001okay the public hearing on the 2021 budget will now come to order mrs moak roll call please mr estes mr guzman mrs hill here mr robot here mr curry dr bruno here okay uh mr guzman mr curry and mrs buttimer notified the superintendent that they would not be able to be in attendance at tonight's meeting due to health concerns may i have a motion to allow mr guzman mr curry and mrs butterman to participate by phone for tonight's meeting any discussion um yes jess we need you to stay here she's there she can only hear you i'm here i can't hear anybody but jason though mr estes here mr guzman here thank you the 2021 budget has been on file and conveniently available for public inspection beginning june 23 2020. today the district has not
002received any verbal or written comments on the 2020-2021 budget members of the public who wish to address the board on the budget should check in with mrs smoke the board recording secretary she will call your name when it's your turn to speak speakers are asked to maintain respectful decorum and limit comments to three minutes or less mr smoke is there anyone who would like to make public comment there is not thank you very much and this will may i now have a motion please to close the public hearing i need a second thank you all in favor say hi hi the public hearing is now closed the regular august 24th board meeting will now come to order mr lobeck will you lead us in the pledge of allegiance please i pledge allegiance to the flag
003of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all roll paul mr estes here mrs vladimir jay would you let jess know we need her yes here yes i can't i can't hear anything about jason here mrs hill here mr lobock here mr curry here dr bruno here thank you very much jess i i realize the difficulty what we'll do is we'll have jason kill you in when it's time to when you have an opportunity to speak okay sorry about the difficulty okay the first item is the superintendent report and melissa will give her a report would move to more or less [Music] such as weekly cases per 100 000 people [Music] um [Music] as weekly cases for 100 000
004people changes in case numbers changes in county youth case numbers positivity rates rate of community spread and status of neighboring counties county health department has worked closely with the dupage regional office of education and our local school districts currently they are hopeful that the illinois department of public health will post their metrics this week they want to make certain that everything in the framework is consistent with idph information we look forward to receiving and sharing this information with our advisory team and to learning more about how it will guide us and our decisions here in district 41. i am going to turn it over to dr mccluskey who is going to unmute herself and i'm going to have the microphone here dr mccluskey is joining us virtually and she's going to provide a brief update
005on remote learning and specifically some class size questions um so there has been some questions in regards to the remote learning specifically um in regards to our special area classes i just wanted to assure the board and the community that we continue to work with our teachers in that area our teachers continue to feel confident about working with their students with the class sizes that they have and they'd like to work throughout this week to continue to see how the learning goes they feel again i've had meetings with each of the groups in art music the principals have had conversations with our pe staff and then with our science teachers at first and second grade and they're really feeling good about their structure and the supports that they're going to be putting in place for
006their students so they would like to continue right now as the model has been established guillermo is if you could clarify how some of the classes ended up with very large numbers um within the av schedule particularly those that are on remote or it would have been done rehomed sure so um the reason that that is is because they're seeing all of the students at that grade level during that time period so if you have four sections let's just say of second grade each of those sections is going to have 12 students in it and so they see in order for it to fit into the remote half of the day into that two and a half hour time period that grade level needs to be seen as a whole group and so that's where
007those numbers come from it would be the same if we were in the blended model those classes would still be larger [Music] does that make sense yeah kate um could you clarify guillermo wants to know if we were on blended would this be different no it would be the same um he asked specifically about a group that was up to a class that was at 120 so i think he's referring to the science classes at first and second grade those classes are not supposed to be that large in science for first and second grade our pbl coaches are offering are providing exposure to science within the grade level teachers can focus their two and a half hour time period that they have their students on the literacy and the math what what the teachers had
008decided to do was to have the whole grade level so the whole first grade come together for the initial day to answer questions and to set expectations they thought that it would be best if all kids heard that same message all together versus doing it multiple times throughout the week i think as they as they got into it on the first day they realized that it was a large number of students and at the time they did not have the extension um added that allowed everybody to be muted at the same time um so the first day did not go as they had anticipated and they quickly started making some changes for the afternoon so that the afternoon would go smoother um with that said they will not have a large group like that again
