001[Music] [Laughter] Good to go. >> Okay. >> Are we ready, Will? >> Yep. >> Okay. Board of Education has been in closed executive session to discuss to discuss collective negotiating matters between the board and representatives of its employees and the appointment employment compensation or discipline of a specific employee. No action was taken during closed executive session. I'd like to ask everyone to join me in the pledgece 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. >> You have a recommendation for tonight's agenda. >> Yes, we do. I recommend the board approve tonight's July 15, 2025 open session board meeting agenda as presented. >> Can I have a motion? >> So, move second. >> Any discussion?
002All in favor signify by saying I. I. >> I. >> Those opposed. Motion's carried. We'll now move on to our board of education onboarding session. Good evening everyone. Um tonight the executive cabinet will be presenting onboarding documents that reflect um each member's uh team or staff and some of the work that we do. We will be sharing roles and responsibilities and future goals. In your packet, I'm just going to read um briefly. I'm not going to read everything to you, but you will have the um the district leadership team, which starts with the board of education and goes through all of our um cabinet members and those that report to them. The next page is IASB documents that talk about the code of conduct for board members. This next page is thank you is your
003executive cabinet which consists of myself, Dr. Curry, Dr. Gray, Mr. Khan, Ashley Green, Monica Wils, and Maria Robertson. The district leadership team are those people that are part of the district leadership team that report to an executive cabinet member which includes Mary Brady P12 director of the elementary Dr. Robinson P12 secondary Dr. Lesby who's over student services, Maurice Payne, IT uh health service coordinator when we find one, Val Deir Tally which is over safety and security and Floyd Bolt which is the interim director of BNG. The Mon PZ special education administrators is director Kathy Horrett, Travis Frederick, assistant director, and Elizabeth Lane, the second assistant director. Your middle school principles, your high school principles, and your K6 principles. I'm not going to read off all of them, but I just wanted you to put a
004face with the name. and your K8 principles. So, we're going to first start with myself. I am the only employee of the board of education. So, whatever you are directing me to do, I typically share that information with my executive cabinet and we get that job done. As the superintendent, my goal is to continue to build relationships within the community and support our schools. We over I oversee 16 district leadership team members and that includes the executive administrative assistance to myself and to you. Six direct reports are the executive cabinet and 10 are district leadership and this also includes the special education cooperative. In addition to the work that we do in the community and as well um as within our own uh buildings I also meet with the principal advisory committee to kind of
005keep a breast of c some of the principal building needs that they may have. So this started some years ago. Even though we meet on a regular basis with principles, sometimes they feel that it's just easier for them to come directly to me. So they have a representative from the high school, the middle schools, K8, K6 buildings, and we meet on a regular basis just to talk about how they feel things are going with their buildings and making sure they're getting the resources and assistance that they need from district leadership. I am a trained evaluator for both administrator administration and teaching staff and on the very very very rare occasion I may be called to review an evaluation. I also meet regularly with um my student ambassadors. This is how I keep a pulse on
006what is happening in the schools from their perspective. meaning um they get to come to me and say what they believe is working and is not working or some changes they would like to see um happen. Um believe it or not, they were responsible for us um getting rid of school uniforms. So they had they made a valid point. We brought that point to the board of education and that is how we were able to get rid of um uniforms at the high school level. So I really do rely on their input. Next, I'm going to talk about the communication because communication is very vital between the superintendent and the board of education. Whenever there is a issue in the community or there is a problem that may come to the board, I will either
007call you or I will email you. If it is very sensitive or time uh sensitive in nature, I will pick up the phone and call all of you individually. This is how I make sure that you are aware of what has happened and what we've done to resolve the issue. I also would like the board to send me communication via email. So if something is happening in the community and someone has reached out to you, if you would just send that directly to me, I will get the answers that is needed and make sure that the appropriate person reaches out to the individual. Not all communication that comes to you means that something needs to be done. Some of it is just making us aware. So I wanted to put that out there too. Anything
008that you send to me in terms of questions will be sent to the entire board. So if you had a question of how many building principles do I have, I will then send to the entire board and frame it as a board member asks how many principles do we have in DPS? Administrative answer is and it goes to the entire board. This is how we stay on the same page. Board agenda items. All proposed agenda items for any upcoming board meeting should be discussed with the board president. During board leadership, the item that you guys have discussed will either be placed on the agenda for action or continued discussion. And I also noted that you can look at board policy 220 public participation. We ask that board members do not respond to public participation. It
009is an opportunity for them to come to you and basically express um what they feel or believe. At that point in time, you will see my staff taking notes. Sometimes I may be taking notes so that we can follow up and address anything that may come up from that. A lot of times they will just they will have something that they're speaking from. They will leave that document with Melissa. So we will make sure that all of that is taken care of. And again, unless it's at your level or I need to inform you that it may be coming to your level, we do have a process of how we handle everything. And I try to start with the building um administrators um and then move forward from there. So basically I'm not going to
010read all of this to you. My direct reports are my six executive cabinet members. I evaluate all of them as well as um Melissa Braer who is our secretary. Other district leadership members are from the making pyet special education district. You'll hear a little bit more about them in a little bit. But I am we the district is part of a cooperative and it is still 12 of us in the cooperative and we are the um agent for the cooperative. Our current district focus in terms of academic achievement is academic proficiency by third grade in both reading and math. We would like to have our uh graduation at 92% in terms of our freshman on track, meaning they started as a nth grader. They went to high school in four years. Currently, we are at
01176% at EHS, if I remember correctly, and 85 at MHS. We're also um working to decrease our teacher vacancy. As a reminder, we still um are short a few, but we have increased our teacher ready program from 25 to 50 seats, and we are going to be expecting international teachers in the near future. Parent in parent involvement is also crucial. We are lacking a lot of parent involvement. And so, the way that we are measuring that is what is happening at the high school level and what we do at the district level combined. So if I was to look at Stephen Decar at the beginning of the year and ask how many parents were involved in your first family gathering, he should be able to tell me 50, 75, or 100. Every time he has
012a function, we are looking to increase those numbers. And if they're not, what are you doing to get those numbers? And that's across the district. Some key accomplishments, we have um had some increases in math and reading. We are currently um well we're about to open up uh Ellsworth Dansby Junior Magnet School in the fall. We have increased our school security staff. So prior to me getting here, we did not have security in all of our buildings and now we have security in all of our buildings and we have increased our school resource officers um from 3 to five in the last 3 years. We have metal detectors and our wands in all of our schools and we have updated all safety measures um for our visitors and for our games. Just recently I gave
013a presentation. We have decreased student expelable offenses by 48%. We have DOT presence in our school on a weekly basis and all of our schools have a volunteer from our adopter school um program. I will let you read about the roles that we play in the community. I'm not going to go through all of those. I'm going to go down to the goals for the 2526 school year. My goal for the district is to increase reading and math districtwide by 10%. Now, you may look at that and say, "Wow, that is a hefty goal." But I believe it is doable. I believe that we have the right people in place, we have the right resources in place, and we're already starting to see those increases. Um, when we have our district leadership institute over the
014summer, we'll be focusing on those students that are on the bubble and moving them over to the 50th percentile. We're going to decrease the vacancy rate by 25%. I feel that Miss Wils can get this done and we want to increase our freshmen on track by 15%. And yes, that may seem like a big number, but overall I do believe it can be accomplished. If you remember the one of the things that we're doing is making sure that we are um getting in with buddy programs. We are working with counselors to make sure that they are doing a better I shouldn't say better making sure they are increasing um their time with those freshmans and helping them to um become better students because right now um this is like freedom for them and so sometimes
015they forget you have to put in the work along with the freedom and we want to increase parent involvement by 20% and again this is not just at the district level this is going to be districtwide Okay. And then my goal for the entire district is to decrease discipline by 15%. And the way we do that is by what we're already doing, continuously talking to parents, continuously talking to the students, the robocalls, the videos, um the in-person um visits to the school. One of the things that I do every year, I start with my freshman. So when they have freshman academy, they they see my face every year talking about expectations. and then the videos um that go along with that. Also in your book is my job description. So that will help you um
016understand what my role is here in the district as well as the community. I'm not going to go through all of that. I'll let you do that. And then also the role and responsibility of our shared administrative executive administrative assistant. So I'm not going to go through that. I'll let you just peruse that. Any questions for me and my role. Okay. Next, I'm going to call up Dr. Gray, assistant superintendent of teaching and learning. >> Can I ask one question? >> Oh, yes. >> What the heck? >> So, is there anything that the board can do to help you? Um, is >> there anything that we're we're not doing that we we could do or something we should be doing better? >> The re the relationship piece is very crucial between the board and the
017superintendent. So, that means communication. Um, the more we communicate with each other, the better. No surprises. So, I'm going to always tell you what's going on and I would like for you to do the same with me and trust that I am going to do my very best to move the direction and move the a district in the right direction. Um, sometimes you're going to get a lot of times you're going to get people calling and emailing you. Sometimes they may not be happy. Sometimes they may be right on. But if you get me that information, then I can at least do my due diligence and make sure things are handled accordingly and just trust that I will get it done. Thank you. >> That be great. >> Good evening members of the board. Uh
018superintendent uh Clark. So as uh my department is uh department of teaching and learning uh we provided a a brief overview but the nuts and bolts of it is that we teach students how to read, write and basically do arithmetic. Uh that's how our job is measured. Uh all the good things that said about our test scores and all the all the bad things that said about our test scores, that's what my department is responsible for and as Dr. Clark alluded in her goals and I'll speak about it toward the end that we we're excited about the work that we've done this year. Uh one of the things we don't do enough of is talk about how good our students are doing. We just have to talk about some of the negative stuff that we
019encounter. But uh my role and responsibility uh I'm responsible for the educational leadership component uh uh of our um schools in terms of working with the principles to make sure that they have the support that they need. Uh the fun part of my job is being able to go into classrooms and provide feedback to teachers uh visit classrooms and ask about uh instruction. And uh one of my favorite questions when I talk with teachers is what road barriers or uh blocks can I remove? And um when I start talking about the assessment piece, we had to make a pivot. Um but I you know I'll talk a little bit about that. My direct reports are the uh two directors of teaching and learning. Uh one has a strong elementary focus, the other one has a
020strong secondary focus, and we're able to support principles in those two veins. um as uh directors of teaching and learning. They do a great job of being a thought partner for principles uh helping them kind of figure out some of the complicated things from master schedules to hey placement of students in classes so we can make sure we get the best uh the best um input output from our students to even teacher schedulings making sure that we have teachers teaching their best uh classes so they can be productive as well. Um, and then additional things that my two directors do, uh, Miss Brady, she's a part, she's charge of the, uh, district appraisal action, uh, committee, uh, title one and title two, and also principal evaluations. Uh, Dr. Robinson, um, he's done a great job
021of, uh, digging into the college and career readiness piece, uh, with some of the work that he's doing in terms of tracking our our students from their freshman year all the way to their senior year. and uh he's already talked about the work that he's done around uh workforce development and CTE and making sure that our students are graduating or leaving here with the industry recognized credentials and kind of doubling down on that effort. We have uh strategists that go in and work uh side by side and shoulder-to-shoulder with teachers. They help with the uh instructional strategy pieces that they may need in terms of small groups uh thinking about different ways to educate students that may need differentiation uh within um their classroom, but they do a good job. So, I have nine strategists
022and six uh curriculum coordinators. Now, the curriculum coordinators, they they get the the nice job of going in and pilot curriculum and asking teachers, hey, what about what piece of the curriculum is not working well? what do we need to do different? And then they may even get up and do some model teaching with them. Uh breaking students down to small groups. They may look at data and say, "Well, have you noticed that this set of students are real close to making it and what can we do to push them over the uh edge?" And so they'll talk about some of the small group instruction. And um currently uh you'll get a presentation from me a little bit later um in this in the fall when I'll go over all of our academic achievement from
023uh the 2425 school year. But uh as Dr. Clark alluded, we've done some great things and I just want to point out the freshman on track. Um both high schools have dug in and paid close attention to freshman on track and they're going to be able to raise their graduation rate um and making sure that these stu our students graduate in four years from high school. So they're putting some safety nets in place and being able to uh just talk with students um one of the things we did everyone that was behind on credit after their first semester the freshman Dr. Robinson and myself went in to talk with the students and say, "Hey, what's going on?" And it's amazing. Students will tell you things like, you know, I have a hard time getting to
024school for a multitude of reasons or you know what, I'm struggling with math and I really think that the teacher hate me. And so then we can talk with the principal and say, "Hey, uh, can you just stop by and just, you know, give that student some positive affirmation and encourage them to ask questions?" And so then the principal now starts to look out for that student. Uh and here's the numbers just as it relates to our career and technical education certificates and just the increase that was made this year. Um so Dr. Robinson like I said he did a great job of spearheading that. Um as we look at some of the assessments and benchmarks I talked about we had to make a pivot. Uh one of the things that we constantly heard when
025we were in the uh appraisal action committee was that fast bridge was not for high school and um both directors did a good job of listening. They came up with uh Dr. Robertson came up with the star assessment and it's more aligned to what the high school students need. So now we're able to track that data. Uh the other thing that kind of switched on us a little bit. Um Illinois went from SAT to ACT. So now we're digging into the ACT piece. Uh and there it's still going to change one more time this year. So we don't have good baseline data on our ACT yet. So we'll be working toward that. And uh when we start to think about our goals for the uh 2526 school year, uh everything that you see is going
026to have a 10% increase. We're really going to push hard and challenge and support. Uh we're going to challenge our students. We're going to support our students. Uh we're going to support our teachers in the classroom as we move forward from making sure that students are uh being able to hit the 40 percentile uh on these low rent um benchmarks and ELA and uh reading uh also in math as well. And we're looking from spring from spring of 25 which we just took to spring of 26 and we're looking to have that 10% increase. Um and then the same thing with graduation rate. We're working hard with both high schools in terms of making sure that students don't slip through the crack and that we have uh our students graduating at least 80% uh for
027Eisenhower and we're going to push uh MacArthur to start leaning toward 90%. They fell at about 85 this year. So um that's it for the department of teaching and learning. I'll take questions. I just wanted to touch a little bit on what we're doing to um gauge how well students are, I guess, making it after graduation. So, we already know that only about 20 to 25 or 22% of our students go off to college in the two year or four years. Talk to us about how you were tracking the rest. >> So, um the good Dr. Marino uh had had us participate into a clearing house and so we're starting to get data on what are our students doing at the 2-year mark, the four-year mark, so we'll be able to track whether or not
028they went off to college, but also as they're graduating. Uh Dr. Robinson has each high school on a spreadsheet and one of the requirements is they tell us what they're doing when they're graduating. So we're following up with them to say, "Okay, you said you had an acceptance letter to Milikin. Did you actually enroll in the fall at Milikin?" So, we're doing that follow-up with students as well, and we'll be able to tell you from the school side uh before seeing the data from the clearing house. Okay, we've tracked these students now, and we know if they're at a two-year um community college, if they went to the four-year university or if they went to CTE route and took a job at the high school or even military. So, we're making sure that our students
029are exposed to all of this. Uh and it's in con it's not just the department of teaching and learning but it's in conjunction with innovative programs and um also student services as well. >> Okay. Other questions? >> I just got a few questions. >> Mhm. >> On Mary Brady. What is a district appraisal action chair? What is that? So the district appraisal uh action commit this a committee uh based on their on our uh contract on the teachers contract that have to meet and they talk about the appraisal process like what are we using this year well the appraisal process is already in the uh collective bargain agreement the teachers contract so they talk about different issues that may pop up and that's where they started talking about well when we go to write our
030goals for the year we don't think fast brbridge the information on fastbridge is appropriate for high tool. So that's how we came up came up with STAR out of that committee. >> Okay. >> It's part of their evaluation tool that they utilize. So they discussed that tool. >> Okay. And um the CTE industry certification. I saw this service food handler. I understand that Hunter safety OSHA 10 OSHA 30. I guess I I probably don't need to know that, but I I was just wondering if you could give me a quick education. >> Yeah. So, the the OSHA 10 is um like safety products that you would uh handle and use. Then the hunter safety is like, you know, if you go out and you are shooting guns or arrows and things like that, then you
031you have that credential showing that you are fully certified and safe to use those. We have a program for >> So he ran it in conjunction with the A program. >> Oh, okay. >> Yep. >> Okay. >> It's pretty cool. >> Yeah. Um we're we're decreasing our emphasis on science. It says the science section will be optional >> and composite scores will be based on the average of English reading and >> what's the reason? >> Are you talking about the SAT score? What are you talking about? I I mean ACT. >> I haven't got to the ACT yet. >> I think he means the Illinois science assessment. >> Okay. >> Just above your goals, >> it says science section will become optional in the posit court. Why are we or is it the state decreasing
032emphasis on science? >> So is the state that has made that pivot mark? Um, so I think science is going to be a five and eight assessment and part of the ACT. Uh, so it's the pivot that the state has made. So we're just following the state curriculum at that point. >> I got a quick question. So you're tracking post uh student >> Yes. >> with education and possible military engagement, right? >> And also workforce. >> Yes, sir. Yes. Okay. Okay. That's so with that is it uh encompassing job acquisition and retention >> in terms >> as far as what in terms of what jobs are actually uh available in the community, >> how the um students are able to get those jobs based on um the requirements and how they are retaining those jobs.
