001cultivate successful passionate learners to the rigor relevance in relationships our belief statements successful passionate learners thrive when we champion innovative teaching and engage learning school at home collaborate effectively we provide a safe secure and caring environment we infuse social emotional learning into academics and culture diversity empowers our learning community to prepare students to fulfill their civic duties responsibilities the bison way students and adults at benton high school create a safe caring and pathetic 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 thank you james let's look at recognitions good evening i'd like to introduce anna maicor if you could come forward please anna [Applause] so late last school year anna competed in the encore international
002music competition which is based in europe and consists of more than 500 judges who are professional musicians of various instruments anna was awarded third third prize in the wins and percussion category for participants 18 and younger she was among 27 others in the world yes i said in the world who qualified for a first prize second prize or third prize that's worth you may also remember that last month she was one of the students who earned a certificate of superior writing in the national council of teachers of english achievement awards she has a busy schedule and couldn't attend last month but i hear she has a plan to thank a few people along the way so ann if you don't mind just share a few words with our board um hello um first off i
003would like to thank everybody in this room for having me here i really feel the support and i'm very grateful to be here i'd like to start off with thanking my band's director mr george he's been my band director since freshman year and i'm so grateful for everything he's taught me he really helped me become the musician i am today and i could not have done it without him um and regarding my writing accomplishment i'd also like to thank my english teacher mr oakson he really his class really inspired me to grow and flourish as a writer which has really been a major part of my success with that finally i would like to thank my parents thank you so much for being there for me literally since day one you guys always support me
004no matter how crazy my dreams seem and i'm feeling very very blessed for all of your unconditional love and support i wouldn't be the woman i am today without you guys thank you so much thank you anna we're gonna take a picture over here uh in front of the board if you don't mind is [Music] okay what are you doing i know we really should take pictures without mass it's just my personal vote congratulations i'd like to have her play for us someday i would love that too she she played for the staff on opening day and she's beautiful yeah it was really beautiful and she told the story with it and everything she's really talented i would love to hear that yeah yeah thanks sam yep uh the check out there oh that's it
005okay uh and uh so do we have a public comments tonight any of the comments yes we have one mr marshall suvak is this on yes yes uh thank you my name is marshall subac i reside in wooddale i just came here for a three short comments first one i'd like to thank the board and mr ontango for allowing me to participate in the strategic planning 2.0 it was a it was a very great experience and appreciated the opportunity to do that secondly i'd like to thank paul wiedemann for his uh many years of service on the board it's my understanding he might not be on the board after tonight but uh really appreciate your dedication to the community you've done a lot of great things for fenton high school and hopefully they have a
006cake for you at the at the end here last thing i want to talk about is the there's been some discussions about a possible referendum and i just want to ask the board before you make a decision on putting a referendum on a ballot to make sure you're asking a lot of questions and taking your time and making this decision right now the bensonville wooddow community is kind of at a crossroads there's a lot of redevelopment going on right now in mohawk manor mohawk terrace we're losing a lot of residential homes because of redevelopment with that redevelopment you're going to be potentially losing students we don't know what the student population is going to be in the next couple years you're also going to be gaining tax base because the price that the developers paid
007for the land is going to raise the assessed value which is going to put more money into the fenton coffers to pay for expenses i'm not here saying the school doesn't need to be upgraded all the students deserve state-of-the-art facilities my oldest daughter got the benefit of the renovations that were done to the school which were great but those were all paid for with operating funds and with the reserve funds the other issue with a referendum is people in the public they're still struggling from the pandemic uh it's not over yet and a lot of people have a lot of economic hardship as a result of that and i just ask yourself is now the right time to put additional tax burden on the people the residents of wooddale and bensonville at this time we
008have higher costs coming in we're going to higher electric costs gas costs food costs all these costs are going up and add one more layer of a higher tax bill on residents is going to be tough we also have a high population in bensonville and wooddale that actually rent and i can assure you for people who rent if their landlord's taxes go up that gets passed through to the residents those residents are some of our families in bensonville so we're going to be hurting those same people and possibly higher rents so i've supported every referendum for the library district for the fire district i don't know if i'd be on board for a fen referendum at this time and this is a person who's fairly involved with the community and understands the community so i'm
009just asking you to go slow the last thing i want to remind you a previous board of yours passed a i believe it was a seven or five phase plan for the redevelopment of the school so i don't know if this is the plan you guys are talking about rekindling or if this is a new plan but it was at least look at that plan and see if that's still viable to do for renovations thank you okay thanks marshall let's see next is our informational items and that would be james yes absolutely we have a presenter here today to talk about our district financial audit mr martin okay i'd like to introduce mr matt barron from waterbuck and amen the district's auditing firm as i mentioned in the memo in your board packet illinois school
010districts are required by state law to conduct an annual audit using governmental auditing auditing standards this means that an independent auditor must look at the books records of the district and evaluate whether internal controls have been established and followed and whether the school district has complied with the numerous regulations and grant requirements imposed by various state and federal agencies so uh with that being said i'm going to turn it over to mr matt barron to review the uh audit results from the 2020-21 school year thanks bruce um i'm matt baran and the partner oversee your audit again this year thanks for having me here tonight i'm here to present on this 6 30 20 21 audit as far as how my presentations go i like to keep it at a high level for us to
011go through so hit the high points but please at any point in time if you have any questions please feel free to answer them as we go or ask them as we go and i can answer them along the way we don't have to wait until the end of the presentation so as far as what the audit is and what we do we start off we come out we do preliminary fieldwork procedures so during that we do walk-throughs of your internal controls we review your payroll your significant internal control uh cycles including payroll student activities cash receipts cash disbursements and each of those to be able to go through and assess that there's an adequate internal control framework in place from there if we're able to provide any recommendations if we see any issues along
012the way second we go through we review during field work the numbers within your audit report to make sure that they are what they say they are and then third we go through a report writing phase to make sure that this audit report is in compliance with all government accounting standards and then we come here today to present upon what our findings are so as far as that goes we're going to start with the audit report we'll walk through it and i'll take you through the specific pages of what uh what i find is the highlights so a few pages in on what is called page one it has the lotterbox and eamon letterhead on it this is the opinion page this is the main thing that you're getting from us as your auditors is
013this opinion page we gave the district a modified opinion again this year what that modified opinion is saying is that this audit report is on a cash basis um typical government accounting standards say for modified accrual basis and this is what these are on cache base so we have to modify our opinion for that as far as everything else goes there is no other modifications and so what we are saying with that this auto report is in compliance with all other government accounting standards other than that the numbers within the support are what they say they are and we have an adequate internal control framework in place flipping forward from there two pages up to page four this is the start of the management discussion and analysis what this section is it's the high level
014narrative summary of what happened within the district during the year i see some of us are looking in the skinny document there's two on this is the big thick one the audit report the other one is the management letter that we'll get to next like i said the md a is the narrative summary so rather than flipping through all 100 pages in here you can go in here and read at a high level what it is that happened during the at the district and since i'm covering that within my presentation let's flip on past this whole section let's get to the actual financials at page 16. on page 16 this is your balance sheet for all your funds that you budget for so when you put together the budget this is the funds that you're
015looking at and caring about as far as what we're going to look at here today the far right hand column our totals second number up from the bottom we have a total fund balance of 27.7 million our main operating fund is our general fund it's at 25.5 million so how did we do this year let's go forward to page 18. [Applause] on page 18 far right hand side is our totals again third number up from the bottom it says we have a total increase during the year of 2.6 million across all of the funds how this happened during the year our general fund is our main driver again we had a total increase this year of 2.2 million through covet and through what had happened during the year with remote learning ultimately the revenues came
016in a little bit higher with pro the taxes that came through and grants during the year to allow for a slightly over budget of about 800 000 on the revenue side expenditures were then held under budget by about 1.2 million resulting in this 2.2 million dollar increase as far as from here our fund balance of 25.5 million when we compare that back to our expenses i always take out those on behalf payments because those happen at the state are not actually controlled here by the district when we compare our expenditures back to our fund balance we're at 94 percent of our expenses versus our fund balance this is an adequate amount for maintaining our day-to-day operations so a healthy fund balance as far as our day-to-day operations go here at the district any questions about
017the audit report before we talk about the management letter or anything else so the skinnier of the documents that some of you were looking at previously that was the management letter so what the management letter is this is what we include to give to the manage to the board to management as far as other recommendations that we identified during the audit so how this report is typically broke up is into two parts one being if there's any current recommendations so would be any new management letter comments that we've provided and then second is prior recommendations so any past management letters that we gave last year we want to do an update on it for this year so as you can see there's no current recommendation section so we had no new management letter comments this
