Regular Board Meeting - July 6, 2022

001the july 6 2022 regular board meeting will now come to order mr lobock will you please lead us in the pledge of allegiance [Music] i pledge 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 thank you mrs moak roll call please mrs buttimer here mr rusty's here mrs hill yeah mrs syed mr lobock here dr martelly here dr bruno here before we get into our agenda this evening i did want to acknowledge that a board member taiba saeed is not with us this evening and she has shared with me that her mother is gravely ill and so she chooses to be with her this evening and we send our concerns on our respect and love

002to taba and her family okay all right we have a important presentation from eo sullivan phase three before colin colonies with us melissa please introduce our guest welcome again to colin corbin um colin's been with us for several board meetings now and he is going to be presenting the results from phase three and move us forward into our next step yeah we were just together a few weeks ago so thanks again for having us out again um so as was mentioned we've completed phase three we this process always speeds up towards the end which is good because people want to move but we also uh really appreciate that we got a lot of feedback and engagement again from the community what you guys see in the report as i've done before i'll cover the highlights

003and then open it up for discussion and questions we got in this phase uh 247 responses from the public directly on top of another 501 phone survey responses so we are again looking at feedback levels that are in the upper echelon of all the clients that we've seen last year or so so again a very very engaged community and we're really happy to see that it also just increases our confidence in the data when we know that we've got that much feedback you'll see throughout the report details on some of the meetings and other things that we went through but i want to go into the analysis of what we get what we heard what we gathered and what this means and really focus my time there as before we've looked at all the data

004points provided from the public and we break it down in different different ways when we look at that data and there's some key things that stood out to us i want to share that with you as we look at what that next step looks like first i want to point to the most important thing which is that 71 percent supported um at least one of the options that were presented only 25 said no no additional funding and so obviously the next step is to figure out the exact plan that would be a consensus plan from the community but at the end of the day we see strong enough support at this level to move forward with some sort of plan and that's obviously what we're looking at next when we look at the responses from

005the public we saw that because we spread this out we don't typically have as many options as we had here but because we spread it out you saw a little bit more of a spread in people's feelings so we're accounting for that in our data when we look at it because typically we only give three options so when you have the same number of people but you give them a fourth option that spreads out the responses again to another another option so it does change a little bit of what we typically see but when we look at the different options presented remember that each of the options had a key negative there's probably a better term for that but there was a key thing that made each of the options a potential challenge and so

006one of the first things we wanted to identify is what is the biggest challenge to the public some of the things we looked at obviously included potentially having to do redo boundaries some of them looked at having to bus either kindergartners or fifth graders and i know the district came into this uh sharing with us that they had heard that there were concern students especially younger kids that was the ideas or busing students at a younger level we see that here in the data that the idea of busing kids outside of neighborhood schools is not something the public really isn't thrilled about the again horrible term but the quote unquote negative of having to redistrict having to reboundry no one ever wants to have to do that but people were more willing to stomach that

007challenge than they were having to send their kindergartner or their fifth grader to outside of their neighborhood outside of their local neighborhood school and so this was very clear in our data that in terms of a viable plan for you all moving forward ideally it's one that maybe would require redistricting versus having to pass those students so it's the first data point we saw that was important what we also saw um is that there were favors uh there were definitely favorites among those four options and as a reminder you guys saw in front of you the i should read what those options are because i know last time that was something i didn't do and that wasn't very helpful so let me pull up that document real quick and make sure i read what those

008options are for anyone who maybe isn't following along to what the options were let me pull that up one second all right so option one two three and four option one was a new full day kindergarten center at churchill option two was a new fifth grade center at hadley and a new early learning center at churchill option three was a new 600 student elementary school on spalding property option four was that same 600 student elementary school on spalding but also the new early living center at churchill so you see the options kind of go up in in cost and in scope and as i mentioned each of them come with a certain degree of positives but also some challenges that come with them and so those were when we gather this data we always make

009sure to tell the public what do you what's the positives you get from this but also what's the potential challenge because we don't want to put our thumb in the scale we want to make sure we're being objective as we gather that data so what we saw in the feedback is that the public opposes option one and this is pretty clear to us now over multiple phases the least supported of the infrastructure options was building the new early learning center when we tested that in the last phase we then converted that to a kindergarten center and it was still the least supported option so this as a potential solution um just does it seems clear to us the public isn't favoring just doing that that as part of something they're certainly open to but just

010that uh wasn't enough to the community uh to solve all the challenges that this district faces when we look at the remainder of the options we saw again uh that not a lot of love for the idea of having to bus fifth grade students um which would have been what option two would have been relying on would be to bust fifth grade students to their own um space their own center as part of churchill i'm sorry a part of hadley uh and so while it wasn't opposed to such a level that you couldn't pursue it there definitely was some opposition to the to the idea so we wouldn't recommend going that route um again wasn't really the favorite of the community really what we saw was that the two options based on the new school

011at spaulding were the ones that got the most support and so as we look forward to what the district should be looking at moving forward we look at options three and four as your best choices because they're centered around that new school on spalding property there are some concerns about having to redistrict but of course we can work through that there are some concerns over the size of that property that were brought up but we can work through that and then the discussions that we had as people brought up concerns about the size of the property as the district explained what it would look like those concerns dissipated so people understand certainly it will be a little bit of a smaller property but in terms of what options are available to the district it's the

012best option that we've been able to test when we look at the funding for those two obviously there is a cost difference between the two um you're looking at about a nine million dollar difference between options three and four you see some opposition increase from option three to four because of that because of the extra nine million dollars and so we're looking at option four we don't think that's impossible to get done to get past but people obviously have rightful concerns about costs and certainly with property taxes right now with inflation and everything else you know the less expensive we can make whatever this option is the happier your public's going to be so option three does come in more favored because of that um but certainly getting that new early learning center at churchill

013would add some additional benefits to the district so if you're able to find some way to maybe um get both of those done for a lower cost or or do option three now and that doesn't stop you from being able to do maybe the new early learning center down the road um really it's that world between three and four where you're safest where your public is happiest um and we think either three or four or some space between is doable and is passable when we look at um we're answering two questions for you in this process not just what to do but when to do it and so i'd be remiss if i didn't talk about that other part about when do we do this when we look at any sort of a referendum we

014want to build it around something that your whole community supports and so we look at options three and four we've looked we've drilled down to the data into every different demographic we could look at whether male or female younger or older liberal or conservative on the left side of town or the right side of town we've looked at all those different data points that we could look at and in each of those options there are at least one if not multiple things that each of those demographics have said they support very strongly and so we know this is a good consensus plan that your community can support when you look at an election unfortunately elections are driven by who shows up so you might have full community support but if an election has just this

015segment that shows up your referendum may or may not be ideally suited for that one subset as an example this election we just passed last week in june um there were some referendums that weren't successful that by the way we told them we wouldn't be successful if they went but because of the type of electorate it was and i'll give an example i don't mean to be partisan but it is a primary so i'm going to use some partisan terminology there were very limited democratic primaries there were a lot of republican primaries and so the turnout in june was very republican heavy not very democratic heavy and so what that means is if you've got a referendum built around infrastructure and safety republicans love referendums built around infrastructure and safety so those referendums passed because

016those are things that republicans definitely want to see in their schools if you had referendums built around education built around investing in 21st century learning and some of those those tend to be topics that democrats tend to more gravitate towards than republicans and so because that june election was very republican you could see what types of referendums would succeed and what types of referendums wouldn't succeed even if the whole community supported it it really a referendum is tied to just who shows up that year to to vote and so it's something we want to look at is first we want you to have a plan that your whole community supports i believe we've achieved that here as we narrow in scope to what that final plan is next we obviously want to get this passed

017knowing it's something the community supports how do we then get it across the finish line so we look at the upcoming elections to determine what type of turnout will you have and as a result for the type of referendum you have when should you go on the ballot when we look at the next three elections available to you it's november of this year it's april of next year 2023 and it's march of 2024 i don't mean to over complicate this but march is likely to be moved they're looking to move that primary up because they want illinois to have more of a voice in the presidential election so we don't know when that third one will be likely earlier than march of 24. those are the three available to you as we look at who's

