001and Miss Mullenbeck, we are ready. Hi everyone and welcome to this meeting of the board of education of Glen Brook High School District 225. Um, Miss Smith, could we please have the role? Mr. Downing, Mr. Glowaki, present. Mrs. Hope here. Miss Mullenbeck here. Mr. O'Hara here. Mr. Shine, present. Dr. Seinberg, here. Six members present. Thank you, Miss Smith. Uh, the next item on the agenda is the approval of the agenda. Uh, Dr. for Grall. Have there been any changes to the agenda since it was posted? There have been no changes. In that case, could I please have a motion to approve the agenda? So moved. Second. All in favor? I. Any opposed? Motion carries. Moving right along. Uh we now have Dr. Grall's superintendent report. Good evening, everyone, and thank you so much for many
002of our students and their families to be here. I've learned that I'm going to try not to repeat what's about to be said. So, I'm going to ask Mrs. Hughes and Dr. Georgees to come to the podium and introduce our student musicians who are here to join us and be celebrated today. Well, thank you very much. So, we are here to celebrate our students who participated in the ILMEA uh conference this past January. So each fall, more than 21,000 music students across the state of Illinois audition for regional honor ensembles in band, choir, orchestra, jazz band, and vocal jazz ensembles. Additionally, students submit um consideration for a comp composition track as well. Students are selected to these regional honor ensembles through a highly competitive audition process that includes the creation of an audition video to
003demonstrate mastery of skills. Our region is called district 7 and is considered to be one of the most competitive districts throughout the state. The top performing students from each region are then selected for audition and placement in all state ensembles. Selected students collaborate with nationally acclaimed guest conductors and peers from all corners of the state, culminating in performances at the conclusion of the annual Illinois Music Education Conference, which is held in lovely Peoria at the end of January. And this year it was probably the coldest um weather that they had had for a while. And um I just wanted to give a quick recap of some of the exciting highlights that the that these students endured during that trip. They had quite the eventful trip down state to Peoria um with a little pit stop
004in Dwight, Illinois, where one of our buses had some challenges. And so we had there's a whole choreography of getting uh people to to the hotel uh including uh some support from Dr. Grall who was there who was able to assist uh for students who are in Poria and to Mr. Chad Davidson who drove back out to Dwight to get the rest of our students. So it was a a whole team event um to get to Poria. But um I also wanted to just share personally I had the opportunity to go down there and it was amazing to listen to the ensembles to all of you. I tried to get to every single room to see um and hear what you were doing and it was just incredible to hear the level of musicianship that
005I heard throughout the time. And I wanted to give one brief favorite moment um which he doesn't know I'm going to say this but it was in the all state chorus and um Abby you might remember she had you all stand in a big circle. Okay. Well he couldn't see it. He was standing right here and I was crying listening to all the uh wonderful voices of our singers. It was really um amazing to hear the high quality performances just even in the rehearsal venues let alone in the concerts that um ensued at the very end. So, we are very pleased to recognize our students here today and they are also supported by their wonderful um music staff that are our fine arts staff that are here with them. We have Cody Halperstad from GBS,
006Brian Boron from GBS, Aaron Kaplan from GBN and GBS and Chad Davidson from GBN. So, let's give them quick a round of applause of thanks and then I want to just uh announce each student. Um, I'll announce our GBN students to say uh, congratulations. So, if you want to just wave when we say your name. So, from GBN we have Aldani in the all state choir, Maddie Mendy in honors choir, Lexi Norton in honors choir, Sydney John in honors orchestra, and Nate Schmolovich in honors orchestra. And from GBS we have Becca vote from all state choir. David Cha in honors band. Sophia Lim in honors band. Patrick Maguire in honors choir. Maddie Preston in honors choir. Santi Robles Berier in honors orchestra. David Schliker in honors orchestra. And Annabelle Langis in composition. Let's give him