033You said that like at a two-year mark. >> Yeah. So, what we're basically doing uh prior to them graduating, we're doing everything we can to connect students with jobs. Like, for example, if you said, "Hey, I'm not interested in college. I want to go into the world of work." Right. >> And so, uh we've had like um a signing day where students have gotten full-time jobs with Caterpillar. >> Right. Right. Right. >> Uh so, we're tracking things like that where we know that we placed them in a job and making sure that they're able to stick there. If they're not sticking there, then what other opportunities do they have after that? >> Right. That's outstanding. So my question is are there um resources in the community that is assisting in that process helping you all
034maintain those uh records and you know addressing those issues that >> not right now it's just us doing it at this point. >> Okay. So that should be something we could possibly look at helping you all get um um connected to. >> Okay. Okay. >> And and I do want to add one more thing because I just kind of want to piggyback. We're keeping records, but with Ashley uh Granite and with um um Dr. Robinson, they do work in tandem with each other. And I know that um and Ashley will talk about this here in a moment. We do have 50 or more partnerships that she is associated with that is giving opportunities out there as well. So really, it's about the students path. So when they go into the high school um and they
035get to that point maybe sophomore year about what they are thinking about doing as an adult, they try to get them on that path and connect them with either um with Dr. Robinson or u Mrs. Grain to help guide them. >> But as you know, we change our mind a lot until we graduate. So we typically have to kind of see where they are in the moment. >> Right. Right. And that's just my thoughts how we can help enhance that process. I just want to see where we're at. Yeah. And and Mrs. Grainy will be able to add to that, too. >> Okay. Okay. Yep. Other questions? All right. Thank you for your time. >> Mr. Khan, I believe, is next. >> Yes. >> Dr. Clark, President Clevenger, board. Madam Secretary, good evening. I'm going
036to talk to you a little bit about um support services in the district which encompasses student services, information technology, and the research department. Um can really just skip to the last paragraph here because this is kind of an all-encompassing statement. Um together, the support service departments form a collaborative network dedicated to removing barriers, closing opportunity gaps, and ensuring that every student has the resources and support needed to succeed in school. I mean, that's pretty much what support services is doing. All right. If you ask anybody in the departments, um, we are just providing students and families with exactly what they need, what they've explained to us they need, what we have historically seen that they need to try to navigate our school system and be successful. So, want to talk a little bit about the
037direct reports and responsibilities. Um, the first person that I oversee is the director of information technology, which you guys know is Maurice Payne. Um, Maurice is providing leadership and oversight of his IT staff and in doing that that entire department is ensuring that our data security and network is safe and that the integrity is upheld that administrators, student and staff devices and accounts are not only updated but maintained and refreshed on schedule that was created by the district. uh providing technology support and service delivery to district staff and safeguarding um safeguarding the cyber security compliance and emergency protocols of the district which I know that he often brings you guys different different items at the board meeting um and and you've had some good conversations in the last year about um different ways to look
038at that maybe some different products. So that's that's their whole deal um cyber security ensuring devices are up to date and in people's hands and working. The next person that reports um that I oversee is the director of student services. Um director of student services provides leadership and oversight to the student services staff. Um that includes health services. Um for many of you that that if you didn't know, health services, part of the student services department, um the director of student services is managing all alternative educational placements. So um Dr. Lesbia at this time is not only doing our alternative building, but she's the liaison between the school district and the regional office of education. So, she's working with uh Miss Tol and Brian over at the ROE um to determine what students are going
039to go to Milligan Futures and opture three. Option three is we have students who need to move to an alternative program for multiple reasons. Um she's also overseeing the Excelis online platform. Um who has access to it um to ensure that it aligns with what the district has set that access up for. Um supporting behavior intervention programs, supervising truency intervention programs, which we're going to talk a little bit more about, TEOP, um liaison for care and transition rooms. So the teaching assistants that that run our care rooms and our transition rooms are actually part of the student services department as well. So we work with the the DFA president to ensure they have training and the proper tools that they need like ripple effects in the classroom to support student interventions and the MTSS process.
040I'm sorry, the multi-tered system of supports process. Um and another thing that happens which you guys know because you get the first read and the final and and have input in between there is at student services the director um works with the rest of the district to update the student code of conduct and parent handbook yearly. So, the research department um is uh Kamisha Matthews. She is the supervisor over there. Um most of the work they do is 100% on the back end. So, they're doing all of the work in the Skyward system. Um they're managing the district data warehouse, which is where all of their teachers, employees pull our reports from. Um they lead local, state, and federal reporting. Anything that we have to report to is ISBY in regards to graduation, grades, and
041discipline. that all comes from that department. Um coordinate assessments and support school improvement planning and data analysis. So outside of those three people um who I directly supervise and do the evaluations of, these are other people that actually work under the student services department. So we have 16 behavior interventionists. So there's one in every building um with the exception of the high school that has two. uh behavior interventionists are put there to help the school and assist with students who need some additional interventions in the building. They might need some tier 2 and tier three interventions. Um the nurse nurses coordinator which is um was formerly Miss Frame and is currently we're getting ready to do some interviews. So that position works out of the student services office and Dr. Lesby oversees that position. And
042then we have four truent alternative optional education programs. That is the the acronym TEAOP. So previously in the district we had two truency officers that worked at the middle school because that was one of our highest needs at Steven Decar Middle School. We had a lot of chronic absenteeism and truency. Um this year Miss Tol was able to update our grant to get funding for two elementary TEAOP officers. So now we have um two T-OP officers working in elementary buildings to help intervene with chronic absenteeism and in truency there as well. So that coupled with everyday labs which is another topic here in a few minutes. Um we're really excited this year to see what to see the decrease in our absenteeism and truency rate. So the current focus for it is the fiber connectivity
043in the city of Decar. So DPS is currently partnering with uh the city of Decatur to install a city fiber ring which provides internal redundancy. And to make that simple, if you think about a ring, information is not just going to move one way. If part of the network goes down, we can still move information basically. So um that's where the redundancy comes in. You're still going to be able to move information if the system's not functioning at its highest level. Um in the process they'll be connecting nine schools to the fiber network with the goal of connecting all district buildings to the city's fiber ring. Um cyber security and online preparedness, assessing the current cyber security preparedness and systems to proactively address cyber threats and engaging staff to participate in training to identify potential
044threats. And then discipline intervention. Um we continue to look at best practices um with with the mindset that we want to be proactive. Okay. Um in not only our interventions but in our discipline needs that we see districtwide. Um that includes you know like the discipline action committee who regularly meets um updating the handbook looking at trends that we see as far as discipline. Um key accomplishments for 2425. Um in IT they implemented the new universal computing system. They did the data center upgrade which included um battery backup and cooling racks and a backup generator. So, in theory, even if the city has an outage, um, which we've experienced in the past where entire buildings would go down or entire portions of our district, we are able to stay operational now because of the backup
045generator and the cooling racks, especially if it's a short period of time. Um, they've worked on the Danby network implementation to install and configure network equipment for the new school, which is a big project because you're starting from from the ground up. And they've worked to upgrade the phone services. So basically um the phone services they've just dis discontinued the the PRI and implemented the IP flex solution which is also referred to as VOIPE in the past. Um it's it's internet protocol for the phones. So again just making them a little more um you know modern and upto-date. So student services um the big you know one of the big pushes last year was the cartwwell mental health services which um has been a success. We have um I have district data that shows the
046number of referrals, number of assessments, and we still have several students and families that are currently undergoing treatment through cartwheel um therapy either individual and or some family therapy for some of them. Um so we did sign a three-year where the district covers the initial cost of the assessment. After that, if the family chooses to undergo therapy, um they do accept all insuranceances and whatever the co-pay is the family is usually responsible for. Um there have been some instances where the c-ay was an issue. Um and as a district we found a few different ways to navigate that and been able to assist families who would have, you know, otherwise turned down the treatment because of a financial burden. So um life vest um this was an anonymous donation set up through the foundation. It's
047been a fantastic program. Um and what has what it's really been is a a major resource for any students that are expelled. Um, so any students that are expelled with no stay, as long as they agree to go through a cartwheel assessment, attend 80% of the time, and maintain a B average, um, they can get their Excelis Academy paid for 100% by the foundation through this grant. So, we have currently, um, I think the number was actually 17, but I think there's 13 still going through it. Um and that is most of those kids are working at Old King's Orchard. So they have they have a place over there. Um Michael Carris I know will reach out to them um once we get that Life Vest grant approved. Um he's done a great job working
048with our kids, giving them a safe place to come and do their schoolwork. Um but yeah, so LifeFest has been a fantastic program for us um and for our students that that have been expelled with no stay just for us and the families to ensure that they continue to get an education which is one of the things that that this board had prior you know tasked us with previously which is where the menu derived from research department spent a lot of time last year working on the implementation of data warehouse um and that's a visual dashboard for teachers staff and administrators I can tell you anytime I need a piece of data I go straight to my dashboard. If it's not if it's not right there in front of my face, then I can pull
049a report. Um, and in my opinion, it's a little easier to work from than data warehouse, even though that's where most of the reports come from. It's just a little more user friendly on the interface. So, um, it's been a ton of work on the back end on their side of planning with the staff because they wanted to make sure they heard from teachers, they heard from administrators, you know, look at this. What do you think? What can we add? What can change? um and really make sure that it was relevant to what those employee groups are doing every day. Um and then the completion of the research department's organizational structure resulting in backup support and cross trainining for management skyward data warehouse and the support for RE program. So um prior research was just
050organized through different levels of analyst. Um there was no specific supervisor etc. One of the things that Dr. Marino did uh before he retired was set up an organizational structure in the research department that allows each of them to have their specialty area but also they've crossrained where if Elden's out Kevin can step in and do the work some of the work I was doing so the district can keep going while I'm out or on vacation. So they're not only still have their specialy areas, but they're cross-trained everywhere so they don't miss a beat if somebody has a maternity leave or gets sick or has a vacation. So similar to what Despa does with secretaries. Um goals for 2526 uh information technology is going to continue fiber connections and working with the city on the
051fiber network. Um they will follow the calendar for device upgrades according to the refresh cycle implement further cyber security measures to address online threats. Um there will be a new rate cycle. Um so they'll upgrade network switches. If you're unfamiliar, the -ate is a government program that allows for reduced rate for schools and libraries. So um you know that that's there's a new rate cycle. So we're good there for a couple years. Um they'll be upgrading high school iPads and teacher MacBooks. Student services is looking um at possibly increasing the number of behavior interventionists. One of the things we're doing right now is a a basically a needs assessment of the buildings. You know, we have a couple that stand out above others as needing possibly a second interventionist um due to the population of
052the school, the size of the school, um the multi-tered system of supports that they exhibit needing, specifically tier 2, tier three interventions with students. Um, so that's being explored right now. Um, improving the effectiveness of the multi-tered system of support process to support interventions, decrease behaviors. Dr. Clark touched on this a little bit, right? Consistency. Um, you know, we're making our robocalls, we're making our announcements, we're reminding kids in the building, but to take that to the next level, we need to make sure that we are placing interventions in place with fidelity. Um there are some basic tier one interventions we can do before a student demonstrates need you know even gets to the point where they need tier 2 tier three and now it's all about consistency and expectations in the building. A lot
053of our buildings are using BIS to do those things now. Um some are still operating with PBIS and any program is okay. It's the consistency the fidelity and making sure that the programs in place and and everybody's using the common language. So, those are the kinds of things we're looking at and we're going to continue to promote and grow opportunities for families and staff to gain the mental health care. Um, which was one of the primary goals of CARWill. Um, and just again making sure families are aware of all the resources we have in this community because we are fortunate as a community to have a lot of the things we do. The research department is going to upgrade the Skyward platform to the latest version. Um they are looking at implementing a multiffactor authorization
054to better secure the network and Skyward access um and increase professional development and training for secretaries and administrators for the effective use of Skyward. Um so Skyward is as a system has a lot of functions and they're all very different in the way you utilize them. So, um, our team goes every year to the national conference and gets the updated training and information so they can bring it back not only to secretaries but to teachers and even families. Sometimes the stuff changes on the family side. So, any questions? >> No. >> Thank you. >> All right. Have a good night. >> Thank you. >> We have um Dr. Curry next. Hello everyone. I wanted to scroll down because that's one of the few good pictures of me that exists and that's all due to Ashley
055telling me I needed to redo my first head shot. Um so um I'm going to go quickly to explain the operations uh umbrella and I'm going to check things off as I go so I don't go on too much of a tangent on things. Um, so most people I want to start with most people think I do finances all day long and that couldn't be further from the truth. Some of you know this, some of you don't. Um, but there are many, many days where finances can't even be considered because of all the other issues that happen under my umbrella. Um, and so we'll kind of go through some of those. So, um, executive oversight of the district operations. Uh I provide strategic leadership across business, the business office, buildings and grounds, which includes skilled
056maintenance, custodial services, and the teamsters, uh transportation, food service, security, grants, and elementary athletics. Um my team is amazing. My direct reports are in this in this uh document, so I'm not going to go through who they are. They prefer to be in the shadows anyway. Um, I'm the treasurer and I'm the licensed chief school business official, which means that it's my job to ensure the financial integrity and compliance um with all Illinois school financial regulations. And we also work with the board for board policy. Uh, my business office leadership role, uh, I oversee accounting, payroll, purchasing, payables, budget development, audits, and grant compliance with some great direct reports between me and each one of those duties. Um and we are the fiscal agent for making piatt special education. Um and what that means is
057we handle their money. It's their money to spend. It's their money to earn. Uh but we handle it. We pay the bills for them with their money. Um facilities and life safety management. I lead and support a major major construction projects, life safety bonding efforts, and ensure all facilities meet ROE and state requirements and prioritize maintenance and renovation work when necessary. All with the help of the leadership from B&G. So, those are the things um the the the summary of all the things under my umbrella. Um as I scroll through here, you can go through and see what each one of the direct reports and then their reports do. Um I want to skip down to uh the regular union and committee meetings. U my my job is spent in continuous meetings um andor continuous
058budget cycling. Um but I chair the district insurance committee. I chair the district wellness committee. I chair the district finance committee. I chair the district facilities committee. I serve as a member of the making pie special education finance committee. Uh I serve as a member of the uh technical academyy's finance committee when they meet. I serve as the regional president currently of the Illinois Association of School Business Officials and host monthly meetings. I represent the district as a presenter, panelist, and or moderator at local and state level school business related seminars, workshops, and conferences. I mentor principles as needed. Sometimes they like to have a conversation that's related to curriculum, not with somebody in curriculum. Um, and that that used to be something I was in. Uh, or I mentor them on their budget or
059so on and so forth. Um, and I have three student mentor or mentees at MacArthur. Um, some key accomplishments. I'm going to scroll down here. Uh, the completion of the Danby Magnet School. Um, we delivered the district's newest facility through success successful coordination of construction, budgeting, inspections, and collaboration. Uh, my number one directive to my team from the very get-go, and that includes BLDD, was to include our skilled labor and our other departments in the planning process so we could be proactive instead of reactive. We have a building that some people have have have uh concerns about. There's always a problem with it even though it's new. there's not as many problems as maybe there used to be, but we wanted to we wanted to avoid that this time around. So, we put the plans
060in front of all of our skilled labor and all of our departments and building level administration and their team who's behind me and can validate that. Rita, thank you. Uh, so I I think that was our number one win in the whole Dansby project. We restructured the business department. We improved operational efficiency and accountability through reorganizing. Um, and we've got a cleaner series of checks and balances. Now, we were able to when Dr. Schllo um was able to spread her wings and take over the CSBO role in Urbana, we decided to restructure and we created the um it's a mouthful, accounting and auditing administrator um Cheyenne Patterson and she is able to then assist me by handling a lot of the financial piece of the pie. Um, we revamped the cash handling procedures. We created
061a district-wide process for collecting, depositing, and tracking funds from athletics and building activities. And that's always in um constant um uh reflection, making changes as we need to along the way to, but we want to strengthen those internal controls. We hosted uh we've hosted somehow the turkey tournament came under my umbrella. We hosted a successful turkey tournament and we've also uh hired new leadership for the for the turkey tournament going forward. Um support principles especially the last two years in the budgeting process. We've last year we had optional meetings. This year we had mandatory meetings. Um, and everybody was more than pleased, I think, with the support that we provided them from my team to them, learning about how to a build their building budgets, spend their building budgets, manage and monitor their building budgets.
