001The pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. We're good. All right. academic progress, the MAP test. And this is one report that is one piece of formative data that we use that teachers use to evaluate instruction. And we've been giving this insight report, it's been my understanding, annually every year. Now, in the past, we placed a much bigger value on MAP as a district. And as you're going to see in a moment, our three academic metrics on our strategic plan, none of them are MAP related. They are all on the Illinois Assessment of Readiness, the IR. And Dr. Webster will do a deep dive into this as we monitor our metrics
002in November after the state report card has come out. However, we still want to do a very brief update just like we did last year to let you know where we are with MAP because it is an important data point and Dr. Webster will share a little bit more about that. >> So, um NW NWA stands for Northwest Evaluation Association. The Northwest comes because they're from Portland. So, and that's where they started. So, the Northwest comes from Portland, Oregon. Um so, to Dr. MHugh's point, um the MAP assessment is actually we use this a lot in the district, but the purpose of the MAP assessment is to inform instruction. It's to help us make instructional decisions to get benchmarks to see how we're doing, to see what kids need. It's our universal screener as opposed
003to the IR AR assessment. That's a measure of how we did. Um and as you know, um for the current district strategic plan, we use the IR as our measure. Um, and this is actually the the NWA map is actually more for the instructional making decisions. So, at the end of each year, we get what's called the insight report, which we've been receiving even prior to my time here. Uh, Katie would present this prior to me. So, um, and basically what this tells us overall in a nutshell is that our kids are doing well. Um, if you look at that quadrant, uh, in the right hand side there, that shows all of our, you want to be in the upper right. upper right means above average growth, above average achievement. The farther up and over
004you are to the right, the higher performing district um and the well the better your kids are doing. And all of our all of our district schools, all of them are high achieving and high growth, which is something really um fantastic to celebrate. Um however, we don't rest on our laurels. Um, while it is awesome to be where we are, our goal is to continue to move those those triangles and that X like the treasure map um up higher and over to the right um as close to 100% as we can get. Obviously 100% is um a lofty goal and not one we could ever truly achieve, but we're going to try and get as close as we can there for both growth and achievement for our kids. So, while we're super excited about um
005how well our students are doing, uh we are absolutely going to continue to work to move that that needle even even further. Um so, the key takeaways um as we look at this is that our students do continue to demonstrate strong growth in achie growth and achievement um both ELA and math, which is consistent with last year's performance as well as other previous year's performance. Um, NWA has updated, they redid their norms this year, as did the state with the IR. So, I I'll talk more about the IR cut scores when we get to November. Um, they just released them last week. So, we just had our first cursory look at those. We'll have a better idea about the impact of those uh at report card time at the end of October. But, MAP also
006redid their norms. And so, it's not the achievement piece is a little trickier to compare from year to year. However, the growth piece you can and growth has been our the growth measure has been our focus because if you see kids continuing to grow the achievement follows and even with the change in the norms we are showing that we still have strong growth which is resulting in strong achievement. Um, we still remain focused though on meeting students individual needs um to support their continued improvement. And I think it's important to note that we feel that strongly across all levels. Whether you're a student who has not quite yet made the benchmark, maybe needs a little bit more support in scaffolding or if you're a student who needs more because you've already exceeded uh and you're
007at the top end of that of that triangle or that quadrant. So, making sure that regardless of where you are, you you get what you need as a student in D41 to continue to move the needle. Um, so using those updated NW un NWA map, we're just going to call it MAP. Using the updated map norms um for this year, we're going to track progress just to to see how that plays out. Uh we have our first benchmark September 2nd. We start our first round of uh MAP testing on September 2nd. Um and that will be the first time that we receive uh benchmark data with the new norms. So we will be looking at that closely to see how that transition goes um and how that looks. Again, leaning heavily into the growth component
008that will remain consistent regardless of the change in the norms to make sure that we're seeing that sustained growth. And as I mentioned briefly a few minutes ago, as did Dr. McHugh, stay tuned for the very exciting academic update um that will come out after the uh school report card is released. Uh we anticipate those are typically released right around Halloween. Um so the first board meeting in November. I anticipate that I will be back uh speaking more directly to the strategic um plan because those are the metrics that we use as well as the impact of the cut score changes um for both uh the academics and again the growth piece. >> Thank you Dr. Webster. >> Absolutely. >> Dr. McHugh, any additional thoughts before I turn? Okay. I do want to then turn
009uh to my board colleagues and see if they have any reflections. Uh everyone did a wonderful job uh submitting uh some questions ahead of time, but perhaps there are some follow-ups or some questions you'd like to ask here. Katie, >> um thank you. That was very helpful. And I think there's no question these are fantastic numbers and we're so lucky to have what we have. But I'm also very curious with the switch to the new HW reading curriculum where we see that some starting to come into play in terms of growth. Um when we can see it and sort of knowing what to look for as you know I'm a non-educator, you're an an educator and I'm really curious >> if you're seeing things already. I mean, you've already provided great information ahead of time,
010but I think it's really helpful for >> So, we looked we looked at the school profile report. So, at the end of last year, we met with elementary and middle school Headley, junior high principal. Um, and what we're already noticing is we saw tremendous growth particularly at the primary level, which would be our K first and second, first and second blew it out of the water in reading quite honestly. Um, so we're very excited about that. Obviously, it's very hard as um as you know, to have a like a caused B, right? like we can't we can't say they're necessarily causal like one caused the other but they're definitely correlated I think and what we anticipate is that as our students are exposed to multiple years like this year it won't be new for teachers
011it won't be new for kids and every year that we get into it I think we're going to see more growth and it's going to go across as the kids have kids and teachers have more exposure and a higher comfort level so I'm very excited about our initial results from HMH um and I anticipate that we will continue to see that growth uh across the district super exciting to see it in our youngest readers as they build those really strong reading skills, those and those really foundational years. Uh we're we're we're happy with with what we saw last year. Dr. >> Mchu, would you >> Yes, I agree. I was the part about the foundational skills. I think there is a dramatic change with what this resource offers compared to what the past resource offers.
