Regular Board Meeting - 11/17/2025

001[Music] Yes, sir. All right, we're going to get started. Well, wow. little house at the kindergarten center kindergarten students. Oh, real. [Music] >> Well, thank you all for for being here. Just a real quick announcement to you all. >> In the back is where we have some material uh that address your meetings and board protocol. have an interest in commenting. There's a floor back there. There's also styling back there. And the other thing to keep in mind, uh, is that at all times, uh, the room is a hot mic. Um, so if he's going to pick up your comments and recording and therefore >> I apologize in advance. >> Yeah. But for the rest of you, I just wanted to just be aware. Okay. Very good. All right. And with that, I will call to

002order Miss 17. Mr. Lock, would you please lead us? [Music] If our kindergarters would like to lead us, that would be incredible. >> All right, please go ahead [Music] to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Great job. [Music] >> Mrs. Roll call, please. >> Miss King >> here. >> Miss Lakeman. >> Mr. Mle >> here. >> Miss Becker. >> I'm here. >> Mrs. Liddow >> here. >> Mr. Estes >> here. >> Dr. Martelli >> here. >> Mrs. Hill >> here. >> Mr. Loba >> here. >> Dr. Bruno >> here. Thank you very much. As you can see, we're clearing some technological adjustment. And let me also just say thank you to the tech team

003for getting us over here and getting it all set up. Well done. We appreciate the effort. And you also, Mrs. for all the work took us place. And this is the first time we have met this morning. So, thank you all for sharing with us. So, Dr. Mchu, you certainly have some celebrations and recognitions. Yes, we certainly do. We have two celebrations and recognitions starting with our kindergarteners. So, I'm going to introduce our principal of the kindergarten summer, this is Sarah Rodriguez. And you brought some friends today. I did. We worked on a little project. We wanted to bring some kindergarteners here today for the meeting because what better way to celebrate than have our kindergarters here. And before the meeting, we talked about our favorite parts of kindergarten. So, my friends here tonight are

004going to share what their favorite part of kindergarten is. So, I think we're all going to walk up here. And I'm going to give them each the mic when it's their turn. >> Okay. Our first is Fiona. Fiona, if you want to tell everyone your favorite thing about kindergarten. My name is and my favorite thing about kindergarten is um playing outside and friends and lunch. >> You'll notice a theme and some classic answers if you've ever asked a student what their favorite thing about school is. And next we have Ayah sing this one. >> What do you like that Mrs. Prender Guest does every day? >> What do you like that Mrs. Prendergast does every day? What does she do a lot? >> I don't know. Miss P sings songs always >> very impressive voice.

005>> Thank you, >> Miss Grace. >> My favorite thing about kindergarten is outdoor recess. I love it so much because I get to spend time with my friends and I get to play with them even though they're in different classes. And it's me playing with my friend Emma because we we were wearing the same dress because a little lighter darker with me when I was wearing my dress of where I had got it for my birthday. That's the sky. That's the red. That's the sky. That's the sun. I added these objects so you knew that it was outside. >> Thank you, Grace. Because we do have a playground for inside recess, too. So, we love those details. And last but not least, Austin. My favorite thing about kindergarten is Chromebooks because you get to type

006with them. >> Thank you, Austin. >> So, we just thought we'd share a little bit about our favorite parts of kindergarten with you and thank you for having us. [Applause] [Music] Great job. Thanks, guys. [Music] The same picture you think is [Laughter] >> such a good job. Oh, that's perfect. Great job. >> One more. Look right here. Look right here. Great job. >> Well, we're not telling them they have to go to bed, right? That's kindergarten teachers though staff that's here and you're not let you let the kids so Mrs. Rodriguez, the shepherds the kids out of here. I just wanted to say a couple words of appreciation for the center. For those of you that came early, hopefully you were able to walk through it. Um, our architects and construction company and QC did

007a beautiful job building it, designing it, getting everything ready. Um, our in-house operations team of Eric Porter and Star Marggo kept everybody on track. They delivered on time and on their budget. And it was not it was not easy. There were so many challenges and complications that came all along the way and they got us to the finish line. And then once we had the building built, we needed to figure out how full day kindergarten works. And we entrusted that to Sarah Rodriguez who as principal, you spent January through pretty much the first day of school doing all the logistics and the planning and the hiring and figuring out what this could look like. and you hired an amazing staff, many of which were in other district 41 schools, and pulled together a staff, some

008of whom are here today. And it's amazing that you created this from scratch you and continue properly to iterate and change. But the cohesiveness, the collaboration, the hard work and and dedication. I couldn't believe walking in here after I think it was the second week of school and seeing already how you had your kids in the routines knowing what they were doing. It was it was as if they had been here forever. So, you've done a wonderful job. Um, board, thank you to all of you who set the vision without you. This would have been possible. I feel like I'm leaving out other people. Sarah, who has >> Well, I just always want to thank my staff because it's been incredible to have a team, some new teachers, but many from across the district and

009um it's an amazing feeling to put that together. Sir, can you have the staff that's here to just stand up to take a wine? [Applause] >> It's uh very special to all be so focused on one thing and that's kindergarten. So, it's a really special feeling and awesome to have kids from all over um in all of our elementary schools here and I love it. So, thank you. There was another group that I am leaving out and I don't know how because we only talk about kindergarten every single week for a year. The team in the back there are are having a team literally every week for a year, sometimes multiple times. Everybody playing their role but also coming together and doing it as one. Um this place truly is a result of we are

010D41 and I am so proud of that and thank you all for coming and sharing that with us today. Thank you. AS OUR kindergarten team may or may not say, you're welcome to leave. I want to remind everybody that we're thinking about kindergarten for next year already. Pre-registration is open. It's open through the end of November. If you have an incoming kindergartener or know somebody who does, have them pre-register on the district website before the end of November. That helps us make decisions for registration, which will happen in January, February. Think about it as the first step process. A lot of people have, but we don't have everybody yet. So, pre-registration on the district website. All right. So, thank you kindergarten team. You're welcome to stay if you would like to slip out. We have

011one final recogn. [Music] So, our board of education, for those of you in the audience and watching at home, November is school board appreciation month. And Saturday the 15th was school board appreciation day. Um, if you have never served on a school board before, the amount of time and effort it takes, it's unreached. And these seven ladies and gentlemen are volunteers. and the amount of time they are putting in for the benefit of our kids and our community. Um I I couldn't be happier to have a supportive, engaged, thoughtful board who not only will you're supportive, but also you're you ask hard questions and you come up with great ideas and advice and I think you are a big part of VR412. So thank you for all of your service during this month and always

012and I am proud to serve you and this so thank you. Round of applause FOR [Applause] THAT. OKAY, presentation we got a few and the first one I'd like to invite Molly Victor up to the podium and uh she and I are going to co-f facilitate this presentation and after the presentation you'll see who's really running it and who's doing one or two slides but we're we're call right facilitation >> co- facilitation >> the preschool school program we're here. The reason that we're doing this presentation in the first place is preschool is part of our strategic plan. We have four goals. Goal three is early learning facilities. And while the kindergarten center isn't a metric on strategic plan check, it's built. It's operational. It's established. But there's an action step on there at the very

013bottom of that of of this um of the goal that says evaluate the facility needs for preschool. So this was something that the board had tasked us with last year. We built the kindergarten center but how are the facilities for preschool and Molly who oversee see you're the executive director for student services but you do oversee preschool. Our question wasn't are the facilities right? it is what is the preschool what preschool program do we want to have here in 41 and do the facilities support and with that in mind I'll turn it over before I get started how many of you have a current preschool student or had a student in the preschool program and you are here because one of our amazing preschool teachers told you to come >> yeah nobody at home >>

014great I noticed Okay, we'll do that one more time. How many have a student currently in our preschool program or formally in our preschool program? Or maybe both. And you are here because one of our amazing preschool teachers told you to come. >> Yes. Well, thank you all for being here. Um I hopefully I'm not going to tell you anything you don't already know. Um and please correct me if I say anything wrong because you guys live preschool much more than I do. Um, so our district 41 preschool program is housed at Forest Glenn Elementary School. It's a 5-day a week program. We have two sessions, a morning session and an afternoon session. Uh, we have six classrooms. One of those classrooms is a bilingual classroom. Uh, Spanish is the language that is is spoken

015and taught in there. Every classroom has one teacher um and two uh pareducators. Um, the cool thing about our preschool teachers is that they are triplelicicensed. Uh, which means that they are preschool teachers, they are special ed teachers, and they are also ESL teachers. So, uh, they are some of our most credentialed teachers in the district. Um, every classroom in our program, um, of the 15 to 18 students per class has to have 80% of those students who meet the atrisisk criteria. And each one of those classrooms holds uh about four spots for tuition students, which would be students who don't meet the as at risk criteria with the exception of our bilingual classroom that is 100% at risk. Every classroom is a blended classroom experience. Uh blended classroom means that it's a play-based student

016centered environment. So those of you who took a tour here at the kindergarten center, you saw some of the play-based activities. Imagine that times 10 in a preschool classroom. Um, our classrooms are mixed age and and abilities. Students can start the day after or the day that they turn 3 years old and go all the way up until they're eligible for kindergarten. Um, our instruction in our classroom targets all areas of development. Our teachers are focusing on literacy, math, language, social, emotional development just like they do at kindergarten, first all the way through 8th grade. Uh we're sharing with you a sample afternoon schedule. Uh this happens to be Mrs. Clem's afternoon class schedule. Um things to point out on there is that uh the preschool day allows for multiple shared play experiences. is you

017see opportunities for time on the playground, uh time at centers, circle time. Those are all times where the students get to interact with each other and with the adults in their classrooms. Teachers introduce academic concepts, things like letters, sounds, numbers through books, music, crafts, and other group activities. Uh, one of my favorite things about preschool is that, uh, they ask a question of the day and students all answer and then they graph those answers and they talk about which answer has the most and which answer has the least. So things you wouldn't think are happening in preschool are happening every day. In order to enter preschool, all of our students participate in a preschool screening. The process starts with a parent request for a screening or through early intervention services. Um this year we hosted

018seven different screening dates or we will host seven different screening dates. Three in August, one in October and then three more to come um as the year goes on. Um each screening is um an individual screening for each student. They last about 20 minutes per student, sometimes a little longer if the student needs a little bit of time to warm up to the strangers. Uh, two staff members screen students together. Um, and then students are able to start in the program um, as soon as one week after their screening, just as soon as all of the parents have finished the paperwork and and gotten things all set up for them. I wanted to talk a little bit about enrollment. Um so here you have um three full years of enrollment and then the last bar

019is our our current um as of September. Um so our total enrollment if we were completely full is right around 170 students. Um the last time we had 170 students in the program was in May 2023. Um as of the beginning of November uh we had 131 students enrolled. You can see at our 2526 bar um there were 116 students enrolled. So between the end of September and now the beginning of November we have grown by whatever that math is. Um we give priority to enrollment to our students who meet the atrisisk criteria because we are a preschool for all program. That means we're a state funded program intended to increase access to early learning programs for all students. So that's what we know about preschool, right? As Jeff talked about, this is one of