062Um, and then ongoing facility enhancements. Um, we have led projects especially, this was more Dr. Schllo, but in in her absence, we had to complete it the new playground installations. um uh and the planning of long-range health life safety work. And then the goals for 2526 include implementing a new two new financial software um packages hopefully launch new budgeting and financial planning platform that enhances transparency and collaboration between the schools and us um instead of just sharing Microsoft Excel spreadsheets back and forth. and we're trying to implement some form of cashless payment options for our families. We're in the process of that. We hope to have something to bring to you in the next three or four months. Um we're trying to advance a $17 millionish dollar bond initiative. We need to work with you,
063the board, um to secure the funding for critical health, life safety improvements over the next 5 years. This kind of came to fruition as the other board was leaving. You're now here. We've got a year out of the five gone. So, now we're down to four years to make these improvements. At some point in time, we have to get together and talk about those bonds. We're going to continue to strengthen building level controls, expand the two signature cash handling procedures, and enforce weekly deposits. Um, we're going to expand grant planning and utilizations by um, Dquishia Taylor is now our new grants person and she's going to she has been working closely with principles uh, to ensure that they're spending their money in in um, the ways that they were allocated for. And we're going to
064continue to ele elevate operational efficiency and training by continuing to streamline any processes ensure training for key staff across finance and operations. And finally, I would just invite each of you to schedule an appointment with me through Jennifer Summer. By the way, if you don't do that, that meeting will never happen because it won't make my calendar. Kind of like Melissa. Jennifer is my right hand. Um, but if you want to get on my calendar, we can we can talk about finances. We can talk about other processes or you can just come upstairs and meet my team if you have any questions. >> You're welcome. Look at >> you're next. >> Good evening, members of the board. I'm Ashley Grey. Happy to be before you tonight. Um I'm the executive director of innovative programs and
065strategic planning. Uh several years ago, um our district really shifted its focus from college um and career readiness to career and college readiness. And really the focus of innovation innovative programs is really to um meet our students where they are. Not all of our students are collegebound and that's okay. But as a district, we were missing opportunities to really connect our students to opportunities um based on their focus, based on their passions and beliefs. Right? So my department really serves as the district's liaison um to build partnerships within the community that expand our students learning outside of the classroom. um whether that's through career and um college days, exposure days, internships, paid co-ops, um non-paid internships, really giving them those hands-on um experiences um before graduation that prepares them post-graduation, right? Um so we're here
066to provide impactful um programs and initiatives um that serve our students. I have two direct reports. Miss Leslie Risby is the innovative program supervisor. She is wonderful. Um, my role as the executive director, excuse me, I'm not trying to get out of presenting. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Um, my role is to really think at that high level, strategic level. um to be intentional about the opportunities to really um think and push our district in a way that we're expanding, we're being innovative, we're staying um along with the curve and ahead of the curve um for our students. Miss Risby's role is to um really look at sustaining the programs and continuous improving improvement of those programs. I know a lot of times you all hear about our flagship programs, extended day and prep academy.
067I love both of those programs. However, we do so much more within our department that I really don't think people know come out of our department. So, you're going to hear a little bit about that tonight. We also have Miss Shereé um Bond. She joined our Thank you so much. She joined uh my team as the new extended day program coordinator this year. While she is new in this role, she's not new to the program. Um she's the Decatur and DPS homegrown. Um and she is a wonderful asset and she manages all things extended day. Our current focus um continues to be expanding what our partnerships look like. I will be with the district 12 years next Saturday. And when I started, we had little silos of partnerships. Um, we didn't have an internship program.
068We definitely didn't have paid opportunities for our students. Um, career exposure opportunities. They just that wasn't the focus at the time. So, we will continue to expand those pathways through meaningful, engaging, hands-on opportunities. My goal is to support TNL. um this um secondary director a lot of times focuses on the curriculum and those types of things and I am all things. How do we connect our students? How do we get them workforce ready? Um how do we bring our partners into our buildings so that we reduce the stereotypes within our schools? How do we get our students out into these businesses so that they see that our students are um able and capable? Right? And so we will continue to offer um 11 different pathways. We will continue to work to expand those pathways hopefully
069by two um by the end of next year. Some of my key um accomplishments uh prep academy that I will be remiss by not um definitely mentioning that baby um literally started from 2018 with the former well strategic plan um that is ending this year and we developed with Richland the prep academy. Um, it's unique to DPS in this area and 25 of those students graduated in May, literally on Friday the 16th, and then they graduated from their high schools on the 17th. Um, so we're very excited. Our Inspire Futures internship program um is a non-paid internship program. over 50 uh seniors between each high school get to go out um and engage in a internship at their um at their dispo at their discretion based on their postgrad plans and needs. um they get
070credit, they are enrolled in a classroom that prepares them um with presentation skills, um essential skills, and ultimately they get a day in the life, whether it's a surgeon, a um a vette, whether it's welding, whatever it is these students are interested in, we try to provide those opportunities. A lot of my work is um being a community liaison. literally got a call from um the park district and they said, "Hey, we have a a donor wanting to partner with DPS. They want to be handsoff, but they want to provide an opportunity for all the districts um kindergarten students to visit the zoo, have an experience, um have like a STEM focus. They fed them lunch. They got to go on the playground for the next five years. that gift to the DP um to
071DPS for all of our kindergarteners which I think we're around 650 kindergarteners um is annually and it gives them career exposure right um and again extended day we will be in our fifth year of this pro program um starting the first day of school going to the end of the school year um we see about 7 to 800 students I know there's always a wait list and everybody wants into the program it is a child care resource gap. That is why this program was started. Um we were hearing from our parents that they were having um workforce challenges because of some of our taring within our school days. And so we wanted to literally give those families and extension of the school day. It provides academic support but also it provides enrichment. So 4 comes
072out the children's museum. We partner with TNL to do my math and my reading academy and different things like that. Uh, career signing day um is a huge hit and we highlight those students that have had on the job training, paid opportunities, CAT, landed Lincoln, our hospitals align um all year and they are offered job um opportunities, paid job opportunities once they graduate. 20 of those students were highlighted. Here's a list. I'm not going through the rest of them. Um, but please feel feer feel free to read because again, manufacturing day, healthcare day, some of the days you hear about our DPS, college and career readiness week, all feeds from innovative programs. Here's our flyer. We support um career and college readiness. We partner with H Heartland Tech Academy. We partner with all of the
073wonderful work TNL is doing at that secondary level um as well as at the primary level to provide opportunities. Here's some prep academy data. Um I am I try to be very data driven for continuous improvement. So um those students that just finished in the first cohort um we save their families $25,000. Um they finished as a cohort with a 3.09 GPA. Um four years, two degrees. Um many people said our kids couldn't do it. Was it hard? Absolutely. Is it still hard? Absolutely. but our kids can and I'm proud that when we start school we'll have our fifth cohort coming on in and um we'll have about 175 students between cohorts two and five now because cohort one graduated my goals for the year um continue to build pathways um and expand those career
074readiness opportunities I also didn't mention but the strategic plan is also in my title I know that is paused right now but I work with the superintendent and Dr. Marino as well as you all um to support the strategic plan uh for the district. I look forward to getting that in pause and moving forward and I will always advocate for DPS and seek out um outside donor support. Thank you. Oh, I'm sorry. Any questions? >> Just one. Okay. Um talk to me a little bit about um the prep academy because you know we hear you only take the best of the best. So, just give me just a like a I don't know a few minutes on that. So, with the prep academy, there's an application prog um process. We start typically in January, myself
075as well as our Richland team. We go out to all of the K8 buildings and talk to those eighth graders as well as Stephen Decar. Um there's a process, there's a a parent webinar because I believe in the it takes a village approach to support our students. And ultimately, the students apply. We um take 50 students each year. We usually get a hundred 110 applications. So um myself and a review committee reviews those applications. We look for students. We don't look for the brightest and best. We look for those bubble students. Um they have to submit an essay as well as letters of recommendation. And we take students that have the grit and aptitude to get through the program. Um there's also supports built in to support the students because it is hard, right? So
076as Dr. Curry mentioned, he has three of um our prep academy mentees that he checks in on. Um it's hard work. Can the students do it? Can the parents support them through it? Absolutely. Um but when students aren't doing the work and meeting the 2.75 GPA requirement and we've had meetings and coaching sessions and those types of things ultimately um we find a different pathway for those students which is why um 25 out of the 46 finish. Not all start at that not all that start at that 50 mark will make it and that's just our reality right but some transition into a or heartland tech or teacher prep and that's okay as well. Thank you. >> Thank you all. >> Thank you. >> For someone that doesn't like to present, that's a tough act
077to follow. Let me just say that. Um, congratulations to Ashley for all of her great work. Okay, so you guys have seen a lot of me lately. Um, so I will try to be as brief as possible and not redundant. >> Oh, but that's Maria. Okay. Beautiful face, not me. Okay. Um, so we're going to talk about the Department of Human Resources. Um, and so basically I'm not going to, you know, read you the summary, but we cover all things staff from the recruitment of staff all the way until they retire or separate from the district. And what I like to say is while our staff are focusing on our students, it is the responsibility of the HR department to focus on and support our staff. Okay. All righty. So, I have a fantastic team
078and I don't thank them enough. Last time I had to buy ACI bowls because I forgot to thank them on the podium. Um, but I have a wonderful team of seven um who support all of the duties of the HR department. Um, starting with our department secretary, our HR coordinator, uh, we have a recruitment and retention specialist, a labor relations analyst, an HR analyst, an HR itinerate secretary. And if that term isn't familiar, this is the secretary that actually trains other secretaries in the district and supports other secretaries. Um and then our HR secretary who is our also our Kyle building receptionist and she is the student records registar. So a fantastic team of seven. Um six of those staff report to me with one reporting to our HR coordinator which is the HR secretary.