012And also just a shout out to the teachers. This was a big lift for them in year one. Uh an entire literacy curriculum. Uh it was not easy. and boy they they just nailed it. So if there's any teachers that are listening, thank you. >> And one of the things that we were very excited about in the primary levels is that we saw um nice growth for students um that were from um groups that we've been really focusing on such as our students from um homes from low soio economic backgrounds, the types of students that needed that had that little bit farther to grow. We saw more growth in there too. So it was impactful for them as well. So it's hard to say for sure after one year what the impact of anything is
013but it sure is giving indications that it has been successful and we anticipate it will continue to be. >> Thank you Amy please. >> Did we see growth among you mentioned the younger kids but did we see the growth we were hoping for in the older grades? >> Uh we did see growth in the older grades not to the same extent as we did in the younger grades um and and less consistently. So it was pretty consistent at the primary levels. Um it was more inconsistent in the third, fourth and fifth more it was more stable through sixth, seventh and eighth but third, fourth and fifth we did see some inconsistencies. Um and that was a topic of conversations that we had when we met with principles um to to help close those. So yes,
014more consistent at the primary, less consistent three, four, and five, but still positive. >> Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. >> Thank you, Julie. Please. >> Um Dr. forester. This is probably a question I should have asked earlier, but unfortunately I didn't think of it till now. So, I don't mean to put you on the spot. Okay. >> So, if you don't know, it's okay. >> Um, I know in our strategic plan, we have growth f focused learning as one of our things. >> Um, and it's hard to I see that we're doing well and we always are doing well on that >> chart, the quadrant. >> Um, can you put this into perspective for us how this compares to like the last few years, five years, whatever? Like are we growing? Does it is it
015about the same like as far as where our point is on that chart? >> Yes. So, we are maintaining consistent growth and consistent high achievement. And so, we are performing I'm trying to off the top of my head. >> I'm wondering if there's any >> I think I have it here. Um >> it's on slide. >> When we look across the district, we are performing at uh >> is it upcoming still? the 67th percentile um in reading and the 74th percentile in math which is that means when you think about percentiles if you were to line up 100 kids right the we would have there would only be we've at the 67th percentile there would only be 33 kids ahead of us right um 70 70th even more so we are very high performing in
016that area our growth is also um slightly above average as well which means that not not only are are kids high achieving, they're also there's they're they're maintaining it. They're continuing to grow, they're growing as well. And so anything in the 50th percentile or higher overall for a growth measure um is a very positive sign um when you have that type of high achievement. It's hard to maintain growth. The the higher that students score, the high the less room there is to grow. So the harder it is to maintain a steady growth. And so the fact that we are still maintaining the steady growth and the high achievement means that our kids are continuing to do well and have shown that to be the case over the past three years even post pandemic. >> Did
017that answer your question? You look like maybe that didn't. >> Um it was good information. I don't think it exactly answered my question but >> okay >> Julie look at the insights report page four. >> Okay. >> There's a three-year district growth model on there. >> Yes. Okay. >> And so you can see where we were over the last three years. >> Yeah. That's what I was looking at as well. >> Okay. Thanks. Oh, yeah. All right. My bad. Thanks, Dr. Webster. >> And a little bit different than achievement. Obviously, you want the achievement to to go up. The growth is is a different type of measure. So, if you're continuing to see that strong growth, you'll continue to see the higher achievement as well. >> Thank you. >> You're welcome. Did that help that
018answer? >> Sure. >> Okay. >> Well, we appreciate the assist from Dr. Mortelli. He's looked at a few of these things, I think, in the past, too. Yeah. Anyone else, please? Chris, can I just ask you started off nicely explaining the difference between MAP and its value and its usefulness compared to the IR and how that fits into actually how the district is is doing. But uh so can you break it down ju just briefly at the uh at the instructor student level you see a MAP score for student A. >> Right. um how is this useful to that instructor? What is now going on >> that? What well that tells us exactly kind of where that child is performing. It helps us know do we need to dig deeper? Um is there anything that
019that is showing um that they either are very high performing and are going to need extension or maybe they're not quite there yet and they need intervention. Um and it's real time. So we take the MAP test, we get we get the results that day and teachers can start responding to that. We also take it three times a year. So we take it in the fall, winter and the spring. So the fall one we take in September, early September lets us know where our students are performing and so we can plan immediately, right? And meet their needs immediately. Winter benchmark really tells us, okay, is are they growing the way we want them to grow the way we anticipated? Is what we're doing working? Can what do we need to pivot? What do we need
020to do more of? And then May helps us not only see where where how we did over the course of the year, but then we use that May data to plan for when students come in in the fall. So there's no waiting. So if a student is receiving some type of intervention in May, it starts right when they come back because we have the data that we need. >> Okay. >> Whereas the I data is is useful, but it's a summitative point that comes after the fact. So we take it in March. We don't get actionable data really until October of the following year. So it does it's a good reflection point. It does give us useful information, but it doesn't doesn't give us real um very useful in the- moment um instructional information like
021the math assessment does. And and what I'm taking away and believe I understand from previous insight reports that this really is a diagnostic tool at that individual student level which is why it's it's really much more valuable to the instructor and to the classroom than it is as a as a sort of standalone measure of an overall school or district. So, it's a it is a universal screener, but it does give specific information about students that helps us understand what we where we need to dig deeper if we need to dig deeper and specifically where and it does give us very good information like I said instantaneously so we can we can get moving. There's no there's no delay. >> Thank you. >> You're welcome. >> Okay. Wonderful. Thank you. Then next up we have
022the preliminary draft 2526 budget and Mr. Porter. Oh, this me. >> That's you. Yes. Uh, yeah. Just, uh, I'll get to this in a second, but just to kind of set the, you know, the stage on where we at in the process with the budget. This is an annual thing we do each year in August. We bring what's called the tentative budget to the board. That's a mandate from school code that says you have to present your tentative budget at least 30 days prior to adoption and you have to put it on public display for your community. So tonight's action is really to introduce the tentative budget for the upcoming school year and then later tonight we'll seek action from the board to post it on display for the public and then in September when
023we come back we'll ask for action to approve the budget the final budget in September. So just kind of a heads up of where we're at in the process. Um now I'm going to go in just kind of a highle summary of where we're at in the board report. You'll see before I get to these assumptions on the screen here. Um overall, uh this budget still has a lot of kindergarten center expenses in it. Um when you look at the summary that's provided in the packet, you can see that we show a deficit this year of $7.4 million. I want to speak directly to that. We have $8.1 million, actually $8,125,000 budgeted to spend on the K center for this coming school year. So even though the building is nearly complete, I'm excited to hear
024how Jack Hayes talks about that shortly. We still do have a lot of number a lot of dollars to spend in this year's budget. And that's why you see overall a deficit. If it were not for the K center, we would show a surplus of around 700 to $725,000. And even that number would be larger were it not for the fact that we're opening a brand new building. Um within this tentative budget, we have a lot of expenses connected to kind of upfront supplies and things we're going to need to to get that ready for kids when they come to school. So just kind of want to start it with that. Start with that just to kind of set the stage of what's unique about this year's budget. Having said that, now I'll just go