018likely to turn out in those elections november is looking to be likely very balanced um very at least for your community everyone will have a reason to come out it's a general election there's a big gubernatorial race there's congressional races there's legislative races there's even judicial races and everything else you'll likely have a very balanced turnout and what we like to see good turnout because we want people to have their voices heard if you can you'd like to run when 50 of the voters show up rather than 20 of the voters show up you'd like more people to have a chance to have their voices heard so november is our recommendation on if you were to move forward we'd recommend doing so in november april's not out of the realm of possibility april of next

019year of 2023 that will be a lower turnout election which means fewer people will come out anyone can but fewer people do unfortunately and so it's one of the factors we don't tend to love april elections it also does tend to be um a much more older environment in terms of people who do show up i wish more of my generation would show up to every election but we don't and so that april election does tend to skew more towards an older demographic i think your referendum will play well with every demographic so you'd be fine in april but it wouldn't be as ideal as going in november plus waiting six more months means inflation has even more time to make things more expensive for you so if there isn't a compelling reason to wait

020we don't tend to recommend to wait the last election available to you would be all the way in 2024 for that reason we just don't tend to recommend it it's a primary which always ends up being volatile so we wouldn't suggest waiting that long we'd suggest november is your best path april is a possibility but again we suggest november i have a few follow-up questions but i want to stop so that you guys can ask your questions all right well thank you colin let's pause then and board members questions you had a lot of material to look at and constantly nice job of summarizing but maybe there are additional questions uh that have occurred to you let me kind of i i have a few but if i could just ask one can you kind

021of remind us of the track record for your math methodology yeah um so i will say i i want to hold out last tuesday because there were two districts we told don't go if you go you're going to lose they didn't listen they went and they lost so that's our loss but i can't really feel like i can complain for that one um other than that we have uh were 13 wins and one loss so the method has worked it didn't work for one district sadly but for all the other 13 it's worked very well well let me let me just say this anybody have a question before jess all right it's always good to follow jess it is she hates going first but we defer to her in that case well jess once again

022would refer to you during that uncomfortable spot um i would say that the outcome of the or the results were surprising to me in a couple of ways um how often is it that one of the lower priced options isn't the winner it's um it happens more than you might think but it is obviously less rarer than a lower option being the church but this is why we love doing this process because every community is different you know i'll tell you the results we got from your community it looks nothing like the results we have from the other districts we're working with in terms of what's important what would be a challenge i mean i'll tell you that just as an example redistricting in some districts is a blank no never never ever do i

023want to see that um and so that had the potential here to be just a deal breaker for people um whereas in some communities it's you know what we'd live with that more than we live with basic i have some districts that busing just wouldn't be a problem to them they don't care so it's why we just we don't come into it with any preconceived notions we leave it open we that's why we do the funnel methodology to make sure that we're just not pushing it in one direction or the other we let the people tell us what um you know they want to see in their districts and then we work of course with the district's experts to make sure it's within the realm of feasibility but yeah the lowest option isn't always the

024one chosen um it generally tends to be more in the middle usually but i'll say it's just as often the highest option as it is the lowest up we've had some districts surprise us where they're very very conservative communities and they choose the highest option we had one that's one of the most conservative communities in the whole state and they wanted a brand new school and they were willing to pay for it it's why we let the people make the decision for themselves versus us just saying here now pay for blank um and i'm sorry if i missed this but um in terms of like how you broke it down it was there like a geographic breakdown and that you know that we got all parts of the community when we look at the data

025we verify that we have representation from the whole community it's not something we submit we just it's a data point we verify to make sure we're comfortable with the data and yes in both of the surveys and in all the feedback that we got we made sure it was balanced between what school are they coming from or um geographically where do they live there's privacy issues with like sharing that but we definitely look at it to make sure we've got a good representation from everyone so it's not everyone on the west side of town and then suddenly we don't realize the east side of town hates it as an example it may not be relevant here but and can you remind me what phase four is gonna be the next step yeah it's a great

026question and it was one of my follow-ups so it doesn't lead in very well so phase four is honing in on that final plan i'm gonna have some questions for you all about what you like what you don't like because ultimately it's gonna be your decision as the board as the people's representatives um but phase four is honing in on that final plan um and if that plan requires a referendum which in this case it would if you did hone in on a final plan we'd work with the district to develop that language um to make sure that it passes legal muster because there is specific legal requirements for what you can and cannot say in the question so we make sure we get the right question in place follow the process for getting it

027submitted properly and we would bring that to you all and you get the final say on voting that up and down and then we would help present that and push that out to the public to let them know what was the conclusion of this process i mean people put in a good amount of time some of your committee members put in you know 5-10 hours into this if not more so we want to make sure we don't we don't miss that last step of letting them know the results of all their hard work so that's what phase four would be hone in on a final plan if it is a referendum build the referendum you all voting on that potentially and then should that happen rolling it out to the public so they know what's

028possibly going to be on their ballots in november and i have a few kind of uh logistical questions or probably more for staff i don't know if you want me to hold off on those can i just ask a follow-up to what colin just shared please so when you say ho in on a final plan are you suggesting making a determination between option three or four yeah i mean you you all as the board you have the right to choose whatever you want so we've had clients who say we're gonna go at option one so you're not forced within that space but yes it would be honing in on a final plan that we recommend being somewhere four or between three and four um that's what we would suggest but again you all you're the

029board so you guys make the decisions so does that include additional community engagement or is that a decision that we now need to make melissa as a board and as an administrative team based on the feedback we've received through the first three phases yep so what tonight will do is through your conversations colin is going to ask the board for your initial leaning um you know whether the board has a desire to move forward if the board has a desire to move forward then out of tonight you're going to direct us to begin that process of working with colin but also with legal counsel and bond council to draft questions what would probably be most optimal is tonight to leave with a directive to draft three questions one being just the consent to build a

030new attendance center that's a standalone question it's nothing related to funding it's just to build a center and a question that represents option three and a question that represents option four then between now and the next board meeting or at the next board meeting that's where the board will make their determination on where they want to go and as a follow-up to that dr k i would simply say you know that is sometimes where we end up um or sometimes when we go through this and i ask like follow-up questions the board is all pretty much centered yeah and they're all fed then we don't need the extra questions so it really will come down to what you kind of give us as feedback if you guys are all somewhere around a consensus then we

031could provide you just that single instead of the two options um but we know you know this is a lot of information you may need time to think about it so those both are available to you if you'd like to have multiple options we can do that if you guys are all in mostly agreement of what you want to do then we would just present that one option at the next meeting okay okay anybody else before jess you have some stuff logistical go ahead melissa here um i guess the ultimate question is well i don't know if it's ultimate question so i'm just curious if with option three we build a new attendance center k5 on at the spalding lot um that pulls up to 600 students out of the existing elementaries into that space

032are we certain that gives us room for all all of the full day kindergarten um and what does that mean for preschool then right so the option that the board can discuss is waiting and trying to do the pre-k center later or taking a more aggressive approach and adding the pre-k center on to the question at this time and if we don't do pre-k then we know we've got to treat forest glen a little bit differently and and possibly pull more kids out of forest glen because pre-k would be staying there so um you know that changes the way we might approach redistricting the district um you know so each decision kind of impacts where we go with it yeah and i was going to ask that question so if i could just follow up

033with that chess if you don't mind so what i didn't take the survey just because i didn't want to i'm not so what were there comments as to an early childhood center or in the results that you got back um what were the misgivings or you know um unwillingness on the ecs that you saw in option four yeah there were two things that we saw with that with that center the first was the challenge of just busing in general um but the second was just that pre-k is less of a priority in terms of where we spend our limited resources pre-k did come in lower on that priority level um and there's a lot of reasons for why that happens but simply it doesn't touch every family um and you know the value of early

034learning um hasn't necessarily penetrated like some other things that have taken us all some time as a society to catch up to so there's a few reasons why that is but um in terms of your options you know option three does check the box of all the most important priorities for the public option four logistically if you look at if you talk to sorry if you talk to like your architects and your experts they do need that space and the one school is held back by having to use that space for pre-k so even though it isn't necessarily the most popular item to the public of pre-k um you all know that it's moving those kids that helps you do the other things and so you don't expect that the average member of the public

035is going to know that level of detail um but i think that's why it was less supported is a little more money for something the public doesn't necessarily value as highly so in phases one two and three those were more of a if i'm correct uh gather information from the public uh and not really a messaging correct yeah we we did put some messaging out as you see but we were very careful about not pushing too much out no sales no promotions no pushing you know when we get a final plan we will package this in a way that says here's all the values here's all the benefits purposely not yeah and the reason is that in looking at the two because it doesn't really kind of conversation started from the conversation with dc center