020our uh strategic goals. Um so in October, the goal three subcommittee, a couple of our our team members are here, uh met to discuss the preschool program challenges and strengths. This group is made up of preschool staff members, administrators, parents, and community partners. During that meeting, Jeff and I asked the team to brainstorm in mixed groups. show parents, educators, administrators all mixed together about the many things that District 41 preschool does well. Here you see kind of the summary of it. Um that every group shared that we have wonderful staff and they attribute that to being on the district pay scale. The fact that we are a fully staffed preschool with people who want to work with preschool children was uh definitely a celebration that came out. Um the team celebrated the opportunities that are

021made possible due to having the preschool in an elementary school. Uh things like allowing the preschool students to ask access the school library or allowing them to have um a buddy classroom with older students. Um the teams also highlighted the screening process and the blended model sharing that both of those things allows for all students to get their needs met in the classroom. After we finished celebrating the strengths, we talked about some of the program challenges. The number one challenge that every team highlighted, and I will tell you highlighted, they wrote it in the biggest, darkest font on their post papers was space. Um, while we have six beautiful classrooms, the program does not currently have access to an indoor gross motor space, enough storage for what a bunch of preschoolers need and their teachers,

022uh, or room to grow. Um, so those were all things that were highlighted in the challenge. Uh they also talked about uh having an administrative team and an office staff that are shared with the elementary school can be challenging at times as it feels like sometimes there's not enough support to go around. And then the team finally identified that we need to increase community and parent knowledge of the program and suggested that we do more to reach families. So the committee gave us four suggestions for next steps in this goal area. They are suggesting that we answer the question, how do we build parent and community awareness of the program? Can we further develop our partnership with private preschool providers such as the GECRC and the YMCA as an example? They are as also asking

023us to um investigate what type of space is needed to accommodate the preschool program in district 41. And then finally, how can we provide more opportunities for family engagement outside of the school day? So, finally, we have these four suggestions. Um, what we would like to do as next steps with this committee and and probably some other uh investigations is explore what makes district 41 preschool great. We really want to figure out how do we measure and achieve great programming. Can we reach out to the schools that serve our students? Why did students choose another preschool instead of our district 41 preschool? We believe we need to understand that in order to grow into greatness. And then the other piece there is we want to understand how our current programming prepares our students for kindergarten.

024Uh are we giving them the right experience in their first school experience to help them be successful in kindergarten? And then secondly, we want to look at developing an outreach and communication plan. Um, the team came up with the great idea that we should figure out how to brand the program. Preschool needs a name. Preschool needs a mascot. Um, so we'll explore what does that look like for our our youngest learners. Um, and then along those lines, we want to also increase communication through all the different channels we have. Um, social media, print, principal communications. We want to get the word out that that District 41 has a preschool and we are great. Um, so those are our next steps. >> Questions from the board? anything. >> I noticed I noticed that um it looked

025like over the past several years less students were taking advantage or that that they're not taking advantage of it. Are they not uh is there not interest? What what kind of are we looking at with the numbers? >> Yeah. So, what you're looking at is um the lighter blue is our September enrollment and then the darker blue is our our end of the year, right? So, looking at kind of that that cross-section of how did we grow throughout the year. Preschool is um an a different kind of program that we have rolling enrollment, right? So, when you start kindergarten, you have to be 5 years old by September 1st. In preschool, when you turn three, you can start whether you turn three on September 1st or January 1st. it's anytime during that school year. Um,

026to answer your question of are are people not coming? Why aren't they choosing us? >> Well, I guess my question is from like is it 2022 to 2024, we saw above the 150 mark and it looks like we're going to be below that mark. >> Yeah. And and like I said, that's one of our next steps, right? Exploring why are parents choosing other preschools instead of the the the district 41 preschool. Do they not know about it? Do the times not work for them? Um, you know, there could be a variety of reasons. That's one of the things that we need to investigate um of, you know, are we missing a population? Are we are we missing something in in our programming? >> Yeah. Anyone else? Molly, can I ask two things? So, how do

027we how do we make ourselves known? What are we currently doing to allow the community to understand that programs here? It looks like we definitely need to wrap that up and make that more robust. I'm just curious what you mentioned. >> Yeah, we have a lot of different measures. We have a um we have uh Megan here. Megan is our preschool parent liaison. Um, a good chunk of Megan's job is helping parents um know that preschool exists and how they get in the door. Um, Megan connects with our community resources like the um case uh early childhood collaborative, the Glenard Parents as Teachers. Uh we participate in the Glenn Ellen Public Library and the Glennside Public Library preschool uh fairs um throughout the year. Uh we advertise on our website. uh we have some social

028media posts that go out. Um so but there's probably more than we can do, right? And so that's what we want to explore some more of that outreach. >> And one of Thank you. Thank you, Megan. You also mentioned that we are a prek for all school, which means there's a grant that we received. And is is the district what is the district's thoughts about reapplying for the grant? Right. Is that you're smiling and wondering? >> I'm gonna let Jeff answer your question. >> I'm going to let Jeff answer that question. >> Yeah. My co-presenter can answer that question. >> I've been hearing us. >> I know. I'm sorry. I should do more questions. So, the preschool for all grant is a grant that annually um we should be filling out and applying for. Um

029but this year we're wondering will there be a change in one of the questions I have that I hope to get through this this engagement that we're doing is if we get it do we want to use it and the reason I say that is there are restrictions if you are preschool for all there are restrictions on schedule even now you mentioned 80% of our students here 80% of the students need to qualify as at risk so one of my questions here is are there fewer atrisisk students available to us in our communities? And if that's the case, we can only grow so much because 80% of those students need to be at risk. If we did not follow a preschool for all model, we would be able to expand as much as our resources

030required to commit to that. But I think it does go back to the what makes for a great preschool. We know we have two ingredients, three ingredients. We have the staff first and foremost. We have the administrators between Molly, Sarah Taylor, and of course, who's doing a fantastic job. They're overseeing Scott the principal of that building, too. And we have wonderful parents who are supportive. So, we've got those pieces. Do we want to follow the guidelines of preschool for all? What would our facilities need to look like differently? And really, it comes down to what does greatness look like for our preschool. Once we can answer that question, that will help us decide. I think for the grant, for the space, and can Yeah, please. Do you think you'll have an answer to that question

031before the deadline for finally? >> I believe should I share what I'm thinking right now? I guess I don't know. >> Well, if it isn't fully faked, I don't It's just an important question. There's a lot of funding. >> Yeah, it's not fully baked. I think our initial thinking is we would apply for the grant still not knowing what's going to happen and then should we receive the grant we want to balance fiscal responsibility to our community with what the community is looking for out of the preschool program. The staff is really going to help inform us with that too because they know what the constraints are from the grant but at the same time it's a lot of money. Now, if we apply for the grant and we get only some of it or

032none of it, then that answer the question for ourselves. If we do get a lot of money for the grant, then we just have to weigh the money we're getting versus what our preschool staff can do for those kids and also enrollment because that would allow us to expand should be my idea. So, it's going to be a combination of staff engagement, but also we're going to want to know what the community and the board defines greatness from the preschool program. And that would be over the coming months. >> You did a great job. question is is that if we're seeing a growth in the transition from EI but it's more to the of our childhood for all whatever they >> preschool for all does that is does that somehow restrict our ability to serve

033the EI transitioning kids by >> No in fact it's the opposite it restricts our ability to serve uh tuition students. >> So is the 20% just a like a math? You do math 20%. >> Yeah. So we could have 100% preschool for all. We could have 100% at risk children. Um we choose as a district to allow spaces for tuition students. So um you know we that's where Jeff is talking about as we explore this we can decide you know kind of how we move forward. Okay, I don't know whether [Music] Okay, Julie, go ahead. >> Um, my question is referring back to your comment about the very stipulations for a preschool for all grants. If that somehow hinders me the space, which I don't know if that's actually a thing, could you get a

034grant for like some pres for some classrooms and then function if do we have five? Five or six. >> Six. If we I know this is mainly sure if we did like four preschool for all and two however we want to do it. Is that like a thing that you can do through the grant? You can be like we we're applying for our four preschool classrooms and the other two are grad. >> Yeah. So we could choose to run a preschool for all program and a fully tuitionfunded program, right? Is that what your question is? >> Yeah. So that's kind of what Jack is talking about. As we explore this, we could, you know, look at different ways that are fiscally responsible for us to meet the needs of all of our students. First, we

035have to figure out what students were missing and why they aren't coming to our program. That's our first step. >> Okay. Oh, please. >> All right. This is the question is more shout out cuz I know that we have quite a few preschool parents. If you have not signed your preschool child up at the Dolly Parton Imagination Library Kids Foundation, please do. It's absolutely wonderful and the kids really enjoy getting the books. >> Yeah. Who doesn't want a free book every month, right? >> People say like, you know, the blended program from our preschool has prior to the PFA. I mean, that I don't think that's a conversation that getting rid of, but I mean that that was the budget program had to come around because that's something that was in place given that one

036of the things that contributes to, you know, positive part of that. I'd like to see I do think that's a really important part of the program. >> All right, Molly, thank you. We really appreciate taking the time right here. >> Yes, let's do that. All right, we've got a second presentation strategic plan which I'm co-acilitating again. >> Thank you for coming. It's good to see you all. >> Thank you. Thank you school families and preschool staff. [Music] >> Motion to sing happy birthday [Music] or Brenda. Happy birthday Brenda. Okay. Okay. >> Well, we just talked goal three. Now we're going to talk goal one. And this is our metrics update, our monthly metrics update and goal one, academic excellence, where I will co- facilitate with Dr. Chris Webster. And before I pass off to Chris,

037just as a reminder, academic excellence, there are three metrics on our strategic plan under goal one in which we're measuring academic excellence. One of them is proficiency. That means achievement. Is this your part right? >> Okay. I believe that Dr. Webster is going to talk about proficiency. And so I'm simply going to say we have proficiency for all students. And by all students, the metric is for Illinois assessment and readiness, I A given to students grades 3 through 8. So it's all students in district 41 grades 3 through 8 proficiency and growth. And the third measure is the achievement gap metric for all 3rd through 8th graders who qualify as low income. And that is to address our achievement gap again measured by the AR. And there's a link in the presentation to the Finland

038school report card which came out on October 30th. If you haven't already, please go to the site. Lots of wonderful data, but the data on the report card will match what Dr. So, sorry. That was really fun. Before we get started, I did want to talk a little bit about some pretty significant changes that uh the Illinois State Board of Education made over the summer to the IR, which is the Illinois Assessment of Readiness that Dr. spoke about as well as ISA, we call it ISA, it's the Illinois Science Assessment. Um, as you might recall, every year I get up here and we speak about how the the cut scores for proficiency for children to succeed on AR has been the highest among the highest, usually top three in the nation. So, a student perhaps

