i have a comment to that uh i'm actually part of the seo committee and you know behavioral issues is part of one of the issues it's not all of it if we're talking about supporting the student holistically supporting the student holistically is not just behavioral issues but really there's a lot a lot of other things that go into um us being responsible and responding to their needs um so i respectfully will disagree with you in stating that it is just behavioral issues i'm talking about the consular positions and the and the the social workers that you're questioning in regards to that they are very short stuff and

045if you ever get the opportunity to sit in one of the seo committees it would be important for you to like to possibly sit in one of these committees so that he could actually understand and hear uh the perspective that they're coming from there is a dire need for that there is a dire need for us to support the staff so that they can be as effective as possible with supporting the children as well as we cannot do a single approach there's no way to talk about working on student behaviors if you're not addressing social emotional needs it has to be a multifaceted approach it has to be safety committee and sel it cannot be one or the other we're not going to solve any problems but isn't the need for the sel being created

046by the issues in the classroom no the the need for sel behaviors are symptoms of social emotional development and learning needs okay so so basically now you're saying is that we as a district are committed to providing that for everyone in addition to the rest of the world yes i think we have to be that's what yes mtss supports tier one seo tier three tiers two and three the purpose of the position is to ensure that not only does the teacher provide seo support as a tier one as part of their mtss in the classroom but as as student needs become more obvious or more time needs to be spent that we have resources that can be allocated to support those children so the teacher in the classroom can continue to do the work that

047needs to be done while the student needs are being addressed and met and mitigated so that they can come back into the classroom as a solid learner and if not possible then also reaching out to the family to help mitigate what the family needs so that we are supporting the whole child and that they can come back into the school and be a part of the community if we do not do that on our side then we are just leaving it's a chance on the outside and we need to work as a partner the city the police every every aspect of this of the cow needs to be a part of this conversation just like a family and community engagement manager you know we we're trying to get one we actually need way more than

048that and and the reason that we need those folks are those become the advocates for the families on behalf of students when children aren't doing well so that they can get the services and supports they need whether they're happening in the school building or they're out in the community you know we talk a lot about those partnerships but if we don't have folks that can actually begin to mitigate that we are going to lose our children to a lot more than just the trauma that we see now and and the behaviors can become worse and or unsupported they can turn into something else so and the thing is too is that right now we may need that and hopefully and the expectation the intent is for those things to turn around so right now we

049may be asking for three sros next year we may say hey we don't sorry guys we only need one now take take two back right and i think that that partnership is going to be very clear you know that we are able to do that right now we may need all of these other folks but then as the classroom sizes begin to get smaller and then we open up other rooms and those folks become teachers they get their own classrooms and then we are mitigating other issues and making sure that teachers have more one-on-one direct connection with our students so the plan isn't one size it's not just one thing that's going to fix everything and the other piece of it is that we have to become we have to be flexible we have to

050look at our data as you know look at our data see what it is that we need in the moment we have to project what we think we're going to see in the future we have to make sure that we're ready and prepared for that and then we have to continue to to plan further outright if we are going to make change then we have to take the risk that speaks to the fact that we need school counselors i would love to see it i mean i'm not sure what you're facing i mean if if you're saying that we absolutely need eight people but that's gonna solve the problem then that's so be it is that what we're saying right now and what are we basing that eight people on i guess that's what i'm

051looking for right okay i'm going to have kyle answer that hey jeremy that that's a really good question and so i want to go back just a little bit and kind of contextualize the eight additional um counselors social worker so the position is listed as counselor slash social worker to cast a little bit of a wider net because we feel like those two specialties can serve the purpose of what we're trying to accomplish what we have done as a district over a number of years is we've evaluated our mtss model tier 1 tier 2 and tier 3 when it comes to providing access to social emotional support for all of our kids where we've invested a lot of time and resources in is tier 3 and i'm going to do an analogy that we're constantly

052putting out students that are fires but students who are in crisis we're doing a crisis response for those students that's really resource intensive both from a personnel cost financial cost and time cost those students need that support we're happy to provide that support but we're going to continue to triage at tier three until we really address tier one and tier two over the last few years we've spent a lot of time on tier one we've made a lot of progress as a district we have a tier one seo curriculum at the elementary level ec included we have it at the middle school level and the high school has even rolled out since cobit tier one curriculum as well that they're implementing what we have found is our gap is in tier two so our clinicians

053in our school social workers counselors psychologists they're spending a lot of time at the left tier 3 level responding to students in crisis and meeting their legal obligations under the individuals with disabilities and education act which would be the minutes that are provided within an iep or section 504 which would be accommodations what and some members of our staff have spoken to this is there are more students out there that don't fall into those categories they don't have an iep they don't have a 504 they're not necessarily tier three but they're students that are at at risk for negative outcomes and the idea behind the eight additional um counselors social workers is for us to be able to fully and better address tier one and more specifically tier two so we can identify and support

054students earlier so we can prevent negative outcomes down the road and it's very intentional that we're looking at i think we need to provide services pre-k through 12 but we need to intervene earlier on in our students education especially our kinder first and second graders which i know there's a lot of attention at the secondary level when it comes to conduct and things like that i'll be honest with you i'm really worried about our kinder first and second grade and it goes down to pre-k and ec because they haven't had that voicing yet they they're kind of playing catch-up when it comes to social emotional skills problem-solving ability decision making and so i i think what we really focus on right now is that secondary concern but we can ignore the need at the lower

055levels and this is the best way that my department in collaboration with a lot of other stakeholders have identified is our way to respond right now and i do think there's urgency in the timing of that um so kyle i i appreciate the rationale i do and i'm here to ask the difficult questions that everybody has to listen to but at the end of the day i still don't understand where b came from i understand the need and the position and what you see it what i'm looking for is where did we come up with the number yeah good question so what we looked at is eight elementary schools okay now they're not all the same size they don't all have necessarily the same need but what we would be able to do with those

056eight fte is allocate them so some of our elementary schools would get an additional 1.0 fte some of our elementary schools would split those fte and it would go down and i keep saying elementary i don't want to dismiss our eldc they factor into this too but i'm going to use founders elementary for an example one of our largest elementary schools right now one social worker one psychologist that is barely meaning the needs of our students with disabilities it's not allowing us to get any further with that so that is a building that needs an additional 1.0 lincoln certainly has students with needs but they don't have the special programs they don't necessarily have the same size so they might not necessarily need that 1.0 fte maybe they would get away with a half 1.5

057fte and then another building would have that additional 0.5 fte and would be able to meet the tyranny of two meets that they have what we would do after this fte proposal depending on how the board acts is we would sit down after we do our spring universal screening we would look at our student data and we would allocate those resources as equitably as we can based on that need but we feel like eight would provide us the coverage we need to actually make a difference and not only the direct impact on students but in our mtss framework as a whole i think it's also important for us to note that we have to start being more proactive rather than reactive and right now just because we have been able to survive with the still

058you know the state the staff that we we do have on board i mean that doesn't mean that they're not overworked right um it is a there is a lot of need and we are being very reactive because of the short um the support that that they have that they're lacking actually um so there is a high need for it that can support not only the needs that are right now but that we can prevent you know as they're coming because the issues are happening and the concerns are there they're present so i mean all we have to do is really just continue to listen to what the we know that the community continues to ask parents students and staff ultimately um i'm just finding it very difficult to believe to to believe that we're

059having this question because of the fact that we are in a dire situation where we are in need of these these support services so that we can support our staff and most importantly the children that they're supporting my understanding of this is that it's it's dealing with situations in the classroom that are disrupting education which is our job and those kids get removed and then they i suppose have go talk to one of these these counselors and and work on that behavior um i understand that however you know we have this other end of the spectrum as well and i guess part of my issue here is is that all of this is coming at once right like why are we not doing a build up approach right why are we not doing adding two

060years see how helpful it is and impactful where's the data like number of of counseling visits per person and and actually trying to understand you know are we even know if this is working right and is other than anecdotal information like well it seems like you know there's less disruption in the classroom i i guess i would feel more comfortable around spending this much taxpayer money to deal with students who are struggling if i understood exactly how they're being held and if that's being effective and if it is i'm the biggest fan but again we tend to go and just are we're hiring and my example of this whole communications position um wild difference was just an analogous to we keep creating and hiring positions and then i'm not seeing any results and so i

061think we should all be concerned about that and the best way to do that is to try to measure it so kyle i'm going to throw this back at you how do we plan to measure it and how can i get some data with a jumping off point from when we make these tires so that we can actually see because if it's not working then we gotta change our strategy right and and how do we know if we're not measuring anything and that comes back to my point which isn't you know these are these are just conversations right it's it's pressure testing the theory you're betting if you spend 700 000 on counselors that we're going to see a difference in the average student sitting in that classroom getting educated i just want to know

062how we're measuring it because it's a big investment does that make sense now yeah i hope i mean yeah it absolutely does and i can maneuver my sensation it does make sense and that's that's a very good question um where do i want to start um you know we measure student social emotional growth in a lot of ways we measure it by uh very directly by our universal screening data which a little foreshadowing i'll cover a little bit in detail when we talk about our department realignment um that is something that we've done now for a number of years and that's information that we have and we can compare kind of baseline to now there there's extensive research out there that shows that the investment in social emotional learning is cost effective for school districts

063for communities down the road so it's not only the academic achievement cost but it's honestly it's developing productive members of society that can go out and obtain jobs and work collaboratively with others and reduce the strain on you know maybe policing and some of those things um and i and i will say this i think in general not just this school board but you know in my uh decade in this district i think the school our school board has come a long way with recognizing the importance of the investment of seo i think coven slapped everybody in the face and i think here we are recognizing that you know there was a high level of need prior to this pandemic this pandemic has put us in a place now where unfortunately some of our students

064do have struggles with that self-regulation with that positive peer socialization and that's generally what's over that's what's recognizable what i want to be very cautious of though is that's just one way that behavior manifests itself there's a whole another layer here where we talk about kids with more internalizing concerns with anxiety with suicidal ideation with lack of engagement or school-attended school refusal all of that is sel and the way we measure that we have various screeners that we do at the elementary and middle school level we very intentionally try to capture that internalizing need because that's ultimately it might not be as overt but that's just as impactful as the students that have difficulty regulating their behavior so what i think jeremy to go back to your original question is how are we going to

065measure success you're going to measure measure success first and foremost and are all of our students able to access social emotional support because right now i would say no they're not so the first step in my in my mind is we've got to make sure they can access social emotional support i'm very biased i've worked with some great colleagues in this district and i'm a school psychologist by training but i know for a fact if we can get our clinicians our kids in front of our clinicians our kids are going to benefit there's no doubt in my mind about it but right now we don't have the capacity to meet the need that's out there so the access would be the first step second step is you're going to see those universal screening data change

066over time you're going to see academic achievement attendance those are the those are the metrics that we would want to measure over time to see an improvement and if we're not seeing that payoff then we have to look at how what is our strategy what is our model but i would say right now we don't have the framework in place to truly say that we're going to be guaranteeing an outcome that's positive but we can get there with additional staff okay last question i promise it's interesting because you know looking at the demographer data you know it doesn't seem like our student population has changed dramatically and i do know that there appears to be some sort of an effect from from covid but it does appear and i'm obviously covering the high school a

067couple years ago for a couple years that the behavior has gotten worse on a fairly substantial level would you agree i think our i think well i think students and adults right now are really struggling and i think our students don't have the executive functioning skills that social emotional foundation to be able to manage as well as some adults do and i think that's what we're seeing and i i'll be honest with you jeremy it's not unique to our district i know that's kind of being a worn out narrative right now but i think because the entire country is seeing this rise in need it it tells us that it's it might not be necessarily something that we aren't doing right it's the need has gone higher and therefore our response has to be higher

068well and that's where i wanted to go with this so i appreciate you taking it down that road because you know when i look at this i'm definitely a solutions oriented person right and i'm consulting a lot of my life so it's problems sort of solution stuff so i do and you know i look at like some of the data that was provided to me and i was looking at just the number of sro calls in a place like elgin with a much higher number of students but actually has a fairly similar number of sro calls and i'd be curious to know how is a district like that doing it and are we you know i just feel like there's so much more research we can do um i'd be curious to know if anybody

069has looked into some of these districts and spoken to them in terms of how many per capita type you know do they have counselors for social emotional stuff why is it that they're getting less sro calls on us is it the way we count them is it that they've just got a different system than us but when we're going to go and add a bunch of bunch of people like i said if it's if it's been proven to work somewhere and we're modeling it and we're doing the research then okay that's great if we're taking a a swag at it saying this is about what we need because we think this is what's going to be successful i get a little bit more nervous right so i'm just kind of checking in to say like

070our population hasn't changed in the last 10 years much at all jeremy can i ask can i ask you a question about that are you do you mean just sheer numbers or do you mean what what are you gauging our population hasn't changed because i think the demographer's study actually said differently as does our school report card our interactive school report card in the last two years even our students that are eligible for free and reduced lunch have increased we were sick at 60 we're now at 65 in two years 65 over half of our students yeah you're talking about a three percent shift in terms of of socioeconomic status i i don't see that as well that's that's just one factor right but you're talking three percent though pointing out is that the number

071of our student body has not changed dramatically and we're playing g flat what i find interesting is that you know the student population mix hasn't changed substantially in in terms of comparative to the increase in the number of sro calls which is off the charts different so it's not a matter of in single digit percentages we all know that so my question was what's why why do we believe that is and how much of it do you think is driven by the way we monitor behavior i i just want to understand your level of knowledge and then also i'd like to know you know what districts have you gone to as sort of that best practice type place to really dive in and see what the districts that have a great strategy that are doing

072well in similar similar situations what are they doing and how much time have we spent on that and where i might be interested tonight i i think i i have quite a bit of experience coming from a march a much larger district and looking at what systems and processes and practices are in place coming here systems and and we don't have a framework that we could set a foundation on so that's what we're spending our time doing now similar similarly elgin rockford waukegan aurora you know in other other districts of freeport and then of course the surrounding districts here in our own region in having conversations with those superintendents who've been around a little bit longer who have things in place there they have other systems in place that that they've been been able to

073mitigate that so they do have resources they do have other things that we currently do not so based on the number of students that we currently have based on the data of what we're seeing not just on the sro calls but just in general the types of calls that are made from teachers regarding students from student to student from home to students you know we have to be able to mitigate that first in order to be able to lay a foundation again being allowed flexibility to be able to build the to build that and then work towards tier two which is the one where we're greatly lacking and and is that in is in a place that also needs to be uh further developed did you want to add anything to that um no well

074yeah um you know it's not necessarily district specific but when we think about um i know if you're familiar with the castle framework and we look at that framework and we look at what those seo competencies are and then we look at they model out based on best practice here is how you have to approach a holistic strategy to sel and it's about a community partnership it's about family partnership it's about school district level support which would fall into the code of conduct our mtss or pbis frameworks and then we talk about classroom supports and so we're using that framework to try and guide what we feel is best practice in many districts utilize that castle is probably one of the most well-known organizations right now and it is a trailblazer and sel so so

075given that those other districts so we're not talking to anyone like we're just going off in the literature is that my understanding then in terms of data it's sharing of data is that not something that goes on interior well it just seems like your equivalent of you know another district that's similar right i think that might be good to share best practices okay i i will say this jeremy i i meet with um region 2 directors of student services special education our county directors i work with mtss consultants that come from u46 so what we are implementing honestly is pretty progressive compared to a lot of other districts especially in our area so we're already heading down a path that i think a lot of districts are probably envious of in terms of our structure

076and our services and it aligns with what is supported by the research and that's where castle would come from so it's not always an apples and apples comparison like u-46 in our district are very different in size or difference in you know demographics but the model is essentially something that can translate to our district good join me any more questions thank you okay um does anyone else have questions or comments um so sorry um so i get my question so you were saying like the communications coordinator um like this position um kind of going back to that in terms of that and the face coordinator and then also phil is but he's not here no okay so um because that's what i mean like like phil was doing communications but we also needed a communications