079Alrighty. So, we're going to talk about some of the key accomplishments. Um, for those of you who may not know or be familiar, I joined the district in April of 2024. Um, so in this past year, um, most of the accomplishments were along the lines of recruitment, right? And so, it's very important that we recruit the staff that our students need. So, we hosted three DPS on-site job fairs. Um, we increased our awareness. We did a lot of marketing and advertising um that I know you're familiar with. Um we also expanded our recruitment territories and expanded our job posting sites. We just expanded our reach in general just to try to recruit the top talent. Um there's been a reduction in the teacher shortage. Um as you know in April I reported out that we
080were at about a 22.7% um vacancy rate. Um and I'm proud to say that we are now at a 9.8% 8% vacancy rate. Um, and that we are on track to bring in our largest group of new teachers in the past 10 years. Um, as of today, we are bringing in 75 teachers this fall. [Applause] So, um, we also, uh, implemented exit surveys and an exit interview process. We want to find out when our staff are leaving, why? Um, and that's some data that I plan to report out to the board. um with uh Dr. Clark's leadership at the interval that she deems appropriate. But um we have had staff who are completing the survey. We will aggregate that data and be able to report out collectively on some of that information. Um we have
081some strength strengthened partnerships. So obviously there are some partnerships that we have with colleges and universities. Um but we are expanding our reach. We are meeting with uh new partners every day. I give uh Ashley Granid credit for connecting me um with some folks and Dr. Clark as well. One of our newest partnerships is with the workforce investment solutions. So uh went out and met with Rocky Wilkerson and she is offering some fantastic support. Um she is going to promote our hiring efforts. We're going to do an interview tomorrow um to promote our hiring on television. every week DPS will um have a kiosk and we will have an opportunity for people to come into that building and to um apply for jobs here with DPS. So, we appreciate all of those partners um and
082all of these um initiatives that we've started. Okay, some important groups here. We have regular union and committee meetings. Um but we meet with our partners in DEA, DETA, DESPA, um really all seven of the unions on a regular basis. Um and then sometimes we we meet as needed when issues um arise. I will say we have great communication and I can say that we have strengthened those partnerships in the past year um with with DEA um with DEFA Despa in particular. Um but we are working really hard just to make sure that the communication is there and that we are supporting all of our students um our students I'm sorry all of our staff as they support our students. Um the list there uh provides the current contracts. You know we've been embargoning with
083a few and have settled some new contracts recently. We are currently embargoning with the teamsters. Um but um I want to focus a little bit more of our attention on the goals for 2526. Um as Dr. Clark mentioned, we are looking to decrease our vacancy rate by 25%. I think we're on our way. Um in April, I came before you and I presented our recruitment strategies and so we are going to execute and implement all of those strategies. um in the next year. There are five pathways for certified staff and then there are four recruitment strategies or pathways for classified staff. Um I won't go into great detail, but I'll just kind of touch on them. Um for those of you who may not have heard um the April presentation, um for classified or sorry,
084certified, we have traditional university recruitment. And so that's obviously recruiting our new college grads, our new teachers who are graduating from colleges and universities. We have our pathways to certification. So the teacher ready program, the grow your own program. We're expanding those relationships so that um staff can become certified teachers if they so desire. We have non non-traditional recruitment partnerships. This includes out ofstate recruiting, recruiting at historically black colleges and universities and Hispanic serving institution. This includes some of our um advertising. We are advertising specifically at Monasuri sites, but we're being very targeted and strategic and they're the non-traditional paths. Um we're talking about our DPS graduate pipeline. So, I'd love to hear that TNL is tracking to see where our graduates are going because we want to recruit them back to DPS. Um, and
085I would love to find a grant or something where we can actually send them off and then help them um, pay for their education and then come back to DPS as certified teachers. And then there's our international uh, teacher cultural exchange program. For classified staff, some of these are very similar. Um, DPS job fairs. We know that the certified teaching recruitment is a different pathway, but when we host our job fairs, we're looking for all of the classified uh, positions. We just hosted our most recent job fair this past Friday, the 11th um here at the uh Kyle building. We had 22 u participants. I think the weather was a little too nice, but uh we're going to continue to host our job fairs to try to get our local community out um so that
086we can um offer them jobs. Um there are pathways to certification as a recruitment tool for classified staff. So, as we recruit for um teaching assistance, what if you you know to tell them, hey, if you come work for DPS, there's a pathway for you to become a certified teacher. So, we want to use that as a recruitment tool. Um there's a DPS graduate pipeline. Um as Miss Grain had mentioned, um you know, not all of our students are going off to college, so let's show them what they could do here in DPS after they graduate from high school. And then it's the marketing and advertising that's just expanding our reach. Um, so for our classified and for our certified staff, um, that's one of our important strategies. Um, but I don't want to just
087focus on recruitment. There's also a huge retention piece. Our staff are important to us. We couldn't do everything we do without them. We want to make sure that we show them that we value them. Um, I appreciate that. Um, our DEA partners, we met and we had a recruitment and retention committee meeting. Um, and you know, they have some great strategies, but I appreciate them in partnering with us in trying to accomplish our goals. So, retention is important as well. Um, and then improving hiring efficiency. So, I know I went through all of that really fast. What are your questions? >> Dr. Clark, um, while you're up, can you just kind of give us an update on our international uh, teachers? >> Absolutely. Um, so we wanted to provide just a quick update. Um, and
088I know some of you may have been watching, you know, in the news and kind of wondering if things that are developing across the nation are affecting um, us here locally, but due to some of the changes in the at the federal government level. Um, in June, some of our international teachers were unable to get visa appointments and so that was kind of shut down at the federal level, but it did reopen in July. So, the appointments have now reopened. Um many of our teachers have those J1 visa appointments. Um most of them have their PELs already issued here in Illinois just waiting for them to to come. Um what it looks like though is that we may have a few that may arrive after the start of school. The great news about that is
089we have a plan. Okay. So right now we are tracking and it looks like about 27 of the 43 will be here on time. um another eight will be here in roughly September and then there may be a few that are here um just a little bit later. Uh however, the teachers will arrive in what we're considering three cohorts. There's going to be cohort one, the group that's on time, cohort two, the group that's arriving four to 6 weeks later. Cohort three will arrive 6 to 8 weeks later. Um, and we've spoken to all of our seven principles um, in the buildings where our international teachers have been placed and we are going to secure long-term subs um, for those classrooms to start off the year if the teacher has not yet arrived and has
090not yet gone through training. But not only will the long-term subs start off the school year with the students, we're going to guarantee their employment through the first semester just to create some continuity for the students and to make sure that that sub has a long-term assignment for the full semester. But this will allow for a smooth handoff from the long-term sub to the international teacher, which will be most beneficial for our students. but it will also allow our teachers to arrive in Decar um to then spend some time with our TNL team. So if they miss new educator week the first week of August, they're still going to go through a new educator week and we're going to be transition them into the classroom, but they will go into the classroom with some additional
091support with that long-term stub long-term sub still being there. Um, so for those who arrive on time, it's not that they won't have support. They obviously will have the traditional support that all of our teachers and our new teachers have. Um, but we will have TNL strategists who are available to them as they are with all of our teachers um, who are new and returning who continue to need support. >> I just want to commend I travel quite a bit and I see billboards when you drive into Jacksonville, Illinois. you will see a DPS billboard >> when you get up to like the Quincy area. You will see a DPS billboard with one of our kids on it saying, "Would you be my teacher?" So, I know you guys are working hard trying to fill
092those positions. I salute that. >> Thank you. I appreciate it. >> Yes, ma'am. And and to build off that, I was talking to a friend of mine who had mentioned that they got a new neighbor who is a teacher from far out of state moving into DPS and bringing their five kids and they bought a house uh >> in the district. So, it's uh I I hope that we can continue moving in this direction. >> Yeah. >> Amazing. >> Y >> All right. Thank you. All right, Maria, you're up. >> Thank you. Thank you. Good evening, President Clevenger, Superintendent Clark, members of the board, Melissa as well. I am the director of communications and public relations for the district, which is just a fancy way of saying I'm a storyteller, cheerleader, and a news anchor
093for all things great at DPS. I lead a team of two, a district videographer and a secretary, and they assist with internal and external communications, making sure everyone from our students and families to our staff and community partners know what's going on in our amazing schools and why it matters. I'm responsible for crafting and sharing messages across a variety of platforms from newsletters, social media, billboards, website, peach jar, yode deck, media advisories, robocalls, text emails, and press releases. I've been in I'll start my 11th school year in the district and I'm still trying to get a new platform and that's a bat signal for when superintendent calls a snow day. I don't know if I'll get it but it would just be nice for everyone to walk outside and see a big apple in the
094sky. Oh, there's no school. Okay. Anyway, I also get to serve as the official spokesperson for the district and the board of education, which basically means if media comes calling, I'm the one they get to work with. from getting media into our classrooms to highlight a student author for a published book or to cover district events, providing a statement for a bus accident or ratification um an agreement of a union contract. I work collaboratively with our local TV, radio, and newspaper media partners to keep our community informed and I continue to work in getting those positive coverages, positive coverage about the great things happening in our schools because our students and staff deserve to be recognized. And I commend Valerie for always coming in to our board meetings. I know it's not where you want
095to be on Tuesday evenings, but thank you for being here. Just today, I also spoke with Beth Stringer from the Decatur Magazine. She has confirmed that our a story about our prep academy will be in the next issue. So, please make sure you grab a copy of um the Decatur magazine out this fall. I also work closely with a with the great safety and security team to strengthen partnerships with our schools during crisis planning and response because clear communication is just as important during a crisis as it is on the best day of the school year. Mr. Dr. Tally and I work to update and standardize the district's emergency operations plans across the building for day-to-day and for special school events to ensure that each school has consistent, clearly defined response and planning strategies for
096a range of emergency scenarios. On any given day, I'm managing websites, creating flyers, responding to reporters, staff or parents, organizing and planning district events, highlighting student and staff success stories that showcase the incredible work happening across our schools. And at the heart of all I do or everything I do is a commitment to transparency, connection, and celebrating the good stuff because there's a lot of good stuff in Decar public schools. Just to touch on a couple of goals that I have for this year is a perception survey when I first joined um DPS family. We did a perception survey I think it was around 2018 2019. So I would like to do another one um to see how Decar public schools and our neighboring districts are viewed by students, staff and families um in our
097broader community. So um we can use those results to inform um our strategic planning and our communication efforts. And then also I continue to enhance engagement with our community members who no longer have children in the district because they do continue to support DPS because they're connected. It may be grandparents or it may be retirees. Um, so pretty soon in the next couple of weeks, you'll get a back to school mailer and I plan on doing a mailer three times a year just showcasing information they need to know for back to school and then we'll do some other positive highlights um about the district. So that will be forthcoming three times a year. It is a privilege to help tell the story of our district and shine a spotlight on all our amazing students and
098staff. And I do love what I do for this district. I know I have a very unique um position, but I do love what I do in showcasing our district as a whole. >> Was there any questions for me? >> Just want to commend you again, Mr. Robertson, for getting that out there to to the state. Yes, ma'am. >> Um I do want to um ask one question because you well too, you already mentioned the the flyer. So if if the board remembers we were trying to drive people to the website >> but we just have people like my father who will just he won't do that. >> So she has developed a way to get information um to the community. So will you be able to track whether or not um people are receiving
099those flyers and what's coming back to us so we can make sure that everybody is getting this information. >> So the mailers are going out to all Decator residents in our boundary. So, if we get bounceback mail or anything of that sort, that's the way we can track what didn't land in the homes. >> Okay. And then my second question, um I know that you put something out every week, the best of DPS every week. Um and that goes out on our social media page, but how do we get information like that to the news media? So a lot of those stories that come that are found in the best of DPS I do work and send that those stories to our media partners and a lot of the times when they cover our stories
100I have a section called in case you missed it and it's from the herald review it's from WND it's from Nicocator showing that they show or they covered the story and it probably was featured in my newsletter last week but they also covered it so I send it again to get another touch on that. >> All right, thank you for that. You're welcome. Anyone else? Thank you everyone. Next we have Miss Liz Lang coming coming up from making piet special ed for Kathy Horrett. >> Good evening. >> Um my name is Liz Lang. I'm one of the assistant directors. See if I can do this special education with min pi special education district. Um I'm just going to briefly talk about uh what make piatt special education district is and what we offer. Um so
101it is make piatt special ed uh is a joint agreement between decar and then 11 other surrounding school districts. Um and we collaborate um to provide special education and related services to students. Um we provide a um a variety of cooperative programs and services for um all of the member districts um that uh to meet all of our students needs and they are housed here indicator. Um we provide quality student focused special education services to approximately 3,100 students. Um and the structure of the cooperative um it has an executive board that is made up of the 12 superintendent from the 12 school districts. Um these 12 board members act as the uh board that govern governs the director who functions as the chief uh executive officer for the cooperative. Um the joint agreement is written
102however that it needs an elective governing board to ratify the actions taken by the executive board and historically DeCar has taken the role of the administrative um and fiscal agent. Um and the dehater board does uh ratify specific actions occasionally. Um our cooperative includes early childhood special education, social emotional development, life skills, essential skills, and then we have the separate public day school. Um we have the social emotional learning academy, that's what it's called, sorry. um students can access um can only access the programs when their IEP teams indicate that that's the level of service that they need um and uh that they their home schools are not able to provide it. Um our support services include itinerant teachers for the blind or visually impaired, the deaf and heart of hearing along with brailing and
103interpreter services. We also have vocational teachers to assist with transition to adult work programs. Um our educational aiologist pro provides hearing evaluation and equipment support. We provide physical and occupational therapy services, social work services, speech language services, behavior team support and then administrative oversight service. Um in addition to this, we also provide comprehensive evaluation um for consideration um for special education related students to all students and all 12 member districts. Um, our cooperative budget is approximately 23 million and we employ approximately 300 individuals. Um, there are several revenue sources and I'm going to talk later about the budget um, for the provision of services and the executive board votes annually on how to assess the member districts for the costs. Okay. So, um, we have two assistant directors, um, Travis Frederick and myself, and we
104help provide, um, program and student oversight and oversee the special education administrators. Um, we tend to get involved when there's more complicated student case issues, um, when we have to transition students to private facilities or residential placements, um, or if there are some conflicts that arise when we are doing a change of placement. And we have special education administrators. There are eight of them that are making PAIA employees um that are assigned to buildings um with the identification um and provision of special educated services to that building level. Um they assist special education case managers with IEP development imple implementation. And then we also have the principal of CILA um our social emotional learning academy. Um currently that school in anticipates a returning 63 students and plans to expand enrollment to meet the additional needs
105of students. Um and then I as we I talked earlier we have the the other make and patt roles responsibility. We have the itenerate teachers. We have a parochial team because um we do um have an obligation to provide some services through um to private and prochial schools um and if they're um if it if it's eligible with uh the private the med the proportionate funding, excuse me. Um and then we have uh the physical uh the therapist, occupational therapists, um the school psychologist, the behavior specialist, um we have prevocational specialists, and then it just kind of talks about what each one does. And then the administrative support team, our current focus, uh the biggest concern we have right now, which has been echoed, um quite a bit, is the staff shortages. Um these have
106led to the decline of our robust programming that we once had. Um we work along with Decatur human resources department to work on ways to fill vacant positions. Um that's probably the biggest concern we have right now I would say. Um and that's affecting our students. Um students have become more behavior challenging. Um in recent years this has led to more um requests for outside placements um including private day and residential um placements. Um and our behavior team has worked to educate school teams on how to understand and address some of the behavioral concerns that have impacted the students. So that's another focus that we have right now. Make pi special education district has worked to improve special education and related services in all of our districts. Um our teachers for the visually impaired and
107teachers for the deaf of heart of hearing are leaders in the state and they are often sought out as supervisors for student teachers and practism practicum students as well as presenters which then often gets us more like a recruiting tool to get teachers and staff to come here and work and make him pay. Um and then our school um CA has enjoyed a successful year of growth. We anticipate being fully staffed at the start of the school year. Um, our programs have worked towards success with some progress made in life and essential skills with the development of some new companion curriculum with support for teachers of students with um and severe disabilities. And we've also been doing more targeted professional development for the teaching assistants and the teachers in those programs. Um, make PA special
108education district meets with DEA and DEFA leadership monthly to discuss special educa special education concerns. Um there are no standing committees but task force do become needed from time to time. Um and the ta the last task force was uh over the life skills and essential skills um task force that worked on needed improvements for those programs. And then the goals are listed and so um you can read them there. By December 1st at least 544% of students uh with IEPs will be educated in the general education classroom uh for 80% more of the day. Um and then and then it says 48% of students in the uh early childhood program. Um we would want to do our best to serve our kids in the least restricted environment, which means the general education classroom start
109there and then if we have to work down the continuum to do more self-contained classes, but our goal is always to get students back into the general education environment. Um, and then by June of 26, um, 85% students with IEP IEPs will demonstrate measurable progress on their IEP goals in the areas of reading and math. Um, and then 83% of students with IEPs will graduate after four years of instruction by May of 26. And then again, decreasing um staff vacancy rates and u and working with staff to assist in decreasing student behavioral needs leading to outside placements. Do you have any questions? That's a lot. Sorry, fast. >> I do. So, of those 3,100 students, how many of those would be DPS students? >> So, yes. So, for Decar, um for the of the special
110ed students, uh 1558. So, 1558 students. >> Wow. Okay. >> Mhm. And how many of those 3100 students are coming in? >> Oh, I'm sorry. That was the special ed count. Uh, >> that's right. That is 1558. Sorry, I want to make sure I gave you the right number. >> And then how many I guess out of for us out of district DPS students are coming into DPS buildings as part of this program. >> Um, >> you can get back to me on that. I know. >> I will have to get back to you. Um, the majority I I I didn't actually calculate that. Um, but the majority of the students are DPS students, but there are quite a few that do come in and access our programs. I can get you those numbers later,
111though. I'd be happy to. >> Huge. Okay. >> Mhm. Any other questions? I just have one. >> Can you touch a little bit more on the uh day placement? Sure. Um what ends up happening we always want to offer a continuum of services within our own um cooperative. Um the last thing we want to do is send students to other places. Um however given I would say one thing is the staffing shortages makes contributes to that greatly. Um and uh our many of the students needs are getting so severe that we are not able to to keep them um in our programs. they might need a smaller student staff ratio. Um even though our classroom sizes are small um in our self-contained programs with likes life skills or essential skills, we're up to 13 in
112those classrooms. And really that's not a very small class size. So when you need a student that needs five kids in the class, you know, with one teacher, we just don't have the ability to offer that because we have so many students needs to meet. Um, and so what we do is we have we're actually very fortunate um because I've talked to other um districts in around and um we have some partnerships with um Mena, there's one in Taylorville, there's one in Nakcomomas, there's one in Springfield and they've been great partners. I actually was there today touring the facility and and talking about some of the upgrades that they're doing. um and we are able to secure spots in there e more easily than other districts are able to find outside placements for the students.
