Board of Education - Jan 26 2026

001We don't have form do we? Yes. Four to seven. Yeah. Great. And Miss Meletti. Uh hello everyone and welcome to this meeting of the board of education of the Glenberg High School District 225. Um, Miss Smith, could you please call the role? Mr. Downing, present. Mr. Glowaki, present. Mrs. Hope here. Miss Mullenbeck here. Mr. O'Hara. Mr. Shine. Dr. Steinberg, four members present. The next item on the agenda is approval of the agenda. Um, Dr. Gravel, have there been any changes to the agenda since it was circulated? There have been no changes. In that case, could I please have a motion? I move. Second. All in favor? I I. Any opposed? Motion carries. At this time, I'd like to take a brief moment uh to remember um and commemorate uh one of our beloved employees. Um

002this evening. It is with a heavy heart that we pause to remember and honor the life of Miss Anna Pereira, a beloved member of the Glenberg South family who passed away on January 11th. Miss Anna dedicated 23 years to Glenn South, inspiring students and staff alike with her love, patience, kindness, and unwavering commitment to the school. She was a graduate of Glen Brook North High School and a current member of our multilingual staff. She was a well-known and beloved member of our school community, having served our district in numerous ways over the years. Her dedication as a family language liaison, as well as her support for staff, students and families in the student services and deans offices, special education through IEP meetings, the enrollment office, and at athletic events made an indelible mark on the

003Glenrook community. Her love for this district and its students, staff, and families was evident in all she did. Her loss is devastating to GBS, and she will be deeply missed. At this time, I ask that we observe a moment of silence to honor the life and memory of Miss Anna Pereira. Thank you. We'll now move on to the superintendent report. Thank you so much, Miss Melbeck, and welcome to all of our visitors joining here for today's meeting. We have a lot of celebrations. Um, and we're going to get started uh by inviting up Mrs. Tomlinson, our athletic director at Glenrook North, and her amazing coaching staff who shall introduce one by one for their accomplishments uh being recognized by their professional associations or the Illinois High School Association. This is Tomlinson. And Molly, I noticed

004that our mic is not on by you. U Mr. Bree Tag, would you mind sharing your mic with Molly? Thank you so much. Thank you. Good evening. We're going to start this evening by congratulating Py Peggy Holichek for being named the Illinois High School Tennis Coaches Association Girls 2A Regional Coach of the Year. It is my distinct honor to recognize Peggy Halichek. Being named the girls 2A regional coach of the year is a testament to Peggy's technical mastery of the sport and her unwavering commitment to her players. In a sport that requires immense mental toughness and individual discipline, Peggy has fostered a team environment where every athlete feels empowered to compete at their highest level. This award proves what we have known for a long time. Peggy isn't just coaching tennis. She is building champions

005of character. We are incredibly proud to have her leading our program. Congratulations, Peggy, on being named the Illinois High School Tennis Coaches Association Girls 2A Regional Coach of the Year. On with the celebrations. Next to celebrate is Julie Holbeck being named into Illinois High School Girls Gymnastics Coaches Association Hall of Fame inductee. This February at the state girls gymnastics meet in Palatine. Julie Homeach will officially be inducted into the Hall of Fame. This isn't just an award for a single season. It is a lifetime achievement award that recognizes years of dedication, mentorship, and excellence in gymnastics. Julie has spent her career elevating the standards of the sport and shaping the lives of hundreds of young gymnasts. To see her name etched amongst the great the greatest in Illinois history is a proud moment for our

006entire community. Julie, we are so grateful for the heart and soul that you've poured into this program. Your influence will be felt here for years to come. Congratulations on getting inducted into the Hall of Fame. Thank you. Shortly, last but not least, Tiffany Kim being named as IHSA's 2024 2025 girls bad mitten coach of the year. Finally, I'm thrilled to celebrate Tiffany Kim for being named the IHSA girls bad mitten coach of the year last year. To be recognized by the state association is one of the highest honors a coach can receive. Tiffany's energy and strategic brilliance have turned out our have turned our bad mitten program into a powerhouse of precision and sportsmanship. She has an incredible gift for identifying potential in her athletes and pushing them to the to exceed even their own

007expectations. This recognition is welld deserved and it highlights Tiffany as one of the premier coaches in the state of Illinois. Congratulations Tiffany for being named girls coach of the year. Thank you. Congratulations to everybody. Thank you. Thank you so much, Peggy, Julie, and Tiffany for coming. I know there's some special people. Do they want to come and say hi again? Not so much. [laughter] With that said, we are so fortunate to be um they have so many distinguished educators and coaches with us in our district. It's wonderful for their recognitions to be acknowledged throughout the state and look forward to seeing many more recognitions in the future. As we move on to the next part of our agenda, it's an exciting time um and also a sad time. We're seeing and celebrating the retirement of

008some of our long-term educational administrators. That includes Miss Don Hall, our long-term instructional supervisor for career and technical education at Glenberrook South and also retirement of Mr. Jeff Rylander, the science instructional supervisor also over at Glenberrook South. But similar to our coaches, we have we are fortunate to have some staff members that will be introduced in just a moment by Dr. Georgees who have been with the district for many years who have leveraged their talents in the classroom who have built amazing connections with our students with their colleagues and now will be stepping forward into new leadership roles. So with that said, Dr. Georgees, would you like to introduce our new is of CTE at Glenberrook South? I sure would. Um, this is truly truly the highlight of the day today for Glen Brook South

009and it is my honor to introduce and announce Mr. Brian Whan as the next instructional supervisor of career and tech ed at Glen Brook South. Brian has dedicated the past 23 years. Did we do the math right? Yep. 23 years um to Glenberrook South serving our community in such a wide range of roles. Um he's been an instructional assistant to CTE business teacher, a basketball and football coach. Um he's a member of our school improvement team and he is sponsoring the investments club. In addition, he has also served the broader professional community as serving as the director of NServe career exploration summer courses. Simply put, Brian is part of the fabric of Glen Brook South. His career reflects the very heart of focus area four of our strategic plan, the intentional development of leaders from

010within. Brian holds a bachelor of science and business administration and marketing from Ball State University, a masterers of arts and secondary education from Lewis un Lewis University and a master's degree in educational leadership from Concordia University in Chicago. Brian's passion for teaching is rooted in his experiences as a high school and collegiate athlete where he learned the power of teamwork, accountability, and perseverance. Those same values shape his approach to education today. He is a relationship-driven leader who believes strongly in building a culture of belonging, setting clear expectations that are fair but firm, and creating environments where students and staff can thrive. Brian's colleagues describe him as articulate, thoughtful, thorough, steady, and authentic. During interviews, he spoke powerfully about relationships and culture, not as an initiative, but as a norm and way of being. And I