077coordinator in addition to that so he supervises that he doesn't do the communications he is a strategic planning and mtss framework developer and communication so under his guides family and community engagement and communications is under his guise right that doesn't necessarily mean that he was the one that was intended to do that work so so we brought him on for the strategic plan and for mtss and communications those three things it's under his guise under his purview correct um so is it is do we want to remove the one or the other we can take it off the table for now so if that's what's going to keep us from moving forward yeah i don't i don't have a i mean i'm on board 100 with obviously supporting our students needs taking care of what

078our our kids um are in need of right now supporting you know social emotional issues i mean i've been a huge advocate of that ever since i've been on the board and supported all these hiring decisions that we've made however you know i do have a concern just about i mean we have to be able to sustain um our budget as well so if we're if we're making this large of a jump are there any positions here and that was really my question from the last meeting is every single thing on this this 3.5 million a priority it's a 100 a priority that we absolutely need or is there you know is there a paired down version um because my my concerns jump to sustainability um in the future because if we add three point

079million dollars fte on this year and then we gotta add ft on next year so then and the next year in the following year so like that i just want to make sure that that's what my concern revolves around because obviously we have to be able to support our students that's 100 what we're here for we also have to be able to you know have a have a sound financial plan moving forward and i just i have concerns around that too so so i i believe that cindy spent quite a bit of her weekend this weekend making sure that we were able to take a look at that we've had a number of conversations around what needs to happen if if the you know there's things that the board is as my supervisor has asked

080me to make sure that i do i want to make sure that we have what we need to be able to do that work if that is something that is no longer a priority then i don't have or that is not as high a priority i would say my students are the number one priority and that i'm willing to table those two positions or any other position in this moment for this request so that we can move forward for the support that my teachers and my families and my students need i would say our and obviously most definitely but that's my question is just like are there are there priorities that are there are there things that are not like i guess that's what i had asked for is there as like a prioritized but

081i think like this list has gone down drastically from the original request of the 10 million i mean anyway this is separate we were the same as last time in totality it would have been 10 million dollars and we've this wait i just want to let's clarify because i don't want to be confused on that this this is the exact same request as last meeting or the fte request for for administrators in the district level i will say so separately the rest of that was the reorganization stuff when in the agenda studying meeting um that i covered i i asked if this was prioritized when they and it was communicated then that this these they felt that these were what we absolutely need and you're okay with the 3.5 million i am also willing to

082um so we have a face coordinator position open that hasn't been filled i would be willing to put the communications coordinator off of here but i think all of these other ones and communication has been something that has come up multiple times from staff right from community and so i agree fully but i know that we have i mean we have phil here that's i mean but he's not here tonight and then we have a position open for faith right we're still not able to fill possibly and then we're gonna open this position as well so that's what like you know if we were able to i mean i i agree i have 100 said you know we need a pr person we need communications we also though like what is also fiscally responsible too

083because we've got to be able to sustain this if we're you know and then we've also got to ask you know for a director of diversity and inclusion and then we've also got you know the whole reorganization which is like another which is millions of dollars more so i just like i get i'm getting nervous i also that the communications aspect of phil's job was to be the manager of the future made him an additional i forget how many tens of thousands of dollars in order to bring him on because he was going to be taking on that additional responsibility and so again you know when i'm asking all of these questions because it seems like things sometimes shift and change and once you you hire someone it's very difficult to unhire someone especially someone

084that's excited to have a job so i'm sensitive to that you know the people we hire we should plan to keep which is why i think incremental additions are important but it does i guess i'm i'm fully against more than basically one communications position and frankly i i just don't understand why we paid someone more to be in charge of that and now they're instantly just going to be the supervisor checking in on that person um that was not clear to me and i i apologize for doing this in a public setting but i didn't have much of a choice now we can we can go back to that meeting in that conversation but the conversation was a convergence between the strategic planning component and the mtss [Music] so if if right now if we

085are we okay we're moving forward or where are we at we're moving forward if we were to table the communications coordinator position so let's just take the communications coordinator out of the picture and let's just drop it for now we can have a conversation later right now what we need to do is be able to move forward with the support so that we can get to fill those positions if we wait any longer yeah we're late so if we remove the communications coordinator then what's our total i'm sorry i didn't hear what you said oh sorry i said if we remove remove the communications coordinator what's our total command yeah one and then like what about the facilities operations lg 9 maintenance specialty the hvac position for a hundred thousand is that is that a

086is that as essential as eight counselors so i will say we are still spending that money but we're spending that money through um outsourcing that service okay how much did we spend to outsource it last year i'm sorry i don't have that specific amount right here in front of me we pay an in-house it would be an hourly rate of less than 30 an hour plus benefits on top of that but i guess okay so then so that so my question is um if we don't if we don't have a number and how much we spent last year or the year before then how can we justify this purchase like if i don't know what we spent if we spent you know like 30 000 on it last year but we're asking to hire someone

087at almost 70 000. we are well over the amount that was spent it would be spent on hiring an in-house individual or when you add in the contracting amount i can i don't have the exact amount so i don't want to state an exact amount but i can guarantee we are well over what we would pay in 100 000 to an in-house individual who's another amount that is not factored into this is the overtime that we pay to the currently certified individual when we do have to call him in outside of his 40 hours he is our only certified hvac and as our systems are getting more advanced it's more critical that those individuals be certified to maintain that equipment and from where we currently stand um does anybody else have questions thank you tammy

088okay um then we'll go ahead and so it has recommended the board of education to approve the fte request for the 22-23 school year is there a motion great question oh sorry i didn't see you i'm sorry i didn't so are we voting on what's been proposed or what's been proposed minus the communication oh thank you yeah so minus the communications coordinator and do we need those specific numbers are the communications and the total salary investment cost three million 377 744.68 i'm sorry can you give those numbers again oh sure 2 million 201. 018.60 and then the total 3 million 377 744.68 and just as a side note too when we're projecting out the benefit costs we're making an assumption on the high end that they would choose family coverage just so we can get

089that um you know because we don't know what people are going to choose single family and this is the family coverage of the highest benefit amount that we have so that number is a high number but for purposes of budgeting that is you know best practice okay and for purposes of budgeting right now we can say that some of these positions for this year at least and possibly next year can still be used we can still use sr funds for that as well right so no i understood but what i'm saying is you know understanding with the understanding that of course if it works out right and what kyle said in the plan and what we're trying to implement if it works out then obviously to consider but at least for this year we know

090that out of the 3.3 million that some of that is going to be us or funds at least for these this year upcoming year yeah we'll take a look at that once we have that final budget approved by the state then it gives us an opportunity to go back and um imagine that based on what they've approved and make sure that it aligns with what the requirements of the grant taxes right and allowing us to also assess within the next year or so the continuance of some of these positions yes okay yeah thank you so um anybody else's questions or comments okay so it is recommended the board of education okay so i'm gonna we'll make a motion to remove um communications coordinator and then vote on the package without that position is there a

091motion still moved second roll call yes okay and so with that being said it's recommended the board of education approved the fte request for the 2022-23 school year is there a motion so moved second roll call sarah moses no jeremy olson ac mirrors yes david seymour yes yes all right next is the sro proposal to me person dietrich ellis we also have uh cheaper and bill nicholas here the city manager thank you for being here as we brought forth the last board meeting we have recommendation in front of the board for the addition of three sros across our district it would add one more at the high school another at the middle schools which would allow one at each middle school and then a third at elementaries they service six out of the eight elementary

092since the other two are outside of city limits so that would provide two sros at these six dekalb elementary schools so if you have a question specifically we do have some information through a powerpoint that you can go through or if you have questions there you go just trying to help so not a very long presentation with some information history of sros in our school um in our schools through some research we discovered that sros came into d428 in 2007 starting off with one sro in 2010 we moved to two sros and then in 2019 three sros what we're doing now so um sros are not here just as the thought of serving as police in schools they're here to support our students in a variety of ways through education through safety and security and

093being that that support that feeling of being safe that feeling of being in an environment where there's somebody who's looking out and supporting them but in addition to that sro role what we're doing in the district is designing a new student code of conduct that both the parent and the student will be signing off on we are in the middle security audit that's looking at both our facilities and looking at our security measures as it relates to staff students and our community coming in and out of our building we have some mentor programs one is mia mend mentoring program those are individuals in the community that are coming into our schools and trying to build relationships with students and helping them to see another way of dealing with some of the aggressions and trauma that

094they're experiencing also black ink mentoring that is another mentoring group that's part of the dekalb community approval of additional student support staff you just heard about that training of dfsa security assistance on last week we had a training and we're looking to build that into the onboarding as well as the return to school training so that our dfsa union members that are there to provide security are well trained and able to handle different situations implementing restorative practices so that students find that there's a different way students and staff find a different way to address issues trauma-informed training bully policy revision crisis prevention and intervention which is also known as cpi training that's for a variety of staff members in our district increased access to alternative education programs at kec alternatives to supervision i'm sorry alternative

095to suspension program asp at our at the menta facility in our old cheeseboro location partnerships with community mental health organizations and implementing tier one sel curriculum pre-k through 12th grade that you heard kyle curtis speak about the role of an sro it's really three-prong to be a law enforcement officer to do law related counseling and to be a law related educator again this uh presentation is available on board docs and you're welcome to read through that in more detail why more srls tammy carson spoke on that but our dekalb high school sro initiated 418 calls for police services the reasons for these calls are various then moving down the middle school sro responded to 301 police intervention request request for the 21-22 school year between huntley and clinton rosette and again you can see the

096different types of calls sros have been pulled into more incidents district wide than they should but due to the aggressive nature of the offense and or those that have been involved we are seeking additional support to address the needs of the buildings that they all support currently there's three sros one for the high school which is a significant population one that's shared between clinton rosette and huntley keeping in mind that they have to travel between the two and then one shared amongst eight elementary schools again having to have that travel time between buildings when a situation arises the increase of sros will support their safety in the sro as well as the safety of our staff and our students and more proactive and allow them to build more proactive relationships in the building and helping

097our students be good citizens through their education so we have bill nicholas here and chief byrd we're happy to entertain any questions or if there's anything you want to contribute if i may just make a few openings certainly i'm happy to answer any questions they have problems to be briefed bill nicholas city manager i've been here just a few times in the last three and a half years both times for development-related igas intergovernmental agreements and we work successfully in partnering on those and and i know that i'm reading sitting looking at the model uh all night and i think we're very definitely in the partnership whoever is in the positions of authority so um what's before the united as a proposed ita to increase the number of sros the uh sros we have currently and

098two are in the back of the room danielle uh i i think uh all would agree to do an exception in addition to those law centered as peter said uh uh duties uh i think mentoring is their strength and it's their their hope that that would be where they focus but for reasons that kyle has more generally explained earlier in the meeting tonight and much more eloquently than i the number of calls for service have gone up in the school year and uh that was that slide which shows the number but uh i think it's even more notable uh to compare us with uh other districts in our who are near neighbors to us elgin had in the same period of time since august of 2021 to the president 539 calls they have seven sros

099four middle schools and three high schools naperville had only about 210 carpenters bill uh 232 then we go down to huntley 171 canelon 54 sycamore 84. so the numbers at least bring us to the table to discuss what we can do in addition to what we are doing at the city level and i believe the chief would agree with this we are not advocating that sros are the answer to all of the social emotional issues that may arise and may overflow from time to time they don't we do what we can but we do not make a big difference when it comes to the uh the situations outside of the school four walls that may be creating anxiety frustration and so forth that students may bring into the schools so what is proposed i think

100you've all had a chance to look proposing six and tammy has outlined what they how they would be spread across the various schools the proposed iga has a couple of additional things in terms of cost you are seeing i believe everybody got this did you get that okay that's the billing rate for the sro services uh as they would be at the beginning of the next school year and then in addition to that i had proposed a fractional part of the cost of the of the vehicles that are needed for the officers to be effective in the school people might ask well why have a vehicle can we just drop off the officers and i think you know that that isn't how we can best address emergent situations in the schools and also a fair

101amount of the day if all things are going on we're working together we're partnering and working with parents and teachers together we are also meeting with families and sometimes that's off campus so to speak so officers do need vehicles and also um the event of the unex the unforeseen and the the unthinkable it's very important to have those vehicles which have tools in terms of communication and otherwise that would be very advantageous bill yes the proposal that you're looking at that you just showed yeah can you show that really quickly sure yes can we do it iga where is that is that attached to the is that on the agenda not on the agenda but it will sent out in prior oh do we would you mind sticking that on there on the agenda can

102you put that on the agenda real quick so everybody has it thank you six that does not include a car so what we're proposing is well one more one more word about background so what we've done in our cast sometimes is to assign uh an older vehicle to the srolls we were talking about hiring three new so uh we have a couple of i guess you would say vehicles toward the end of their usable life which have been taken up by our we have csos and other acronyms our community service officers and also our social workers and uh the last vehicle was assigned as which around the schools that's the courtesy cardinal airport uh so that's it uh we have when we hire three uh we're not going to bring in the new recruits and

103more senior officers you know four five six years of experience something like that and by the way our practice has been in the past and we proposed we would continue to do this where we would collectively interview the people who might be interested in the position reach a consensus about the best steps so that's what's in there and realizing that uh the officers even though they may be involved more than eight hours in a day but just tearing it down uh the other 16 hours a day theoretically the vehicle is available to the cal police department so i've taken a third of the cost and then multiplied 75 times that because in the summertime the officer is going to be what's the what's the total cost for that it comes to 25 of each vehicle

104is uh the state purchase price was about 46 i believe fully equipped and when i say state purchase i don't know if you're familiar with that but that that statewide that's the lowest uh we can get for whatever it is about 11 000 or so [Music] yeah but in front of a crowd it's always intense 14 times 40. it's about 300 it's about 36 years so add that to okay happy answering questions sir does anybody have questions i do um since we've been talking about this for a little while can somebody tell me what constitutes an sro call like i could tell um so here i find it interesting so i'm looking at a pretty significant number sure calls to the high school we have somebody in there and when i see the number 400

105and 18. what does that mean well it could be a lot of various types of calls so i mean fights and progress of course of course anybody with uh even a call of a illegal weapon may or may not be real uh of course narcotics calls uh bullying i mean there are a lot of different scenarios where we will be called uh to assist or actually handle a situation so most of these calls that we have been uh responding to as of late have been serious calls that we see on the streets every day and i guess i just need to explain that uh as a srsro you should not be in i mean they spend more time right before guys on the street and that is totally against with their requirement and their criteria

106their job is they are supposed to be life coaches and mentors that's what that's what they're doing in naperville they're not being the police in those school districts they're not doing this they're doing exactly what they're supposed to be doing which is helping children being mentors i've talked to at sros on a number of occasions and they have all these different ideas that they can't implement because they're too busy actually in the police in a school district which shouldn't be happening so and i guess i want to champion the three that i do have and just tell you that their heart is in this body i mean i cannot tell you how much they love this job uh and the reason how we got here is because i had an officer come in my in

107my office and they look beaten down i'll just be honest they look beaten down like i've never seen you know most of the time they come in they smile and not today so uh and we had officer involved in a fight and he was the only one engaging you know six seven young ladies fighting and i think people don't understand the amount of force that it requires for one person to mitigate that fight and what we don't want is and he was using probably half of his strength to try to deal with this uh because if he you know i mean we have so many different collateral damage that could occur from that uh we don't want him throwing young ladies across the room we don't want with uh you know the whole time his

108guns exposed stages exposed every all you know everything that could have changed it could have been something could have been you know pretty dramatic across the board so when i saw that video when he came in the way as downtrodden as he was at that time uh you know it spoke to me yeah and i and i will be honest with you i'm here to champion for the children in this community i'll be a champion for everybody in this room everyone who lives in this in this community the cap that is my job as police chief but specifically um i have the champion for those three i have to make sure that they are safe they have children that they want to go home to um and uh you know there have been some recent

109uh deaths with some sros i don't know if people are aware you have death in detroit of an sro not too long ago so um a lot i know people say well it's just a school a lot of things happen at school i mean do i know i can remind you about california and some of the other places where we've had some some active shooter situations so a lot of things can go wrong however i guess i just wanted to make sure that you know i heard in the past well you know this is a band-aid uh and i would agree to some of that um but we use the band-aid every day on the streets we have a lot of plans in place to stop crime a lot of plans in place but uh

