001Call to order. The April 22nd, 2026 regular board meeting of the Fenton Community High School District 100 board to order. May I have a roll call? White. Goodrich. Yes. McCullough. Yes. Miller. Yes. Lewis. Yes. Brzezinski. Yes. Figueroa. Yes. We have a quorum. Please join me in reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. Yes. Pledge of Allegiance. To the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Sam, please read our Fenton mission, beliefs, and Bison Way statements. Absolutely. Fenton mission statement: Cultivate successful, passionate, empowered learners through rigor, relevance, and relationships. Fenton belief statement: Successful, passionate, empowered learners thrive when we provide a safe, caring, welcoming environment, diversity, equity, and inclusion unify our community, school and home collaborate as one, we
002champion innovative teaching and engage learning with state-of-the-art facilities, we infuse social-emotional learning and academics and culture, we prepare students fulfill their civic responsibility, we immerse students in authentic life experiences. The Bison Way: Students and adults at Fenton High School create a safe, caring, empathetic environment where we believe in each other, respect diversity, communicate openly, grow together, and hold each other to high expectations to become the leaders and innovators of the future. Our next item is recognitions. Kate. All right. Good evening, everyone. Uh we were thrilled to share a lot of celebrations last month, and we are in for the same, so try to keep up. We'll start with hitting the mats with wrestling. So, if the following students can join me and Coach Hastings, Derek Mazariegos, Rene Reyna, Giselle Castillo, Ariana Soledad, Gavin Stewart, Juan
003Lopez Velasquez, and Maya Mccalska. >> [applause] >> Okay, we'll start with Derek and Rene. They both qualified, so if you guys could step forward, Derek and Rene. Uh they both qualified to the IHSA state finals after impressive regular seasons. Rene was 35 and 7 on the season and won the regional championship in his weight class. He then placed second at sectionals on his way to state. Derek was 22 and 9 on the season and earned second place at regionals on his way to the state finals. So, let's give them both a hand. >> [applause] >> All right, now we're going to talk about girls wrestling. Girls wrestling has only been an official IHSA sport for a couple of years. Statewide competition originally started under the umbrella of the Illinois Wrestling Coaches and Officials Association, known
004as the IWCOA. Fenton continues wrestling in the IWCOA state series, and this year, Giselle, if she could step forward, took first place in her bracket of 38 competitors, making her the IWCOA state champion in her weight class. Ariana, not who's not here, was the state runner-up in her bracket of 29 girl wrestlers. Her state finals match was very close, and I'll let Coach Hastings share a little bit more about that later. Thank you, Giselle. >> [applause] >> Finally, these are also student-athletes, and four of them were honored for their work in the classroom. Giselle, Gavin, Juan, and Maya were selected to the IWCOA Academic All-State Wrestling Team. It's actually a very selective group of students who are chosen for Academic All-State honors. In order to qualify, these wrestlers must be a senior, have earned a
005varsity letter, and must have a cumulative grade point average of 3.7 on a 4.0 scale at the end of their seventh semester of high school, so that's midway through their senior year. So, let's give them a hand for being athletes and scholars. [applause] And then, finally, one more recognition for Gavin. Um so, if Gavin can stay up here, Gavin is a prime example of having character. This year, he became the first Fenton student to receive the Ed Washington Sportsmanship Award from the Upstate 8 Conference. In this nomination, Coach Hastings praised Gavin for being supportive, helpful, positive, and responsible to his teammates, as well as to Fenton's competitors. So, congratulations on that. >> [applause] >> And with that, I'd like to introduce coach coach Coach Hastings to say more. All right, thank you so much for
006having us. Thanks for recognizing these incredible individuals. I'm obviously biased, but they uh they are absolutely amazing. You know, I think um I'm super proud of all the effort and dedication exhibited by all of our wrestlers, and uh they get pushed beyond their mental and physical limits, and they just, you know, they just step forward and accomplish great things. They respond valiantly. Um as a result of this resilience, uh they've obviously had a lot of um great individual accomplishments. So, again, Rene, uh we heard about him. He just had an exceptional season, um 26 and 7, I believe, conference champion or all-conference regional champ, um just got better throughout the year, like really dominated, um was relentless throughout the year, and worked on improving, and then just had a great season, won a match downstate.
007Um Derek had a little rough go of it at the beginning, but he kind of stayed the course and focused on getting better, and just had an incredible end of this season. He was all-conference, had an incredible sectional, beat three really good uh guys to get downstate. Think it's only our second time since I've been here that we have two um returning state qualifiers, so that's super exciting. Um and then on the ladies' side, uh Giselle just had an exceptional an an exceptional year again, 27 and 3. Um she's a two-time captain, she's a two-time conference champ, she's a Fargo qualifier, um and then an IWCOA state championship state champion to kind of add on top of that. Ariana had an awesome season, and she's a on her way to having an an just unbelievable
008career as well. Um And then, I think the uh academic awards are, you know, that makes us most proud. That's what we're here for. Um I don't know if we've had an Academic All-State uh award winner, and then we get four of this year. Um so, that's awesome. Saving it. They're sandbagging. Nice [clears throat] job. We'll take it with these guys, um and Giselle obviously just an amazing um you know, reflection of our program. Gavin's had an incredible career. He's really stepped up, had 22 wins this year. Um he was a leader. Uh Juan and Maya came out for the first time. I think that takes so much courage as seniors to go up there and and deal with with all the stuff they have to deal with, and then get good grades in as
009well. So, um super proud of of all the accomplishments of of these fine young people. So, thank you again. Thanks, guys. >> [applause] >> Stuff. Thanks. >> [applause] >> Okay, next we're going to recognize group interp. So, group interpretation performers, could you join us up here? >> [applause] >> Okay, so while they're walking up, I'll just remind you, group interpretation is a 30-minute play that focuses on storytelling without the use of character-defining costumes, makeup, props, lighting, or any of the other trappings of traditional theater. Students rely solely on their voices, bodies, and musical instruments to bring a story to life. This year, Fenton competed in a different sectional, which was filled with a lot of very talented schools. Fenton's cast of Theater Camp didn't skip a beat, earning third place and another trip to the
010IHSA State Finals, where Sebastian Botello, Yuliana Garcia, and Alida Thatch earned all-state cast honors. So, if they could step up real quickly. Nope. Sebastian is out. Oh, and Sebastian's not here. Alida and Yuliana, very good. Um and with that, we have group interp coaches Nicole Hendrix and Melissa Feinberg to tell us a little bit more. That's what she just said, right? Yeah, all right. That's us. This is us. That's us. Okay. Um so, this year we did a wonderful show called Theater Camp. If you're we adapted it from Yep, we're in the shirts. >> [laughter] >> Adapted from uh was it on Netflix or Hulu? Hulu, yes. So, it's a film, a mockumentary, based on a show um and it's about a camp uh with a bunch of theater camp counselors who have made theater
011camp their life, kind of like our students have made group interp their life and speech their life, and uh really become a family together. Very funny if you want to check it out as a movie, but even better as a group interp in 30 minutes. Um they made us so absolutely proud this year again um doing things together with choral voices and sound effects and just being very inventive and bringing together uh a story without any props. We're not allowed props or basic set. We just have these basic sets, no lighting or anything, and um they absolutely delighted the audience. I think one of my favorite moments this year was hearing all of the other cast members say how much they really enjoyed the show because when the kids inspire one another in their own