009they are meeting by grade level by building so students will have one synchronous lesson a week and then they will have the other four be asynchronous which was the initial plan um and they will not bring the whole group back together again because obviously that number is too large bruce do you have any questions for dr mccluskey or melissa um yeah i can't hear anything that face there's going to be ask 125 he said it sounds like the specialists are taking over so the pbl coaches are actually teaching science for first and second grade but what will their class sizes be when they don't get them all so it will roughly be the same as all the other specials so it's somewhere between like 40 it's around 40 students i would say uh yeah any
010other question um so i have met with all of the special area teachers including the teachers for the first and second grade science i have given them an opportunity to [Music] split the classes in half however in my conversations with all of those teams pe music art pbl they all feel that the best way for them to instruct the students is in a whole group they feel like they get more face time with their teacher more synchronous learning versus recorded lessons and they really feel like there's a benefit to having the whole group together so at this time all of them would like to keep the larger group i've asked them to monitor that throughout the week and come back with a decision by the end of the week but all of them feel confident
011and feel that it's more beneficial to keep the larger group thank together and bruce while we're talking to our board colleagues at a remote um jess do you have any questions for dr mccleskey or melissa jess can you hear me and you said you didn't have a question at this time no no questions thank you very much and julie any questions make sure your mic's on all right jason so just a fun kitty so we'll be the teachers are gonna continue with the first and second grade science through the class sizes 40-ish this week key different report about how that's working at the end of this week is the decision to be made based on what is seen this week and how to proceed forward katie jason just said reiterated what you said is that
012they're all going to touch base with you by the end of this week they wanted to um see it out the way it is and get back to you and let you know their thoughts on whether they wanted to maintain the plan or look at um breaking those down lower yeah i think right now they're feeling really confident in the work that they're doing with the students but we're only in day two um so in all fairness you know they want to see out the week and you know have an opportunity to see all of their groups in a week's time period to make a final determination jason yeah good well thank you bob would you like to repeat what i had shared since it wasn't um just that it wasn't on the live stream
013okay um just because this is important and want to report on this and apparently the live stream didn't pick it up when i wasn't using the mic so i wanted to provide an update regarding the status of a decision-making metric for dupage county the dupage county health department has created a return to school framework this framework will assist all dupage county school districts with operationalizing the idph document on adaptive pauses which is where we would move to more or less restrictive learning models based on covet metrics related to community spread in dupage county and within our schools of importance to note this framework uses a minimal moderate and substantial levels of community transmission within each of these levels there it is there are various factors that will be monitored such as weekly cases per 100
014000 people change in case numbers changes in county youth case numbers positivity rates rate of community spread and status of neighboring counties the dupage county health department has worked closely with the dupage regional office of education and our local school districts currently they are hopeful that the illinois department of public health will post their metrics this week they want to make certain that everything in the framework is consistent with idph before they release their document to the public we look forward to sharing this information with our advisory team and to learning more about how it will guide us here in district 41 and at that point i turned it over to katie so i'm going to close out my report thank you melissa and board members we're learning okay we now have um no thank
015you thank you very much are you working for us no nothing to report thank you thank you so much thank you mr estes report nothing from me thanks thank you and mrs hill anybody yes um educational um they got back to us and invited both of us to be on that they have assembled some other volunteers in the sixth congressional district are there here leaders educators advocates um so they will be sending us the occasional question when legislation is proposed what do you guys think of us and so what's that unfortunately my more detailed report is not happening so i will move on to the next one okay um the next one is regarding lend dei committee lin is our legislative i can't remember what it stands and they have assembled a dei committee which