025to some of the assumptions on the screen. So similar to what I've done in previous years, I just kind of like to highlight the big movers in the budget. Um the first section to look at, which can you guys zoom in a little bit on that, it's kind of hard to read, at least for me, but maybe you guys can see it better. Um the first section we talk about is just FTEEs. Um as we're opening a new building, obviously our FTE count is going up this year. It shows a 17.4 um FTE increase over the school year we just ended. Um what's unique about that and I talk about it on the next page is the K center which causes this FTE increase is actually going to have 36.6 employees in it. So I
026wanted to highlight that each of the existing elementary buildings Hadley and Cso all show a reduction of FTEES this year and that was deliberate. We knew that there were people that were going to shift into the case center. There were already D41 staff. Um, and that's why you see only an increase of 17 people when in reality we're adding 36 people to that case center. So, that was a good sign. Um, as far as revenue assumptions, I have some of the bigger movers here. Um, every year we we do estimate what new taxes will come to the district based on the CPI. So, this year that's a little over $2 million. Um the CPI that will impact the levy which again will come to the board in November and December was a 2024 CPI of
0272.9%. Um the other assumption in the federal level um we do expect to see a little bit of a decrease in federal funding. Uh the biggest part of that is title one funding. It's uh about $200,000 lower than we normally see. Um and we also have finally fully expended all of our ESSER funds last year. So you see the estimate is about $320,000 lower federal funding this year than previous years. Um the second bull I have on here is interest income. Um we still are in a very favorable position with a laddered investment structure. So this year while we had about $3.5 million in interest captured, uh it will go down a little bit next year, but it's still estimated to be around $2.9 million. Um the other item I I noted here was just
028corporal corporate personal property replacement taxes. That's been a weird one the last few years and went really high postcoid and then it dropped really low and I think this year it's going to stay just about the same level as last year. So, uh those are kind of big movers in the revenue side. On the expenditure side, uh the first bullet just kind of highlights how we have made some inflation related adjustments to department budgets just in light of the increased costs for goods and services. Um second bullet, both GIA and ASME our unions um reflect a 4.22% 22% salary increase. That's consistent with what our contracts call for. Um slightly lower than the postcoid amounts we did the last couple years. Um the next two bullets are just kind of highlighting some of the bigger
029department spending initiatives for this school year. Um as we talked about uh previously this year, the HMH literacy adoption, we we did a one-year trial last year to see where we liked it, to make sure we liked it. This year is where we're really buying that multi-year package of materials. Um, that's a substantial cost. It's about approximately $1.3 million. Importantly, that's a one-time purchase which will cover the next five years. So, uh, doing it all up front to capture really the savings in doing so. The HMH provides a substantial discount when you do one big lump sum purchase versus buying on a yearly basis. Um, the other item that remains high, it was high last year, it's even a little bit higher this year, is the tech budget in regards to our network refresh. It's
030called the PON network. It's just a way that we're kind of updating and bringing our buildings uh to a higher level of connectivity, better solution for the buildings. Um that will be an expense that while it remains high this year, we do have the opportunity to get some money back in rate. Um so while we budget for the cost in future years, we'd actually get a reimbursement potentially up to 50% of that. So now to the the second page, if you will, I put a just a summary on the case center. So as you all know, this is kind of a big deal. $28 million building just about complete, going to be ready for kids uh next week. Um to highlight kind of where we've been as far as the spending goes. In the FY24
031school year, when we started this project, we spent about $1.3 million for the school year that just ended June 30th, we spent 18.3. Um so like I said earlier, we still have approximately $7.5 million budgeted to complete that project in FY26, the budget year we're starting right now. Um, in addition to those construction costs, we also have the numbers I was talking about earlier as regards to staffing the building or not staffing, but filling the building with supplies, some of the materials we're going to need that are really kind of a one-time startup cost of about $625,000. Uh, the next bullet, I talked about the staffing earlier. We are going to have approximately 36.65 people. To explain the 65, obviously you can't have a65 person. It's somebody that's shared with another building. Um, in fact,
032there's a few people that will do part of their day in the K center and part of their day in one of the elementary buildings. So, uh, that explains that number. Um, the last bullet I put is just for reference. This is something we do every year, uh, in order to appropriately account for the expenses for a capital project. You need to charge them to the capital projects fund. That is not a fund that we can levy into. So, we do not collect taxes in that fund. So what we do is we budget a transfer of funds out of the education fund into the capital projects funds so we can correctly record those expenses. Um and then the last bullet I just put on here as a reminder just in case anybody wasn't aware this
033is a project that has been fully funded out of district reserves. Um it we did not borrow any money to do this. Um, and I thought one stat that was pretty interesting is as I'm completing this uh the budget this year, obviously on a cash basis, when we estimate where we'll be after the uh remaining expenses are are are paid out for the case center, we'll be at approximately 20%. It's about a little under 20% fund reserves. So, if you recall when we started this project, we really kind of worked backwards to say how much can we spend on a kindergarten project that would get us to around 20% and we came up with 28 million. So, we were very close to what we wanted to be. So, um with that, I'd be happy to
034answer any questions. >> Thank you, Eric. And pretty good estimating. >> Yeah, >> sometimes. >> So, questions for Amy. Was Did I see you? No. Okay, Katie, anyone else? Well, well, Eric, and you always do a great job in providing lots of detail, excruciating amounts of of of detail. Uh, but but uh the title one funding about 200,000, did you say less? And is is that something in the formula in the number of students in the in the title one portion of students in the dis why so much lower? >> So the year that we just ended we collected $436,000 in title one funding. So the way title one funding works is you know you write your plan to your your best guess on how your program is going to work and usually you spend
035to that dollar amount. if you don't spend all of the dollar amount, it can roll over into a future year. So, I think the year that we just ended had a higher than typical uh aotment because there was money left over from the preceding year. So, we had a higher year last year and then this year's aotment just for some reason, and I don't understand, I've not heard why, uh is $250,000. So, that's a number that the state calculates once they're given the funding from the federal government and then they distribute that to us. So, I've not heard why that number is lower. Um, currently sitting here today, title 2, which is a grant we typically receive, we get around 80 to I would say 70 to $100,000 on annual on an annual basis. That
036has not been funded at all for this year. So, that sits at zero. Um, that is a federal thing. It has to do with the government to be honest with you. That is a something that comes from Washington. So, title 2 has not been funded. Um the notification we received is it may be funded at a later date. Um very possible. I know that title three was also not funded until about a week ago. Uh and then we got a normal allocation of title three uh just recently. So little bit of a unique year for title grants. Thank you. Yes, it is. Um one way to put it just another question about the title one. You said it's at about 250 this year and that last year we ended up amp with a bit of
037a higher number because of a a rollover. How does the 250 compare over the past let's say three years or so? Are we close? Is that >> We had 280 and 22. We had 292 and 23 and then we had 436 last year. >> Okay. >> All right. Okay. Thank you. >> Can I ask a question real quick? Yeah, please. Yeah, ask >> Eric. Sorry. Do you can you do a quick rundown of what title one, title two, and title three mean? What what those each? >> Absolutely. Title one is intended to lo to serve your low income percentage. So, generally we have one school that is considered a schoolwide title one school and that's Churchill Elementary. So, most of our dollars are spent, in fact, all of our dollars for title one are spent