110but we have to do it um parallel i mean we have that this stuff has to go on at the same time we have plans that have been in place for years to stop crying you know in the city limits in urban areas across the board but we can't give up the fight on the front line that's you know we they don't it doesn't that plan isn't moving fast enough and i say the same thing here so yes are we putting a band-aid on it yes we are but it's necessary because we have to hold the line until as you spoke of you know when we get the social workers in place so they can help heal the families i mean we have families that are traumatized okay i can tell you right now overnight

111i read when i get up in the morning i read all my significant incidents that i come through overnight and i will tell you it's domestic trouble domestic trouble domestic trouble i see it almost six or seven times a night so that means that this whole situation that you're going to see in the schools started last night at about 11 30 at night where everybody else is asleep so you have this domestic that's going on where the children are asleep they're being awakened about all this now the police are at their door so now we're dealing with the police being at the door so all of a sudden you gotta get them up at seven o'clock in the morning and go to school and then here we go so i just think we have to

112think about where it starts we have to heal the family and i know we're talking about that we're talking about healing our children but you know it's you know it's in totality everything has to we have to heal that family to heal that child to reduce the fights and i mean because i i promise you that no there's not one child that would get up and just want to get into a fight i just don't see it there has to be a reason for the outburst there's a reason for it and when i tell you i can read it and see it at night when i look at that domestic that just occurred my first thought is how's that going to trickle down to the kids and into the schools you know at 2 pm

1133 p.m and then i think if we go back and look back and and we track our steps and say how did this how did this occur in the first place what made this young lady so mad that she had to open the door she wanted to attack this other girl what made it what made it that way and then i think if you go back you'll see that they that family's not healed they're dealing with trauma that's probably been going on for years and we so so to your you know i agree that is the root problem it is exactly what it is we need to we actually need to heal that family but while we're in the process of doing that we have to put a band-aid just to keep the fights from

114happening to try to you know try to mitigate all the fights try to mitigate the bully all this stuff and we have to get out in front of it a little bit so um i guess you know i just you know at the end of the day my job like i said and i'm going to say it again you know i'm here to protect every resident in the city of dekalb and that's and that's everybody who steps foot in here whether you live here or not and those children in that school are paramount that's exactly what sro's do every day they care about these children uh all they care about is they you know to help them and get them through the day without having you know these traumatic situations occur but we're gonna need

115some help and i will tell you i'm not gonna allow one way or the other i'm not gonna allow that sro and not high school to get in that situation again not gonna happen when i figured out it doesn't happen on this side i'll figure it out on my side because at the end of the day i can't let that happen to him it's just you know i mean he has a family to go home to these two young ladies in back have children young children just you know i mean i'm not going to allow it to happen can i just i'll figure it out don't worry okay it connects with what you just said last comment from decision people i'm sorry [Applause] so uh another ingredient here and i i just touched on i

116really emphasize it i think it's very important you were just special our partnership is going to be based on the effectiveness of that conduct that you're working on sure enhancing your refining and i think everybody has to sign up and you know parents teachers students administrators everybody who is going to be working with our sros and vice versa so otherwise uh as a team we can't make it happen and we can't make things better and that's what we want to do and i i know you'll probably want to update that from time to time that's within your purview not ours but we're very interested in seeing that that is in place before the school starts because we're not interested in putting the sros in the schools frankly if we don't have the other half of

117the ingredient if that makes sense thank you thank you thank you okay questions um according to the draft iga the budget at the back at the end of it i think so that five thousand eight hundred eighty eight six hundred ninety five dollars that's where that's a proposed or projected budget for all for six sros right before so it's like my total on that with the vehicle was 624 yeah about that but that's for that's including the three we already have the three sros we already have it's not a new cost so the new post the 588 is an addition the additional cost to the additional three no that's six what's the additional so i think right now you're at three uh so and this is based as i said in the back and at

118the top of this this is assuming a fifth year right off of the uh union uh pay scale right so so about 430 and then in addition to the 36 000 for vehicles right correct plus the 98 times 30. the 430 is for the three additional and then the additional vehicles that we said of the feed that you the 430 was cindy's original projection based on what we have now based on what bill is proposing it would be the 98 times three plus the 42 000 for the vehicles all right which will put us at further just the 98 116 times three will be two hundred and ninety four thousand three hundred and forty eight so please me to put you in an awkward position here without knowing the specific dollars but the agreement actually

119says so it will be based on the officers that we agree are are going to be the fit for the year so i've just made the assumption all of them are fifth year one might be and i said this in my uh what i note that i sent to uh that we could have a fourth year and we could have two six years so it might be a little bit different than that but that's the way so it's likely to be between what you're proposing and what tammy has come up with previously based on our current right yeah and the current amounts that we're paying for our current three dollars if we doubled that we would be at that 430 but as bill is explained depending on if there's lesser experience levels income could come

120in lower and then but then so so we're agreeing on a pro that approximately will be 430 000 in addition to the 30 approximate 36 thousand dollars for vehicles if we had three sros with similar experience to our current zeros great experience so that's our projected estimate so as we see um so like 466. okay no you're fine um so as we are rolling out a lot of things and working cohesively right and coalition with a lot of the initiatives um if we find that there's a need for us to redo it reduce sros um in the future is that going to be a possibility or how much how are we committing to so actually this couldn't happen at a worse time for us so we are authorized to have 65 officers in this fiscal

121year our fiscal year bunch of the calendar here we're at 60 now because we've had turnover we've got retirements and so forth and to hire an officer it's really about a nine-month process to get that person fully qualified through the academy field training and uh able to you know work alone at be so and we have to go through a separate state mandated hiring process so it's going to take a little while for us to replenish but we will be ready with three for you when school starts which is going to be faster than we can probably replace them we're in the process of firing now right now we have a statewide uh surface of of uh candidates trying to get into academies and so we we're behind the eight ball there as well yeah

122the only way we could uh expedite it sometimes there are lateral positions that open up well we don't have to send them to the academy but we have to of course you know we have to vet those personnel because we have to make sure that they're a good fit for the city of the calvin and specifically for the cow police department so we can do that and if a year from now proceeds say well i think we could do it with five right before things are really working well or not i'll find somewhere for them don't worry you know i i just want to say i appreciate the connection and the obviously i want to make sure that that our students and our and our sros are safe right um i'm going to be honest

123with you i i you know i do get concerned sometimes in regards to you know the education to prison pipeline israel deportation to present you know education to deportation to prison pipeline is real right so of course those are things of concern so i do want to say thank you for the clarification and the presentation that was presented today i want to make sure that we are making sure that of course our families our students feel supported our staff feel supported right and that our sros feel supported um you know with that in mind you know i feel more comfortable today than i did in the last couple of weeks um not that i didn't understand the importance and that i didn't understand you know safety concerns but you know again as an educator and

124somebody that thinks about those things then that ran ideally i ran on the okay we should have you know we shouldn't be policing our children to me it is important that we address root cause with the support that we are talking about that we just you know that we the positions hopefully being proactive rather than reactive you know without having to criminalize our children because to me that is fundamental to the work that i do and what i you know want to make sure that that we advocate for um so you know without taking responsibility as a district because it is an institutional commitment that we're making which ultimately means working you know hand-in-hand with with the police department so thank you for that we're going to be a good partner for the schools i

125think i mean i've been here almost a year um you know i'm a proponent of that i mean i believe in that you know i think at the end of the day i we you know i want them to do exactly what they're supposed to be doing is like coaching and being mentors i don't i don't want them at least at all i'm converting it and that word and that is so we have in the three sros we have now people who are certainly technically trained as police officers they understand the law and you know how to do the enforcement side of that but we're really qualified them for positions are some things you can't get out of a book or in an academy it's compassion it's empathy it's a sensitivity to the needs of

126the people that they're serving and we would hope that the next three we trust we know that the next three with your cooperation and your support and going through the application processes will be just the same and all three of them they're always the first ones to apply like in the summer months when they're not here for their bite control in the parks or to walk the beat or whatever they are just genuine human beings and so i don't worry about that path that you're talking about no and i like i said i appreciate it i i work at niu and i i see how community policing actually happens right i see what our students and you know i'm a fan of that right of people or police officers being in the community and being

127engaging in different ways that allows for that mentorship to happen i am a product of cps so i also understand how policing on another level in school systems actually you know functions when you over police and criminalized children so i was i just want to say thank you for clarifying and again to detroit for providing that additional support today because that again kind of brought a full circle for me knowing that it's not just about putting police officers in our schools and making sure that we have that in place but that we are working you know in collaboration and coalition with all the other things so it's this and that right um so thank you and i i i am also cps so i know that is uh and uh you know i'll go the

128school in englewood and i still remember my school resource officer you know one chicago police officer and uh we had a we loved the guy and he loved us and i can still remember my relationship with him and i believe we have the same relationship here uh with uh with the three that we have and i and we try to keep them in that posture throughout the summer so they so kids don't see you know conflicted or you know side of things uh even though majority you know there are times when they're going to have to do their job i think uh i think everyone understands that but we try to keep them in that role throughout the summer so they don't uh feel conflicted uh and uh and believe me i uh you know

129i encourage everyone in the police department to be a part of you know any type of school function outing i try to get you know everyone to be a part of it and i will tell you we have about 60 officers there now and in my heart i know that the majority of those officers want to be a part of everything that's going on here at the school district and i will guarantee you that we have three officers in the building uh that can uh fit the mold of the three that we already have and uh and of course they'll be mentored by them as well so and not to out one of the sros but one of them is a licensed teacher but again i appreciate that and you know these questions now yeah

130go ahead jeremy okay uh what are we contractually obligated to in this agreement from a term perspective in the numbers three three years three years with a 90 day out if either party chooses and i think the very first thing that you know minerva you and i and the gentleman here at this evening talked about was you know we can't police our way out of this problem and i know that we were focusing on a number of different interventions here and clearly you know with the additional eight counselors um you know we've got the back end piece of that cupboard but i did throw out an idea and i'm just wondering minerva how much research has been put into a private security option i've been touching base on my own because i haven't heard anything

131from anybody else yet was it not the end of the last meeting but there are districts having some pretty significant success utilizing uh that type of system for increasing or decreasing their needs so i just didn't know if any has any experience on that yet i'm curious i'm going to have dietrich i'm going to have dietrich address this initially so currently we have um in our dfsa collective bargaining unit security assistance they serve a role of doing that in our high schools and our middle schools where we who have our serials as well so that would be a matter of um having to negotiate with them and that's not a conversation that we've had with them about that so so the answer is no the answer is no okay because there are there are districts

132that you mentioned working for some um and you didn't have a negative or positive result you said it worked differently in places but i'm sort of doing my own thing here and it does seem like some districts are actually having pretty good success with in fact i was at central dupage hospital last week and happened to come across to the third party their security at the hospital and talk to a couple gentlemen there and it seemed like a pretty good outfit you know given the fact that it is a pretty big commitment and it's very a financial commitment um you know i guess i'm i'm a little bit wondering you know i'm two faces here right i think we all agree that our our safety assistants security assistants are not getting involved in altercations and

133i think as we discussed the need was to have people who could intervene who are trained in in restraint right and be able to offer that assistance to our sro and the real need for a police officer be like an arrest situation which are more rare um but you know in those cases you know these people are vetted by these companies we can increase a decrease just the same but it may be a little bit more cost competitive and one of the things we had talked about is maybe looking into that maybe looking into one more sro at the at the high school as opposed to three and i felt like this was a work in progress and now i feel like sort of we're just going right write three police officers and i do

134think there are a number of drawbacks to that i guess i just i felt like maybe we weren't all the way there yet and again i think there's a lot of a lot more research that can be done and discussions that can happen um so uh i think this was information only and i apologize i don't have the agenda in front of me it is so jeremy if i can just if i can jump in here real quick sros are trained very specifically to work with the student body so they're not intentionally just police officers that wear a different name tag as they walk into the door there's a lot of work a lot of professional development i just listened to about half an hour of that i understand what an sro is and i've

135talked to several my point is simply that the need isn't for for us to to you know necessarily and by the way you're assuming that these other folks wouldn't be trained which i'm being told they're actually very well trained as well maybe not police officer trained in the laws of every single thing but but definitely trained in terms of interacting with high school students and certain companies specialize in it but we haven't even researched it yet and so i guess what i'm saying is if we're going to spend again another 600 000 taxpayer money i think he deserves the diligence and i've asked for it already and it's not happening so again as a member of this board it's my responsibility to look out for the fiduciary you know parts of this as well and

136if we can get away with one more sro at the high school and maybe a couple security officers maybe shift some of our assistance over to the to the elementary schools where maybe a safety officer or a safety assistant a lot more functional there because the kids are just genuinely smaller then then that's an option right i feel like there are so many different ways that we can slice a niceness and just jumping to doubling the number of police in our schools and and acquiring you know pieces of police cars and all this other stuff i mean i just feel like we we owe it to our taxpayers to do our diligence i think there's some diligence still laying out there and i love everything i've heard tonight again i'm in support of making our

137schools safer i think you all know that i think we've had those conversations real time but again i'm also about doing the homework and doing the diligence and and i don't think we're there yet and so what my my request would be coming out of this information and thank you all for for all the commentary would be that we actually do that and that when we come back to vote on this make it an information action if you want but let's let's talk about that research what we found out and see if it's viable and if it offers us any other alternatives to consider as a board so that would be my request [Music] audience so we always want to make sure that that that kind of research and information will also come from them

138right now aren't we paying for a safety audit and we're going to jump and make a commitment before they even get i do think the timeline affects that the timeline for hiring officers affects that but and i'm not opposed to um researching more about a third party security firm but i do think that there's a huge benefit to having people that are invested in our community that are already a part of our community that have a vested interest in seeing our community prosper more than just as a contractor a paycheck and i don't i'm not saying that that's necessarily what happens i'm just saying we know that our our sros do that and once we had all of these uh social emotional counselors and once we implement our plan we really don't have a way

139of knowing you know what what it's going to look like to be in randomness and have the ability and one of the things that i i just in talking to some of the sros that i personally know was that the biggest struggle is things like you just pointed out i think it was bill or cheaper you know when you've got 11 girls pushing her out right and there's he's trying not to hurt anyone at the same time to try to bring something up and then he's at risk so i i get all that they can provide some of that relief but then we don't necessarily need just keep them full time if if our interventions and all of our restorative practices and our social emotional health pays off so i guess i i feel like

140we're jumping and i could even get behind getting one more goon right now if we had the ability to tack on two more if all of our other options fall off and the safety of it comes back desperately needed i mean i would feel much better about us committing next week or in two weeks whatever it is to to maybe one officer to start and then if the audit comes back and the information comes back on all of our research and it's basically screams at us you know what you really need two more then fine right we've got the numbers we know what it costs we can move forward and and what it's going to cost us what two weeks or maybe a month on the back end so it's not that big of a

141cost to pay you know for doing our homework and just making sure we're making the right decisions for our community and for you know for our taxpayers that's kind of where my head is okay so you would like to have us push this back for a little bit until we get the safety on it back is that what you're seeing again if it's coming back we should have the recommendations from the firm sometime in the middle of may there will be obviously some review that will need to be done you know and so i'm not exactly sure the date that'll be coming back up on the board if it'll be the second meeting in may or we will be in june okay so so it puts us back at months on making this bold decision

142you know and you know like i said if we desperately want to at least get somebody going if they're if they have to put someone through the academy we really want to have somebody here by the start of the year to help out in the high school then bring back one for you know information action and maybe we can discuss some of the homework we're doing any of the research that we can get done and then maybe add an officer at the high school and and then put the other stuff off until we get that safety update i'm okay i'm just i'm just spitballing and throwing things out to you guys to do this in a more strategic and thought out process that is fiduciarily responsible if i may frankly making decisions with more information

143sure uh tammy's gonna raise my quest if i may i've spent the last week and a half with the safety auditors and and i strongly feel that we're going to see the recommendation coming from them for these additional sros i may be able to they may not have the entire report done by the next meeting in two weeks because their audits are complete they are working on it i may be able to have them be able to make a statement in regards to their recommendation relating specifically to the sro that i could have for the next meeting i can check with them and see if that's an option now when they do that do they they look at information i assume they do this for a lot of distance if they could get us some