012events, that just really warms my heart. And um thank [snorts] you so much for always supporting the arts and um making sure that we have an arts program here at Fenton High School because it really truly is one of the ways that our students find their voices, excel with sharing their voices, and just become the fine young individuals that they are, but in this case as a group. And so Um I think we're going to uh let Jayden Maharo and Arturo Hurtado Jr. uh two of our seniors um they're uh four three-and-four-year members of group interp uh come say a few words about their experience. >> [cheering and applause] >> Um hi, I'm Arturo. I'm a four-year member, and starting off, I would just like to say that sorry. GI is probably the most hectic
013time of my schedule of the year, but it's also my favorite time because I get to spend more time with everyone to quickly from speech, and it really just we have spent like 3 hours every day together here in the arc right over there. >> Six days a week. Six days a week, Saturday is Saturday's for eight. Eight hours. We spend a lot of hours. Um but I really love everyone in this cast and this group, and they're all like a family to me, and I know we're a good family because they get on my nerves. But I still love them. Um speaking of family, I'd like to thank my parents and my family for always supporting me and being there for me and always showing up to all my shows and performances, and I
014would like to thank the alumni who aren't here, but they come They they are always here. They're always in the community. They're >> [laughter] >> They're always at all of our shows. They're always supporting us. They're giving us all this feedback, all these critiques, and I think it just shows how much of a family we're able to build here in this community, and because they always come back, and I know that even though I'll be gone next year, I'll come back and see the great show I know we're going to put on. Um I would also also like to thank my coaches for all the time and effort they put into the show. We wouldn't be able to do a fraction of of the performance we do without them. So, thank you guys, and I
015would also like to thank um assistant director uh Coach Nevs for making these short shirts. >> [laughter] >> I love them. Um And with all that, I just like to say thanks for all YOUR HELP. >> [applause] >> UM HI, I'M I'M JAYDEN. UM GROUP INTERPRETATION, like Arturo said, it's very hectic, but we are an amazing group of people. Um we have fun. We work hard to make an amazing production of acting. Um first off, I want to say thank you to my coaches. Miss Feinberg, thank you for always pushing me to do better, to get to that peak performance. Miss Hendrix, thank you for always believing me and believing in me and um always giving me inspiration. Um You guys have helped me into improve in so much, not just in in my acting
016or in my speaking, but also in my confidence and just being myself. Um our group interpretation cast is an amazing group of people who work hard and make an amazing production. Um from speech to GI, we work hard and give it all. Um so, I'm just thankful for this community that we have here at Fenton, and thank you for all your help. >> [applause] >> OKAY, AND NOW FOR OUR UM GOING TO recognize the cast with certificates. Thank you. Yep, and I'm going to read them in no particular order as you hand them out cuz I can't see them from over there. Oh, okay. >> I can just read this list though. Oh, yeah, they're not in that order. I know. >> Just read the list. Okay. All right, so we have John Aguilar, Jacob
017Jordan Arguelles, there we go. Analia Ardiego, Eleni Coleman, Manny Flores, Yuliana Garcia, Arturo Hurtado Jr., It's you don't have to keep up. >> [laughter] >> Jayden Maharo, Alida Thatch, Jason Vargas, Angelina Vargas, and in absentia, >> [laughter] >> Sebastian Botello, Maya Otero Roman, Mia Otero Roman, Eddie Perez, and Yulia Michalowska. AND PICTURE TIME. >> [applause] [applause] >> OKAY, AND FINALLY WE WOULD LIKE TO RECOGNIZE contest play. So, could the cast and crew of contest play join us at the front with Dr. Mike Mitchell and Amanda Baker Sanchez? >> [applause] >> As they're getting ready, let me remind you that contest play is where theater meets competition. Unlike a full-length production, everything is tightened. Scenes, transitions, and technical elements all have to be executed efficiently and creatively within strict time limits. Similarly, the crew builds and
018manages the set and props used in the performance, as well as manages the audio, visual, and lighting. Their actions are timed and measured just as rigorous as rigorously as their as their performers on stage. As previously mentioned, Fenton competed in a different sectional this year. Fenton's production of Living Out earned second place at sectionals and a trip to the IHSA Finals where they took seventh place overall. Six of these students earned individual all-state recognitions. Uh when I say your name, please step forward. Faith Worzeona in acting, Damaris Lopez in acting, Angela Garcia Lopez in acting, Alex Cabello Rivas in lighting design and operation, Alonzo Romero in acting, and Leslie Anzualdo Palomeque in light projection design and operation. There is something special about a few of these all-state honors that I have to mention. Alonzo and
019Angela received all-state recognition while performing their roles entirely in Spanish. We believe they're the first Fenton students to earn this achievement. So, let's give them a round of applause. >> [applause] >> Similarly, Alex and Leslie are Fenton's first all-state recognitions on the technical side. Also deserves a round of applause. >> [applause] >> WITH THAT, I'LL PASS THE MIC TO DR. Mitchell and Mrs. Baker Sanchez to talk a little bit more. Okay. Well, first off, I just want to thank the Board of Education for inviting us uh tonight uh for recognizing us for qualifying for state at the IHSA uh contest drama state final. Um I would like to acknowledge Ms. Baker uh who is instrumental to our success year after year, as well as Ms. Bray uh for your support. She went above and beyond.
020She actually took her truck to another school to pick up a piece of furniture for us. Um and I will I do not forget that. That was uh you know, you're tops in my book. Um Also, I'd like to say a thank you or shout out to Mr. John Aguilar for being our roadie and drama dad. Honestly, he's just a huge help helping us organize. He's a fantastic colleague and our number one fan for both contest drama and group and therapy loans coming to see our students perform. We had a remarkable season. We really did. And you already heard about the seventh place and the all-state honors that kind of thing. What I want to say is that our cast and crew, they performed a play that dealt with some really heavy issues. Child care,
021immigration, the loss of a child. And they did it with They did it with grace, and maturity, and tremendous heart. And I'm really really proud of them. Now, what you see in front of us are a bunch of theater kids. I want to I want them to all say their name big and loud because I want them to learn to project. They have to do this. I don't even like this microphone right now. So, big and loud, just tell us what either cast or crew and your and your year, please, okay? Go for it. Um Yesenia, senior crew. Alex Cabello Rivas, lights. Um Gabe Roxiana, senior cast. Uh John, I'm a junior, I'm in cast. My name is Noel, I am senior and I was on sound. I'm Lucy Johnson, I'm a senior and I
022was on crew. Mahela, sophomore cast. Uh Max Koziolczyk, senior cast. Angela Garcia, I played the role of Sandra. Uh cast freshman. D'Nair Yabadoo, >> [laughter] >> junior, cast. I'm Alonzo Romero, I'm a junior and I'm in cast. I'm Marisol Lopez, I'm a junior and I'm also in cast. Now, these students are often referred to as theater kids, but they're so much more than that. And now I get to embarrass them a little bit. How many of you are involved, just raise your hand, in another activity outside of theater? Just raise your hand. Oh, come on. I got like that. All right. Now, how many of you have a leadership position in another activity, club, or sport? Like an officer or something like that. Huh. How many of you are taking currently an AP class? Okay.
