September 20, 2021 - District 41 Regular Board Meeting

001get started good evening everyone uh first business is the board needs to hold a public hearing on the 21 22 fiscal year budget uh the board will now come to order in which to do that mrs smoke will call please mrs buttimer here mr estes here mrs hill here mrs syed here mr lobock here dr martinelli dr bruno here the 2122 budget has been on file and conveniently available for public inspection beginning august 17th to date the district has not received any verbal or written comments on the 2021 amended budget members of the public who wish to address the board should complete the sign-in sheet and indicate they wish to comment for the public hearing so it is the amended budget only mrs moak we'll call your name it is your turn to speak and

002i'm looking at mr smoke oh she's shaking her head or maybe she's telling me something speakers are asked to maintain respectful decorum and limit comments to three minutes or less is there anyone who would like to make public comment on the amended budget well the fy there you go we'll see i need to i need to go back to my reading assignments the fiscal year 2022 budget thank you mr deporter and mrs mo let's make sure we get that straight what would anyone like to comment on that and mrs milk is shaking her head no okay then may i have a motion to adjourn the public hearing motion second second all in favor say aye aye all right the public hearing is now closed we will now open up the regular september 2021 board meeting

003we will come to order and to do so we are going to stand for a very special reading and a roll call yeah there you go you had it in a different place roll call this i'm just reading now mister called mrs moak here mrs pottermore here mississian here mrs hill here dr martelly here mr lobock you're dr bruno yeah i am here i am [Laughter] um now we will move to the reading of reading we're going to have a very special presentation of the pledge of allegiance and so if all of you will please stand and we the flag is over here [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

004thank you for taking one piece of things to do off of my plate vice president lobock lost his responsibility there we thank the children that was awesome for doing that for us okay now the board has a need to adjourn to a closed session may have a motion to adjourn to close session to confidentially discuss section 2 c1 the appointment employment compensation discipline performance or dismissal of specific employees no sure second please any discussion hearing none mrs milk roll call mrs siam mr lobock yes dr martelly yes mrs buttimer yes mr estes yes mrs hill yes dr bruno yes folks we will hopefully be very brief and we're going to step into a sideline just to handle some business and then we will return to the meeting shortly so okay you want to get you

005uh everyone make sure your mics are on okay it is now 7 p.m and the board has returned to open session mrs milk another roll call please mr estes here mrs buttimer here mrs hill here mississaya here dr martelly here mr lobock here dr bruno here thank you before we get into the the agenda for tonight's meeting most of you most people in the district are aware of a recent significant social media issue that the district had to address on behalf of the entire school board i'd like to make a few summary comments first of all the investor the investigation was very cooperative deliberative and comprehensive many of the public accusations based on the evidence were highly inaccurate we are pleased that the district has resolved this matter and the board remains supportive of the

006process utilized and the outcome let me also on behalf of the entire school board be very clear the district and the board's commitment to diversity equality and inclusion is unconditional finally our commitment to the safety of our employees and our students is unwavering thank you very much all right we will move first to recognition a very joyous moment and marcy and melissa you are facilitating this recognition we will see it on the screen absolutely yes we have some of our new teachers here with us on the screen i just want to ask everybody here we go hi um i'm lindsay keiking i am from lincoln and i'm the math coach there caitlin tilly hi i'm caitlin tilly i am the new part-time social worker i am at both ben franklin and abraham lincoln karen hi

007i'm karen sorens and i am the math coach at franklin emily hi i'm emily dewall i'm the new third grade teacher at benjamin franklin suzanne hi i'm suzanne kopecka and i am the new math coach at churchill evelyn hi my name is evelyn sanchez i'm second grade duel at churchill elementary school jennifer baker hi i'm jennifer baker and i am kindergarten at ben franklin and lincoln kelly hi i'm kelly hayes i am at hadley and i am teaching sixth grade math sarah good evening i'm sarah tatel i'm the assistant principal and early childhood coordinator at forest glen jennifer fenaro hello everyone i'm jennifer fernaro i'm the school psychologist at forest glen for the early childhood program and k5 heather hi i'm heather gancer i'm first grade at churchill evan hi i'm evan prizzy i teach

008spanish at hadley junior high catherine hi i'm katherine young i will be i'm teaching eighth grade math at hanley at hadley i can speak caitlyn esther hi i'm caitlin nistop i'm the fourth grade dual teacher at churchill elementary all right thank you everybody for joining us this evening so this is just a part of our new staff that we hired not everybody could join us tonight but we wanted to just have you be able to put a face with the name of our new staff members so thank you for joining us and thank you board [Applause] thank you all you don't have to stay on screen and watch the entire rest of the meeting as part of the probationary no not not right marcy they get to go they get to go thank you all

009thank you very much okay melissa you have another yes absolutely the next recognition or celebration i would like to congratulate bob julie jess and ted for being recognized by the illinois association of school boards for receiving master board member status it's my understanding you'll receive a pen a pin um at the official meeting so on behalf of iasb and everyone in district 41 congratulations thank you very much thanks to my other board members for their great work thank you i think it's important to share that master board member status is earned by attending professional development and training workshops and attending events through the illinois association for school boards so it's something that board members don't have to do it goes above and beyond their service so it's hours spent learning and and working on other

010things within their organization so thank you on on on behalf of everyone okay we will now move into reports and we will lead off with our superintendent's report sir variety we are gonna andrew is gonna project for me right okay he's got something up there all righty so a couple of things i'll go over what we're going to cover tonight in my update um kda is going to do a couple several slides that have to do with county metrics and some new process pieces of information that are coming out from dupage county health department or idph we'll do a little bit update on the status of shield testing we'll talk about the test to stay protocol talk about a revision to remote learning that we're working on and then give a short strategic plan update

011so i'm going to turn it over to katie katie i know some of these are on the dupage county dashboard so you can go through those as as quickly as you need to um so the so the first slide is our own d41 dashboard so you can find that on our website it wasn't updated yet this week but hopefully later today so that just gives you an idea of what's going on in our with our own students and staff next slide and the the next few slides are from the cdc um cova data tracker they keep that more up to date than idph or dupage county so as you can see the whole state of illinois is in high transmission still next slide this goes over the cases cases per 100 000. that's what puts

012us into high it's 156.68 right now next slide our percent positivity is actually going down um it's down to 3.65 next slide and then this is the dupage um county vaccination rate so um the total percent of the population that's vaccinated is 60.5 percent now and then the total eligible um so that's anyone over the age of 12 right now is 70.6 percent vaccination next slide this is the covid interim exclusion guidance i think this will be changing this week idph has taken it down off of everywhere so it goes to a page not found but this is what we're operating under i just wanna so there's nowhere for you to look it up right now which is really frustrating but this just goes over the symptoms of covid and what criteria to return to

013school the documentation required to return to school i'm not going to go over it in great detail because again i believe it will be changing this week so that's just for your for your reference next slide um the dupage county health department has some new notifications this year that you may notice last year we sent out a notification for every single positive case whether they were in the building during their infectious period or not this year they've changed it too we're only notifying if the infectious person has been in the building and it goes out this low risk notification letter goes out to the entire school so you'll just know that someone in school was positive according to the county health department we don't notify any closer level there's nothing in between there's the whole

014school and then there's the next notification so you can go to the next slide which is the close contact notification and that only goes to students or staff that are required to quarantine so under the new rule for schools we're really only quarantining kids on the bus and kids at lunch at hadley those are the only in-school quarantines that we have needed to do this year so next slide and then the third type of notification is an outbreak notification this goes to the entire school after it's approved by the dupage county health department they have to approve the letter and they have to approve the outbreak and just a reminder last year an outbreak was five cases that couldn't be related anywhere else besides the space in the school this year it's two cases so

015this is an example of an outbreak that we have going on at churchill right now so next slide and then after the outbreak notification will get posted on the idph school outbreak site and it's very delayed um it's another entire friday after dupage county finally declares it so you'll see like on this one it'll say posted september 10th when we knew it was an outbreak that was officially declared on september 3rd but there's just so much lag and it'll be up there for 28 days until there's no more cases so two two coven monitoring periods next slide this goes over the current dupage county quarantine and testing recommendations their ideal is 14 remains at 14 days and for anyone that's not fully vaccinated and then a minimum of 10 days with a four day monitoring

016period and then no quarantine if you are fully vaccinated and have no symptoms next slide this goes over shield testing started today at lincoln we had a really great day lots of compliments about how wonderful our students are they did a great job many of them asked to do it more than once because they were having so much fun it was pretty adorable um there's for the difference between this saliva test and last year's saliva test is that there's no confirmatory testing needed because this positive it's a pcr and it's diagnostic um so if your student does test positive i will either be calling you or your school nurse it'll probably be me but or the school nurse and then we'll be placing anyone that's positive on isolation and their close contacts will quarantine they