144information that they have on like security services things like that too any sort of data they can give us would be great to review i'm really open to seeing what's out there in terms of ideas i'll see what we can find out so does it make sense that we would bring this back as is and then amend it if we need to um i mean i guess if we're going to do so we you would want to bring this back for a vote next time with potentially some information provided by our auditors by our safety firm that's auditing us and then also what about like researching the security firm i'll do my best i don't know how fast i can get current information or get enough detail um if they may want to know numbers

145but i do have to meet with the fsa because we don't want i'm going to hear that jeremy jeremy can't hear you well we we may have potential union issues we wouldn't want to but i think those are i mean honestly though this is about security right i mean this is about state safety if we've got to have those conversations that we have to have them and we've certainly i've watched us do it with our faculty um so i don't know why we could do with our undercover unions and i mean that's what we're proposing right now so i think that this is about getting the right solution in place with all the information and then once we figure out what that is through hopefully through this safety auto recommendations and some of the research

146that we're going to do um that we can make an informed decision and see who it affects and how it affects them and then sit down and have conversations i mean that's that's the process right right so yeah he didn't hear everything you said about about getting remember what i said i was asking about would you be able to get information from um security firms oh or i'll do my best with uh finding out information from security firms they may want more hard fast data like the number of and other information that came from the security audit or information about the buildings i will i will do what i can we probably need to be careful also not to represent it as we're like seeking a bid or a proposal and that's something i was

147going to mention and could this be something we could consider down the road of course we can consider anything and look into any options we are dealing with union matters but also when you're going into something like this it does require a significant amount of time put into gathering information betting can't vetting uh companies and to say that we could potentially have this even close to being in place by the fall is probably a stretch a very short stretch where i would think my recommendation would be allow us to come forth with the safety auditor's recommendations if we can get back forth in the next before the next meeting the recommendations will be from us to still come forth with the three obviously adjustments can be made to the vote at your discretion and then

148if we whatever is voted and approved potentially at the next meeting we have a 90 day out as they'll explain so if we go into this next year with however many may be approved of sros we could take the next year to potentially explore other options as we look forward into the next the following school year and as far as a security firm we have to make sure that we identify those that are trained to work in a school right because bouncing at a nightclub no other places and things of that nature are very different so we have to make talking about sure different things there are professional services well-trained people that they have staff to do exactly what we're talking about just like they roam around the hospitals and do safety at all the

149northwestern facilities they third party all their security and that's a that is a customer facing base that is very interested in customer satisfaction and keeping people happy so i'm certain because i've already spoken to people who have told me that there are companies that specialize in this so that's why i'm wondering if you know i don't understand why we wouldn't i almost feel like there's a reticence to do this and i think if you make a couple of phone calls you can find out probably more than you think and and i don't believe that it would require going through a bid process so i would be i would think that we could all just google and find companies to do it but i would think our safety the guys doing our safety audit we probably

150know some companies that are doing it because i mean you live locally and you've already worked for districts locally that do employ these types of services so i know they're there i understand i just don't understand their service level what they cost and i'd like some references you know like maybe we call a couple of these schools up and say how's it going you know do you like it i'm sure you're using it what's good what's bad i mean these are the types of things that you do when you research a topic in detail that i would like to see us do i mean it's our responsibility to do that fully note it okay so um so then what's your recommendation jeremy that we go ahead and do that and then not vote next time

151like i said i don't understand why we would jump to a vote to get the police committed because the minute we say yes they're committed to getting three people going and then if a better alternative or a more aggressive alternative financially that still works in terms of what we're trying to accomplish in our schools and presents itself we're kind of tied to another solution already i think this is purpose for the horse i think worst case scenario is if this takes us four weeks to do we weren't going to approve this for two weeks anyway so it really only sets us back for two weeks that isn't going to make a hillary's difference to our our schools so let's let's just get it right the first time better ones go twice wait wait what you're

152twice couple months does it make a difference well if i could just say that we are at the whim of academy dates so i guess everyone thinks that we can just say hey we got these guys we want to put them in the cab it doesn't work that way we have to go within the calendar of the academy dates that are available to not just our police department throughout the state so they're just not we just can't call academy you know for the dekalb police department it doesn't work that way so uh there's some dates in may there are some dates in august uh and that's pretty much all i have right now that i know of what so we just have to consider you know uh when we can actually get officers in the

153academy what are your dates in may uh it's at the end of may so i don't have exact date okay how much advanced notice do you need to make sure you have officers in the academy well um it would i mean they have to they have to tell me they have space for me they would have to let me know that um so you know we're pushing anyway for the reasons that i mentioned we're sure so we're going to continue to get in as fast as we can and we're going to get more officers to fill anyway um what i'm concerned about and and um and jeremy's right in terms of uh school finances in terms of city finances and this by the way city council hasn't weighed in on this hasn't even seen it

154yet as a body so it'll be some of that to you know that opportunity also to wade through it um and they'll want to see the code of conduct so i don't know where that is uh but that's the piece for us that's most important because just as as you were saying earlier just putting the alternative in school without without knowing that there's this weight of of uh collaboration and cooperation that's going to carry all this towards some successful end uh it's not going to fly with it no thanks for bringing that up by the way what [Music] is um so we're in the process right now kind of finalizing the draft form and then what our next step would be to get it out to various stakeholders for review and input so that would

155be community stakeholders expanded audience of our staff parents in a student group then after that phase what we'd like to do is bring something forward to the board for input and then ultimately adoption so um i don't have a specific date in mind to come to the board yet but what we would anticipate is probably sometime in june to be able to kind of make sure that the stakeholder input is we don't want to shortchange that part of it and we want to be able to revise based on that as well we are maybe it will help to know that the city's standpoint we're willing to be flexible as we go along here we'll feel our way what was before you and the draft tonight was three uh it's less than that you know we

156can deal with it uh we all at the staff level anyway i think at this point that may be the the right number but you know if we can't get the officers whatever we'll work with you and i think the issues didn't start in the last couple weeks they're not going to be fixed through the next couple weeks i think we work together collaboratively to have a good plan and then really go to work together agreed well okay so with that said where are we at so we're bringing back and seeking information for to get the audit information right and then also security privacy we'll bring this back for information is that what we're saying you're sending information only at the next meeting can it be considered information approval potentially and or not um i

157don't really hear that if we are able to bring that information that you're asking well i just don't i don't think we're gonna have all the information by them [Music] as long as we have this done by mid-may and it sounds like according to bill which is great you know they're putting guys in the pipeline or i shouldn't say guys but officers in the pipeline um for ford anyway because they obviously are feeling backfilling as well so um i again i would say you know in two weeks let's let's informationally and see i mean we may find out this third party thing is a total waste of time and and make a decision to move forward you know at the next meeting but i think either way we always have that option we always have

158that option so that's what i'm saying there's no need to like rush this to a boat but we still have so much data to collect and and i think it'll be worth hearing and then we can at least feel good looking our our tax base in the eye and saying look this is important we did a massive amount of diligence we've looked at every alternative and this is still what we believe is the right thing to do and whether that becomes you know one more in the high school and then we wait it out when that becomes three altogether or it becomes a combination of a security company and an additional professor know but let's at least give it the opportunity to bat it around and see what our options are so i think you

159know and then you know it sounds like we may get some feedback from the folks at the security audit by then so we might have some good things to discuss and then you know we can discuss it and figure out what we wanted okay so is everyone okay with bringing it back for our information based on what we get back from the security audit based on what we get back from researching private security firms and then also considering additional sros can i ask one more question to bill and chief heard to move forward with the council and bring this to them what do you need on our end point good question so for example if we bring this back as solely informational or if we bring it back as i and i don't actually hear

160much of a difference between the two because we could always act on it so i'm not if we brought it back as informational with possible action does i mean it does one benefit your position with the council over the other i don't i don't think so i think uh they'll be interested to know what you feel comfortable with and and will uh have to consider the council will have to consider uh what they're comfortable with and i don't think we're that far off the mayor has been involved as you know up to this point and uh and some other aldermen have been keen on learning whatever is available to them and so i i think there'll be a discussion uh probably the first meeting in may to be the second monday in may which will

161be after our next meeting we'll see where that's gone and then we can move pretty you know together side by side moving forward i think we probably will need to see the draft right yeah they might want yeah then a draft excellent so then let's go ahead we have consensus to bring this back uh as information uh the next meeting consensus yes okay right now uh thank you gentlemen for being here thank you bill for joining us and thank you for your uh passion for our community it was very evident thank you thank you thank you man yeah yes thank you all right jeremy talk to you good night okay next up is a first student pupil transportation contract this is an action item it is recommended the board of education approves a two-year contract

162extension with first student for the 22-23 school year as presented is there oh i'm sorry n2324 school year as presented is there a motion may i ask one question oh sure cindy so we know that there's um a significant increase in the cost and i don't think there's a way around that is there any um signs that we would be reimbursed more for transportation is it based on our costs okay yeah actually the new budget they have increased the allocation of what they call is for mcats or mandated categoricals with part of that is transportation reimbursement just don't know what that looks like yet okay but um last um for the last school year what we're receiving now is about 72 and a half percent reimbursement so in a perfect world it would be 80

163i mean that's right and it would cover kind of our increase that we're to have part part of our part of the increase yes and then remember as well we're getting that reimbursement from first student for the federal money that they receive that we're getting um back as well so that helps to mitigate it and i did some research with other districts and what they're paying as well similar districts um that we pay for the fuel and actually the wrap costs that we're coming up with are very comparable to where they're at now okay so it's not like we're out of the ballpark and it is a big increase but it will hopefully get us some additional drivers incentivized with the additional pay and uh because again we're still having some issues with just getting

164drivers i mean if we were having issues before covet and because you didn't have to fight now so good to know thank you okay uh anybody else have questions okay uh is there a motion second morocco jeremy olsen yes yes david seymour yes matthew david yes sarah moses yes thank you thank you thank you thank you for students yes chance do you want to go home have a great night have a good good to see you okay next up is uh differential committee committee meeting minutes this is information action and it is recommended that the board of education approve the differential the minutes from the differential committee meeting held on march 9 2022 including the committee's recommendation for new differential requests totaling three hundred and ten thousand five hundred and twenty nine dollars and thirty

165two cents questions motion still moved second stacey andrews yes david seymour yes samantha mcdavid yes yes jeremy olsen yes next up is golden apple foundation recruitment pipeline proposal this is an action item it is recommended that the board of education approve the golden apple foundation recruitment pipeline proposal is there a motion second welcome david seymour yes smith david yes sarah moses yes jeremy olsen yes daisy yes uh next up is action item front line software upgrade for onboarding frontline central it is recommended that the board of education approves the frontline software upgrade for onboarding is there a motion second roll call samantha david yes sarah moses yes jerry nielsen yes stacey ramirez yes david seymour yes next up is dhs advanced placement ap comparative government and politics uh it has recommended the board of education

166approve the new dhs ap comparative government and politics course materials for four thousand six hundred forty three dollars and twenty cents is there a motion removed second broca from steven yes sarah moses yes jeremy olson yes yes david seymour yes next item is hdhs student travel to spain june 14th through the 24th 2023 dates are approximate it is recommended for the board of education approve the travel of up to 20 dekalb high school students and their teacher chaperones from spain from june 14th through the 24th 2023 the dates are approximate is there a motion second roll call sarah moses yes jeremy olson yes david seymour yes mcdavid yes next hosting 10 to 20 students from spain at dhs in october 2022 it is recommended the board of education improve the visit of 10 to 20

167students from millennia [Music] spain for the period of 9 to 10 days at the beginning of october 2022 is there a motion second rojo jeremy olson yes yes david seymour yes david yes sarah moses yes next up is vision mission core values and commitments uh this is daisy and i and um we can go ahead and read through the [Music] oh we got it you haven't printed in front of you um so this is this is the mission district 428 mission vision sorry vision mission core values and commitments this is a um the near final draft uh we'll talk about it tonight but of a body of work between the district and the community uh we had all different stakeholders that came to be a part of a night where we got together to find

168out what our community values you know we invited students staff all different people from the the community came to participate so it was well attended and then we took this work and we um we kind of put all together and came up with a distilled version of what was shared with us and what what the board values and so we've got um the blue is uh i guess the yellow is like the most recent version so the blue was the was a draft the yellow is the most recent draft and we can read through all of these and kind of choose which we prefer and then if there's anything else that we want to add we've never really read it out loud so i'm going to go and do that tonight so the original vision

169was our vision is to foster connections that allow students staff and families to feel safe validated supported and celebrated creating a strong strong sense of belonging with our district ensures that each student has what they need to achieve their aspirations and then a distilled kind of version of that vision statement is a climate of belonging and opportunity supporting and inspiring every student to achieve their potential so is there feedback on either of those preference or [Music] do you like the distilled version so help me out is this supposed to be added the yellow is supposed to be added to the blue or no yellow is supposed to replace the blue replace the blue okay but it doesn't have to but typically like a vision statement is a short statement um that's and i don't know

170if i'm explaining i don't want to patronize you there you know i don't know yeah so it's a short statement that is essentially like your um your vision it's what you what you aspire for your school to be and you state it as a fact that it is i wonder if a climate of belonging would make more sense in a value and commitment if and if it was even simpler like to positively impact the lives of students supporting each student to achieve their full potential so say that again the first part like the so so like our vision is positively impact the lives of students supporting each student to achieve their full potential our vision is too fast kind of broader maybe i don't know no that's not you but you say it again positively

171just the first impact the lives of students supporting each student i think the belonging part is important i just wonder if that's true no i agree i hear what you're saying so our vision is to positively impact the lives of students supporting and inspiring every student to achieve their potential i like that one more time i apologize i wrote it here okay our vision is to and i don't know if we have to say our vision we could probably just say right to positive like to possibly positively impact the lives of students and it could be a supporting and inspiring part in front of the say against him supporting well i just i i was kind of taking notes when i was reading this earlier in the meeting uh supporting each student but it i

172could be supporting and inspiring if that's i mean visions are supposed to be kind of inspirational yeah in nature yeah i kind of feel i guess i feel kind of strongly about supporting and inspiring i think that's fine anybody else i'm good with that we like that jeremy do you like that yeah i do all right next is our mission so the original our mission is to provide an equitable and inclusive community that supports our students holistically while educating them to live in a society where we appreciate each individual's uniqueness we achieve this by supporting our staff and partnering with families to create a community that welcomes and appreciates our community's diversity of cultures values and perspectives and then the update was our mission is to provide an equitable and inclusive education that supports our

173students holistically empowering them to thrive we partner with our families and empower staff to meet the needs of our students we promote critical thinking and high academic standards in a safe and secure environment our practices and policies are shaped by respect kindness accountability truthful and ethical behavior and informed by data honoring our diversity of cultures values and perspectives what do you all think um this is just a suggestion i i think both of them have a lot in them that i think potentially could be again in the core values and commitments and it could be even distilled further [Music] to um like the first part i think is really important that to provide an equitable and inclusive education that supports each of our students holistically providing i think you could say providing the tools they

174need to thrive by partnering with families and supporting staff to meet the needs of each of our students so maybe it doesn't need to say each twice of our students that supports our students so maybe take that out we partner with our so the first portion of the first paragraph supports our students holistically she's important providing the tools providing the tools they need to thrive by partnering with families and supporting staff is that what this one yes supporting staff to meet the needs of each of our students because i think we could in our values and commitments talk about our commitment to appreciating diversity culture okay we do go into that yeah so okay our mission is to provide equitable and inclusive education that supports our students holistically providing tools they need to thrive we

175say providing needed tools to thrive which is weird providing tools they need to thrive providing tools and then we use that we partner with our families we keep that the same or we change that we partner with our families and empower staff to meet the needs of ourselves i think we can make it one sentence and say bye partnering with our families with families partnering with families and supporting staff and then just take this next whole part off and we can add that into the um commitments and i think it makes sense because it's more it's kind of long and wordy yes yes even both like looking at them i'm like daisy i made it more concise and i'm like wait not really it looks right it like looks on this it looks kind of