023You see, these students are not just theater kids, they're artists, they're scholars, they're leaders, they're teammates, we're family. Uh theater teaches them empathy, collaboration, and teamwork, and it helps to shape them into well-rounded human beings. And I am deeply grateful to have the opportunity to help provide these experiences for our students. And again, I want to thank you all for that. Sincerely, thanks. >> [applause] [applause] >> Now that we're done with the good part, public comments. Cameron, do we have any comments? No, we do not. Our next item is informational. Sam, okay, we're really excited tonight. We have a variety of informational items here for you tonight. Come on up, Michelle Papanicolaou. Round of applause for Michelle. Hello. >> [cheering] >> And she's going to go through college and career readiness at Fenton, sort of
024her annual explanation of all the tremendous work that she's leading here. So, go ahead, Michelle. Well, thank you. And the good part isn't over yet. >> [laughter] >> We're going to continue celebrating the work of college career readiness that our staff and students have been up to this year and a little bit into even last year, I'll talk about. But thank you for having me tonight, board. It's a pleasure to be here. I'm Michelle Papanicolaou, I'm the director of post-secondary pathways. I'm also the division leader of career and technical education. It's nice to meet new members of the board. Always nice to see the board number board members I've known now for a while. So, I'm going to start out with a quick story. I was walking through the hallway last week and this really
025stuck with me. It was during passing time and I overheard while I was walking through the hallway a guidance counselor talking to a student. And the guidance counselor said to that student, "Well, what are you planning to do next year?" And the student's response was, "Well, I'm just going to work." And I paused and I had to just keep walking and I went back and reflected on that a little bit. You know, that's not what I would hope to hear. I'm not afraid of work. There's great work out there for our kids. But my hope would be that every student leaves with a plan, not just the next step, right? And for me a good plan for our students would consist of two two components, right? A clear career goal and a clear path on
026how to get there. So, when I think about what I want to hear in a response, it could be something like, "I want an apprenticeship at the pipefitters union. I want to get a cybersecurity certificate at COD. I'm waiting to hear about the engineering program at the University of Illinois. Or I'm going to start my own business and I already have a mentor lined up." Any of those have those two components, a clear career goal and a clear path. And that's what we're aiming for. That's the purpose of our work. We think that's what's going to change lives, right? Like that's what's going to expand what's possible for our students here in this community. So, I also took away from that interaction the fact that I know we're doing this work, right? I We have
027an outstanding counseling team. We have a very strong college and career counselor. There are activities and workshops and newsletters and parent parent events and alumni panels, all kinds of things happening for our students. But to me that told me it's not hitting and landing the same way for all of our kids. And what do we have to do for that? So, it validated the work that we've actually been doing over the past two or three years now to create a future ready framework. It's a framework that's a systematic approach. It guarantees a consistent approach that every one of our students gets to experience college readiness, career readiness, and financial literacy readiness in the same way. It's a four-year road map for our students. It's tier one experiences, meaning it's guaranteed for every student. It's typically
028led by our counselors and that's where it should be led, but it is implemented school wide. We have teachers throughout this building that are contributing to this work. The idea of this future ready framework came out of the post-secondary workforce readiness act, which is an act that passed back in 2016. It's one of the most bipartisan acts that the state has passed, you know, in history, probably. There might be a few more, but both sides really believe in this work. And it pretty much says that every school should have one of these frameworks. And Illinois State Board of Education created one. They said schools can adopt this or schools can make their own. And we decided we have a unique student body, we have a a unique community, and we were going to make our
029own. And we invited the P-20 Network to help consult with us on that. They were instrumental in the implementation of the post-secondary workforce readiness act across the state. So, I felt very fortunate to have them come in, Dr. Jason Klein, one of one of our soon-to-be Fenton family members and Dr. Rodrigo Lopez helped us through this. We compiled and gathered a very robust group of individuals. We included District 2, District 7, the College of DuPage came. We had counselors, teachers, support staff, a parent, administrators, and we took a look at what we were doing and we looked at it closely. We did an internal audit. We looked at some of our data, National Clearinghouse. We brought an alumni panel in and we said, "Okay, is we're doing working? Do we have to make shifts? And
030we did just that. We created our future ready framework and we have a year by year activity and learning and planning and experience list for our students. We even were able to include some of the before ninth grade because of our collaboration with our feeder districts. And what's really great about this that I have to point out is that so many other schools have a framework like this and they list everything they offer for students. When the college and career counselor Rachel Georgakis and I were going through this the other day, we're like we we are really proud that these are things we ensure every student will get. It's guaranteed. So, this is what it this is what it looks like. The other thing that happened within this work out of strong collaboration as we
031started to coalesce around some of these core beliefs that I want to share with you. We're building some coherence around it. We'll continue to build coherence around it. But I think they're important to point out. The why over the where. Our students talk about where they're going to go to college. We don't want them to talk about just where. We want them to talk about why. Why are you going to the U of I? Is it because you want to be an engineer? Is it because you want to go into a special program that they have? We also want to emphasize the idea of a first career. Our adolescents, our teens have enough pressure on them. We do not need to ask them to figure out what they want to do for the rest of
032their lives while they're in high school, right? We want them to know, "Hey, I'm pretty passionate and interested in this. How can I make a career out of it?" And we give them the process. We want them to take away the process, not try to have it all figured out. We want them to learn, explore, plan, know how to set goals, know how to make connections, know how to research programs that are going to support them. So, they can do this over and over again. However many times they want to change that career, right? So, if they get two years down the line, they're like, "I got this. I know how to do it." Finally, experience over exposure. In our community, I want to make sure that our students just don't hear about college. They
033don't just hear about careers. They actually get to experience them cuz I'm not convinced that every student will get that opportunity unless we give it to them. So, for me, that seeing and feeling over just hearing about things is very important. So, I'm going to take you a little bit into some of the areas of that pace framework. And I I think I'm going to cover three of them tonight. The first one is having an on-campus college experience before they leave us. The other one is having an on-site career visit before they leave us. So, we were able to do this out of our future ready Fenton Day. That's the day where we have all of our ELs testing for the state mandated ACCESS testing. We needed a great environment for them to test. We
034wanted to do it all in one day so they weren't we weren't pulling them out of all their classes, doing it over multiple days, sometimes weeks. And that opened the door for us on the college and career readiness side to say, "I got this. I know what we're going to do with them." >> [laughter] >> Right? We got the buses lined up. We reached out to all of our partners and we said, "Can you take our students and can we bring groups of students to your campuses and to your sites?" They said, "Sure." And we chose freshman year for a specific reason. We want our freshmen to understand that college is an option for them, right? Sometimes our kids think, "Oh, maybe I'm not going to be able to afford that." There are affordability programs
035in our colleges that are available to our students. Our college and career counselor talks to them before they go leave for the visits. On campus, the colleges talk to them about free tuition, all of the programs that they have available to them. And then on the and then they also, you know, that's it. Affordability. Oh, and then we want them to understand the expectations sooner, right? They're going to look at a GPA. You Oh, I like what I'm experiencing here. I want to do it. Well, I better get good grades, right? So, they get to understand the expectations a little sooner. With the career sites, you're going to see in a moment and I'll actually um work through these career sites. Most of them are post-secondary education or training facilities or organizations. Most good careers