038at Churchill. That's a mandate on how that title program works. Title two is for professional development. So, historically, we've spent all of our title two dollars on professional development across the district on staff. Title three is for English learners, um, English ESL basically. So, our our dual language and our ESL program is funded by Title 3. That's a smaller grant. It usually is around 40 to $50,000. >> Thank you. >> Yep. >> Good followup, Julie. Yeah. Okay. Great. Thank you, Eric. All right, we've got uh a final presentation and you going to introduce or am I is Eric introduce you're going to introduce our guest I think maybe or is Eric Jack be happy to >> maybe he doesn't need an intro. >> He needs to push the button to make sure it's green when
039he starts but happy to present uh for Jack Hayes to present to you all an update on the kindergarten center. Jack Hayes is the president of Frederick Quinn FQC and they are a construction management firm we use. >> Thank you. Thanks for having me back. It's been a few months since I was here and as Eric mentioned, we're happy to report that things are going very well at the kindergarten center. I don't know if you've been over there recently, but it's looking fabulous. Uh we are going to be ready for kids next week for um kindergarten assessment and then for teachers to set up their classrooms and for school to open after Labor Day. So, a lot of really good news. Um, we're not done. Still a few things left to do. Always some headaches
040when you finish up a job, but uh all the major milestones have been been hit. Uh in large support, as I was mentioning with Dr. McHugh earlier, it's been a great collaborative effort with administration um the staff here as well as uh the partners at Whiten Company and all the trade contractors that are working on the job. they've really come together uh and it's been a very um good thing to see that they've worked so well together. So, uh the few remaining things that we have uh were notated by the regional office of education who came through today and gave us our certificate of occupancy. So, that's a huge milestone and we'll be paying attention to those as well as punch list items as we work out over the next month or so. So really
041nothing but positive news coming out of what's going on at the kindergarten center. It looks great. Uh the parking lot even looks great. The playground looks great. The field looks great. The courtyard looks great. It's really it's really going to be a special place over there. I guess the one thing as I reported when I was last here, we've had nothing but challenges with the roadway work on Bloomingdale Road. But I can report that we have a permit to do the roadway work, which is a huge milestone. So, we have a permit. Now, it's a matter of uh just pulling the logistics together with the contractors. Obviously, since they were supposed to start on April 15th and it's August 18th, their schedule's been impacted. So, we have to kind of work with them on their
042availability because they clearly moved on to other projects and other responsibilities. So we will do that in coordination with the district in terms of how we deal with the roadway work, traffic, busing, so forth. We've already been having all those conversations. So we have a plan now. It's about executing into the fall so that we can wrap that up and put a bow on it and finish the project. So thank you to everybody. If you're listening, if you're here, thank you for all your help and support. Um it was not it was not a one team operation. It was a multi-faceted operation. And so it was really great collaboration. >> Questions? >> Jack, first of all, thank you uh for overseeing it, bringing all those various pieces together, contractors, the trades, working with the very
043with the various villages. Thank you to David um and the team internally for getting us ready. Uh we wanted to be ready for uh the the official start of school and and we will be. Um, I I I did have questions that I I want to pose to you, but let me first turn to see if board members have any thoughts, comments, uh, questions. I think everyone except for maybe me have been able to get over and get a peak. Um, but any thoughts? Yeah. >> Well, and then Jack, let me ask you this. Um, I I I was curious, although I haven't set foot on it. Uh, so from a bit of a distance, I mean, it does look really beautiful and I've seen the pictures. Dr. McHugh's done a great job giving us
044updates. um and have heard wonderful things, but I got to wondering is there anything this was sort of a unique space and property, different levels to build on, and I'm wondering if there isn't something unique and special from a maybe from an architectural design or from a construction design that maybe to the naked eye isn't so obvious, but will cause this facility to sort of stand out as uh as unique. uh >> you probably have a perspective that >> yeah absolutely um you know there are a lot of architectural things and I'll leave that to the designers to pontificate about all of those things but one of the things in construction that that always we we always guard against is the is the unforeseen condition an unexpected challenge and given that we started this project
0453 months later than we were supposed to if we had encountered one of those it would have we would be having a different conversation today. Right. So, one of the things that makes this the building unique from my perspective is that the the the main Church Hill School is at one level and the upper level of this building is at that same level while the main level of the K center is a floor down. >> And so, you have this topography that happens between the addition that we did back in 2014 >> 15. So, we're up here at 2015 and we're down here now in 2025. And um so we have these massive what look like retaining walls to somebody walking in the courtyard where we have plantings and the nice stair and so forth.
046Well, those are actually structural walls that were built to retain the addition that we did in 2015 and control the slope down to this existing building, which when you got down to this existing building, the soil that was there was lousy. So, we couldn't build on the soil. We had to install a structural foundation system below the slab and the footings called uh geop. So, it's it's a it's a subsurface embedded rock mixture that's there. I don't even remember how many geop are there there are in this building, but it's done on a grid system. 70 somebody's counting. >> See, it's a team effort. >> That's good. No, this is great. >> So, 37 geopers that basically hold this building up because of the lousy soil we had to build on. So, this there's all
047these interesting things about the structure of the building um that you know people are going to be looking at the canopies and the colors and not have a real appreciation for the challenge that went into getting the building started coming out of the ground. >> Yeah. All right. Wonderful. >> Thank you. Yeah. Thank you for the explanation. Anything else? Yeah, please. Amy, >> I had kind of a logistics question that I just thought of for the first day of school. I know that many parents want to bring their child and I don't know what the parking situation is going to like. Normally you drive through, drop your kid off, but if you want to stay, do we have anything in place for that? >> Yes, all of that will be coming from Principal Rodriguez. the
048whole first day of school, arrival, dismissal, all of those pieces. And we have been certainly taking the road work into consideration. So, we will have that full plan for you very soon. >> Great. Thank you. >> Sure. >> All right. Well, you know, Jack, I don't know if there's any sunlight left, but you know, you can go back to work a little bit, right? >> See what else is left to do, right? >> Yeah, that's right. Well, thank you. Means >> no. Thank you to the district. Everybody here has been great and uh we appreciate the support. So, thank you. Thank you, sir. Well done. All right. All right. Thank you to everyone for those presentations. We'll now move to the public participation part of the meeting. Members of the public who wish to address
049the board should complete a form and submit it to Mrs. Moch. We ask the speakers to respect that we are obligated to adhere to YouTube community guidelines and are asked to maintain respectful decorum and limit commit comments to 3 minutes or less. with about 30 seconds to go in your comments. Um, I will politely interrupt you to remind you of your time. Mrs. Mo, is there anyone here wishing to make public comment? >> Helen Basaki. >> Thank you very much. >> Green button. >> Yes. I'm so glad to hear that there are positive results with the H&H curriculum. However, I do question some things because I feel like we've always kind of had positive reports with Lucy Cawkins units of study. Um, meeting after meeting, I don't know if I've ever been to a meeting
050where we said things aren't looking good, the kids are struggling in literacy, that type of thing. And I do very much believe that our youngest readers are benefiting the most. I saw a huge difference between my first grader who started during the time when Miss Webster implemented the into reading supplement to go along with units of study compared to my eldest two who were only units of study. um her skills were surpassed a fourth and fifth grader just because of that implement which just shows you that even just minor phonics um foundational implements make a huge huge difference but the question still remains and it's the question I've been asking year after year after year what about the older kids the sixth seventh eighth grader or now high schooler who cannot write or spell. And