039that has the score in Illinois could have the exact same score in Colorado and in Illinois they would not be meeting expectations, but in Colorado they could be exceeding um because our bar was so high. Uh, Dr. Sanders, the uh state superintendent um who was also a former district superintendent um identified that also as an issue. So this summer, the Illinois State Board of Education made some changes to this the cut scores um to make them more in line with a typically performing student. So you'll see that um both in ELA and math, the old score um was higher than the current score. that resulted in this year our uh achievement our proficiency scores being higher even if a child had the same score as they did last year because the bar was was moved

040to be more right sized that's what Dr. those calls and sorts. Um so ASB has been very very uh very specific about saying this is the new benchmark for the academic achievement piece. Um you can't really compare this year to previous years because the cut is different, right? So this is a a new benchmark for the proficiency targets. Growth however has remained unchanged. Growth is is measured differently. So growth has remained unchanged. The interesting thing is is that when they looked at science, they also felt like the science scores were not um rigorous enough. So they actually increased the science scores on ISA um in fifth and eighth grade by about 13 points. Um so if you see an increase um in some areas in the achievement um in ELA math, depending it could be

041a result of the cut score change, but if you see a decrease in science, it could be because of the the increase in the cut score. Again, you're really apples to apples this year, last year, or this year as you came prepared for academic achievement. So, I just wanted to give that context for you. I think it's very important if you do choose to go look at the Illinois School of Work that you realize that this this change was made. So, I I just spoke about how we we can't compare this year to previous years, but this is why our measures still work. So, we um use the ECO report uh for two of our three measures. And what the EP report does, and we'll talk in a few minutes, is it compares us to

042other districts in the state of Illinois. All of the districts um are following the same cuts course. So that takes away the lack of comparability. So the metric that we uh established when we reevaluated last year continues to work because it continues to be an applesto apples measure. All districts are following the same standards. Our third goal for closing the achievement gap is a growth goal and growth is unchanged. So that has not been impacted by the ISBY cut scores. Um so we are still able to identify uh meaningful trends and our data still is able to drive our instructional improvement and we're very fortunate. Many districts across the state that have used a different metric kind of had to go back to square one. We did not because of the metric that we use

043in our plan. And before I go any further I just wanted one quick clarification uh between the difference between proficiency and grade level. Uh there's often a lot of confusion when the Illinois school report card comes out when they see that the students are in the 60th percentile uh or the 68th or 70th percentile for um ELA. That does not mean that only 60 or 75 60 or 70% of our kids are reading at grade level. It's not a grade level measure. What it's measuring is their proficiency on the IR exam and meeting different standards. It's not grade level. So it's the the proficiency score is comparing our students to state goals not to grade level performance. So there is a difference and it's often um misunderstood understandably um in the both in the education

044field and outside of the education field. So the IR is measuring proficiency towards state goals not mastery of things like a child can read that grade. Okay. So here we are. So here are the proficiency metrics. So what this measures is if you'll see the 91st and 94th percentile again that is the report that we received from ECRA about the Illinois assessment of readiness that compares us to all of the other schools in the state of Illinois and determines where we fall with our scores. We score exceedingly high. um we're above the 90th percentile, which means that we're in the top 10% of the state, top 10 percentile of the state for our scores in both ELA and math. Um you'll see that they stay the same um from 23 24 to 24 25. Um

045and actually, especially for ELA, that's actually we're happy about that piece. Often times when you use when you implement a new instructional resource, you see a dip the first year because the instructional resource assumes the kids have had it. um all of the five or six years of elementary school specifically or six, seventh, and eighth grade. Um so there there are gaps we need to go in and fill because the students weren't exposed to that specific resource prior. Um our students that showed the most growth with HMH with our new instructional resource last year are our primary school kids, which actually makes sense. So it's going to take a little bit before we start to see that. I imagine that next year um we'll start to see that coming back up. We still have two

046more years left to meet this very high goal. Um the 95th percentile is a very lofty goal. Um I think we can I think we can do it. Um and we're almost there in that. Um but I think we're going to get there. We're close. We're close. Um this is the growth metric. So again um you'll see that we maintained our growth in in ELA which is actually celebration. We didn't see any type of diplomation. Um and we grew we actually grew a bit by a percentile point in um in math. So we our growth in math we are seeing movement there again inching close we're so close um in the arts we're so close to that 95th percentile goal um and actually with our pool too. So we are again close to being in

047the top 5% the entire state of Illinois. This is actually the one I'm the most excited about. Um, this is our achievement gap metric. And so this looks at using the IR the amount of growth our students from low-inccome households uh made from year-to-year on the assessment. Um, just as a refresher, the reason that we chose um the lowincome students for our achievement gap metric is because there's a high correlation with low-inccome in many of our underrepresented um groups. One of the things they have in common is poverty. And so by choosing this low-inccome group, we were able to really um focus on a wide spot for our students that need us the most. And I'm very excited to say that we saw growth in both ELA and math um for our students that have

048demonstrated achievement gap. We have we're starting to make progress in closing that achievement gap. So even though we didn't see it broadly, um overall when we look at this one group of students that we're really focusing on, we are starting to see growth. Anything above the 50th percentile for growth is exciting, right? So if you're growing at the 50th percentile, that means if you were to look at a trend line, it's staying the same. So if you're underperforming at the 25th percentile, you're staying at the 25th percentile. as you go every percentile point you go over the 50th percentile, the more quickly you're you're closing the gap and getting to more uh proficiency levels than we would anticipate. So the fact that we are seeing our students um in in this achievement gapric performing at

049the 53rd and 58th percentile um is very exciting um and we we would anticipate continuing to see that grow as well. So that that's a celebration. Okay. So, that's our data and here are our next steps so that you know what kind of our action plan is for this year. Um, did you want me did you want I see you looking at me. Did you want to take it or you want me to do it? >> I wasn't sure if they were all gonna or not. >> It looks like I did it fancy and you have to press that. Thanks. Sorry. Okay. So, the first thing we want to do is obviously enhance our data driven accountability, right? So, we want to keep looking at the data to help us inform instruction. And one of

050the ways we're going to do that um you there please. Thank you. Um is we are going to be meeting with building leadership uh to help them monitor school improvement plans. In fact, we actually um Mrs. Mo just sent out uh invitations over the course of the next month. Uh we'll be meeting with each of the building principles to kind of look and see how their school improvement plan is going, how their data looks. Um we'll do that at each benchmark three times a year so that we can continue to show that growth. The actual work happens at the buildings. they are the ones that are doing all the amazing work to show this work for our students. So that's the first thing we're going to do. Um we're also continuing to deepen our core

051instructional frameworks. Uh we are really focusing on small group and differentiated instruction. We really uh brought that forward as a key initiative last year and I I do strongly believe that that had the impact on our students from low-inccome households. Um we are going to continue that work. Um and that is for all students. It is not just for students that aren't quite there yet. Uh we're also working in kids that may already know and need an extension as well. And um and that will also happen for um we're also continuing to focus Molly and I are working very hard on continuing to um focus on the MTSS systems of support. We have great processes in place. She and I are working very hard this year on making sure that we have researchbased um interventions

052to make sure that our teachers have the toolkit they need to provide those interventions. And also um if you were at the committee as a whole um you will um probably remember we talked about something called TAC briefly. Um so we are looking at ways to integrate technology intentionally. Um there's a lot of conversation right now about the power or the the danger of technology in education. So we are working very hard identifying ways that we can do that intentionally. Um the TAC framework is a framework that's been around for a very long time. It is like the gold standard. Um, and this is something that we're going to be working uh uh Fisel and I are working on this year together. We are tag teaming this um to really bring this framework uh for

053our PLC's to our teachers so they have a really clearly identifiable way to determine what technology if technology when technology based on the content and their instructional practices. So lots going on. Dr. Mu, I'll turn it to you. >> Any questions? questions. Chris, first of all, thank you. And whenever you take the time to define terms, right? You can never do that enough and explain the difference. It's important to recognize what the assessment was showing what it isn't. But from a more narrative perspective to parents who would it's a word of frankly who would want to know are we at grade level and we can't really use it's not exactly telling that telling us that what is telling us that >> so should and should that be the focus or should be just growing you

054tell but assuming that is something you want. >> Sure. So there's different ways to measure that. So if there if a a parent is looking for specific information about a reading level for example or math level um that would be something more organ organic that would come through our common assessments and our built-in instructional assessments. Their teachers would have that. Uh we have running records there. There are other assessments that we do the assessments for learning as opposed to the assessments of learning. Right? Um so the assessments before learning would be the ones that happen in the classroom throughout the year and the classroom teacher would have that information um based on that based on his or her uh observational data uh or the different assessments that we have built into either our core resources

055or our county assessment framework that measured um mentioned. >> Well, thank you for that and I I raise it because this is obviously districtwide data. a lot of metrics that stay uh in is holding school districts accountable to but it's not the only measure of how well the student is doing and getting inside that classroom and getting inside the PLC's and talking there's so much happening there. Oh, absolutely. >> And that we should sort of redirect and assure the parents that a lot more about your individual child is doing it in grade. >> Absolutely. We have uh benchmark assessments that we do three times a year that are more standardized assessments, but we also have again common assessments that are created through PLC that are part of our instructional resources, observational, exit tickets. We have

056all sorts of meaningful um in the- moment data that informs our instruction. again that this is really the assessment of learning like did did we how did we do right and then those other systems like I said for learning where are they where what do the kids need where are we at what's their level is what we're doing working like for MTSS the constant progress monitoring is what we're working on with these particular students actually making a difference if not what do we need to do differently all of that happens every day all the time in the classroom >> it's good not to not to lose package. >> Oh, absolutely. >> This isn't the only data that the district has access to. Thank you. >> And to go back to your earlier point, if I

057can give a shout out to the uh subcommittee, the strategic goal one subcommittee that Dr. Mchu and I met with. Was that September? October. Uh seems like yesterday, but we're already Yeah. Um uh thank a big thank you to them. Uh Dr. Martelli was there as well. uh they actually we asked for feedback on what would be the most useful for parents in the community to know in this board meeting and the board. Um I did a similar presentation for them. It was bigger and broader. Um and they really helped us hone like this is what we want to know as parents, as community members. This is this is what you should be telling people and talking to people about. This is what's important. So to your point about proficiency and growth and that type

058of thing, um several of the slides that I used tonight I used by direct recommendation from the the committee that Dr. Martelli, Dr. McKe and I met with in October to help make sure to help this can get very technical to make sure that the board and our parents were actually getting information that was useful that we asked parents was useful. So, a shout out to them and thank you to them for cut all my slides. >> Great job. >> Well, thank you for shouting and thanks to Martell. It's good to know that board members make it positive. I'm assuming [Music] he was very involved actually. That's good to know. Okay, that's great. >> All right, and we'll go to public participation. Members of the public who wish to address board secretary speakers are asked