036and so i guess from what you're seeing in the responses that you received and and the sessions that you've held is the difference between options three and four something that can be addressed close some of that gap with through through messaging or is it really no we really don't support the money regardless of what it's for yeah that's a great question so it isn't that there's opposition so it's not to say that if you went with four that would submarine any sort of referendum that said every dollar that a referendum costs more is another vote you have potential of losing right so another nine million dollar increase i'll just tell you what that taxpayer impact is to make it real you're talking about the difference between 214 a year versus 271 dollars a year so

037and that's a significant impact for taxpayers so the question then is what more are you getting for that and the point that i would say is yes we're going to package it all to the public and let them know things like you know that it isn't necessarily the pre-k center because you want to put more focus on pre-k though that would allow you to do a little more in pre-k um but really it's the space that takes up and forgive me i don't know which building that is but in forest glen that takes up space in forest glen which means that when you open up space in the buildings forest glen might get left a little bit behind if we don't give them this space too so it's it's looking at sort of equity question

038to be honest of are we making sure that every family in the district gets these benefits because they said they wanted you know some key things they wanted maintaining lower class sizes full day kindergarten student resources and supports programming and specials those are the four things they've asked for if not getting that extra space of an early learning center hinders your ability to provide that to any students let alone just maybe one neighborhood one area then you as a board may say you know what we've got to do this or as an administration or as a team say you know what for nine million dollars to make sure that every family has these benefits we have to now you may look at it and say you know what we can do it without that um

039and nine million dollars less in a referendum means it has that even higher chance of passing so that's you know this is where as a board you get to make the tough choices and and that's why you know that's why you get paid the big bucks but ultimately it's going to come down to your choice there of making that determination you will get more votes at the option three than you would at option four just for the cost so it's certainly something to look at of do you want to take that risk of that extra cost now in looking at a referendum at 271 a year many of the referendums we see that are passing right now are 300 400 a year some as high as 500 a year so you are at a good

040responsible level either way um but again every dollar goes up it's a vote you might lose so it's just something to keep in mind and that's enough of that well just and that's context the community doesn't have yeah that's context you have yeah so i don't know if that plays into the decision that we need to make as a board well that's my next question's gonna go so given that you know the referendum sizes that we're talking whether it's 214 gm 271 a year after two or three what impacts do you see the recent passage of the gotland park district referendum on this referendum which affects the same group of taxpayers primarily um and the passage of the district 89 referenda which affects a different group of taxpayers but still in everybody's minds yeah yeah

041so what we've seen is because we gather the data so freshly if you will like this data is hot off the presses um and so we've gathered this data at a time when those referendums were on the ballot when people were thinking about that we gathered this data in the middle of of inflation i mean we all cross our fingers but gas prices are likely to be less in november than they are today by all indicators and so when you look at when we gathered this data you wonder will things be better or worse in november and we all hope that will be better and signs are that will at least be slightly better so when i look at this data and i project out how do things look in november i'm looking at this

042and saying this is i'm comfortable with this i do believe this is where we'll be now some giant war breaks out or a giant recession that we can some things you can't predict but right now we're looking at just four months from now um and the odds of things changing so drastically that option three or four couldn't pass are very very limited do you think that the passage of the park district referendum which was what was it fifty dollars colin i'd like to weigh in and tell me if my thinking is right or wrong uh this community this part of town has an opportunity to weigh in and make the decision come the november election i don't think 89 passing the referendum along with the park district hurts us i think our community spoke in

043terms of supporting the district in a second referendum attempt because of what was needed and this community will have the same option um and i'll tell you like i don't think that hurts us at all we don't just run school district referendums we also run park districts and other municipalities and i would say that the opposite is true so you all passing a referendum and then like a part the park district running that park district referendum would have less of a chance of passing like that the inverse is completely true because people are much more willing to invest in their schools than anything else so the park district passing and then the schools coming up people will think about the schools self-contained do i want to invest in this or do i not but if

044the opposite was true and i was advising the park district i'd say get out there before d41 does because if you wait till after you might be in trouble okay that's very interesting just you got any more logistical questions i do melissa's there um so i i my assumption is that one of the benefits of creating a new k5 at spalding is that there's the potential that we could reduce our busing needs and costs because perhaps through the process of redistricting we would have fewer students busing to the elementaries um i guess mike and my question is and i apologize that this was not submitted earlier eric you may not have this and i would be surprised if you did actually but i'm curious how many students are currently bused approximately to all of our

045elementaries nope nope can't pull that out of the bag but i would say as far as the busing estimate overall i don't think it would save us money it would just redistribute the buses i mean i think there's still going to be hazardous crossings i mean you look at main street anybody that would attend a spalding location on the west side of main street would have to get a bus there's no cross there so something we'd have to look into obviously it wouldn't be a driver of this so part of doing this would not be to save on transportation costs correct yeah it could be i don't have any information at this point without knowing the exact areas which that's being worked on um to be able to say that we'd have a transportation save

046but i think the one thing we have seen in redistricting conversations is while there is a challenge some people don't want to leave their current school so that is always the concern and the worry on the flip side when you haven't redistricted it as long as you guys haven't there are pockets and our challenges where this is your chance to actually clean a bit of that up and so you can have some positive conversations with the community about how some of those pockets that currently don't get to go to a neighborhood school or a local school this will actually solve that challenge for them so we've seen those redistricting conversations they're not easy to have but actually if you handle them well they can become quite balanced because you yes there are some negatives some

047challenges which you can work with in policies and grandfathering people in and whatever else you need to do but the positives of being able to solve some of those challenges of you know maybe you don't save money on busing but now you don't have kids busting from one in a town to the entire other end of town that's a pretty big positive and as we've seen in our feedback bussing is a big deal in this community so if you can streamline that maybe it doesn't save money but it does get them busting closer versus further away i think your community is going to be very favorable to that right and most kids currently in an elementary building will be entering hadley by the time we opened doors on a new k5 building so you know

048with the ability to grandfather fifth graders there would be very few children impacted that would be moved from their home school because we're looking at year five of a strategic plan to open doors because of how long it takes to you know the next steps of all this so most kids currently in their elementary schools are going to finish at their elementary schools with the timing of this so people who entering now would know that they were subject to absolutely and we will have that information ready for the community in terms of what the redistricting would look like um prior to a november election so people will know what that would be like specifically exactly you'd have the lines yeah kind of thing oh okay that's earlier than i thought you know we that came

049up in a couple of the saturday meetings is that um people i think who know they don't live really close to a school felt that that would be important information to have when they voted on something so we've started that work we will have that before you know yeah it definitely will be helpful i mean people voting for something with the worry that they might lose their local school it's going to be there's a thousand roads to know you know it doesn't have to just be no it could be no not yet or i don't know all those equal no so you want to make sure you give people all the information if they still choose no then that's the great thing about the way this is structured they get to make the final choice

050but you want to give them all the information and don't leave holes like that yeah it's a geocoding process and we're already two weeks into having somebody else do all that for us would we necessarily know on about it before we vote as a board so that'll come after we vote a support um is there any risk in um in the redistricting that churchill would lose its title one status and the impacting result we would make certain how we did you know how when we look at redistricting like we know we do not have enough kids across the district to do dual language programming in every building that has to stay cons concentrated at churchill so those things will be taken into consideration when we make final decisions about rebound you know redistricting so as

051not to lose a status but still give them crowding relief not to jeopardize um our dual language program we would take that into consideration okay is there the potential that the new building would be a title one school or i don't know if that would be something that you would do intentionally or not intentionally or intentionally avoid you know just knowing our percentages you know of i don't see that happening if we were to keep a cluster of programs at churchill that we have enough need that it would kick another campus into title one designation but we really won't know yet and it would also depend on how many kids attended when we opened what that percentage would look like if we had a large amount of grandfathering you know there's a lot of variables