011get the privilege of experiencing this daily as Brian's classroom is right across the hall from my office. his interactions with students and his classroom culture is a model to others and brings me joy on a daily basis. He's usually my my awesome of the day giggling as he talks to kids as they're coming in. Our administrative team is so grateful for Brian's long-standing commitment to Glen Brook South and we are excited for the leadership, humility, and vision he is bringing to this next chapter of the CTE department. So, please join me in congratulating Mr. Brian Whan. And Brian, can we have you come on up and see all of us? And we'll just shake your hand real quick to celebrate that. Shake your hand. Yeah. He's like, "Okay, so then Brian, before you sit down,

012is there anyone here that you'd like to recognize that has joined you for this gather? Uh I don't even know where to begin, but um my wife Emily is here uh with me. She has supported me. Um you know, it's like one of those awards speeches where they people get run off the stage because they thank so many people. Uh I I don't even know where to start and where to end. So I'm just incredibly grateful for this opportunity. People from my department took time out of their evening to come support me. Um Dawn, your support all over the years. um and our administration, our board. Um I'm just I'm so happy to be in this position. I'm so happy and thrilled to be uh part of this community. Um I was a student here.

013My parents moved here in 1979. This place was part of the reason why they did that. Um so my kids are going to experience all the great things that uh the Glumbers have to offer. So I I just I can't express the amount of gratitude that I have. So thank you. Congratulations again. and Dr. Georgees. Next up, we'd like to recognize our new instructional supervisor of science. Yes. So, it is my honor to announce Miss Jill Serling as the next instructional supervisor of science at Glen Brook South. During the last, we're checking again, 14 years about, we're doing okay. um of her tenure at GBS, Jill has served numerous roles beyond teaching in the science department and we're only going to name a few because we only have so many minutes, but she has been

014the backbone of the Titan advisory forum. I am always grateful for her support and leadership on that team. Um she's been part of our professional learning committee, our student voice committee. She's also served at a as a science olympiad sponsored sponsors of many other organizations. Um she's done habitat for humanity trips. She sponsored women instead in STEM and she serves the district uh as part of our GA leadership. Jill has left an indelible mark on GBS and is the epitome of focus area for the strategic plan to internally develop our leaders of tomorrow. Beyond her school-based leadership, Jill has served as the president of Chem West since 2016, connecting educators around the Chicagoland area by providing them with professional learning opportunities. She also serves on the board of a national chemistry nonprofit and was the

015planning chair for Chem Ed, which was a week-long international conference for science educators. Jill has contributed to the culture of Glen Brook South by being a beacon of servant leadership. She is absolutely the go-to person not just for the department, but also for the school. She's always striving to keep us organized. She works with the administrative team to improve systems and she's always providing a positive smile and support to all. Jill began her pursuit of being an educator when she earned a bachelor of science degree in chemistry from Illinois State University. She then continued her pursuit of learning by earning a master's in arts um in school leadership from Roosevelt University and an ESL certification from the University of St. Francis. The leadership team at Glen Brook South is overjoyed to welcome such a committed,

016hard-working, and servant leader such as Joe. I am confident that the science department is in good hands, and I cannot wait to see what we can accomplish together for our students. Please welcome or please congratulate Joe. [laughter] That was a surprise. Yeah. Oh, chill. Chill. You have a fan club. [laughter] I like these new competitions. [laughter] And Jill, it's going to be the same question for you, too. Anyone? I mean, there are people with signs. Well, I have a cheering section back there. But I also have my family, my parents, my nephews, my siblings, one of one of the two there. And as much as I'd say like people from past and present science department, but also like you guys, is for me not just [laughter] so thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Right. Congratulations

017again, Jill. At this point, for those who have been recognized but would desire to continue on perhaps in your agenda this evening, you are welcome to leave. Otherwise, you are welcome to say we have an exciting presentation of the master facility plan, student absenteeism. Look at him go. Wait, there's more. [laughter] There's so much more. Yeah, I got up to you. [laughter] There's someone else that came in. You know, we still got the four. That's right. First one out. I was really important to start the meeting. Well, that was terrific. So much fun and congratulations um to our coaches and to our new IS's and to the Glen Brooks for having such wonderful people. Um we're going to move on now to our board reports and we have a number of them this evening. Um

018we are going to kick it off with um Miss Hope who will give us a report from the communications committee meeting which occurred immediately previous to the board meeting. Yeah, we had a fantastic meeting. We reviewed um the 2025 communication survey and the feedback that we got and there were a significant number of respondents. Sounds like split from GBS and GBN. And what was most impressive to me was looking year-over-year 2025 to 2024 and a huge kudos to Carol and to Christina. huge improvements in every single category in terms of satisfaction by parents of the communication, all of the different types of communication they're getting. And then we got to look at the ways that parents are engaging um with all of the communication that both schools and the district are putting out. And then

019we moved on to look at some of the data analytics from social media. And again, a really engaged community and and great feedback from everyone. Thank you, Miss Hope. Um, we will also have a report, I believe, from Mr. Glowaki um on the Glen Brook North booster club meeting. Yes. Uh, it was a very interesting meeting in terms of very excited about the master facilities and contributing to master facilities. Um, Molly was there with me as well too. One thing that came of the meeting that they're also very interested in, and I think this may be with other uh parent groups and everything, is a list of the resources available that they can utilize to help support their functions. Uh whether it's websites, communication tools, things to support fundraisers, etc. So, if there's a comprehensive

020list, they're all excited about that, which they were very excited. they've been moving various components onto uh the the central ones to make it easy for parents to get all the news and everything, but felt like there may be some other things out there that they're just not aware of. And so that was one thing that came of it. Um and then yes, they'll and planning for their booster bash coming up and everything as well too, which that will actually I a big piece of it. They're very excited about how that can help the master facilities initiatives as well too. If there are things that come out of uh the discussions and various open houses we're hosting over the next few weeks to see what else can we be doing to maximize the resources for

021everyone here. So that was a fun meeting. Great. U glad to hear that we already have so many uh community members interested in the master facility plan giving us feedback on how to um bring that to fruition. Uh we have one more board report tonight and that is Dr. Grall who will be reporting on his um uh participation in the Glenrook Foundation meeting. The Glenberg Foundation met last week uh virtually for about an hour and maybe 15 minutes. Um really exciting. The Glen Foundation traditionally has done a very large event. It's connected with the Glen Brook musical which this year is at Glen Brook North and is Rogers and Hammerstein's Cinderella. Um, and they do kind of a dinner before that connected with the Saturday performance. Um, that is still on track, but this year