018year as far as the past ones go there were three that we had in the prior year two of which have been implemented one funds over budget we didn't have any funds that went over budget this year and secondly we had helped implement a new gasb standard a new accounting standard into your auto report the only one that is still outstanding is a heads up about a new government accounting standard coming in play to next year as it relates to leases so as you can see with that i have no internal control recommendations there are other best practices as far as what we identified during the audit so as you with that being said it was a very clean audit from what we what we reviewed we had no internal control findings of which that
019needed to be corrected any questions about the audit any questions anybody look the only thing we have outstanding isn't uh effective until next year so we'll be ready for it right we and we hope that we'll get that for you that's that's our job we consider that to be our job is to work with uh work with bruce to be able to implement it the joys of gadsby yes thank you um just before i leave the stand we want to thank bruce and his whole team for all their hard work with our with the audit prep it was another complete package when we showed up all of our questions were answered along the way in a timely manner for us to issue the report again on time this year so i just want to commend
020him with all his hard work and we really appreciate working together thank you let's go next to the financial projection good job good evening um so uh i've been asked to do an analysis of the district's financial condition um this presentation be broken down into two parts one is going to be a 10 year history of the district financially and the second is going to be projections over the next five years based on work that myself and bruce have put together so to begin with this graph represents uh total revenues all funds in the district over the past 10 years and total adjusted expenditures over the past 10 years which include all expenditures other than capital expenditures that are over seven hundred thousand dollars over the past ten years revenues in the district have grown
021at a rate of 1.3 percent i work with many school districts in illinois and i could tell you that that 10-year growth rate is one of the lowest of any school district in the state so the district has had a unique challenge because most districts have seen large growth especially those that are dependent on state revenues because state funding has grown so significantly you have a unique challenge of having to navigate your finances through this 10-year low growth period on the positive side the district has been able to maintain expenditure growth at a level that is even below that 1.3 percent so you could see that revenues have really been flat in 2021 although they were artificially low a little bit because the cost to operate school last year was a little bit less because
022the kids were learning virtually you could see that your expenditures in 2021 were pretty much equal to what you were spending eight years ago so that that's also an another uh anomaly that uh you know the one is a bad anomaly that your revenues are low the one is a real positive anomaly that you've been able to despite that low revenue growth keep your expenditure growth below that level and this is uh a depiction of the revenues versus expenditures the uh the horizontal axis that's at zero that's the balanced budget and you can see that for the past four years the district has run surpluses uh aggregating uh over the 10 years of 7.8 million dollars and consequently uh again despite the 1.3 growth in revenues the district has actually been able to increase its
023fund balance reserves as matt mentioned you've ended the fiscal year with about 27.8 million dollars all funds in the bank that compares to just under 25 million dollars in 2012. so the district has done a great job of of not only growing fund balances during this 10-year period of low revenue growth but you've also used fund balance reserves to pay for a lot of capital projects so that's quite an accomplishment in terms of financial projections major assumptions on the revenue side our real estate taxes are going to grow at the rate of inflation which we know will be 1.4 percent for this year's tax levy and we're projecting inflation to be higher most economists think it's going to be a one-year blip but we're projecting four percent next year that two percent thereafter uh general
024state aid uh revenues will be flat as they always are basically your state and revenue and federal revenues are flat with the exception of that you are going to be getting a couple million dollars worth of s or grant dollars which are to be used for covet related expenditures but the district will have expenditures to offset those revenues in aggregate we're projecting revenue growth to be a little bit higher than your historical trends at two percent and that's primarily because we're anticipating the one year blip in inflation this is a breakdown of your s or grant revenues and when the money has to be spent and most of this money is contained within bruce's budget for this year and it'll be a part of next year's budget as well major expenditure assumptions on the expenditure
025side most expenditures will go back to pre-covert levels and that's an important thing all school districts had had lower than expected like the auditor said we ended up 1.2 million or so below budget on the expenditures because you know at the time of the budget no one anticipated a full year or close to a full year worth of virtual learning um so so those types of expenditures are gonna that have been that were suppressed are gonna go back to historical levels which which would which will represent a large bump in the current year base salaries are projected to increase three and a half percent over the next five years the district is projected to receive savings from retirement retirements over the next four years as described in the bullet point employee benefits increasing five percent
026a year they were four percent last year but there's some uh analysts that think that that number is going to start trending up industry wide um we have built in 400 000 annually for major capital expenditures which would mostly be in the line of technology purchases you know smaller purchases like that and minor repairs in the buildings uh i talked about the ester dollars putting it all together we're projecting expenditures to increase about eight and a half percent in fiscal year 2022 and then grow at an average rate of two and a half percent thereafter continuing on the projected annual operating uh the operating surplus and deficit graph we added the five-year projection and you could see that we are anticipating based on those assumptions that the district will run balance surplus budgets each of
027the next five years again quite an accomplishment if the district does accomplish that it will be nine years consecutively that you'll have surpluses so i would say that based on the assumptions that exist right now the district's financial condition is going to be stable and slightly improving and the district has proven at least for the past 10 years that it has the ability to remain solvent and fiscally strong on its own it hasn't it hasn't uh it had to be on its own because it didn't get a lot of revenue growth uh the only thing that i see that could buckle uh this future trend is something that is uncontrollable by the district meaning something that would come from springfield unforeseen that the district can't control in terms of a pension shift or something like
028that projected fund balances because of the slight surpluses will grow slightly to about 30 million dollars by 2026. and again looking at this graph it's a it's a an incredibly stable um fun balance for for an entire 15-year period so with that i would like to see if there's any questions or open up the questions anybody okay thank you thank you thank you everybody uh we go next to our strategic plan 2.0 all right sorry about that as you all know we completed our strategic plan initiative last week and later on uh at this meeting at the action item we will recommend that the board approve the strategic plan 2.0 in summary there were a total of four meetings three hours long it started in september i can't believe is already the end of october
029we got it done there were 38 members of on the committee the the committee was a cross section of our district which included students staff parents board members and administrators we are sincerely grateful i see john aguilar over there uh for the committee because the strategic plan is important i cannot tell you how much uh stress that enough it is important the strategic plan is our roadmap for the next three years it outlines our district mission the mission belief secret to success greatness uh greatness uh indicators and goals um an action plan later on uh we'll discuss that again thank you next slide uh there's a great picture of that of our committee there was also names there did there was that visible gym of all the individuals okay great i did uh one of
030my homework was to finalize the greatness indicator if you go back to that gym right there this was recommended uh to the committee um and we reviewed this and we're gonna keep it as recommended by the committee to keep this greatness indicators okay so there's nothing changed there that was my homework to present to you to the board via dr porto next slide what are the next steps the board must approve it later on this uh evening uh that would be the recommendation from the administrators the administrators will create ac uh action plans next semester and roll it out august 2021 so 2022 i apologize so the administrators have a lot to work to do next semester to create those action plans and to implement it next up is okay community engagement committee as you
031know we are facilitating this uh meetings uh with eos sullivan the community engagement committee purpose is to help determine the pathway forward for fenton high school the committee will review options and make recommendations to address the district's challenges we had one last week fenton administrators and e.o sullivan consulting are facilitating these meetings there are a total of five meetings we had our initial meeting on october 14th the agenda for the meeting on october 14th included introduction a committee presentation discussion feedback form which is critical so we have something in writing from uh folks who uh from the committee and the tour of the building you can i cannot stress how important the tour of the building is for our parents our community members just to really see for their own eyes the building shout out
032to john rosinski for attending that that meeting next slide here are um the names of uh the committee members they are i believe 23 is that accurate 23 um community members there in the committee which i think it's a great number so we get a lot of feedback next one is public engagement session we had one last week as well the purpose of the public engagement sessions is to review the challenges fenton is facing and to discuss possible solutions we will we will together develop a community driven plan for the future of fenton the collaboration will ensure our final plan is fair fiscally responsible and reflective of our wishes of our community this was stated at that meeting okay there will be a total of eight public engagement meetings uh the the agenda for our
033october public engagement includes introduction committee presentation question and answers from the community again a feedback form tour of the building and approximately 15 people from the public attended this meeting i see one of them here uh present today fenton administrators and e.o sullivan also uh facilitated these me uh this meeting shout out to leo figueroa for attending thanks leo thank you and it's good to always have a board presence there um we cannot have more than three because it will evaluate the open meetings act more than two more than two sorry uh next up is the equity report before i go we go to any questions from the board in regards to those two meetings the public engagement and the community engagement committee one's a committee one is talking to the public presenting our issues