052that could um impact your percentage of free and reduced um when you mention grandfathering i'm not exactly sure what you mean i'm not sure if now is the time to absolutely it's a very easy um explanation districts that read zone redistrict redraw their boundaries you have the flexibility obviously you can't grandfather in an entire family for the duration of their elementary year to stay in their current place because then you're not moving enough kids out to give that crowding relief but you could grandfather in for a year anyone going into fifth grade could stay at that school that they had last year and and then the change goes moving forward so there's different ways to look at it to give some relief if we were in a position where we were ready to open doors

053sooner and we had kids that were going into their fifth grade year we could alleviate that and allow them to stay for their fifth grade year and we've seen some want to move so you give them certainly gives people that option there are there are ways to solve that or soften that a little bit particularly for kids going into their last year and that would be part of how we would roll this out if that was the direction you as a bird wanted to go we would say that this is how this would be approached um so that people sort of had that comfort level they knew that that would be the ideal and is the goal of the boundary to right size each school and would that be fairly immediate with with the new

054school or or is each school gonna kind of have space to grow the the benefit behind a new k5 center is to give space for um keeping class sizes lower so not that we're going to grow attendance at a school but that we have room in that school to split sections and keep class sizes lower there are variables that impact that such as if we grandfathered fifth grade for a year we would be keeping kids at their home school a year longer so we might not have that flexibility for a year but we would that following year you know so if that was a decision made to kind of soften that change for fifth graders you know you don't recoup the benefit that first year while you're still grandfathering kids but you would moving into

055that next year um so we're looking at what it would take you know which was why we scaled this out for a 600 student building because if we don't siphon off enough students from each of the four elementaries we don't recoup that room um to to split you know to increase sections as class sizes increase um knowing that we're taking existing kindergarten classrooms you know we have to account for than full-day kindergarten in those buildings so um yes but maybe not year one if we were to grandfather so yes the the goal of the new k5 is to give that opportunity for maintaining class sizes and what came out as the number one um interest or priority from the community and that came up in some of our discussions with the community uh and so

056i want to point to what dr k said about this being a 600 student center or 600 student school that is larger than what had been looked at previously but with this the community saying their number one priority was maintaining lower class sizes knowing that all the projections you have looked at have at the bare minimum keeping you at your current space but likely increasing in terms of your attendance you know if we just went with that smaller school the challenge would be yeah we could say we're giving you more space today but as class you know as that attendance increases this isn't something we could say we can do tomorrow so by having that space of that 600 uh student school now we know that this is a benefit that takes into account the

057projections down the road it isn't just a solution for today it's a solution a long-term solution is small to support that yes i believe something that you've brought up that just to make sure it was aware it would be a two-story building to make that happen uh so that was something that came up that franklin is the two-story building yeah well uh obviously we have two-story elementary schools yes it would be about two-story elementary um is there any potential to add space at the spalding building that would accommodate any additional preschools classrooms or expansion there right the campus is not large you know the footprint for the building on that campus wouldn't allow that because you can't put that age group of students on a second floor so there's just factors that you know we

058can do a 600 student building there but we can't build it larger and accommodate the preschool center there the property is just not large enough to do and we're limited by the age group of kids that we could put on a second floor so we know we cannot build a k-5 center and add pre-k to that and do it at spalding okay dr k out of curiosity what are the rules on how old the kids have to be to be on the second floor um i believe it's set isn't it pre-k and one has to be first floor and then second grade and up kid can be on the second floor uh um yeah go ahead i think they're great questions they have to be all done but temporarily done um colin can i ask

059the the questions uh around the estimated cost to taxpayers of each of the options was the uh was the amount of the reserves accounted for in the so people understood that they were part inclusive of that yeah yeah and as we talk about it was kind of mentioned how it not really but the idea was like how would this look down the road um the idea that the the district is we call it skin in the game that you guys are putting your skin in the game to make this happen that 15 million dollars in reserves that is always very well received by the community that you're not just going to them you're finding a way to also invest on your own to help make this happen to reduce that tax impact so yes that

060was made clear in the process the tax impact is specifically what the tax impact will be because that's the number you know minus that 15. so we stuck with that sort of what exactly it would be for people but they we didn't really overemphasize that this was your reserves going in so because again to do so would be sort of putting our thumb on the scale to say hey look this is good guys so but as we roll to the next stage people will very favorably look at the fact that this includes district reserves excellent and um last question also i wanted to give you an opportunity where we've talked about some of the logistical questions but but on a pedagogical on an educational level addressing it from what would best serve the long-term education

061of children in the district putting aside the challenges that colin has raised and there is this slight difference between options three and four just speaking as the the head of the district responsible for the educational quality uh that we provide what is your um what is your sense what is your recommendation what is your right well i mean i don't pay taxes here so it's kind of a you know people are going to resign to my answer on this because i don't pay taxes here but i do in my own community this conversation started because of the importance of early childhood education in this district so i understand because i was at every single one of those meetings and heard all the conversation i understand that people's sentiment was that ec didn't rise to rise

062to the same level of importance of full day kindergarten and keeping manageable class sizes but i never once heard anybody say that early childhood education was not important so i think the community clearly understood that i think as educators we all understand that the ability to have options for this community and expand that program you know from an educational standpoint there's no argument about what the research says about the importance and the impact of early childhood education um so if you're asking me that then you know i would take it back to where and why this whole conversation started um but again you know um that's reflective of the conversations that i've been part of um in these meetings and if i may say dr k has been really good about people people in like

063the community committee meeting have asked her well what do you think and she's been good about we're here to listen to you um so this was really your first chance to actually answer that question honestly which i'm glad you did um but really she was great about because people kept asking her what do you think we should do like we're like no we want to hear what you want um so that's the first time i've actually heard dr k say that she didn't instruct us she didn't instruct the community committee on which direction to go here um so i just wanted to point that out that you've been really good about that it's my job to deliver on the best outcome with whatever the community decides if there's a question on the ballot but if

064you're going to ask me my thinking about the importance of early childhood then obviously you know i recognize the importance of it and i also recognize the history of the conversations that that was always part of the conversation okay thank you um colin so you said you had uh some follow-up or yeah and it's probably a question you may have may have planned on asking anyways but it really was just to ask each of the board members kind of where now that you've heard this do you need more time or where are you leaning um if it's a bit of a consensus then that does sort of simplify things if it's you still need more time and you're still split between a range then we can provide you a range of the next meeting but

065some direction would be very helpful so however you want to do that mr president i'm all for that's very good well thank you so bored as melissa mentioned a little bit earlier there will be a question about a standalone center but the choice that we really should be making the direction and consensus and hopefully we can arrive at tonight is to accept a recommendation to do option three or four or possibly possibly spend the next couple of weeks allow the district to work uh with sullivan bond council our attorneys to craft what would be an appropriate question around both of those options and so they would both be conceivably items that we could act on when we come back on august the 15th so if the will of the board is to go with one

066of the options then that can be the direction but we do have the opportunity really to have both of those questions generated and we have the extra period of time roughly a month to continue to think on those questions okay so sorry it's okay those would be to choose between obviously we're not going to put three questions on the boundary here here are your two options plus the standard for building we would decide between option three and four when we came back on the 15th there would be a resolution uh that would be developed created and we would need to take action at that meeting yes so if the board is in it if the board knows where they stand on this then you would direct us to have to work with the o'sullivan and

067general counsel and bond council to draft the questions one question is a must and that's just the consent from the communi the permission from the community allowing us to to build a new k5 attendance center so that's a standalone question that question is a given that has to happen in order to move forward and then whether the board makes a determination tonight whether they want a question prepared for option three and four that means that on august 15th you have to make a decision about what question is going to go on the ballot or if you know you're thinking on it tonight then you direct us to have a question drafted reflecting three or four if you know where you stand on that so what just hypothetically putting two questions on the ballot and i

068guess i realized it but i didn't necessarily realize it what were to happen to say you put option three or four on the ballot and the other option to build a new building and to build a new building failed in the referendum pass yeah so the good news is there's a couple things i'll say to that first of all that's really really unlikely um we're going to pass by just a handful of votes so yeah no i i hear what you're saying the thing is the building won't have the cost component comes in with the meat of the question which is that second one so if that passes the one without the cost component will pass by more it's just always what happens um so but i think this is the important thing to note

069is that the what you're putting on the ballot gives you the authority to do blank so it doesn't mean that you're locked into going that high if you do it you have to do what you say so when we say are you willing to spend x to get these things those are things you have to give them if you spend that money but you're not locked in let's say a recession were to happen and you all as a board said you know what we can't we can't raise taxes right now we can't do this it's not to say you're locked in you still have to issue the bonds you could choose to not issue the bonds this gives you the authority to issue it it's not requiring you to issue it so the point is