036require training, some sort of post-secondary learning. Most require some college. So, we want them to understand. So, we have DuPage County JATC. That's the apprenticeship training center, right? We have Columbia College of the Arts. We have the US District Court, which isn't necessarily a um post-secondary site, but they get to see lawyers in action and and see professionals in the field. So, after they came back, we were able to talk to some of the students and I'm going to let you listen to what they had to say about this day themselves. >> [music] >> my name is Matthew and today I went to Dominican and it was my first time going to a college. Hi, my name is Jacob Gender. And I'm Alberto and we're sophomores. We went to the Loyola School of Communications. Hello,
037my name is Sophia. My name is Camila. We are freshmen here at Fenton and we both attended North Central College. What stood out to me the most is the small class sizes which were around 17 students per teacher. Which was super small compared to what what what I've heard about which was big halls and uh a lot of students packed into one place with only one professor which it it would make you get like lost in the mix. My favorite part of the experience is learning about all the new opportunities such as internships, clubs, and knowing I can pursue sports I did in high school in college. My favorite part of the experience was that overall we got to sit through an actual college class and the teacher was actually treating us like college students
038and we got to see a real classroom and see how everything works and we even got to like talk to real students and talk about how they're really going through those experiences. And then the lecture we got in that class was about marketing and investing and that really really inspired me to go to college cuz like that really just boosted something in me that showed that I want to go to college, you know? Attending North Central College um only confirmed my idea of attending a four-year college, how to apply for scholarships, continue taking business courses here at Fenton, um as well as continuing to try to get good grades. So, I thought college was going to be a lot more boring like just sitting in a big classroom with like a lot of people, like
039hundreds of people. But this was more a small classroom with a lot of like TVs and visuals. There was only 10 people and the professor made the class very engaging, very fun even for us like we aren't regulars at the college, obviously, but we got to like participate. We got to engage with other college students. So, I thought it was a really fun experience. Uh it def- it definitely did because I thought that it would be super scary, but turns out that everyone was super welcoming and super nice. So. Do you see yourself being there? Yeah. >> [music] [music] >> So, I think they had a nice day. Um we were able to align the career visits to the school links that our students set their goals in school links. So, we were able to
040personalize that a little bit for them, too. So, it was something they were actually um aligned to some of their interests. So, another part of our pace framework is that our students will attend a career fair and a college fair before they leave and they'll also have an opportunity to hear from our alumni through either alumni panels or alumni speakers. So, we had a career week back in um February. How was it now? Yeah, February is a big month. Um that was February 5th, the future ready Fenton Day and this was at the end of February and we brought the real world into Fenton. We had over 50 organizations at our career fair and we had over 30 professionals from a variety of industries speak with our students. Um we had a I would say
041about more than half of those career speakers were alumni, which was great. It was nice to see them back. We had some Fenton families, Kate's sister came and talked about interior design. We had some other teacher siblings in um in the building and we had a parent talking about cybersecurity and some of our other community partners. We had 600 over 600 students attend the career fair, which was fantastic. It did help that um part of the pace framework is that all of our sophomores will attend through their English two class. So, our English two teachers had a great assignment for them. Um for our career spotlight series, 175 individual students participated, but then 30 plus teachers brought their entire classes down. So, those were just the students who signed up. So, you know, I can
042probably get those raw numbers for you, but it was pretty big. Um, 98% of the students reported learning about careers or pathways they did not previously know about. There was other really great data from the feedback we asked from students, but the one feedback that stood out to me, and I keep hearing it over and over every time we bring alumni back, they all say to me, almost in exact words, "I wish they had this when I was here." And it's great feedback, and it just validates the work that we're doing. The last part of the piece framework I want to highlight is the raising awareness of career aligned coursework. So, in our junior year, we ask that students take a close look at their career interest, and they seek to sign up for an
043advanced course that aligns to that. Because when we get into advanced coursework, that's where we get authentic learning, maybe an authentic college experience because they're in an AP, or they're in an internship experience work-based learning, maybe they're doing a project with mentors, maybe they're going on more site visits and seeing what the real world industry looks like in that field. But, those tend to happen in advanced courses. So, we really want students to know the pathways and how to get to those advanced um, courses. So, we did a little work in SchoolLinks to make sure that there's some guidance in there for them, and they can see the pathways and all the courses that are aligned to that. And we're also working on creating a video series. We did, um, contract out with a video
044with a video company called Green Room Productions. They're doing a great job. Um, and I think I picked the right one to share with you today, um, because it's kind of the theme of the night. I picked the fine and performing arts one to share with all of you, um, just so you can get a taste of what those videos are going to be like. We can share this with families as they come in as incoming ninth graders, so they really understand what kind of authentic experiences we have in our pathways. So, I'm going to show you that video right now. In the fine and performing arts program, we offer drama and literary arts, music, and studio art. We try to keep our students as career-focused [music] and college-focused as possible. So, the way that
045we've structured all of our classes is that you've got the introduction course, level two, and then we feed all of our kids as quickly as possible into getting into the AP advanced placement courses [music] so that they can start earning college credit. When we do improv, it's a lot of thinking on our feet, [music] which is a really great skill for anything you do. But then also, when we're learning a scene and we're running lines over and over again and fixing blocking, it's I think it's a really important skill to be able to focus on something and work on it and work [music] on it until it's perfect, and be able to find new ways to improve. I want to be um, a teacher, and I think that this really helps me develop teaching skills
046just because you work a lot with other people, and not only do you get taught things, but you're also able to teach other people things, and I think that's really rewarding. I want to go into an accelerated lawyer program, which I know will be very demanding. So, I know like that uh, directly my AP 2D art like time management can directly correlate and transfer [music] into me going into my accelerated lawyer program because you are the one who's structuring out how long it takes you to do your pieces. I think that being involved in the fine and performing arts can prep you to be in absolutely any [music] career. Leadership skills, collaboration skills, those things are applicable in any field that they choose to go into, any major they choose to go into. Auditory skills,
047you've got visual skills, [music] you've got motor skills. You're combining all that, so your brain is on fire. So, it helps them in a [music] ton of their other classes. I tend to see those kids as being on time and present every single day. And what employer [music] doesn't want to hire somebody who's on time and present every single day? We do art critiques with a whole class, so we present our artwork [music] to everyone. It's very important that you also get criticism in your work, otherwise you're not going to be able to grow if only yourself is judging the artwork cuz many times you won't see what other people can see. Some of the field trips do include like going out and performing, and also being able to listen to other bands perform. So,
048I think that there is a lot of growth opportunity from being able to listen to other people play. We have gone to Disney, San Antonio, Texas, New Orleans, New York, California, [music] and that gives the students to kind of see how music is involved outside of the world of Fenton High School. So, there's a lot of opportunities to get involved in the extracurriculars in the fine and performing [music] arts. We're going to the Shakespeare Theater in Chicago, and we're going to see Much Ado About Nothing, which is so cool cuz it's such a cool theater, and it's a play that we've been studying. We were doing scenes from it, so it's I'm really excited to see how we interpreted it versus how they're going to interpret it. It's so exciting to see who they become