007a round of applause. And before anyone heads out, could we ask our directors to come forward, join our students, and we're going to get a full district-wide group picture here. All right, we're definitely gonna need two rows. I don't think I've seen the two together. You just got used to the elbow room. I know. Same person. This is such a good idea. Mr. Davidson, we're losing you in there. Just over the hill. Before you all get to move, there are some wonderful parents here who have been supporting you for all your instruction, your travel, and everything else. How about you all give them a round desire to head out? Thank you guys so much. Have a great day. Brings the house down every congratulations. I love your fine. Sounds like a plain strange animal. Well,
008I got I know ex all the time. There's a couple right there. Yeah. And there's one before I wanted to go on that tour, but I like that was it. priorities. Yes. Yes. Well done. Yes. Very. Thank you. All right. So, as we move on with the agenda, we have two other items for our superintendence report. The first one is just a recognition of some tremendous work that has been being led by Mrs. Bonner and Dr. Pac and that involves the starting phase. Oh, thank you so much. I got a remote. The starting phases of collecting feedback regarding our upcoming stadium renovation projects. Just to kind of recap, last week on Tuesday, we had a dayong event. It began with having three listening sessions for our coaches, teachers, and staff at Glumbrech North to gather
009together with our architects as well as administrators to talk about what the first phase of our plan is to rebuild the Glenchrook North uh stadium. After school, we provided a fourth opportunity for staff feedback. And then in the evening, we had our first community engagement session. members of the Glen Brook North Booster Club were present as well as um some individuals actually who helped out with the referendum back in 2006 who had seen the advertisement and came to to share some thoughts. It was a wonderful experience. Um and then we uh at Glenber South today held our first collection of listening sessions for teachers, staff um and coaches. Um, and we'll be having our first community listening session for the Glen Brook South Stadium on Wednesday. So, any board members who might be interested at
0107:30 p.m., so it's a little later, but at 7:30 p.m., we'll be gathering at the Glenberrook South LYSM uh to hear from our architects, learn a little bit about um what the project entails. And as you kind of see in the picture a little bit here, we have very large uh renderings and maps of the site where you'll get some ideas of some enhancements we're looking at, as well as see the current um I was going to call it a floor plan, but schematic of how the campus is laid out now. Um areas where we've identified um uh some corrections or some growth opportunities for us to address. And then you'll see another rendering of all of the changes implemented in. So you kind of see a before and after. And everyone who attends gets
011three wonderful post-it notes. Now she doesn't know I'm about to ask her this, but Dr. Romano, would you share your microphone with Mrs. Bonner and just allow her an opportunity to talk about these three post-it notes and what that activity looks like at the end of the day? Thank you, Dr. Grall. So, when we had each of the participants in the room, we asked them to take three different colors of Post-it notes, walk around the room, talk with their colleagues, and share with us on our green post-it note what they loved about what they were seeing on the boards. On their yellow post-it note some questions or concerns about what they were seeing on these boards, and then on their blue post-it note, something that we were missing, something that wasn't there, that didn't show
012that they are not seeing. So, we asked them to walk around, write really specific pointed feedback for us, stick it on the board. Um, and we did that for each of the listening sessions we've had thus far. We got some really good feedback. And it's interesting to see you each stakeholder has a different use of the stadium or the area around the stadium. And so, there were conversations or uses that we could not possibly have anticipated or known about had it not been for these listening sessions. So, any board member who might want to see what this looks like in action, your next opportunity is at 7:30 on Wednesday night. And I know when we get to board reports, um I know Mr. Downing was able to join us for the Glen Brook North gathering.