022they are also looking in the fall to do a new event called Glen Brookfest. And this would take place at uh one of the local forest preserves and would actually be a uh concert experience, if you will. They're still working through the exact bands that would be part of that. Uh but they have already secured significant donations. Um and now they're working through all the logistics before they formally announce it. So it would take place again in the fall at a forest preserve. great opportunity for alumni to come and visit, learn about the great things that are happening in the district and certainly um uh to serve as a fundraiser to support some activities going on in the district. Um for board members though, just a little extra highlight. Um I will share out that

023date again for uh the night of Glenburg theater event which is coming up for Cinderella. Um we'd really like to have all board members if they're available attend. Um, so again, I'll send you that date. Put it on your calendar and let me know if you might have a conflict. Uh, otherwise, we look forward to seeing you and anyone else in your family who'd like to join us. Thank you, Dr. Grall. Uh, that brings us to item six on our agenda, recognition of community visitors. And I understand that we do not have anyone who has signed up to speak tonight. Um, but I understand because it's very, very cold out there. Um, but remember that you can always reach out to us um by uh phone or email um if you're not um able to

024come to a meeting. Um item seven on our agenda is the consent agenda. Dr. Grall, have there been any changes to the consent agenda since it was circulated? The only change was earlier this afternoon, another one of our um prospective and now recommended employees uh received all of their background checks completed. So, I uploaded an updated personnel report that's listed in the briefing notes. Thank you. Uh did any board members have any questions about that? In that case, could I have a motion? So moved. Second Miss Mr. Downing. Yes. Mr. Glowaki. Yes. Mrs. Hope. Yes. Mr. O'Hara. Yes. Dr. Steinberg. Yes. Miss Mullenbeck. Yes. Motion carries. Moving on then to our action agenda. Uh the first item on our agenda 8.1 is student attendance and chronic absenteeism update. Dr. Grall. At the beginning of this

025year, we identified several different goals that we wanted to focus on. And one of those goals was recognizing that the most important thing for our students is to be present in class and ready to learn. And to that end, there is a metric that is included in the Illinois State Report card. Mr. Bree tag had given an overview of that uh back in uh the fall and it's referred to as chronic absenteeism which ultimately is identifying when students um exceed a certain number or percentage of absences um and are ultimately marked as chronic uh uh chronic absence. Um when that happens, we want to work with those students and their families to engage in conversations to identify if there's any supports that the school can provide um and to ultimately ensure that students are present

026and ready and able to learn. This evening very fortunate to have Dr. Cummings, Miss Canola, and Miss Corber, who's going to walk through the different interventions that are in place at Glenberrook South and at Glenrech North, and then provide a little more context to what might just show up as a metric on the state report card, um, and give you understanding of what exactly we're doing to ultimately improve that. Um, to that end, uh, Dr. Cummings, you want to kick us off? I would be happy to. Um, I am excited to introduce Jen Corber and RSLi Canola, uh, both associate principles at their respective buildings to share with you some of the very creative ideas that they have come up with in terms of battling some of this chronic absenteeism. Um, no surprise since CO

027most districts have seen an increase in absenteeism and I feel like we're starting to come out of that fog a little bit. But what I hope for you tonight is that you can listen and hear some of the creativity that both of these buildings um interventions that they put in place and then we'll be able to come back to you at a later date to share some of the data from these interventions. So I'm going to turn it over to you Jen. Right. Thank you. Um so as we shared um chronic absenteeism is for students who miss 10% more of the school year. So that's either excused or unexcused. So, we're going to talk about where we stand at both Glen Brook South and Glenrook North um and the positive that we've seen that our

028rate has dropped um nearly 4.3 since the height of COVID, which was really nice to see as we look at our rates um with GBS at a higher chronic absenteeism rate um than GBN. GBS is currently at about 19% um chronically absent with GBN um at about 13% this year. So just to share that information um as Dr. Grall said you know it's really important when we look at student attendance that our students are in class that they are learning and they are performing to their full extent full potential. So the framework that we used um in order to provide interventions for our students is through a multi-tiered system of support. So as we go through it we're going to talk about tier one, tier two and tier three interventions. So tier one interventions are

029for all of our students. They're more preventative. Um so that's for students who miss less than 5% of the school year. Um and then early intervention for our students that would be in the yellow there um greater than 5% and then our students who are chronically absent would be like our intensive interventions um that have missed school greater than 10% of the school year. So, some of our tier one universal prevention that we've been doing is going into this school year, we worked hard and we aligned our state attendance codes, our district attendance codes with the state attendance codes. It was important for us to see why our students were missing. Um, and helping our our families and our community understand what is considered by the state to be an excused absence and what is

030considered not necessarily to be excused be more unexcused. Um, another thing that we did is in our progress reports, we now include attendance information. So, you'll get your students grade in the class, but also their percentage of attendance, which is nice. And we've gotten a lot of positive feedback from parents as well to be able to see both because students, as you would know, that are in class more tend to perform better. Um, for communication, students who are unexcused get daily automated notifications. So parents are able to know if their student is unexcused, whether they forgot to call them out, it's a reminder, or just so they know that their student is unaccounted for at school. Um, and our deans each year go into our freshman PE classes to present on attendance and the importance

031of attendance each and every day. Um, one of the things that GBS has done specifically is they have implemented some hallway checks, um, where their staff and administrators are having some more presence during the passing periods to help reduce the unexcused time out of class and encourage students to get to class. So, for our tier 2 interventions, these are our students again who miss approximately greater than 5%. Um, we do dean interventions. So, our deans at our our student support team meetings go through um student attendance. We're able to use our panorama platform to see um our students who have missed the most um and be able to see where they fall within the tiers. And then they are offering progressive discipline also coupled with support. So, sometimes if a student has cut class, they

032may receive discipline, but also what we want to do is provide wraparound support for the students as well. Try to figure out why they're missing class. And then another new opportunity at GBS which I'm going to pass it over to Miss Control to talk about um is the addition of attendance interventionists. Good evening. Um as Jen mentioned, we were lucky last year Barb and I when we were reviewing um our um sit committee notes, right, and some of the feedback that we had from members from our school improvement team. We wanted to see if there's additional supports and interventions that we can put in place and one of them was these attendance interventionists. Many schools have them and so we reached out the deans and I reached out to a couple of schools just to

033get an idea of what their attendance interventionist do. So we have a 1.0 O FTE which is a we split it among four staff members and they are first semester it was their first semester um these are teachers that um again that we u assigned to this role and they have a huge learning curve and right haven't been in the classroom and trying to address the chronic absenteeism they're like wow so we did a lot of onboarding at the very beginning helping them understand panorama and then actually writing intervention plans giving creating the case load. So together they met with uh supported 31 students first semester and um as we know u students with chronic absentism it's often a symptom of some other issues maybe going on in their lives. So part of the the

034biggest role that they have to uh do is create relationships with students, right? And these a lot of our students that they're working with are students that are what I call in school truents, meaning that they're in the hallways. Um so they they're chasing them. They're trying to find where are they hiding in the building and really just trying to build not only strong relationships with the students but also their parents and their other teachers. Um so we were very lucky to implement that and um I feel like it's a it's a positive um so far it's been positive. Um the next slide is going to talk about our tier three and this is again as Jen mentioned for students who are having significant uh chronic absenteeism. This includes again both excused and unexcused students.