017do have a patient portal it's very not user friendly to get it set up so i would just recommend calling the help number anyone that's signed up for testing had received an email and then we also have a d41 shield website so if you google that you can go right to all the information about shield next slide this is our this is the um percent of students that are participating in shield um so you can see lincoln 39 ben franklin 53 percent churchill 40 forest glen 46 sadly 31 and then overall 40 percent of our students and this is fluctuating you can enroll at any time and you can also take away your consent at any time so so those numbers i anticipate will be changing um and then if you do consent now that

018the initial consenting process has been done give yourself at least two weeks to start testing um we'll try and get that a lot faster but right now it's we're just trying to get it off the ground so and then if anyone's having difficult with saliva collection i um i had a list of kiddos today from lincoln so i emailed all their parents just letting them know one was kind of adorable and said oh it had gum in my mouth and i so we didn't even want to try so so you'll just be getting an email from me that like do you want to try again or not and then we always have binex now as an option um where i just do a little superficial nasal swab for anyone who still wants their child tested

019but is having difficulty with saliva collection right now we have 10 students that are participating in that screening option right now katie quick question does those percentages include kids that are don't have to test for 90 days because they were a positive yes it's anyone that's consented okay there are some kids that are on pause right now because we don't want to test anyone that's in there 90 days but but that is the total number of um anyone that has signed consent and then as soon as their 90 days are over we'll enroll we'll get them back testing okay thank you can i ask is it required to set up a parent portal if you're in the testing or is it just entirely optional it's entirely optional so otherwise you can just assume no news

020is good news and that we would only call you with a positive it's more just if you want to check your students results some i've heard from some local like drama clubs and stuff like that that they're requiring their students to test so it's a way for the parent to print out a result for for some of these outside organizations that that are requiring testing so it's you know so it's a you know an extra service that we can provide but it's not it's not necessary to test your consent is all that's necessary it's more just if you need to re review your result or print it out for someone else thank you katie okay a brief update on tests to stay at last week's meeting the dupage county shared that test to stay is

021an allowable option but not one that they are recommending districts may choose to implement test to stay but the district will be solely responsible for assessing the eligibility of each close contact to participate in test to stay and they reminded us that they can also revoke or overrule a decision on having a close contact participate in test to stay the final decision is theirs districts will also be responsible for implementing and tracking all of the required testing on days one three five and seven close contacts who are deemed eligible for tests to stay must wear a well-fitting mask this is one of their criteria close contacts who are deemed eligible for tests to stay must quarantine outside of school with the exception of leaving home to receive medical care so test to stay applies to

022school but it doesn't apply to things outside of school if a participant in test to stay test positive they must go on isolation even if they are asymptomatic and again that the dupage county health department can overturn a district's decision on test to stay right now we're discussing whether or not we are staffed and have the necessary resources available to implement test to stay we're also waiting for an opinion from our liability carrier on this um i anticipate at next monday's meeting we'll hear more from the county um and from other dupage districts um regarding their intent to to try this or not um remote learning update so um as people may have recognized the county officially this one of the changes this year is the county dupage county is the entity that formally puts

023a student on um quarantine so remote learning has started at the point when a child is placed on quarantine not on that waiting for testing period we're trying to figure out a way that we can establish a secure way for parents to provide us with medical documentation so that we can start students on remote instruction when they're waiting for their pcr results you know andrew and katie mccluskey and our other members of our tech department and marcy we've been in conversations and katie oducci we've been in conversations about how we can make this happen um you know email would not be considered the best way to be doing this so we are investigating other options so that we can open up remote learning um sooner for children but they do get that um as soon

024as they are deemed to be on quarantine or in isolation we're trying to speed that up we're just trying to figure out a secure way to navigate the paperwork part of it because this really has to pertain to students who are in that holding pattern not you know vacations and things like that so when we have figured out how we're going to handle the medical documentation piece we'll give another update and we'll share all of that information with with our families strategic plan update just want to share the board is aware but want to share with our community people who are on that committee are aware that there's a delay but on friday september 10th shortly after five i was notified by cec that our new facilitator was no longer able to facilitate our virtual

025strategic plan process so i'm in the process of investigating other options of consultants that can come in and step into that process and help us revamp and get that up and running again um so as soon as i have um a proposal new proposals for the board to consider i will bring that information back to the board that's all i have for tonight okay do you want to address the teacher salary and benefits report did you want to touch that here um no let's stick with oh yes i do okay sorry about that yeah it's okay um as you're aware this is an annual requirement um but we are required to post the administrator and teacher salary and benefits report for 2021 school year and the imrf employees over 75 000 for the 2021 school

026year those reports will become available on our website for the public thank you melissa all right we'll move now to board reports are there any reports from board members i'll look to my right down here and see if we have any reports uh taba right ted did i see your hand yeah i have a quick one um i uh i attended the pta council meeting last month um which was sort of a kickoff for the start of the school year dr k ran through some of the stuff um from her updates got some updates from each school pta um how they're dealing with um ice cream socials and and outdoor um back to school um and then i need to apologize because there was another pta council meeting today that i oh here we go

027all right well terrific thank you because i completely spaced it out i have no good excuse so thanks thank you ted well perfect segway jess yes so last week i went to the ben franklin pta meeting and then this morning i was at the pta council meeting and themes are pretty similar and i will say that i'm always amazed by the amount of effort that our parents are putting into what they do for the pta it's really important work and it makes our schools a better place to be and everyone is uh really excited to be able to get back into the schools when the transmission rate has gone down and i've always i've been long impressed with their creativity in keeping their activities alive and having them outside and finding creative ways to continue

028to have them whether they be outside or remote um so thank you to all the parents who are active in the pta um i know it takes a lot of work um also the d41 kids foundation um i'm sure i was at that meeting as well or no wasn't i didn't go oh yeah i was not feeling well so they had a meeting um but this week is our first golf outing on thursday and it is sold out so congratulations to the d41 kids foundation um for doing that that's our first of an annual event so we hope that you will get your tickets early next year and then we'll make it even bigger and better but we're looking forward to thursday golfing and dinner and that's it wonderful thank you jess let me go

029down to the other end dr martelly no you're good julie hill a report yes mike first um i attended the hadley pta meeting on the 14th um they reported a successful welcome back teacher breakfast and um the color run is coming soon um the late bus will be available for attendees and actually the email i'm a hadley parent and the email came out today so um if you're interested you can find it in your inbox um lockers are coming to students um i think this week they can choose whether or not to use them um the owls which are these magical hanging microphone camera things i don't see them in here but they are fully installed it hadley so they are available for quarantined and isolated students use tic tac challenge continues is disruptive and

030destructive and is in fact vandalism um i think we're all pretty aware it appears to be a nationwide problem um but if you're a parent with a student please talk to your student about how serious this behavior is um the positivity project is a social emotional learning program at hadley um this month they are covering curiosity and open-mindedness and um hadley pta says they have more clubs than ever this year so your children have ample opportunities to get involved and make hadley their own it's a good way to make friends and take ownership of the school and that's that's all i have thank you okay thank you very much jason oops um i have sorry i've got one thing too um the glenbard parents series next three events are regarding mental health um two are

031on thursday lisa dr lisa demour during the day under pressure taking control of stress and anxiety um youth mental health post pandemic she's an excellent speaker and every time i see her she is very good and i take nuggets away so i highly recommend that um and then she will be back in the evening with um lori gottlieb uh uh who authored maybe you should talk to someone a therapist or uh her therapist our lives revealed and i i happened to read that one it was very good book so i recommend going to that session if you can make it and then next tuesday i'm going to really destroy this name but ross sasebo with jason washburn and the title is behind happy faces depression and suicide let's talk about it so another important event

032and thank you to the bombard parent series for bringing these amazing speakers to our community we're incredibly lucky to have this free resource to all parents and community members thank you jess and then jason yeah i attended the pta i'm sorry the churchill pta meeting last week and i kind of want to echo what jessica said about their importance and the work that they do at churchill thank them for that i appreciate the questions that that were posed to me um we talked a little bit about the district strategic planning process um and i appreciate those questions okay very good and just finally i had the pleasure of attending the continuous improvement team meeting and i just want to underscore its focus on district-wide professional development the amount of time and commitment that's made by

033the professionals in this school in this district to what is relevant and meaningful professional development and then ways of evaluating the effectiveness of those things so it was good to hear that discussion at that initial meeting all right thank you very much all right members of the public who wish to address the board should check in with mrs moak the board recording secretary speakers are asked to maintain respectful decorum and limit comments to three minutes or less with about 30 seconds to go i'll give you a a polite reminder um i'm going to have to use my cell phone to keep the time we've misplaced a little timer my apologies for the annoying sound that this is going to make let's try not to have it happen do you know how to use it i