176the same on the paper exactly okay just clarifying question toward the end of that that last sentence is it to meet the needs of our students or meet the needs of each other i think it means to say each i think that in tones you want that to get lost if that's what you were trying to highlight the the diversity that's represented and the individuality probably and individuality yeah okay i guess i just assumed all which it makes sense right but just yeah yeah right okay additions to the off got it okay so the next page okay so i didn't get to these i didn't i mean i've obviously i've read them but i didn't either i didn't make any suggestions okay well we can't we'll just talk it through so um then we have

177this the definition of core values and commitments so uh with this one dc and i kind of had different opinions but you guys will see what you guys think so i didn't necessarily think that we had to define like that paragraph i thought we could take out but daisy thought it was important to include it because we haven't really done core values and commitments in recent history i kind of thought it was self-explanatory but she thought it was kind of important to have it in there so um and we could we could you know leave it not leave it we could adjust it or we could shorten it or we could you know keep it as is it says district 428 is dedicated to a set of values that govern our work to continue to

178be fiscally responsible these principles shape our aims program development and support systems they direct instruction curriculum and assessment so that all students reach high levels of achievement district 428's commitment to excellence is communicated through our programs and core curriculum standards our values guide our vision of creating a diverse inclusive and equitable community for all students sounds good so it's your recommendation to omit that i i personally was thought that we didn't necessarily have to um say that but they said that we go into this one of these two statements and then we go there's four of them so there's like four four values and commitments that we make that they're kind of like reiterate what this says here in this paragraph so um it i i i think either way if we left it in

179or we didn't i don't know what you guys think very preference or and we don't have to completely decide now too everybody can kind of take it home and you know think it over i think since we kind of did agree to the vision and the mission would it be possible for us to at least improve that and then table the core values and commitments because i feel like these are much more expensive like we meet like you don't want me to keep reading them i mean you can i'm always willing to get through something [Laughter] would it be possible to do that though let me just i'm going to just read them out loud for okay for the public okay and then we can do that that's fine okay as long as yeah just

180that we get feedback and then do that that's fine so um our values and commitments are allowing to achieve our vision and mission creating equitable learning environments through school programs and practices so the original is we are committed to taking a student-centered approach that adopts programs and policies that ensure all students have equitable access to opportunities to succeed academically socially and emotionally and then the edit to that was just the title was shortened to creating equitable learning environments we are committed to taking a student-centered approach ensuring all students have equitable access to opportunities to excel academically socially and emotionally we wholeheartedly support our educators to meet our students diverse needs and learning styles while creating and maintaining an inclusive classroom environment so next is inclusive teaching and learning is a core value and commitment and

181then it says we are committed to reviewing and adjusting our curriculum and teaching methods as needed to ensure that we effectively help every student we are devoted to supporting our educators in recognizing and comprehending our students diverse needs and learning styles and creating and maintaining an inclusive classroom environment so the edit on this one changed it to instead of inclusive teaching and learning it changed it to high expectations and high expectations we believe maintaining rigorous standards and high expectations for all students are key to academic excellence and lifelong learning we hold high expectations for ourselves in creating engaging meaningful learning opportunities that captivate our students attention and provide them with rich experiences we expect that our staff will be fully supported to excel at their craft the next one is strengthening unity and collaboration we

182are committed to encouraging each student to engage in meaningful interaction with the rest of the students with the rest of the school community and learn from one another while respecting differences and embracing shared ideals we invite the creation of brave spaces where people can express themselves in ways that promote conversation and education educational opportunities then the edit was same title we are committed to inviting each student to engage in meaningful interactions with their school community and to learn from one another appreciating differences in celebrating shared ideals we invite the creation of brave spaces where people can express themselves in ways that promote conversation and educational opportunities we empower staff to share knowledge ideas and experiences to inspire and inform our practice and then the last one is community involvement and service to our community we

183are committed to creating a culture that respects the right of all community members to be informed involved and empowered in district matters we are also committed to engaging students with students to practice responsibility towards creating a socially socially i think it's supposed to be and there is a hand that i need in one of the versions that i had worked on with stacy it had gotten put out but it was supposed to be there i think okay and just okay and just society through critical thinking skills civic engagement and service to our community and then that it was uh our short i guess community involvement and service we are committed to creating a culture that respects and honors the value respects honors respects and honors the value all community members bring and ensures involvement of

184all stakeholders and district matters we are committed to engaging students and understanding how they impact their community via an asset mindset critical thinking skills civic engagement social justice and through service to our community so those are the four and then we can go ahead we can vote on visitor mission we're happy with that yeah yeah do you want to do i mean we can i'm good with that yeah yeah jeremy okay with that yeah all right what um what way do we want so that it is kind of effective um to look at the commitments and values like so that we have possibly bring them back at the next level right right that part so i guess we could do we could we could bring back like i mean um maybe if everyone could just

185like say like if there's a if you have a preference okay and then or if you actually have like a different edit or if there's something that you think can be like you know combined made concise and then we could bring something else in okay because if you look at a lot of different districts i mean there's there's all differences you know yeah yeah and i think i mean i think it's nice the more um the more guidance we provide should we do that through like so should we send it right who's the point person do we do that through jackie so that like how do we get it could i guess if to follow open meetings act can jackie add things sorry to ask you to do something add things to a document that

186everyone can or is that by a lady normal does that make sense um if she if you i don't think it's violating yeah we're not working in the documentary we're not working at the same time that's my public document my understanding yeah one of the things that we did like in the last time it was a lot of work um well not like we could have a workshop and we could like probably bang it like an hour right now we have a lot more right yes we have a lot more so um even if it's just reviewing it i know last time it was the feedback was sent to me and then it was like i sent it to the people sending people right before audition individually to get more feedback right um i mean

187if we could get that was it wasn't i mean it wasn't bad because at the end of the day came back to i was kind of that point person and they kept sending her back to you want to be the point of ourselves so we'll just send it back and do that maybe we could yeah you could just you could compile in one document like the different and then we could just pick which ones we think are best one of the things too that that um serena had discussed was possibly um even uh just even looking at benchmark in other districts and their strategic plans um we were looking at even definitions right defining it to the definitions of like what does equity mean to us what does you know uh social justice mean to

188us or some of the languages in here right i'm not and those are just examples i'm not saying it exactly but really like success what does success mean to us right so when we're talking about that defining it in a way that allows us to cancel right you know provide a thorough understanding of this is what we mean when we say this right because equity means so many different things to so many different people but if we can agree to you know definition right then that could provide us with at least some support okay so we'll do that too okay okay so um then i guess i'll make a motion to pull out the vision admission and go ahead and move forward with the vote on that um so so move right uh yep yeah

189okay roll call jimmy olsen jeremy jeremy is on you yes yes okay and then uh we'll go ahead and do we have consensus then to bring back our core values and commitments and a glossary of terms uh back for a vote at our next meeting yes can we commit to core values and commitment well yes i'll just say yes okay we might have to extend it for example for the glossary but i think we still have to move to actually or no we did that's what we just did we approved it we approved the mission of vision okay all right cool okay that means we have that so our our our mission our vision is um to positively or not should we say we positively impact the lives of students supporting and inspiring our district

190428 positively impacts the light do we know our vision is to positively impact the lives of students of our students supporting and inspiring every student to achieve their potential okay each student each student yes we'll get it here i know i put it in both each i will fix it jackie so and then our mission is to provide an equitable and inclusive education that supports students holistically providing tools the tools they need to thrive by partnering with our families supporting and supporting our staff to meet the needs of our students of each of our students okay all right so we'll type that out better and i will type it and send it to you jackie thank you all right nice work all right thank you next up is new business uh curriculum and instruction realignment

191plan this is sarah montgomery billy formo and utrecht well good evening and billy and i will be presenting on the teaching and learning formerly curriculum and instruction realignment presentation value version number two after our last board meeting billy and i met with kyle student services director to go through our departments work very closely together and different programs of course dovetail as we support all students and so we looked at what are our department needs and how do we prioritize we also heard through the board to phase in or phase out are different needs and then having that priority with the sel through kyle so what you'll see in our presentation is a three year rollout and we started looking at our current department our current department how we support the buildings and students so you'll

192see on this slide our current fte is 20. you'll see in the bottom is grayed out our six through l support leader and our multilingual coordinator currently is housed in student services under kyle's department we would look at bringing that back into teaching and learning so in our version two um the reason we went to kyle was we were hearing a lot as we went in buildings as we're hearing school board meetings seo sel so we wanted to make sure we were prioritizing those needs so we all know that we need to focus on academics as well right but sel was what we wanted to prioritize so you'll see that we scaled this down pretty well so here you can see um like sarah's mentioned we have 20 current fte if we include our multilingual

193coordinator and our secondary l support leader so here you can see in yellow we're adding two well 20 plus two is 22 right i'll explain that here in a little bit so if you look here um rp k5 director and our director of cmi everything that's in green that is no change all we did was realign or retitle positions so that's no change at all the orange there is increasing contract so we're asking for our multilingual um coordinator and our assessment coordinator to go from 10 months to 12 months and also the secondary humanities manager and elementary humanities manager who would be our current positions as as part of our real life number correct um 10 to 12 months and then our p5 instructional support coaches currently the elementary has five and a half so

194we're asking to increase that to six the reason we have five and a half is because we have a 0.5 construction approach and a 0.5 tactosa which is explained here in our blue is where you see our decrease so this is where we get the 21 and not the 22. we're actually decreasing one fte with a halftime tactosa and a 6 through 12 instructional support coach which that's actually 1.0.5 of that would go into the elementary to make that six so here in yellow is what we are requesting for the next for our first year phasing is our six to twelve director and then our elementary ski manager year two we're looking at bringing in some additional coordinators to help so for instance we would bring in the specialized curriculum coordinator and then the elementary

195and secondary sip pd coordinators that will directly support building administration and then our special populations so as you know we've spent a ton of time on school improvement plans and our strategic plan and aligning our sips to our strategic plan so these sib coordinators the pd set coordinators would make sure that they'd really be helping provide the pd that we need to meet our goals and to fulfill those strategies that we have within our school improvement plans and our special ed curriculum coordinator as we sat down with kyle we asked is there any way that this could be absorbed within your department at least for the first year and he said that he felt that they could but we really need somebody in our curriculum department who specializes in special ed because there's a lot

196of special curriculums entered and we want to make sure that they're aligned to grade level standards which can get tricky especially as the students get older so then there's year two our fte summary for increasing year two and then year three um with our one-way and two-way dual language now being further along will be fourth grade two-way dual language up to fourth grade so we really felt that we need multi-lingual instructional coaches at 612 and pk 5 to help support our needs for those students so that's an additional two right there so overall our three-year phasing although just want to make it clear that it's fluid tonight what we are asking the school board to consider is our year one obviously we're going to take a look at how things look next year and reassess

197and go from there so this is what we foresee in the next three years and this is what we would be asking over a three year period so a total of five more fte six six six oh twenty okay six any questions absolutely i appreciate the breakdown of year by year i'm sure i'm a visual learner so yeah this helps these are these are charts and that's helpful but like what like what outcomes can we expect and like where's the um like the support material to describe why we would approve this or why we would do this sure so let me i'm going to go back to our year one because really that's right now what's our focus right now so um as we were here earlier tonight right it's not morning yet so there

198were a couple things that really stuck out to me um direct line to the building and the needs of the buildings are those being met so with what we're asking right boots on the ground i heard and then i've heard baby name so if you look here um and i'm just going to come up here because i'm i'm a visual learner as well but i need to point to things so that people understand where we're going with this these this elementary steam manager and elementary humanities and then secondary as well these are directly focused on content so steam math and science and the arts and then humanities which are social studies so right now one of our biggest downfalls i would say in our department is that sarah and i are focusing on four different

199five different content areas within i would say elementary where they're more like tenants right so she has more contents less buildings um i have less content more buildings so this here allows these two managers to go into the buildings and work with our instructional support coaches to get boots on the ground so really this um column here and this column here are boots on the ground this we're envisioning them envisioning them as boots on the ground not i know they're housed at the district office but these are people we really want inside the buildings to be able to help with the school improvement plans and with any professional development that might be needed targeted and differentiated i'm sorry you're saying who's housed at the ed center that you'd rather have in the buildings and again

200house house being housed at the district at the center is more so so that we can use them fluently right throughout the district okay just wanted to verify it and then like i guess like what would what would a like elementary scheme manager what would the job description be um so across elementary and secondary um that was looking at curriculum alignment assessment development also helping to guide plc work so they're going through the four essential questions of a plc and also providing some of that targeted piece we're looking at creative ways to make sure the professional development is offered at different times through the plc's next year and dividing up that time and working with the building principles what specific professional development do you need for engagement what do you need for reducing the chronic

201truancy absenteeism things like that that will help larger groups and then some targeted smaller girls and so this is so right now okay so currently we're at a that's one 20 fte this would be a 21 ft but what's the um what's the difference in cost like from adding one so the difference in cost here and this is actually estimated probably a little higher but um okay so 381 000 correct does anybody have equipment other questions nope so would an elementary scheme manager be considered administration and then the support coaches are all dcta they're our current instructional coaches correct or i guess they are instructional support coaches it says right here so like on this chart we would have are you looking at year one yeah so like uh we'd go from eight administrators or

202we go from six administrators to eight right because they're splitting the director position too yeah to be more focused i i get i mean i i think like what what would probably be helpful for me um would be like job descriptions and like because just mean like you guys can tell me like what it is but like without like actually being able to like read like what like why doesn't make sense and what outcomes can we expect and um it's because i guess and honestly like i'm starting to get really nervous because we're spending a lot of money like this is a lot of money that we're talking about here we're talking about half a million for sros we just spent you know 3.5 million for fte for next year and then we've got like

203like is it sustainable like all this output that we're looking at here well it depends on how you phase it in for one and i know we talked about trying to maybe support some of the fte with that or again that permanent dollars but yeah you have to it's the hard thing is you know for the first couple of years it looks fine in terms of how it affects our fund balance um it's just when you're both looking out to your like four and five it's a little more difficult to predict only because we don't know a whole lot about state funding um you know we're a tier one school still for evidence-based funding but we're on the edge of tier two because we have received additional funding and we also received the property tax

204relief grant which has been incorporated in there as well but for next year we need to use those dollars that's about 5 million a little more than 595.4 million for the um abatements per tax abatement after that those dollars could be used for their purposes operating purposes but then we have to also keep in mind you know what sort of tax care we've been on that track for the last few years to do that our building needs you know well that's what like we're looking at potentially having to add additions on to to buildings and then also um or or build a building um and i don't know that we could depend on a referendum you know to pass yeah that's a yeah that's difficult from the feds i know they've talked about infrastructure right

205and even at the state level they have but again we can't hang our hats on that stuff because we don't know if that's going to occur right now cindy where are we at in regards to um with some of the new construction that's happened and and newer commerce that's come to the area where are we at in um like because so right now they have abated i think or is that what it's called it's like they only pay a percentage yeah like um right yes right so they um they're it's they're evading half of their taxes but of course we're receiving a lot more so this last tax level we just wanted to you saw that huge increase in our um new growth that was for our candidates like about 21 million but half of

206it is really what they will be assessed for they basically take their assessment and they come in um also part of our tax levy this year was the decal tiff that was about 60 million dollars in equalized assessed value that came back onto our books so that did infuse more revenue which is going to be for the 20 to 23 school year so we'll realize that next year oh yeah yeah we'll realize that next year and that'll be embedded um in our revenue for okay but that was included in your projections okay and then we also have facebook that's coming online which i still haven't gotten clarification about exactly what that ea is going to be they will be 100 that their first phase i guess and even for penny that's just the first phase

207there's going to be more but we just don't know what that looks like yet um once we know what that equalized success value is and probably that's going to be fully assessed in the 22 tanks of the year which will affect our 23-24 budget so we're always going over yours on that so that's going to be additional dollars as well in the projections um i probably didn't put as much in there and of course it's going to be because you remain conservative but yeah they'll be additional tax dollars coming from that as well okay yeah so there's um you know when i work on my projections i always look from a perfect conservative perspective for sure um but we do want to again just there's a lot of things we're trying to do absolutely yeah