051yes, they do exist. And no, we're not catching them. They're not necessarily currently inter in intervention. I don't think we have a way to catch them. I haven't seen any changes to identify, specifically the older kids who were essentially disadvantaged and left behind by the previous curriculum. Are you truly okay with parents paying out of pocket thousands of dollars to correct a mistake that this district made? Or for the parents that are blaming their child because it's like a journey to figure out what the problem is. Initially, you think maybe they're not working hard enough. They don't have enough drive. Um maybe they have a disability. Maybe they're dyslexic. And maybe they actually are dyslexic. Maybe they actually do have a special education requirement. But a lack of proper literacy foundation skills back when they
052were in kindergarten, first grade, second grade is now a compounding factor. I've seen no real effort to identify these kids and get them the help they need by a true literacy expert. It truly doesn't take very long. Even one year of intensive learning of the foundational skills to properly encode or decode if kids are struggling there too makes a world of difference. >> 30 seconds, Helen. >> Um I've seen it with my own eyes and there's no reason why the schools cannot provide that. I do think it's beyond the Wilome curriculum for literacy advent intervention, but even if that's all you're going to provide, we once again need to discuss how we can access that intervention. I looked over the special education report coming later in the meeting and there's no mention about um gaining
053access to that intervention if you do not currently qualify. I brought up my concerns for years at the school level. We went through the process to determine if my child had a learning disability. He didn't. I showed the atrocious writing samples, the same ones where teachers around the country when I posted online says it looks like he's speaking in a different language. None of that got him into intervention because his MAP scores, the ones you were talking about earlier, were too high. >> There are other people who'd like to give comment. Can you please finish up? >> I'm not saying that MAP scores shouldn't be a factor, but this is the only metric we have or MAP and A. And why aren't we testing for the core skills using a Dibbles test you on paper,
054handwriting, not electronic, so that you can figure out specifically what kids actually know and don't know. Thank you. >> Thank you very much, Mrs. Moch. Anyone else? >> Nicole Kenny. >> Thank you. >> Well, I'm encouraged that the district has moved to HMH for literacy. I want to understand how the district plans to help the children who were already failed by Lucy Copkins. Many students, including my fifth grader, never received systematic phonics instruction and continue struggling with reading and spelling. These students simply cannot move on with the new program. They need targeted intervention and remediation. I'm also fortunate that my child has an IEP, but others do not. I would like to know how the district's special educ education program review and the adoption of HMH will ensure that both special education students and general
055education students get the support they need to catch up. >> Thank you very much. And I appreciate Molly and Dr. McHugh for doing that. >> Thank you, Mrs. Mo, >> Na Johnson. >> Good evening. >> Been a while since I've said anything. Um, I came to support Helen and the other parents. Um, I had today my son who's going to seventh grade starting to read Lord of the Flies. And one of the things, uh, Mr. Cooper did in seventh grade for my son Brady, who by the way has scored tremendously poorly in grammar, vocabulary, and reading on the ACT. And he's not the only one. Many of his friends are also scoring that poorly. Someone needs to explain why. And I'm here to help Helen and everybody else help our seventh, sixth, seventh, and eighth
056graders start to catch up. There are some very smart kids at this school and in D41. But there are a lot of kids. There are a lot of kids. When I ask them to rewrite a paragraph here, I can show you. I'll give you all copies of the 15 to 20 mistakes my child made in just rewriting a single paragraph. Mr. Cooper had my junior do that or when he was in seventh grade and I sat there for hours helping him, helping him learn what punctuation is, helping him with vocabulary, helping him to understand context. We can tell kids tell stories all day long and create these stories and be able to have amazing stories from first and second grade so they feel confident, but if they don't know how to create a sentence and
057if they don't know what words mean and if they don't know the the vocabulary to feel confident in speaking and telling that story, their stories are going to be bland. They're not going to reach their audience. They're not going to be able to feel confident speaking up in front of a room, in front of people. This was my binder from senior year of high school. honors, English. Do you want to know what we talked about? We talked about parentheticals. We talked about grammar. I had two or three people analyzing my work and they were schooling me on grammar back then. We need to go back to a little bit of that. It's not hard. Computers, flashy games, they're not helping our kids. They get in in their heads for a minute, but they don't keep
058it for a lifetime. So, I'm going to ask you guys to rethink, you know, rethink the process a little bit. Maybe the kids should start handwriting a paragraph from a book once or twice a week and have their parents look at it. Get the parents engaged. My sister in Massachusetts, Lucy Cawkins, I don't see a thing. He's going to fourth grade. She goes, I don't know what he's writing. That's what happened to my kids, too, in D41. I'm tired of it. My kid I have a kid in college. I have a kid in high school. And I have a seventh grader. and I'd really ask for you guys' help to implement some little bit of old school to help these kids gain some confidence and attention to what they're doing. Thank you. >> Thank you,
059Nicole. Mrs. Mil, anyone else? >> That is it. >> All right. Thank you all. >> All right. We will then move on and we've got a superintendent report. So, we will turn to Dr. McHugh for that report. [Music] >> All right. I have five items today to talk through. Let's start with the school year kickoff. We are excited. This is a picture of the new teacher orientation we had here. Uh Dr. David Bruno was our time is up. This concludes the superintendence report. >> I'm sorry. >> Dr. um Dr. David Bruno spearheaded a wonderful new teacher orientation, 37 certified staff and about we're going to have about 13 pair of professionals. When I marveled at the number of bags when I walked in, he said, "We are opening a new building." Um, so yes, lots
060of new staff. They are excited, they are engaged, and they're going to be great for kids. One of the new things this school year, as all of you know, is our new personal device policy. We uh have been communicating and will be communicating this out to the public. We'll see it in principal newsletters. This came out of the anxious generation book study. It came out of a large community engagement and what our community told us is they wanted these devices powered off and away for the day. So, this is the new board policy. um on one screen. Here it is. Devices need to be turned off. And we're going to ask that the kids keep them in their backpacks um so that they are just out of sight and not a distraction. This is not
061just cell phones, it's smartwatches, it's smart tablets, it's earbuds, it's wireless headphones. And we do have a procedure similar to what has been at Hadley already that will be implemented at the elementarymentaries. So I'm just asking any parents that are listening either don't send them with your child or prep them. They'll need to be in the backpack. We are going to enforce this from day one. We do believe this is going to be um best for kids and um I just thank everybody who is part of this engagement process from the community with the personal devices kindergarten center. You heard from Jack Hayes that it is almost ready to go. Our ribbon cutting is going to be Thursday, August 28th, 4:30 p.m. Everyone is invited. Please come. Come one, come all. And also tonight, uh,
062I believe it's on the consent agenda, you will be voting on the Glenn Allen Children's Resource Center, adding them to the me memorandum of understanding with the district to serve students at the kindergarten center as well as our other schools. So, we're excited that the GECRC is going to help our full day kindergarteners as well. Strategic plan monitoring. Um, you got a little bit of a taste with Dr. Webster's report here. We have an updated metrics table that I'm going to show you in a minute. We are going to do regular strategic plan updates the first four months of the school year and then we will return to some of those the second half of the school year. The metrics, as you recall, we used to have a baseline column and a goal column, and