034i think i got it down i was practicing so i'll do my best okay mrs milk is there anyone who would like to make public comment i believe we're doing it over here um the first person and please forgive me if i say anybody's name wrong sian ford right here right here man please make sure the mic is on the light will be green so you just push the button and it puts it on the mic there you go is it green you turned it on all right you're all set awesome okay hi my name is kean ford um so i'd like to address the board in the community today about some comments that were made as we were kind of talking about on social media the mask will need to stay on do your

035best you can use his bigger voice use as big a voice as you can the mic and lean into the mic man okay okay there you go yeah i'm not sure if the mic is on or not it is you're good go ahead okay i'm really sorry take your time you're good yeah i can hear you so we were kind of talking about some of the issues on social media recently and i just wanted to talk about that as i wanted to express my support for miss crowe and her her work at lincoln um and i and her support of inclusivity and diversity in the classroom because i personally find the criticism that she's been getting disgusting and i say this as a lifelong resident of glen ellen i went to ben franklin and then

036here at hadley and then i graduated from glenbard west in 2017. i actually went to high school with miss crow we attended west at the same time and i also say this because i am transgender and not too long ago i was a transgender child and i would guess that there are a lot of you here who have never even really met a trans person before or at least not a trans person that's open about their identity but we are here we're part of your community and i met many trans kids while i was at glenbard west and i'm sure that there are many throughout all of our districts in glen ellen and the wider community and i obviously didn't know that i was trans when i was a kid i had never even heard

037the word in the early 2000s when i was at ben franklin but that didn't matter because i knew i was different and i dealt with bullying from students and from teachers all because i wore boy clothes and played boy games and read books that were meant for boys as my teachers insisted and i felt isolated and excluded from my classrooms and my school community so much so in fact that i developed severe anxiety and suicidal thoughts by the age of nine my experiences are not uncommon ask any trans adult and they will tell you the same story and data shows us that the suicide rates for trans kids queer kids and kids of color are astronomical compared to their peers if you're interested in learning more i can direct you to some research i compiled

038as part of my honors thesis while i was at new york university so children are going to continue to be trans and queer and our community is going to continue growing in racial and ethnic diversity these are facts if these kids feel isolated like i did if they do not have a school community that celebrates and empowers them for their identities they risk the highest rates of bullying mental illness and suicide than any other group those are also facts this has nothing to do with 30 seconds ma'am children's lives are not political statements what ms crowe is doing in her classroom is not part of an agenda what she is doing is nothing short of life-saving for these vulnerable children and it should serve it as an example for classrooms across the country those children

039deserve to feel like they belong your children deserve to feel like they belong miss grow should be back in the classroom immediately and we as a community need to support her support our children regardless of what clothes they wear or what books they read because it could mean life or death thank you everyone thank you very much [Applause] maggie once i get it going sorry about that thank you before i speak i'd like to make a comment that i wrote the speech before mr bruno did make his comment um from the board but i'd also like to make it very loud and clear that that is not the message you are sending to our community go ahead my name is maggie camparisi i'm a glenn allen native and mom the following paragraph comes directly from

040the illinois state board of education's inclusive curriculum information guidance document on august 9 2019. governor jp pritzker signs house bill 246 public act 101 0227 into law this made illinois the fifth state in the nation requiring public schools to include instruction and adopt instructional materials that accurately portray the political economic and social constitute contributions of lesbian gay bisexual and transgender individuals the law took effect july 1st 2020 with the intent of implementing it during the 2020-2021 school year the inclusive curriculum law offers public school students a more accurate complete and equitable picture of american society and provides lgbtq plus students the opportunity to see themselves represented in history and literature the elected school board and district 41 administration you should be ashamed for not doing everything in your power to support and defend a teacher

041who is not only supporting all official illinois state state learning standards but a teacher who's trying to be inclusive of all students to ensure they feel welcome in our buildings and classrooms by showcasing material that represents them no student in this community should ever have to feel uncomfortable with who they are or the family they come from no teacher should ever have to feel they are wrong to showcase own or incorporate inclusive materials in their classroom to echo the signs we see throughout our communities glenn ellen and wheaton are for everyone district 41 is for everyone by listening to the loud politically charged outside of our community the same adults who are harassing our children for wearing masks to school you are telling the community you serve that our district and our home isn't actually

042for everyone your current message is loud and clear i understand you just made that short message to us but it is not loud and clear to the community your current message is loud and clear to the community and that message is very far from equity and inclusion anything but publicly supporting and defending the passionate educator in question is a mess it is a message exclusively 30 seconds discrimination and outright homophobia deserve uh sorry if that is the message that you want to send as elective board members then you don't deserve a leadership role in this community as elective board members your top focus is representing and educating all students in the community not molding your image to the vocal minority spewing hate thank you for your time and please do the right thing by publicly

043not just in this board meeting defending your educators and your students when they do the right thing thank you thank you [Applause] susie warden um i'd like to address the everybody here because there's some strong people that are thinking that people are out bullying people and i've been in a business for 25 years here and i would never bully a kid never i would never bully a kid i would never bully a person period it is our right to to not agree with mandates it's our right to not agree with things we don't have to come out and hate people i mean we decided that we wanted to defend our freedom we want to defend our kids freedom i don't agree with masks i don't agree that that we need to to force our children

044to wear masks um i don't there's not a study peer-reviewed double-blind study that says that masks work and you might disagree with me but if you can find one i'd love to see it um but it does our kids more harm to sit in a desk for eight hours while we as parents stand out there and yell at people with all your love that you are coming to us we're gonna have explanations of of the hate that has been towards us which is fine but when you say we're bullying children it is not right we've never bullied one kid i've been there every day and our sign says freedom and our sign says love kids it says nothing about we hate you i would wear a rainbow i would say everything everyone is a is

045open to come to glen ellen it's awesome i don't think inclusion i think we have to say that we i've been in this community for 25 years i've raised five kids here i've never i've raised black kids i've raised black kids i've raised people that excuse me susie just stopped for one second folks please let the speaker speak what i just want to make sure thank you people were attend of course i've raised i've raised black kids i include everybody we have we have people come to our house for the last 25 years we're here because we love kids and if you don't agree with what we're doing you don't come to us and you yell at us you you say horrible things which is we're adults we can handle it but the problem is

046is that when you're coming to us and saying that we're hateful we're not hateful the people that are very very bold yelling at our faces apparently are pastors in this community people are saying that we don't we don't care for kids i'm sorry but we didn't call dr what in 30 seconds we had called the media um then you could say that but we never called the media that was that was people in the district i don't know who calls the media but if we were love if we were supporting the children and we were um caring for the children we wouldn't call the media we didn't we don't know who did so we are in in total support of the children who are in support of choice and that's and that's what we have

047thank you dr ward i'm sorry [Applause] chris warden chris next but let's make sure you're next jealous did you sign up to speak tonight okay then we'll get to you okay go ahead nancy shahanna okay thank you man stephanie clark um hi there uh tonight i wanted to take a minute to comment on the budget that the board is going to take action on um and my comments are very similar to what i said in 2019 when you presented the budget up for approval shows that d41 does not have enough revenue to cover the expenditures and you're having to dip into the fund balance to cover the budget this will have long-term implications to d41 and the plan for a preschool center to be funded with our current budget and fund balance the largest contributing

048factor to this is to continue to add full-time staff to the budget with little to no discussion this year you're adding almost a million dollars in salary and benefits with 14.6 full-time staff positions i had a conversation with eric deporter to understand where these positions came from two-thirds of them can be funded through esser funds or let's call them covet funds which account for about half a million of salary and benefits the other third are enrollment related full-time staff and some new aides at hadley when the budget was presented at the last meeting mr deporter mentioned adding these fte to the board i was surprised to see no discussion from the board on the impact that could have to the budget long term as clearly that it's not staff that prior boards could have accounted

049for after this year does the board plan to keep the nine esser positions that account for half a million in salaried positions when you no longer will be receiving the s r funds to pay for them the district has attrition and head count every year so i'm sure these staff members could stay on in some capacity if they wish to if you plan ahead for it so it's important that you keep the admin or let the admin know your expectations in advance so they can plan if you continue to keep these positions when you no longer will be receiving funding it will be a huge drain on the budget in the years leading up to 2019 when most of you joined the board there had been a continual board discussion about watching spending in d41

050this wasn't an effort to cut things but to prioritize the needs and adjust staffing versus continuing to add salaries in 2019 president bruno took over and said the board shouldn't be discussing staff neutral even though prior boards had accounted for that i said then and i'll say now the board should be discussing the plan for future years including budget priority strategies and plans moving forward prior boards had always had these discussions looking at five-year projections one of your main responsibilities is to be fiscal stewards of our tax dollars 30 seconds i've seen little to no discussion on any of this put aside the 1 million in coveted positions you're still adding half or half a million in coveted positions you're adding half a million in staffing this year alone is the new staff neces if