059to maintain respectful form and their comics or that's by the way electronic billboard. You probably won't be looking at about 30 seconds. That's how I was politely asking you to wrap it up. Please note that all meetings include public comment are live streamed and they are recorded and they become part of the official background. Mrs. M, is there anyone wishing to make public comment? >> Andrew McGaby Grady, please. Good to see you again. >> Okay. Good evening, uh, student. Good evening. My name is Andrew McGee. I'm a proud parent of a kindergarten student here at the kindergarten center. I'm here tonight to raise a safety concern that affects our young students and their families every day of school. I'm fortunate to live close enough to the kindergarten center that my wife and I are able

060to walk our son to school every day. But that walk has shown me just how unsafe the area on Geneva Millennial Road can be during drop off and pick up. vehicles regularly speed through uh the school zone, not just cars but trucks, school buses, construction and semi trucks and even police vehicles often going twice the posted 20 mph speed limit zone and that is while students and parents are present. To understand the scope of this issue, I bought a radar gun and I began tracking the speeds uh during my short 10-minute walk to and from school. Since the start of recording, there hasn't been a single day there hasn't been a single day that I haven't clocked multiple vehicles traveling at more than double the speed limit um in the school zone. Part of the

061problem is that there is zero enforcement from the ground police department and that the school zone flashing lights are out of sync for when the students are actually walking. They don't turn on until 8:00 a.m. Um, and that is after many of the junior high students and the kindergarten center students have already crossed junior road. They do not activate again until 3:30 p.m. And that's 15 minutes after kindergarten dismissal. And that's when most of the kindergarten students are already home. Under Illinois law, the school zone speed limit applies or of 20 m hour class from 6:30 to 4:00 p.m. And that's when children are present. I'm not suggesting that lights are on that entire time, but they should at a minimum reflect the student activity, and right now that simply does not happen. I spoke

062with principal Sarah Rodriguez who has been very receptive. So I'd like to thank him for that and we both agree that both the placement and the timing of the science should be reviewed quickly and especially with the winter conditions coming. However, my experience with the Glenn Police Department has been a bit frustrating. I was told that we can't have um we can't be every school every day. uh there will be suspended no matter what. Um and I understand that they forwarded my email to D41. Um but it felt a little less like problem solving and more like excusem. Um I reached out to the department um the DuPage County Department of Transportation since they manage the road signs. But lasting change, an actual change which is going to take a coalition between the school district,

063the village and law enforcement. Um, thank you. Thank you very much. >> Andy Fman, >> welcome. Thank you. >> Thank you guys. I appreciate the time. Um, I'm just here to tell you guys a little bit of the story and actually echo a lot of what Andrew said today. him and I are in university. A few seconds, a few seconds is all it took for me to nearly lose my son. My name is Andy Bowman. I have a son, Griffin, and he attends Churchill here. He's a second grader. Since he started school, I've had the privilege of walking him to school in the morning and picking him up in the afternoon. I love doing it. It's great. And a lot of days they tend to blend together, but uh that day, it always sticks out

064to me. Um it was the first week of school. He was really eager to get to Church Hill. got the little buddies and stuff like that. Um, we were standing at the crosswalk that Andrew actually mentioned at the intersection of Bloomingdale and Gene. Actually, we we crossed it to get to this meeting. Um, we got the walk signal. We started to cross. Um, we both saw the school bus that was stopped in the southern lane of traffic moving westbound. U, what we couldn't see was the sedan that was rushing through the next lane over. Um, I mean that that sedan never slowed down. A lot of them don't. and it made a right turn against red. I remember it vividly. Um, and really it was just a few seconds that all it really would have

065taken for either me to lose my son, for my son to lose his father. So, this isn't just a question about kids. It's it's everybody that crosses there. Um, but yeah, it was close. It was just way too close. And so my question is is like how many close calls need to happen before we collectively act? Um, I'm asking I'm here today just to really raise awware await raise awareness about the issue. Um, just, you know, just really just ask the question, what will it take to prevent the death of a child? Um, I'm I'm interested in a crossing guard, a sign that reads no turn on red, a few cement pylons to prevent a car from hitting anyone, children, anybody for that matter, should a car lose control. You know, Andrew brought up the

066fact that the winter's coming, winter is coming. Um, and they're making a lot of folks make that left turn from Bloomingdale onto Geneva. We actually had an accident there during last school year. It wasn't during the day. You could tell there was a lot of debris there. It's clear that that is an issue. So, I'm just asking you guys, let's consider what's at stake and just ask ourselves, what can we be doing? And all it really takes is a few seconds to lose someone that we love and really just change our lives forever. So, I that's really what I have for you guys today. Um, I'm, you know, like Andrew, I've I've reached out to several different folks. Uh, PTA, I've spoken with the Lel Police Department. I've spoken with the We Police Department. I

067reached out to Department of Transportation and their committee. I'm organizing a meeting there. I'd love to have somebody from the school board join. Um, because it's an issue that is it's it's it's safety. It's it's something for everybody. So, that's the reason I came here today. I do appreciate you guys' time. I know, Bob. So, thank you very much. >> Thank you, Andy. Adam Tate [Music] broke. Sorry. Okay. So, at the risk of sounding like a broken record, I'm also here to talk about student safety uh on Geneva. So, yeah, Adam Tate, I'm a father of of three uh two of which are currently Church Hill students. I'd like to second both uh Andy and Andrew's comments. Uh we are also I'm also one of their neighbors but um we've been uh uh at Churchill

068for 5 years now and for 5 years we've been raising concerns to previous school administrations to the uh Glennland Police Department to the DuPage County Transportation Board. Uh and essentially we've just been consistently told there's not much we can do and um you know when we've asked about crossing guards in the past we've been told that well it's actually too dangerous to have crossing guards there. Um, so you just need to walk down to Kennallorth. Um, and for those of you who have spent any time walking on Geneva, I can guarantee you crossing at Bloomingdale is not is is certainly uh less uh dangerous than trying to walk down Geneva even further. Geneva is raceway. Um, consistently, as Andrew pointed out, people are speeding daily during uh during school hours. So, um, you know, I

069think what what I'm here also to do is just ask kind of two things of the board. First, let's figure out a plan on how we can get a crossing guard at the Bloomingdale uh intersection. I'm convinced that we can do it safely and cost effectively. And then also help be an advocate of ours uh to the the Glenn Allen Police Department. We need to change behavior of drivers on on Geneva and the way that's going to happen is increasing the number of traffic stops. Uh for 5 years, I have yet to see a single traffic stop happen during school hours when children are present. So this is something that seems to be pretty straightforward, seems to be something that's achievable for us to do and and I'd ask for you guys' support. So again,

070thank you guys for your time. Hopefully I didn't sound too much of a broken record, but uh looking forward to figuring out how we can move forward here. Thank you. Okay. All right. We will then go to we'll go to reports and our superintendent will lead us off. Okay. We'll keep this one short and sweet. Instructional technology and the happy schedule. For those of us who were there at the community the whole meeting on November 3rd, instructional technology was the topic. If you weren't there, you can go on the website. You can watch the video from that. And the presentation is up. And really, there were three main themes that came out of the surveys that were submitted to by students, parents, and staff. Number one is bringing home Chromebooks. If appropriate timing for bringing

071home Chromebooks, how we're using devices at school for teaching and learning. And when we say devices, we mean uh instructional technology is Chromebooks, anything in the classroom. These are not personal devices. These are schoolisssued devices in classroom. And then the third theme that came out was consistency of use classroom to classroom, grade to grade, school to school across the district. And we had about 45 people at the committee of the whole region and we talked about these issues. We looked at the data and we saw that there was some lowhanging fruit that we have and we saw that there are some um bigger issues to tackle. All of them were going to now go to the staff. Kindergarten Chromebooks was one of the the biggest topics of conversation at the full day kindergarten center. We

072already have charting ports filled in. So my kindergarteners don't need to bring their Chromebooks whereas our three and a half day sections and our Google sections still bring them home. So that is going to be a a quicker area. We're going to be able to move on for that. But that begs the question, is it just kindergarten K2 across staff uh students and um families were suggesting we don't bring Chromebooks home for those grades? And there was mixed reviews about grades 32. So the staff voice uh there's parent teacher conferences that we need to have as many staff members there as we wanted to. We'll be bringing that to staff next to talk to them about where we go and we're already looking at solutions charging solutions and things in my future. And thirdly, as

073you heard Dr. Webster talk about, the TPA framework is a framework that both Dr. Webster and Mr. Bake are talking about kicking off at the beginning of the year. you press pause on that so that you can get into this engagement but working with staff on a framework of when is it appropriate to use technology in the classroom where is the return on investment versus what's too much screen time because staff students and families alike want more balance and meaningful use of tech there may be some people on both fringes who say we want no technology whatsoever or everything on tech we're not going either of those places but where in the world do we want to be and there were a lot of good questions for such as technology on recess or technology for

074awards. Where do we stand on that? Is that too much screen time for the overturn investment? So, those are all conversations we're going to be having with staff and then we will continue to bring that back to the community. I do think we're going to see some meaningful changes this year, but this will be ongoing even into next year as so much of our instruction is embedded in technology. what we need to sort through the staff is what is meaningful and what are some of the things that we don't really need technology toward speaking of Dr. our she will be retiring while we are finished. We pretty sad to see her go. Um we need to find another assistant too for teaching learning and accountability. So we are in the midst of that hiring cycle.

075Um we anticipate having a candidate to recommend to you at the December board meeting and then Mr. Dley the Hadley Junior head principal retiring after I believe 12 years of service. Does that sound right? Um, we anticipate with that host meeting just went out. So, we're looking for candidates and we'll begin that hiring process coming up shortly. Dr. David Bruno is here those searches for them and we are going to get hopefully two terrific candidates to bring you in December and January for recommendations in those searches. And lastly, if you recall last year, um, Dr. David Bruno and Dr. Labster worked with elementary staff on the elementary schedule to see how can we make the schedule even better and working with staff came some recommendations went so well we thought included in so uh we

076are convening a committee again Dr. Bruno and Dr. web start working with HA staff and administration on the HALY schedule, what seems to be working and what are some pain points and we expect to be bringing um more information back to you possibly December board meeting, January board meeting some conversations as we get ready for next year. So, we're in the early stages um heavy schedule um given the student committees that you have um and are super important are those will be part part of that conversation to hear student voice and hear what comments critiques they may have on on that >> Dr. paper. I just can't wait to lay in that. >> I'm going to grab a mic. >> Fair enough. >> So, that's a great question. Um, what we did, Chris and I,

077Dr. Webster and I, we put surveys out to all parents in sixth, seventh, eighth grade. We put all surveys out to all sixth, seventh, eighth grade students. a survey to them and then we also put out to the staff. So we took those three voices that went out about three weeks ago, four weeks ago and we got five 600 responses from our students and then we're taking all that and then analyzing it and having discussions with the committee on what we learned that email from. >> Thank you. I don't think I put our student board members on the spot, but when you saw the um questionnaire and answered it, I was just curious what your perspective is like. Could you change one thing and oh man, I wish this were better. We have to end.