049and the tools that they pick up and that self-confidence and that self-reliance and that and that I can do this, you know, that belief in themselves. I see I see that happen all the time. When I look at my current and former students, they are the leaders of the building, and they are the leaders [music] in their fields out in the real world. A little bit better than my video from earlier in the presentation. >> [laughter] >> Um, but they really did a nice job, and um, we'll eventually have one of these in every one of the areas. They should be done by next fall. Um, we were able to see the business and finance one. It was just as good. Um, so we're hoping that helps inform our community a little bit better about
050the good work we're doing here. Um, I'm the last two items are just kind of looking forward, and um, to recognize the partnerships that this kind of work takes, right? We have gone in the last four years from about 40, 50 really good partners, and our database of partners are 350 plus at this point, and they all contribute in different ways, right? Sometimes they welcome kids for tours on site, or they come and speak to our classes, some donate money, um, some service mentors in our incubator program. But, honestly, the most intensive type of giving that our partners do are the ones that are internship mentors. They take our students four days a week, couple of hours a day, into their workplace, and they help students understand what a professional setting is really like. And
051um, we've been grateful for them, so we're going to honor them on April 30th at 1:45 here in the arc. You are all welcome to come. Our students are going to be sharing some of their stories, the mentors will be talking about their experiences as well. We'll have a little pizza, and um, just celebrate the great work that our partners bring to the table. Um, so, please, if you're available, just swing on by. The other thing we'd like to invite you to is our incubator pitch night. Um, I think a few of you came last year. Our students um, have been creating their own small businesses in our incubator program. Our young entrepreneurs are going to present on March 8th from at 5:30. I I think there's like a fair beforehand. I know there's a
052fair beforehand, so I think they start presenting at about 6:30. Um, but we'd love to have you there to support our students. Um, I just want to end by saying thank you for the support in this type of work. I really do think it's the ticket to brighter futures for our kids. The more that they know about the opportunities available to them and how to get there, I think it can change lives. So, I really appreciate all of the support from the Board of Education. Thank you. Did you mean May 8th? Oh, I did. >> [laughter] >> Sorry. That was a quick last-minute addition, and I screwed it up. Um, but we were just talking about did we we should make sure we invite you to that. I'm so sorry. Um, but yes, it's May
0538th. Of course. That's what I get for being last-minute on that one. Um, any questions? >> No, I do stand corrected. The fun's not over. That's right. Wasn't that a good session? Okay, good. I'm so glad you enjoyed it. All right. Well, thank you so much. Okay. Thank you. >> [applause] >> Okay. Um, I'm going to talk just a little bit about our um, summer support for teachers who are continuing work on curriculum and coming in for different trainings and meetings that we have in the summer. So, this is a request every year that we make of the board. Um, I made it last year, but just to give you a heads-up about what is coming next month. Um, for curriculum hours, so teachers will put in a request if they are a new teacher
054of a course, so they're teaching something for the first time, or if we have a new course that's running and they need to continue working on course development. They might put in if there's a new textbook for a course, or if there's a major course revision that needs to happen. So, for those reasons, teachers would submit for curriculum hours, and that's so that they can continue whatever work they're doing over the summer. And as somebody who taught for 18 years before taking this job, I can tell you that they're working a lot more than the hours they're putting in for. So, this is just a small way that we can support them over the summer. Um, and then for workshop hours, we uh, have a couple of things that we may be calling teachers in
055for meetings about, but the main summer training is going to be um, on AI in the classroom, and we are going to have LTC, which is a nonprofit uh, tech company who will be coming in to provide those trainings. So, that is what that will cover. So, I don't know if there are any questions about any of that. Appreciate the uh, focus in the training with AI to better develop how to use that new technology. Mhm. Just mentioning this earlier that new technology is great. But not before you know how you're going to use it. Yeah, and to build on that a little bit, we've been doing a lot of work on AI this year uh school year and I think next month I'll be presenting a little bit about what we've been working on
056this year. Okay. G- Oh, sorry. Do you want No, yeah, I'll keep going. Yeah, to give back um on what Steph just did. Um again, this is something that we request every year. We'll be requesting this just like summer curriculum hours uh next month, but just to give you a preview. So, we call this extended employment, but very much like curriculum work um for more of our specialists, there's still work that needs to be done over the summer to get ready for the next school year or even to uh finish out this school year. So, on the left you'll see um what we're requesting for extended employment. So, for example, counselors come in, they do credit checks. Or if students were in summer school, they update make sure their schedule's ready for the next year.
057The nurse and health assistant come in and they get all of the files ready, start getting, you know, all of that. Um EL Our EL coordinator often meets with new families, takes a look to make sure that all of our EL students are getting EL um services within their schedule for next year. And our internship coordinators are meeting with businesses, making sure everything's set up. So, um those are for per diem. So, it's up to 56 days um for all of the uh student services listed there. Uh they don't always use all of those. Just so you know, this is a reduction of about of that request of about 3 days from last year um due to reductions in positions. Summer maintenance hours are um the same, although we do this by the hour. These
058are for courses that are mostly lab based and so there's a lot of making sure that they have gone through their inventory, cleaning up the labs, doing some work on, you know, machines in the auto lab, things that you just can't do during the school year. So, in um those areas it's up to 142 hours we're requesting. That is a significant um reduction from last year, which was up over 300 because of science with everything that was going on in the STEM wing. So, those will be up for um your approval next month. Okay, uh this is just an update for you guys. Uh so, we had uh the insurance committee that we have here, which uh represents all the different unions um as well as administration, um met with our insurance rep from the
059EBC, which is Educational Benefit Cooperative, uh on April 9th to discuss our rates for the upcoming fiscal year. Uh just so you guys are aware, the EBC has about 100 uh school districts that it serves and provides insurance for. Um we did um just so you're aware as well, we we did work with our insurance committee and, you know, explored the the possibility of looking into some other uh cooperatives to see if we could save money that way. Uh we believe we're still in the best situation to, you know, get the best rates uh for Fenton. Um so, these are the rates that came in for PPO, uh 14.2. The rest of the cooperative was had 16.2, so we're lower than the rest of the group. Uh HMO 15.4. Uh HMO for the rest of
060the group was 16.4. And then our dental came in at 6.4. So, uh overall we're pretty pleased um comparatively to the rest of the group, but I mean it is still uh pretty big jump if if if we're being honest compared to what we've seen in in years past. Is this increase just from last year? Yes, sir. Okay. Yes, sir. Uh So, you you So, you first of all, you're in a large you're in a larger group. This This is not just Fenton. >> Right. If we were just Fenton, we would probably get crushed in the market. >> cuz I it's a risk thing. Yeah. Um but nevertheless, the rates my my experience for some of these things says that the increases like this are usually based, you know, some factor of the group as
061a whole plus the individual experience of, you know, Fenton in this case. Mhm. Um I don't know how they weight it, but I you know, it's that's how it's done. >> Yeah, they look at our high costs um claimants that we have, you know, that's part of it. They They also things like GLPs, you know, the use of those that went into the HMO. Uh so, that's increased it as well. >> something there were three three high cost cases here but what I remember seeing. But um I don't know how much flexibility you have, but I've been similar situations back when I, you know, before I you know, retired. Wait, can you talk into your mic? Oh, all right. Yeah, I've been in similar situations, you know, before I retired dealing with those insurance costs.