070what you put on the ballot gives you the authority to act as a board you still have to take that act so when you ask a question like what if one passes and the other doesn't well then you could go at the next election with the one that didn't pass and get some clarity you have options at future elections to sort of clean that up um so that's why i gave you that larger picture is no matter what happens if it isn't super clear because there are two questions doesn't mean we couldn't clean it up down the line we couldn't get some to bring things together and solve the problem okay so you know boyd can i if i can um i'd like to propose that we would direct the district to work with the

071appropriate people to prepare option three and four and we would then have the opportunity to continue to to think on this topic obviously communicate individually with the district on it there may be additional questions there may be information that we will gather from uh council and from our consultant in this way both of those options remain viable for us it seems to give us flexibility and time to think on on this topic look a little bit more into the data how do folks feel are they comfortable with that i'm saying may i add something to that if that's okay you certainly can um so you guys as a board have to decide what you're comfortable with and so if you guys haven't if you're not decided on what you want to do then do that

072path that's but there is a benefit if you are pretty clear you are pretty settled on where you want to go there is a lot of work that goes into prepping you know how we how we roll this out to the public the plans the messaging we can't really do that if we don't have clarity and so if you do know today kind of where you're sitting you'd allow the district and us to start on that a little bit earlier which means we'd be more effective in the process of getting this out to the public so i would only add that there is a benefit where if you guys do kind of know where you're standing there is a benefit to giving us that today but if you don't you need that time there's no

073problem at all i just want to make sure i mentioned that that there if you if there is some clarity um us starting a little earlier does help i think maybe it makes sense to have a discussion on it and and i say that in that as i sit here today um because this is the time we had we had to have our conversation so it's not like between now and august we're gonna have a conversation um so if i may you may um as i sit here today and this is based on the information that that you provided um i'd lean toward option four really for the reasons that melissa set forth here today you know a an early child from a childhood center is really where this all started there's been a lot

074of work done by the district when it's meant by the district in furtherance of of that goal and the reason for that is because of the proven benefits that early childhood education provides for the most needed learners and i think one thing that this community has shown is its commitment to the marginalized learners that have the needs of whether it be financial needs whether it be learning needs whether it be physical needs this community has shown his commitment to support the diverse learners that we have in this district and it starts with early childhood and this administration over the last i've been on the board now for what five six years has put a lot of time and effort into obtaining grants uh to really build this early childhood program to a point where it

075literally does not fit in forrest glen um and i say that not just as a board member but as a parent of a child that to all the credit to our early childhood staff um my kids doing pt in a hallway because they didn't have a room for physical occupational therapy for early childhood that year it's a space issue there there is a large space issue and be able to devote the time needed to support these kids is super important you can tell you can see a difference from kids that have received those type of support services from an early age when they hit their 20s when they hit their 30s and just where that where they're at from uh from a developmental perspective because they've started from a better base of support um and

076so i think that that early childhood center is of such importance and i've seen it through my own my own family well jason i appreciate your making the case so jason's proposed that maybe we uh take a stronger look at option four he's feeling strongly that that would be the preferred option where he sits today i think educationally melissa makes a persuasive argument uh that up and certainly i've seen the same data to argue for uh for option four but let me see then if there are some alternative thoughts well how about if i start with there should be dr martelly i am only or someone who is close well in echoing what jason just said and what dr keskowski shared earlier i would i would agree with option four and i think giving you

077o'sullivan additional time to plan and prepare the messaging for phase four i think is also a critical part of this because when you look at the data on who is going to strongly support or strongly oppose option three or four they are very similar but there is stronger opposition to option four just as there is stronger support for option four so how we message that do we have visuals do we have schematics of what these buildings could look like how are we going to you know provide context for the community as to why option four was what we ultimately have decided to go you know for educationally speaking i'm all in favor of option four i think it gives us the most flexibility not only for the early childhood but it gives us the most

078flexibility for our k-5 programming as well in in all of our elementary buildings and i think that is critically important when you give consideration to what we could be doing around 21st century learning inquiry learning you know providing students with authentic learning opportunities that engage them in in critical thinking and problem solving we have more flexibility for those educational programs with option four so i think all of that needs to just go into how we get into that phase four with the community well so chris just to clarify we won't have models available by august 15th for the board to look at but prior to a november election we will have that information available and we will bring that to the community yeah i mean to the point of having more time that means we

079can produce more of this i will add one thing we're not going to get too specific with it because when you say hey would you like to build a wall there everyone says great then you say hey we're going to paint it red i hate red so i'm against it so you want to be careful not to get too specific but showing people ideally what spaces like this have looked like in other districts and what it could like look for us you know you want to you want to continue the good vibes of this community engagement you know people do really appreciate that you've engaged them on this discussion and so what a new school could look like we don't necessarily want to lock that down because you're going to work with as you always

080do your experts the community to build that together to what it could look like so we want to make sure we're careful about this is what other spaces have looked like without being like here this is exactly what because someone's going to say they don't like the doorknobs and that's a reason to vote now so you want to be careful about getting too specific let me just jump around and ted your your thoughts are you do you have strong feelings uh about uh option four or three well option four would be my preference um you know in terms of looking at history here and what the needs of the district are and our students um i certainly would yeah i'm actually i was actually excited when i saw this report saying that there was support

081for this right um and i you know but then you know the safety part of my brain says well you know what what if we lose out right right should we go for the safer bat um but i i am i i think i i i certainly understand that it's important to have more time to try to prepare this kind of stuff i'm way on board on that um because i really do want to have a good presentation and i understand you don't want to present something that's because i hate the red door on it on the other hand showing some somebody this is the kind of thing that you're buying they kind of get the buy-in it's like they already own it yeah no you're totally right right before be you know although otherwise

082you know no you're not going to get it sorry now you know kind of thing so i i don't know where you how you balance things but um that thank you yeah great julie um i'm also leaning pretty hard on option four um is your resident early childhood advocate i'm i'm definitely leaning option four i mean the benefits of quality early childhood education is are basically uncontested they are huge many um long-term studies on the effects this has on children especially at risk children they're also um you know there are kind of ideal ratios when you're in like a blended inclusive class a preschool classroom of like the typically developing children and children with special needs and all that and like from what i understood from several years ago we don't even have the space

083to do those kind of things um when i asked probably before i was on the board like i didn't know this preschool is like so small that i i i taught preschool before i had children and i didn't know we had a preschool because no one can advertise it because there's literally not space if we advertise that we can't take the people so we can't tell anybody we just have to fill it with the people who already know about it because i would have 100 sent my child to my local public school with certified teachers who have been trained in the early childhood space like that that would have been a non-issue no question i would have absolutely done it i didn't even know it was here until i started looking and being on the

084board and i was like what um so what but um yeah i mean we yeah i'm always for advocating for the young kids and this is a huge a huge thing to include more children more space more opportunities um i think it'd be super cool and i'm really excited about it thank you uh before i turn lastly not first but lastly to jess i did want to acknowledge that i did communicate with uh with tieba today and she was as her colleagues have been uh supportive of uh of a referendum on on option four so uh jeff i changed i flipped it completely what do you think i'm going to say i think yeah i was on the previous referendum committee and helped that pass and there were a number of us who were begrudgingly

085on it because it wasn't what it didn't go far enough and there was a lot of talk throughout the community about kicking the can down the road um and and people don't want to do that anymore we want a solution that's going to all right let's do it let's show the commitment let's let's have a long term plan and that's not to say that what was done before was bad it was it was um a little bit more piecemeal and ultimately more expensive because some other attempts prior had failed so um so i think it never gets less expensive to do what we need we've known what we needed to do for two decades um and so i i would like to see option four at the option three price tag so that that would

086be what i would like for the the august you know to happen i apologize you didn't hire a magician thankfully the numbers come from your experts they don't come from me so if i mean certainly i know your architects will look and do the best they can and certainly i'm with you give me the you know the lowest price that's easier to make happen but yeah or you know and if we're working magic then give me the option to price tag oh here we go um but i mean i guess that's an uh follow-up so my answer is yes option four i'm in agreement with the board uh but but the logistical question then to the staff is obviously some of these are they're all rough estimates at this point how much farther can you