034or facility issues and answering yes how are you getting the word out for the public engagement perfect good great question there was a mailing of sixteen thousand letters i think i got that you didn't get it which is a card card so we got that we also do a email blast and we did a text class as well so it's on our website i mean who gets that every resident including um business owners so everybody's getting it everybody got that at least a mailing okay now if they were registered if they put into uh in the public forum their their telephone or their cell numbers and they would also get it the the target is for all of our so do you see that residents were 16 000 sent out and only 15 attended yes
035ma'am we have three more uh two more after this so yeah i want to acknowledge john too so uh our one of our board members attended one of the discussions this past thursday thank you for that i also wanted to mention that um i think to respond to our public comment earlier just wanted to make sure that you know this is a community process and we want to um engage and raise the awareness and then also provide voices if anybody comes out this is a good time to come out and actually speak and and speak your opinion so thank you for that no great point it wasn't a kumbaya moment at the public engagement there were folks asking really really good question leo was there and the the the solution is telling the truth okay
036we these are the issues that we have here and answer the question as best we can and i think we've done that so the public engagement sessions people can come who haven't been here before i mean that you're trying to draw on new people all the time right right we had five seniors show up that i've never met before um we had a a board member from another school district attend um we had a lot of parents who whose kid is playing football for example um so uh we got we have a good cross-section of the community attending but the committee that's set you're not taking anybody right yeah the committee said next public engagement is this tomorrow um actually at uh i believe six six pm seven seven seven pm that's why i will
037not be able to attend illinois associated school board dupage division meeting tomorrow i'll be here and notice this are sent out it's on the website yes okay okay are you doing it on different days we're doing it saturdays sundays mondays we're alternating okay so saturday mornings evenings and then tomorrow is thursday tomorrow tomorrow night will the different uh newsletters like the bensonville newsletter the wood dale newsletter also put that in their newsletter so that those that we are planning to yeah yep we are planning to uh uh the next newsletters for for uh bensonville and wood dale will come out so if we did not have a meeting yet so there's nothing really to report but even to put that just to put the dates in oh yeah yeah yeah and to draw to draw
038the community into the meeting just because somebody might just kind of flip through that net look but they may read that newsletter a little more closely or whatever just another way of reaching them you know totally agree okay equity report mike this is a video [Music] hi everyone i'm mike varago and this is your equity report let's start by recapping what we miss in our month-long celebration of hispanic heritage our association of latinx and allied students also known as alas and the language club did a fantastic job decorating our windows in the cafeteria a big shout out goes to mrs avila peterson mrs demaro mrs rodriguez mrs vasquez and mrs ochoa for organizing the event our latino film fest drew in a number of students who enjoyed the film's stand of the liver selena and
039in the heights would stand and deliver drawing the biggest crowd never underestimate old school movies aka mexican bingo was a big hit on october 1st during lunch periods our students filled rooms 302 and 304 in hopes of winning some mexican candy and chocolate mrs trujillo mrs rodriguez mrs avila peterson and mr rodriguez kept the game exciting with their dramatic call outs we concluded our celebration by focusing on cultural awareness and understanding through a documentary called being nea with a student panel as a follow-up on october 19th equity is foundational and at fenton we are focused on building these foundations from the ground up to become more equitable we have to educate ourselves increase empathy towards different groups of people and raise awareness about ways to improve as staff members students as a community the documentary
040highlights experiences that are often overlooked but are very real for many people in our building a student panel of 16 members rotated over several class periods and did a fantastic job of educating students and staff about microaggressions and describing their lived experiences as nas regardless of your cultural background the documentary and student panel hopefully allowed all of us to take a step towards individual growth that will contribute to the betterment of fund high school there are a lot of people who think of making all these important events happen we should be proud as an organization the equity podcast club kicked off their first lunch discussion on september 29th the topic was on npr's code switch episode what does it mean to be latino the light-skinned privilege we had a good number of staff members join
041us in such important conversations on october 27th the discussion will continue around indigenous people's day and the rise of indigenous voices thank you mrs toe mrs rajendran and mr mitchell for engaging us in such meaningful conversations blended learning is off to a great start currently we have a total of 317 students who have experienced blending and are learning independently the top three locations that students are visiting are the locker lounges one of our new spaces the arc academic resource center and a writing lab the asian student association kicked off their very first event decorating for hindu heritage and filipino-american month the students are planning on celebrating navrati a hindu festival by hosting a dance party on october 27th where participants can learn traditional folk dance called dania ross on october 7th we had a great
042turnout at our bilingual appearance outreach program meeting also known as bpop mrs ward mrs and mrs rodriguez kicked off the meeting with information about the goals of our el programming through the lens of state funding after the meeting our parents then split into the respective groups fathers unidos where mr castro helped parents become familiar with powerschool which is our student information system also used for attendance and teacher ease which is our grading program [Music] the other group is our paleo polish parents club where mrs sater and mrs jorgekis provided information about fafsa the equity action plan is moving along with each trend chipping away at its goals and tasks the system strand is finalizing its research and definitions for diversity equity and inclusion and example statements developed by other organizations and school districts our goal
043is to ultimately develop our own set of definitions and statements the teaching and learning strand is diving into the culturally relevant teaching standards and developing ways to collect data about knowledge about those standards the strand is planning on using collected data to plan for professional learning opportunities that would increase crts culturally relevant teaching standards implementation into the curriculum student voice climate and culture strand is currently focused on two tasks the first is to continue to develop uh a group of student-led equity leadership team mr madel has his second meeting with a student equity team on october 19th the second is increasing the capacity for restorative practices throughout the building right now mr madel is leading a committee focusing on learning about the topic and determining ways to begin providing professional learning opportunities for our staff
044the professional learning strand has completed a draft of a professional learning statement that will be recited at the beginning of each training session grounding us on equity this is similar to what we do with our district mission and vision statements at the beginning of all board meetings the strand is also in the process of completing a self-assessment survey for staff to determine where they are in their journey on the equity continuum the goal is to use the data to develop professional learning opportunities based on needs last but not least the family and community as agency strand leverage our bilingual parents outreach program meeting bebop on october 7th to gather data from parents as a form of needs assessment ultimately the group plans on utilizing community locations such as the public libraries to host parent guardian
045gatherings we have established groups in padres unitos and polish parents clubs so we leverage that to gather our data and our hope is to expand from there the bensonville and wooddell public library sent representatives to our be pop meeting where they provided information to our parents we plan we plan to host our first gathering at one of the libraries in january that sums up this month's equity report until then enjoy the rest of your evening thank you mike moving on to covet updates next slide please okay let's hold it there for a minute uh jim fenn continues to focus on safety and wellness our layered mitigation which is as you know social distancing wearing a mask washing our hands vaccination efforts are going moving in the right directions there we're being consistent and safe and
046we believe it's working i strongly believe that there is a concrete sense among students staff parents and community that fenton is working overtime meaning really really hard to keep our school open and keep students parents and staff safe now if we look at the slides here as you can see the trend and due page is good covet cases are down next slide this one is i'm going to go back here because i can't see this is the different pediatrics uh level here uh the highest one is green i believe that is 5 to 14 years old tends to be high but you could even see with the green the red and the blue the trend is downwards as well next slide this one is in the case of hospitalization how many folks are in the
047hospital due to covert it's also down we like those trends moving forward how about the covert updates here at fenton last three weeks we had no cases of cobit among our students i mean our staff the average for last three weeks with students is one student so we like those trends there as well so we're going to keep being safe we're going to keep following our layered mitigation and keeping folks safe so we could make sure our school stays open next slide please also a quick update on last friday we had about 350 individuals from district 2 district 7 and district 100 as well as our taxing body staff participated in a booster shot it was a pfizer shot started at four and we were out of here by 7 p.m esther updates of some
048of the bruce that we purchased with esser dollars it's flexible furniture that we could move around small groups of learning going on in the classroom and kind of gives you an idea of the uh we chose to go forward with uh just in our request to improve air quality this year we have individual air purifiers we purchased with with investor dollars to put in place in each classroom in the district so we're pleased we've pretty much launched that i think there might be a few outstanding ones that we're waiting for but that project has happened for the most part we're going to put a universe in room 225 just to improve the airflow in that classroom and then the ini ionization project as we've kind of shared along here that project is complete now and
049that's throughout the whole building and that was all these projects were paid for with esser dollars thank you bruce next of a student life i ask our deans uh mr madel and mr castro to put together a video in regards to our students and how they're transitioning to in-person learning it's also a video it's all some time to speak to you this evening about student life and what we're doing down here in the dean's office i'll go first and mr castro will follow so the first thing i wanted to talk about was how we are supporting student voice and encouraging it and trying to amplify it as much as possible we've done a couple things on the past few weeks to go ahead and try to do that the first was something came out of