078>> Uh I feel like the biggest thing is the just the single period classes like SP like language classes and exploratory and they learn the music program. I feel like there's a lot of people who dislike the language classes and really like the music courses and the exploratories and they wish that they could do both music and exploratories and I feel like that's the biggest thing that I've heard mostly. I was just trying to say like passing periods because I have some classes that are all across the school uh and also some classes that are right next to each other. So, it's really hard to feed that [Music] >> the student voices will be very nice. They they already have been on the committee while we here. This is not just an adult committee. Uh

079we're listening for two weeks. Great. Thank you. All right. Then let's go to board. Yes. [Music] >> Yeah. Just a couple of things. Um, the calendar committee has met twice in preparation to put together the 26 27 school year calendar. Very complex process. I've learned a ton. Um, but we are going to have a tentative tentative plan I think is to have a draft ready to review at the December meeting and then vote on the calendar at the January meeting. I attended the IASB Dupage Divi division meeting with Jeff and Ted late October. It was fantastic, especially as a new board member. Um, there was a speaker Jim Bette who wrote a book called The Art of School Boarding. We got a copy, so nobody wants to borrow it. It was really I skipped it

080so far, but really really engaging speaker. We also D41 won a raffle. So we won a free school board training similar to what we did over um the summer in July and you know when they like called out D41 we like yay. So that was exciting. Um there was a I attended a PEP committee meeting. There's a new um member of the pet committee. He's an independent contractor actually, but super excited about getting PEP out into the community and building awareness. And he's going to be reaching out to Erica already. Um, just to talk about, you know, what we've been doing, how to get more engaged. Uh, the Ben Franklin PTA meeting, that PTA is on it. They had someone from every event that's happening at Ben Franklin this year. Went through it all. Super

081efficient. It was such I don't know. It was very interesting to watch. And then I also just wanted to send shout outs. I attended the Hadley concert which was the seventh and eighth grade band and orchestra students. Fantastic. It was like one of the coolest school concerts I've ever gone to. And then also at Hadley they did their Veterans Day assembly last week which again they had the seventh grade band this time and then a guest speaker who was a former teacher at Hadley I think for like 30 years or something. But um it was so interesting. So really cool events happening. note probably too but also nice. >> Yeah. No, it was great. My dad um he is a former Air Force and we had always attended the Veterans Day assemblies at Lincoln and

082so we weren't really sure like oh the kids are getting older what's it going to be like and have them was fantastic so it was really great meeting best day ever for him so thank you >> yeah Ted and I and if there's anything you won't you want to share Ted feel free but we participated in a half day workshop with the policy committee so Jeff Nancy Ted and I and the Illinois Association of School Board representative uh fine-tuned bunch of our policy work and we'll be bringing some information back in December. Correct. Yes. Yeah. We I mentioned it last time that we did about half of the policy a the other half instead um actually did that last day. this this was going over all of that work with the IAS representative. I want

083to make big shout out to both and and the U cabinet is uh we got a gold star from the representative in terms of how prepared we were and how carefully we could scrub all of the details. Uh she said all the time nobody nobody comes through this much detail um in terms of going stuff. So they that was kind of nice to get our workers being recognized even somewhere. So the next step is we will get the draft of all the stuff that we've been touching um in preparation for actually pushing it out. Um hoping that we can have that in our hands before we move on it. I think kind of summary here's the stuff that changed and it wasn't drastic drastic here and there we were behind on some updates and as

084I mentioned last time our technology section actually calling us ahead of the curve of our technology policies and now they've been incorporated into different areas standardizing also real quick. Um, I also attended a concert and I just want to give a shout out to Paul Marqueesy, the bar director at Hadley. And it's funny because it's easy to get in trouble, but he came out as a disco ball that um with his ball head stickered with with disco ball things, what you may call them. um >> like attach to his >> like literally attach to it. But the point be what what what the shout out is for is that if you want to get your kids engaged and just make your class a fun experience, look at what Daisy does. It it's just a shout

085out for that because you could just see through the choir director how much fun and joy that of a choir department. Nice. How about over here? Yeah. I attended the happy PTA meeting. They had been fun which was successful. They were excited that even more students actually signed up the day and they also said if you have not renewed your PTA membership for it yet, please do that. Going to lock down their directory if you're not a member. 63. >> So, a few weeks ago, I um Q hosted me on a tour of Church Hill. I appreciate that. Um and I got to peek in here at the center as well. It's fun because it's in the middle of the day and there's kids here, right? To actually see, well, this is what we're doing.

086This is what our work does. to see all of those happy, engaged, smiling kids. I mean, is really nice. Um, so thanks for thanks for that opportunity. Um, already mentioned the policy meeting. Already mentioned the uh division meeting. Um, I attended the Church Hill drama presentation. Uh that was two. >> Noise the weekend before tax. >> Yeah. Well, yeah. Yeah. I I mentioned to Dr. Mchugh that I was going home earlier in the afternoon. Oh, maybe I'll I'll do that. Maybe I'll change. And so I walked in. I forgot I picked this seat back here where nobody would be sitting and there's some guy sitting right next to the spot I was in. But that was really fun to to uh to see that. I I really appreciate all the efforts that the parents were

087shows kids. So um and then I attended the uh Abraham Lincoln PTA um meeting last week and uh we had a bit of a discussion follow on to technology discussion. I appreciate appreciate having just wanted to tell you guys that I did, as promised, submit written testimony to ISB. Um, so I just wanted to give you a couple highlights. Um it's regarding funding helps. Sorry, the highlights aren't working. Okay. So, um if we continue to fund the program, the law originally said this, you know, a minimum of $350 million, new dollars every year for public school funding. Um and so Bob sent me some information from an organization he's been involved with. And from that I learned that if we do 300 million new dollars per year, it will take 14 years for every district

088in the state to be fully funded. Um if we do 500 every year, that will happen in six years instead of 14. Um and say um oh right now there are still 431 districts serving 76,000 students who are still less than 70% funded and their idea of fully funded is 90%. Um so that's a whole bunch of districts in this one state in a whole bunch of kids who still do not have fully funed schools. So I think that really underlines the um the importance of this issue. And the second thing was about mandated categoricals which are like I have a little less here. Hold on. There it is. Special special education private tuition, special education, transportation, regular vocational transportation, free breakfast and lunch programs. Um those are all included in that and those were

089flat funded for fiscal year 2026. And I think we're all very familiar with the fact that um nothing has gotten cheaper. In fact, everything has gotten more expensive. So flat funding is really kind of a cut and you know when it comes down to it. Um so we were asking for 450 million for EDF and 100 million for innovative categories. Um give you this letter might have already. Um but I think those are the highlights. So, I just want to let you know that I did in fact do it and it's in front of me. If you guys have questions, I'm >> Thank you. It's important to give testimony to the state board of education shape budget request and policy positions to the general that time. Thank you everybody. All right. Um, let's then go

090to our students. [Music] So, eighth grade went uh last Tuesday, my vet to red at West and um yeah, also on Halloween uh there was a hu and eighth grade kind of Give me a second. Got five minutes. Okay, so the sixth grade are having a easier time adjusting to Hadley than grades than sixth graders in the past. Um, and that's all thanks to the fifth grade teachers. Um, their biggest problem is charging their Chromebooks every night, which I feel like that's a problem across like almost every grade level. Um, and that's about it for sixth grade. Um, and then since Sophia wasn't able to make it here, she asked me to do her report for her. So, last month all the seventh graders went to the Brookfield Zoo um as part of their ecology

091unit. Um, and the weather was great and there were some cool new exhibits there. Um on Halloween there was a great tip day where they had raffles and quarter awards where like where quarterly they'll be teachers will award students for their good behavior and the the concert was also very fun. >> Thank you. Thank you so much. Very good. All right. And we will now move into the discussion portion of our agenda. Four items up and yes, >> you have the resolution to regulate the first item. >> Okay. >> All right. Yeah. So um what as as you guys referenced earlier we are going through a process of updating our board policy documents and in doing so we identified a report that is required to come to the board uh it's connected entirely to expense

092reimbursements for staff members. Um so what this does is it's a requirement for the board to take action to set a limit. So in the past we've had a limit based on uh for instance uh a maximum amount uh a staff member can spend for airfare or for a hotel at a conference. Um moving forward that resolution has kind of changed a little bit to where now it addresses what's the maximum amount that we would approve as a reimbursement for such expenses. It's not so much limiting each individual item, it's the maximum amount that will be reimbursed. So, um, what we're presenting to you tonight is a resolution that the board will take action on later to set that amount at $1,000. Um, an important note though, so we very rarely in this district do

093reimbursements for personal expenses out of pocket. Um, our offices and buildings are set up so that if a staff member is going to a conference, we're going to pay for that conference with a district credit card or with a district check. So, it's very rare that somebody comes out of pocket with a credit card to pay for expenses. So, um, I mentioned that just to highlight the fact that reimbursements are very rare in this district. Shouldn't it shouldn't apply very frequently, but again, this is a board policy requirement. Questions? >> Okay. School maintenance project. >> Okay. This is an annual grant that we applied for. Um, it does not require board action. what it requires the board just to give a thumbs up that basically saying yeah we approve the district applying for this grant

094um to describe what the grant is used for it's called the school maintenance project grant um it is a reimbursement grant so if you do a qualifying project in any of the facilities during the year and you apply for this grant and and you are approved you'll get up to $50,000 as a matching grant so uh for the sum summer summer of 2026 we have a project scheduled at Glenn that does qualify by it's an HVAC. It is an HVAC upgrade project of about $1.5 million. So again, we have spent far more than $50,000 to get a matching grant from the state. So tonight, it's just a requirement that we present it to the board and just kind of get a consensus that you approve for us to apply for this grant. We is that

095it? Yes. >> Thumbs up. >> Excellent. >> And then I got Dr. getting this robust cob as the 2526 fiscal year left. >> Right. So, this next topic is a riveted topic. Obviously, we've been using that word for the last couple months, but um tonight is just an annual process where we do bring to the board an estimated 2025 tax levy. So this is a requirement under school code that it's presented to the board placed on display for a minimum of 20 days um before it is ultimately will be brought back to the board in December for an action request. Um that action has to take place in December and it needs to be filed when I say it the tax levy needs to be filed with the page county clerk by the last Tuesday

096in December. Um having said that what I'd like to do tonight is just go through the levy calculation. If you can see that screen, good for you. I can't see it, but I have it up on my laptop over here. So, we're going to just kind of work down this together. Um, and I can talk through the different steps and process involved in calculating the the levy estimate. So, similar to previous years, the first thing you do is you really look at last year's extended levy. So, on the screen, it will show the 2024 actual levy extended. Um, that's listed on the screen. And then to that, you're going to add an increment. The increment is what's called the CPI, the consu consumer price index for 2024. So that number was 2.9%. So if you