035So it's not just the students that are not being called out. But it also includes our students who are being called out for different reasons but have significant attendance is concerns. Um we are partnering with North Cook um which is one of our um in it's called North Cook Intermediate Service Center which is our region office of regional of education and they are able they partner with many schools in the area as well as our feeder school districts to provide student advocates and so they are hired by North Cook but they work it full-time in our building and we currently this is our second year having student advocates. They each carry a co a case load of 28 students. So that's in addition to the 31 students that our attendance interventionists are working with. And

036these are really in students with intense needs. They partner with the families. They'll do home visits. Um as well as um at GBN um our deans at GBN are doing some home visits with our student support team. Um at GBN they also have attendance leazison who I believe serve like case managers. They don't work in at GBN in the building, but they're connecting with our SST teams and the families to support to try to understand what's going on um so we can get the students into the building. Um another tier three support, we started this partnership with Oakton Alliance with Oakton Community College or Oakton College, excuse me, and they have an evening high school program that we had not tapped into. um you have other school districts that have and again for whatever reasons

037the traditional school wasn't working for some students. So we I believe we currently have three maybe four students there right now where they basically withdraw from our district and they go to this evening program at uh Main South. They they're housed at Main South in the evening, two days in person, two days in synchronous. However, their trans their credits get transferred back. So they do get a GB uh GBS or GBN diploma, but it's another partnership again for those students who just need maybe they're working during the day, they have other circumstances that are preventing them from being in our traditional school. Internally, uh we were very lucky at GBS where we were able to develop our GBS connected program. I call it a school within a school program. This is the second year um

038that we're doing it and uh that has been very successful as well. Um again many of those students were significant attendants uh throughout their high school careers and we felt that connecting them with instead of them traveling and connecting with eight seven different teachers they connect with one teacher um there a lot of their programs um schooling is done online through our egeneuity program however we also have some students who do a hybrid model let's say if a student really enjoys their art class they keep their art class but they may take their academic courses with Miss Neestos, who is our GBS connected teacher. Uh, and then we also have some students who just need credit recovery. So, they'll go into her classroom just for one block and then they go back into their uh

039mainstream classes. I mentioned the home visits as already. And then our school improvement team focus. Both buildings have created uh a school improvement focus around attendance for GBS. uh our goal we have very we've created a very high goal for ourselves to reduce it from 19% to 15% at by the end of this school year hopefully um and then we are piloting this semester has not started an open campus SRT pilot we looked at our chronic absenteeism rate and um as we were analyzing the data we recognized there's many students correct me if I'm wrong Barb that the students that had excused absences we wanted to see if there was a way to incentive incentivize them to say, hey, instead of missing over 17 days of school in the year like they did in the

040previous year, could we reduce that by giving them an incentive to have an open campus type of uh I think we have 21 students who qualify. There's criteria that we created. Um so hope we'll definitely let you know how that goes. But that was just an incentive based program that we wanted to try and offer. at GBN they have been strong uh working really strong on focusing on creating uh and building relationships with their students between students and teachers and the overall community to create a sense of belonging which that as we know research shows is a big um impact on attendance as well as using um uh it's an an evidence-based intervention called root cause analysis to try to understand uh why a student uh may not be attending um the classes and I

041I think that is Oh, future direction. So, one of the things that Jen and I are doing this year, we pulled a committee from each building. The goal is to create an attendance guide or a manual, if you will, for families. As Jen mentioned, when we were looking at our state codes previously, um we weren't sure why students were being called out because it was just marked as excused. And we wanted to try to understand what were the types of reasons families were calling them out. Was it vacation? Was it medical? Was it you name it. So we aligned it with the state code. So we do now have one semester worth of data to see what type of reasons our families are calling out. Um one of the things that this committee will be

042looking at is to really look at those excused absences. What what should we be excusing as a district? What are our thoughts on that? Um we're also a big one that our staff have shared a little bit frustration is this makeup work uh makeup work ability when a student is absent. Many we are finding that some students can basically miss a majority of a semester but yet uh because their parents call them in they are just submitting work. So they don't actually have to be in the building and that's quite concerning for us that you can not come to the building and still you know do well academically. And obviously that doesn't mean students who have significant medical concerns. That's very different. We're just talking about uh other types of excused absences and still aren't

043able to make up the work. And uh we're also just going to look at what do we currently have as some other school districts have between you can have a student who's gone all day excused but yet is participating in their activities um at the end of the day. Some schools have said no. you know, if you're if you're sick or if you're absent, then you shouldn't uh be participating. We're taking feedback from different stakeholders to try to understand what that also incentivize our students to come on a regular basis. Hopefully, we can have that out by the fall. Thank you. Questions? Thank you. Um board members, any questions? We'll start with Mr. Kaki. Can you refresh my memory regarding excused? Uh because from what I recall the data when we were looking at this

044earlier, the numbers went up senior year. Yes, that was quite a bit where we saw a lot of the absence and a lot of them were excused. Yes. So, you know, they're doing college tours, they're on varsity teams, they're in competitions across the state and nationally. Um are those all considered excused absence? Do they still factor in now that she looked at the table and compared it to what Illinois was attributing? Are we in alignment? Is that creating an issue because our kids are so involved in so many things? So the state still considers any type of excused absence as part of a chronic absenteeism uh report and the data. So there's a difference between uh excused and unexcused that all compiles comes together. That is our chronic absenteeism. And then there's obviously their current

045the chronic truency rate which is only unexcused but for the state they count those as excused absences as well as part of the chronic absenteeism. So if you have a family who's out um on vacation or significant trips for awards and whatnot and let's say out of 177 days they're missing 17 days that once they hit 18 it puts them on a chronic absenteeism list. So I guess my concern is we're wonderful program but I wonder if what we're dealing with comparing to these other schools may not be a fit for what we actually have as the underlying issue here which is we have very highly accomplished individuals highly involved that the community and others is getting them into various programs that are taking them outside and yet the rest of the state hasn't caught