050our equity plan and that was a student voice committee that we have established we had our first meeting and the topic that was brought to me was the dress code we had a lot of students who had some questions and concerns about the equity of the dress code the meeting itself was fantastic we had a nice turnout of about 20 people we had some very strong conversation and arguments in the best way possible uh so we will actually now be bringing this to the discipline committee to see if it has legs and gets any further traction the second um meeting that we had was actually with 10 what we deemed to be influential seniors friday before the homecoming week started purpose of that meeting was just to talk about discussions what homecoming actually supposed to
051mean and what it's all about how we do it here at fenton um and to actually just give the the students a chance to ask us questions about what the possible consequences of something that they may do uh could be so it ended up being a great discussion a great meeting and i think that it really helped us out during the homecoming week and how well it went mr castro so speaking of homecoming yes it was a very successful week and i think in great part due to that open line of communication that we had with seniors this is the second time we've done this and it was fruitful both times so in terms of student behavior um it was a very good week particularly compared to previous years the bonfire was very well attended
052our second time doing so and in terms of the numbers um i want to say that it was almost twice as many students who participated in the bonfire this year than the first time we did it the football game again behavior was very good really no major issues um that led into the final closing for homecoming which was the dance at white pines uh again pretty well attended they couldn't bring uh guests but it was all students all fences students they needed the opportunity to be able to be free a little bit so a nice opportunity for them to be with their friends the only issues really that we had with more from the the safety security side in that being that it's white pines the venue was open from every different different angle as
053opposed to school all of our doors are closed so we know students are coming in and out so just something for us but uh again we needed the opportunity for students to be able to get together and to let off a little steam during homecoming so overall very successful weekend or week rather next up would be masks and social distancing um in terms of social distancing we've upped our visibility and accessibility during the lunch periods which we feel are probably the areas where we are needed most seeing as though it is a longer period and masks could be down for an extended period of time when students are eating so that's how we are addressing the social distancing in terms of masking once again it's visibility and being vigilant in terms of being consistent as
054to how the mask is to be worn above the nose whenever a teacher informs us of a mass violation via a log entry uh it's very important to us to be timely in our response so we have been able to respond to all within 24 to 48 hours appears to be acceptable um time frame for the teachers so we'll continue along with with what we've been doing for mass next um there's been a drop in fights thankfully as you have probably heard we had six fights this school year things are improving here the the the school culture the students are adjusting much better so in the last two weeks we've had one fight now that's not necessarily something to brag about um but again given other schools other districts the incident that happened at joliet
055last week or the week before we are in much better condition that doesn't mean that we're going to let up we still want to continue to um address that uh making sure that students are uh in control of themselves we attribute a lot of the fights that actually probably all the fights that have happened because they've all been one-on-one and they've been um self-contained where it didn't lead or spilled into anything else it was just one and done that's mostly due from what we've seen um to just a lot of impulsivity given that students have been out for 18 months uh away from their friends away from that socialization and uh had that turn taking and if they want to get something done they feel that immediate urge to address their needs at that point
056without some some careful thinking but all in all uh drops the fights are dropping again we have one in the last two weeks and we hope to keep them further apart as well or even non-existent for that matter lastly we're never going to miss a chance to talk about restorative practices and interventions we have been utilizing them frequently this year uh we are approaching probably 20 different types of interventions that we've done that are all restorative most recent one is probably the best example i can think of uh restored practices this year we had uh several students we found vandalizing school property we were able to talk with those students they all owned up to what they did in the past that would probably be an automatic two or three three day out of school
057suspension in this case we were able to um be restorative we were able to knock it down to a one day in-school suspension and seeing as though there was vandalism and graffiti all over the school likely caused by these students we were also able to come to an agreement with the students and their parents that the students will additionally help the custodians clean off the graffiti that they themselves are responsible for so that's uh probably the best example i can give you of restorative practice being utilized in our school so if i could just add to that also actually in the past we also used to issue a citation a monetary citation with a student in the family they have to pay and then another note just in terms of students repairing that harm helping
058the custodians all parents were completely on board with that and it's not something we've done in the past but probably something we'll do more of depending on the nature of the the harm that was caused so that is uh that's a wrap for us want to say once again thank you for your time have a great night thank you all have a good night thank you mr madeleine mr castro so far can i pause right there any questions so far whether it's covid whether it's student life just wanted to keep you guys brief asked them to do that i also asked mrs uh roberts our assistant principal to go over the class of 2021 post-secondary plan survey every year our counseling department administers a survey to seniors regarding their plans after a high school like
059i said i've asked assistant principal eileen roberts to prepare a video summarizing the survey data the data is important because it provides us a picture of our students post-secondary plans good afternoon fenton high school this is eileen roberts the assistant principal at fenton high school today i'd like to talk to you about our senior profile and the highlights from our survey each year at the end of the year around late april early may we ask our students to tell us what they're doing post-secondary after they leave us what are all the great things they're going to do beyond the fenton walls this year we're excited that 315 out of 358 completed the survey when we talk about post secondary one of the options is heading off to college 73 of our students plan to attend
060either a four-year or two-year university we have about 37 percent that will attend a four-year college 36 percent will attend college of dupage we have 66 of our students that are first generation college students that's a phenomenal number of students that are now heading off to college as we compare year to year you can see that our survey results are up it's an increase from last year last year was a difficult year being in the pandemic and remote and we were not able to obtain as many responses as we would have liked being back in person now we are able to do so we have 315 surveyed as mentioned 37 percent will head off to a four-year college or university 36 percent will attend a community college four percent are going into the trades seven
061percent into the workforce three percent into the armed services 66 first gen and we had over 1.1 million in scholarships those are all very commendable amounts of students that are eligible for scholarships within colleges and post-secondary 39 of our students received a scholarship to college that's almost 4 out of every 10 kids were able to receive one that's phenomenal and that concludes our senior profile i hope that was useful even you guys have getting a breakdown of the different colleges that the students have chosen to go to will we get that again this year we could get that yes that's right oh yeah we could definitely mean like four years three years no like northwestern u of i yeah u of i someone to whoever north central right i believe the the survey has that
062information i'll forward it to the board okay okay any other questions comments now we're going to turn it off uh turn it over to michelle papanekalau who's going to talk about career pathway is it going to be live or is it going to be a video as well we got close to a circle in the corner but it's not quite there so we have a video for you thanks michelle greetings this is michelle papanicolao from fenton high school i am the director of curriculum and instruction today i'm with some of our career pathways steering committee members to share our work related to career readiness here at fenton high school this team's been meeting since about 2019 to learn about career readiness initiatives at the federal state and local levels and to create fenton's unique mission
063and goals related to this work we're excited to begin our efforts towards assisting students in developing their pathways to prosperity our team consists of dedicated members of our fenton staff who represent nearly every department across the building as our work continues we will form advisory committees that will include more stakeholder groups like parents students industry professionals and other community partners one of the first things our team did was create a mission statement to ground our work we all agreed that at fenton high school every student deserves an authentic and challenging experience that is personalized to build skills for an evolving future we also work to define what career pathways is about and what it's not about our work to develop career pathways builds students awareness about high demand high growth high high-wage careers it builds
064their professional skills that will be essential across industry sectors such as building relationships and collaborating it will also ensure our students create personalized plans to grow their passions and interests through the world of work they'll see in the future finally it's about building programs of study for our students that ensure rigorous and relevant learning opportunities we also clarified what career pathways is not it's not about a one-dimensional vocational education it's not about tracking students into a career at 14 years old and it's not about asking students to choose between college or career there are several national regional and local organizations that share ry northern illinois university has created the educational system center to help school districts and industry leaders prepare for and implement this work throughout the state of illinois they partner with groups like
065the p20 network at the local level and national groups like jff jobs for the future amy lloyd the vice president of jff captures this why in a short video we'd like to share with you today you may find more information about any of these organizations through the links at the end of this presentation let's listen to amy lloyd as she explains how pathways can change lives and communities pathway is an opportunity for for kids to start experimenting when they're young thinking about what might i want to do when i grow up who might i want to be what matters to me as a person what matters to my community and then have them start exploring how their learning in school connects to the world beyond [Music] too many people from you know historically marginalized backgrounds