087go um between now and the ballot question and the deciding on the figure right so it gets very specific between now and when people are asked to go to the ballot box these were cost estimates done to to navigate through this process and get the community input now once we know the board's choice and decision the work of making this much more dollar specific i mean we know cost per square foot there's people constructing school buildings our architects used those dollars you know so we know this is based on good information but we haven't gotten to the design and let's talk about what this really needs to be um that happens next one you know because whether we're doing option three or option four changes that but yes um much more detailed specific information comes

088next and i guess i'd like to see the cost come down if it's possible and i maybe that's not possible but uh but just given the results and the the how that narrows the chances of of it passing based on the data right so option three has a better chance because it's a lower priced option yeah my math was was bad 52 to 41 is 11 million not 9 million so it's 11 million difference seems like other people figured that out um so yeah i mean my directive will be the same that the whatever the lowest number we can give to make this happen it's certainly going to make the feasibility increase the feasibility so i'll be i'll be your advocate on that for sure good is there i'm just curious if we have time

089for the question i'm sorry like option 3 is 214 a year per tax payer on average and the other one is like 275 for so 71. is is there like uh a number that has some psychology to it that uh is important like five you know 499 is better than five is like do is do we have to get under 200 as long as it's like 249. yeah both of those being in the 200 range are gonna they're in a sort of a safe zone but i will say you've got to keep in mind that what's on the ballot is the total dollar amount not the taxpayer impact so it would be the 41 or the 52. that's what's on the ballot um so if it's not possible um then it may not be possible

090but i will tell you 49 has a much higher chance of winning than 50 or 51 or 52. so um three million dollars is a lot of money i don't know that's even possible but to answer the question yes 49 would have an increased chance of passing um so if it was possible to do this at 49 then we should certainly look at that but um three million dollars that's five percent of this whole budget that's probably not even possible so i don't wanna i'm answering your question without putting that expectation out there but yes if you could get that what's on the ballot right now if you went with option four would be 52. if that was 49 that would increase the odds but it may not be possible so we have to live

091in reality okay i think also to address the point you raised about kicking a can down the road you know you know if you look at the collective bargain agreements of the trades that are going to do these works they have price escalations that kick every year and so every year that you kick a can down the road for early childhood center but the price of j and i'm just talking contractual obligated labor costs are going up each year and you could pull a good look and yeah and that's something that we will we talk about in every referendum which is if you want to do this do it now if you're not if you're against this by all means vote no you want to your voice should be heard but if you're in favor

092of this don't wait because if something is 11 million dollars i got it right this time today it's those that those prices we've seen they used to escalate three to five percent architects are telling you now with everything else it's eight to twelve to even a higher percent every year it goes up so you know 10 million today is 11 or 12 next year so there is a point to that that if because you will have people again i mentioned earlier there's a lot of roads to know one of those is i get it but just not today so you want to answer that question which is okay if you get it and you think we need to do this at some point today is the cheapest you're going to have this option so if

093you're going to continue to be the fiscally responsible board that you are and community that you are um then there is an impetus to do it sooner rather than later okay well uh let me just and close this section of it has one of a team of of seven board members plus a superintendent i have always strongly believed that this question should be brought forward to the community and that this board has been very committed to addressing this problem that has existed for a very long time and that it's important to address from an educational perspective what would be best for education and as all of my colleagues have said the research is overwhelming about early learning particularly as julie noted for at risk and i'm certainly grateful to dr kaskowski and to katie mccleskey

094who had been here previously who talked a great deal about what the educational needs what would be in the best service of the of the district so i also think that option four is the question that should be brought before people and let the community make up their minds i'm thankful to the board for their honest and thoughtful and and strong direction on that that's what our job is and and we have done that so we will direct then the district to work with you bond and legal counsel to prepare a question on option 4 and at the august 15th meeting that is when the board will take action on a resolution okay very good thank you all very good and colin you are done thank you sir appreciate your work thanks for your time

095all right we will move then to public participation members of the public who wish to address the board should complete a form and submit it to mrs moak speakers are asked to maintain respectful decorum and limit comments to three minutes or less at around 30 seconds i will politely interrupt you and ask you to conclude your remarks please note that due to the youtube community guidelines the audio from the public participation portion of the meeting will not be available on our live stream or recording however the public comments will be available on the district's website tomorrow uh mrs moak i know you're there even though the poll's in my way is there anyone who would like to make public comment jan laskwits jan thank you we will then move on to reports we'll begin with

096the superintendent's report melissa thank you um i'd like to share with the board that we are on track with um one part of our priority to bring mental health services and supports to our students and families as you may recall i shared with you that i was working with chestnut health on a possible opportunity to bring virtual mental health assessment and counseling to the district i had an update meeting today with their director and they will be able to provide this for us i anticipate receiving a written agreement tomorrow that i will then have legal counsel review if all of this goes well um here's what i'm hoping that we can accomplish at the start of the school year to provide access to virtual mental health assessment and counseling for our students during the school

097day this will be done through a referral process between our school clinicians the parent parents are guardians and chestnut this is something that we would be offering to our families it is not something that we are requiring but we have heard for months and months about the importance of mental health and also the concern that our families have about the length of the waiting list so this is an opportunity for us to provide something more for families who either cannot access these supports or are on a waiting list and they need something more urgent so the assessment and ongoing services will be provided free of charge to families it's my hope that we can prioritize families who do not have access to in-person services or oregon who are on this wait list for services chestnut

098can provide up to five days a week for us with after school hours available for family counseling sessions for families who wish and need that they are also able to provide continuity of care during the summer our startup meeting will help identify the potential need and help us scale a starting point with chestnut our next next steps will be to have the agreement reviewed by council hold a startup meeting with the necessary districts administration and clinicians and chestnut staff and then bring back a proposal to the board for action in keeping with this i was also notified that our request for funding through the house appropriations committee has moved forward to the next step if we are able to secure funding district 41 will be able to offer a very robust range of mental health

099services and supports that includes both virtual and in-person services for our families i see this work is crucial to our overall approach to safety we know that there are research proven commonalities found in incidents of mass violence this is not new information what we also know is that red flags and warning signs were evident in these cases it's imperative that we develop an understanding of what these warning signs are within our community so that families know how and where to reach out for support it is beyond what most of us can comprehend that a loved one may be showing signs of self-harm or harm to others we have to find a way to make asking for help palatable doable and prompt in the coming weeks i hope to bring a great deal of information back

100to you so that we play a leadership role in this in a variety of ways and at multiple levels our focus needs to be on proactive initiatives so that we reduce the risk of harmful behaviors we cannot only focus on how we will respond if and when these behaviors occur so again very excited that we can offer this to our families this is not required services but it is certainly something that we have been asked for and appeal to of what can we do more um in this realm so this is within the realm of people who have genuine mental health needs um there would be this would be separate from school this would not be done by school clinicians this would be done by professionals who could assess and develop a treatment plan and

101work that through with families so that's where we stand as of today on this i i don't know whether board members have a question about it but i am really encouraged about the information that came uh from washington that our grant request for mental health services has moved to the next stage as part of a larger appropriation that suggests that we had a really good ask for a significant need and that it's been it's been acknowledged and appreciated there's no guarantee but it would be a considerable amount of dollars that would help us really extensively ramp up the services that we could uh provide so i appreciate the district putting that application forward and that was really good news and there's three more steps right um yeah house ascended in a president's signature yes and

102how soon that happens i guess we don't it it was march okay well there we go maybe march well while we wait on that we know we can start we should be in a position to be able to start providing virtual services to families um and then also continued work with the milton township mental health board to see if that is um a mechanism for additional supports that we could bring in and also conversations with some local providers so really look broader than just virtual but that is absolutely a very realistic starting point that we can offer to our families some of them have have felt very stuck and lost in the absence of assessment and services for very long periods while they're on a wait list and so if we can help fill that

103gap temporarily and then parents would assume responsibility for services through their private providers and insurance if they have it i see this as a stop gap for those people on that way on wait list great that's all i like oh that's it okay i saw you scrolling all right let me then turn to the board board any board reports justice shaking your head no ted um dr martelly what's going around here miss hill anything from you no no no mr lobock mr lomach has nothing let me then say that i wanted to thank board members who did participate in the who are able to participate in the fourth of july parade uh here in town i know that uh jason had his own yep yeah joan float we had our own yeah you had your