013So, I'll also provide him that opportunity to share some additional feedback. You know, you could do it now or the board report section. It's up to you. What do you prefer, sir? Uh, I'll just just as long as we're on the topic, I'll just say that um the the sessions were good. Um, and I it was interesting because a lot of this there was a lot of similarities between the parents association and the booster club. But what I also liked is at the booster club meeting is that afterwards they asked everybody sitting at tables and they said, "Give us one thing uh positive, one thing that maybe you think we could work on." And there was it was kind of a lot of consensus already. So it was good. Well done. So to continue building
014on community feedback and also feedback from the architects, um a group of about eight administrators traveled across the region for a lovely stadium field trip or tour. Uh we had the opportunity to visit uh Downer's Grove North. We visited um Battavia High School and then Sterling High School. And as we were making our way around the areas, what we were looking for were different design elements of recently remodeled stadiums. Um, that might be helpful for an environment like ours that might be a little uh a little older in nature. What was really cool though was being able to talk to folks who oversaw many of those renovations and asking them the popular question. If you could do it just a little bit differently, what would you change? And each whether it's an athletic director or
015buildings and grounds person or a chief school business official or principal, each of them were able to identify things that they would do slightly different. And that really is helpful because we're talking about areas that have been um substantially remodeled over the last five years, so very very recently. And as we're going to do this project, we want to leverage their wisdom and then also fill in all of the feedback that we've gotten to have perhaps a destination stadium experience across Willow Road, all in the communities of Glen View and Northbrook. Um, so I just have here a a few pictures to give you an idea of things uh and the level of detail that we got down to. Um, when we talk about going to visit stadiums, we literally were digging into the design
016of the stairs and the structure of the non-slip or the slip resistant surfaces. We were going to the back of the stadiums realizing how much storage opportunity there is as well as uh possibilities for creating team rooms. Um and everything integrated in a single stadium footprint as opposed to separate out buildings. Um, we dug into lighting structure, understanding uh not only the benefits of transitioning to LED lights, which we've experienced in a lot of places in the district, but ways that you can actually add accent lighting uh onto all of your polls so that you can celebrate uh touchdowns or other celebrations that happen in our different sports. Uh we talked about how to incorporate track activities into the stadium as opposed to outside of the stadium. What is what is restricted within the gates?
017what is um next to those gates. We talked about um access opportunities for the community. What parts of the the setup when you're creating a complex is accessible not only to students but but community members as well. Um and then a lot of discussion on press boxes. Uh understanding accessibility requirements, understanding the uniqueness of different sports um for the amount of visibility to the field that you need. um recognizing that one uh press box that added windows on both sides. That was great until they realized how the sun rised or rose and sets and realized that they had to block the windows the whole time because it created the visibility issue. So small things that can make some really big impacts. Um, so we have a lot of pictures, board members. Uh, you have a
018link to them. Um, in your bullet points from Friday, and I will just give uh uh credit to everyone who went. Um, it was it was a wet day. Um, and we we drove through some pretty significant rain and for whatever reason, um, it just so happened that by the time we got to each field, it was dry. Um, and then when it was time to go, it started raining again. So, it all worked out. It was a real fun experience. And we're going to continue leveraging not only what we have learned from our architects, not only what we gather from our families and our coaches and individuals use the space, but learning what is best practice. There is no guide book with respect to this. So kind of building our own and and looking
019forward to our next iteration of sharing um renderings uh towards the end of April, beginning of May. So that concludes my report. Okay, that's all very exciting. Um we got a little bit of a preview of the board reports from Mr. Downing. Um did you want to share anything else about the booster club meeting or the um uh parents association meeting that did not have to do with the stadium? It was all it was all focused completely focused on that. Okay. Did any other board member have anything that they wanted to share? Well, the one thing that I want everyone to remember is that we have a policy committee meeting on Thursday. It's going to be very exciting. It's our last one with um the our facilitators from IASB. So, if you're a policy maven