066are not attaining post-secondary credentials at the rates that we would like to see and are not entering the workforce with enough credentials knowledge and experience to be able to launch a career that leads to economic advancement i mean this is about you know social justice with the lens on education and workforce ensuring that all people have the ability to access the supports and services that they need to thrive in their community of course to learn earn a living wage jff is seeking to create structures and systems that allow people to disrupt the correlation between background and outcome i think when we hear the word pathway a lot of people immediately associate it with kind of old school vocational education systems that sorted students predominantly by race and class into college versus career ready and instead
067a pathway is a way for young people to explore their identity learn high level rigorous academics in context so it's not just about acquisition of knowledge but application of knowledge in real world settings and have a continuous and seamless bridge into post-secondary education two-year and four-year that connects to a high-growth high demand ideally also high-wage career trajectory hi everyone as we continue our work with career pathways equity is a significant driving force in that work we also have driving forces from our state and federal governments there are three important governmental acts that we'd like to highlight these acts help guide and support us in our work the first is the illinois post-secondary workforce readiness act of 2016 the act takes a student-centered and competency-based approach to helping students prepare for post-secondary and career opportunities second
068is the every student succeeds act also known as essa and that's the reauthorization of the 50 year old elementary and secondary education act which is our nation's guiding legislation and long-standing commitment to equal educational opportunity for all students president obama signed the bipartisan measure into law in 2015. essa tasks individual states to create a plan to ensure every child is learning and on the path to college and career readiness we'll talk about illinois's essa plan in a little bit finally the strengthening career and technical education for the 21st century act which is also known as perkins 5 was signed into law in 2018 by president trump this is a bipartisan reauthorization perkins 5 represents a significant move to expand opportunities for every student to explore choose and follow career and technical education programs of study
069and career pathways to earn industry credentials all three acts focus directly on the need for school programming to address career readiness in particular the essa plan developed by the state of illinois has the most impact on fenton's annual accountability score the college and career indicator component of this score requires students to identify a career area of interest by the end of their sophomore year it also requires students to complete at least three career-ready indicators prior to graduation some of these indicators can include a career development experience earning an industry credential military service or an asvab score of 31 or higher completing a dual credit career pathway course completion of a program of study attaining and maintaining consistent employment for a minimum of 12 months consecutive summer employment 25 hours of community service and or the
070participation in two or more organized co-curricular activities hi my name is brian augustin i'm the division leader for stem here at fenton high school the career pathways steering committee has spent time over the past couple of years defining and refining the goals related to the implementation of career pathways athens in high school these goals include five areas career programs of study career awareness professional competencies personalized learning plans and community and industry partnerships members of our team will spend the following few slides explaining intentions within each of our goal areas hi my name is rich weiss and i'm a business education teacher here at fenn so the first goal area addresses career programs of study in this area we want to ensure that students will have access to programs of study that provide authentic experiences for
071students within career settings dual credit opportunities and the possibility to receive industry certifications and credentials examples of programs of study include engineering technology culinary nutrition health sciences computer and information technology and of course i have to say it finance and business services [Music] hi this is ron janick from the special education department and our second goal area is career awareness in this area we want to ensure students alongside with their families teachers and counselors that they build awareness high demand high growth high-wage careers related to their interests and passions in addition we want them to understand the opportunities available to them to nourish those interests and passions inside and outside of school one of the platforms we'll be using is called nepris nephrus will give students availability to speak with and see what professionals are
072doing in some of the fields right now hi everyone this is mike lauderman science teacher and i'm here to talk to you about the third goal in feten's drive to implement career pathways in our district that third goal we call professional competencies we want to ensure that across the curriculum students are developing proficiencies in the skills employers consider vital in nearly every industry some of those are skills that our teachers are already working to instill in their students effective collaboration to achieve a goal written in verbal communication and critical thinking there are also personal habits that we want to emphasize because we know they are critical to career readiness being a self-starter keeping a schedule and managing your time being a reliable teammate and knowing how to plan the steps to accomplish a task finally
073there are professional competencies that we may now only be touching on obliquely at funton but that in the future we will want to teach deliberately as part of our career pathways these might include technical skills involving digital media social emotional competencies to prepare our students to work with people from different backgrounds and even financial literacy competencies so that our students know how to manage their incomes and make the most of the opportunities their new careers will give them i'm christine larson from the math department our fourth goal area is about personalized learning plans we want to ensure all students leave with a well-developed post-secondary plan and a solid resume of college and career readiness experiences and skills finally our last goal has an impact on nearly every other goal we've set we want to ensure
074we develop and maintain strong partnerships with industry professionals and community agencies to create appropriate and informed opportunities for students fentanyl is looking to build these partnerships in the following areas computer and information technology manufacturing engineering technology and trades health sciences and technology human and public services arts and communications finance and business services and agriculture food and natural resources if you're aware of anybody who might be willing to partner with fenton to support students in developing their career readiness please let me know at any point we hope this provided a brief overview of our what and why of career pathways here at fenton high school this slide deck provides links to the organizations mentioned in the presentation links to the federal and state mandates introduced as well as some of the tools being used here at
075fenton to support this work we thank you for your time and would love your feedback if you have any questions ideas or concerns please feel free to contact me by email or phone anytime thank you and have a great day thank you michelle good job [Applause] any quick comments or questions before we move on all right i know we got we got a couple more here it finally happened i cannot believe that right after two years of delay at least three postponements the illinois associated school administrator global service project took place in the dominican republic approximately two weeks ago paul leo and i represented fenton there were a total of seven school districts from illinois state attended seven superintendents and 13 board members it was really nice for fenton to be there with the rest
076of the school district it was a an honor and we're just continuing to put fenton out there to be a not only a state leader but also global in the way in summary it was hard and fulfilling work when i said hard work it's physical labor it was physical paper uh the server project consisted of physical labor and an appreciation of the educational program in the dominican republic we woke up at 6 30 ate breakfast at 7 30 in the morning and got on the bus to go to work at uh approximately nine o'clock there were two major schools we worked in instituto di ambiente which is basically the institut uh environment environmental institute locate located in arab koa in the middle of of the dominican republic basically up in the mountains it served high
077school and college age students and they had two career tracks forestry science and environmental management the school focused on teaching and practicing sustainability recycling reusing and reducing natural resources their educational school mantra is learning by doing the school sits on top of a mountain our focus at the school were to create a learning space for this in for the school in the middle of the forest or i call it the jungle we use trees use nails i mean literally use the nails and use plywood uh again used plywood uh to create the space is there a picture there could you go back jim just to give it some credibility that that we actually did work the tools were amazing you can see one of the guys there i taught them how to use a machete
078to basically clean off a tree trunk so students can sit learn do their homework on so a lot of love and labor there uh next school that we worked in is called the dream project okay and this was located in the city of cabarrete northern part of the dr they have students from pre-k to high school they have a montessori school they have a strong literacy program and a strong parent outreach program our teams painted walls and playgrounds and repaired parts of the playground that needed some more work walkway we put cement down a garbage area that needed a ton of work and a motorcycle parking areas for the parents here are some pictures there i think that's leo there putting some cement there once again long days in the sun but definitely very fulfilling
079i will be quiet here and give a chance for leo and paul to chime in mr paul okay uh i was going to say that when we were in the mountains james paul were the leaders and they sweared the jersey believe me they were the vips that day and we were carrying a sand and uphill believing it was heartbreaking labor it was two of us pulling that wheelbarrow and i was impressed to getting into cabarete because that project started back in 1993. they got no schools 93 of the kids were not able to finish high school not even grammar school nothing they were nowhere to go and it was a dream that's what they call a dream project and uh i was i don't want to say but i'm gonna say that my church when
080i was ready to go they offered some money to be donated to that school they don't have any idea i said uh i don't have any idea where we're going to but finally when we get to the the dream project is when the church donate that money it was equal so that money that the government is given to that dream project 200 a year is what they get and believe me they don't have any only one project like james said they get they got aganar global connection groups luceros there is another project because many dominicans they don't have any paperwork like a birth certificate they don't have any ideas so imagine people to be like 50 60 years old ready to retire and they don't have the birth certificate so it's kind of hard the