208we're trying to balance um uft we're trying to balance taking care of our students that's number one that's priority absolutely but then part of that is too we need to give them the faith building we need to give them space and then we'll need to hire you know we'll have you know we can get those class sizes down but it does require staff so yeah it's um definitely um a jigsaw puzzle to some extent and especially this is a multi-year plan it's not something we can just one year we're going to have all these new buildings right now it's going to take probably three four five years until we get there and right now we're just starting those um those stepping stones to that with all these assessments between the security assessments facility assessments um

209we're on a great path and we're getting a lot to get there it's just that trying to and then you know their presentation with phasing stuff so sustainability i mean in the short run yes the long run is hard to predict okay in the kind of projections that you had provided us based on my questions that i had sent that was that so the one that was for all fte that was last week or the previous meetings plan like 10 million that was today's and including this the realignment yes so the year one phase one so what i did is i just dropped all these others okay because that's really looking at the i shouldn't say worst case scenario that doesn't sound right but it's the scenario that's most expensive let's say and it's you

210know all in one year so and without using asset funds as well so that is really you know the the highest cost we're going to see um then as we you know look at these um different things and the approvals and what is going to get approved by the board or not approved by the board then we can scaffold that stuff in within our within our projection as well okay and that the projections also included um the sro increase requests as well oh they that okay that's good to know too i was yeah i included everything that was on the table yeah okay yes it's very helpful thank you sorry i'm not i'm just looking at actually i'm going to play that's these are long when these last two meetings are so long um like

211i said at the end of the day what we're coming to the school board with is this is what we feel we really need so base projection so this so if we if we move forward with the space projection uh additional 1 million and evidence-based funding all fte requests added for so that that in in 20 projected in your school year 26-27 that brings our fund balance down to 15 well actually 14.98 15 which is below our um policy so i mean like this i mean i i 100 support doing what we need to do for our students doing what we need to do to support staff doing what we need to do to make sure that people are able to do their jobs however like we've got to be able to financially sustain ourselves

212too and if we're down to 15 we're below our policy you're 26 and that's based on include the full rollout of these plans right and and maintaining six sros yes okay and then this next one is 11.5 percent year 2627. best case scenario is we're at 34. percent well that first one is really just the baseline okay before we did anything and again looking out to 25 26 or 26 27 i feel like every time we run through these projection models it always looks uglier in those years because what we're doing is when we're looking at revenues we're being pretty conservative in terms of what the state revenue is going to look like and um also what the tax remember really we're about 50 50 right now we're about 50 local dollars um and the

213other half being state and federal dollars so so we really kind of have to look at each of those revenue sources and when we're looking into the future it's difficult to know what those are going to look like but for projection purposes we keep those the one look that we do know we adjust like the taxes and that type of thing the state funding you know that we know that we've got a base funding minimum that's what's included in here and then also adding another million to that that's about what we've been getting but once you get to tier 2 just don't know what that's going to look like right cindy i feel like when i first came on the board about three years ago um i felt like that the state portion was closer

214to 30 percent am i am i thinking clearly yeah you are because we probably were at about that right back then but because of the evidence-based funding and the additional dollars we've received our state funding our pi let's say of our revenue has shifted quite a bit to be um you know higher in state funding or more equal in state funding with their other funding as well but you're you're correct okay so so given that if there's a change in administration in a couple of years and somehow those policies change let's say um and let's say we go back to 30 um have we modeled that out in terms of what what ramifications that would have to our district and our tax base well i mean going back to 30 would mean you have to

215shift it someplace else i guess i mean meaning that the evidence-based funding formula just gets dismantled and they start something new politically that probably would be very difficult whether no matter what administration's in there that's just my opinion just because this is a formula that's been in place since 2017 it's had some success in getting money to school districts that need it just like like we did it was a game changer for us honestly we wouldn't be even talking about these fdes without those dollars that have come to us from from the state funding formula but i guess that's sort of my point right which is we didn't used to have it and now we do but we are in a bankrupt state essentially and and if for some reason something happens we're forced to

216deal with less money it puts us into a bit of a predicament and obviously that that's a huge amount 20 of our budget for increasing our budget by 10 that's even more and while i understand it could be difficult i guess i'm sensitive to the fact that you know things can change and they can change quickly and then i think we've seen that here nationally right because we all pretended like inflation wasn't really happening and suddenly it did so um i guess that's my only concern is i just knowing that we're even more dependent upon the state of illinois which is not a fiscally set position in fact we're 50th in the united states in terms of our fiscal security do you have any reservations about that at all from your perspective i mean i

217always worry about that only because i've been around long enough and been through a lot of budget cycles with the state i mean even with toronto does that concern me yes um what does the future hold for that it's difficult to know i'll be perfectly honest with you that i mean all of us struggle with that in my position as a school business official and trying to be fiscally responsible um on top of though knowing that we have needs of students too and you know because that's our priority right um so that's that's the difficult thing and again it's back to that balancing act what can we do to make sure that we're covering those needs but then also maintaining our fiscal responsibility um tough decisions absolutely it is and you have to think about

218those things yes you do but you know what's the likelihood very difficult to know i wish i'd get that crystal ball sure yeah but i do appreciate your perspective thank you for that and uh so you know and i don't know who's still in the room but i know that you guys are all uh and extended uh administration um you know working hard on plans that you see to carry out um you know your goals and objectives that we're sort of establishing here you know and i think we appreciate the sentiment at least you know i think i speak for all of us in that regard but at times they're going to be difficult decisions we're going to have to make and these are effects things we have to weigh out and and so keeping

219in mind what our key priorities are i think right now safety security and sort of classroom size or some of the top of the list you know are up there and you know if we have to re-look at some of these things or maybe just pace ourselves into them more slowly than maybe we would like instead of a full blown implementation we may have to walk before we run in some instances until we see you know perhaps some of the industry that's moved it does start to incrementally increase the amount of taxes some of those are are based over time so as years past week we'll get more tax money it'll increase our tax base so there are other things like that and again um do you model that in sorry to go back to

220you against sydney but um you know are you tracking on those those contracts with people like the candy company and and all the new business out there as far as they all have a little bit different incentives in terms of how are our tax dollars ratchet up is that something that you calculate into your numbers yeah absolutely yep one night when i know those numbers i put them in there like i said with facebook it's probably i'm roll balling it at this point until we know what that true equalized assessed value is but yeah i absolutely do that and then make sure i also subtract out the probations too those bills tax um incentives that these companies are getting but it still bears up additional dollars for sure okay well i i should be surprised

221thank you um but does anyone else have questions okay so we're so i guess also um i mean i guess i said that it's just just to have supporting documentation to go along with these i mean we can certainly get either job description yeah like job descriptions and all that yeah what what else do you want besides javascript like you want a written rationale yeah i mean like like these are this is just positions i'm not i mean i'm not trying to be dismissive it's just that it's within our fte cover sheets so we can provide both um so this is information okay so you're not it doesn't it doesn't look like this you're asking for this to come back for a vote or you are yes yes okay so um is there consensus to

222bring this back for a vote next time for year one yes yes thank you thank you so much next to the student services realignment um so i have 29 slides but i do want to hit a few highlights and then i obviously want to open it up for some questions so um like uh billy and sarah just mentioned we've been engaging in a process over the last several months to try and take a look at the student services department and consider what changes we might need to make what realignments we might need to make in order to kind of address priorities with strategic planning and priorities within our department and ultimately best support our students or staff so they can best support students i just want to hit some highlights a little bit of data

223included in here why do we feel realigned and additional staff are needed going back to before my time when the student services department the original design of that was to oversee special education within our district over the years it's evolved and student services is a broader encompassing umbrella and there's a lot that fits in to that so special education is a huge piece of that we have over a thousand students that qualify for special education early childhood through our 22 program we have a large number of students with 504 plans with this in special education but it falls within our umbrella they don't you know in also under that umbrella comes our district threat assessment process our gender policy implementation code of conduct sel um you know we currently have our multilingual department um housed

224under us i know it's a potential change there there's policy there's procedures so it's kind of evolved into more than just special education and over the years the district has provided more resources to adjust that but we're we're seeing those needs continue to rise those numbers continue to rise responsibilities continue to fall under our department and therefore we see a realignment maybe some additional staff is a request i put some information in there about since 2016 2017 we had about just slightly over a thousand students eligible for special education as of early march 2022 we're at 1155. since march 10th we've had 60 new students qualify either through our own evaluation process or move-ins so it rapidly changes sometimes and of course some students come up but this time of year we typically see a

225pretty good uptick in students that do qualify so with that the number you're about 1200 at this point um yeah um so in addition to that the more students that we have eligible the more that there is time spent in some of our federal requirements which would be iep meetings eligibility meetings problem-solving meetings and those meetings there's a trickle effect with those so it's additional responsibilities and time spent by case management by compliance oversight by our department um and of course the time that people gather and work with families for their students planning i did put some data in there about special education meetings as of february we're about 731 meetings for this school year i will say this is what we like to say is iep season a lot of students come up for

226their annual iep so i can refresh these numbers in a couple weeks if needed but i know we'll probably go into eclipse or come very close to what we've had last year which was just shy of a thousand meetings we had a school nurse here earlier that talked about the rise in medical student medical needs partially due to the pandemic but partially also due to just we have more students moving in the needs are a little bit more complex they require more expertise and therefore we she did point out i'm not a trained medical professional no problem admitting that nobody within our department has that background and my predecessor and i talked a lot about that and she said one of the biggest things that you're going to learn about this position is how much

227health services what all goes involved is involved with that and i have learned that if you peel away the pandemic which i know is hard to do um it it's it's a could be a department of itself wow um kind of last two things i want to touch on compliance with federal and state law so this year we are actually getting about 1.7 million dollars from the individuals with disabilities and education act grants which is something we get every year um that the amount has gone up but as with all grants um you know you get this money but there's requirements to that and it's really abiding by federal law state law and any regulations and it's very important that we sustain that funding it goes to curricular materials software we use it for you

228know we have a niu school psychology student this year that's paid for the grant so we find different ways to make it directly related to students with disabilities it's the compliance of our ability to follow those regulations in state law that we see as something that we want to stay on top of because we don't want to risk losing funding um and then last but not least and i've talked we talked a lot about tonight is an effective ntss framework that provides training coaching to best support the social emotional needs of students so those are some of the highlights of what what we identified as needs within the department i'm going to quickly go over some sel data just to illustrate that last bullet point a little bit and i'm going to quickly go through

229some highlights of some of the positions we're going to ask for and then so what i took here is this is a um i apologize it's not showing up very big but this is a screenshot of our best uh seo screening data so what you can probably see a little bit more clearly on your what does bus stand for sir um it's the best best so what it is it's a behavior um essentially at-risk rating scale so it looks at various behaviors that um could be problematic for a student and it gives a reading and then it falls into various categories that would show extremely elevated elevated and then what they would say is normal or average range what the idea of this is is early identification of students that have needs so that you

230can intervene and hopefully prevent further problems down the road um what i want to point out here is what we have is the fall 2019 data on the left here fall 2020 and then fall 2021. so obviously fall 2020 was a very atypical year we didn't have actually have students in our schools at that time so what this um rate that there is a difference it's not an apples to apples comparison the closest the best we can do is look at fall 2019 and fall 2021 is close to apples and apples but we know there was a significant event that happened in between there right what i would highlight is anything in the green means those are the number of students that were rated is considered average meaning there's no more concern than what would

231be expected i'm colorblind so i'm going to go ahead and say that's yellow and red combined those would be at risk and then they're extremely elevated so those would ideally be the number of students that we want to intervene with and what you kind of see from 2019 2020 you generally see this the need for this number of students that need support kind of increase increasing a lot of these areas and each of these like you know kind of groups of three assesses a different type of um index on that scale so but i just kind of wanted to paint the big picture and we could dive into this and have a whole agenda item at some other time but the need has increased and that's really what anecdotally we've been talking about a lot

232today um thank you for this this was helpful yeah no problem um we'll have some spring data that we can come back and look at too we just haven't done that yet with students so then you have your savers so this is used with um our elementary students the last rating scale this is a self self-report this is actually what our students are saying to us we use that at the middle school level it's more developmentally appropriate for them to kind of be able to rate accurately their own interpretations this includes externalizing as well as internalizing behaviors um this next category this is what we use with our elementary age students it's a different type of scale it's a teacher report because it's not really that great to have a first grader accurately report how

233they feel it's important but not necessarily from a standardized assessment measure what you see here is again you're going to see green and yellow for most of these yellow being those that area where students would be needing some form of tier 2 or tier 3 intervention and again it goes by fall 2019 2020 2021 this last one here this there's a little red there i would say ignore the red that's just how the report was pulled um so what i would say is look at the yellow and red there and that's your students at risk now this is teacher self report or sorry teacher report that student report so what you see here this area this is academically here and you saw this it was interesting because you saw a greater concern last year when

234students were remote that's what our teachers were saying is hey our kids don't seem to be getting it they're remote and that reflected in the data then what you saw when kids returned is actually kind of got back to a little bit normal now this is an achievement necessarily this is just what teachers are observing but what you see in some of these other areas are things that weren't necessarily present students conduct students ability to self-regulate and manage emotions and we saw those kind of rebound unfortunately from what was relatively what was lower in 2020 kind of rebounded back to what would be pre-pandemic levels in a lot of these areas so we kind of saw that need adjust the reason i wanted to highlight this is because when we talk about tier three and

235we talk about one student at tier three and again i'm going to come back to the amount of resources and things that go into that that is where our systems get over tax or where we're at currently now and so when i get into some of these requests later on a couple of requests are directly to support teachers administrators and students at that tier three level so that way we can intervene and get them the support they need or improve tier 1 tier 2 have better coaching have better training have better modeling so that way hopefully we can reduce the number of kids that are getting that tier 3. and really quickly i'm not going to read this to you guys because it's all there in front of you for each position that is considered

236a new position what i did is i went through and i say my department there were so many people that went into this um but i put together the powerpoint so the rationale is kind of why we think we need this and then i put benefits to the school community we've talked a lot about a direct impact on students and certainly there are a few positions in here where i think it definitely fits that definition but the reality of it is is some of these are administrative positions and i don't work directly with students but i have a way to impact students by programming by training by looking at kind of how we do business and then also keeping in mind what my staff at the building level is telling me they need to be

237able to do their job more effectively so every single request that her additional position we had here one of the things that my department did is we really challenged us to say if we're going to go to the board if we're going to go in front of the public and say we need another administrator we better be able to tie that back to how this is going to benefit staff and ultimately benefit kids or our families and so we hope that we did that to provide a rationale to it so somebody used to work in the buildings i get the optics sometimes when it's an administrative position that's added but we wanted to be really strategic about that the only other thing i want to say before jumping into this is we didn't do this

238in isolation from our billionaire request so we started with the building fte request and we said what do we need to get in front of our students now that's what we talked about earlier then we went to this and said okay now that we have what we ideally would like to see at the building level what do we need to make our staff feel like they have the time the resources the support to effectively do their job so then we came to this so health services curve coordinator i think we've talked about that quite a bit tonight it's one of those areas that i think we could do a better job as a district i think our nurses health assistants would really benefit from some more expertise training making sure we're in compliance with state

239reporting somebody to go to to consult with somebody who could be a partner with our health department both locally and at the state level assistant director of student services this i want to speak to just again the umbrella of student services and how that's kind of evolved over time and you know currently there's a director of student services and then our organizational chart consists of student service coordinators we have four student service coordinators and one student services tosa so a dcta physician you really function and do the same job it's just a credential is the difference there our student service coordinators spend the vast majority of their time in meetings so they facilitate meetings they serve as kind of the district representative to allocate resources to make sure that we're in compliance with law they're

240fantastic at it but what that doesn't allow them to do and because our numbers have grown over the years is it doesn't give them enough capacity to do the other parts of their job which is to oversee our programs to to get into classrooms and coach teachers to directly problem solve with teachers or clinicians on students to do a lot more outreach in terms of community partnerships and our our big picture is that we would like to free up our coordinators to be able to do more oversight over our programs more evaluation of our programs and not spend as much time in the medians that they are we could utilize their expertise differently or better in some ways the director of student services when you think about student director student services and assistant director the