046up to what we're doing. Um and so are we missing the true issue that we're wrestling with? Yeah. No, it just look data down and keeping that mindful because I'd hate to start creating policies and everything on bits and pieces of what really may not fit for us. And I would just take anecdotally, I would say that number of that students is probably very small compared to other reasons. Um, now that we actually have codes this semester, we could actually look at it to see what percentage of our students were out because of uh conferences or you know uh trips for sports and things like that. I would say that's a little bit lower for us at GBS. I can't speak to GBN. Um I don't think it's the 300 and kids that are on

047our list. Yeah. And I I just want so you guys know we're not that's we're not looking to consequence Yeah. those students. We want them to be part of these, you know, experiences. That is what makes them who they are. And so they're not receiving consequences for that. We are approving these absences. They are excused. But they do affect our our chronically absent. Right. Thank you, Mr. Downing. Excuse me if I missed this. Um, by the way, thanks for all your hard work. Uh, do we know the So, it's one in five are absent from Glumber South, which I think is almost staggering, right, for that number. Um, do we know how much of the different what's the breakdown between excused and unexcused? I don't have it in front of me, but it is um

048ballpark's fine. Oh, I don't even know. Do you have you have probably have the report? We have the state report, but I didn't bring it with me at this because I think those are two two separate. Yeah. So, I have the chronic I have the data the chronic truency rate. So, the chronic truency rate at South in 2025 was 7.6%. Uh, however, again, the state combines for chronic absenteeism, they combine both the excused and unexcused. So sounds like that's the difference. So So is it So you're saying 7% 12% [snorts] right? Say again. 12% are excused. Excuse%. Yeah. Um [clears throat] I always think of the Little Rascals episode when the guy's chasing the kids down the street for missing school, but we can't do that here. [laughter] Um we try the buildings. I guess

049you can. Uh yeah, and I'd be interested to see and I'm glad you're you're digging into that because I wonder how much of this is a pretty affluent place. I wonder how much of that is, you know, a week here, a week there, you know, uh you know, as opposed to I'm going to college visit or I'm my, you know, I've I've going uh to you know, made the state wrestling tourn whatever it is, right? You know, so yeah, very different. Absolutely. Very different. And I think that it's smart to come and think about having some sort of a policy and it used to be you get in trouble for this stuff. Yes. Just a comment. Yeah. Thanks for your hard work. Yeah. And I think it's true. I don't think what we're trying to

050do with our communication that we do in like in our weekly principal newsletters. I don't think as parents you don't realize one day here, one day there actually adds up. So we're just trying to ask parents with our letters to like monitor, you know, because you think, oh, I'm going to add a day to, you know, fall break or winter break. you don't necessarily think when you're looking at it total. You're like, "Oh, wait. Ooh, that's ouch." Right? You're not necessarily thinking it because you're only thinking only one day here. So, absolutely, you have that buffer of those 17 days. Um, but it's when it hits past those 17 days. Mine was fever or blood. It better be one of the two, otherwise I was going to school. [laughter] So, to Mr. To Mr. Downing's

051point just to highlight um what we see other school districts do and part of why we haven't had this conversation here is because we need good data correct in order to inform the next steps. But it is becoming highly um common for schools to say students get x amount of absences per semester and should you have additional absences, it requires evidence for that absence. So it goes away from submitting I'm going to the doctor and we just accept it. it's I'm going to the doctor and here's here's the note from the ortho or here's the note from the doctor that you did attend. Um continuing on so the natural question is well what happens then if you don't have evidence and it means that your handbook language is of such that if you don't have

052an excused absence you don't have the ability to make up work as if it was an excused absence. Candidly, we're probably another year away from really making that type of a recommendation because you need to have longitudinal data that you can point to. Um, but that is what other schools are doing. So, slightly different than what the movie showed. Um, but in essence, it's it's putting accountability when absences are submitted. Mr. May may I ask a follow-up question that you just as you were talking about these truencies and all these labels and stuff and how that factor in mental health days how do those factor in because that was something the state if I recall correctly inserted into this and now how is that being counted is that excused it's an it's part of the

053excused absence. So it's part of excused but it then calculates towards your chronic absenteeism. Yes. Okay. So you get up to five. I believe the state allows five and then we have a built-in system where after I want to say it's three um our SST teams right away try to reach out to the families to say hey how can I help you what's go you know is there something we can support you with so back to the data and how these are being used very good reasons for possibly using these but again the policies and stuff not may not be addressing the underlying issues we're wrestling with Dr. So, so just one last followup to that because yeah, I look at the I look at the you talked about having kids in school and what

054a difference that makes. And I can think about that from an educational standpoint, but I think about that from a social standpoint, from a development standpoint, from we saw what happened during COVID with kids that were home all the time and, you know, doom scrolling or whatever they were doing, right? I mean, but that that that's not reality. reality is being here and being in the classroom and and learning from each others and making the mistakes and getting grit because you did something that maybe you shouldn't have or or getting encouragement because you did something the right thing you know missing 17 20 25 days that hurts it's a whole month more than a month so to provide your answer I just ran the data for you um of the excused versus unexcused 66 6.4%

055of our absences are excused and 33.5 are unexcused. I'm not surprised. Dr. Steinberg, thank you. I have three questions and I'm assuming but I'm asking as a question in terms of are we using our data? I give you examples. The first one is are we cross crossing information of absences with the curriculum for a particular day, right? Do we get more people not being in class the week before finals or the weeks after some break or after a holiday or whatever? Because it it's true it adds up individually but there are some indicators that escape the particular individual and more related to a group. So that would be question number one. Question number two going more fine tuning into that are people skipping more when they are having a hard class call it math for

056some people call it art for other people I don't know but are we finding outliers that say hey among our current absentisms we have people are taking classes with is Jill still here is still here Jill's still here yes I know you're not taking it the wrong way maybe people who are going to chemistry it's like oh I'm skipping class and Hey, I love Jill. Joe, no one takes off when there's a test, right? How could you miss that? [laughter] I mean, I'd want No. This could be Oh, this could be a bad indicator. It could be a good indicator. People are doing very well and people who are like, I don't need to be in class because it, you know, he's going slow so everybody can do okay and I'm I'm an A student.