097see in this calculation towards the bottom of that screen up there, it's taking last year's extension of 57,730,559 and multiplying that by 1.029 to give you that 2.9% CPI increments. Um towards the right of the screen, it'll show you what I call the new tax dollar. So the new tax dollars attributable to the CPI increase approximately $1.6 million. So that's the first step of the levy. The second step, if you scroll down just a little bit, um let's go ahead and stop there. So the second step is you need to estimate the new property growth within our boundaries during the calendar year. So this is a step that takes a little bit of guesswork because as we sit here tonight, we don't know what the new growth was for our taxing community this year. Um

098what we've typically done is we look back at historical new growth in the district and that's what's shown up on the screen you can see anywhere from 6 to 13 million has kind of been our range over the last 11 years. Um so as you see right on the middle of that screen or towards the bottom um I have I've entered entered an amount of $20 million as estimate and that it's obviously higher than we've expected to be and there's a very good reason for that. Um, since this is a yes, if we were to guess below the actual new property growth, we would leave taxes on the table, if you will. So, basically, we don't guess a number here that's as least as least as large as what our new property growth ultimately turns

099out to be, with leaving taxing capacity on the table. Um, however, by putting $20 million in there, I expect that to be greater than the actual number and then the Page County Clerk will automatically lower this number down to the maximum. So, in no circumstance would we get a lobby that's above what school permits. I'm going to pause and ask if there's any questions yet. >> Not seeing any. Um, so we can scroll down a little more. There's a question. >> I just need to make sure I'm understanding correctly since this is my first. It's my understanding that you cannot get more than inflation CBI based on inflation, right? So we can't get more money than inflation was or actual tax revenue from new property. Is that correct? >> Mostly. Let me let me explain

100it. So great question. So, the way the the school code works is it's governed by a law called EAP, property tax extension limitation law. So, that law went into place to limit a school district's ability to increase their tax living yeartoear by no more than the CPI percentage plus the taxes on new property growth. So, for instance, what we just walked through is a calculation where we're using the CPI factor of 2.9%. That's the largest number we can use. If we decided to use 5% there, the clerk would say, "No, you can't do that. You're not eligible for that." They automatically lower us down to the CPI amount. The second part is that new growth estimate. So, that's where it's a little bit of tricky. We don't know what our new growth is. Talk to

101the assessors. They won't release that until after our tax levy is due to be turned in. So, that's why we have to estimate it. So I estimate high knowing full well that the clerk will look at our levy and say actually your new growth was X which is less than 20 million and they're going to bring us down to that. >> Does that answer your question? >> Yes. Thank you very much. >> Yeah. Well and there is one more right because there's also the 5% overall. >> Well we're going to get to that next. Yeah. >> Yeah. So I'll jump in. It's because it's riveting. You're excited to hear about this. I can tell. >> Um, if we could scroll down just a little farther down, we'll go to the next. There you go. Um,

102so what we do now, and Ted alluded to this, is you you add together, you take last year's extension, you add the CPI increment of 2.9%. You add what we're estimating for new property growth to be, which you can see at the top of the screen there is approximately $636. That would be if we received an actual new property growth of $20 million. So again, keep in mind that number is higher than it actually will end up being. So at the very bottom of the spreadsheet, you can see where I'm going to to what I labeled there, the estimated tax revenue for 2025 calculation. And what you're doing is you're looking at last year, comparing to what we've just calculated on this worksheet, and you're you're calculating percent increase year-over-year. So at the bottom of

103this it says a truth and taxation test shows that this increase would be a 4.00% increase over last year. So what school code says or PTEL says is if that increase is greater than 5% you're required to have a truth and taxation hearing before you adopt your levy. Um that would happen at December. In district 41 we do that every year regardless of what this percentage is. It's an opportunity for the community to come and comment on our levy ask even though we're not technically required to do so because our number is less than 5%. Um, is that what you're referring to, Ted? >> Well, there's that plus you can't get more than 5%. >> Well, oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah. So, to step back for a second, what Ted's referring to is PEL says you're

104you're eligible for the lesser of CPI or 5%. A couple years ago when CPI was north of 5%, it was 6.5%. I want to say in 2022, we were automatically limited to a 5% increment on last year's extension. Good clarification. Two different 5% rules. Yeah. Um so, as you can see, as written, the the year-over-year increase would be 4%. Again, that's considering a $20 million new property growth. Um if you factor in the reality of it probably being closer to about an 8 to9 8 to9 million new property um growth for our district that brings that number down to around 3.3 to 3.4% year-over-year increase. So that's the levy calculation. Happy to answer any questions. >> So it looks like on that just a little bit. >> Could you go up just a little bit?

105>> Yep. Okay, that's good. Thank you. Um, so in the 2024 tax, the 2025 bill, it has 3.18 and then below there's a 4%. I'm a little confused how 3.18 get 4%. And I think I'm reading it wrong, but could you help me understand? >> Absolutely. Yeah. So, what you're looking at is in I think I labeled it step four to estimate the value of new property in tax revenue. So, what we're doing there is we're looking at our 2024 tax rate as a district, which was 3.1835, and I'm multiplying that tax rate towards new property growth. So, they are separate things. I'm doing that to estimate the number of dollars that would come in for our new property tax growth there cuz that's the that's that's our most recent tax rate. That's as close

106as you can get to estimating what the taxes would be on property. Um so that percentage is totally unrelated to the bottom test which is a treatment taxation test just comparing your year-to-year change. >> Thank you. >> Good. All right. Yes. So later this evening there is an action request for the board to approve the levy being placed on display which will enable us to move towards the summer where we'll bring and we'll have a treatment taxation hearing at the beginning of the board meeting. Then we'll ask for an action to the levy that need to know, you know, with talking about some of the funding stuff that you talked about. So specialized transportation, special ed placement, what have you, is that if those numbers are sitting at flat rate, aren't going up, um there's

107still obligations that this district and there's obligations the district has to cover. And that's when you look at the levy, where do those funds come from? They come from what this district led to what district. There's reasons that we have to increase this money every year because when our funding doesn't go up, we have partners that we have to meet. That money's got to come from from something to cover those. >> Okay. Then we have one more item transportation item. Eric and Jeff great for talking. >> You want to kick us off here? >> I'll kick us off my facilitation later. So transportation, we're going to have several action items coming up and I want to kind of set the stage. This is as much for the community as it is for the board. I

108want to put this out there. There's a very thorough multiple very thorough order reports that I would encourage everyone to look at. But in a nutshell to know how we got here, we are in year two. We had saved the bus. Year one was not good. I repeatedly said it was not good. Eric felt it was not good. You as the board heard it was not good. And we were in frequent conversation with Safeway that they need to do better. They need to improve. Um, in the summer we had concerns about on time buses, communication from Safeway to our schools and our families. But a third one came up with Safeway's finances that we had concerns with this one. Um, the start of the school year with Safeway was better than expected for some routes,

109not all, but some. But in the background, um, Eric and I, me and Eric, have been exploring other options should A, Safeway financially not make it or B, Safeway not be able to hit that bar of greatness that we have in District 41, and we would need to find another provider. The issue with this, as Eric knows too well, is there aren't bus stores out there that you just go and get buses. In fact, people don't just switch buses mid year. It is a very big deal. And when we went out to bid last year, we had very few bids bidding for our services. Um, it's complicated, but nevertheless, Eric was working behind the scenes and exploring what various options were and did a lot of work in the months as we watched how Safeway

110was performing this year, which while better than last, still wasn't good enough. And I think you Shannon heard repeatedly from our families that they weren't there yet. Let's fast forward to October. In October, we heard from Safeway that financially our our concerns were justified and as Eric was holding their teeth to the fire with, "Hey, clean financials." Um, they realized that they could no longer service us under the current contract, paying the rate that we had. So, we had options and options were paying me a lot more money to stay with a bus company that was not meeting our needs. But we thought that we had better options and we have explored a few other providers. Um but the recommendation we're going to bring to you tonight is first. This is the company we've had

111before for years and um Eric and I mainly Eric have been working with first student folks on what if what if we needed to make a change mid year which is kind of unprecedented. That just doesn't happen. You don't just switch bus companies mid year. But if we had to do it, what would that take? and first student while there were no guarantees that we were going to go to them were working behind the scenes to see here's what we could do with buses here's what we can do for drivers here what we can do for people in the event that we were going to be that way and come October that really heated up in terms of hey we we might really want to recommend you so we did we were looking at other

112providers but we feel that tonight for student is the right option for us for a couple reasons number they have a strong capacity to develop. Um, we have talked to other districts around us who have used first student and they've been terrific. Um, the first student representatives we've been working with have been highly collaborative in hearing what our needs are and really working to uh to get a good partnership with us. They have prior experience with us. It wasn't perfect. We know that it wasn't perfect. Um, I have confidence. I don't want to speak to you, Eric. I I think you do though. we have confidence that we will be able to work with them in a way that just didn't work as we tried. Um we didn't get the results that we needed. Um

113and secondly or thirdly um they also have an existing debug that's hoping to support the transition should you um should should you approve the action to both terminate the the agreement with Safeway and create a new agreement to sign off a new agreement with first I want to come up you want to fill in some of the blanks and then talk about where we could go from there. Yeah, absolutely. In fact, I I'll pause just if there any questions that jump out right now before I I kind of complete the story. I don't see any. So, so everything Dr. Q said is spot on. Um, you know, we've been looking at a plan B knowing full well that there was a high probability that the financial situation of Safeway was going to be such that

114they might not be able to serve us. um we were faced with the idea of do we live through the year and hope that Safeway survives or do we work on a plan B that we might have to bring to the board for action and that's what we're doing tonight. Um after the call from Safeway in October which basically um was it occurred because of my repeated attempts for a financial summary from the part of our contract with Safeway permits us to ask for that. It gives them 48 hours to respond to us and they didn't meet that window and they wouldn't give me any information. So, after repeated attempts, they they pretty much told us that because of their operating costs and the way that they did our contract, they needed to either ask

115for an increase in fees from our district or separate service with us. Um given that we've been talking in the background about a plan B all through this process, you know, we were prepared to basically sever uh our our relationship with safe and move to a new provider. So I'm going to talk just briefly about what that would look like. Um so in working with First Student um who was one of several uh providers I did contact and and basically ask them are you interested? Can you scale up and serve us? Um, first of course is the the most capable um and really can meet our needs meet our needs the best in my opinion. Um, what it would look like is we would present which is on the agenda tonight an action request from

116the board to terminate services with Safeway effective December 19th. That date is important because that's the last day before winter break. um that will enable Safeway to finish out um the remaining month of this calendar year and then we'll make a clean break effective right after winter break. January 5th is the day that our kids come back and that's when first student would start serving the district. Um because of the fact that this is a very atypical unusual switch. Um what we plan to do is have first student run our existing routes. We're not going to have them reroute everybody. We're not going to have any changes go into place. Uh we're going to ask first student to just start running the routes that we're currently running today. Um and then we'll make adjustments from

117there as needed. An important aspect of this change is Vard High School District 87 is also going through this. Um they've had a few conversations at their board meetings. Um they will also be making a change. Uh they've not taken action, so they don't know exactly what that that change will look like, but what I do know for district 41 is we're no longer going to be partnered with District 87. Um, currently we're in a partnership that enables us to tier routes. And when I say tier routes, that means a high school bus runs first. That same bus and that same driver then turn around and go pick up D41 kids and run a D41 route. So when we make this change to first student, we will be entirely untiered. We're no longer going to