113The goal though is to always bring the students back. And one thing we talked about and Travis, Kathy, and myself in one of our last departments meetings is we need to be more uh intentional about going and seeing the progress our students were making and how do we bring them back. Um and so that's one of our goals for this year as well. Um and how that is paid for is um it is what we what the cost the school district um the we get reimbursed for those programs because there is be approved but there's a portion we do not get uh reimbursed for and it's two times per student capita and that's the amount that the school district will pay and then uh make piatt picks up the rest of it which is a
114large amount of money and then in two years, the school district will will be reimbursed that money and then making pi will ask ask for that back so we can keep doing that and frontloading that money for those placements in the future. Any other questions? Okay, thank you. [Music] Okay. So, as we wrap up, I just want to uh let you know that also in your binders, you have your standing committees. Um we have the most used acronyms that you will hear a lot. So, you'll have those at your fingertips and you will have the school calendar. Um, as well as you go through your binders, if there is something that we miss or something you would uh like to see in the future, please let me know. The onboarding is typically every 2 years
115because that's when a new board is seated. So, if it was something we missed that you wish we would have touched bases on, I can still get you that information. But no, the next on boarding won't be until a new board is seated. Okay. Do you have any other questions for me? Thank you for your attention. Thank you to DT for assisting. Um I appreciate all the efforts. Okay. I think on behalf of the entire board, uh thank you to Superintendent Clark and the entire staff for all the work you put into this and the value that we get out of it I think is immeasurable. Thank you. Okay, moving on to board discussion. Uh we're going to move right into presentation from Jim Hton representing the Illinois Association of School Boards. Um as we
116embark on our search uh for our next leader of Decar Public Schools, Jim. >> Hello. Hello. Thank you. few handouts. So that's >> okay. [Music] >> All right. [Music] >> Oh, well, I was going to say thank you. Hi. >> What's >> Thank you. >> Yes, sir. >> Kevin H. >> Thanks for your time. >> Thank you very much for uh allowing me to have some conversation today. Uh I've been in conversation with uh President uh Clevenger for the last oh few months uh kind of having some conversations about uh what the district uh wants to do next. And so what I'd like to do is go through our process. And again my uh name again Jim Hilton. I am the associate executive director of executive searches. uh been in that position for one year.
117Uh I uh have been a consultant for executive searches at ISB for 10 years. Uh but over the last year, I've attained leadership within our executive search group. Um the packet that you were given, I just want to go through that a little bit. Uh on the right hand side is the PowerPoint uh for your notes if you want to go through that. On the left hand side are some pieces of information uh about our organization. The first small piece is the national affiliation of superintendent searches. That is the small that talks about our national affiliation. The next is the executive search brochure for our group that is presenting here today. And then the next piece is the bullet points, the the summary uh of what an executive search is. And that will go along
118with I believe I had sent this prior to uh President Cinger and he had uh put it as part of the board packet. And then the next piece is our dashboard document. And so you're going to find the dashboard document and our summary align. So if there's something that is uh a miss uh or you have to go back or have questions, the dashboard document is something that we provide districts uh to post as updates for the public information. And then the na next sheet is uh large district experience. And so some of the districts that we've uh been fortunate to work with over the last several years, we have some of the large district experience there. And then the last two pieces there are the resumes of the potential consultants that could be uh
119leading the executive search here with uh Decatur. Any questions on those pieces? So everybody has that information. All right. Thank you. Well, let's go through and and again, uh, as I said, uh, I've been working for our, uh, executive searches for the last 10 years. I've been in the leadership role over the past year. Prior to that, I was a school district superintendent of about 3,000 students uh, for about nine years and then served as a principal ship, teacher for 20 years, and, uh, retired after 35 years in education. So, let's go. You said the green. >> Yes. >> All right. So, the association uh ISB is the market leader in Illinois for superintendent searches. We do more searches in the state of Illinois than anybody else. Uh our consultants have over 300 years of
120combined experience. Uh we network. We have a great reputation. uh the process that allows us to attract consistent strong pool of candidates has to be with the confidentiality that we have uh we're known for the confidentiality piece and by and large is uh the ISB's foundation principles of Hector governance it's good to hear what you just went through and I learned an awful lot about the district in the time that I was sitting here but your responsibility as the board employee as a superintendent that's one of the most important things that boards do. The next piece is again we are the only organization in the uh state of Illinois that primary goal to serve school boards. There are headhunting firms out there uh that but they they do other things. We basically are your organization.
121You belong to uh you belong as an as a member of our organization and and some of that you'll see with our fees later on to kind of help supplement what we're doing. Okay, our executive search nationwide, you'll see that we have active participation in the national affiliation of superintendent surggers. There are 39 states that we partner with that enhance our national presence. We have an extensive recruiting and diverse top quality candidate pool. We partner with the ISA, the superintendent association, school business officials, the principles association. We have professional advancement seminars three times a year where we partner with IASA. We have people who come in and we tell about what we do and and and sell our organization and and basically sell you. Uh we have a robust nationwide network. We reached through the
122national affiliation of superintendent searchers. Those 39 states that I was talking about. We are now using Revelis that has a 17st state application system. So when you we can uh share candidates between the 17 states. There's a lot of them in the great le great lakes age area in the Great Lake region uh that that are very uh interested in the state of Illinois. Uh and we also check on the reciprocity piece. So some of those districts or some of those states have reciprocity uh with our certification um and we'll make the reference checks. We'll do those pieces and and we'll make sure that that's verified. We also have an exclusive network of 7 to 8,000 educational leaders. That's current and aspiring superintendent that have requested to receive our vacancy notices. And so four times
123per search, we will send out notices about Decator. All right? And whenever we originally post it, whenever we update the posting, whenever we add more timelines, those pieces, those 7 to 8,000 educational leaders will receive our notifications. That's just some of our advertising piece. Our process really aligns with the summary on the left hand side of your folder that we gave you. Um we establish a collaboration with a search consultant and co co-f facilitator. Um, our proposal is in our district or in your district, we would have five executive search professional professionals being part of what we do here for Decator. Uh, that would include two primary field consultants, myself and Dr. Carmen Ayala. Uh, her resume is also on the left hand side of the uh, folder that I've given you. The supporting consultants
124have over 40 years of experience. Um they're from small, middle, and large school districts. And the past state school superintendent, former superintendent of schools will work to develop a timeline. The piece uh hang on here. After the timeline and before we get into advertising, we have to survey staff. So we'll survey the board, we will survey the staff, we'll survey parents and guardians, we will survey uh business leaders. Uh and and it will be aligned 15 questions basically an online survey that aligns with the professional standards for educational leaders and we'll compile the information. We can ask additional questions as well, but we'll compile the information and then report out to the board on what the congruence of what those specific stakeholder g groups were looking for and what they said was most important for
125DeCar. What we also do is we can meet generally consultants meet one-on-one with the board and so rather than having the board conduct that they can meet one-on-one with the board and get additional insight regarding what your board is looking for in that next superintendent. The other pieces that we are potentially uh recommending are focus groups. Now foc focus groups are we go into your district into your buildings into and we will talk with staff. We will talk with business leaders. We will talk with parents. Whoever the district assigns us or says these are good individuals to get input from. We will have those conversations. The conversations revolve around what do you do well? What is unique? What are your challenges? And then what would you like to see in your next superintendent leadership skills?
126We will listen, we will write, we will find themes and then we will share and report out what those focus groups say, what what they what would the report and all of this is in open session. All right? And so all of those pieces will be open session. This rich data that we provide is incredibly important for boards as they're defining their vacancy brochure aligned to what we're advertising for. Any questions? And each district is a little bit different. How many days? And we'll see a little bit later about how many days uh does uh consultants come into the district. that that ranges. I've I've been in district I've been in districts 10 days, I've been in district five days, I've been in district two days. Uh just depends upon what the um what the
127board tells me they want to hear from and and the logistics of it. All right? And so our day can also be 6:00 in the morning until 9:00 at night. All right? We don't charge mileage. We don't do any of those pieces. And so we're all in with what we do whenever uh we provide you with a fee. Okay. Oops. All right. Articulate the ideal candidate profile. You're going to see I'm going to hand out some brochures. Thank you, sir. Each one of these brochures is developed from an announcement of vacancy. And so your ideal candidate profile comes from your online surveys, comes from the open questions, and you're going to add additional information for us so we can pull this together. But these are some of the larger districts that we have a large
128format and we have small format of what the districts are uh advertising and looking for. And so it's the candidates, their materials are are the district information, financial information, programs review, the community information, search timeline is all in there. Um and and basically this is professionally ga prepared. It's an online link, PDF link um that that we have within our postings. And so we provide the district with nice little copies uh that our production uh department comes up with. But what we find is larger districts like the larger format, the large the large book format uh to sell and tell their story. And so you'll see within there the information that we've gathered from districts is on a general information form. We get that form from you. And then the ideal candidate traits that comes
129from your surveys, comes from your stakeholder pieces that's pulled together as we then advertise. All right? We work with the board to come up with dates. All right? And with regards to closing dates, etc. And you're going to see that if we start talking now, we could potentially close the search by la mid to late December, 1 of January, which is what you want because that would be in the very first series of searches. And so there's two pro probably three phases of superintendent uh vacancies. There's a first PA phase right now where people know that they're moving. Some of them we started working on in January, February. Um some of them are just now coming coming available. So this is the first phase where you have that four to six months of advertising, data
130gathering and then what we do with candidates application etc. So, and then ending with hopefully for a board hiring at the end of December, 1 of January would be the goal. All right. And um and you can so you can see then that the announce announcement of vacancy has all of those critical information about the districts that were advertising for. And you can also say we collect applications, verify the qualifications and lure. We have an online system. That online system is incredibly confidential. That's part of why we get a very vibrant base is because of our confidentiality. Um the past folks that you can see that we advertise with. All right. So, our advertising is here and we will blanket with your vacancy and advertise for what you're telling us we're looking for. All right.