063we have now made it a baseline 23 24 column, the data from the end of this past school year, 2425, and our 2027 goals. We have eight metrics in all some of them. There's an ELA and math metric on here, but as you can see, the first three metric metrics are on academics. The next three are on culture and belonging. We have the staff culture survey there and then we have parent and student culture updates, the kindergarten center and then communication. One of the changes since the spring that we made is the parent culture and climate was going to be from the school perception survey that we gave. So we gave a school perception survey. We said we're going to choose the metric that best matched what we were looking for. And when we looked
064at the school perception survey, it gave us a lot of good data. it didn't quite have a question that aligned with goal two, which is parents feel valued, respected, and heard. So, we pulled a question out of the five essentials survey about my voice is valued and we do want valued to mean it matters and when people come and talk, we listen and that we're not just giving lip service. That is the uh the measure that we chose. It was 68% in 2324 as our baseline. This past year it went up to 78. Our goal is 85. I'd love that to be 100, but we set that for 85 at the end of uh 27. And lastly, I would be remiss if I didn't talk about transportation. This is a preemptive. This is a message
065to the community that we know that Safeway did not provide the service last year that our kids in our community deserve. Eric Deorter and I, we've been working with them over the summer. We have a new penalty structure for them and we are going to be monitoring their progress very closely to make sure that they deliver on their contracted service that our kids and the community desire. So, no update other than as we're entering the school year, um we have high expectations for Safeway. This actually concludes the superintendent's report. Now, I'd be happy to answer questions. Any questions on the topics that Jeff presented here? No, we've seen it. Yes, Katie, you have a question. Jeff? >> Yes. I am so excited about the new personal device policy, but I'm curious about the enforcement and
066I'm thinking about Hadley, but I think it applies to everything. Are are you checking that they're in How do you know they're not wearing that? Like, are the teachers ready for the questions? Like, what does that look like? I think the biggest challenge from my end is how do we make sure the teachers are supported to enforce this and then the principles and assistant principles supporting the teachers to enforce that because all of us right here we're not in the building with the students every day. A lot of the enforcement that we talked about we did with the principles and assistant principles. We talked about them. What do you need? Everybody needs to hold the line. And if everybody holds the line and we follow our policy, it won't be an issue. Not to say
067it won't pop up, but everybody has to hold the line. And as an admin team, we talked about the fact we can't have one teacher who allows it and another that doesn't, or the school allows it and another one doesn't. We all are in solidarity. It's board policy. We're going to carry out that process. So, we are going to do everything we can to ensure that we're monitoring that, but if we see a watch, it will go right down the the enforcement policy for that. It has to be off the body and out of sight in the backpack. And Jeff, remind me that's in school, not just in the classroom. >> It is in school in between the hours of 8:30 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. Okay. And the reason we did that is there are
068some students who do need to connect with their families before or after have extracurricular activities. So outside of those school hours, they will be able to use those devices. But in between 8:30 and 3:30, including lunch, including recess, no devices at all. >> Yeah. >> Yep. Jeff, before be before we um move on, um I do want to acknowledge um the the decision. I think it was a really wise one to draw from five essentials. Uh I think the folks at the University of Chicago really put together a pretty strong um assess. It's my personal view on the use of these these assessments and it's free to the to all school districts and going there to find uh a metric uh demonstrates the seriousness that that you and your team put into the strategic plan
069and having an appropriate metric. You didn't find something that quite fit under school perceptions. You could have, you know, good enough, right? but instead you went and looked at the five essentials data and the the the questions that they asked. And I appreciate that um seriousness in in finding a measure that will speak to um how parents feel when they are speaking to the to the district. >> Yes. And I can't take credit for that one. So Erica Crabial is the one who identified that one. >> But I also have to give a shout out. Molly Victor was the one as we were we were putting some other metrics up there and she kept bringing us back to the goal. Does that match what the goal says and they weren't we were missing the mark.
070So, thank you Molly and Erica. It really is a a we are D41 effort with this stuff. >> We are grateful then. Thank you. Okay, then let's move into our uh important discussion item. >> I had a quick question. >> Oh, did you have a question? I'm sorry. Please, Amy. >> Um it was regarding the technology. Are students still allowed to have like old school watches that don't connect to the internet and wear them? >> Does anybody do that anymore? >> I would if I wasn't allowed to have a smartwatch. Like I live and die by watches, so that's why I'm asking. >> Yes, I would. It it the policy only covers smart watches. It does not say no watches of any kind. What I'm hoping is we don't get watches that don't look like
071smart watches but are. But if it's just an old school nice Casio with the black band that I was rocking in grade, it's acceptable. Oh, is that a Timex? Right. >> Okay. Great good question. >> All right. Thank you. All right then. Uh well, actually before we get into the discussion, any board reports? I know it's been uh some summer uh time and but uh yeah, Katie, please. I don't want to steal your thunder, Bob, because I see this hat sitting here. Um, but I just wanted to acknowledge everyone that worked on Susicle this summer and also everyone from the cabinet and Jess had a small role that was there. Um, it was amazing and so appreciated and so thank you for being there. And then um, just wanted to share the PEP Foundation, the
072Partnership for Educational Progress, um, had their first meeting last week. I was unable to attend. when we were on our family vacation, but I've been talking with Erica, the leader, and um we have our next meeting on September 3rd. So, I'm learning a lot about it and I think it's a really neat organization to check out if you haven't seen it yet. >> Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Okay. Yeah. Good. Anyone else? >> Yeah, Amy. Oh, go ahead. >> I wanted to echo what Katie was saying with Susicle. It was great. Um, the D41 kids put on their annual uh musical and did a great job and raised some funds for the D41 kids. Their meetings will resume in September when school is in session. >> Thank you. >> End of July, Ted and I participated
073in a policy committee meeting. Ah, >> and so we're just going through a policy manual customization project right now. >> Oh. So, it's it's really >> talk about stimulating stimulating stuff. >> I'm just going to leave the report at that. There's nothing more to share. >> That's probably good. >> Too bad everyone missed it. >> Can't can't wait to see the final product. Well, thank you. It is actually it is the most probably serious of work because everything has to come out of policy. Uh so, thank you. Thank you both and thanks to uh to Nancy. Uh I I I also did want to note uh the the the Susical the musical the the play put on as a an important fundraiser by the kids foundation. The foundation's done a lot of great work um
074in lots of different areas and it's only been around for a short period of time and this is just one of those uh activities and you know Gina Woods who is the director who does a lot of our uh plays in the district. She really does a marvelous job. Um I think maybe someday it'd be nice to have her come here and and take a bow. Uh, and I do know that uh I do know that uh Mrs. Mayor, right? A Nora Law, >> Nora Lau was Mrs. Mayor. That's right. >> Yeah. >> And Jason's daughters, >> Alexis. >> Yeah. >> Also, performed. And then just finally, the probably the folks who never really take a bow and they don't show up in a in a program book, but the folks who built the sets,
075who built the scenery, um uh I I do know that a previous board member, uh Stephen Michael's uh wife, uh did a lot of the scene work, uh and whoever built the piano that they could roll in, roll onto the stage and roll off when Cat and Hat came out doing that lounge routine on that piano. I pretty much fell out of my chair and I wondered who built that thing. I want one of those things like right here in the I don't know who that person is, but if anybody knows who that person is, I would love to personally thank them. I I thought that was terrific craftsmanship and I wonder how did they do it? But that's the magic, right? Anyway, well done to all those all those people. Yeah. Okay. All right.