051the new staff is necessary that's not to say it can't be done but how will you accomplish this do you need to offset the budget reallocate staff will priorities shift will taxes increase this should all be discussed by the board in detail some board members have claimed that prior boards holding the line on taxes d41 was going to run out of money to operate or district the prior board knew that wasn't true and would have plenty of money to be able to fund a new preschool center if things were so dire with the reduced levy as you led some community members to believe why would you so edison lee add hundreds of thousands of dollars in staff and benefits in 2019 and again now in 2021 thank you thank you very much mr smoke marty

052boyd good evening good evening um i wanted to come in and ask some questions of ward today um some of you know that i have concerns about proficiencies in the district i've talked about it several times and as looking to the future this year and next i wonder how the impacts of these masks are going to have on our youngest learners have you guys thought about that at all has is that something that you care about that if you're in early first second maybe even kindergarten you're learning your vowel sounds how do you learn your vowel sounds wearing a mask can that be done is there science behind that that there's that's a possibility i mean we already know that our reading scores are pretty horrible they could be better for a district that spends

05356 million or so a year i would think that our proficiency levels would be in the 90 percentile not where they currently are so um what are the known challenges of mask scoring have you have you really have you looked into it are you thinking about it [Music] what um how are kids learning um wearing a mask i mean are you doing is there any conversation going on about the pluses and minuses of wearing these things and how it's impacting these learners i don't ever hear anything about it why don't you talk about it do parents care i question that um and then lastly what is your assessment of the lost learning now um i've heard other teachers talk and uh to parents saying that they're not too worried about last year's last learning um

054what's the term they'll circle back or they'll they'll pick up whatever the kids didn't get last year how does that work when every year is foundational in the k-8 i'd be open to hearing from anybody who would like to talk to me about that thank you thank you marty this is smoke i have a lot of trouble with these um hearing people these masks because i have a hearing issue so some people might may not be able to hear me so i brought a face shield instead so i'll talk with that so you'll be able to hear me a little a little bit better put your please put your mask back on bob i'm going to ask you to abide by the policy and put your mask on it's a face shield that is not

055a facial bubble bob i'm gonna pause that your time out of respect to you i'm gonna ask you to put your mask back on so you can make the comments you came to make and we want to hear them respectfully so please do that it is a face shield though thank you bob i appreciate you taking the time thank you mom i'd like to point out a couple things first of all um when you had all those new teachers it was real nice that you guys went out and tried to get a whole bunch of male teachers which we really need one male teacher you had as a new teacher zero people of color and the other thing the dupage county health department actually updated the numbers in dupage county for people under the age

056of 20. we had a huge increase we're up to zero deaths from covid in the entire outbreak zero the old phrase let sleeping dogs lie sure seems to be in play in glen ellen you continually choose to value your authority over just letting people express their opinions and move on but the petty and childish way that you continue to play political games just makes those who seek you seek to stifle become more intent on voicing their opinions there is another saying history repeats itself seems that the shoe might be on the other foot right now concerning peaceful protest and power right and another saying about power corrupting and of course that old one about karma being a female dog while using children as pawns is disgusting quit playing politics unless that was always your intent

057and quit wasting taxpayer money on lawyers to bolster your ego thank you thank you very much jennifer hear ed i'm short so i don't know if you can hear me can you hear me we can please hello board members dr k and fellow glenn allen residents my name is jennifer heward i have three kids currently in d41 a seventh grader at hadley and a first and fourth grader at lincoln i've come to this board meeting this evening to speak about the importance of inclusion in our district a few years ago d41 adopted the motto choose to include and i believe this message still stands strong in our district today school is actually more than reading and writing and arithmetic as i've heard some tout lately our children spend majority of their day in the classroom

058during their formative years and classroom teachers and their curriculum play a significant role in the lives of their students school has the ability to make or break a child with their daily interactions experiences and school environment being a particular predictor of a child's well-being and success in life i would like to paraphrase and at times directly quote from the organization open society foundations on the gift that is inclusive education quote throughout the world children are excluded from school because of disability race language religion gender and sexuality but every child has the right to be supported by their community to grow to learn to go to school and be welcome and included by teachers and peers alike when all children regardless of their differences are educated together everyone benefits this is the cornerstone of inclusive education

059inclusive education means different and diverse students learning side by side in the same classroom inclusive education values diversity and the unique contributions each student brings to the classroom in a truly inclusive setting every child feels safe and has a sense of belonging inclusive systems provide a better quality education for all children and are instrumental in changing discriminatory attitudes schools provide the context for a child's first relationship with the world outside their families enabling the development of social relationships and interactions respect and understanding grow when students of diverse abilities and black backgrounds play socialize and learn together education that excludes and segregates perpetuates discrimination against traditionally marginalized groups when education is more inclusive so are concepts of civic participation employment and community life end quote in inclusion one does not get to pick or choose who

060is included we do not get to pick the narrative that is told or exemplified because we do not like or agree with the alternative this is the gift that is public school education the melting and bringing together students from all walks of life to learn together and shape each other's minds and beliefs 30 seconds as i mentioned inclusion can be represented in numerous ways it can look like having a neurodivergent learner in the same classroom as their neurotypical peers it can be having children of all races see examples of powerful and historically important individuals that look like them at all times throughout the school year rather than just during black history month or asian american heritage month for example it can be reading stories about different family makeups some with two moms or two dads

061or a single parent as we know all of these exist within our own community or asking students what their preferred pronouns are at the beginning of the school years versus just assuming may please have two seconds to finish you may some of these ideas may be new to some and i know that change is overwhelming and hard at times however it is imperative that we look beyond our own fears and biases to make schools safe and inclusive for all of its students and continue to choose to include thank you very much faina d'angelo all right there's a 99 chance you're going to ask me because i didn't practice but um i actually came here wanting to support miss crow and the education we've been discussing there's a 99 chance i might cry um but i've

062actually decided to change it based on the behavior i've seen so far by these adults here in this room so let's see how this goes we just moved here about a year ago but i moved here from communist russia 1991. one you ma'am speak about uh freedom you don't know what that means when you actually live i'm sorry that's okay oh no i'll stop the rule should be that you present your comments oh yeah sure the board do not read sure no you're right you're absolutely right i don't want when you speak about freedom you don't people don't actually know what that means when coming from a communist country i am disgusted and ashamed of how these adults have been hate behaving here today we should be here talking about children and the benefit of

063their learning and their feelings safe when they're at school they spend more time in the school than they do at home with us we should not be talking about masks and asking about science behind mass let's just follow the rules that are set by our state let's stop having these arguments let's stop fighting with each other we are setting such a terrible example to our children and i'm so ashamed of everyone here who's been fighting or standing and protesting and talking about love when we're not showing it to each other this young beautiful woman spoke about her experience she was speaking about numbers but i'm gonna give you some because maybe no one here believes me but there are numbers and truths i'm not a doctor but i know how to read right and i

064believe in science the second highest cause among young children and adolescents is suicide what are we doing we cannot have blood on our hands because we're fighting and we're against inclusivity of lgtb children consider suicide put away your differences put on your masks let our teeth children feel belonging i can't speak anymore i'm sorry i'm disgusted and ashamed by the behavior we should all support what has been set by the standards of the state and do this for our children thank you ma'am thank you very much thank you gina ryan gina excuse me okay i don't can everybody hear me i just project i'm italian i think i can everybody can hear me mask or not i don't have anything prepared this is my first meeting but i grew up here moved away recently moved

065back a couple years ago i'm a clinician for emerging adults um teens and children with anxiety depression um gender identity i thank you for being brave enough for coming up here and sharing your story for everybody to hear i am i am surprised and bewildered at some of the commentary that's going on but i also want to extend my gratitude because ironically we're all here taking the time away from our families to try to advocate for them at the very same time so i think what i wanted to say is there was something coming up about curiosity for the kids like exploring that and being open-minded and for the for the families there's there's been no child i haven't treated whose system also needs to be included in the discussion of what's going on in

066their in their world and in their mental health so if you're exploring or if you're finding resistance in the laws or if you're finding resistance in science or the resistance in the pandemic or resistance and wanting to wear masks or going along with their community i would ask you to be curious about your own resistance like take a look at yourself and just be curious about it and then extend that curiosity to your kids because we are literally raising the generation that's going to be changing the social platform in so many different ways so whether or not we disagree we can still be respectful whether or not you know we are on one side or on the other side we can still be respectful and we need to be giving that type of respect to

067our children there are so many kids being bullied whether or not they're wearing masks there are certain kids being allowed not to wear masks it's important for everybody to keep the standard of hay even though i don't agree with it we're doing it for the community that's like that's being an adult right adulting sucks sometimes it certainly does but you need to be curious about your own resistance and i think that when i hear about the struggles that are going on even in families and the global pandemic and how much that has impacted everybody to say that it has an impact it's probably short-sighted thank you um so i'm i'm very grateful to be here and i'm grateful to hear everybody speak i'd also be mindful of the fact that we can't answer things that