062And I don't know how much flexibility you have, but usually there was some kind of an adjustment made uh to the plan. Um If If we did want to make any adjustments, that would have to be negotiated through the union. >> All right. So, this is all this is all wrapped up in the union contract. >> Yes, sir. Yes, sir. So, any any changes we'd like to make, you know, we have it'd be a process um and we'd have to work with the the union on changing anything in terms of the rate, in terms of what we cover, and and things of that nature. And just so you know, we will ask for board approval later in the meeting as an action item to accept the the next year's rates. Yeah, okay. All right, good
063evening, board. Just want to We had discussed this during the Finance Facility meeting earlier this evening. In addition, this is Some of this information is a a review from our December December 17th board meeting. Uh the the link to that and and is on this slide. But in addition to that, we also presented this information to our entire faculty on Monday. We're We're wanting to make sure that our staff are aware of some of our current and historical financial information and then also bring some of our cost-cutting plans to their attention. And then future uh we will be discussing with them other ways that we can try to continue to get ourselves in a in a strong financial position moving forward short-term as well as long-term and doing that in a collaborative manner. Uh but
064I want to try to go through each of these slides very quickly. There was a request to sort of recap this um as well as tie in some of our our cost-cutting plans moving forward. So, in a brief trying to do a brief summary of a a rather long presentation that was conducted back in December with uh Dr. Rob Grossi as our financial consultant. Um at the end of fiscal year '24, we had a a positive operating fund balance of $24.6 million. At the end of last year, we reduced that operating fund balance from 24.6 to 22.6. Uh so, that in theory is deficit spending. We had through previous board uh presentations from years ago, we understood this to be uh the inevitable reality when when we would take on the STEM wing. We were
065going to pay for the STEM wing through debt certificate payments. Uh it In other words, pay through it through fund balances. Um and then this is our projected budget that we would anticipate uh reducing another three three million dollars of fund balances partially to uh with um expenditures exceeding revenues in addition to the 2.3 plus million dollar debt certificate payment. So, in general, over the next few years with our projections, we are projecting 2 and 1/2 million or 2 and 1/2% revenue increases yearly. That's basically uh based on CPI. In addition with collective bargaining agreements with projected cost increases, etc., we're projecting a 3 and 1/2% expenditure increase year over year. So, doing that understanding that that will only increase our potential deficit spending over the next 5 years. So, we need to uh find
066ways to mitigate and shrink that that difference to to try to get ourselves sort of righted over the next few years. Um This is again from December, a brief uh brief history of sort of the revenue as well as the expenditures that kind of went into play. We gained some nice revenues um during the COVID years with ESSER money as well as CP CPPRT revenue. Um On the flip side, on the expenditure side, we had some larger bucket areas with uh out-of-district tuition, debt debt payments with uh the STEM wing and the the front entrance renovations, salaries benefits, and transportation that um increased our uh expenditures over the the past 3 years pretty significantly. Uh this next slide again is a quick review just showing over the course of from 2018 until recently, uh the
067district had been doing a a relatively solid job of increasing revenues and surpluses into the fund balances. So, as a as a district, as a board, as an administrative team, as as a a collective group, uh for several years we were adding money to our fund balances and last year was the first year in several that we dipped into fund balances to pay for for bills. Um The next slide just shows a sort of the projection of current with which is blue, red being worst case, and green being best sort of best case scenarios of how we could sort of predict future uh surpluses and deficits. If we continue on in our current pace of revenue projections and expenditure projections, our uh surpluses or I'm sorry, our deficits will increase year over year in the
068blue. If revenue starts drying up, property tax freezes, we we under levy, etc. etc. Expenditures increase, we could be in the red. And the goal is to try to get to that green. We know that we have a debt certificate payment of 2.4 million that that is due year over year. That's supposed to be paid out of fund balances. If we can find ways to get our our expenditures a little bit less than revenues year over year, we can get in that green where we're we're under that that debt certificate payment. That's sort of the goal to try to elongate this. And again, this is from the previous presentation. The blue is sort of the projection if we continue on the way we've been going, red being worse. The goal is to find ways to
069get to that green where we're sort of slowing that curve down. We have fund balances to spend. This is a way to continue to provide the best services we can while also elongating that that curve of surpluses. Now getting to the the newer stuff here. We've we've hinted at a few of these things. We again presented this information to the faculty on Monday and then we'll have small group meetings with during lunch periods with the staff to get into to a little bit more granular feedback and and discussions with this. But what we wanted to identify with them that part of our cost-cutting measures right now is what we're calling right-size staffing. We we presented the staffing plan last month for for our our FEA. The the notion of our student enrollment has been steadily
070decreasing and what we've been doing is aligning our our staffing to adjust to the student enrollment. We could certainly make additional staffing cuts beyond that right-size staffing, but what we've presented to you as a board and potentially in the future would be continue to right-size staffing. If we do need to make further adjustments than than that, that would be more of these cost-saving staffing adjustments. The next item was discussing department budgets. If we could find a way to on a general setting decrease department budgets from as high up as the the budgets associated to the school board to the superintendent the district level down to the department level. If we could reduce those by about 5% overall, that could save the district about 270 to 300,000 dollars. In addition, there are some other ancillary spending
071ideas such as what will what we had talked about earlier with an athletic trainer. We currently use a contract service. That's a very expensive plan north of 150,000 dollars a year. If we hire our own athletic trainer with salary and benefits guestimating around 90,000, that would be a 60,000 dollars savings. Out of district tuition, if we can find ways to to keep students that we have historically been sending out of the the the building to service educationally, if we can find a few kids here or there that we can bring back in, that's a district savings. Field trips, if we can be a little bit more efficient and a little bit more selective with field trips, copying, food purchases, travel, transportation, things like that. Those those smaller 10, 20, 30,000 dollar cost savings all together
072add up with the staffing department budgets. We're looking at when hopefully by by July when I present to the board a tentative budget, we will see that our expenditures historically have been increasing by about that 3 and 1/2 to 4 and 1/2% year over year. So anywhere from two two to three million dollar increase from the previous year's budget. I'm hoping to have that number much closer to a million dollars less than that. So looking at somewhere around a million to a million and a half dollar increase where that would be the expenditures would be closer to a 1 and 1/2% increase from the previous year. That's of course trying to to again be fiscally responsible, be mindful, be efficient without making drastic systematic organizational programmatic staffing changes to the district. So board, these these
073two players were resolved. The first one Starbridge asked for professional learning development contract services and purchase agreements that we had. So that that was resolved and then the second one Michael Henry asked for the name of the law firms that provide legal services to the district for the past eight years and both have been resolved. Our next item is consent agenda. Can I have a motion and a second to approve the consent agenda as presented? I'll make that motion. Second. Roll call. White. Yes. Brzezinski. Yes. Miller. Yes. Figueroa. Yes. Goodrich. Abstain. McCollum. Yes. Lewis. Yes. Motion passed. Our next item is Board of Education regular meeting dates. May I have a motion that the Board of Education approve holding regular meetings on the fourth Wednesday of each month unless the day conflicts with a holiday.