076Then we have one discussion item, an important one, and that is a a review of the special education program. Um, and I'm going to let both Molly and Jeff facilitate the discussion around uh the review. So, please. >> Sure. Why don't I start and then Molly, you can you can take it from here. So, there was a special education review done here in 41 during the 2016 2017 school year and then there was a refresh of that done. And it's my understanding it was spring of 2020, correct? So it was even like March, April, May of 2020. And at that time then I believe what was going on in the world put everybody's attention elsewhere. As I've come into the district, I've tried to do a lot of listening, uh, looking, listening, and learning, and
077special education has come up a lot. Um, Molly wasn't here when either of those audits were done. Libby wasn't here. I wasn't here. A number of our our people weren't here for that. And I think this was an opportunity that we wanted to take to have somebody come in a third party and say, "Here are the things that are going well because we know there are things going well and here are the the the growth areas for us." And the four major areas, I should have this in front of me, Molly. Let's see if I can do this from memory. Are uh we're going to look at the specialed programming along the continuum. We're looking at the instructional practices, the instruction going on. Uh my mind is jumping to the parents. I know that's number
078four, but we're we're we're talking about staffing of course is number three. Uh what our staffing is, as Dr. Bruno nods, and uh and the parents, our partnership with the parents because an IEP meeting is a partnership between a district and parents. And I know that's a critical piece that we want to take a look at. So, um I'm gonna kick to Mali to talk about who we are bringing to you for approval tonight and take it from there. >> Yeah. Um we Jeff and I met with two consultants. We cast a wide net. We had two consultants who are interested in saying more about what they could offer us. Um we ultimately landed with uh Dr. Leanne Frost. She comes to us with over 30 years of special ed administrative experience. She is pretty
079well known in the special ed field in Illinois. She has presented on multiple topics, been involved in in many districts. Um the thing that I think really sold her for us was that she has successfully completed multiple special education reviews over the last few years um with glowing reviews from the districts that she worked with. Um, and she was able to articulate back to us what we were looking for and give us data sources that we would want to collect. Um, so that's a little bit about Dr. Frost. We're looking to have the review completed this fall with a wrap-up hopefully by the December board meeting so that we can take actionable items if there are changes to staffing, if there are changes to processes and get those implemented so that next year, if not
080possibly even in the spring, we could have those changes in place. And we also wanted somebody who was going to tell us what it was. So, so Dr. F, we did not want somebody to come and say you're doing a great job and then move along. We wanted someone to say, "Yeah, you're doing great in these areas, but here's your next step, and here are areas that aren't going as great as you want them to, and here are some ideas of what you can do to improve them." And through our reference check, we feel like she is going to give us that honest look at ourselves so that we can make some changes for the benefit of the kids and families of 41. >> Okay. Uh board members, any questions or comments? You do have
081a board re report on uh Dr. Foster as part of the uh packet any if not Jeff would you mind um because you were uh you were trying to hold all of these different elements in your head right um and you you you correctly noted that there were in fact were four and you did touch on all four but would you mind if I restated them uh really as a question because you had done this really nicely uh umh for me and and and I'd like to kind of share this out in terms of uh what questions we're attempting to answer in this review that we'll have a parent feedback piece in addition to u a number of other elements but um here are the four questions does the current continuum of services in district
082meet the needs of all students with disabilities and then there will be diffs to sort of assess that Two, are students with disabilities making adequate progress with our current instructional and service delivery? Two, and again then ways of assessing that and we'll get a report from Dr. Frost. Third one is is does the current staffing model adequately address the needs of all students with disabilities? Okay. And then finally, do parents of students with disabilities feel a sense of belonging to the district? use the word partnership and I think that that is a narrative that we're going to continue to uh um to emphasize. >> Yeah. With an >> Did you want to modify that? >> With an emphasis on communication for the parent one, our communication with parents, not just to but with parents. I
083think that's going to be a big focus and parents will be a part of this. Obviously, we're going to need their voices on this to help us. >> Okay, great. Fantastic. Thank you. All right. Well, much much more to come and an ambitious schedule getting started and we will we will take action on that today so Dr. Frost can start with the beginning of the school year. Okay. Thank you. All right. Then we will move to the action item and our consent agenda. Are there any items board members would like to be removed from the consent agenda to be considered separately? Hearing none, then may I have a motion to approve the consent agenda which includes the employment recommendations, resignations, leave request and retirements with resignations as noted on the personnel report, disposal of surplus
084property donation report, freedom of information report, the investment schedule, monthly revenue of expenditure summary report, school district payment order, summary of bills and payroll, treasurer's report, board meeting minutes from June June 16th regular and closed meeting minutes. And then July 23rd, 2025, which is a board workshop special meeting. Uh and then July 23rd, 2025 board workshop close meeting minutes, review of all closed session meeting minutes, approval of close session audio for destruction, and approve the revised memorandum of agreement with Glenn Ellen's Children Resource Center GECRC that was mentioned earlier as presented. Yeah. So moved. >> I need a second. >> Second. >> There we go. Is that Katie's first second? [Laughter] >> Everything's a first for a while. >> That was my first motion. >> I know. >> Roll call. Mrs. Moch. >> Dr. Martelli.