068we can't control we can't answer things that are in the future we can't answer things that are ahead of time we can have grace so when our kids might be behind or when our kids might be not understanding our vows those those take conversations right you can have grace and you can be curious and i think that's the only two things i want to leave everybody with today good time thank you very much brian and i apologize i can't read the last name can i get your last name sir i would just like to say the amount of amount of trust for the government is astounding after all they've done over the years and i've come to my attention to some of the board here are marxists who having family that were butchered raped and

069tortured under marxism you expect me to just take this and let it happen here i'm a third generation american my family came here from oppression from communist and socialist nations you should be ashamed of yourselves and i would like to ask anyone who sees that red fist on her mask you know how many people died under that excuse me brian again please do not make comments to people in the audience make your comments i'll make it at you because you're marxist so i'm sitting right here brian please go ahead don't go after bob if you want to uh no one's talking bob i'm talking to you excuse me you can go ahead and address your comments to bob but don't be getting vigilant attacking him go ahead has anybody of these woke people ever been

070to another country like africa i've been to nigeria i've seen the effects of tyranny i've been to kowloon bay in hong kong i've seen the effects of tyranny okay you you and to say about suicide i tried killing myself in high school i actually slipped my own wrist i was in the hospital because my girlfriend died in a car accident you know what just because you're not called the name you want or the gender you want it's not that big of a deal okay a lot of people go through worse stuff so i'd like to ask all the woke people in here who are s and i'll talk to the board who are so okay with this just remember the nazis said the same thing it's for your trust the governments for your own safety

071the communists said it trusts our government and i have friends that are black that don't trust the government i don't blame them all the things they've done waco ruby rich tuskegee experiments i'm blacks you expect me to trust the government to all of you who trust the government fine your sheep's been led to the slaughter i could care less but you know what i'm for rebellion this cooker is founded on rebelling against tyranny and i will continue to rebel and be an anti-communist spokesman everywhere thank you brian you're signed your sign stephanie g and carty i have a question for everybody um is glen ellen for everybody except the peaceful protesters by district 41 building that we've been there for one month um so everybody's welcome in glen ellen unless you think different than some

072of the ones in glen ellen so if you're more conservative more republican more independent you're not welcoming glenn owen of course that's true thursday um the 16th um district 41 building happens to be across from the school we all know that we're at district 41 building we're not at the school it just happens to be across the street oh well so a public sidewalk i'm walking on it around 9 15 last thursday and i'm turning the corner where you know district 41 building is in the parking lot just walking real slow just have my coasters in my hand and this car mid-sized car darker color is turning the corner from the light and i saw a guy and he's talking to me from the passenger side window open and he's talk he stopped and he's

073talking in the middle of the street of course and i'm in a i'm i'm a friendly person and i'm like good morning how you doing and then he starts screaming at with me f word about a million times and i'm like whoa whoa whoa whoo um so i just went back to the sidewalk and i'm walking slow and he continues to you know inch by inch um follow me on the sidewalk while he's driving on a street um f u f u f u f u s follow the science whatever and i'm like i finally said the science is changing every day so don't follow the science they're always changing their mind about everything um and then he keeps screaming and yelling at me yes i'm just trying to walk down the public side 30

074seconds ma'am and then all of a sudden he stops the car and gets out of his car and he has something in his hand i don't even know what it was because i was in shock um and he's screaming at me just because i'm trying to go because he kept screaming at me and i'm like and he didn't like that i was going da da da da da so he gets out of the car and comes towards me and i'm thinking oh my gosh i gotta run thankfully he turned he changed his mind and went back in his car and drove off [Music] please finish glenn allen is welcome everybody's welcome in glenn ellen unless you have a different form of way to express that we are not for children wearing masks especially little kids

075that could barely breathe barely talk barely see expressions barely see smiles can barely understand their teeth finish up please what you're past your time i'd like you to oh well thank you very much i just love glenn ellen they treat everybody so wonderfully even the peaceful program thank you stephanie you had your you had your you had your opportunity appreciate it this is mo jan leskowsk listen kelson this is short this is brief i'm a retired teacher i'm just going to share some statistics especially to the board you should know all this you people might not know this because and you can see this later if you'd like you take a picture of it i can go around this is as of you know the most recent stuff that's out there it says basically the

0762018 this this is district 41 academic performance after all we're at school so school districts should be concerned about performance how are kids doing 2018 60 proficient in english and language art language arts that's not very good it's pretty that's pretty pathetic for my school district that never was that low uh 2018 uh for math proficiency 62 not good not good there's this is where the money needs to go where the energy needs to go get those kids proficient in the subjects that matter 2019 uh it went down from 60 to 55 a 5 drop 55 that's pathetic i'm sorry english language arts 2019 60 um it went down from 62 percent a two percent drop something's wrong this is what the board of education all needs to be looking at look at what you're

077doing help the kids learn put your energy in that financials you spend two hundred and 14 nine dollars per student operating costs it's not on everything but i'm not gonna read all that bottom line four out of ten kids do not perform at grade level four out of ten wrap that around your head four out of ten children do not perform at grade level that is not okay in glen ellen illinois are you kidding me performance 2015 ready for the next level 55 were ready for the next level out of 100 everybody can be in agreement this is not okay 2016 58 ready for the next level still poor and then 2017 was 58 ready for the next level that's what you guys need to work on thank you janice [Applause] erica nelson okay good

078evening erica nelson i am a 24-year resident of wheaton in the part of wheaton that has glenn ellen school district and glen allen park district and then i'm in the wheaton library district and city council i have two children they both graduated from churchill elementary school hadley junior high school and glenbard west one is a current educator ela now a kindergarten educator bilingual spanish and a son who just graduated a year ago living in indianapolis and doing quite well dr kazkowski dr mccluskey and dr bruno board members vice president lobock buttermer hill estes syed and dr martelly thank you for making the well-being of the children in district 41 your first responsibility dr kaskowski and board president bruno you initiated outreach to the village village president senec and chief of police phil norton on behalf

079of the children and parents who walk to school each day along maine and elm street to forest glen elementary school your focus on student safety and mental health is fundamental to a healthy positive day educators school leaders parents psychologists the remarkable social workers at our five district schools and students themselves are focused on learning that has been the watchword the comment much of social media is get back to education which is what this district is working hard to do the start and end to the day are the mental health bookends that support a child's emotional well-being september is suicide prevention month i wear a bracelet in memory of a child in 2019 who took his life at the age of 15. the reason the glenbard parents series is focused on the topics that board member

080buttomer spoke about is because this month is focused on that very issue i encourage everybody in this room and those of us who continue to work on mental health issues to attend to learn to grow to understand board continue applying your expertise and board as a board of education aligning your decisions with what is best for children that is a very challenging thing to do public education opens its doors to all all children from the moment they arrive at school to the moment they depart safely home keep moving glenn ellen school district 41 forward educationally inclusively and recommit innovation at all levels today's children and those who will come into our schools deserve no less than your best and thank you for doing this important work on behalf of our community thank you very much

081roman morgans good evening everyone um thank you can you hear me yes please all right awesome so again my name is roman margus and i'm here because of miss crow case um but before i start i didn't really prepare any speech i want to share with you a little bit who i am first uh so we moved with my husband thomas to the us four years ago before that we lived uh a little bit around the world including brazil london and so on so i was somehow used to a diverse and exclusive environment we moved to glen ellen um despite the fact that again i take a lot of energy from the big cities uh and we loved it here we have a lot of friends here we just met very nice people and and

082we simply love it here we want to be good citizens um hey texas and be also respectful now a joy in our life happened two years ago almost two years ago when our little son oliver was born and we are proud parents we actually made a commitment to glen ellen and we bought even bigger a nicer house but now we belong to lincoln so we were actually in europe a month ago when this whole thing happened when i came back and i've heard about it from our neighbors who again were very very lovely i got very sad enraged and thinking is this really a future for oliver i am sad and again enraged when people are talking about diversity and inclusion in this room and still there are people in this room shaking their heads

083i have to ask myself whether i have done the best for our son i want him to you know grow in a lovely and loving environment i don't want him to be bullied i want him to learn in the school because i'm paying taxes for that that there are families like ours and that it's normal there are more gay families in this community and they have kids too please if you are thinking i don't want my kids to learn about lgbtq it's part of life it's me it's us it's our son adam that's all i'm asking for a board and from from everybody in this community give us some love thank you [Applause] lee fruit hi i'm uh lee fruit and i didn't expect to say a couple of things to start but i feel