074In the case of that conflict, the regular meeting would be held one week earlier. Motion. Any discussion? I'll second. Second. Second, there we go. Any discussion? Roll call. McCollum. Yes. Goodrich. Yes. Miller. Yes. Brzezinski. Yes. White. Yes. Figueroa. Yes. Lewis. Yes. Motion passed. Next item is the the DAOES Board of Directors representative. May I have a motion that the Board of Education approve the resolution to appoint Michelle Papanicolaou Director of Post-Secondary Pathways and Career Tech Education as Fenton's representative for DuPage Area Occupational Education System DAOES as presented. I'll make that motion. I'll second. Roll call. Brzezinski. Yes. Goodrich. Yes. McCollum. Yes. Miller. Yes. White. Yes. Figueroa. Yes. Lewis. Yes. Any discussion? Should have been the other way. Never mind. Motion passed. >> [laughter] >> Next item is health insurance renewal for 2026 27 school year.
075May I have a motion that the Board of Education approve the health insurance premium renewal rate for the 2026-2027 school year as presented? I'll make the motion. Second. Any discussion? Yes. Um I've got a question on the health insurance rate. What's the what's the split between employee and employer in terms of that increase? We have several splits based upon PPO, HMO Illinois, HMO Blue Cross, and then whether or not it's a single or a family plan. So it'll range from 90/10 to 80/85/15. So the total the total the increase is passed on to the employee for their share as well. >> As well as the employer, correct. Roll call. Miller. Yes. White. Yes. Brzezinski. Yes. McCollum. Yes. Figueroa. Yes. Goodrich. Yes. Lewis. Yes. Motion passed. Next item is motion to administrators salary adjustments. May I
076have a motion that the Board of Education authorize the superintendent to make adjustments to the administrative salaries to become effective for the 2026 27 fiscal year. Adjustments are as follows. Administrative salaries for an overall average increase by 4.5%. You need a motion? Yes. All right. One, I'll give it a yes. Second. Any any discussion? Yes. Discussion. Sure. I'm just curious to what the total dollar amount is. If If If we approve that motion, the the total salary total amount would be for next year would be 2.3 million dollars for administrators. It would be a decrease with the staffing the administrative reduction from last year. That would be a decrease in in 68,000 dollars from last from this fiscal year's salary allocation which was 2.4 million. $68,000 is pennies compared to what we need. There are
077times that it's appropriate to strategically utilize debt and where to engage in deficit spending. However, when financial forecasts uh predict expenditures that exceed revenues for the operation of the district, there's a problem. Over the next 5 years, we will exhaust all fund balances. Until we have a balance balanced budget moving forward, I will not support the expenditure of new dollars that are not related to previous pre- previously agreed upon bargaining agreements. I do, however, believe that we should be consulting with our union stakeholders about our financial challenges. Collaboration with this matter will be most beneficial. We need a defined plan to address these challenges and this should have been discussed years ago. It also seems to me that the STEM wing required the acquisition of too much debt for this district to manage. Debt service,
078it seems to me that this board overspent and now you can't balance your budget. These salaries are already high. We already have a large number of administrators. We see millions of dollars going out here. Um this is a problem and we continue to spend and yet we see that the resources are dwindling and will be gone. So. As we stated at other board meetings previously, when prior to the storm water project and the STEM wing, prior boards, this administration, others, they've had many more than a few plus years as far as being in the black with uh regarding our budget. And to pay for those projects, we dipped it was it was we dipped into that fund. That was always part of the plan and intention and to be responsible going forward when we knew
079that there was going to be a decrease in student enrollment over those same years as well as our CP- CPRT that was going down, too. So, it was planned out. It was those things have been addressed multiple times over the past more than a year. And this is not something that that has just come up on the board or the district in the past month or this year. Plans to address this has been in the works for a while now. So, were you aware at that time that we would run into deficit spending and ultimately exhaust all of our funds? No, it's unreasonable to think that any company, business, government agency, or or whatever is always going to be in the black. There are going to be some lean years that we have you have
080to make do with. That's a simply an unrealistic expectation to have in any situation. But how do you address it? How do you A plan was put in place. A plan was discussed. It's always been discussed. And it was noted that when these when we had those extra funds, this wasn't going to last. There was always a need to be responsible regardless of being in the red or the black. It was you always have to be responsible. You know what? I I I I get where we're going with these discussions. I understand it. I was here for some of it, but not all of it. We still have to function. We're working on looking at reductions. We're looking at new ways to bring in money. Some of them may work, some of them may not.