104own thing kind of slowed up the whole crowd too i heard i did we had we had a group of uh of of individuals with down syndrome and their families uh marching behind a rock your socks banner handed out socks and really promoting inclusion and acceptance throughout our community we had probably about 25 kids we had i'll tell you who stole the show was tommy uh tommy is uh is an adult kid with uh with down syndrome that a kid was a rock star he was having probably the most fun of anyone i saw at a parade but what's great about it is just to see the acceptance and the worth and the love that our community gives um you know the the all the other members of our community it's just it's just great

105to see and it's exciting to be a part of so it's fun i'm sorry it's very nice and jess i know that you marched with the foundation yeah the d41 kids foundation um uh walked up slightly ahead of the group for the um the lion king um theater group that is it's our the d41 kids foundation is putting on um the lion king august 5th and 6th and there'll be a matinee and an evening show each of those days and some of the cast members walked and sang and danced behind us so they were very very far behind us but they had a blast and it was really great time for them so thanks to everybody who walked for the d41 kids foundation and lion king yeah yeah looking i have that i have at

106least the matinee or an evening performance on my calendar it'd be the first time we've seen something like this and ted and i also walked with one community all right uh and they had a a very nice turnout it was wonderful of them to ask us to join them and thinking about the fourth of july i i did want to take a moment really on behalf of the board to express sorrow and heartbreak and solidarity really with our brothers and sisters in highland park who are grieving the violent assault on their personal liberty during the fourth of july parade they have experienced any measurable loss and over the past few days as i have reflected on their suffering and their resolve my thoughts like those i think of many have also naturally turned inward the

107brutal mass shooting of innocence at a neighboring community celebration so like our own celebration evokes a rather dreadful sense of vulnerability we too are people that repeatedly gather as one body to celebrate to pray to work to play to govern and learn like highland park when we come together we extend the norms of trust to friend and stranger alike and to do otherwise would make fraternity impossible we expect that when in the company of others no one will do us harm and in return each person will be treated with dignity yes we take multiple sensible safety precautions but then neighbors throw open their doors and they walk hand in hand with equal claim on what the american promise heralds for us all now perhaps it's just for one day but still on the fourth side

108by side we walk we wave we clap we shake hands we smile we laugh we give away we give out way too much candy however until monday it was a little easier to rationalize the idea that while a hideous act of violence could happen anywhere it won't happen here but now you've all the buffalo and highland park feel so much closer to our home than they ever did village boundaries seem less protective against external or internal acts of hate the space between mourning the loss of others and realizing our own worst nightmares seems to be collapsing and yet it is our shared exposure to the imaginable pain caused by anyone with a willingness to hurt and a weapon of mass destruction that reveals our interdependence and collective capacity to build and sustain healthy communities we

109are vulnerable but not alone we are at risk but need not be insecure in the seconds of inhumanity that it takes to wipe out a life countless heroic acts of decency emerge from the shadows of other people to offer stranger and friend alike refuge in seeing ourselves reflected in the images from highland park we recognize our own humanity and are called to assist those in need in that awareness we find solace and the power to protect and care for one another we can then do what morality demands in of all of us and that is that we treat one another as dignified ends and never as selfish means for it is our remarkable sameness as much as our beautiful uniqueness that enables us every day to wake up to leave the home and to take

110a leap of faith out of the darkness of despair and into the light of grace thank you all all right eric we have a discussion item uh pushcoin platform yeah this is a kind of a continuation from our approval to bring in a new foods food service provider quest with that new provider it's really an opportunity for us to one enhance you know our service side of our lunch operation and you know also it's kind of required markcourt departed with their terminals and their point of service system so we need one in place in order to satisfy the quest needs as it is but the second part of this which is really an opportunity i think i'm most excited about is it's an opportunity to really modernize our online fee collection process district-wide so when

111we go through this registration process and we go to collect fees this go around the goal is to have push coin um set up and ready to collect those fees so it'll be a more modern looking marketplace that our parents will get to see and as a kind of let me use the word teaser the high school is also implementing push coin right now so there'll be some continuity between grade school and high school uh for your kids as they transfer uh through the grades so um pushcoin itself is an entity i've known about for about a decade always wanted to bring them in never had an opportunity they are very popular among school districts in illinois there's over 36 that i know of right now that are clients i've never received a negative comment

112about push coin and i've tried to find some seems odd that there wouldn't be but i haven't found any what i would describe it is it's really a third-party software that will just integrate seamlessly in the background with our website in addition to being the point of service solution for lunches so there'll be scanners and keypads at each of our locations for lunch but then separately the back end on our website will now start to use push coin to collect fees and process those transactions so it's really an upgrade to what we currently have [Music] jeez sorry bless you wow i haven't i just stepped back but no i think it's pretty straightforward happy to answer any questions like i said it's a highly recommended service and and for uh timing reasons we will also

113later in the meeting act on this as a recommendation any questions for eric about push pushpoint are they the only vendor that you um considered or were there others there are others that i know of that don't have positive references so i did not consider them okay okay used it and loved it great one more positive recommendation it's good to have them on the board there's to be some added utility that our parents will realize right out of the gates so it's uh i'm excited to bring it on board great a little tight time frame that's why we're that's why you're bringing it right yeah thank you okay let's move on to our action items uh the consent agenda are there any items board members would like to be removed from the consent agenda to

114be considered separately hearing none may have a motion to approve the consent agenda which includes employment recommendations and resignations on the personnel report the june foyer report the school district payment orders of june 15 to june 30th 2022 july 1 2022 in the open and closed session meeting minutes um the june 20 20 uh the june 20 and 2022 as presented motion second mrs milk will call mr estes yes mrs hill yes mrs buttermer yes dr martelly yes mr robach yes dr bruno yes all right we do have uh a couple of recommendations and as eric just noted uh to approve the push coin platform may have a motion to authorize assistant superintendent eric deporter to enter into a service agreement with pushcoin beginning with the 2022-2023 school year at an approximate annual cost of

11522 750 and a one-time fee of 2 000 for upfront cost as outlined in the board report motion second any discussion roll call mr smoke dr martelly yes mrs hill yes mrs butter yes mr rusty's yes mr oba yes dr bruno yes and we have a board policy revision this is the second reading and adoption may have a motion to approve the board policy revisions as presented motion second okay any discussion this is milk roll call mr loback yes mr estes yes mrs hill yes dr martelly yes mrs butter yes dr bruno yes all right moving on to board governance and learning together we do have an item and this item is a education is a resolution from the board of education titled commitment to the inclusionary principles and what i will do is read

116the resolution and then provide board members any opportunities that they would like to comment on it and then i will ask for consensus support for the resolution all right whereas the board of education of glen allen district 41 has approved a strategic plan for the years 2022-2027 on april 18 2022 and whereas this board finds and determines that it is in the best interest of our children and community to reaffirm our commitment to the following inclusionary principles specifically in district 41 we view every child as an individual with unique strengths and needs we develop a continuum of services that is driven by individual students strengths and needs that includes programs and services provided in our schools within our cooperative and in partnership with various day placements we create a culture that develops a sense of

117belonging for all diverse learners we embrace shared ownership by every educator for every student we respect every student's strengths and needs we presume competence for each student we encourage in collaborative problem solving to develop challenge and accommodate all learners now therefore be it resolved by the board of education of glen allen school district 41 dupage county illinois as follows glenn ellen school district 41 reaffirms our commitment to the inclusion of all children not only for this board of education but for all in our employ let me step back and before i ask the board for their assent and support for this resolution are there any board members who would like to comment on the resolution mr estes it is my hope that district 41 is broadcasting a clear message that we have high expectations for

118all students that all are capable learners that no learner will be marginalized that we recognize and value the differences of every student that those differences such as culture experience ability language socioeconomic status and more are not deficits it is also my hope that by leveraging those differences to enhance the classroom experience our entire student population will benefit studies have shown positive results of inclusion not just for at-risk students but for all learners such as increased student engagement improved communication more satisfying diverse and caring friendships reduced fear of human differences and growth in ethical principles and finally it is my hope that this strategic plan guides our district in providing a rigorous learning environment focused on students strengths an environment where teachers have a sincere desire to empower students and where teachers see themselves as agents