057So, not not always it's a negative indicator, but things that we can learn overall that may have an impact on absentism. So, I said three things. So there was the third thing which of course by right now I forgot but [laughter] it will come up later. I'll let you answer any of those. Yeah, definitely trends. There are definitely trends when we review our attendance data and panorama allows us to look at like on a daily basis which would do we have great attendance. Yes, usually around holidays the day before for sure. Um you know um always we know like or sometimes it's a full day, sometimes it's like right at noon everyone's being called out. Um and then there's also I think part of um at GBS part of what our attendance interventionists and student

058advocates they are getting that information in terms of also like the root cause analysis trying to understand on an individual basis what's going on tell me more about I see that there's a pattern here that you're always missing this particular class and part of it I think why GBN's also focusing on the relationship building is that we know if students have a strong relationship with a staff or that teacher they're more likely to go to that class right they feel comfortable they'll be there. So that is why the focus on building relationships is also important. Um that is also why we want our attendance interventionists and advocates to help a student navigate that. So if I can connect with you and build a relationship with you, how can I leverage that to then help you

059connect with your teacher? Um and so there are meetings sometimes with the teacher and our advocates to try to connect that and get reintegrate the student back into the classroom. One of the thing one of the things we see at GBN and we're trying to be able to pinpoint it. We get it anecdotally from our teachers are students calling out getting excused on test days. And so we're trying to figure out because they may miss the whole day and we're trying to see did they have a test that day but that's something that our teachers are sharing. Um you know so we're trying to see is it the anxiety going into the test? Is it they want additional days to study for the test? Are they getting information about the test from their peers? So

060[laughter] there's, you know, there's things that we want to look at as far as with the test days. Yes. So that is something we're trying to to pinpoint if how often that's happening. Yeah. Thank you. Came back to me. I'll come back. I'll come back to Dr. Steinberg when two more. But he's got two more. Good. No, but one was part B of a question. Back to patterns. It's not always the negative as I said earlier, it's the positive as well. So, I talk about curriculum, but let's talk about extracurricular activities. Do we notice that, I'm making this up, people on the football team have less degree of absentism that people that don't do any activity or any sport, people that go to theater or music or choir. Can we find out things that we

061can say engage our students more to come to the curricular part, right? Because they are attached to anecdotally, I can tell you that we don't lose a lot of kids during the season. Oh, yeah. in football they are there anecdotally I'm just giving that anecdotally yeah I would agree I think being in sports creates that sense of belonging u we may have one or two that for other reasons um and I I've literally called one of the football coaches this fall I'm like hey can you help me what's this is going on with this kiddo right so uh we do make those phone calls to try to connect because sometimes we leverage that relationship also and that that could help with a freshman class because if we know things are going to help somebody again

062I use sports and arts but maybe something else it could be a good ad you know advising part of of an incoming student to say you know you're going to do we believe you're going to do better if you join group A or group B my last that's a belonging my last one is more but on the on the quantitative side I know that five and five is the same but it's different if I miss a week because I was sick that if I skip five days throughout four months So I wonder if we do that analysis as well on the people that go above the regular number. You know, we have a large population. So women have students that have or have chronic diseases or have somebody in the family that has a disease

063and many things. So are are we working on that layer as well? And I think that's something that we're looking at in our student support team. So we can we're able to pull a list of our students and their absenteeism. And a lot of times you'll know exactly, oh this student, you know, was out with mono for two weeks. So, they're going to be on the list. It just we know that's a a valid reason, but when we see a student that we have no idea, those are the ones that we're really worried about. Um because we know students get sick and sometimes they're out. Especially if you're absent in the beginning of the year, you're going to flag earlier because there's less days. So, that's why we're going through each student to see um

064but there are students that we don't have any medical notes. We haven't heard from the family. Those are the ones we really want to target to see what's going on. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Hope. Yeah. I was also going to mention that the sense of belonging and I know we're hearing later on from the group that's looking at the student seal benchmark survey and it struck me last time we heard those results that the sense of belonging while it's improved is still I think lower than we'd like it to be and lower than it could be. Do the two committees work together and you know measure any data together if one is going to be a KPI for the other or how are we tying the different things together I guess is my question.

065We're all We're what? [laughter] A panorama. We see them both. Yeah. Don't um Yes. I think for at GBS um I think our sense of belonging data is really high. We do have our students report that they feel a sense of belonging to the building. I think when you drill down on the 300 students that fall on the chronic absentism, some of them may report that that they do not, right? Um it really just varies or they feel like they belong in certain spaces in the building but not others. Um again it's not just um I always tell people like there's no magic wand when you look at attendance. You have to try a lot of different things because with what what works with one student is not going to work with the other student.

066Right? I could uh call one family up and talk to the parent and that student will be back and we'll be like okay I didn't realize thank you. with another student. It might be just trying to build uh a relationship with the family also to get them to see why it's important. Um some students who do have a lot of absences that are excused, they're able to still function in academically. They they don't necess they're not the they're not failing. We're really concerned about our students who are not showing up and also are now having significant attendance or social emotional, right? Maybe they have significant school refusal issues. Um so there and we see them not doing well also academically. So I would say those are our target as well. Yeah. And same for GBM.

067One of our our big focus when we looked at our survey results are student teacher relationships which goes with that sense of belonging and being able to really hone in on that. So we're doing some different things for teachers to identify students that they have a strong relationship. We're going to be asking our students to identify staff. So, I think we're really trying to make sure that each and every one of our students has somebody at school that they could go to or talk to if they were experiencing a difficult situation. Mr. O'Hare. Oh, thank you guys. Um, this looks like a lot of work, frankly, a lot of leg work. I mean, it, you know, you got to track down each one. As you said, each call is individual. Um, I love what you

068said about not being as concerned about the students who are succeeding because I just want to make sure I understand why we're doing all this work. And my understanding is we're trying to help the children graduate um and and well graduate with with a degree and and move on with life, right? And so I guess a couple of things I' I' I'd be curious about is is there a graduation rate difference between the excused and the unexcused absences? You know, you mentioned the 300. So by by your numbers about 200 of those kids are excused in that chronic absenteeism. Um and if they're all graduating and doing okay, you got to ask yourself, I should really be focusing on as you said, you know, I I really don't care what the state worries about in

069some ways because our job is, you know, that the state is looking at the state and so they're worried about other high schools that have more issues than we do in some ways. Um so for me, it's very important that you guys focus like you are and I I love that fact. The fact you mentioned that is awesome. Um, yeah, that's all I have for you guys. Thank you. Um, thank you for this I I know this is a um a difficult problem that we've been struggling with for a while and it it's great to hear that you're coming at it from a lot of different directions and I think all the different um suggestions that the board members have made is really interesting to different lenses to look at this problem through. Um, but