084compelled now um thank you on behalf of those who have family members with advanced cancer thank you to those who care enough to wear a mask to contribute to slowing this bread to help keep my mom alive also as somebody with uh half of my family who is jewish the nazi references have to stop um my name is lee fruit i'm a 21-year resident of glen ellen i'm sorry and the parent of two sons who have attended schools in d41 and 87. i'm here tonight to address events surrounding one of our teachers whose credibility in the workplace was recently called into question her detractors cited her liberal leanings including messages around lgbtq representation in the classroom it would be reasonable to question how messages such as school is for everyone you can do anything you

085are valid and you belong could be construed in any way other than how they were intended it's important to recognize that individual groups from around the country are making it their mission to infiltrate communities outside of their own with the goal of sowing mistrust hurling innuendo and deliberately harming people in their wake unfortunately there are also individuals within communities who choose to perpetuate and invite this behavior in despite veiled political rhetoric designed to distract the reason for this is not a mystery the truth is that homophobia remains a last bastion of acceptable bias and despite progress in human rights ignorant and out-of-date misunderstandings of human sexuality and gender persist inflating free speech with the public slander and harassment of others is intentional has real consequences and should be intolerable to our sensibilities fortunately i believe

086that a majority of our community values inclusive education and all that it entails and i know that many rejected the intolerance displayed here this is something that was already said earlier but for those unaware of 30 seconds sure this school year illinois house bill 246 which passed in july of 2020 ensures the inclusion of lgbtq members of society in public school curriculum a block grant requires that textbooks authorized for purchase include the rules and contributions of lesbian gay bisexual and transgender people in the u.s it is incumbent upon administrators to support their educators in fulfilling their duties under the law and to assure ensure equal protections for all students and teachers and it is our collective responsibility to call out fear-mongering five seconds fear-mongering and thinly veiled bigotry when we see it if you agree

087please do not be silent make your voice heard thank you thank you first of all i want to thank all of you for your comments uh and for cooperating with the rules around having the conversation uh not always easy to do but i i applaud you for making an earnest effort to do that thank you now before we move on though i wanted to turn before we kind of want to say a couple things sure you may and then i do want to turn to dr kaskowski who wants to um address some of the things that were said uh in public comment okay so jason please i want to start i want to thank um our first public speaker that that spoke tonight and i wanted to just thank her for her strength being up

088and and speaking tonight and bringing that perspective to the table of roman thank you for bringing that that perspective as well it's tough to it's tough to do that um and this place has to be a place that's safe for everyone to come and give their viewpoints no matter what those viewpoints are is this is not a place to come and attack someone for who they are or for what they say but more specifically it's not a place to attack someone for who they are i understand that they're disappointed with this board of a response to some of the issues that have come up recently and i want to be very clear personal issues aren't board's issues to be dealt with at the board table there's a place for that but it is the board's

089role to state that mission of the district and to be clear in what that district what that mission is dr bruno stated it i think it's very repeating district 41 is a safe place that's going to support all its students in all of its families no matter what their differences might be our differences are what make us a community and we have to respect that and that's this will be the heart of what our district is i also want to discuss some of the comments made towards dr bruno dr bruno's a big boy you could say what you like about dr bruno as a board member i make fun of bob all the time i'm good with it and i'm okay with people addressing dr bruno's political views that's fine but i want to be

090clear of working with bob four it's called five years give or take i've never seen bob bring his political views to the board table or make a decision based on any political thought when decisions are made at the board table they're made by the entire board as a whole not by one person that's why we have a roll call and each person gives a vote i know that when i've made votes whether you agree with my my votes or not they've been made for what i believe is in the best interest of the district and i feel confident saying that that same is true for dr bruno and and every other board member sitting at this table and so if you have an issue with some of the decisions the board made that's import that

091your issues with the board are not with a single board member and i just wanted to make that point clear and i just kind of want to roll back just to where i'm at because i don't want to close on that i want to just close by just continuing to address that district 41 is just our inclusive values and just the support for everyone in this district from both our staff and our families is imperative to making this continuous to be the successful district that it is okay thank you very much thank you dr kaskowski not to put you on the spot but i could tell by your face when we were talking data that you would like an opportunity to correct the record um i think it's very important when we talk data that

092we do it um from a context that's accurate and dr martelly if there's anything you would like to add because i know not to put you on the spot either we spend a significant amount of time talking about our student achievement our growth and our academic data so katie anything that you want to share i guess what i what i can say is i certainly stand behind the work of our teachers and of our district i think we've all faced a time that nobody has ever faced before i do not believe in learning loss i don't believe that our students have lost learning at all in fact i think that there are definitely things that our students have not learned yet but yet is that key word our teachers our coaches our administrators are continuing

093to work through what our students were able to master last year what our students are continuing to master this year and we're moving forward and our students are learning so i guess i mean all i could say right now without data in front of me is that i support the work that is happening i'm proud of the work that's happening i'm proud of our students i'm proud of our teachers who come and give it 110 every single day and i believe great things are going to continue to happen in our district thank you dr martelly since i've been put on the spot i might as well use the platform right so yes i i have just recently given a presentation to my school board on this student data and without question there has been incomplete

094learning over the last 18 months and that is not unique to glen ellen that is not unique to my district that is universal across this entire entire country due to the pandemic so i think the question that we have to ask as board members and you know mrs dr mccluskey and i've already had this conversation is you know what is that plan then moving forward to move us out of the incomplete learning that students have experienced due to this pandemic and that is the important question that we need to be asking and determining as it relates to some of the data that was shared by a community member i don't know the context of that information but if we're talking about iar tests 60 percent is not considered at grade level relative to the illinois

095assessment of readiness and so that information needs additional context to better understand how our students in glen island progressing so as a board member let's be clear i do look at this information i do understand this information thankfully to my day job and i want to be very honest incomplete learning is a real thing and we all have to face that in glenn allen both as parents as board members and as administrators and teachers and i have full faith that that's exactly what our teachers and administrators are doing and so katie i look forward to looking at that information more closely with you and you know having those further conversations so we can ensure that our teachers have what they need to to fill in those gaps for our students over these next two to

096three years you know another community member talks talked about budgetary issues or questions at least some of those questions are addressed in the very immediate future due to s or funds and the reason that is is because students have experienced incomplete learning in the immediate future and therefore we should be putting resources there to support those students now the question then becomes well what do we do when those esser funds run out and that is a fair question and that is a question that the board and eric and katie and all of us will be having in two to three years but for the immediate future those resources need to be put into the school systems to ensure that the students that have experienced this incomplete learning are getting what they need from us as

097a school district so if you'd like to talk the granular details of student data you know where to find me i'm happy to have that conversation thank you dr martelly dr kraskowski anything else no i think it well no but yes i think when we talk about incomplete learning or what our kids haven't learned yet at no time have we said that last year wasn't different last year wasn't challenging but our kids learned and we presented data that showed that our kids learned does that mean that they covered the same amount of curriculum material in the course of a year as a typical year absolutely not but there's a difference between learning loss regression and we haven't covered it yet so as is part of every start of the school year it's to fill in

098those gaps and move the kids forward i think when you look at data you have to look at it as dr martelly said in context um you know one of the pieces of data that we look at and that we anticipate hearing again it's how do we prepare our kids for their next step which is high school our kids do historically extremely well when they go to district 87. um you know so it depends on the data you're using you have to look at it contextually into how are we doing compared to those around us so you can't just put out a percentage well what does that mean because how are we doing compared to others um who are similarly situated um again i agree with dr mccluskey i'm extremely proud of the work that

099our teachers have done in extremely challenging you know changing models all sorts of unknowns of last year but the commitment to put resources resources being people and materials in the schools is something that i know this board feels strongly about to answer the question of what happens when esser money dries up well we have to look at the data and do we still have a need to maintain these positions have those positions made a difference this year we're using esser dollars to fund those we will have a year's worth of data to say have these interventionist positions made a difference and if they do the conversation comes back to the board to say do we want to sustain this when those dollars are no longer available to us but those are conversations that we have

100all the time and we will be reporting on those okay dr k can i make one more comment sure sorry just based on what folks have shared tonight i think it's it's unfair to to put the spotlight solely on student data as it relates to how students progress in math and reading we've heard a lot of people talk about tonight inclusivity and mental health and the emotional well-being of our young folks what it means for us as adults to be models for our children and i just want to just i i feel i need to share a cautionary tale about trying to trying to value our students our children and their progress based on a moment in time relative to math and literacy and i also think that we need to be very cautious about

101valuing the work that our teachers and our administrators in our school district in general do by looking at a moment in time relative to math and reading achievement or growth and i think based on the comments that have been shared tonight based on the tensions that some of us feel within our own community i think it's only wise for us to be mindful of the entire child and honoring and recognizing how it is that we value our children and what it is that we want them to do in terms of showing growth and progress as a young person i don't ever want to look at my first grade child and somehow label value to what his map score says or when he gets to third grade label value as to what his iar assessment results