131And so, we've articulated the ideal candidate profile based on your surveys and stakeholder input. We've developed the announcement of vacancy. We're collecting applications, verifying the qualifications and lure, making sure that they're licensed in the state of Illinois. And then throughout this competi throughout this application window, we go back and forth and have that dialogue with the board president or designate of this is how many applicants we have. This is where we are. And so the board president knows and can share with the board what the application process is. We analyze the applications and so upon a closing date and you'll have a we'll have a rock hard closing date. Upon that closing date then we will start going through the applications. Our we'll have a minimum of three consultants that will do the application verifications
132and we'll do it independently compared and and basically comparing it to what you have announced in your ideal candidate profile and then we'll do it together and then from that pool of collaboration between consultants we then narrow the pool and we narrow the pool then into a screening interview. We'll have an additional uh interview of 10 candidates, 12 candidates potentially trying to get it down to that six um five, seven uh whatever is a workable number uh for the district. And this is something we talk about through through the process. All right, let's say it's six. and and we then what we do then is we verify the references of those that meet our criteria and you say that you're looking for. We do the background inquiries. background inquiries is we will call and we
133will verify their previous and past and current supervisors getting additional information about what you said that you're looking for. Okay? And then based upon that application process, screening interviews, and extensive reference checks, the ISBA team identifies a slate of agreed upon candidates to present to the board of education. And we'll do that in executive session because everything up until this time has been in open session, has been completely transparent. But to protect the candidates, what we try to do then is keep everything in executive session at that point. Okay? And it's incredibly important because that's where we actually have, I think, a a very good record by the candidates know they can apply through us, get through the first round of screening, get through the second round of presenting to the board, and they will
134be confidential. So if they're working in a place, they want to make sure that um the place they're working at they have a good working relationship still. Uh today's age is incredibly important. One component that boards have opted to do at this time is to do a practice interview training. A practice interview training is where one of the lead consultants would monitor uh the board in executive session and one of our ca on one of our consultants would act as a mock candidate. All right. And you would go through that and I know you had some new board members and so as we were trying to work through that uh is that an op, you know, is is that something this board would want to do? Uh it's an additional $1,500. Um but what we
135would do is we would align it on the s same time that we present our slate of candidates to the board. We would come in, we would have you we would instruct you on the interview process. We would go through the mock interview and then we present the final slate of candidates um is is what we've done in the past and it seems to work out very well. If for all searches whether you do the interview training or not we provide the interview track uh prep and and protocol uh training and again this is in close session. All right, we'll do all of the first interview scheduling. Uh, all of that is done through ISB and and what we do. Uh, we'll go through all the protocols, all the legal legal questions, all of the
136pieces that you will have done the stakeholder pieces on on the front side with your survey. you will have known what's important within the district and we will we'll work with the board in developing those questions then for that initial first round of interviews. Another piece that we also provide is the stakeholder with semi finalists. Let's say that the board gets through their first six and they want to talk to another two to three. that next level of semifinalists, then we can facilitate additional stakeholder groups. We're seeing more and more of this in districts that we work with, which is basically we work with you identifying the stakeholders that you want involved. All right? We'll reach out, we'll ask for questions, uh pre-quests from them. And let's say you have um three uh three semi-
137finalists. And the key will be how many groups do you want? Some groups don't mind a heterogeneous group, a mixand match of business, teachers, administration. Some go completely homogeneous. I want a group of uh a group of uh business leaders. I want a group of parents. I want a group of um staff. All of those pieces and administration and all of those pieces can be facilitated by one of us. And so this piece, the additional 1500 per day basically comes from how many groups do you want? Um do you want three groups? Do you want two groups? Um and we have the facil we have the consultants to facilitate that uh as we're going through the process. And so this is important because what we'll do is we'll align it with the second round interview
138and then we will it's about a 45inut time frame. Each semifinalist will be the each stakeholder groups will see each semi- finalist and then fill out a ratings form at the end of each one of those short questions. Um, and the rating form is aligned to your ideal candidate traits. All right? And it's on a liyker scale of how well they meet the ideal candidate traits. We facilitate that. It's gone extremely well uh because people get input. They also have an opportunity to write a narrative on the back and then at the end of those stakeholder groups we will tally it give you what each group thought at the end of the night and so you'll have that data from each group while you'll go into your final round of of uh finalists. Okay. And
139so and then I think the thing that probably is the icing on the cake is we provide a po a board superintendent workshop. It's included in the transition for success. Uh whether it's the starting rights workshop. Um you know in my district I was an internal candidate whenever I became a superintendent. Uh the board said Jim will go through the process and if he makes the final six so be it. Uh if he doesn't make the final six okay he wasn't good enough. and and that was okay. Um, and so we can deal each district's a little bit different on how they want to do that. Um, and I can the the last couple of districts that I'm trying to think of Fallon Township High School District had an internal candidate. They wanted to make
140sure and they hired the internal candidate by the way. They wanted to make sure that the she matched up against the external. Um and so we can inform, you know, the board will inform us how we want to uh deal with that. Uh if you have internal um but again whenever I was at the board workshop, even though I was an internal candidate, I interviewed as a superintendent, they knew me as a principal. All right. and as a grand person. And so I was able to then through board and governance be the next superintendent with a board which was incredibly important. This is um we we we basically um are divide up by by enrollment. And so Decatur falls within that $10,400 uh time frame for a standard search. everything except for the stakeholder fees,
141the additional interviews, the stakeholders at the end can be done for that $10,400 between the two uh primary consultants that we're talking about. If the board wants additional stakeholder groups and this can be talked about and and added at a later time, if if it's four, five, just let us know and we'll talk and we'll work with you on what will be sufficient to talk to the individuals that you want us to talk to. We're going to listen to the board here because we work for you. Do you want the practice interview? That is a $1,500 fee. And do you want multiple stakeholder groups at the end with a semi finalist? How many groups do you want? That's another uh component that we can talk through. Okay. Determine those. This is a uh kind of
142a tenative timeline. It's very generic right now. um this July, but you can see through what A and B, we we can start the process now and potentially close the search probably late October potentially uh to start the interview process. And you can see here we'll have the early November. We could have slate of candidates presented to the board mid November. And then like I said, the the longer you wait, um that's it it keeps pushed back a little bit, but as long as you're in that first wave, which I believe you are, um boards would like to have that contract signed generally at the end of the January. You know, mid January is a board meeting. You know, it'd be nice, nice time frame if you can get through the holidays um with with
143with your next superintendent. Um and again why ISB we're responsible only you know quite honestly um we don't we don't hold anybody but you. Uh we're part of what we do. Uh our mission and vision is grounded in educational equity. Um our success rate from two from two 2020 to 2024. I know that's a four-year span, but 95% we take the three-year contract, which is generally what a first uh a first contract for superintendents are that that three-year contract, we have 95% success rate. All right. Uh we have a statement of assurance, which means we're going to stay with you until your superintendent is hired and beyond. And I mean, we're part you're part of the policy pieces. You're part of the I mean those pieces, too. I mean, it it's your the board governance,
144those pieces. We're going to be here with you. And we also have a guarantee of service. If that superintendent leaves within a year or doesn't work out, will repeat the process for free. We we really believe that our process is solid. our longev our success rate is solid and I mean we've only had a handful of searches that haven't worked and it for various reasons and again current consultants have led over 300 searches um we have experience in Illinois oops and and again um I I do think Um I some of I a lot of ISB success rate comes from your outreach and training consultant who you've been working with and have a relationship kind of taking you know we kind of hand the baton off and then we work together and and so all
145of those pieces um I I I think align to what ISB does questions. >> Do you have statistics on >> the ones that have lasted longer than three years? >> We do. We do. Um I can get that data from you. I can get that data from you. Um we just pulled three years because it's a a typical first year contract. But yes, where our longevity is good and I'll get that information for you, Mark. >> So, this has nothing to do with you, Dr. Clark, at all. Uh, our last search was chaotic and a bit embarrassing for the school district in front of the community. And um, it before we got Dr. Clark who's been wonderful. We had the search firm uh bring forward a candidate who was not qualified to take that position.
146Um so in the qualification search um have you ever had that situation? >> No, we have not. Fact is if we have out of state candidates we want to make sure that there's reciprocity uh to make sure that they have a lure. We have difficulty bringing to a final six somebody that isn't fully certified. All right. And so if we have an out ofstate candidate that says they've applied ISB to get their information, we call ISB to make sure that they've done exactly what they say they're going to do. Um we've worked with our regional offices of education sometimes to get that expediated. Um that's worked well. Um if if we have an probably the only time that we would do that would be if you have an internal candidate and some boards would like
147to give an internal candidate an opportunity to finish and so special circumstances would be yeah we went the top six gym and let's include internal uh the internal may not be finished yet but we still want to listen to them. That's the only time that we have done uh not certified and I mean we we know Illinois I mean obvious you know it's it's it's and having the NAS affiliation that affiliation superintendent searches is is is awesome. I mean that it's it's worth its weight. Um I am the um chairman in waiting. Uh this last uh year we were in uh the Cosba conference and presented Atlanta, Georgia with the individual from Atlanta um or from the Georgia Association. Um Tennessee is now in charge of we kind of passing around the leadership so to
148speak. Uh Illinois will be uh chairs the following year. Uh what we do is we're getting ready to once a year we'll get together. We'll go through protocols, procedures, what's happening in an AI, uh reference sharing, all of those pieces at least once time a year to do that in person and then virtually a couple of times a year. Uh the Revelis program that I talked about is new for us this year and it's going to open up out of state candidates what we think very it's more flexible. Um it it's more uh has a higher degree of integrity. Uh it's not that Front Line didn't, but it was a little archaic. This this is a little more uh easier to to manipulate. >> Good questions. Thank you. Yeah. So, >> what was the process
149for you being an internal candidate? How did that all work? >> They treat they treated me exactly the same and I wanted to be the same. Um I interviewed as a every every culture and place is a little bit different. Um the the place that I was at uh I had built up a reputation as a teaching and learning person. All right. Um but I had high credibility and and so they needed to pass a referendum. We had to build a new high school. We needed an ad fund increase and we had to get a high school. And then we had to I had an integrity background. I didn't know finance. I didn't but I knew TNL. Um and and I convinced them that I could learn everything else. And uh they needed a leader
150and I interviewed as a superintendent. The schoolboard association included me as one of the six that um that they interviewed. But if I hadn't been good enough, if I hadn't have been what the district was looking for, um then I I wouldn't have made the finals. And so it wasn't a rubber stamp per se, but it was cream rising to the top. If that makes more sense. But our our recommendation is for internal candidates to um be put against the pool and if the inter candidates rise to the uh level then then that's the recommendation. Some boards don't want to do that and and that's okay too. Um I did the Essville search about four years ago. They had four internal candidates. They went and interview all four. So we had six and four. So
151they had 10 that they had to go end it up and hired an external candidate. But their philosophy and their district was we're going to home or or being from Edwardsville was very important for their district and they wanted to make sure that an internal candidate had an opportunity because there was talk around that ah firm's going to come in and not because sometimes if if there's been a secession of um you know having somebody in training and and that's good. Some districts do that and you have a success rate of that. Um, but they weren't ready to do that and so they needed something a little different. I don't know if that answer your questions or not, but >> so out of my ignorance of this process, I'm brand new. You touted 95% um
152success rate. Is that based on retention or district success? >> It's it's based on retention. It's it's based on that the fit that we work districts in getting. So our process of the interviews of the stakeholders of the involvement of the district advertising screening all of those pieces. Um yes. So it's 95% of those folks have stayed in the position they have. they wouldn't have stayed in the position they had if the fit wasn't right. You know, I mean, if we didn't do all of the work on the front end to make sure that um the fit was correct, then it would have been a higher uh higher vacancy. We we we believe we believe so. >> And then one more, excuse me, >> yeah, >> we can talk about maximizing stakeholder input >> at
153uh $1,500 per consultant per day. Um, how does that look? I mean, far as like >> It looks a little bit I I can tell you what um districts have done. All right. We've had some districts where they were large and they said, "We're going to go in every building. You're, you know, so so I start at 6:00 in the morning. I meet with custodial staff. I meet with building personnel. We have small groups or stakeholder groups that some districts have pulled together said, "You know what? um it's not efficient in our district to work uh to try to see every teacher. And so, you know what, we're going to we're going to see an elementary group. We're going to see uh high school group, middle school group, nonert group. Uh so, BRA, I mean,
154all of those pieces, but we work with you. You're going to tell us what's the most I think probably in your district we're probably looking at four to five days of consultant work would be my thought. >> Okay. >> Um and and you know I mean you you that's my thought. That's my thought. >> And and again same thing with the stakeholders at the end. Do do you want you I mean we've run as many as 30 in a group of a stakeholder group but if you want to get broadbased input I would say you're probably looking to at least two to three groups um at the end with your semi- finalist would be my thought. >> And what would you advise those groups to be sir? um a combination of administration, staff, uh nonert
155team, I mean business leaders. Um >> absolute uh transparency at least for me is really important in this process and it sounds like you provide opportunities to get a lot of input. >> Yes. >> From a lot of groups. I just want to make sure I understand how you're >> we pick that or you assign. Yeah, I with you. >> So, if I think there's five groups that are important in the district and I get my esteemed colleagues to agree with me, >> you're going to come in for four days and sit down with those four groups and evaluate them. >> Well, we're we're not evaluate them. We're we're going to basically say, like I said, >> we're going to listen what's unique about Decator, what do you do well? >> What are your challenges?
156>> And then you would provide us with a with a report. that data with a report and you give us a report. >> Yes. Yeah. We we'll look across all groups and then provide a report in open session. >> Okay. Thank you. Thank you. >> Yeah. Yeah. Good question. Yeah. Thank you. >> Other questions, other thoughts? I guess at this point in time, Jim, we'll have to regroup at the next board meeting in public meeting and all of us come prepared to to talk about this in a going forward strategy. Does that sound reasonable? >> Is that going to set us back on the same frame? >> Would that how far would that set us back? Is it possible to have a special meeting where you can do it in in or do you have
157you have one meeting a month? Correct. >> Because Mr. President, that would put us into August if I'm correct. >> We only have one >> one meeting in July. >> Special board meetings are fine, too. They're open. But to to rate for a regular board meeting, you may not want to do that. You can, but what I would do is I would because then you're in office. Correct. Well, then let's just assess a informal survey here. Are we comfortable with where we are right now and with the school board's association as our representative in this search firm with this search process? >> I am comfortable. >> Sorry, you can't vote, but you can take a consensus. You can do a consensus. even even knew not to take a vote. >> Can't take a vote tonight.
158>> No, but you can you can pull the board uh to get a consensus to know whether it would be wise to schedule a special meeting or look to your first August meeting, which I believe is fairly early in the month. Uh >> but you can absolutely pull you can absolutely pull the board. You're not taking action at this time. >> Why can't we take action? because it's not >> you don't have an agenda item to take action tonight. >> It's got to be agenda. >> Yeah, >> it is an agenda. >> Well, it's on the agenda presentation >> board discussion. So, you don't have an action item that would allow you to vote tonight. >> All right. Sorry. >> So, we have one, two, three. Will >> Yeah. >> Okay. Devon. >> Yes. I
159mean, yeah. >> Okay. And I think we know where everybody stands here and we will come prepared at the first meeting in August to take that formal action and get the process started. >> August 5th, >> I believe that's >> Yes. >> Right. August 5th. >> Should I can I ask a >> Should we should we be prepare be prepared to talk about alleart items we're interested in since we are talking about a cost? >> Sure. >> You know what I'm saying? what $10,400 for for the initial and then you have a list of all the cart items here that we would have we would discuss at that time. Am I understanding that correctly? >> Do does the uh complete contract need to be voted on >> if we are going through the process? >>
160It will. >> Yes. Yes. And Bill and Melissa have samples of that contract >> and Melissa also has >> there's a sample in your back. >> So then my question goes back to what Mr. Hail says then if we're going to have community input, how do we know the amount of meetings we would need in the front of this process? >> I don't understand. I don't know how we could do that rationally. >> We can start and you can start with an initial and then add. >> That was my question then. Now you answer. Start with an initial and add in the menu as long as we have board action on the additions and then we can then we can facilitate. >> So that's now clarity. >> Y >> thank you. >> Everybody comfortable now
161then. Okay. We'll come prepared at the next meeting to take that up as an action item. >> Thank you Jim. >> Thank you. >> Appreciate that. >> Thanks for your time. >> Thank you very much. So >> good to meet you as well. >> Thank you sir. All right. Thank you. I >> think we all look forward to embarking on the search for our new leadership. >> Thank you, sir. >> Thank you, Jim. >> Thank you. >> Have a good view as well. Have a good evening. >> President Clemer. >> Yes. >> For clarity, can you please tell me what the action item will be so I can have it correct on the agenda? >> Probably need to work with Mr. Helton on that. So, it'll be a contract and work with Luke on the
162exact wording for that. >> This is the contract. Okay. >> Okay. Is there any other items for board discussion? >> Yeah, I've got one thing real quick. Um, I just want to tell my fellow board members, thank you. Um, it has been wonderful since you've been on the board. And one of the things that I have appreciated is not being the only person asking questions. and all of the questions coming through as we see those as uh for board answers uh have been incredibly enlightening and have brought up things I wouldn't even think of. So, thank you all. >> Thank you. >> Okay. Anything else? Okay, moving on. Move on to public participation. Mr. Bradford. Seeing no public participation, we'll move right on to reports from administration. Hello again. Um I have brought Becky back.