016stands for diversity equity and inclusion and um we talked about what their districts are doing under this realm and introduce ourselves and sort of look into the future and we will that group will also have legislation put in front of us um i think that's the crux of that um these will all be cinnamon so they'll all be online and the last one i will report on is the iasb resolution that we submitted and dr and i testified for that a week and a half ago maybe so we do have a chance to appeal and we have indicated that we would like to do so so that we can at least be on the list of resolutions and um so what was the conversation regarding the voting against that proposed resolution um one person questioned
017our research one person was afraid it was going to impede on their second amendment rights which it wasn't it was just asking people to not be smart about safeguard storage so their children can't get them it wasn't had nothing to do with purchasing or you know acquiring remember those are the two that kind of the kind of stuff that doesn't fit neatly squarely they did say there are sections but that this one wasn't similar enough to the exceptions in order for them to recommend so on the substance of it they really didn't have much more than what julie is that this just doesn't look like the other resolutions that the client typically takes up and therefore for that reason they would not recommend it but they did allow for the fact that there are resolutions
018that are exceptions to the more standard resolution it was really it was a but julie has requested an appeal which is a process that is available and we're hopeful then that there will be a load that will be dependent we're waiting here right it sounds like if we're so confused but it sounds like if we bother to appeal thank you julie and jason but i just had one um august 3rd i attended the inclusion subcommittee of the integration and alignment committee of the early learning council of the governor's office of early childhood development union um there was about five different issues on the agenda the two of uh that stuck out mostly were of issues regarding child care discrepancies and the provision of early childhood services in the life of the coca-19 pandemic as of
019the child care of discrepancies studies are being done as to the accessibility of child care for children with disabilities and the impacts that the lack of available childhood options are having on families with the impact of employment parental stress maintaining child care placements in how the illness start program and other developmental other illinois funding mechanisms are can be used to help address this discrepancy issue um i'm gonna it was a scarce talk about how these child care issues are just growing discrepancy issues just growing due to the killer 19 pandemic um and then the state's trying to put in place some funny mechanisms kind of help address this um the next issue that almost stood out to me was the report on the issues of returning early intervention services back to providing services in home
020while early intervention services aren't something that i'm primarily provided through the school district i thought that it was important to note given that a lengthy report was submitted to the committee and there was no real metric that was that had been developed by the state as to what needs to be in place in order for er providers to provide in-house services that there is just not not a metric out there right now too that you can plug in just to have on the visible with x line z or head or to be able to provide these services at home it's just not there and i thought that was that was it was interesting given this kind of what we're seeing also at the school district levels from from the state as well so i thought
021that was interesting to point out as well thank you thank you jason thank you board members i do not have any board reports uh and the ones i would have commented on because they would have done that so thank you okay we will move then to public participation members of the public who wish to address the board should check in with mrs milk the board recording secretary speakers were asked to maintain respect for the court and limit comments to three minutes or less mr milk is there anything wishing to make public is the mic on hold on adam maybe you got it thank you i wasn't planning on speaking but i i have to correct some misinformation that was given my daughter is a first grader at ben franklin she was in the science class
022in the afternoon in the improved session so i know that you said that the teachers set a plan in motion but the afternoon did not go smoother and i've emailed the board and the administration about this but there were 165 165 children in my daughter's science class not 120 165 and that was just when i looked and must mention that class also ended early because of teacher frustration it's counter-intuitive to say that teachers will set or will get more time in more personalized teaching when you're in a grade wide group that could be up to 70 children taught once a week the d41 teacher and student ratio is about 25 kids that's the target and we will be well above that number at 50 as dr mccluskey said but more realistically if it's growing wide
023close to 70. the asynchronous learning portion needs a major overhaul we have teachers in the administration think it's sufficient to feed kids an eight-minute youtube video on science experiments we may not even be teaching we may as well not even be teaching the class as i mentioned in my email my hope is that the public continues to comment and make concerns known to the board and the administration and that we see major changes in how we approach this [Music] action items and the first up is the consent agenda are there any items board members would like to be removed from the consent agenda hearing none may i have a motion to approve the consent agenda which includes employment recommendations resignations and a leave request on the personnel report the school district payment orders of august