081montessori schools and i can name it in our last date thursday when we were there it was another group i believe it was something like called i um mariposa it was part of the the dream project so it was really exciting like james said uh it was a heartbreaking labor believe me guys and phantom was real well being represented and paul james and i was the cheerleader down there so i don't do anything he was definitely more than that leo was not afraid to pick up the shovel or swing a hammer and he was basically the group's translator um for for our journey it was you're too kind and humble for that paul you got anything to say well yeah i just basically wanted to add it that this was a great opportunity for fenton
082high school to be represented along with six other school districts from illinois i believe this was the first post-covered service project to the dominican republic the service project as already said was outlined was reconstructing the rest area along the along a mountain path and the other service project was the uh contributing to the dream pot project in cabaret a lot of labor in the heat scraping painting restoring playground equipment and it wasn't but the point is it just wasn't the the task that we were doing but the fact that we were there and it was appreciated you know uh i think that there was just a genuine appreciation that we were there by the people at these at these facilities at these schools that we were there and concerned it was it was a great
083outreach and and i thought very collaborative and also the environmental aspect we stopped at a beach where they were replanting mangroves to restore the beach area building artificial coral to to bring sea life back back to the area and just a very industrious and very concerned about bringing not only recycling but bringing the wildlife back to certain areas and then also the nursery uh huge nursery i think they they had said they replant some seven hundred thousand trees at this nursery every year uh bring it back to lush tropical it was a hundred and seventy five thousand wow yeah and that that gets replanted it's a free program where they give it back to residences as long as they plant these trees and uh um you know uh take care of these trees so they
084were very very involved with that and i think that was it it was just a very good interactive uh project and uh gave a great insight and and i thought we were very well represented in this project how long did you walk how long were you there it was a total of five days i had to come back a little bit early but just wanted to thank this gentleman again it's um the money to go there to eat to drink all out of their pockets all of our pockets so um uh you know you don't find too many folks like that to to go to a third world country work really heavy labor and pay for it too so no i just wanted to make sure that's out there we hope to do this again
085and hopefully uh all of the board members will have a chance to go i really highly recommend it next up is our favorite topic for you uh this month we had eight uh it was the four-year month do we have a laptop update at all oh i'm sorry did we go left that did i skip one i am sorry yeah jim batson you can go on to the foias if you want sure uh this is why i didn't i skipped laptops yeah this is just a a quick informational item typically during about during the summer time we would come to you for a motion to approve a purchase of teacher laptops and staff laptops administrator laptops or computers that we use on a daily basis um this year has been sort of a challenge we
086had a lot of difficulty getting units available because of supply chain issues chip shortages whatever it might be and so what we wound up doing is we found a group of 20 uh laptops about half of what we would normally purchase that were available and we had to jump on real quick so two things one we had to go ahead and uh send out the purchase order to get these uh through but the second thing is because it's only 20 it falls well below the threshold for board approval but in all you know transparency we wanted to make sure that you understood that we didn't forget those things we're just purchasing them now we're purchasing 20 now we have a line on an additional 20 to fulfill our the rest of our order and that
087will be coming up in a future month maybe november maybe early december we're just waiting on some uh some confirmation on when those might be shipping so just wanted to to be aware of that that um you know it's been a long time coming we we attempted to do these back in the spring but the lead times were so long at that point in time it would have gone into the fall which so we couldn't have purchased it in that fiscal year so um but just to you know bring you up to date and uh we are making these purchases um and we'll keep you posted on how to go thanks jim i'm back to the foias we had eight four years this this month number one was johnson and bell limited all records for
088construction and repair work done at our campus well it was requested next one is number two edgar chades all information regarding hvac and air circulation improvements number three the illinois educational association and the national educational association wanted to know all non-certified staff members not part of the the illinois education association affiliated uh with the bargaining unit and in-district subcontract companies number four smart procurement we get this every month basically a foyer regarding in regards to a list of all the vendors for the quarter number five sharp schools all staff information was requested six local labs coveted 19 protocols they wanted to know how many students had covet how many staff had coveted and local labs again asked for the 1619 project and number eight nbc5 chicago requested if there was unclaimed funds and property that
089has not been reported yet all have been resolved any other what does that mean unclaimed funds and property great great great question and we looked into that and i'm going to let bruce answer that question uh those are basically stale checks or checks that were never cashed um it's really more uh checks rather than property oh yeah bruce is it also include um fees that haven't been paid to us and folks that have not cashed their check from us uh yeah that's that's part of it as well okay we move on to the if there's nothing else consented we have one more and this is for you guys right this is your recognition from the illinois association of school board recognition um if mary could have the gifts uh leo figueroa leadership academy member he
090gets a gift from the illinois association school board patty master board member level two okay juliette master board member level two as well congratulations kit leadershop academy member and master board member level one and paul wiedemann new master board member board again we want to thank you for all of your hard work outside of the board meetings we know you attend these meetings uh outside of of our uh fenton uh whether it's the dupage uh strand or the as well as illinois meetings as well as the national conference once again thank you thank you mary okay regarding the consent agenda the financial reports treasury report budget summary report minutes personal report donations do we have any questions or comments regarding this consent agenda okay and so may have a motion to approve the consent agenda
091as presented so move second uh mary roll call please wiedemann yes figueroa yes haid yes january yes redzinsky yes regal yes people pump yes and motion passed next is our discussion items uh acceptance of the 2020-2021 district financial audit may have a motion that the board of education except the 2020-21 audited financial statements as submitted by lauterbach and almond uh llp i'll make that motion oh a second thank you roll call please we have a discussion i just want to i'll show you i don't want to ask a question it says we do not intend to imply that our audit failed to disclose commendable aspects of your system and structure so they just didn't find anything outstanding i mean like what what does that statement mean it's on this little in this little packet on
092the management second pair no second paragraph of that the statement october 12th statement we do not intend to imply our audit failed to disclose commendable aspects yeah it's almost like a contradictory sentence but i i don't it's consequential i would say all right yeah okay good question was it was there any other questions on that so so based on the audit from what i saw um they they didn't see any alarms or red flags on it everything looks in order and i think the comment was that uh to bruce's credit was it was sorted quite well and clean the books were clean questions that's important yeah if you know looking back on the financial records to before my time here with the board during james's tenure here it looks like we've put ourselves in pretty
093good fiscal financial position so do we have comments on any of that okay so with that uh uh can i get a roll call wiedemann yes galloway yes redzinski yes regal yes figueroa yes tinkpop home yes and motion passed going to the estimated tax levy questions uh may have emotion i think bruce oh okay okay i'll make this brief next slide jim um first of all i want to apologize for delivering this live and not on videotape so [Laughter] um so we're here tonight to talk about the 2021 tentative property tax levy and i just kind of will go through the mechanics of it and then get into the specifics of what the 2021 audit uh excuse me levy looks like so i can't read that fast jim uh uh what is the property tax
094levy the amount of money that the district asks requests to operate for the upcoming school year it is the primary funding source for school districts it accounts for 80 percent of the defense funding and it is limited by ptel which is the property tax extension limitation law or better known as the tax cap so how is it calculated so for 2021 and this is uh would be uh applicable to any you know year that we are levying um the factors involved uh include the 2021 extension so that's the beginning of of the calculation so it's the previous year's tax extension and then plus the consumer price index and that's based on uh the year december 2020 what the average was for the cpi for that particular year so with that added on to the previous
095year's extension you get your estimated extension for 2021. so how is the rate calculated um the rate total rate is equal to the total extended taxes divided by the district's eav so for 2020 um the extension there that's the actual extension 26 million eight sixty six nine divided by the actual eav equalized assessed valuation for the district of that 1.3 billion dollars and that comes up with a rate of 2.0281 and you should see that on your tax bills that that is the rate that for fenton uh high school district and then the estimated calculation for is that 27 million eight seventy seven zero two five divided by the estimated eav and this the estimated eav comes from the addison township treasurer so the projected rate is that 2.0170 so a slight dip from the
096previous extension year how do we determine how much to levy you've kind of heard our financial projections this evening our budget developments for our educational programs and our debt schedule and there's three variables that kind of tied to the levy the cpi which is inflation new property and our debt schedule so how much are we levying for this year for the 2021 levy year we're requesting 3.89 and that is slightly inflated due to unknown eav new property and the limiting rate um we know what the cpi is but we don't know what new property is so that's kind of a cushion or uh you know protective measure there to make sure we don't leave anything on the table so to speak so the estimated increase we think is going to be around 2.21 based on
097the cpi plus 11 million dollars in new property and again that that comes from the edison township treasurer so the actual dollar increase is about 578 thousand dollars so just to give you an idea of the history of kind of the levies and extensions and this is where the p-tell or tax caps comes into play um you know you've got the levy year on the left the cpi increases which we're entitled to legally the actual levy request so that's kind of the inflated number that we you know put in play for protective measures and then the final extension so if you compare the levy request to the final extension you'll note that the final extension is is less than the levy request in in every one of those cases up there and that that's pretty