070I guess the thing that that I keep coming back to, um, and I I know we got educated on the board got educated on this concept a little bit more and there's just, you know, it all rolls up, you know, and again, you know, maybe maybe we don't care about the state's definition so much, but it all rolls up into one number, right? Absenteeism, excused or unexcused, but the parental mind, or at least my parental mind goes to, as long as it's excused, it's okay, right? It sounds fine. I called them out. I had a doctor's note. I did all this. Um maybe we need to like do a little um reset in people's perceptions of is it really okay to not have your kid in school 19 days out of the school year, even

071if it's all for good reasons. Should know should we be focusing on the really good reasons um as opposed to the things that you probably could get by with the kid could go to school that day but for convenience sake or whatever reason you and you're going to call them out so it's not a problem. It is a problem still because we know the data shows that right that we're I'm assuming there is correlation like you said that you know most students who don't attend class are going to do worse than they would than if they did attend class right so even if they're doing okay even if they're still graduating they may not be reaching their full potential. So, I'm wondering how we might be able to message to families that just calling your

072kid out and saying it's excused doesn't make it okay, for lack of a better way of putting it. Um, and also, so that's just a thought I have, I guess, and I'm sure that's something you all are thinking about. I know you were working on getting that information to parents and giving them these updates on because, as you say, probably some people are just kind of losing track of what's happening. We give them suggestions in our weekly newsletter. We're like, "Oh, please consider late start Wednesday is a great time for your doctor's appointment." Like I in our letter, we try to give them different suggestions. Yeah. Um to say instead of, you know, missing a blocker here, use our you know, our late starts, right? 9:00 you can get those early appointments. Use the schoolbased

073health center because the students can just walk into during like their SRT or lunch. So, we try to give them different ways. This year specifically, we're trying to message, hey, yes, save I have my calling like save up your 17 days for like the the special trips or the, you know, conferences, college visits, right? If you got a doctor's appointment at 8:00 in the morning, don't take the whole day off. Go to school after that. Exactly. Um, but I mean, to me, I the numbers that also jump out to me is when you talk, let's if we say GBS 19%. Isn't that 600 kids? I was looking at the what our current chronic absentism, not the state one. Yes. Yeah. So, I'm just saying that's a lot of kids. That's a big number. And then

074when we look at the like the very focused interventions, we're talking about a few dozen really. Um, so to me, it feels like the lowhanging fruit of this when you look at the 66% of those being excused absences is the the easy the the people whose parents are not even calling them out. the kids whose parents are not calling them out because they don't that that's that's going to be hard. They don't even think they need to call the kids out, right? The kids whose parents are calling them out 66% of the, you know, of the time for their absences, they might just, I mean, it seems like that's the audience that you could maybe really get some traction with. Um, so that's just my suggestion, but as I say, it's an intractable issue, I

075think, in in in some parts, but you know, coming at it from every angle is is the way. And I think that's why we really want to come up with our like our parent handbook for attendance and really help to make our community knowledgeable of what is chronic absenteeism and just so that before they a parent goes to call them out, just to be knowledgeable of how much that does truly impact their student. um social emotionally, academically, just what is it considered? And I think I don't think parents want their students to be chronically absent. I know I guarantee they don't, but sometimes it's easier than to push through or just giving them the tools that they need to make sure their students at school. And then the last thing I would say is I

076think is get all this um uh number crunching will be really interesting and helpful in us for us to to hone in on home in on how to um deal with these with this issue. But I'm really interested in what Dr. Grall had to say about what other schools in neighboring districts are doing because it sounds like they have a very different approach than what we've taken which seems pretty less affair kind of um and you know when you have something like this that is really you know a big problem that we've are trying to um really address um I think it is worthwhile to to look at what other districts are doing and have been successful with because maybe our system that we've used for so long is just not meeting the moment. Yeah.

077And one of the things we are so for like our committees that are looking we actually um research other schools to see who had who has a guide what is you know what is their attendance policy state what does their makeup work a policy state. So we have that data that our committee was looking at when they were coming up with ideas of how we can create this guide. Um and speaking to like that 66% very true that's what our school improvement team found when we were looking at the data. They're like, "We need to focus because those are the kids that we can probably move and get them go down less to 17 17 days." We're like, all we're asking you is to go below the 17 days, right? As well as that uh

078incentive program that we can say, "Hey, you know, help us out. Let's work together and partner so we just keep track of your um absences." Yeah. Well, this is great. And I can't get called out at work 17 days. [laughter] I can't Can I? Speaking of the Can I? We're getting ready for the real world. I'm just saying if I can add to that point, it's [clears throat] like we're looking at new generations that when they are older and they join the workforce and and I I remember as a parent, I used to sometimes get upset of some of my kids not studying for an exam because they say, "Oh, I already did the numbers and it won't change my final grade, so I may as well not study." It's like and we unintentionally creating

079that habit of I'm the own I have my own judgment if if there's a value on me showing up and today it's high school but tomorrow it's going to be college where parents are not even around and then the next day it's going to be the workforce and it's like well I I'm done with the deadline I'm not showing up tomorrow and maybe yeah I don't have anything to contribute to my own work but we have other people depending on me as a supervisor as a colleague or as somebody reporting to somebody else so I know we didn't invented the problem we shouldn't be solving it but are these subliminal messages that they are getting at an age when kids are socializing more and being more aware of being part of a society and believe

080me I talk a lot with people you know at the end of college that they are inserting into the workforce and these are most of the common problems of managers that people don't know I didn't have to show up on time in the morning I thought it was the same if I came 10 minutes later because everybody comes at any given time or today well tomorrow I have a match of something so I'm going I take the day off so I'm more relaxed. And I'm not criticizing, you know, every generation has its own things, but habits that start percolating into people's mind. Yeah. And I think our goal is never we don't ever we don't want to shame students and we don't want to shame our families. We're just saying partner with us. Uh let's

081work together to figure out how we can support you. That's usually a better approach. Mr. In the spirit of this partnership, I we just approved five trips today for nearly a hundred students with several excused days if I'm not miss from [laughter] the from the Glenick South baseball team. I'll take this question [laughter] to to the chess team and others and business program. May I suggest that those forms get updated to start note indicating at least the days that are impacted with excused days to from a board that we can at least be knowledgeable of it including costs and everything. But to this point, these are kind of what you're wrestling with and it's that 66% you were talking about. Yeah. And so, you know, like we said, you know, there's there should be a

082a spectrum, I would think, in the mind of the parent who's choosing, you know, whether to excuse their child. Like, they're going to the state chess tournament. Yes. You know, they're not going to school because, you know, they finished their doctor's appointment at 9:30 and they might as well stay home. That's much lower on the list, right? So just so so I'm clear our focus is the kids who who are having trouble or are we focusing on just getting our number down by getting the lowhanging fruit of the ones who aren't having trouble. I I want to make sure I understand to to be to be very clear. We are focused on every student's attendance. Yes, we want all of our students in school ready and able to learn. When we are looking at allocating