0245th through august 18th the foyer report august 4th through august 18th the july 2020 financial reports the august 6 2020 special meeting minutes in the open and closed session board meeting minutes of august 13 2020 as presented motion okay thank you will coleman smoke mrs hill yes yes mr curry no mr guzman [Music] your yes yes mr estes yes dr bruno yes thank you next up is the superintendent's recommendation prove serious safety hazards may i have a motion to approve the resolution for serious safety hazards as presented up yes mr guzman yeah mr curry yeah mr estes yes mrs hill yes mr robot yes yes the next item is approval for remote learning resources they have a motion to approve the purchase of peer deck and quizlet supplemental resources motion motion second yes mr curry
025yeah mr estes yes this is dr bruno yes fiscal year budget at the june 28 2020 board of education meeting the fiscal 2021 budget was approved by the court of education and subsequently placed on display for a period of at least 30 days as required by law the public unit of the budget was found earlier this year may i have a motion to approve the adoption of a 20-21 budget as presented folks to see if they have any questions um so let me turn to guillermo do you have any questions uh no i want to thank eric for converting the questions like to the estimating cases and changes in the budget due to coffee i understand that each time it's the best we can do but given the information that we have potentially changed and
026it just makes sense thank you bruce and jess any questions on the budget speak to um a little bit yeah is this working yeah you guys hear me okay uh yeah jess there would be some cost savings generally it would be my understanding there'd be very little cost savings because keep in mind all of our personnel are still getting paid all the regular expenditures are still happening some potential savings we'd see would be in the area of supplies consumables you know if kids aren't on campus then we're not buying those consumables throughout the year so there'd be some savings there potentially transportation would be a savings area as well uh if we're not running bus routes uh you know for instance in the spring we did not pay what we normally would have paid towards
027busing for the month of march april and may we don't go into in-person learning and have the need for routes that would be the case as well those are the two main areas other than that there really aren't any obvious cost savings that would happen um [Music] no um thanks yeah i also had submitted some questions which we got answers too and i want to thank the district for answering those questions okay with that there's no we'll call on the budget mr curry no mr guzma yeah mrs yes mr estes yes this is hill yeah mr lova yes upcoming meetings monday september 14th then monday september 26 27 pm uh in person here are there any items for consideration for future agendas now go ahead continue to monitor you know this first second grade size
028they can just make sure that everything is going smoothly just on the next a little bit adjusted to make sure everything is going the way that is anticipated in okay i'm billy thank you jason uh bruce you're up um i was just wondering um i'd like to entertain looking at an abatement for uh some of the taxes we're paying because i know a lot of parents are paying quite a bit extra in um in child care costs and uh we have 29 million in the in the bank i was looking maybe to have discussions about possibly abating those money and uh helping alleviate some of the coven-related expenses that our families in taxpayers to pay throughout the district and going on uh and then bruce's item was to consider an abatement on taxes are you
029talking about november and march i'm not sure which one it is that's a good question yeah so just just to clarify you know the decision in december november december is based on what do we want to extend as our levy the abatement process comes later when the dupage county clerk sends us the ask for levy and then the board gets to make that decision at that time in march whether or not they want to basically debate or not collect all of the taxes that we've asked for that's how that works they do not we could have we could have the discussion before that and agree to a base i mean if we've got 29 million in the bank you know we could decide to abate that at any point just have it go active at
030uh whenever we uh whenever you know they decided they would decide to evade their cast is it not true correct bruce what are you are you saying you can have this board could obviously have the conversation in advance of march is that where you're getting at yeah yeah absolutely the board can talk about it whenever they want just the time to move on that and take action on it would be in march okay did you hear that response please yeah um to have the discussion i wanted to know what the faces thought process was on this and all the factors that that would go into this there's one thing to say we have 20 million in reserves it's another thing to discuss all the plans that we have for those reserves um including our fund
031balance and our plans for those funds that are in the access of those fund balances or any property would have you so if we were to have that conversation i think it'd be important to have the fac on the way out as well um for example uh i think my main concern is yeah i think we'd like to hear more from the nvc and if eric has any um information to impart um i i guess it would be willing to i'm not inclined but i guess it would be willing to maybe oh i'm not excited about the idea i think we just saw the budget and we saw what cobit has cost us and what this year's budget already looks like and so i feel like that's irresponsible physically to talk about because we are