102look like that would be a terrible injustice to him and so in the context of all that we've heard tonight i just want us to be mindful that what we do as adults for our children whether it be in the schoolhouse or outside of it goes well beyond what it looks like based on math and reading and i wrote an entire dissertation on valuing non-cognitive factors which is essentially to say if you look at what makes people ultimately successful in life not doing school but in life it has far more to do with the dispositions and attributes and the skills that they develop outside of the learning they do in specific content areas and we need to be mindful of that thank you [Applause] you got to get that doctoral dissertation in there again university

103of illinois it adds credence to my argument i think at least i hope well done dr martin if you want to read that let me know because no one has i've offered all right any other comments okay thank you then we'll move on to our we've got two discussion items the first one has to do with fun transfers eric you want to introduce this please yeah absolutely this is something that we do each year uh and just to explain what it is is within the budget we move um funds from one fund to another school school fund accounting mandates that you track things in what i like to refer to as silos so in order to fund and pay for the expenses related to capital projects annually we ask the board to do a transfer

104out of our education fund into the capital projects fund so we can expense those payments to our contractors appropriately so that's what's in front of you tonight and it's for discussion only tonight is really the steps that are required that are mandated by school code is that it be presented to the board for discussion and then at the next meeting there'll be a public hearing where the community would have a an option to comment on the transfer and then we'll be seeking action at that meeting so very straightforward process just simply a product of the requirements of county of accounting related to school finance thank you florida any other questions for eric okay we've got a second discussion item and this is the new technology position and andrew you will yes i'll take a couple

105quick minutes i know you have the board report but i want to take a a few things out of there and just share them um for everybody here this is a position that we used to have back in 2015 the person left the role and then it was not filled i think part of that was some budgetary considerations that were given and i just want to paint some context around what has changed here in the district between 2015 and now to understand that we were in 2015 we were primary desktop users as staff and we were very limited in the technology devices that students use there were laptop checkout carts that were moved around from classroom to classroom since then we've moved the staff to mobile with being laptops as their primary device we also

106have our aides and other support staff with chromebooks our students are full one-to-one k-8 with chromebooks so we have a high need of devices in the district where we're supporting 2500 devices on the wi-fi throughout the day we have 4 500 chromebooks that we're managing all of this puts a high demand on our network infrastructure a lot of those things that unfortunately on a day-to-day basis if all things are going well nobody knows about part of the reason we want to have this position is make sure that that is happening we continue to offer this the standard that we are used to here in the district a couple of other things i want to point out that are in the board report as well is that we have as you've seen in the news higher

107and higher incidents of cyber attacks throughout the state the nation and across the world k-12 is one of those environments that have had a high rise in those cyber attacks in 2020 we've had an 18 percent increase in those cyber attacks that were reported in k-12 environment those same reporting entities have said that 2021 will see the same similar increase if not more in the k-12 environment this role will help with making sure that our environment stays secure and keeps up with those cyber security practices we move forward with the amount of demand on our current staff that's why we're asking for this additional position so we can make sure that all those things stay in place as we continue to grow with our digital curriculum and digital materials that we're putting in place in

108the classrooms as well so in order to continue to provide that that um quality of care for lack of a better word from a technical standpoint where that's why we're asking for this position to be reinstated thank you andrew board members um certainly had an opportunity to digest andrew's very thorough report and send questions in for to better understand any additional questions about this fava i'm just wondering have we already started taking applicants or not yet the position was posted as anticipated to start to open that applicant pool as you go higher and higher in the technical requirements such as this type of position that pool already starts fairly small so we wanted to get that out there nothing has been done but it has been opened up as an anticipated position thank you any

109other questions i have a couple jason um so since 2015 emma how has this how was the work that would be taken up by this role how has that work been covered so since 2015 so jim who's our assistant director previous director for me have been picking up more and more of these the items that this this role would take on it allows me to be able to do more of the leadership and management of the team coordinating with techno technic teaching and learning it will free up our building techs who are on high demand already they've been picking up some of that slack one of the things that they've been picking up and working with as our jam console to manage our ipads that doesn't have to fall on their shoulders then so we

110can move the things that have been spread across many folks on our team to the right person has the tech the high technical skills and is trained in that area instead of being spread across we've also taken advantage of and many purchases where we've leveraged the vendor to get things set up and initially manage that and then transfer that knowledge off for us to maintain again this will then move that into someone who's in house to maintain that and not have to always rely on an outside vendor to call for help to set up and always include extra costs in when we reach out for vendor support okay anything else jason thanks i think you answered my second question i didn't ask so thank you all right i'll let you look for it no no

111he answered he answered it he got to that second question very good i didn't ask it he just got to the answer all right can i ask another question yes please table of course i'm just wondering uh since it's uh it's going to require a certain knowledge of the district have you guys considered promoting somebody who's already in technology and is aware of our needs that would of course be ideal and it's also always ideal to have someone that's been in in education environments to begin with going back previously to the fact that as you get more and more technical sometimes that pool is very small i i would have no problems if we have someone internal with those skills to promote them i i'm a fan of promoting from within sometimes that's also part

112of the reason this pool is small to begin with is a lot of folks stay within the locations they're at to move up in that ranks and stay with that environment they're at so i would encourage that if we have those skills that's something we'll look at as we go through that applicant pool if someone does have that and applies okay all right very good thank you andrew and this will come back up under recommendations all right uh the action items excuse me dr bruno just um i miss somebody during public comment dr bruno i missed a i missed someone who had asked to make public comment um i'm hoping that we could let i would be happy too sure okay adam collins i'm sorry i apologize mr collins thank you um all right so

113i'm adam collins uh i'd like to say first of all to the board i apologize for comments and attacks that were made on you you are elected officials but you are volunteers and i think with respect to that and the two other board members previous board members in the room right now i think there are ways that we can rationally discuss our our differences but moving on to my point i'd like to address something that has to me kind of fallen by the wayside our schools are out of space um this has been talked about gosh i mean talking to some people in town for 15 years 17 years but as an example 2016 d41 hired doctor dr john casarta he's a subject matter expert on demographic trends in one of the top 100 urban

114innovators and they used him to forecast enrollment trends through 2026. two of the three scenarios that he presented netted a positive gain which we are now seeing firsthand add in that people have been moving to the suburbs at a higher rate as a result of the pandemic our enrollment numbers have outpaced our physical space sooner than i'm sure anyone on the board or previous boards has had predicted um using ben franklin as an example we have five sections of kindergarten five sections of first grade five sections of second grade fourth third fourth and fifth grades uh it was recently made known that the ben franklin accelerated enrichment class is sharing a classroom with a kindergarten so you have fifth graders using the kindergarten room when it is not in session sitting at desks sized for

115kindergarten bodies chairs that are sized for kindergarten bodies it isn't ideal and i know i think everyone does kids are resilient and everyone's doing their best the fact of the matter is our district has been watching this our enrollment numbers increase and we're no closer to having a right size district than we were 15 years ago 30 seconds adam sure using the board approved class targets and the covid mitigation measures in place no matter which way you look at it we're out of space and i'd like the board maybe at another meeting or at a community of the whole meeting to discuss options what's happening with the property behind churchill what's happening with spaulding i noticed there's a two million dollar item on the next year's budget uh for land acquisition um and i'd just

116like to know i think a lot of people are are looking at the future very nervously especially next year if a kindergarten class comes in that's that's large uh ben franklin's going to be out of space and i'm sure other schools will as well thank you thank you and maybe this is an opportune melissa's shaking her head yes since you had to wait i and you know just to correct the record um we are exploring options besides casarda and if that is the best option um then we're prepared to move forward with having that report updated and our next cal committee of the whole meeting will be devoted to setting context and starting those conversations so it's absolutely on the docket thank you dr k just because this is it it never happens i talked

117to dr casarta today it's just amazing that somebody would mention that of all days this is the first time i've talked to him in 12 years in education and i talked to him this morning so just perfect timing what's a good thing we got adam up here thank you adam thank you okay we'll then move on to the consent agenda are there any items board members would like to be removed from the consent agenda to be considered separately hearing none may i have a motion to approve the consent agenda which includes employment recommendations and resignations on the personnel report the august financial reports as noted on the meeting agenda and the august 16 2021 regular meeting minutes and the august 16 2021 committee of the whole meeting minutes and the august 16 2021 closed session

118minutes as presented i'll second that roll call mr smoke mr estes yes mrs hill yes mrs saya yes mr wolbach yes dr martelly yes mrs buttimer yes dr bruno yes all right thank you we have a couple of um recommendations the first you've heard andrew presenting on the network engineer position may have a motion to approve the network engineer staffing as presented motion thank you any further discussion roll call please mrs hill yes mr estes yes dr martelly yes mr lobock yes mrs buttimer yes mrs cyan dr bruno yes we also have the second reading and adoption of board policy this was a very large uh policy change all of those changes were from the island from the illinois state board of education may have a motion to approve the board policy revisions as presented