241job responsibilities would be split pretty differently so the assistant director would be more in charge of the day-to-day the procedural the compliance oversight a lot of professional development that we do with our assistance with our related service staff with some of our administrators the director of student services would spend more time looking on community partnerships policy revisions code of conduct bullying some of those things that fall outside of that realm of special education really it would allow us to provide more uh oversight's not the right word it's probably more support and attention to all those things that we have to do as a department special education facilitators is another new role this is a we're looking at six additional facilitators essentially these would be special education or staff members with that background that could be

242special education teachers they could be school psychologists social workers their primary role would be the direct support to family students and staff within iep meetings so they would actually be the ones to facilitate those meetings to serve as what we call the lea in those meetings what that would do is it would free up not only our coordinators to be able to do more programmatic oversight but it would actually pull out a lot of our building admin our deans our assistant principals and principals that oftentimes have to be in iep or 504 meetings because it's legally required the feedback that we get sometimes is although they really appreciate being involved in the solving process of that and knowing what students needs are it's very difficult when there's other things going on in the building where

243that they can't attend to so whether it be instructional support for staff whether it be responding to students who might need that administrator to intervene whether it be addressing parents that are coming in they're required to be in meetings which is a lot of time we would like to free that up a little bit the other thing that adding this position would do is we would absorb a lot of our evaluation of related service staffs like social workers counselors nurses as well as our special education teaching staff we would take their evaluations which currently are done by building leadership if we would be able to take that off of our building leaders plate to free them up more as well some of our building leaders have great expertise when it comes to special education and

244some of them that's just not their forte if within the student services department it would be somebody who knows the role what's expected and the quality of what our teachers and clinicians are doing they can provide that coaching and mentoring and help them improve we feel like that's an area we can better support our staffing special education compliance analysts so currently our department has an administrative assistant an administrative assistant wears a lot of hats initially it was an administrative assistant to help the director but really that primary role is compliance oversight so when we look at any meeting for special education we are obligated to do certain things we have to notify that we have to provide prior written notice to the family that has to be done within a certain timeline there's certain people

245that legally have to be invited and the way our department has evolved over the years is that used to be centralized and my administrative assistant was the key like the oversight of that a few years ago it was decentralized meaning that that a lot of that work not all of it went back to the buildings what we found is and this is not a knock on our staff but about 35 of the paperwork that gets submitted to the administrative assistant now for review gets returned for corrections that's frustrating to our staff it's time that they're taking away either from support talk consulting with families or working with kids they have to do paperwork multiple times and it's important that they do because we get audited and we worry about our funding so by having someone

246dedicated to compliance what we would do is we would pull paperwork responsibilities from our special education teachers from our case managers who would be like maybe slps or nurses we would try to take as much of that off of their plate as we can that way they can spend the time doing what we think is their what they went to school for which is direct instruction with kids direct support with families there's not a special education teacher that i know that would say i got into this to do all the paperwork that's required and honestly a lot of people leave the field because it's not what they expected we want to try and give them what they're really good at is getting drunk kids this is one way we think we can do that all

247right last one here sel support specialists so these would be we currently have a vacancy as an seo coordinator we need to fill that vacancy what we're looking at is adding one or potentially two sel support specialists that would be able to support that coordinator what these positions would do is they would be direct they would be in buildings so they would be working on tier one implementation they'd be making sure that it's being done with fidelity it would be coaching those teachers to implement it the best way they can they would be involved in implementation of restorative practices at the tier 1 and tier 2 levels they would help support students that are not responding to tier 3 general education support they could be an external consultant that would come in students with more

248extreme behaviors whether they are special or general education that require you know at times restraint or you know due to severe safety needs these would be consultants that could come in and actually work with teams to have an outsider's perspective of trying to better support them within our building we have a lot of students that go to therapeutic day schools if we can keep them in their home school it's not only better for the building but there's a financial savings as a district as well to be honest with you so really quick overview of some of those new positions the rationale goes into a lot more detail and i can certainly answer any questions that we have about those but i wanted to get into kind of what we would like to see or what

249we would hope to work towards over the next couple of years currently this is our organizational chart for this year we currently have 13 fte included in that we only have 12 of those fte filled so the seo coordinator is now where we would like to get to and i did a two-year plan i can go back and revise it but when i sat down and i looked at a three-year rollout of this in my mind i thought three years to roll this out as our department and what our needs are currently i would like to be a little bit more aggressive and look at two years that being said i can go back to the drawing board and re-think some things but ultimately you've got a 23-24 school year we would like to see

250this type of organizational charge so what you see in highlighted yellow would be new fte positions so this is kind of our we think as a department we need to be able to execute on all of our goals which align with the strategic plan but we broke it down into options so we've got three options year one and year two for each so option one um what we would look to do is add nine additional fte um it would be the assistant director the compliance analyst one sel support specialist and then six of the special education facilitators three would support our secondary buildings middle high school three would support our elementary and slash eldc that would be for 2223 option two uh or sorry option one year two that next year we would look to

251face in the health service coordinator and then the second sel support specialist of course this is it would be set in stone so we would evaluate our need heading into that second year and if for whatever reason we didn't feel like we needed these positions or we thought if that work could be absorbed elsewhere we could always pivot i did break it down a little bit and cindy helped me out a lot by getting some numbers in there so this would really show you what the change in fte is and what the estimated cost for each would be so in total you're one and two on the bottom right-hand corner um just a little bit over um one million sorry that's pretty far away oh like one point all right option two so this would

252be uh first year option two uh what you don't see here is the assistant director so that is pulled out of this option we would move forward with the compliance analyst the health service coordinator would be kind of put into this plan the six special ed facilitators and then one sel support specialist so an increase of 9 fte and then within option 2 we would look to add that second sel support specialist and then i kind of did a strike through there so you can see what those changes would be and that takes the total about 941 000 for both year one year two and then we have option three so in year one what we would look to do is add those six special education facilitators one sel specialist and a compliance analyst and

253then in year two we would look to maybe add that assistant director of student services so there'd be one additional fte in that second year so what you see here is what we would ultimately cut from the proposal would be the health service coordinator and the sel support specialist i will say we don't have a health service coordinator but we do have assistant directors special education or student services i should say that position or the director of student services would absorb that responsibility so it still would provide some more oversight to our health services it's a model that i know other districts have used i've seen it both ways but that would be a way that we could still provide some more help with our nursing staff i don't know if it you can't predict

254the future i don't know if that person would have the health services background necessarily and your your preference would be option one then two then three that is kind of how i laid it out um i fully understand the financial cost of this where i'm coming from is the opportunity and i'm really grateful for it to advocate and say hey here's what we think we could need we could we need to hear the things that we could do with this in terms of supporting staff taking things off staffs plate and the other thing that we would look to do is we've got a lot of good partnerships whether it be the niu or some local agencies but we can take that to a whole new level and that would give us more capacity to be

255able to do some of that community outreach and partnership as well so i know that was a lot longer than i thought no i honestly like i i really appreciate the data that you provided because it like when you provide data like that when you talked about like 35 percent of the you know forms coming back and having briefed up oh well then okay now then it helps to make decisions because then you understand why you're making the decision so i appreciate your presentation um very much um does anybody have questions um jeremy do you have a question yeah and then so the ask is um ideally for uh for us to bring back one of these options for about yeah um the ideal last could be option one option one year one would you

256do it by year similarly yep i'm also open to feedback so if there's some things that you would like to see maybe tweaked or you know more information more data you know that's obviously something that we can pull together for the next meeting too but i so it's a you have front loaded the cost in your options for in all in each of the options is there a way to spread that out more evenly or is this i mean would it not make sense to add you know like i know you said that right this is like the optimal way to add these positions okay i i would look at them i went there a lot with my in my head like all right 10 ft first year to the second you're right that's not

257balanced i will say this the um facilitator positions i don't want to say they're the most important position in here by any means but this is probably the cornerstone to be able to pull a lot of things off of special educators plates as well as to free up some of our kind of this coordinator level to take on more administrative duties and to expand them outside of special education they really there's a lot of expertise here that we could use in terms of discipline that they would be disciplinarians but to be more involved in you know restorative practices and at the sel park there's flexibility there if if they're not in these meetings the problem with that somebody said to go back to your question is that's kind of a package deal um so if

258we added like three it really wouldn't give us as much capacity that we feel like would be worth the bank for the buck i guess okay it wouldn't have the intended outcomes correct then you know seo i you know i did pair that down a little bit you know that's a tough one because i know seo is so important right now so it was hard to really say let's push this off a couple more years because that is our priority and i also understand the i it's not about how busy we are as staff members because we'll do the work we'll put in the time but what i see is our you know to be very honest a hard look at hey look we need to work on a few things or put some more

259time and attention here so we don't have something down the road like an audit that shows hey we gotta do some corrective action here and so that that part of what keeps me up at night that doesn't necessarily direct student impact students directly but i know it would or could would it be right it would trickle down so the special ed facilitators though like you said kind of a package deal but potentially have the biggest impact on direct student work like work with direct directly with students and i i definitely understand and agree and see how you have to have the administrative support there those systems need administrators to be able to function and you know at the classroom level and at the student level so i think that makes sense i was yeah okay

260if we added these there would be the trickle effect of not only our coordinators having more time but we would be able to pull some off of our building administrators as well so it does it would benefit us in multiple ways and the compliance analysts would pull a lot from building administrators um probably not building administrators but our special education case managers okay the case managers okay okay so anybody else have questions um so i guess we would say consensus to bring one of these options back then yes which option what do you recommend minerva um so we've had a lot of back and forth conversations with both teams around the alignment and by being very strategic around the option one in priority is what makes the most sense especially where we currently are i

261keep reminding everybody that we need to be fluid and flexible when it comes to changes in adapting as the year goes on things may change so no one should ever feel really attached to a title because that could change next year or the year after so right now this is what we're looking at that would make the most sense option one obviously is the most optimal to ensuring not just that we have services at the hands of everybody that needs them but it also kind of helps us to mitigate the issue around smaller class sizes right and giving teachers back the time to be able to be in front of students without having to do the additional types of things so in in relation to this one i would have to go with option one

262as well your statement just posed a question this is all contingent upon qualified individuals being able to to satisfy and fulfill these positions right and what would it take for us as a district to be able to do that because i understand that we're kind of on a timeline right now as far as hiring is concerned absolutely yeah the thing is is we can have vacancies and not have people to be able to qualify for them right or or just the fact that there's not enough people out there so the pipeline that we're developing will help us mitigate that but that obviously takes some time making sure we're connecting with the other components like the golden apple and other pipeline development will help us to assist that but still no guarantee did you want to

263add something well also by adding so much support in it will make us more desirable people will want to come here hopefully because they see that the supports are there they see that some things are coming off the plates for the goals that are in front of our students and they can truly get a position that's more administrative or a position that's truly in front of our children and then minerva do you think this is financially sound for the district i'm sorry do you think this is financially sound for the district oh this fte so i think that you know i i understand the number right and it's painful to see but if we don't begin to mitigate earlier and as kyle has mentioned everybody else has mentioned we're going to end up spending a

264lot more time trying to come up behind it to fix problems allowing us to be proactive right now again this can change next year if we're doing the right things and putting the right systems in place that we have the right people there it can eventually turn so that we don't have to have top heavy resources like this right and so i think that you know over the course of one or two years when we know that we have a strong foundation when we know that we have systems in place teachers are trained staff is trained everybody feels that way it's going to end up changing what we what we end up paying so we have to spend a little more now to get to that point but then eventually the the outcome should be

265that we'll be able to lay back from that or and if we're opening up additional classrooms like i said then those folks would have been trained and are lined up to go into those classrooms for us and the transition will be a lot easier so we'd end up spending less in the future by spending a little bit more now so let me let me add one more thing the other piece that we're going to go through is lining up any current vacancies vacancies that are are currently sitting there not filled with the funds already allotted so you know taking a look at this now we can come back and say we found a great 20 positions that we're going to be able to close and the funding might roll that's a that's just you know

266we'll see i guess just again like what you're explaining now this this type of rationale is kind of explaining of why this makes sense is what's helpful um that type of information like what what do you project what do you see like what what type of outcomes would we expect if we were to put something like this in place and then oh this would actually end up saving us money in the long run is that what we're thinking or so obviously it's not all about finances it's obviously we're here to serve students but we have to i mean we've got to make sure that we can afford what we're doing um so yeah that more detailed explanation is helpful for decision making right so the intent is actually for us to go through one more

267pass through and see what we can be able to re you know close or realign pensively naming and realignment instead of re-organization realigning positions that are currently there so that we can do that the intent is to do that so that we can then again drop the number right now we can't say positively that we can do that because it depends if it's a teaching position administrative position 10 month position 12-month position so that takes us a little bit longer but that is the intent to be able to do that we started looking at it we've started to look at it now we just want to be more intentional about which comparing apples to apple so that it's a clear yeah we got this and then the expectation to be able to lessen the cost

268overall and then like so you're talking about positions that are open now like just within the district so how many positions how many about how many positions do we have i know you've printed i didn't think to bring the list with me but it's substantial we have about 40 assistant positions so like how many high school teaching positions do we have open right now i don't have a report because i'm just like i'm looking at our website and like we've got high school teaching family consumer services one fte then we have just anticipated high school teachers 20 22 23. do we know specifically what those positions are i'm sorry i was looking for it so it says anticipated high school teachers 22 23 on the human resources page for job applications it says high school

269teacher family consumer sciences we have one one ft for that and then it says anticipated high school teachers 22 23 yep so we have anticipated positions because people have notified us that they will be resigning so we want to get positions posted early enough so that we can try to get them filled and we're not right do we do we so we know what those specific positions are yes why do we not have those listed specifically then on the on the page for hiring teachers because like as a teacher i was a teacher like if i saw anticipated high school teacher i'd be like oh i don't know why would i want to apply because i i mean yep so sometimes we're notified by a staff member i i'm going for board approval in another

270district on x date but pending board approval i am resigning okay so we don't have any certain vacancies yet we have not confirmed the resignation okay i guess that just ties back into what you were saying about open positions and realigning and right so positions that are anticipated will probably end up being filled because we still need to have those positions right so that's one thing versus a position such as the family and community engagement manager we haven't been able to fill right so that position has been vacant do we continue to keep that position vacant or do we align it to a position that we need more currently so you know can we switch that over to something else that would make sense so that we can fill it and get it and use

271it more appropriately because again the position is open has money attached to that and so it's still being held on versus letting it go realigning to a different position using that funding for something else so versus a position that somebody who is just resigning and we're waiting for next steps that's why it's a little bit more difficult to do that now since we're still kind of waiting for a lot of things to to happen so i guess you know i'm sure so then i guess back around to the question i guess like this is a financially sound decision for the district all of this ft that we're looking at all these expenses where you're feeling good that this is a financially sound decision yes it still needs to be it's there's still me some tweaking

272to that and then again so the question when you say there's still going to be some tweaking so does that mean like to what this presentation just was for kyle or like because if we're proving things then like i guess what's the tweaking i'm sorry to say this like if we're if we're still tweaking but yet we're approving so what like what tweaking are we doing so we we are right so we need to well what we wanted to make sure that we got in front of you was the alignment of where we see positions being and then what we still want to work on is uh what we're always going to be working on is what positions are out there that we can realign so that we're not spending the money that we already

273have it aligned allowed for for something else right so it's our intention to be good stewards of the of the funding but we want to put it out there in front of everyone that we are looking for these positions to support the strategic plan the disrespecting plan the board's priorities and then the school improvement plans because that you know schools are putting these positions on this work into their plans and we want to make sure that they can do the work while they have it so you know if we wait to get everything lined up then we will take us further out and we wouldn't be able to start thinking about what jobs descriptions postings you know what positions we can use for what so it's just part of that that reconciliation of opening positions

274okay does anybody else have questions no jeremy or are you awake still all right i thought maybe you're asleep in your driveway i don't know [Music] okay cool um so then we uh you're asking us basically to make a selection to bring back correct yes okay so does the board want to bring back um option one is there consensus to bring back option one option two or option three what do people want to do or no option should we just go around david do you have a preference samantha um i'll i'll go with option one okay do you hear me i know you don't have it in front of you yeah again i'm i understand everyone's desire to implement immediately more of a stair-step guy myself because i think there's so many moving pieces here