118be running school routes and waiting for that bus to get to our routes to get to school. For that reason, the routes, while they might not change, I do expect the times to probably change. Um, as many families and parents know, we have a lot of late bus issues in the morning still. Um, and when I say a lot, it's 3 or 4, and that's way too many in my opinion. So, with this change, I'm expecting that those routes might start a little earlier just so those kids get to school on time. So, that that that is one thing I do expect to happen in January, which I think is a great thing. Um to everyone to jump back in what cost? >> Yes. Um with this change, as you can imagine, we're no longer

119going to benefit from the tiering of the high school. Um by taring with the high school, obviously you're using one bus and one driver to run two routes. Um we're not going to have that benefit anymore. So we're not going to have that shared financial uh experience that we do have currently with this data set right now. So, this change will, you know, involve an increase in our transportation costs. Um, again, I would I would refer you to the board reports that are in the agenda tonight. They are very detailed um for the rest of this school year with the first student transition starting January 5th. I estimate it to be about a $1.2 million increase for our district. Um, that's just straight general ed and special education transportation route costs. Um, that's an approximate

120number. Um an important note I would add to that is it it is going to change our state transportation reimbursement dollars as well. So while our spend on this level will increase um there will be a trailing reimbursement from the state it's also going to increase because our the way the state reimbures transportation is it's a percentage of your total expenditures. So while our costs go up, our re, you know, reimbursement dollars will go up. Obviously, it will not offset an entire increased cost, but it's important to consider because those are not insignificant dollars. >> Questionification. So in looking at Safeway their performance issues from for just the performance deliverable um were so when you look at the financial it wasn't just the they couldn't continue to provide the deliverables for the contract um without

121a large increase without a large increase to the price. It was also that even at that price, there was a risk that they still wouldn't be able to provide transportation services. >> I would put it this way, we are not the only district um inclusive of district 87 that is going to be impacted by this. Um I think unfortunately, this is just my opinion that safely entered into a number of contracts with many school districts last year, same time we entered into a 5-year deal. And I think those were all in my opinion bid too low. Um that we find ourselves in this position because the bid that we accepted while it looked great financially for us it simply isn't enough dollars for safely to cover their operating expenses and their debt obligations. So with

122that in mind, you know, there's been a concern of mine all along that what if a few different school districts decide that, you know, we're going to jump ship because of service or for whatever reason. Now you have a an entity that's struggling to cover their costs losing paying customers. We don't want to be stuck as one of the last people still with Safeway when I know at least in my opinion there are not that many providers in the market that could service our district. So we wanted to be ready to make that change >> and Safeway is taking steps to actively drop districts. Yeah, they're stopping prov they're under contract with other districts and they said we are stopping providing grantation because good luck. >> Yeah. What what they communicated to us is that

123they needed to basically either change existing contracts with clients or exit those contracts because they simply are not getting the profit they needed to service their debt. Um Safeway offered that to us. Um and you'll see in the conversation we'll have later tonight about the termination agreement with Safeway. there is going to be a portion um a period of time in December where we're going to need to agree to pay a little more so that we don't have an interruption in student transportation because it simply was not possible to get uh another provider in this situation for student up and running December 1st. So, we're going to need Safeway to operate in December. And they told us that um a lot of their struggles are driven by their lender. you know, they went they've borrowed

124a lot of money to purchase buses um and they can't make those debt payments. So, their lender is requiring them to either modify these contracts or sell their assets. Um so, in our situation, we need buses to transport kids to school in December. So, we're going to need to agree to a higher rate during December to keep them online. I I guess the point is that safely they say do this or sell your assets safely sell your assets district 41 up >> you guys been working behind the scenes to make sure that not only do we have paddles we're not I think it's important like you know this isn't just a looking for new transportation provider you know service this is looking for new transportation by difference might not be. >> Well, since Jeff brought

125up a good point as the question, maybe this is good time in terms of the board to see if they have other questions. We certainly submitted a fair number of them. This would be a good time anyway to to revisit some of those because I think it does provide a lot of information. So, yeah. Please. >> I think first I would echo exactly what Jason just said. I mean, seeing a little bit what goes on behind the scenes and the time that you put into this, it's I mean, as a parent, thank you. Like, I can't imagine where we'd be sitting right now if we were not going to have buses. Thank you. That's amazing. Um, I said this when we were discussing an email, but I am trying really hard to keep like in

126the balcony and the dance floor cuz you guys are doing amazing, but a midyear bus transition as a parent makes me a little bit nervous because winter will be on January 5th. Um, everybody will be coming off holiday break. It was really reassuring to hear the routes are staying the same, but in terms of, you know, drivers practicing the routes, like I don't expect them to be doing that New Year's Eve. Um, or any if there are time changes, when will parents see those? Is it Skyward? Will that come later? I mean, what just kind of reassurances do we have that we're going to be ready to go on January 5th? >> It's a great question. Um I know in our conversations with first student which I'm just going to take a moment. We do

127have two first student individuals in the back that have been you know integral in this conversation. So that's Peter and Rich. They've been with us since August. Um and we've kind of talked about plan B. But to your question um the plan is to run some routes before January 5th. You know they've been working behind the scenes to get their uh the bus depot staff lined up. You know you're going to need individuals to come in and run this in very short notice. Um, one of the strengths of our students, they're a national organization and their they know how to do that. Um, it does kind of set them apart for their ability to service our district. Um, and that's where some of our comfort comes. Uh, knowing that they have served our district. They

128were 7 years in this district before that the state came in last year. Um, they still operated the depot just about a half a mile north of here and serve a lot of our neighbors. So, uh, they know the area. um they they've committed to, you know, staffing appropriately, getting managing staff on site to run the depot. Um and knowing that, you know, they've already got the routes. We've already started talking about student feed information um as soon as that's appropriate, we'll share that information. And then as part of your to your question, um I absolutely expect to be sending communications out probably over the latter part of winter break to let parents know like get into Skyward Family Access, look and see, double check your times because if we do make some changes, you

129know, I don't anticipate them having before January 5th, but it only takes a minute to check in. It can make a big difference. We're going to be doing that as soon as we can just to make sure. Like I said earlier, there are still buses getting heavily late. That's got to stop. So >> yeah, thank you. >> Any other questions? So it looks like inside I guess you can do the first looking at looking at is that we take we included options for this year we have safe we had first student coming in for safely to make sure we enter services to our student options that contract. So while we are not tiered now there is there is availability in the contract if if that option is unavailable that there there's the ability to to

130tier up if that's available. >> Yeah. Yeah. That's a good point and and we'll talk a little bit about this later but part of our agreement that we're going to propose in the first week enables us to make those changes that you know will basically improve our efficiency. Um, and there's the option that if we do find a partner, Indians District 87, maybe it's one of our other neighbors that utilizes per student. If there's the opportunity to tier with those districts, we have the ability to look into that. I think a this is a really wellrounded like as much as an immediate need, it's thinking long term how to address the need. >> Yes. Anyone else? Any other question about was there any final thoughts then before we close the so I I just want

131to give my thanks to his team here for staying on top of all I've given us updates over the last few months and it seems like sometimes the story changes hourly based on the situation and even as recently as last Tuesday I was at the president's meeting and and says well what you think and I said I think I'm really grateful that you get a handle of all this really behind the scenes, but a lot of work. >> Well, thank you for saying that. That's that gentleman over there and his team, Shannon, has been incredible in handling all this. Um, Eric has been out of Wisconsin. >> Maybe he'll start doing my day job again. I don't know. But I think it comes down to for me this is going to cost more money and

132we know that and that'll be coming in through forecasting and where we go. We need that. It's it's the balance of what do our families and kids need and they weren't getting it. Chloe, you ride the bus, right? >> Uh Joseph, you ride the bus. Um but Chloe, you're the reason we're all here. And when we have buses that aren't picking it up on time, busy stops altogether, not communicating when they're late, that's not great. And we need to get a bus company that's going to give that to you. And I believe that's that first treatment is going to do. So yes, we know it's more, but we have all the confidence that this agreement is going to give this community the busing that they deserve and and that is a great service. It won't

133be great January. It can't be too >> maybe, but I I would not put that on that in terms of it's not going to be perfect from the jump. Anytime you start a year for busing, it's tricky, let alone right in the middle of of the year. So, there's going to be a great period of time. When I say great, we're going to get there eventually, but we also know it's not going to be great right off the bat. But the way you have been working with Eric and with myself, it's a matter of where there's a problem, we solve it. It's collaborative. That's a partnership that was missing the safety. We weren't collaboratively solving problems together and seeing that. And I think just from how the two of you have been over the last

134few months, that's a sign that things could be to come. So, um, it's going to be great. >> It's not great down here. At least pretty contract. I think I saw that. >> Yeah. General All right. Well, thank you all. Good discussion. I appreciate the board meeting all the material and nice job [Music] all that information. Well done. All right. I I just want to note that originally thought we might have close session right at this point on the agenda, but we do not need you session meeting. So, we're going to jump into the action items and this is where we have our consent agenda. Are there any items board members would like to move the consent agenda consider? Hearing none, may I have a motion to approve the consent agenda, which includes important recommendations

135and resignations as the personnel report, disposal of surplus property, donation of gifts, of information act report, investment schedule, monthly revenue expenditure summary report, school district, summary of bills and payroll, treasur report, and the October 2025 regular meeting minutes, November 3rd, committee of poll minutes, and the close session. session is of the November 3rd meeting. I need a motion. >> I'll second [Music] you. >> All right. >> Mrs. >> Ms. Becker, >> yes. >> Mrs. Lidd, >> yes. >> Mr. Estis, >> yes. >> Dr. Martelli, >> yes. >> Mrs. Hill, yes. >> Mr. Lobach, yes. >> Dr. Bruno, >> yes. All right. All right, we have a number of recommendations and all of these sound familiar to you. The first one out is the annual Chromebook purchase. May I have a motion to approve the purchase

136of 780 Dell Chromebooks of Chromebook 11 Pro management license and cases for a total cost of 322,3840 to be funded from the 2526 technology budget as outlined in the order? Second. Any further discussion? >> Mrs. Mo, roll call, please. >> Mrs. Linda, >> yes. >> Mr. Estes, >> yes. >> Mrs. Hill, >> yes. >> Dr. Martelli, >> yes. >> Miss Becker, >> yes. >> Mr. Lobach, yes. >> Dr. Bruno, >> yes. Motion passes. Thank you. Second item is approval to place the letter on display. It's riveting. You hear it one more time. Please say no. >> It's riveting. All right. You're doing You're doing a great job. May I have a motion to approve the 2025 preliminary and place it on display on November 18th, 2025 and to set December 15, 2025 at 6:30 p.m.