020and you have nothing to do on Thursday, come join us at four o'clock in the room next door. Okay. Um that takes us then to the next item on our agenda which is recognition of community visitors. No, we do not have any community visitors who wish to speak this evening. Uh that's fine. If there's anything that um you would like to share with us, you can always shoot us an email, leave us a voicemail. Um uh so we look forward to um getting comments from you in any any way that you're comfortable. Item six on our agenda is the consent agenda. Uh Dr. Grall, have there been any changes to the consent agenda that was circulated? There have been no um structural changes. I do want to just comment, we uploaded a new copy of
021the um school operating budgets memo. Uh we received some feedback from board members requesting clarification on the overall percentage increase. So, we've improved that and that is included in uh diligent now. Okay, great. Did anyone have any comments on the consent agenda? In that case, could I get a motion, please, to approve the consent? Second. Mr. Downing? Yes. Mr. Glowaki? Yes. Mrs. Hope? Yes. Mr. O'Hara? Yes. Mr. Shine? Yes. Dr. Steinberg? Yes. Miss Mullenbeck? Yes. Seven members voting yes. That takes us then to our discussion action agenda. And the first item on the action agenda is the revised 2627 school calendar. Dr. Grall. Thank you so much. Um this evening we are presenting a revised calendar for the 2026 to 2027 school year which is next year. The board might recall that we originally presented
022um a uh calendar proposal which was approved in the fall. Since that time there is one primary change that I wanted to highlight and then I will turn it over to Mr. Bag. um which is that it is anticipated that the general election day in November 2026 will be a statewide school holiday. Uh we are scheduled to be in session that day. Um so in cooperation and partnership with our elementary feeder districts, we learned that most of them are already out. Um and as a result, you will see a uh swap of a holiday in November for the November required holiday. Um Mr. Breag also has some other information to share and then we'll be happy to answer any questions you have. Absolutely. Good evening. Um, as we as Dr. Grall noted last October, we
023brought forward that this was going to be the first time that we were going to have our final examinations before winter break. And during that, we thought we had some creative solutions as we embarked upon this new journey. And with those creative solutions, we would be gathering feedback. Uh two of the most important pieces that we have. Number one, with the examinations occurring before winter break, it's how did we exit out of those. So by that I mean usually we have an institute day somewhere near our final exams uh towards the back end. This year we ended on a Friday and we had final or excuse me we had our institute days when when students returned the same time in order to do that. One of the primary reasons was this idea that we liked
024ending the semester on a gold day so that we had a balance of blue and green and gold days across courses. That required a little bit of a creative offering known as an eight period day. Um, I will say that we gathered feedback after that experience and for the first time since I've been in this district, the feedback was overwhelmingly um in one direction by both staff and students and that was do not do that again. That did not work out very well. Um, we were very appreciative of their feedback and their honesty and quite honestly um their positivity that they saw what we were trying to do. They saw that we were trying to honor a an important piece to our schedule, but it just didn't work. So, a couple changes and refinements based
025upon this feedback. We we had well over 350 staff members and well over 900 students weigh in. And primarily, they said, "Hey, the we know we've long held to some of these ideas, especially ending with blue and green and gold balanced that it's okay. we can make adjustments. It's better that we have consistency in our schedule. So, moving forward for next year or this uh upcoming calendar that we're proposing, we would like to eliminate the 8 period day option before the start of our final exams. And we would like to adjust the end of the first semester by one day. Essentially, we are moving um it was ending on Friday, December 18th. We are going to move that to December 17th. That will allow us to again move an institute day to the uh the
02618th, but students final day of the semester will be the 17th. And then their first day coming back will be Tuesday, January 5th rather than Wednesday, January 6th. So they still um have a shortened week coming back from break. Um, however, we're able to better end this semester and start the semester in alignment with what our students and our staff recommended. That does have us splitting up the final or excuse me, the two institute days as noted here. Again, this year we had them both. So, um, at the start of semester 2, this will break them apart. One will be at the end of semester 1 and one will be at the start of semester 2. Also, as we were refining that work, we found uh as Dr. Grall noted, the Senate Bill 351 11,
027excuse me, and what we noted was a shift in Columbus Day as he mentioned and the election day. So, that was a swap. The important piece to that is that making these changes, especially this one, allowed us to start school and end school as we previously approved in October. So there's no change to the start of school and the the final day of school. That's really important in our design that we don't disrupt what might already be out there for families. So those are the major changes. Again, um just as a reminder, this does still adhere. There's the same 177 student uh attendance days, and we do um start and end the school year as previously determined. So with that questions from the board. Uh Mr. Gwaki, no. Mr. Downey, Mr. O'Hara, Miss Hope, Mr.