098much how it how it plays out so that's p-tel in action we can ask for you know ten percent increase but p-tell is still going to control uh what our final uh extension is and our limitations on that property tax extension limitation law that's the tax cap uh and just to kind of give you some perspective on the 2020 new construction valuation what the district is made up of 48 is residential commercial is at 8.24 and industrial is 40 almost 44 so about 52 commercial industrial compared to about 48 residential and that's a new property of 2 million 168 880. so that's an actual number from the clerk's office so here's um the actual we're actually seeing more in residential uh well it is combined actually a little a little bit less actually it's about
09952 percent commercial and industrial even that seems like an awfully high number but that's from the township right that's that's yeah that's new property that's just new property yeah so yeah that's in in the our taxing district the industrial is it higher with the new construction or they're not on the bookshop uh the 11 million isn't reflected in here so that's our actual bruce real quick when you talk about the the new residential does that include you know like flips uh you know where we're at yeah that would include any new uh properties that are coming on the rolls the tax rolls so whether it's a you know a a new home um you know a new business that type of thing something coming off of a tiff you know new industry whatever that that
100would that would come into play there so then the next slide um is the actual comparison um for 2020 in the graveyard area there the final 2020 tax rate the final 2020 extension and then the fi the yellow highlighted uh column of the proposed tax levy um that's the respective funds and the total capped fund extension of that 27 million 132 i think it's 739 i can't really read it from here 725 i think it is so that that comes at 3.89 percent increase that's what we i just kind of referred to and then the other thing that would go on top of that would be the the the debt service levy so that's the that's what it would be proposed to be that is again probably higher than what we're going to get but
101um that's just kind of to give you a perspective of what that increase would look like and then the projected rate based on that information and then the all the way at the top and the right there is the projected eav increase based on uh that three and a half percent increase plus the new properties factored into that eav amount so this just kind of gives you a a ranking um maybe i shouldn't say ranking but a comparison of eav to tax rates across all the seven high school districts in in dupage county so we we're at number three there in terms of tax rate um and then our eav is at one point uh two billion dollars um i think that's what that says 1.3 billion dollars so we're uh out of the seven
102we're at number three there with with our tax rate and then our uh these are just a comparison of our historical tax rates um so all the way over to the right there the yellow column the 2020. that 2.0281 is the projected rate and what does that mean for a tax bill so i i put in a 300 000 home so thirty three percent of that thirty three point three percent of that um eav uh less than six thousand dollar exemption uh generates a bill of approximately one thousand nine hundred and four dollars so we're we're about number three there when you apply that rate to a home and this is all the same value of the home across all the taxing body or all the school districts listed there so we're at the third
103rank there based on our rate of what it looks like so the next steps for the levy adoption uh tonight we have the estimated levy that lasts the board to act on the november 17th will will ask the board to approve the final levy and then of course we'll file that with the dupage county clerk because we're under five percent uh a hearing is not required and that's kind of uh it uh overall for the levy for 2021. so any questions i can answer but i understand because it's kind of all so we're asking for a percentage of the tax dollars of the buzz i need to i'm not understanding that well we we have a an extension that we're with regard to taxes that are payable to the district that we request every year
104so that amount let's just say it's 20 million dollars it's a little bit more than that so that extension increases incrementally each year by the cpi plus new property so that's really what the district operates its funds on uh it's it's you know operations on from the tax levy um and that's as i said about 80 percent of the total funding comes from local property taxes okay then uh may have a motion to approve the tax levy motion to move forth border approval of the 2021 estimated tax levy is presented that reflects an increase of point eight nine percent so moved i'll second roll call please wiedemann yes galway yes rudzinski yes regal yes figaro yes hey yes tinkpop pump yes and motion passed next is our strategic plan 2.0 we'll need to prove that
105as well any comments questions on that comments from the experience anything okay uh may have emotion that the board of education approved the 2022-2025 through 2025 strategic plan 2.0 i'll make that motion second thank you roll call please wait a min yes redzinski yes regular yes figueroa yes haid yes galloway no thinkpop home yes so motion passed and we go to the disposal surplus district property questions on that there there were a lot of things that were like look like they were functional but we're still just going to recycle them yes instead of reselling or we are we are reselling we do have a third party uh vendor that we definitely want to see if they're of value uh we should get money back from that bruce you want to talk about that a little
106bit because it looked like there was just one thing that was going to be there were some laptops yeah most of the tech stuff will uh dispose of that in the best manner most profitable community for the district um whether it's reusing recycling or we might get some nominal dollars for it but i know dr batson works with some vendors on uh who recycle that or will purchase it from us and use it in a responsible manner so that's uh this is old outdated equipment either functioning minimally or not functioning at all that is taking a kind of valuable space in the district dr batson any comments on that yeah just real quick i think bruce hit all the the key points there a lot of these things are just um beyond their useful life
107to us and if we can get some money out of them and we you know purpose that money to to to buy new equipment many of the chromebooks you'll see are ones that the seniors chose not to purchase this last year those are older ones because we didn't really do any recycling a year ago so there's some from the seniors from the prior year and some from the seniors this year and there's the way the chromebooks work is they are only useful for so many years and then their operating system stops um updating so we have to re refresh those so um yeah well i have probably six or eight different vendors i'm going to shop these around too and i'll get the best price for for what we can get out of them it's
108it's it's not it's a nominal it's a nominal amount of money we get back probably correct or is it it depends i'm sort of expecting a little more this year only because there's such a need for devices especially in in you know a lot of these things will go to third world countries so i work with vendors that make sure that they've cleaned them they wipe all the data any data that might be on them you know basically reset them to factory and then they might go to central america or somewhere in africa or something uh to be reused they still have some useful life in them but you know maybe and we do this once a year i'm sorry we we purge we have a purging of these uh items once a year we
109we've typically done it once a year but we we didn't last year because of the the shutdown so there's quite a bit on this list that are things that have been around for a while you can see the storage area and the pallets in the storage so on the vehicle is that going to auction or is it doa or is it a trade-in on a replacement yeah it doesn't run at all was used by our auto shop but we used to have it in our transportation you know fleet and now it went to our auto shop program it's non-running so it's a salvage company that'll that'll pick it up and give us some money for it okay uh if nothing else then i may have a motion that the board of education approved the attached
110uh resolution authorizing disposal of surplus personal property so move it thank you roll call please weedman yes regal yes figueroa yes paige yes jaliwick yes and yes motion passed the approval food services agreement comments questions um you're probably getting tired of seeing these amendments so the last one we brought you was in august last month we talked to you about what's driving this really is the hourly rate adjustment that the board so graciously agreed to last month um because of the timing of it we didn't have the formal paperwork for you to review and sign off on and because of the time timing of it to get it to the state uh in a pretty quick turnaround mr ontango agreed to sign it which is perfectly allowable legal to do but we we do want
111to keep the board apprised of what's happening with this amendment and we're asking the board really to ratify what we submitted to the state last month so really the only change here is allowing authorizing the district to pay a 15 an hour wage that we were ultimately going to get to as it were as the contract was written but we just ramped it up that much quicker so that's that's kind of what this whole amendment is about thank you bruce anyone have any questions or comments on that okay i would say that you know the the food services staff here work super hard and uh i i agree with this i do i feel good about this um may have emotion that the board of education ratified the attached kovid 19 emergency contract amended for
112school year 2021 2022 for food management services dated september 16 so moved second roll call please weidman yes figaro yes hayden yes galway yes redzinski yes rhaego yes team paul palm yes and motion passed again uh we go on to discussion items and this is regarding our vice president paul wiedemann we're sorry to see you go but do you want to make a comment or anything on that paul uh sure i just wanted to let everyone know that it has been my honor and privilege to serve the students and community of fenton high school district 100 for the past uh six years the first couple years were particularly challenging but very rewarding and very worth it i would like to thank past and present board members administrators teachers and superintendent ontanko in collectively making fenton
113high school an innovative safe and empathetic center where students can pursue their passions as a springboard for further education i am proud of the remarkable remarkable achievements these past years in all aspects of academics student life and making high school a center of the community as well as a trail blazer in dupage county in many initiatives i will personally truly miss being a board member in the fenton high school community and wish you all the best in your future endeavors and your board member's search [Applause] thank you thank you very much thank you that means a lot to me thank you thank you so much paulus mary bring uh brings the gift for to you from us which you have to open um just wanted to give you a shout out and some of the
114accomplishments that you helped accomplish here at fenton you've always been student centered strategic plan 1.1 and 2.0 equity audit facility audit personalized learning pandemic leadership vaccination event balanced budgets food for families parent outreach portrait of a graduate tri-district unity student achievement and ap district of the year and the 2015 renovation once again thank you so much for all of that and thank you also for your your leadership this last six years um we have something there for you and we do have a cake for you so oh the most important part yeah thank you which we will not we will eat afterwards okay let's take a look oh yeah oh great very nice so everyone's going to get so every wednesday you got to put that on every uh third wednesday of the month you'll