119of change in that journey thank you ted let me look to my left any one dr martelly sure school board school leaders and educators have a significant opportunity and responsibility to create learning environments in which all students can thrive and achieve their full educational potential fostering a sense of belonging and connectedness in a school is crucial for putting all students on a path to success however according to the center for american progress as partners at the equity federation nearly 400 anti-lgbtq i-plus bills were introduced across the country in 2021. in 2022 state legislatures are currently considering approximately 300 anti-lgbtqi plus bills these bills endanger the fundamental rights and well-being of the lgbtqi plus community it goes it goes without saying that the inclusive practices of states communities and school districts is a much debated issue

120across our country all the more reason we are reaffirming district 41's commitment to inclusive practices that create a sense of belonging and connectedness for all of our students according to the national alliance of mental illness and the trevor project which is an organization that provides crisis support for lgbtqi plus youth there's strong evidence from recent research that members of this community are at high risk for experiencing mental health concerns especially depression and anxiety many people in this community struggle in silence and face worth help worse health outcomes as a result we do not want our youth in glen ellen to ever struggle in silence regardless of their need instead we should be celebrating all the positive qualities the children of our lgbtqi plus communities possess so tonight i'm proud that we are reaffirming our commitment

121to inclusive practices and is one of our public comment tonight jan had pointed out most importantly the work of leading with the virtue of love in all of its forms continues after tonight as we look to ensure that our deeds follow our words for the betterment of our children thank you dr martelly anyone else mr lobuck sure as it is and i think about inclusion i think about it um from two perspectives i think about it from this from the perspective of our students and i think about different perspective of our students once they leave the educational system and with all students as an educational body we have we have the responsibility to best prepare our kids to go forward into the future for whatever that may mean for them but to prepare them in

122the best way possible to give them the best skills and ability to succeed as success is defined for them and i take that to the next perspective of when our kids leave school and and grow up and and are adults and and are looking for employment and i get thing i had a conversation with with a kid named jacob the other day um jacob's on the autism spectrum he volunteers with ray graham at the hanson center um and he works with with the horse therapy ability walks by some parker around over the horse arena every week um jake's a hell of a good kid and has had a hell of a time trying to find a job that pays him um jacob's a self-advocate um he's spoken at numerous locations on the need for employment

123opportunities for people with disabilities and jacob will tell you that he's faced discrimination a number of times based on his autism and the number of times that has prevented him from obtaining gainful employment and when i tell that story i tell the story not for you to think just about jacob and jacob's situation jacob recently found meaningful employment and it is very happy the job that he's found but i want you to think about that story from two perspectives i want you to think about that story from jacob's perspective of looking for work having the ability to do work but not be able to find work and also from the perspective then of an employer and wanting to take the risk to employ someone that looks different that talks different they may think differently but

124because once you bring different values and different benefits to your work environment inclusion helps both by including all children in classrooms we're not just creating benefits for kids that have different abilities we're creating benefits for all kids we're creating an environment where children learn acceptance and love and they see what each individual child individual person can bring to a situation and when we when these kids grow up they're going to bring those same lessons going forward and that's really important and so when i think about our inclusionary practices and when they were put together in 2017 and really reaffirmed them now i think i think that's my thought process behind why we're doing this it's for our kids now to provide that with that educational platform and for our kids later to best prepare them

125going forward should become citizens of the world and to be successful in the way that they define success jacob's a hell of a good kid if you met jake you'd love him he could play the piano he's he's just a great kid and it breaks my heart to see kids like jacob every day facing those kind of challenges and by teaching all kids an inclusive environment we're not just helping like i said we're not just helping these kids that that learn differently we're helping everybody we're creating a more inclusive world and and i think that's important and in looking at it i currently read a book by katie smith and i pulled the title of it because it's long it's called softening the edges assessment practices that honor k-12 teachers and learning using responsible assessment

126methods in ways that support student engagement but the thought process it's a long title i'm not i'm not far into it but the thought process behind it is is that and look into how we're going to assess our kids grade our kids test our kids however however you want to to find that word assessment it doesn't have to be something static just like in jacob looking for a job what he brings isn't something static we can look at assessment testing grading in a more dynamic way and more in a way that kids can really show what they've learned in a way that utilizes their strengths not necessarily that may play to their weaknesses and i think that's important in that we talk about looking for the strengths and the competency in all our kids i

127think it's also important on that back end to make sure that in presuming that competence in focusing on their strengths and that in our assessments in that we're assessing kids in a way that utilizes those strengths so they can really show what they've learned and again this is something that really benefits all kids because some kids may freak out trying to write an essay but if they give up enough to give a presentation they might be able to spew on for a long time kind of like i'm doing now but it also gives us a better ability to use our data to look at what are our kids learning how are our kids moving towards their goals or not moving towards our goals and then to work with our itp teams to really best on

128the work with these kids so inclusion matters and it matters in d41 beautifully said jason jess i've saved you for last um okay you have to follow jason i'm sorry good luck with that julie i'm sorry i didn't well go ahead chest i didn't save you for last turns you empty the audience i saved julie for last all right in our strategic plan one of our foundational pillars is to be equity driven creating a sense of belonging and cherishing the unique attributes of all children regardless of their ability race religion sexual orientation gender expression or socioeconomic status our work continues a long tradition of caring for our fellow community members and has been amplified by our ongoing collaboration with outstanding partner organizations like the glen ellen children's resource center supplies for success pep and most

129recently with the establishment of the d41 kids foundation and that's just a few of the organizations that we partner with all these organizations and more build a robust web of support so all kids can come to school ready to learn and engage with their peers as part of our plan we will establish a diversity equity and inclusion committee and equity subcommittee we will also create a needs assessment and asset map to further identify how we can help support student success we are so fortunate that our community is filled with folks who are passionate compassionate and eager to give their time treasure and vast talents to the students of d41 i'm excited for how this road map will light their way forward because we will certainly accomplish much when we work together on behalf of our

130students they get to follow that i can't um i had a few thoughts but i cannot add or improve upon the content and the eloquence and the heart of my colleagues at the table tonight so i will echo what they have all said i agree wholeheartedly and thank you for doing it better than i did thank you julie a board i've never been prouder to sit amongst you than to hear you speak from the heart with so much commitment to this district's commitment to every single child under every circumstance it's a real pleasure to serve with you uh with that it almost seems foregone but uh i'll just glance around the table do we have uh unanimous consent for the resolution yes everyone shaking their heads enthusiastically so this resolution is approved by the board

131thank you all right upcoming meetings august 15th regular board meeting here at hadley 6 30 and then tuesday september where did the summer go uh that will be a committee of the whole meeting here at hadley uh are there any items board members wish to present for consideration for a future agenda yes but no um i i wanted to address it another but you didn't give me an opportunity oh i'm sorry it's not a big deal um i was gonna i wanted to echo what you said regarding um a tragedy that occurred in highland park and then follow up on melissa's report um as a board there's not a lot that we can really do to prevent these kind of tragedies but one thing we can do is provide resources for mental health counseling and

132mental health services um for our families and i'm really proud of the district and i'm really proud of the work that that melissa's done um to bring that to our district i think that it's something that you could easily get glossed over but it's really important work you add second steps into it and the work that we've been doing for the last few years it's it's really important and unfortunately you see why but i think it's that that continued commitment and that continued growth you know adding um the social worker at hadley i think it's i really applaud what what our administrative team has really done and its commitment to building the mental health capacity mental health services capacity in our district so i think that's an important important work unfortunately illustrated by what's what's

133occurred around us thank you jay i'm glad you commented on that okay then um may have a motion to adjourn the closed session to confidentially discuss section 2 c5 the purchase or lease of real property for the use of the school board including meetings held for the purpose of discussing whether a particular parcel should be acquired and section 2c 11 litigation when an action against affecting or on or on behalf of the school board has been filed and is pending before a court or administrative tribunal or when the school board finds that an action is probable or imminent in which case the basis for the finding shall be recorded and entered into the minutes of the closed meeting i'm sorry oh sorry yes there was j motioned uh second any discussion will call mr smoke

134mr estes yes mrs buttimer yes this hill yes mr lobock yes dr martelly yes dr bruno yes the board will not be taking any action after closed session thank you all for coming out this evening thank you for hanging out to the very end [Laughter] you were abandoned you