163She's been here quite a few times now from Nania. Uh we have run out of our contract for our electric and gas. uh at in some discussion in finance committee, uh we thought about a couple um different options as opposed to just staying with our current provider. And I'm going to turn it over to Becky at this point. >> Fantastic. Great to see you all again. Thank you for having me back. We going back to the front. Awesome. Thank you. Uh so we're going to talk energy, but I'll try not to put you to sleep too much with it. Um, so I'm going to give a little backstory since there are some new board members and maybe you've not been through this process before, but uh, in the state of Illinois, you actually have the
164option to buy natural gas and electricity through a third party. You still have Amarind as your utility. They still own the lines. They're who you call if there's a blackout. Um, but the actual juice or gas itself can be traded on the futures commodity market like corn or soybeans. And why this is important to a public school district is it allows you to have price certainty and budget stabilization over a term of the contract so that you can plan for your budget. Uh versus I don't know if any of you have gotten your Amarind bills in July yet. Yikes. Uh the price went up by 100% from last month to this month. Um so we just want to try to avoid that and allow you to have some some stability, some planning, and then open
165up some opportunities for long-term cost management savings. So, with that, um, I'm Becky. We met last time, but, uh, we're third-party energy adviserss. So, I'm not the one actually producing the electricity or the gas. We're here to help you enter into, um, successful contracts with reputable suppliers to make sure that you have favorable contract terms and that over the course of that contract that the district is protected. And so, here's kind of the whole cohesive thing. This is this is what we do, right? Energy costs are going up for everybody. You're paying them at home. uh it's not getting any better and likely won't for the foreseeable future. So when we think about energy cost management, we're thinking big picture. And I've actually been here several times as Dr. Curry pointed out. I was here
166last time to talk about community solar. You'll see there. And the district has already engaged in on-site solar as well. So this is just another piece of that of that puzzle. Um so I'm not going to dig too much into this, but basically we are your consultant. We are unbiased. We sit on your side of the table. we're representing your best interest as a school district. Um, overseeing a competitive RFP process. At the end of the day, this is electricity and natural gas. No one's electricity or natural gas is better than someone else's as long as the contract terms are favorable and comparable. And so, we just help you get to the best result possible. Um, and as you all have a many things going on, this is what we live and breathe every day
167in this market. So, it's it's kind of like the stock market for energy. And so we are there guiding through the contract um the procurement and then most importantly is the service after the fact. So if you've ever had a billing issue and ever had to stay on the customer service line with Amron, you know how brutal that is. We do that for you uh so that you don't have to. We're one point of contact for all things energy as it relates to your gas and electricity. So what are these fancy graphs? Okay, so a competitive RFP process we find is especially key when it comes to commodities purchasing. Uh there's really, you know, like I mentioned before, we just want to get to the best possible rate with the most favorable contract possible. And
168so comparing multiple suppliers is really in the best interest of the district quite honestly. Um a lot of them are very favorable or are or comparable when you look at them on paper. Uh so how do we just get to the best rate possible? And so you'll see all those little dots up there. This is what we'll do um be proposing to the district for their electricity purchasing. Um that is your larger spend of the two between your natural gas and electricity. And there are a ton of electricity suppliers in the marketplace. And so what we do is instead of just doing like a sealed bid where everybody on Tuesday at 10:00 send me your rate, uh we actually pre-qualify all suppliers ahead of time and then we throw them into kind of gladiator style
169a realtime competitive bidding auction. So it's like eBay but in reverse. So with every bid that they submit through the course of this 15 to 30 minute auction, the price actually goes down. Um so this is dual purpose for the suppliers. They love the transparency that they're given because often we've been doing this like 25 years. We would like award a bid and then we'd get a call from a supplier after the fact saying, "Why didn't you tell me where I needed to be? I could have lowered my price." And we're like, "Uh, that meant that our district could have saved money." And then the suppliers also don't have that insight, that window into the competitive field that they're playing. So, this allows that. Um, it allows complete transparency into the process. uh the the
170site stays live for 12 months after the auction is completed and there's some built-in mechanisms into the auction that within the last 2 minutes of the auction conducted any bid receive automatically resets the timer to 2 minutes. So if you've ever been in eBay and someone's snakes something from you in the last 15 seconds, this has something built in to prevent that happening. So that's why the standard auction length is 15 minutes, but sometimes we have them 45 to 50 minutes long because they just keep going on with every additional bid received. With a district of your size, we would expect a competitive about 8 to 13 suppliers to participate against each other and we would expect somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 bids to be received versus just the standard receiving an email with
171static rates. So, it's the utmost competition. And after conducting a few thousand of these, our analysis shows three to 5% additional savings versus a traditional RFP alone. It's pretty cool to watch. There's a live link to it. So, on the day of the event, if any of you wanted to see it or if you wanted to to be able to see it after the fact, we will provide that to you. So, um, often after we've run one of these in a district, uh, we get asked if they can also use it for salt purchasing or anything else, like if they can bring it up for other things. So, it is a really, um, efficient way to get to the best price for commodity purchasing. So, let's talk a little bit about your current status. Um,
172your natural gas contract is already expired. Uh, so you're currently on a floating month-to-month uh, market rate. So that would be uh conducting a traditional RFP for that just because there's fewer gas suppliers. So we find that the auctions don't tend to lead as great of results as the electricity. Um so that would be the recommendation for for natural gas would be to bring forth rates for for those fixed rates into the future. Electricity is expiring in December 2025. U you can purchase electricity or I'm sorry all energy as far in advance as you would like. So my recommendation would be to do both of these at the same time. And your electricity new contract, should you choose to take one, would just bookend to your current. So it's not going to nullify anything that
173you have currently. It would actually start when your your current one expires. I did want to highlight that that little blue arrow there uh showcases where the energy market was. The last time you entered into contracts, it was at the lowest point in history of energy pricing. it was coming right in right before COVID or right around that time. Um, and we had an influx of supply into the marketplace. So, it was a brilliant strategy the last time because you took long-term contracts at that time at some of the lowest prices in history. Um, once we've actually completed this and move forward through this, I would like to share with you what your cost avoidance was over that term of that contract because I would venture to guess it's in the hundreds of thousands of
174dollars that you avoided uh as a result of having these contracts in place. So, there is a substantial financial value to it in addition to the convenience of of that long-term budget planning. Um, with that said, like the call out I mentioned at the beginning, energy prices have increased significantly. You can see that big blip there in 2022 was when uh the Russia and Ukraine um conflict started. Most of the the world put sanctions on Russia's natural gas which meant that they started to buy from the United States. United States became the world's largest exporter of natural gas overnight. And if you think back to econ 101, what happens when demand goes through the roof and supply goes down? Prices go up. And so, um we've had a lot of volatility over the last several
175years. And I would expect that we would see pretty significant rate increases on both electricity and natural gas as a result. So for that uh next step should you choose to move forward um the pre-qualification rounds for all suppliers both on natural gas and electricity. This is um what's required if we were to conduct that auction for electricity. We want to do a standardized uh request for pricing up front so that we can confirm that all contract terms are the same, that all pricing is accurate, and it's a true apples to apples um uh comparison before they would participate in that live auction. And then what we would do is we'd come back to the August board meeting with the results of that indicative pricing round to share that with you so you have an
176idea. I'm not just speculating what the prices are. we can actually talk um about accurate numbers and those results and at that time um ask for authorization to conduct and move forward uh with administration um conducting a live auction for electricity and uh securing pricing for natural gas. The nature of energy is that prices stay static for about 5 minutes. Typically suppliers will hold the price until the end of that calendar day. So, what's a little bit different with energy is that rather than conducting an auction and then coming back at the next board meeting with that pricing to approve, we're asking for pre-approval based off of that indicative round of pricing so that administration has the authority to sign on the auction day or the day of the RFP to secure that pricing that
177day or if we wait for the next board meeting, that pricing would no longer uh be valid. So, it's just a little bit of a pre-approval, but that's why we want to qualify with actual numbers to place before you. Um and so then after that if they chose to execute and all thresholds were met then we would share those results with you. So I just rapidfired educated you guys on energy purchasing. What questions do you have about the the process or uh energy itself? What to expect? >> This looks like we had a five or sixyear contract >> fiveyear contracts prior. >> How do we if the prices are fluctuating that much? Is there an advantage to be a shorter contract or do you want to be longer? >> Yeah. So, we'll actually run one,
178two, three, four, and fiveyear term simultaneous and then have that discussion together. Um, and then it's really up either if the board would like to have input or administration to make the call on what to do. Uh, right now with the volatility we're seeing and the prices are higher, uh, we're seeing like two years is about the sweet spot. The one-year term has a lot of volatility, meaning higher pricing. the two years more favorable pricing, but again, it doesn't necessarily lock you in that long term. Um, but that would be something that we can have a discussion about. Yeah, there's there's so many variables at play right now affecting energy pricing that are not uh short-term, right? The the main driver of energy prices today is the influence of artificial intelligence and the addition of
179data centers to our grid. We use natural gas to make electricity. So it is impacting both electricity prices and natural gas prices. Um one data center that Microsoft or someone builds requires energy of 25 nuclear plants. >> So when we say that we are rapidly approaching this, we don't have enough supply to meet demand. It is it is not a headline. It is accurate. And so I think we're probably in the higher price range for for a while. The the good thing about your district though is that you've already moved forward with on-site solar uh and you're well underway for that. Uh once all of those complete are completed, if all of those projects make it through to completion, your usage for electricity drops by 50%. So 50% of your energy usage will then be
180at that flat 2 cent per um kilowatt hour rate that you receive through your power purchase agreement. So you had some pretty awesome foresight into moving forward with that. >> We are so smart. >> You are so smart. Your consultant is really great. >> I just have a quick question again based on my ignorance in the process. Um, are you able to school us on how the tariffs would affect these prices? Um the tariffs affect the prices because energy or anything in the stock market loves drama and the tariffs create a lot of drama. Uh whenever there's a new headline about the tariffs, we see the market go up immediately and then retract within 2 to 3 days after because most of the energy production is domestic. We are a producer of natural gas. So
181the tariffs don't necessarily have a direct impact on that. What we're seeing is more just the stock market in general as it moves. Energy is following that. Um I think longer term what the implications of oil might have an impact on because natural gas is a byproduct of oil. I could see where that may impact things. But also as part of the current administration, um they've removed some of the regulations around natural gas fracking or natural gas production here in this in the United States. It just takes about 2 to 3 years for that to ramp up. So I would expect that within 2 to 3 years, we'll see another influx of supply into the market, which is where we were back in 2019 and 2020. Um right now, we're not at that spot. So,
182>> so with that knowledge then would it be more beneficial to do a long-term or short-term contract? >> I can't answer that question directly. >> Okay. >> Because five years ago, I wouldn't have predicted many of the events that we have weathered to have happened over the course of that five years. Um, this five-year contract served you quite well. And I don't know, especially with the changes that your usage will um be experiencing with on-site solar long-term may not be the play because they a supplier is going to look at your historical usage and usage patterns to determine what they think you use in the future. But your future is going to look drastically different than it does today. So I'm thinking a two to three year is probably going to be your sweet spot.
183We can look at all of those and then we can actually put a valuation on them to say the difference in the rate for a three-year and a 5year is x to you per year. Okay. What does that what does that mean to you and what's the comfort level that you have with that? >> Thank you. >> I like like the the dollars drive the decision uh more than what do I think will happen over the next five years. >> Yeah. >> Any other questions? >> Other questions. So the the full transparency piece is my predecessor is not here to take the pat on the back for that fantastic rate in 2019. Um but at the same time and we don't have real any issues with our current providers but there's no competition for them
184if we stay with them. So, the idea of trying to find the best possible price, being transparent about it through the RFP and the online auction, whether they're good or not, which is quite possibly not, um, will know that we tried our best. >> Yeah. Your your incumbents will be included as part of the process. So, if they want to retain your business, all it does is it adds more player to players to the field. So, they just have to sharpen their pencils a little bit more. >> Outstanding. Thank you so much. Thanks for >> Okay, I think our next report is Rita Ellis. >> That's right. >> Give us an update on our new magnet school edition. >> Hello board members, President Clevenger, Superintendent Clark, Board Secretary Miss Bradford, members of DT out in
185the audience. I am Karita Rita Ellis, principal of the new Ellsworth Danby Jr. Magnet School that is ready to open August 13th. So, I am giving an update of where we stand in the transition um from American Dreamer, shutting that down into opening Ellsworth Dansby. So, I'll give you a an update of where we are um and where we're going for the rest of the summer as we get ready to open in August. So, we um had our grand opening in May and it was a great success. Uh huge thank you to Maria. I could not have done it without her. Huge shout out to our buildings and grounds, our IT and my wonderful custodial staff for getting the building that was empty without any adults or students in it ready for all of the
186people that uh participated and came to our grand opening. Um we had great feedback. All of our tours were led by students who were not um really experienced in the building, but we prepped them for about a month and a half so that they were ready to give tours to all of our guests. Um, the Heart of Illinois Community Foundation were great donors to get us a great grand opening, make sure that we had food and decorations and new clothing for our staff and our students as part of our grand opening. So, we had a great turnout. A lot of our current students were able to see the building ahead of time and really they really enjoyed it and that really sparked a lot of excitement. Um, a lot of people think that opening a
187new building is um, all rainbows, but a lot of people still had a little sadness to say goodbye to, you know, the history that they had in the old building. So, um, out with the old, in with the new, and thank you for everyone that helped with our grand opening. We utilize the district relocation guide that was updated by me. So basically the relocation guide is created by the district um with a lot of uh moving parts and a lot of um people that would be involved like superintendent assistant superintendent uh buildings and grounds to make sure that our uh relocation is all planned out so we know where things are going, how things are labeled. certain color labels on a box mean that it's going to one location and so that our staff knew
188how to move the building correctly. This is extremely important because if you don't move correctly upfront, it makes the unpacking um a disaster. So, we had a very smooth move um thank you to buildings and grounds and our transportation department. And we officially moved into Dansby on June 9th. Um, one of the things that I've worked really hard over the summer was creating our new mission and vision so that it will be ready um for all of our new staff, for all of our new families that are asking us all about what Dansby stands for. So, I'm going to read it because it's the first time that it's been uh shared. So our mission is that Ellsworth Dansby Junior Magnet School is dedicated to developing future leaders by encouraging academic excellence, building critical and creative
189thinking skills, heightening curiosity, supporting collaboration, providing rich access to technology, and enriching social development in a nurturing environment through esteem education. Our goals are to inspire, educate, and celebrate. So we are moving from a STEM focus by adding in the arts um to become a steam uh focus. We are fully staffed with orchestra uh band a steam um art for elementary and middle school. Um science and science lab. It's a beautiful science lab. two moving mo maker spaces on both floors of the building for our students to access as well as partnerships with NIU Steam STEM uh SAM Lab Studios which is our coding program um from kindergarten through 8th grade and Zespace which is our technology that is focused on 4D and augmented reality. So that is kind of where our mission comes from.