028Shine, Dr. Steinberg, you ran the table. Oh, there you go. There's always a first. Thank you very much. All right. Thank you, Mr. Brite. Uh the next item on the agenda is the staffing plan for the 2627 school year. Dr. Grall. All right. Before the board this evening is the first reading of the staffing plan for next school year. Um to be clear, the staffing plan represents the overall needs in order to operate the school district between July 1st, 2026 and June 30th, 2027. When we refer to um staff members, that includes our teachers, our administrators, instructional assistants, buildings and ground staff members, security personnel, clerical and specialists um and several other employee groups um that ultimately um include full-time positions. When you look at a staffing plan, sometimes it can be a little confusing.
029we see fractions of individuals um and that's really a function of an individual's full assignment even though um the overall recommendation um and forgive me I'm just pulling it up right here for example the recommendation at Glenberg South is for 276.8 8ft FTE. Um, that doesn't mean that we have uh 277 individuals because we have a wide range of folks who might work part-time positions or split them with other staff members and so on and so forth. Um, from a a licensed perspective um uh specifically a teacher, a teacher uh teaches five classes if they're full-time in the first semester and five classes in the second semester. each one of those classes year long is 0.2. Um and so when we see um odd numbers, it might mean that an individual teaches um fewer uh
030sections in one semester and maybe more sections in another semester and so on and so forth. Um overall, and then I will ask um Dr. Georgees and Mrs. Hughes to just share some feedback about their building. The staffing plan is heavily developed by the school-based team. So through the leadership of Dr. Georgees and Mrs. Hughes, they begin working on the staffing plan as early as November when we're starting to have conversations with our rising freshman teachers uh that teach at our respective middle schools and junior highs and then students will ultimately go through the process of registering for classes and um overall we staff based on student requests. That's why we see changes in departments from year to year. If we have higher requests, we might see a trend or a change in one department
031going down and another department going up in terms of staffing needs. Now, there's always one little caveat with that. Some of our programs have space limitations. Um, we just recently were talking about culinary uh over at Glenrech North. when you only have two instructional spaces for culinary and they have a cap uh in the mid20 of students, um then even if you added more staff, you you only have two labs. Um and so there are some restrictions that apply there as well as in other areas. Um but at this point, um I want to highlight the overall numbers uh for staff can be found on those tables. I know they can be a little uh hard to read so it might help to zoom in. We separate it by um department or position classification and
032then building. So you see every position that exists. One area that you might be wondering is the term contracted and just wanted to highlight there that some of our positions uh specifically in what we refer to as related services. So those are individuals uh providing occupational therapy, physical therapy, uh vision, support, hearing, itinerant support. Um some positions we partner with True North in order to staff or NSSEO or other special education cooperatives. Um so we do contract out for that. We also as a district contract out um print services for our print shop currently operated by Xerox. Um and then we also outsource our bookstore operations. Um in order to have all staff on a single document, those are listed there, but you will see that they are highlighted as contracts. Um the final thing
033uh before I turn it over is that you will notice on the license staffing we have a reserve amount and that means that we intentionally set aside 1.0 to FTE for um additional teaching needs that we don't know about today. Um that could be because of a higher number uh than anticipated uh amount of students who are moving into the district. Um changes in IEP needs, students returning to our district, students changing their their overall interest in registration that can be accommodated. Um and so we do use that reserve um each year to some extent and then it resets. Uh but just wanted to call that to the attention especially for our new board members who might not have heard that term reserve before. With that said, uh Dr. Georgees, you want to start with
034South? Sure will. Um first of all, I'd like to take a moment to thank the staffing teams at the building and district level. Um these teams are comprised of all of the associate principles at Glenrook North and Glenrook South in addition to uh Skip, our director of special education. Um and uh we also have support from Dr. Laura Cummings um on the work of our our one staffing team for educational support personal and special ed. So I would like to thank them. Um they do a tremendous amount of work along with all the school counselors in the buildings that are working directly with our students and families to determine what their requests are. Um so that we're able to have a staffing plan that is truly directed by our students and their needs. Um so
035I'd really like to take a moment to thank all of them. Um at GBS you see that for the upcoming year we have a decrease of 2.7 FTE. Um this is a direct result of what we have seen coming in terms of the enrollment decline for Glen Brook South. Um I am very very happy and proud to report um that we were able to address the enrollment decline through retirements. Um, so we did not have to um have any situations with full-time personnel. Um, we were able to retain all of our full-time personnel. Um, and as we are anticipating more retirements in the future years with our further enrollment decline, uh, I anticipate that that our plan would be to try and leverage those retirements as much as possible. So, we were successful in doing