032already in whole um but i'm willing to undergo the democratic process um do you have a thought on this please in november or december to have the discussion then if we did have then you'd be more inclined am i summarizing your position correctly okay okay eric can i ask you one last question well if we were to have the discussion in november december as opposed to march what do you see as the upside or downside and what is your recommendation for when that conversation would be most appropriate for the board the way i would explain it is when we bring the levy calculation to the board in november december for that decision you know an abatement can be anything from one dollar to the full level um so abatement is basically where you're saying let's
033say our extended levy is 44 million dollars you can abate 44 million dollars you know that's what an abatement is it's just basically not collecting the taxes that you've extended so i can inform the board in november and december what the levy calculation would permit us to extend and ask for when this board wants to talk about the appropriateness of an abatement purely up to you guys there would be no information that would be new to the board other than as you guys have referenced you know how the impact of the covet expenditure budget is going for us and that's the one year thing i tend to think that's a short-term picture a long-term enterprise that we run as a school district so i don't know that that would really inform me if i was
034a board member i'd be looking long-term um we can prove i mean we can provide that information um waiting till march and for instance we should clarify the clerk sends the levy headed report to me in march and that is a one-week turnaround where we need to fire back at the clerk and say yes we've actually made the decision to do an abatement so that decision would need to be delivered prior to that that one weekend march when that lavietta report comes to my office so the only new information i can imagine providing would just be the impact of this year's republican expenditures otherwise i think it's a long term the way you look at it is a long-term snapshot of where the district is positioned and whether or not an abatement is appropriate does
035that make sense no i i think in the short term you'd have more information um yeah i mean that would be correct what i was going to say as an example would be transportation as it stands right now we're not in a hybrid model and in a hybrid model we're going to have two times our normal transportation costs that's why the budget shows a doubling of that budget well we'll know within the next month or whenever we get back in person when that transportation expenditure lineup is going to start paying more if you come back in a hybrid it's going to pay twice as much so there is more information you'll gather the farther we get into the school year but again that's a short term thing which i think an abatement is more of
036a long-term decision well thank you did you say january february i'm sorry bob i just didn't hear him yeah eric yes i tested january february and eric acknowledged that there would be more information related particularly if we were in the hybrid to transportation okay well i also think the conversation appropriate in that january february period it would still allow us that was i think we delicious have it when we have maximum information there's no real disadvantage to doing it in january and february till march period anyways anyway in my position that we do not have this on the agenda until we've had the living building come back in january but then we do a lot of time to do it so we're not just starting that one expressed an interest in playing it through the
037fac without any traditional thoughts or to this any change of mind on doing this uh no i mean the fac you know they informed you know they with the last board they said that we shouldn't uh uh zero the levies but the board decided and ultimately took responsibility for cutting people's taxes during the levy uh you know for two years in a row um so if they want to make a suggestion that's fine the board ultimately decides is there any reason though to have that done and to have that discussion in november december as opposed to january where the fsc will also have the additional information about any adding i'm fine with january february that time and that seems like it seems like the majority of the board would like that timeline the most so
038i'm finding that all right well thank you besides i think we would need to come up with what are we asking the fbc to look at and look at whatever the fbc's calendar is to see what kind of time frame they have i'm not sure what their next meeting is what's on the agenda for their next meeting so that we have to take that into consideration and and look and make a specific address as questions of charge asked them to look into making sure that there's sufficient time for them to come back to us okay well thank you thank you all right the board does have a need and we will not be taking any action let me determine may i have a motion to return to closed session to confidentially discuss section 2c1 the
039appointment employment compensation discipline performance or dismissal of specific employees including hearing testimony on a complaint launched against employees yeah mr guzman mr curry yeah mr estes yes this is yes mr lobock yes yes thank you very much