190Our vision is that Ellsworth Dansby Junior Magnet School will provide an innovative academic program while creating the blueprint for steam education with indicator public schools district 61. So you are the first to see our new mission and vision. Our school improvement priorities that are in our school improvement plan are highquality datadriven tier one instruction in all classrooms, steam integration, and a focus on culture and climate. If you've had any time to visit either American Dreamer or our new school, one of the things that we advertise that we are very excited to expand on is the house system. So, we utilize Ron Clarkmy's house system, which is a culture and climate builder that makes sure that every student, staff member, anyone that walks into the building feels included, feels like they belong with healthy competition. So
191all of our new students will spin the wheel on sorting day to determine what house that they are in. Most people uh try to compare it to Harry Potter. It is more um in comparison to a fraternity or sorority. So every student, every staff member, every adult has a place. And if you stop by on a Friday, you will see everybody representing their house. Um we have special chance cheers and we are excited to take our staff this Thursday to Ron Clark Academy to see it in action in Atlanta. Um our core values um kind of focus around gear which is growth, empathy, accountability and resilience. And that's for all students and adults. We are almost there to being fully staffed. I did basically my last interviews yesterday for our open kindergarten and second grade
192position and we hope to put in recommendations as soon as possible. Started the summer with 16 open positions. Um and I am down to one position basically. uh special ed, which we found out that we could have an extra position later on a couple weeks ago. So, that's just been posted. So, without that position, um we are down one. So, we worked really hard to get interviews done um in June so that we can head into our summer retreat and professional development and getting everyone moved in in July. We are the only school in District 61 that wears uniforms. Our students wear polos with khaki bottoms. For K to five, they wear black. And for middle school, we try to give them that choice. They can wear gray, white, or black polos. We have been
193blessed to be able to provide every student with a polo that looks like mine with the new school logo on it. They don't know. It shall be a surprise um uh at open house for them. But um we want our students to feel good. We want them to be focused on learning um and growing. We don't want um them to be focused on trying to figure out what they are going to wear. So, we try to uh keep up with that. A lot of people wondered why we did not get rid of uniforms moving into the new building. Um I've been at with this with these group of students for four years and we track data. We track data on casual days when they are out of uniform. Not a good day. So we are
194going to continue with our uniforms because data shows that our students perform best when they are in uniform every day. I am working with my um student leadership group. We met today and they are trying to come up with some ways um to give some student choice. So one of the things that they did come up with as an idea is that on students birthdays or half birthdays they could dress casual. So, our students are all about a casual day, but it has to be intentional for Miss Ellis to approve it. We are very excited. All of our new sports uniforms are coming in. Thank you, Dr. Curry. Um, and they are wonderful. I would say this is probably the hardest um decision to make was coming up with what uniforms would look like. So,
195we are excited to show all of our students at open house. We will have them on display. um and they are wonderful with our logo and it was a joy to kind of work with BSN to capture where we were trying to go with our look. This will be the first opportunity that our students have for a home event. So, um in the past we've had to travel to the disc or a local church to play a home game. So, our first home game will be a big one and I'm very excited for our students to be able to experience that environment. I think it's crucial to the middle school experience and I'm excited for that. We did get to have our first um instruction in the building. So, we've had a group of about
19618 young ladies that came for the fly girl steam camp in June. We partnered with Milicanin. Um I'm an alumin. So, um I love to partner with um local places that we can make intentional partnerships. So we focused on food chemistry which was a real world application and they got 3 days 2 days in our maker space at Dansby and then one day on campus at Milan. Um if you want to find out more about our steam camp uh we were the steam minute on WATV on July 7th. So they ran a story um in the news on our camp. Our girls really enjoyed it. We hope to open the up the opportunity for other students. So upcoming events, we have everything planned to get us to the first day of school. So at the
197end of July, we are doing a taking flight to middle school, middle school orientation. Feel free to stop by. It's July 28th through 30th. Every day is a different grade level starting with 6th, then 7th, then 8th. Middle school, in my opinion, has the most change to go through in the new building. They're upstairs on a different floor switching classes, dressing for PE. And so we wanted to put them in this space for first to work through the kink. So they'll be able to use our new state-of-the-art uh kitchen and see what that process is like. So we're hoping that after the 3 days we have a reflection of any changes that we need to make to be successful for this school year. Um every year we do a popcorn with the principal which is
198for all new families for magnet orientation. My favorite snacks popcorn. So, I bring them in and they get to ask all the questions, take a tour, and have uh time in the building before the first day of school. That's for all new families. Um, car riders and uh walkers and bike riders and buses are going to have a transportation practice day on August 8th. Bike riders and walkers will be new to us. So, we want to make sure that we have all safety measures and people where they need to be for that. So, we are going to be at the school outside giving out water and popsicles as kids get to practice uh walking to school riding their bike so they know what that process looks like. We want to know where our students are
199coming from so that they are safe. But we also want them to know how long it takes to really make that walk or that bike ride. So, we don't start the first week with tardies. We do kindergarten signing day. So, just like a sports signing day, our kindergarteners sign to starting their first um experience in big kids school. So, they come, they get a little orientation, they get to drop off supplies, they spin the wheel to find out what house they are in, and we get to meet with parents and students before the first day of school to help them be comfortable. And then we are wrapping up with Dansby registration reward night at Splash Cove which is free to our families. Um it's an opportunity for us to get to meet all of our
200new families, old families, and before we get down to the business of learning, be able to um be in a space and relax and have some fun before school starts. They must be fully registered to attend. And if they are not, we have hotspots and computers to help them get registered on that day. Ribbon cutting is on August 12th at 4:30 and then that will lead into our back to school open house from 5 to 7:00. Um we are going to have a very exciting open house. We will have tables representative of our organizations. Um, we work with the local store to sell uniforms uh to our families on site. Uh, we will have a DJ. We will be feeding our families, welcome them into our new school for some the first time before the
201first day of school. So, I just have to take the time to thank everybody that has gotten me to this place. Without everybody's support, there's no way that I would have been able to get my two weeks off for summer vacation. Uh, because I've definitely lived at the school every night. But um my custodial staff, buildings and grounds, transportation, IT, whenever I call, they come. If I need something, nobody's told me no quite yet. Um but without them, there's no way that we will be able to open a building in August. So, I greatly appreciate all of the support. Thank you. Any questions? >> Yes. I hope I'm not stealing anybody's thunder, but but Miss Ellis, I want to say to you from the bottom of my heart, if I was a soldier, I'd be
202proud if you were my general. >> A thank you so much. Oh, thank you. >> I you you are a duck on top of water, but I know you're kicking hard to to move. I I want to thank you for everything you do to build culture, to make sure those kids know they're part of Decar and make them proud of that. I think that's something we need to do better. And uh I just I I hope I'm not stealing your thunder, but uh I just wanted to make sure personally on behalf of all of us, thank you for everything you're doing. And I know I was a part of two school moves and it was torpedoes hitting the ships and you have done a brilliant job of logistically getting everything in its place and I
203wanted to come I wanted to make sure we commend you for that. >> Thank you so much. I appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you. >> Yes. >> Go Flyers. >> All righty. Go Flyers. We're ready. Thank you. >> Okay, Dr. Curry, >> following Principal Ellis, never easy to do, but I really don't have a presentation. The policy committee met. We went through the policies and exhibits for 118. You all have them uh in your board packet. you have from now till the next board meeting to reach out to me with any questions or concerns about any of those policies. If there's one that's specific to you that you want an answer to or you'd like brought forward to to the whole board, let me know and we'll get it to you and have a presentation.
204But other than that, they're there for you to look at and get back to me. Okay. Thank you. >> That will end our reports from administration. >> Okay. We'll move on to our consent items. Does anyone want any of the items pulled from the consent calendar? Seeing none, Dr. Clark, >> I recommend the board of education approve the consent items as presented, which includes a minutes open close meetings June 24th, 2025 and special close meeting June 25th, 2025. B, freedom of information report. C, change in expense request process. D, job descriptions. A, secretary to student services and buildings and grounds. B, secretary to the high school athletic directors. >> Okay. Do we have a motion? >> Second. >> Any discussion? Are these job description edits or new positions? >> These are new positions. >> Any
205other? No. >> Miss. Bradford. >> Mr. Joiner. >> I >> Mr. Clevenger. >> Hi. >> Mr. Reynolds. >> Hi, >> Dr. Laoren. Hi, >> Mr. Wetszel. >> Hi, >> Mr. Hail. >> Hi, >> and Mrs. Tyus. >> Hi, >> Seven. I zero nay. Motion carried. >> Thank you. Now, we'll move on to our roll call action items. Do we have a recommendation for the personnel action items? >> Yes. I recommend the board of education approve the personnel action items listed in the memo from Monica Wils, director of human resources, and the human resources department as presented. >> Have a motion. >> Second. >> Any discussion? Miss Bradford. Mr. Hail I >> Mr. Clevener hi >> Mr. Wetzel >> hi >> Mrs. Tyus hi >> Dr. Lorenson hi >> Mr. Reynolds >> hi >> and Mr.
206Joiner >> I >> 7 I zero nay. Motion carried. >> Thank you. Do we have a recommendation for the tenative budget for FY2526 for the Mon Payatt Special Education District? >> Yes. I recommend the board approve the FY20252026 minet special education district tenative budget as presented. And after the motion and second, Elizabeth Lang, assistant director of special education district will present information on this item. Also, after presentation and vote on the FY2025 2026 making Payet special education district tenative budget, I would ask that the board of education to set the public hearing date for Tuesday, August 19th, 2025 at 6:30 p.m. at the Cow Administration building and note action will take place at that meeting as well. Do >> I have a motion? discussion. >> I think I got two of those in my packet.
207I don't know if somebody's missing one. >> There might be. >> Thank you. We're close. We're close. >> Okay, it's my turn. Elizabeth, it's your turn. >> Okay. Did Did everybody get a copy of this already? Um, so I don't know if you had a chance to look through it. I'm happy to answer any questions. I can quickly go through um through it or if you just have questions, I can answer them. whatever you prefer. >> Questions. >> Okay. >> Just just a quick one. >> At the expenditure sheet going across, there's >> increases annually. >> Are those built-in rises in the budget or >> am I misreading that >> for which sections of >> go across on the bottom? >> Can you can you flip to it? >> The total expenditures. Yeah. Yeah. >>
208Can you flip to it on the screen? >> Use your remote. >> I think the if you see the rise in the >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's 2,00 there's $2,000 across the >> Right. And I think where you're going to see that is probably coming from >> I was just I was just wondering what was making the dent every year. Tuition >> to raise it, >> tuition. I'm sorry. Tuition is the big expense. Um if you see that line on other including tuition, >> it's gone up. Okay. There's there's there's another sheet, >> Miss Bradford, I thought that had a go. Can you go back? >> I think you answered my question. >> Yeah, it'd be that uh other line um on that the sheet right the slide right before. >> Okay. >> Um but
209that's where we're seeing the biggest increase is our >> tuition. >> Okay. >> Which hopefully we'll see that coming back. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I was just wondering >> if that was to to be expected. >> Yes. But I think and maybe Mike can talk about this too. You know more about money than I do, but um that I think we'll start seeing some of that come back as we get the reimbursement from sending kids to private facilities. Okay. We have the two-year cycle and then they reimburse us that money back. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Two years in a re budget for that. >> I got you. I got you. Anything else? >> Okay. Thank you. >> Thank you, Miss Bradford. >> Mr. Reynolds. >> Hi, >> Mr. Cleger. Hi, >> Mr. Hail. >>
210Hi, >> Mr. Wetszel. >> Hi, >> Mrs. Tyus. Hi, >> Mr. Joiner. >> Hi, >> and Dr. Lorenson. I seven I zero nay. Motion carried. >> Thank you. Now, we need to set the uh public hearing date. Could I have a motion from the board of education to set the public hearing date for the FY2526 making Patt Special Education District tenative budget for 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, August 19th, 2025, the Kyle Administration building. Could I get a motion? >> So move. >> Second. >> All in favor signify by saying I. >> Those opposed. Motion's carried. Okay, the announcements and upcoming dates should be coming up on the screen. Uh, the board of education and administration uh, sends condolences to the family of Dale Eugene Bradford, Senior, who passed away Wednesday, July 2nd, 2025. Mr. Bradford
211was the father of April Clary, male clerk at the Kyle administration building and Beth Stout, secretary at the K8 as to the K8 principal at Monasuri Academy for Peace. Our condolences go out to all the members of that family. Important dates, July 1st to 31st, school registration open in Skyward for the 2526 school year. Parents and families need to log in and register your student or students for the upcoming school year. Parents and families, please contact your home school for assistance if you have issues with the Skyward and need help with that. Uh August 11 building meetings, August 12 teacher workday. August 12th, uh the K8 grade building open houses. The 13th first full day of school. Mark your calendars for those of you who have children in DPS61. Mark your calendars. Uh the 19th
212will be middle school open house. The 20th are the high school open houses. You can tell we have a lot of action coming up here. Families check with your home school for the start times of all these open houses. Uh, also remember the Kyle administration building 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 Monday through Thursday. Kyle building closed every Friday through August 1st and they'll resume normal operations after August 1st. Uh, additional reminder, gosh, I remember Lori now. every meeting. Immunizations and physicals. Wednesday, October 15th is the deadline for your immunizations and physicals for the 2526 school year. Mark that on everybody's calendars. Uh public portion of the next regular meeting the board of education will be 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, August 5th, 2025, Kyle Administration building. Um, Board of Education meetings will be the first and third Tuesdays
213of every month for the 2025 school year. Do we have a motion to adjurnn? >> So move. >> Second. >> All in favor signify by saying I. Will. You look perplexed. >> I thought I'd goofed it up or something here. I