085>> Yes. >> Mrs. Leau. >> Yes. >> Mr. Estes. >> Yes. >> Miss Becker. >> Yes. >> Mrs. Hill. >> Yes. >> Dr. Bruno. >> Yes. All right. We've got then a couple of recommendations. and as you heard just recently to approve the contract uh for special education program review. May I have a motion to authorize executive director Molly Victor to enter into contract on behalf of the district with Dr. Leah Anne Frost for the purposes of a special education review for a cost of no more than $12,000500 from the 2526 budget. >> I need a motion. >> Motion. >> All right. I need a second. >> Second. >> All right. Any further discussion? No, we're getting it. Roll call. Mrs. Mo. >> Miss Becker. >> Yes. >> Mrs. Lab. >> Yes. >> Mr. >>
086Yes. >> Mrs. Hill. >> Yes. >> Dr. Martelli. >> Yes. >> Dr. Bruno. >> Yes. All right. Motion passes. Second item is to approve serious safety hazards. May I have a motion to approve the resolution for serious safety hazard approval as presented? And of course, this has to do with the Department of Transportation making decisions on an annual basis in terms of crossing and uh where our schools and where our students u um are transported and they do this annually every year and we have to approve these. Uh may have a motion to approve the resolution. >> Motion. >> Don't be shy. Second. >> Second. >> There you go, Ted. Any further discussion? Nancy. Roll call. >> Mrs. Mrs. Lidd, >> yes. >> Mrs. Hill, >> yes. >> Dr. Martelli, >> yes. >> Miss Becker,
087>> yes. >> Mr. Estes, >> yes. >> Mrs. Hill, >> yes. >> Dr. Bruno, >> yes. Motion passes. And third item is to place the 2526 draft budget on display and schedule public hearing. You heard Eric speak to this. May I have a motion to approve the resolution notifying the public of the hearing of the 2526 budget and the placement of the 2526 tenative budget on public display as outlined in the board report? >> So moved. >> Second. >> There we go. That was kind of a tie. Did you get that, Nancy? Just any further discussion? All right, we'll put this on display then. Roll call. Nancy. >> Mr. Estes. >> Yes. >> Mrs. Mrs. Leau, >> yes. >> Mrs. Hill, >> Miss Becker, >> yes. >> Dr. Martelli, >> yes. >> Dr. Bruno, >>
088yes. And then the last item, approve the revised 2526 board of education meeting calendar. Uh, and just to clarify, uh, the date is the same, but we are going to hold uh our this board meeting in November at the full day kindergarten center. So, we're going to hold it at the new school and we're required to announce where that meeting will be held. So, that'll be a a big first. Yeah, we'll do it around the slide. David, is that okay? Can we No. No. David's saying no, we're not going to get near the slide. >> I don't know. All right, then. May I have a motion? >> Bob was going to go down the slide. >> That's how we're going to start the meeting. May I have a motion to approve the revised 2526 board
089meeting calendar as outlined in the board report? Yes. I mean, >> yeah, that works. >> Motion. >> I need a second. >> Second. >> Any further discussion? All right. Nancy, roll call. >> Dr. Martelli, >> yes. >> Miss Becker, >> yes. >> Mrs. Hill, >> yes. >> Mrs. Leau, >> yes. >> Mr. Rastis, >> yes. >> Dr. Bruno, >> yes. And that motion fa passes. Thank you all. All right, let's move on to the uh board governance learning together. And uh let's start first of all with Julie uh an advocacy report from you. >> No. Well, okay. >> I don't have one. >> You don't have to. You don't have to have one, >> but we have some things coming up. So, we'll have plenty to talk about next month. >> Yes, we will. Yes,
090we will. Thank you very much. And obviously, hearing about federal funding uh becomes very relevant uh to our uh to our work. Uh so, thank you. All right. And then uh the second is the 2526 board meeting planner. Dr. McHugh, >> this is something we wanted to do to give the board an idea of what's coming down the line as well as the community. Now, I do want to say this is a draft. things could change based on the timing, but um we tried this last year and we have now added our strategic plan monitoring the metrics reports that will be coming up in addition to things that we do every year, reports we give every year. So, it's just something that you can take a look at and see when are we going to
091be talking about those culture surveys, you can take a look and see, oh, that's coming up in September or October. >> Very good. Yes, it's I think it's good to have that. I think previous boards have appreciated seeing that calendar of what items will come up when. A third item is we did hold a special meeting, a professional development meeting with our IASB Illinois Association of School Board Field Rep. And this board has done continuous improvement uh work every year. And I just wanted to uh just briefly note that in that meeting uh we um we reflected on all the work we were doing together and began to rethink how we were doing it and whether there was areas are areas of improvement. uh we looked at some of those opportunities um to strengthen the
092data informed auditing monitoring process that we use and this comes out of uh of a guide called the principles of effective board governance. So, how are we using the data uh in our oversight? Uh, and just to stress that as a new team, adding Katie and Amy and then welcoming Chris back, it's important that we continue to reflect on all the shared understanding that we had about what our work entails. encourage each of us to check in with one another regularly, you know, ma and to ensure that all voices are properly heard and that will certainly be my um my role and uh and my commitment uh when we're here at the table and that we follow our agreed upon norms and communication expectations. Uh so I appreciated folks turning out that evening. It was
093like most professional development sessions a long evening but uh I think when we were done we were still interested in talking right so thank you all for doing that work uh it does make a difference uh in how we serve the community and in relation to that uh growing out of that we did decide to make uh some modest but important modifications uh to our meeting norms and to the expectations ations for the communication and relationship between the district principally the superintendent uh and the board. Um and so what I'm I am going to ask here uh you've all seen that uh new um uh set of expectations and norms. I want to ask for a motion to approve the revised board superintendent communication expectations as presented. >> There you go. I need a second.
094>> Second. >> Ah, wonderful. Any further discussion? >> I have just a comment, >> please. >> Um, I really appreciate from you all you the um the earlier >> the earlier notice of the board packet and the getting this is terrible grammar. I'm really sorry. and getting the answers to our questions back earlier in the day because it is really hard at least for me as a parent to do anything useful between four and six. Um that it does not involve the children or carpooling or getting dinner on the table. So getting that kind of midm morning was great. I appreciate the forethought and early work that it takes you all to get all that done. Um and Nancy for getting the board packet to us earlier. So I just a broad thank you. I
095a huge improvement. I know it's not a it's not maybe a huge thing, but it felt huge to me. So, uh, many thanks for that. >> Good. Yeah. Well, that's one of the reasons why we hold these PDs, right? See what it'll shake loose. >> Yeah. I agree. It was nice to have that extra day. >> Yeah. Good. I'm glad board members. Yeah. Opened it up and used it the way it was supposed to be used. That's great. Yeah. All right. All right. Mrs. Milk, roll call. >> Mr. Resties. >> Yes. >> Mrs. Leau, >> yes. >> Miss Becker, >> yes. >> Dr. Martelli, >> yes. >> Mrs. Hill, >> yes. >> Dr. Bruno, >> yes. And motion passes. Okay. Two upcoming meetings. We'll have our regular board meeting on September 22nd. That will be
096here. And then the October 20th regular board meeting, and again, that will be here. Uh any items board members wish to Wait, whoa, one last thing. I almost forgot. Uh we are uh starting something new this year and I I did want to uh acknowledge this at the board table because it speaks to how well we do our our work as a team of eight. And since we did bring two brand new uh people onto the board, I did ask if some more senior board members would be willing to play a formal mentoring role uh for those junior faculty faculty. I'm thinking of my U of I sorry uh board member roles and Ted was gracious enough uh to step up and say that he would be happy to serve in that role uh with
097Amy and Julie did the same in serving with Katie. I decided to leave. Nobody wanted to work with Dr. Martelli so he's on his own but I understand that. Um >> you're close by Chris. I'll just walk over when walking the dogs. Um but thank you both. It is we are asking you this is a volunteer job right and we've now asked you to do a little bit uh more work. Uh so thank you very much and I think Nancy will also be helpful in facilitating if there were certain things you wanted to do or get information you wanted to get. So thank you. All right. We're now going to uh move into close session. may have a motion to adjourn to close session to confidentially wait any items for future board meetings. Sorry, skipped
098over it. All right, then. May I have a motion to adjourn the close session to confidentially discuss section 2C6, the setting of a price for sale or lease of property owned by the public body? >> So moved. >> Second. We have a second. Yes, Nancy. Mr. Estes, >> yes. >> Mrs. Leau, >> yes. >> Mrs. Hill, >> yes. >> Miss Becker, >> yes. >> Dr. Martelli, >> yes. >> Dr. Bruno, >> yes. Thank you very much. We will now move into close session. The board will not be taking action uh when we complete close session. Thank you all very much. Please be safe going home. Stay dry. Bye-bye.