081We still have to continue to operate. We still have to continue to have a staff. We're already looking at staff reduction. What will we reduce in the future? Let's see what our students bring. We're we're working on it and I I hear what everybody's saying. We still have to function. We have decreased the raises this year from last year and we have to do we have to do and some of it isn't good. I understand that. So, we have to do what we have to do and I'm an advocate for all individuals who work in schools and serve our children in our community. However, do we have to provide a 4.5% salary increase on a $150,000 annual salary? This was discussed in executive session and the consensus of the group there was to bring this
082out to a vote today. If you are not in favor of it, sir, by all means vote no. I understand it. It's we're we're each one of seven. If four of us say yes, it's a yes. If four of us say no, it's a no. Then we go back and look at it further. It's it is what it is. I mean, we have to be comparable. I don't want us to be the top. I don't want us to be the bottom. We got to be somewhere in the middle because if we lose good people, how are we going to get new people? That's my feelings. Well, the reality is, so it seems, if we exhaust our fund balance and we have no assets in terms of being able to operate our district, what's the next
083step for our district? A referendum? As we get closer to that point, I think we'll have to address that. Nobody says we're going to decrease. We don't know what CPI is going to be in two, three, four years. We don't know what is else is going to happen and these are projections. Some are good, some are bad. We're going to have to address this on a year-by-year basis in my opinion. That's just my opinion. So then, is it accurate that everyone here I mean, no one wants to work toward preventing the need for a referendum? I think that's what we want to >> That's a separate issue to discuss now if you other than what's in front of us. We're talking about administrative salaries at this at this particular time. You're moving us in that
084direction. That's a separate discussion topic. Roll call. If there are no more comments. Yes. Brudzinski? Yes. Figueroa? Yes. Miller? Yes. Goodrich? Abstain. Mccullough? No. Lewis? Yes. Motion passed. The next item is motion to approve the 2026-27 staff salary adjustments for at-will and bus drivers. May I have a motion that the Board of Education approve the 2026-27 fiscal year salary adjustments for at-will 4% and bus drivers 2.9% increase. Any discussion? Yes. It is absolutely wrong to propose a 4.5% increase for administrators and what's the amount on the bus drivers? 2.9. >> 2.9. So, looking at the dollars spent, how much how many dollars are being spent on increasing administrators versus how many dollars are being spent on at-will and uh bus dri- at-will and bus drivers? The increase it's a decrease for administrators. If if you
085recall, we are cutting an administrator. So, we have a with the percentage increase for administrators, it's a reduction in in >> 68. >> Right. Right. 68. Okay. And if you add benefits, it's over 80,000, I believe. >> Okay. But we're 80,000's Yeah, I understand. >> Not a lot. So, there's no There's no proposed cuts for at-will. It's a smaller group. Part of that 4.5% was as Doug mentioned is the reduction of an administrator and other individuals, administrators, that are taking on extra work and that was just approved. So, how much how many dollars are going how many new dollars are going to the at-will and bus drivers? The at-will will be $50,000 of additional money going to at-will with with no staff reduction plan and at this time. And the bus drivers will be an
086additional $31,000 with again no no plan of reduction in in staffing at this time. So, Okay. Do you still remember those are part-timers? They are no full-time. The bus drivers. Is my un- Yeah, the bus drivers. Is my understanding. Am I wrong wrong or right? >> They're part-time. The the vast majority are. There are a few that do qualify for for benefits because they they meet the the criteria. We've This is probably the lowest increase. We've done a We've had We've done higher raises for them in the past years because keeping bus drivers is been a real challenge for for many districts. And this year is just at 2.9. It's just where we at. And What's the rationale for the the difference between one group of employees versus another and not just making it the
087same for everybody based on CPI or some other metric? I I know we talked about this last meeting and I know you you were gone. Because we had bumped both of the bus drivers the last couple of years to get them comparable, it was decided that they're there and they really already did right by them and that was really just maintaining. And the staff employees, it was the opposite. So there was some discussion in the executive session last meeting. I know you were you're out on that. The and the 2.9 is really CPI. So that's where how we came up with that number. Roll call. I didn't get a motion or a second. Motion. Oh. Okay. Can I get a motion and a second? I motion. Second. Well, all right. Thank you, Karen. Roll call.
088McCalla. No. Goodrich. Abstain. Miller. Yes. Figueroa. Yes. Rudzinski. Yes. White. Yes. Lewis. Yes. Motion passed. Next item is disposal list. May I have a motion that the Board of Education approves the disposal list as presented? I'll make the motion. >> Second. Any discussion? Some of the disposal list there are we we're going to try and sell or whatever we can of this and recoup recoup a little bit. I know it won't be a lot, but not all of it is junk, right? We're going to do some sales where we can? Correct. >> I noticed there was a lot of stuff marked for disposal, so I had I had the same kind of question he did. So but anyway, whatever you can do. Yes, we we adhere to to the state's rules in regarding disposal. If
089anything is considered damaged or it has no monetary value or we will we put on disposal list and then we we toss. If we can scrap it or if we can donate it and you right. Got it. Roll call. Goodrich. Yes. Rudzinski. Yes. White. Yes. Figueroa. Yes. Miller. Yes. >> McCalla. Yes. Lewis. Yes. Motion passed. Next item is the SMPG galvanized piping replacement bid and alternative bid. May I have a motion that the Board of Education approves both the base bid of $101,000 $300 and the alternative bid of $55,300 totaling $156,600 from Midwest Mechanical for the plumbing system upgrades as presented? Motion. Second. Any discussion? Just clarification, we are going [clears throat] to get $50,000 back to this from the matching for the initial. Yes, from the state for the >> didn't see it earlier.
090I mean we're actually getting a a matching grant and saving $50,000. Correct. All right. So I just want to make sure that's all. So start. Roll call. Miller. Yes. McCalla. No. Goodrich. Yes. Figueroa. Yes. Rudzinski. Yes. White. >> Yes. Lewis. Yeah. Yes. Motion passed. Does anyone have any committee reports? Mike, would you like to report on the foundation or should I? Go right ahead. All right. The foundation did finally meet. Our next meeting is going to be 28 May. We did approve two small grants for $3,500. We're sending in about $50,000 $58,000 to use over the next year year and a half. There are some fixed funds that become available every year from past savings and then we're still unsure what's going to happen with Subaru. So really that's the report from the foundation. Next
091meeting is May 28. For the finance facility We had a committee meeting earlier today where we talked about the health and life safety survey amendment plan, budget updates, the energy savings program updates, the athletic trainers, trying to save money there where we can, facility rentals, of course the galvanized piping update, the main gym padding wall, and then another update on the railroad fencing. Just a quick update from NATSIC. There was a meeting. They was a presentation on a program called Lasso, which is mainly for elementary age students. Also they announced that there will be two interim executive directors next year as the current executive director resigned at the end of end of the school year. So that will be a combined effort that effort there that was approved. Other than that, there's a going to
092be some changes in in the business office there also that will be confirmed next month. But that was the NATSIC meeting. No more and new No, there's a land Sorry, there's a land meeting Friday, which I'm eagerly looking forward to. Next meeting the next board meeting new business. The next scheduled Board of Education meeting is Wednesday, May 27th, 2026 at 7:00 p.m. Graduation for the class of 2026 is Thursday, May 21st at 7:00 p.m. IASB and the Board of Education workshop will be Wednesday, May the 6th, 2026 at 7:00 p.m. May I have a motion and a second to go into closed session for the following. A. Five Illinois CS 120/2 C1. The appointment, employment, compensation, discipline, performance, or dismissal of specific employees of Fenton School District 100. Two. Five Illinois CS 120/2 C2. Collective
093negotiating matters between the public body and its employees or their representatives or deliberations concerning salary schedules for one or more classes of employees. Three. Five Illinois CS 120 two C9. Student disciplinary cases. Four. Five Illinois CS 120 /2 C10. The placement of individual students in special education programs and other matters relating to individual students. Five. Five Illinois CS 120/2 C11. Litigation when an action against affecting or on behalf of the particular public body has been filed and is pending before court or administrative tribunal or when the public body finds that an action is probable or imminent, in which case the basis for the finding shall be recorded and entered into the minutes of the closed meeting. Was that you, Miller? Yes. Roll call. Goodrich. Yes. McCalla. Yes. Miller. Yes. Figueroa. Yes. Rudzinski. Yes. White. Yes.
094>> Lewis. Yes. We are in closed session. There will be no decisions made actions taken after closed session. >> Mhm. >> A motion and a second to go back into open session. Motion. Second. Roll call. Yes. Motion passed. We're back in open session. May I have a motion and a second to adjourn? All in favor say "Aye." Aye. Aye. Aye.