275that we're throwing sort of max resources and everything which i know sounds good but again when things are shifting constantly i much prefer a stair-stepped approach so i'd probably go just instinctively towards maybe one of the smaller packages to see what impact it made and then and know that we're making you know progress in the right direction right before we go all in so i say you know one one or two or i'm sorry two or three i understand both perspectives i'm good with option one okay so that's consensus for option one to come back and all right thank you thank you okay next up we are not done yet folks all right what's your position on it um i would probably prefer a slower progression because i'm feeling really nervous about finances at this

276point um i mean i think it's a beautiful idea i mean i love the idea of being able to do all of it and you know i i am i am nervous about the output here so uh next up is a director of equity position at our last board meeting the social justice committee did a presentation and in the end made the recommendation excuse me for a director of and this is actually the wrong title but director of diversity and inclusion that was the initial discussion but through a follow-up meeting it was decided to title it director of diversity and inclusion attached is a draft job description um it is up for discussion up for um editing but that is the job description that the committee is bringing forward can you give us the difference

277of the titles again um so initially it was thought to be director of equity that's what we talked about and mentioned at our previous previous presentation and then after having a follow-up meeting and doing some some research and making decisions i thought the title director of diversity and inclusion would be more encompassing of the work that we're looking to have done so we eliminated the equity part from it equity is not eliminated it's still part embedded in the job description and the work that will be done the title is director of diversity and inclusion get up for discussion as well what is the salary um salary would be around the same the range of the current directors that is the salary study the next stage that we'll be going to so we can estimate it

278at current pay but that those have not yet been evaluated for the salary study so probably around one at this point around 1 17 120 to start and what would that be with benefits um okay questions was this this was included in your projection models no it was not this is separate okay so what what all was included in your projection models the the ft requests the align realignment and the sros okay yes the two realignments all the eft so where you've eliminated the communication person from one neck if this could kind of replace it almost slightly a little more okay so um i just i guess more i have a comment that a question is again we're going down you know sort of the best case scenario uh for every single thing that we're

279trying to address here at the as a district all in one year it's a little overwhelming i think it will be to our taxpayer base my thought is that the i like the title i think it's fine i like the thought of it theory and my biggest thing is i hope i'm not sure the director coordinator is the right title here but i do think that it needs to be somebody who can be an individual contributor somebody can come in and actually impact because you know coming into a situation there has to be time to get your hands dirty and evaluate and and actually really understand how you want to use uh you know whatever it is that we add to this but i see this is another situation where you know similar to what

280happened with film or you know hiring somebody to do communication and then it becomes well just you know i'm going to hire other people to do the job the reality is this you know i would much prefer to see this person come in assess the situation even if it's an internal candidate frankly put together a strategic plan on what they're going to do how they're going to do it and who that's going to require and give us a couple of different meanings to you know absorb it and then again maybe a progression of i just fundamentally think that we have to start you know walking before we run we can't just fully implement an entire new wing of our of our cabinet and our programs with all these people before we even have a really

281good idea on how it's going to work if it's going to work and what's going to be driving it so some some sort of a an individual someone coming into the role expectations of getting out in the field and actually being in front of students um actually living the moments and then creating a plan based on that would sort of be a must for me in this particular role that's just my two cents anybody else have comments or questions ha i guess how does that work like you want somebody to do the job before they're hired no i want them to be hired and do the job not just as a supervisor but as an individual contributor or hiring a director level but cindy's a director and she does you know individual contributor work all

282day every day so that's kind of more what i'm looking at not just somebody to manage people not a people manager but somebody that can actually do the job and then as the job becomes bigger right and then we start to need additional resources we consider incrementally looking to add to that as these programs mature i guess that's more the bigger approach i'm talking about okay thank you so that i'm clear are you saying it shouldn't start off as a director it should start somewhere i guess but i'm not saying i think that's all titles and salaries david i guess from my perspective it's more about can they come in and actually get you know to the ground level in other words the director you know to me you know it's just someone that has

283direct reports that's why they call them directors right so that becomes a people manager ultimately but we in the cabinet sort to handle those titles i guess a little bit differently at times because some people are more manager really and others more direct you know contributors i'm just saying knowing that this is a brand new program it'd be nice to get somebody to come in and really spend some time in the role from a strategic perspective but also an individual contributor level in the in the schools face-to-face with our with our student body sort of creating a plan instead of just walking in and saying okay here's my concern i i i'm afraid we'll get somebody in this position and they'll say okay the next week will be in a meeting and they'll say you

284know information i need four more people to do this this and this and that's my strategic plan i'd much rather see somebody spend some appreciable time you know actually just focused on that part and that initiative and trying things and seeing like you know what philosophically is the right path how many resources is that going to take i think that would be a better path i i hope that made sense thank you it does agree so anybody else have questions or comments well i think um jeremy to go along with what you are stating right now i think when i think about a director role as somebody that has experience with that and that is going to be able to provide that service and be boots on the ground to analyze and assess our current

285practices policies procedures ultimately to provide that additional support and you know experience to that has the experience to provide that additional support to the different entities and groups or that we're assessing um i do i'm looking at just that at the essential duties i do feel that equity needs to be imparted part of that um and the reason for that is because again diversity equity and inclusion three different things that obviously carry a lot of weight and importance when you're talking about equity work is not equality equity work talks about meeting the students needs and meeting you know validating what the student brings with them and acknowledging that they they have um right wealth right that comes that they bring with them um so acknowledging that is part of the equity work right and meeting

286the student where they are at um so you know i would that's one of my feedback there one of my statements with regards to feedback um so i do believe that titles do matter and especially when you're asking them to do such important work like this another thing that i i have a little bit of feedback as well as in regards to qualifications i would say that a master's degree if we're gonna won't pay that much money for somebody that you know is going to do this type of work and experience master's degree and some type of work that has to do with diversity equity inclusion um is important and the reason why i'm saying that as well is because again when you talk about master's degrees it is more focused and centered on equity

287inclusion or diversity i put in inclusion work that is related to models and frameworks that allow people to provide a lot of the things that that jeremy just mentioned um and a master's degree usually allows you to allocate that experience at the right that's right right well i have i i don't know i think we'll be able to find qualified people with a master's degree but i do think it's important also to recognize though that possibly work experience could because especially people from minoritized groups don't always have the same opportunities to to you know educational opportunities work experience opportunities i think that you could look at a combination of work experience and and degree i i think as a director it's fine to require a master's but i just you know just want to put

288that out there 120 000 a year ambassadors if if they have the experience and know what they're doing that's it's exciting it's just required masters prefer i'm not trying to change your mind no i'm okay with a masters required honestly i just i just want to put it out there that there are not always opportunities afforded like there are real barriers so sometimes especially when you're looking at no and i understand where you're and i understand what you're saying in regards obviously to just statistics right showing statistics that show that you know the percentage of you know the people that have that whole master's degrees obviously are there's a lot of yeah well that needs to be done there yeah i will have an issue finding somebody with a master's degree so i'm fine okay

289anything else jeremy uh consensus to bring this back yes next meeting yes i just want to make sure i bring back the right thing so director or otherwise with diversity upgrading inclusion right the director i think because of the scope a director position makes sense i understand what jeremy's saying and i agree that there yeah and i agree too i mean like yeah like if we're if we're i mean do does it have to be director level to like to do this does it i mean is it something that we can i mean to jeremy's point like i mean we have a lot of directors here that do a lot of work that are directly you know directly directly directly directing and doing and um so this position um will touch the entire district it

290will touch curriculum it will touch discipline it will touch staffing it will touch retention of staff it makes sense for credibility's sake for the work that they're going to have to do culturally yeah i think you have to give it the title that demands the respect of the work that's being asked of the position it makes sense right so directed of diversity equity and inclusion qualifications master degree required and experience with diversity equity and inclusion so those are the recommended changes consensus to bring that back he said yes sir yes before we move forward can i change my vote on the presentation that kyle just made sure um considering um leaning more towards uh presentation two option on the two that's the one that removes the assistant director we'll just bring the proposals and then

291get another couple days to review this i mean what we would [Music] consensus to bring it bring bring it back and then we can um we can void on which one perfect because then at least allow us to review what jeremy stated what you stated but we all kind of describe the world yes our presence is all right we're moving next yeah okay all right all right this is a information action a resolution authorizing notice of non-renewal dismissal [Music] this is procedural this is for staff that were hired mid-year they were informed at the time of higher they were in a one-year position but again this is um just following school code and making sure that those individuals are properly notified okay we've done this action prior this year as well but we had some

292more late-nighters okay um is there a motion second jeremy olson yes yes david seymour yes next up is miss cynthia carpenter andy frame services incorporate contract extensions of information so currently we use andy fraim services for our crossing guard contract and we're looking to renew that contract for another school year a quick history in terms of um crossing guards the city of dekalb used two supplies with crossing guards and back in the 18-19 school year we absorbed that cost into our budget it was something that they requested of us through an intergovernmental agreement um so when at the time that the city had the crossing guards they were using andy frain as well they used to use their own police officers and found that it was difficult to manage it so they contracted out with

293andy frank so at that time we went through a request for proposal um when we took it over and andy fraim came there wasn't really too many companies out there that actually did it but andy frame they're out of over one that did so we're looking to continue our relationship with them to provide those crossing guard services for the 22-23 school year and they increase their response into 3.95 which honestly i feel seems reasonable considering um also we're still in keep forgetting that we're still in the mode of getting to the higher minimum wage so a lot of these increases are impacted by that that i think will end i think we have to get 15 an hour in january 2025 so so we're transitioning there so right now we um that would be a

294total cost of approximately 142 300 a year for the crossing guard service system and they've done well so even under with the code and everything you know they've done a good job okay how many crossing guards do we intersections mostly at the middle schools and the elementary so it's not the high school obviously and um actually we just added an extra one over at company middle school which is the intersection of far boulevard and 23 fourth street which that was a real problem i mean tammy i went out there and monitored it and people aren't very good about um slowing down you know they're gonna have furious so we have actually two guards there too to help with that crossing and looking at some options with the city to re-do that intersection because it's it's

295really not a safe intersection so well it's safe now because i mean we make it as safe as we can but it does need to be improved just to cross itself so it's a problem scenario okay so this is just information tonight and it will come back for action at the next meeting okay thank you consensus yes yes thanks cindy uh next up is the iasa global service project yes good evening this is an opportunity that came about the iasa has put out an application across the state for districts superintendent and a board member to participate in a service project and we applied and we have been accepted to participate in the global project that will be in the dominican republic in october and what they with the intention of this is to go back

296to a school that had begun to be remodeled and renovated by a group of superintendents to go back and to finish up any remodel and support to ensure that the school is up and running the dates the tentative dates are between the 12th to the 19th and there's a 500 charge per person in this case uh uh samantha was the one that opted to participate in this program so it would be myself and samantha for the uh so we're asking for approval to be able to attend but we don't need approval for the five hundred dollars so we don't need approval for five months we're going to cover that ourselves because it is a service project so the 12 13 14 17 18 maybe so sick you go off you'll be off for six days

297in october i'm sorry you would be off for six days in october with this uh i don't know about it's not six days total that's just the window it's a win it's four i believe it's four days possibly five but that would include probably the weekend okay so we don't have exact dates yet okay is there um this is information oh we had this before okay uh is there any questions congrats sounds fun okay uh it is recommended there's no recommendation yeah i think we have [Music] maybe because it's i a s a oh yeah it's late sorry okay so consensus to bring it back yes yes all right yes uh aasa national women's leadership consortium pd this is information action this is a professional development for myself for the national women's leadership consortium from

298aasa as part of my contract i get yearly professional development this is one of those professional developments that we are i'm asking for permission to be able to attend it is one two opportunities out of state but then the rest of them are during the school year virtually the first one is in june so school will be out we will be winding up in right before the holiday weekend the fourth of july weekend and then the second opportunity would be over the weekend in february so it would minimize the number of days outside of the school district okay oh so you would be gone the you memorial be gone oh during the summer yes virgin how many days uh so it's two days during the summer and then two in february and then uh it's

299a friday saturday sunday in february okay so um it's any questions comments okay it's recommended the board of education approved dr garcia sanchez to attend the 22 national women's leadership consortium for professional development is there a motion second roll call ceremonies yes jeremy ellison yes jason yes david seymour yes samantha david yes thank you and then with that is the strategic plan monthly update so i'm going to be quick there's a few pages online but i want to make sure i hit the highlights based on feedback from the audience the public participation we kept hearing about math we are doing math we continue to do math talks as part of a strategic a strategy that we're sharing with our teachers and that continues to go well and as being well receptive well received we also

300are noticing that our summer program at the high school level continues to be expanded so that's great our kids are wanting to make sure that they catch up on their credits on october 7th of we are going to be hosting the county-wide professional development sarah and billy are leading the work for on our behalf there and so they are making sure that we're well represented that will happen here at the high school october 7th and then next month i'm not sure if it's the first or second meeting we will have school improvement plan overviews for each one of our schools presented so that we know which strategies are being worked on by wood schools and cindy and bill sarah and billy will be we'll be presenting those to all of you and um let's see

301next month so that's around strategy one student achievement and we continue on as you all know mtss framework was completed we gave you all a draft so we're just kind of tidying up the draft the next steps is to do the sam which is the self-assessment at mtss that is an assessment that each school and the district itself will be able to go through to see how well we are implementing mtss and where our shore companies are and then now that we have the approved district vision and mission um the committee for the strategic plan will now be able to begin the three-year strategic plan so this one was just a year one uh now i'll be able to do that and do our um our placement so that we can share that with the

302public as well and be able to talk about which one of these strategies will be able to do that so i believe sam is on that committee is that right and then as soon as we're able to start um on that work we will uh so we're just waiting we were just waiting for this to happen and we can get going let's see big things that have come up on student services the sel teacher advisory committee met on march 8th to discuss ways to increase student access to sel support this information was shared with the district sel committee on the 17th at their monthly meeting so they're working on that in technology a number of things but e-rate funding requests for 22-23 school year are completed and waiting on fcc usac for funding just waiting

303on that on baited breath right right our facilities now that the demand for study is complete we will be working to get the space allocation reports completed to be able to move forward with building and expansion plan discussions and tammy is working on that very diligently in regards to priority two community engagement and marketing the family and community engagement framework components are being developed within the family and community engagement domain in the multi-tiered systems of support framework i know that kyle and team will be working diligently on that along with phil and team strategy number three which is financial stability with equivalence we all know you know that cindy does her due diligence and goes way up and beyond so the only thing that is that we just want you to know is that there

304are three things that are not have not been started due to staffing issues the business and finance manager position was filled on january 20th representative here dantania it will take some time to get the new person up to speed get her up to speed before additional attention can be given to the items and they are building a departmental budget book the formalized system for budget requests and meritorious budget so those are things that are on her plate and we'll be getting started as soon as she's ready so priority number four we're on hr recruitment development and retainment professional development planning is underway for the 22-23 school year and there will be a pd calendar that will be inclusive of all employee groups i believe band and team has already put that together for us and

305we're just beginning to complete that a needs assessment is being developed to support that work and that is being led by billy and sarah so those are just highlights uh hr is doing a number of things around pipeline and getting things set up so plenty of things that are happening across the board so thank you to cabinet for for all the work that you do yes thank you also i'm not sure who's sending out emails regarding the summer initiatives uh to help children stay on task with you know so they don't lose whatever it is that you all are teaching them this all year i've lost the words i apologize but i've received several of those emails so i just want to say i appreciate that because you know it's kind of been in my

306face uh regarding what i can possibly do to continue to support my daughter during the summer aside from of course the summer day oh no it's time for the summer initiative put that in the budget [Laughter] what about 10 minutes yeah okay um it looks like we can do that as long as we it's not recommended to do all the time but as long as we cite it okay so we're gonna go ahead and adjourn to close session to discuss matters of employee compensation uh do you want me to find the actual yeah is there employment compensation jackie