036that this year. Um, and you see it impacts across our core departments differently than our electives. As uh, Dr. Gabbell alluded to students change their interests and their requests and therefore our elective departments adapt accordingly. Um so that's the biggest update from South this year and overall at Glenberrook North we are increasing by 0.9 and you can see how that similar to what Dr. George was just describing about elective interest there's just natural movement throughout that um as well as in some of those core areas where they also offer elective courses. So um even in those core areas there are some times where um elective courses change in the number of requests that are are um indicated by students. So at this point the staffing plan is being presented for its first reading. The reason
037why um with spring break we do two meetings in a row is uh there are some statutory uh statutoily defined timelines that we need to adhere to. Um, so the board would be meeting next week to formally approve the staffing plan, but we are um open to any questions that you might have across any areas. Mr. O'Hara. Uh, no, thank you guys so much for everything you've done. Um, I just I just as a note, I I note that at GBS we I know we've had trouble in the fine arts department with um not trouble, but it's been declining and I noticed that that one popped up. So, kudos. Nice. That is a testament to the fine arts team. They've been doing a lot of work with our sender schools. Uh for example, uh the
038Glen View Sings is one of the most popular days we've had. Oh, I wish they were still here. Um for their congratulations. They've been putting forth a lot of effort um to both culminate relationships with our feeder schools and their families and to develop their program. So really proud of their work. Miss Hope, Mr. Shine, uh two questions. Um first one's as a request on the table on the last page could you attach FTEES next to the salaries? Absolutely. And also could you um include for 25 26 to the level we know it. I mean, I know we're we're in a run rate situation right now, but be it budget or some estimate between budget and where where we are today. I mean, I know we've spent whatever 70%. We've got some unknown, but just
039if we could see see that would be great with the FTEES. Um, and then my question is in the academy and thanks for all this detail. It's It's a little hard to see it all, but it's nice to have it. The academy, where is that? Um, the academy is on page four of the memo. Um, like a Yeah. Oh, no. I You know what? I'm sorry. I was confusing the south with north with a reduction of 2.8 to two. And I see it's 2.8 2.82. So, all good. Thank you. No problem. Steinberg. Dr. Steinberg. Thank you. I I know this is kind of crazy to put it together. So, I appreciate you all thanking everybody that's involved on this. I I do have a few questions of things that we don't see here that that
040sometimes are I mean to me it's also interesting that our core staffing gets done with the with the reduction and and students are picking other subjects. Now, how are we what's the average class load mean? Are we keeping between the two districts, you know, in terms of students being able to have classes that have similar size? And and I know I know this is just to finish the do a question because on one side is the equity for the students and on the other side is for the teachers as well. So, how how are you are we managing that? Yeah, we do uh follow different class sizes by departments that we work through to make sure that we are both meeting the requirements of the space. As we've kind of alluded to before, sometimes rooms
041are just built uh with only so many stations and others uh and in addition to what the appropriate class load is for the workload of the content area that's being uh presented. So, we do work within guidelines for that to make sure that we're similarly situated. And across Willow Road, um, we utilize a planning spreadsheet that puts Glen Brook North and Glen Brook South side by side for every course code. And as Miss Hughes and I are working with our teams, we're seeking similar sizes across classes and divisitors as much as possible. We will own that it's not always possible and that's based on how many students request and when you divide that by those class maxes uh, Miss was referencing, it doesn't always come out even. But when we get to some um larger
042classes um and we have more divisitors in there, we try to look across the line and say, "Okay, she's an average size of 22, maybe I'm 24. Do we add another section to get us closer together?" So, we're very thoughtful in that as we're distributing the the FTE we have available. That's great. I appreciate that. And and we still have a few classes where if it's not offered in one of the buildings, a student can take it in the other building, right? Yes, that is correct. Um each year the staffing team we work together um to identify uh coursework that is either intended to be hosted at one building for example they do a lovely job of hosting Hebrew um for the district um and other courses where perhaps they're a capstone opportunity uh and
043there's just not enough at one building um in which case we collaborate together in our communication to see which campus has the greater number of students of interest and then we work with those families and students to see if they're able or interested in traveling. Those are limited. We try to keep students in their home campus and we try to run uh all the classes that we can at their home campus, but we never want to deprive a student of a capstone experience. So, we work really hard uh in conjunction to to do what we can or if there's a facility need that um dictates that too. That sounds great. Thank you. U Mr. Gwaki. Oh, thank you. Uh I agree with my colleague about the FTS if you could add that. Love table four.