137as the truth in taxation public hearing and publish notice of said hearing in the Columbia suburban life newspaper. Motion a second. There's a second discussion >> just for we talked about the plat also like you look at the transportation like this I mean like where we start from is like this is what serves our financial base and then and when you look at what you know what what our administration does and puts us in the position to be able to flex when our students need it. This is where it starts from and I think it's important to recognize this our base right this is our base and it gives us you know it gives us the ability to properly serve our students and jump on our students use amen roll calls >> Mr. Estes >>

138yes >> Dr. Martelli >> yes >> Mrs. Becker >> yes >> Miss Lidd >> yes >> Mrs. Hill >> yes >> Mr. Robot yes >> Dr. Yes, that is motion passes also. Amend the resolution to regulate expense reimbursements. We have a motion to approve the resolution to regulate expense reimbursements pursuant to section two of the board policy as presented. Motion >> second. Any discussion? No discussion. All right. Then roll call. Mr. >> Dr. Martelli, >> yes. >> Miss Becker, >> yes. >> Mr. Estes, >> yes. >> Mrs. Miss Lindau, >> yes. >> Mrs. Hill, >> yes. >> Mr. Lach, >> yes. >> Dr. Bruno, >> yes. And that motion passes. Also, uess before we get to the next two items, two remaining items available, a contract with Safeway and then a services for student. I

139do have a prepared statement that I'd like to read. The administration is recommending work through two agreements relating to student transportation services to respond to three following things. First, sufficient level of service by the district's current provider Safeway. Second, Safeways representation to the district that it could not sustain service to the district under its current contract. And third, Safeway's failure to demonstrate sufficient facilities and financial resources to fulfill its current contractual commitment after the upcoming winter holiday break. We knew issues with Safeway were communicated to the board and the community about when school resumed in August of this year and again in October. Over the last few months, significant efforts have been made to asssure long-term service, satisfactory levels of service in a safe way, but without success. The point has now been reached that

140the imminent risk of sudden and complete loss or at a minimum substantially reduced and interrupted service for the approximate 1,800 of our students transported to and from school and school activities daily. necessitates ending the district's contract with Safeway and contracting with per student on an emergency basis. So, first motion recommended for adoption by the board approves an agreement with Safeway to terminate service and the general education special education transportation contract with Safeway at the close of the day on December 19th when winter break starts. The agreement avoids a protracted unilateral contract termination process and minimizes the risk of service loss or interruption by Safeway within the next month and permits contracting for student community service with students return to school from winter break on January 5th. The second motion recommended for adoption by the board

141approves a five-year agreement with First Student with an with an option for the district to terminate after 2 and 1/2 years. First Student was willing to ramp up the provision of service to the district mid school year and so quickly only with a contractual length similar to what First Student had with every school district. The contract has been negotiated with prices competitive with those paid by area school districts but is being awarded on an emergency bas basis without formal competitive bidding. This is permitted by the Illinois school code as long as the contract receives at least six yes votes from school board. The preventive bidding process is a long and complicated process. If followed under the present circumstances, the bidding process presents risk of a lengthy interruption of transportation services to our students. Additionally, the

142loss of state aid and a significant extension of school into the summer likely combined with remote learning. These are risks that can be avoided entirely or at least substantially reduced by contracting your first scheme. now on an emergency basis. Thank you. All right. Now we will get to uh the two the two recommendations. Uh first then is termination of contract with safe Safeway Transportation. may have a motion to approve an agreement between the board and Safeway Transportation Services Corporation entitled agreement terminating Safeway Transportation Service contracts substantially in the form presented by the superintendent and to authorize the president or president and secretary to sign the agreement provided it is signed first by say by a safe play officer. Yes. Okay. So I need a motion. >> Motion >> and now I need a second. >>

143Any further discussion? Okay. Very good. Mrs. V roll up. >> Dr. Martelli. >> Yes. >> Miss Becker. >> Yes. >> Mrs. Hill. >> Yes. >> Mr. Rusty's. >> Yes. >> Mrs. Lidd. >> Yes. >> Mr. Rob. >> Yes. >> Dr. Bruno. >> Yes. Motion passes. And then the second recommendation, approval of transportation services with the first student on an emergency no bid basis. May I have a motion to approve on an emergency no bid basis as summarized by superintendent and also my statement an agreement between the board and first student meeting entitled transportation services agreement substantially before presented by the superintendent and to authorize the president and secretary to sign the agreement to proclate after student by doing the authorized authorized representative of for And so long as the agreement terminating Safeway transportation services contract

144is in motion. >> Yes. Second additional discussion. Please >> I just wanted to say throughout this my main and foremost concern has been for the students to be able to get to and from school safely. And I think that this move will allow us to do that. And we know that it's going to be more expensive than what we were previously paying. But I think that that is worth doing if our students are getting to and from school safely and on time, but most importantly safely. [Music] >> All right. I think it's important to note >> this important to note that well it is more expensive and it's not out of line we got in the past I mean we've gotten some really high bid pack this is not out of line with so thank

145you okay all right we'll go >> Mr. Rusty's >> yes >> Mrs. Lidd Becker >> yes >> Mrs. Hill yes >> Dr. Martelli yes >> Mr. Lach Dr. up. >> Yes. Motion passed for the All right. We will move on then to the board governance together. And first up is the Illinois Association School Board Resolution Report and our representative >> to our delegate. >> Julie. >> Oh, you talk about buzzing floor. Sorry. Um, so school funding blessing safety. Um so this one's to establish a dedicated school bus safety equipment grant with the state board of education to provide financial assistance subject to the um for the cost of factory installs three point seat belts on new or lease school buses on or before a date. Um creates a small district waiver that extends the compliance

146deadline to 2034. um authorizes qualifying districts to use transportation bond proceeds or involving lease agreements with the local press share without content against the district's statutory limit. I was trying to summarize that my head and I just had to read all words. Um directs the department of transportation to approve alternative researchbased occupant protection technologies that may offer equal or greater safety at lower cost giving districts flexibility to comply. Um so I had a couple questions. If you guys read my quick summary here, um, overall I support funding for public schools always. You've heard me say that for like seven years or whatever. I've been here, six something. Um, and um, so I did have a couple questions last concerns. I also um asked Dr. Mchugh and to talk to his cabinet and they are very

147supportive of this resolution. And given their deep understanding of school transportation cost and funding, I suggest that we follow their recommendation and vote to approve it. But I am open to comments questions. I can't actually answer any questions, but we can try. >> There's only one resolution. >> There is one resolution. >> I I looked at I was like, what? >> I see something. >> Yeah. No, this is it. So that's here. >> Yeah. meeting. >> No, probably not. But >> you might have left. >> So if the board's in agreement recommendation, it sounds like we are, then we will be directed to vote yes on the resolution. >> Great. Thank you guys. Amazing. >> There's there's one other item that I just wanted to mention as a kind of prompt goes to all of

148us. Uh to our learning community, certainly to our parents, uh the board has taken up study schools for me. Many of the class hopefully some people in the community are reading it. It is a very provocative provocative >> I can verify it is >> not at the border but that's and we'll be holding a February 8th committee meeting will facilitate hopefully we'll be proud of the community to think creatively and looking into the future of what it's going to be and I just just as uh as a little prom wanted to just make note of right in the prologue and I found myself I don't know what you did too uh but they they definitely preview some common principles and they generate a new acronym um in which they claim from this research and this

149work going across the country talking to teachers and educators and Dr. tell you talked about this a larger network that's connected to what it's geared to be and they talk about first purpose student so in what environments do kids excel where students attack challenges they know being important that makes the world better they call that purpose and under essentials students acquire the skill sets and mindsets needed in the increasingly innovative world agency students own their learning becoming self-directed, intrinsically motivated adults knowledge. What students learn is deep and retained, enabling them to create, to make, to teach others. They also point out other things they learn that they feel are going to be somewhat um if not shocking, they're going to make the reader uncomfortable. They're like the purpose of US education is to rank human

150retention, not to develop it. What about me? It's from that point. Um that the idea of college ready and that's connected to every state assessment we make our kids take actually impedes learning innovation in K through 12 schools. We may find ourselves fading in 2015. Uh all students would benefit from considerably more hands-on learning. We're trying to close the wrong achievement gap. We can make education better and more equitable by challenging students with real world problems. K12 schools done right will produce graduates better prepared for life than most current college grads. I take no offense of that college educator. Um and then finally, educators can transform schools at scale with change models that establish traditions rather than mandated practice. And that's just two pages of the code. So hopefully you will get into that and

151kind of really be engaged by that conversation. Yeah. >> I have a couple things to add. >> Oh, look at you. >> Yeah, cuz you threw me off when he said, you know, maybe we want to ask some and I'm like, did I did I get the book? I didn't remember getting the book, but I did listen to a little podcast um with the author and um I wrote down this quote that I thought was interesting. He's talking about what's what's what's the next thing, right? What's what's really preparing our students? In fact, I found parallels with um a talk I went to six years ago. I think put that in um from International Center for Leadership and Education. He did a similar thing where he surveyed schools of what what what was what were

152common factors in successful schools. And his his thesis was when you're when you're making changes, it's not incremental, right? You actually need to move forward to say forward. But one thing that stuck out in for me in this interview back this is a quote from him. It says, "In most places I've visited, unfortunately, you may get on the honor roll." Now, the way you get on the honor roll is by being able to memorize content, replicate low-level procedures, write formulaically, and follow instructions. If you can do these four things, you will be in most you will in most schools be on the honorable student. And those are the exact four things that machine intelligence excels at. So if we're teaching our kids to be machines >> really take us into the conversation. You got to

153hold off. >> Well, we can't say too much, right? Should we say you want to say >> I said more importantly, Ted's point is the machine will be replacing our students. Not that we're making our children machines, but there will soon be machines replacing what students said >> and the tech would I can waste just a little more time. >> Oh yeah, I forgot I forgot two things. Um Bob and I attended the uh finance committee meeting right where um Eric gave us really good indepth coverage of not only the um of the procedure um which I I've now now seen seven times very close attention to the time before I got to um but I I enjoyed that I would say Um fair but also we did some initial discussions in terms of like

154projections of things um or bringing forward later in the school year at time and then um the other thing was I forgot to thank the PTA for their very generous donations that as part of I normally break protocol and thank you not supposed to discuss it. I forgot to say that. So, thank you. Thank you. All right. Very good. Upcoming meeting Monday, December the 15th, remember we have the public hearing and the regular board education meeting and we're back at Hadley. And then for the new year, our regular board meeting is on January 26th at 6:30 again at Okay. All right, then. We are going to return to close session. May I have a motion to adjourn close session and complimentally discuss section 2C5 purchase or use of property for the use of the school

155board discussing whether a particular parcel should be required second discussion roll >> Miss Becker? >> Yes. >> Mrs. Lidda. >> Yes. >> Mr. Estes. >> Yes. >> Dr. Martelli. >> Yes. >> Mrs. Hill. >> Yes. Mr. Lobach. >> Yes. >> Dr. Bruno. >> Yes. The board will not be taking any action back. So, thank you all. Good night.