115be in unity with us all right and the master teacher i'm not sure what's in there should i open it up absolutely suspense i know oh very nice second part of this thank you thank you so much i just want to make a also a comment on no thanks so much thank you thanks so much thanks paul okay thank you just just something to to send you off with is um you know i'm 100 certain that there's going to be an absence uh missed uh here at the school from your leadership and also from the community it sounds like um i wish you and your wife and your family the best in your next journey your next chapter um your leadership is something that we all can learn from and the dedication it took the
116six years that you put into the the students and everybody here at fenton i'm sure that everybody knows you're always going to be forever bison so much gratitude paul much gratitude thank you thank you so much kid and again thank you to everyone it's been a my honor and a pleasure and i really enjoyed it and really wish you all the best thanks again thank you just just a couple quick words paul obviously that all the accolades and everything well deserved a couple things i'm going to remember about you this is only my fourth year here but to me you kind of bridged the gap of like before i was here and and like that veteran leadership so we could always turn to you and say how things were where are we going and i
117think that was kind of a unique perspective we could say about you because you were a long-serving board member so um i thank you for that but for me even more importantly would be your visibility i mean i think you know we'd be out there delivering food and you were always there you and your family we were doing uh immunizations and you were always there i mean and and it's just your dedication was second to none and so for me um it's not just about doing the job here but you obviously you cared enough to be at these events consistently and so i just want to thank you for that because it kind of gave us all a boost you know at different times when something would be going on and there was paul and
118we'd have some good laughs along the way and i just think it was some good really good times uh so thank you for that and i would just echo that paul be you know with you being so visible and you you the time commitment that you've made and many of you make or all of you i should say but you know coming to the that's easier said than done and it's and it is a commitment and uh so i admire that and as others do as well so but uh thanks for being so visible and and a good you know part of everything we do here and and being a major you know contributor to it so all the best to you paul thank you thank you bruce thank you sam appreciate it yep and
119i will miss that i will miss that okay on to the next chapter yes on to the next okay thank you gosh i got lost here where are we the resolution next one item is the discussion action item this is just discussion no action item here uh in regards to 2021 resolution committee report it's back again this will be uh voted in at the triple i uh the illinois association of school board delegates there's about uh delegate members there because there are 859 school districts in illinois what this resolution here is basically 23 items that our representative your representative here the uh isab delegate will vote on your homework is this came this week so i have not had a chance to look at it okay so it will be our responsibility to take a
120look at it there's 23 items here either you are our district uh is opposed uh to to the proposal or for it we will later on uh after this item here we're going to have to choose a a delegate because mr wiedenman has resigned so we're going to do that next but once again homework here please read it if there's any questions please uh email me or give me a call what we have done in the past especially for john and sylvia is we have taken the recommendation there's going to be a recommendation to oppose or adopt we have taken the um the the recommendation of your association the illinois association of school board uh for the least at least the five or six years i've been here um as as a group the member
121the delegate representative for our district will make that vote we'll make that vote okay i'll stop right there any questions or discussions in regards to the resolution once again we got it this week homework is to read this and if there are any questions give me a call but the recommendation is to follow the recommendation of your associates now one more thing please put on the lenses of fenton okay many of these resolutions are from down south okay rural rural districts we are not a rural district one of them i just read real quickly is about concealed weapons okay we have sro here okay we have sro there they cannot afford an sro that's why their board is saying hey look let's have someone like the superintendent or the principal have a concealed weapon so
122that's two distinct entities two distinct location once again keep the lens of who we serve okay but so you're saying that we we go along with what they recommend well on that particular note it says do recommend and but you're saying that that might not be something we want to recommend correct so yeah so make sure you look at it and just really read it and it's it's put on the lens of our constituents that's absolutely right good point okay kid any questions on that one no no so okay i think the the i think you said it good well is um looking at it from the community lens here versus the rules um so the next is we go to the uh approval the iasb delegate um can i jump in that real quick
123so paul is uh resigning um uh leo could you confirm that his letter has been submitted and his last day would be this friday is that accurate that is correct thank you so now we have a vacancy in as a illinois school board delegate so what we need to do this evening is to choose a delegate from the remaining six board members here's our tradition we've always we've always wanted our president here at fenton to represent um fenton high school at the illinois associate delegate at the triple i that has been the tradition i'm just going to say that that's really going to be up to your vote you guys could leave it up for discussion let's talk so i'm i'm comfortable keeping it like that yeah oh my god no no comment yeah yep
124paul what does that entail what is that well that's again when we go through all the other resolutions on that yeah then it's the iae iasb delegate that represents fenton high school at the meeting at triple i so that entails that delegate needs to go to the um meeting and vote according as the board has um directed uh directed exactly and how often is that how often are meetings it takes about uh jim you you're there too uh with yours i think good two hours hour and a half two hours making it shorter each year right how frequent is that once a year typically right now now there has been like last year there was a controversial item and every every delegate has a right to come up to the podium speak their mind and
125so forth so if there's something controversial a little more involved it does take a little a little longer and there's a little finagling and so forth but it's you're a delegate you're representing okay our school district um to vote on those items so i would say should be under two hours okay thank you uh then i'm i'm okay with it how does this take place is this at the conference yes it's on saturday of the conference all right so we're already at the conference anyway you might as well go yes you're absolutely do you know why these are listed the way that they are i have no idea i mean why doesn't it just go one two three four yeah i'm sure there were six other uh six other proposals that they didn't want to
126put in this resolution possibility do do we have a backup in case the delegate is sick or something how do we do that you cannot get sick that day okay or if i i have to suck it up okay uh may have a motion at the board of education approve uh kitting pong as the new fen uh asb delegate to replace their outgoing vice president paul wiedemann moved i'll second that uh roll call please wiedemann yes haid yes jalawi yep rozinski yes regal yes figueroa yes team pope home yes suspenseful yes i thought it like the theatrics okay uh let's get to the committee reports um bensonville community foundation bensonville community i'm sorry you're i think really only thing that came of the meeting that uh is that we're looking for people from the community
127that is in need of some funds to come forward and uh you know we have received a big donation from subaru uh this past year and so there's a good amount of money there so if there's anybody that any organization that is in need of some funds to uh to come forward and uh and uh and ask the ask the foundation for that and i and i know we we need to sit down and talk about the ap okay that was my next question yes yeah uh i think that that's probably something that we we should do but i just think we need a little conversation but yeah thank you so much anything to add no uh the finance committee i don't i think we covered it well the previous meeting in this meeting unless
128there's any questions that haven't already come up yeah uh isb delegate that would be paul for now tomorrow um yeah i uh we just voted on our new isp delegate [Laughter] new update good you know the um that that will be the next action up for the iesp delegate is that triple i mean again we have our division meeting uh dupage division meeting uh tomorrow uh and uh thank you paul um the len meeting nothing to report our next meeting is on friday the 29th okay and uh netsec please um leo was unable to attend last yesterday's meeting uh it was basically similar to our meeting uh the main topic was uh the the financial audit for netsec the board policy committee we didn't have one and uh dei we didn't have one so um
129nothing to report uh our next board meeting uh with new business the next uh new scheduled regular board meeting um is wednesday november 17 2021 at 7 p.m with the tentative board policy committee meeting scheduled at six prior to the regular meeting uh with new business announcements it's gonna be triple i conference on friday november 19th and saturday november 20th and we've got board members attending that um so do we yeah we want the resolutions then before that for the meeting you really just right that's correct for our next board maybe if you could read this you know this week and perhaps you know a week before our board meeting just give me a call or an email okay thanks okay uh so we're gonna head out to executive session i may have a motion
130a second to go to closed session for the purpose of the appointment employment compensation discipline performance or dismissal specific employees of the public body for the legal counsel for the public body including hearing testimony on a complaint lodged against an employee of the public body or against legal counsel for the public body to determine its validity however meeting to consider an increase in compensation to a specific employee of a public body that is subject to the local government wage increased transparency act may not be closed and shall be open to the public and posted held in accordance with this act five illinois cs 120 2c1 and collective negotiating matters between the public body and its employees or their representatives or deliberations concerning salary schedules for one or more classes of employees according to guidelines five
131illinois cs 120 2 c2 and the selection of a person to fill a public office as defined in the opening meeting open meetings act including a vacancy in a public office when a public body is given power to a point under law or ordinance or the discipline performance or removal of the occupant of a public office when the public body is given power to remove the occupant under law or ordinance five illinois cs120 to c3 bro call please pardon me motion uh please i'll make a motion to go into executive session for everything he just read because i'm not repeating thank you exactly okay roll call please wiedemann yes shall we yes redzinski yes regal yes figueroa yes okay yes yes and uh motion passed and we are in closed session yes it's close sessions
132about 20 minutes do you want to take a little break my uh motion passed and we are into open session again and i think i need to make a motion for us to adjourn so bo second yes figueroa yes paid yes yes and we are adjourned thank you paul for everything you