044Thank you guys for assembling all this and everything. If we could also include I guess financial projections based on what we know to fill in the chart for 20 uh for the upcoming year. What percent for 25 26 and 26 27 based on what this looks like just helps put a context on it. I know it's subject to change but um the salaries and benefits as you put them in the percentages were very helpful. Uh, other question I had is, is there any legislation we should be mindful of that may impact our plans going forward that we should just keep an eye on as well too? And maybe that could be footnoted or something on here uh to help us as well too because I know previously we increased FTE and the special education based
045on and in uh English as a second language programs because of state mandates and everything. So that'd be helpful to know. And then last but not least for the principles I guess um looking at I guess building off of the class sizes and everything noticing some differences I guess where you've um maybe it's the class number of sections each school has because it seems like there is a disparity between south and north in terms of mathematics sciences and uh counselors and as the population is getting closer and closer together what Is is there any areas of concern there or how are you treating that? And that may be more of a question for North. But so in terms of the core subjects, math, science, English, social studies, those are still very much driven by student
046requests. And as my enrollment declines and her incre hers increases, you'll kind of see those levers adjust accordingly. Um, now in some of the core subjects, as Dr. as Mr. Miss Hughes alluded to, there are electives. So even though you might see a slight decrease in grad requirement courses, uh there might be an increase in taking a fourth year of math or taking a fourth year of science or joining journalism or yearbook. Um and and that sometimes negates the the reduction you would see from an enrollment decline if those electives have a tendency of increasing. In terms of related services, we have been having those conversations, tracking those case load goals that are part of our staffing norms very carefully. Um, in fact, this year we're sharing um a part-time counselor. Um, but we will
047be tracking those into the coming years to make sure that our case loads don't drop too low, in which case we would need to adjust that related services FTE. Glad you guys are sharing lessons learned because that's kind of the point in terms of what's being effective. No other questions. Thank you, Mr. Downing. Um, just go on Skip and Pete's uh question. Uh, it' be interesting to see you have FTEES and then contracts just be the breakdown in costs between the two. So, we have a few important takeaways. Um, just to make sure I have properly documented them, in table four, we will look to add the 25 to 26 school year for salaries and benefits. Across all of those four years, we will look to add the FTE total. Um, and we'll divide it
048by licensed and non-licensed staff uh that was um utilized. Um and then there was also a request to note um statutory changes um as well as financial as best as we can. Um, I do want to let the board know the only statutory change as of right now that um has been um uh incorporated into Illinois school code is an increase in world language uh credit requirements. There are other um pieces of legislation that might further impact FTE um but a lot of that is actually on the educational support uh side. So our non-licensed staff um but we will make note of both of those uh to give context. Did I capture that right Mr. Downing? Okay. And RJ just clarifed but and you can note that for the 26. Yeah. So we can we
049can basically increase um those two portions of the budget by the projected uh salary base increase just to kind of put it in perspective and then we can um uh reflect an updated number in September. Dr. Steinberg had a follow-up. Yeah. So maybe something else to these points that my colleagues are making that could be helpful especially when we compare schools it's you know we talk about FD all right and but really we can go from FD to number of classes that an FD means from number of classes to number of students that are covered by the SFD and I'm not talking about micro for each section because it gets when you say I'm going back to to Mr. You know what is coming when we compare comment when we compare like pick English right
050everybody needs to take English so you look at the two schools I said why is there's 10 10 FT difference but what is the meaning of 10 FD so if your school has a thousand students more than the other school and the average FTE is something it makes it easier to understand and say well we have these differences because we have x number of students and and and sorry for the nerd comment but it's a stepwise function at some point we lower one limit and we lose one kind of You're welcome. You lose one kind of FD and some but it makes it easier to understand when you have that that extra asterisk on the side that so we can add some narrative regarding the difference between schools just to provide some context there and