119for adoption motion second any discussion roll call mr smoke mrs butter yes dr martelly yes mr lobock yes mrs cyan yes mr estes yes mrs hill yes dr bruno yes and then to approve the 21 22 fiscal year budget may have a motion to approve the 2021-2022 fiscal year budget as presented motion any discussion further roll call mrs moak mrs cyan yes mrs hill yes mr estes yes dr martelly yes mrs buttimer yes mr loba yes dr bruno yes and then finally to authorize to prepare the 22-23 fiscal year budget may have a motion to approve and adopt the resolution directing the superintendent to prepare the budget for the fiscal year 22-23 motion second any discussion please we'll call mrs mullen sorry bob just please um i'm just i'm just wondering um is it possible

120that we can consider land to purchase yeah absolutely good question um and that's something actually i went back and forth with the state numerous times on and they did confirm that that can be used for land acquisition that's an appropriate use of those funds importantly though just and i mentioned this just for clarity's sake you know much of the allocation we've received for esser has already been applied in other manners so but there is still some capacity to use some of that funding towards land acquisition yes thank you very good okay thank you so we need a motion two motion thank you second second thank you any discussion all right we'll call mr smoke mr rusty yes mrs phil yes mrs yes mr robot yes dr martelly yes mrs buttimer yes dr bruno yes thank

121you also on the agenda section referred to as other report governance learning together and the one item that we have here is for the board to [Music] see if we can reach consensus on a school board association professional development session and board members were asked to take a look at a number of different trainings that are made available to the school board association and i am hoping that folks may have some recommendations i i felt that the board governance review training would be a very productive and helpful one for for the board it is facilitated by iasb it is done in a closed session and it involves a board self-evaluation based on metrics that the school board association uses um so that that's a recommendation i want to put out there on the table to

122consider doing this professional development you heard us talk earlier about board members if the board desires to move forward with that option we do have dates uh for the board to consider yes we do there are some dates in october and november that it would require a special meeting that would take place in closed session and facilitated by a isb rep and there are some dates there that we would have to i hate to run this up who's the isp representative earlier his demolinarium yes that is accurate i believe so so i have that on the table how to fulfill the table um are we allowed to suggest some you can certainly suggest we can put a couple if there are other that we're interested in um i was interested in reflect respond and recover

123the three r's of moving forward and then also the one on equity and educational imperative so the first one had to do with just can you say it again today i'm sorry uh it's called um reflect respond recover the three r's of moving forward ah yes yes and then the second one is equity and educational imperative yep got it okay all right so we've got essentially three the board governance review and then the three r's and equity and educational imperative are there any others that board members would like us would like all of us to consider you know and i i just don't recall i know we've done both ways um would this be an open or closed session so some of them are uh some of them are done in closed session the board

124governance review is something that is done in closed session uh some of the others though are done as an open session uh i think the equity uh as an educational imperative uh is open and i believe the three r's are also is that correct but did you i don't know yeah yeah that one's an open one as well they are open yeah so those are open there's some language at the bottom of each of the blurbs on these trainings as to whether or not they are can be done in closed or open session um can i suggest the trust edge experience particularly if it is an open one that would involve the community yes i was looking at that same one ironically i was looking at that one as well and just didn't know if

125based on strategic planning situations if that would be worth doing yeah or are we going to get that accomplished through the strategic planning process committee the whole meeting on that topic as well so yeah okay so just that i'm following just which one the last one the last one the trust edge experience trust edge experience the board can of course commit to all the professional development that he that he thinks is appropriate for for the work that it does we would simply have to arrange times uh to do those but there are four uh that we have proposed so or any of the do we have consensus that these four would be valuable to consider that any of these four would be good to do we only get to pick one well we can i

126would suggest we start with something and get on the calendar and we could then reach out to our isb rep and say we're thinking we would like to do additional ones what would your calendar look like and that can be challenging but we can we can certainly try one issue that i have um and well not to speak negatively with people um we've utilized this i'm a individual in the past um and i didn't feel it was inherently productive um it's been some time i'm not saying that we shouldn't go that route and try it again i think different i agree and i'm not saying that we don't do it i'm just saying that you know if one if the first one doesn't go as well as we would we would like it to go

127that way we consider moving in a different direction is more of what i'm saying and we do have options to ask for i don't know how easy it is to find additional people but i'm just saying i just want to throw that out there because we've had experience facilitation is important and if the trust edge one if that is open and we can involve the community i'd like that one just to be the topic for one of our cows if that's possible yeah i think that's a more extensive training and somebody else does it i think we should get more information yeah you know it may be right on how long it is and bring that back to the board to consider maybe that's a second part of the year one i got the impression

128from reading the description that it's a bigger session than some of the others and then it's not done um by our local right i did too yes hashtag ropes course yeah so so how about we communicate with iasb or interest in these four would the board be okay with starting with the board govern governance review as an overall that does self-evaluation it is done in closed session based on metrics that iasb generates and they will put out an assessment a survey that they will ask us all to complete and then we will address those in in the professional development and have a fairly broad conversation um around i think a 360 with all the work that the board does i think it would be a good one to start with and then these others i

129think are more focused and tailored to achieve a certain outcome i think there's i think there's some advantage to being able to do a closed session meeting and do a little team building by ourselves um and that'll probably make us more effective in terms of um some some future success and then particularly as we turn our attention to some of these other uh more focused topics all right then with that there are we will propose to do the board governance review we've got some dates yes um there are four dates listed in october and now i'm assuming these are evening the 7th the 13th the 19th and the 20th excuse me dr bruno today we learned there are only four dates left oh so is october gone um october 7th and 13th are gone no

130those are the two remaining okay and then november 8th and 11th well that makes it a little bit easier i'm only available two of those which ones yes october 13th and november 11th okay i'm not available november 11th how's everybody on october 13th i just pulled out my calendar i don't know hold on oh let's see if we can do it maybe we'll get lucky what are we looking at october 13th october the 13th what time there would be an evening session right that'd be an evening session right i assumed it would be an evening session i'm free well i guess we can talk to the about the time i i'm not available till 7 30 that should we go with october i'm not available till 7 30 that day say it again 7 30

131p.m i'm i'm available after that so you're available on that day after 7 30. yes okay i presume i'm sorry i presume the strategic planning won't be meeting that day as currently planned right it's going to be totally um re-figured likely not but never say never okay well just that is a date of the strategic planning as previously scheduled that's what i'm asking right and i we can't confirm whether it's going to happen that day until we pick a new consultant um my guess would be not okay but when we have somebody we will try to keep as many of the dates as possible um i don't know just based on how long it takes um whether she would be women okay how long do these classes see or whatever pd sessions take do you

132guys know right the other day two hours i'm trying to recall they're longer than yesterday i thought it was 90 minutes last time yeah i want to say the last one i did with them was done on a saturday and it was three hours all right so that may prohibit us a late start all right well let's we've agreed on a date well i mean halfway though what i'm saying is the strategic planning is for now i mean for as of two weeks ago was planned for that night and so if if it's happening whether or not i can be there is completely dependent on j there could be a conflict is what i'm saying depending on the start time of the isp that's why i'm asking the odds of strategic plan staying on that

133night is probably slim okay that's what you don't jump on a date soon with the there won't be any more days well that's why i was asking what the schedule looked like because i can't be there if i have to be the other thing same thing for me yeah exactly figure it out okay ask her what a start time would be on the 13th if people have the 13th and we're sure that that was the only day that we could all be there correct i think that's how we narrowed it down yeah okay well we'll do our best for the 13th october the 13th that's what we're going to shoot for we would do we would see if she would be willing to have a later starting session she's able to do that yeah okay

134for some reason i seem to remember a late session being done in the past i don't know whether it was 7 30 or not okay good well thank you any other other any other learning together from folks uh i did have just briefly i wanted to use this time to thank feeling other now yeah i'm in the other other okay to thank the village trustees and the village administrator the village staff and the glen ellen police department and particularly village president mark senec for working collaboratively with rightly with the district in trying to bring a proper resolution to the protests that are occurring on the corner of maine and elm that both protected the constitutional rights of protesters and also secured the safety and well-being of the children i'm very grateful for the village's work

135and the leadership the president seneck showed in working with us okay so we've got some upcoming meetings and the next one is october the 18th it'll be both a public hearing and a regular board meeting right here and then on november 1st we're going to do the committee of the whole board meeting and we've already announced what that topic will be and then on monday november 15th regular board meeting again here at hadley all of these starting at 6 30. are there any items board members wish to present for consideration to a future agenda if not the board does not have a need for another closed session so it is now 902 pm may i have a motion to adjourn the september 20th 2021 regular meeting motion second discussion all in favor say hi hi

136meeting is adjourned thank you very much folks good evening