051Mr. has follow. Is there um a target for a school district um the ratio of um salary and benefit expense to total budget and do you have any context say on where we've been, you know, historically? This this kind of feels, you know, like kind of in that mid70s point, but I'm just curious. It's a great question. So you never as a school district want your salaries and benefits to increase 78%. Um so that's the high level. Um we tend to float as you can see in the last 3 years. Um and I'll even go down a little more between 72 and 76% we do have a longit a longitudinal data chart as part of the budget book. Um where I think we have six or seven years uh that are listed in there. Um,
052but we can also provide that as a as a reference point as well. But 78% is is your high percentage. Something you guys like look at or are concerned about or is it just is it just kind of like the mass of, you know, just some some years it calculates out like this or or when you see that you go, "Oh, this is going to become problematic." We do a five-year projection every year to monitor it. Um, and that can we're currently in a state of declining enrollment. So the the practical reality is as you have less students in some cases 100 or 200 less students that will require less staff to support it. Let's say we weren't in that kind of a situation. We have to monitor that because that would dictate um whether
053or not um something needs to change. Maybe the the number of staff you have, maybe the approach to compensation that you're you're navigating through. Um and so for at least the last seven or eight years we've been very closely monitoring that ratio and we've proactively made um decisions Dr. George has mentioned we try to leverage attrition whenever possible. Um, and so as we start to see us having a a ratio challenge, that might be when you have a choice of do you replace or do you not replace and there's some level of discretion, meaning it's not directly tied to instructional courses or do you run courses consistently at 23 as opposed to 19. That's when you start to really have to hone in on those decisions. Mhm. Okay. So, this will come back on consent
054at the meeting next week, correct? And as of right now, there are no large presentations or anything scheduled for the next meeting. Um, it is possible that the meeting will primarily be a consent agenda. Um, and then, uh, possibly a closed topic. uh but I don't anticipate anything major and that's just the nature of the meetings back to back. Okay, very efficient. Uh the next item we have on our agenda is possible topics for future meetings. Um nothing next week apparently. Um but I mean if you desire we you know what there will be a wonderful report out on the policy committee on the policy committ with the IASP. That's right. We Matt and I Matt and I will definitely have a robust presentation. What time is the report and does require a quorum? Uh
055um four. Yeah. Do we um do we have anything that's scheduled just to so that we know what's coming down the pike at this point? Um we do have some topics um over in uh April. We will be discussing um the special education program evaluation that was performed by the district management group. Um we will also be receiving a few other updates and I'm just blanking on the exact topics but that were a result of board discussion. Oh, one of the topics was um further talking about capturing student voice um in our decision-m um so that will be a big focus. Um and then as as crazy as it might be, if that's the right term, we will be nearing the discussion of um approving bid specifications or approving the administration to seek bid specifications
056on the stadium renovation projects and the um uh accelerated culinary uh space uh bids for Glenberrook North. So that will be another topic. Excellent. Um the next item on our agenda is a closed session. Um we will have closed I don't know if we'll have anything coming out of close tonight. I don't think so. No action. Okay. Um so this evening the board of education will enter into close session to discuss sensitive matters as allowed under the Illinois Open Meetings Act. There will be no action taken following close session this evening. At this time, I'll entertain a motion to consider the appointment, employment, compensation, discipline, performance, or dismissal of specific employees of the public body or legal counsel for the public body, including hearing testimony on a complaint lodged against an employee of the public
057body or against legal counsel for the public body to determine its validity, and to consider collective negotiating matters between the public body and its employees or the representatives or deliberations concerning salary schedules for one or more classes of employees. So moved. Second. All in favor? I. Any opposed? Motion carries. All right. Um, so we will take a five minute break and go into closed. Two.