083our resources limits of 28 on a case load, 30 some for others, we have to target those based on the students who best uh will be served by those interventions. And that's where we'll target a variety of different populations to provide a little more perspective on how that might look in a future year, which might be better than midyear. Um, I have a note here to bring back um before the school report card comes out, but after the end of the school year, we'll give an understanding or an update on where our data is. And that'll be really important because as part of our strategic plan, and this goal is not going away. Very uh grateful that both school improvement teams focused on addressing chronic absenteeism. We're going to want to have clear measurements on

084what our goal is for the next year. And so we'll present where our data falls, where specifically we're going to target, and how resource allocation is going to be geared to that, and we'll bring that back to the board. So I I think what you're what all this is saying is that this is a multiffactorial problem, and therefore it needs a whole lot of different approaches. Um, and we're addressing different cohorts within this 20 or for GBS 19% or for the district, you know, 16.5%. There's you can slice and dice it a lot of different ways. And each of those different subsets needs to have a different strategy. Yeah. So, good luck with that. Thank you so much. [laughter] Thank you. Okay. Um, next on our discussion action agenda is award of bids for our

085summer 26 capital projects. Love that. Dr. Patak is going to present an overview with some very good news. And that's all I will say. Thank you, Arj. Um, as a reminder, back in the fall, we presented the board with a list of recommended capital projects to be completed the summer of 2026. And at that time, the board authorized us to work with our architect to create bid specifications and put everything out to bid, which we did. And the estimate we had brought to you back in the fall was about 8.7 million. In reality, our bids came in almost $2 million under budget. So, a significant um difference there and there there's a few reasons why, but in your packet and also up on the screen, we have a summary of all of our summer bids.

086Um across the top are the projects. So, just to remind you, the work we're doing this summer, we have roof replacement at GBS. We have a lot of bathrooms at GBS. If you remember, the scope of our bathroom work doubled. Um, originally we had planned on doing just the west academic wing, the first and the second floor bathrooms and that ended up getting expanded in scope to also do the east wing as well. And that was based on conversations we had at the facility committee meeting to go ahead and get pricing for both areas, which we did. Um, we also have at Glen Brook North the relocation of the nurse's office, the creation of a satellite health center, and then some various mechanical projects. So, as you can see, we're 1,894,000 under under budget or

087under our estimate. Um, and really all of that is in the bathroom area. You'll see our student bathrooms came in 2 million under our estimate. And so, the reasons for that, a few things. Number one, we did have a very competitive bidding process for all of our different trades. We had five to six different vendors bidding. And so the difference between the median bids and our low bids was about 900,000. Um the biggest reason I think for our difference as we've analyzed this is just how efficiently the bathrooms at Glenrook South are laid out in the academic wings. Um we base our estimates on past projects. And at Glen Brook South in the academic wings, each wing has kind of a cluster of bathrooms versus our other bathrooms that tend to be more isolated and

088spread out throughout the building. So again, our west wing has a whole cluster of bathrooms as does the east wing. And so the bathrooms on the first floor and the second floor, they're all back to back. So they share all of their plumbing. They're vertically stacked. So the first floor is right below the second floor. And so just that efficiency, I think, is really what what drove us to this. And then also just pure economies of scale. Our largest bathroom project to the state has addressed about 16 toilets. This summer we're doing 92 toilets. And so even though we built in economies of scale, it just wasn't to that extent. So I think overall our estimating was just too conservative because we haven't done a project of this magnitude. So we feel good about all

089of the bids. We've had Nicholas, our construction manager, they called all the low biders and everything's in the scope. So um I'm happy to answer any questions. Otherwise, at the February 9th meeting, we would be putting this on consent for board approval to approve the bids for the summer of 2026. Thank you, Dr. Patek. Um, board members, Mr. O'Hara, Miss Hulk, Dr. Steinberg, just have a comment that it's the opposite of a comment that probably I made last year or the year before when I said at the time we were looking at tariffs and different things that could have impacted prices. Maybe now we are on the opposite side of the spectrum for whatever reason. I don't advocate for more spending, but since we are into economy of scale, if there's room to since we

090have the budget for it without more toilets, [laughter] you know, I love bathroom renovations, something that would I don't think Glenn Brook North would would decline uh new toilets. Um we are evaluating some other smaller projects. Larger uh plumbing uh projects would be challenging at this point to get bid. Thank you, Mr. Downing. Awesome. Thanks, Mr. Kwacki. Nice work to everybody that was involved on this. Thank you. Yeah, I think this sounds great. $2 million is $2 million. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, we will bring that back on consent. Yeah. Thank you. Uh oops. Let's see. Uh oh. Talking about capital projects, our next we are going to have a presentation on our uh 27 to 36 uh master facility plan. All right, everyone. The time has now come where I will invite uh Mrs. Bonner

091and Dr. Patac back to the podium. Um, just to kind of frame this for everyone, developing a multi-year facility plan like the one we're presenting tonight is a routine and responsible practice in all of Illinois public schools. About every 10 years, districts step back, assess their facilities, campuses, and develop a roadmap for maintenance, improvements, and investments to meet the needs of our students and our community both today and into the future. At Glenbrook, the work matters because our facilities are really not just buildings. They're learning environments and community spaces where students grow in every way. And our facilities are most certainly not only utilized by just our high school students, but our elementary students and our community members all the way into adulthood. A well-developed facility plan helps ensure our schools remain safe, well-maintained, and

092positioned to sustain educational excellence that our community has valued since 1947. Supporting the continued success and yes, our recognition as the number one school district in Illinois. It is also a part or also part of what makes Gleniew and Northbrook a place where so many of our graduates return as homeowners, later as parents, grandparents, and even great-grandparents. What distinguishes the facility plan you will learn about this evening from so many others is that we have prevented a backlog of deferred maintenance from ever accumulating and instead taken an approach to proactively address areas of concern while also modernizing our facilities strategically and responsibly to meet the needs of our Spartans and Titans which continue to evolve and change every year. Just a few moments ago, we heard Dr. Patac share a few examples of this work,

093including the expansion of the Glenrech School Health Center, which will open at Glenrook North next year, and the complete renovation of a few student and staff bathrooms at Glen Brook South. Together with the floor to ceiling classroom renovations completed over the past 5 years, these projects reflect our ongoing commitment to safe, welcoming, and future ready learning environments for every student and staff. And from a financial perspective, by annually allocating dedicated resources within our budget, we have learned to live within our means while maintaining our facilities in a thoughtful and sustainable way. The steady approach has put us in an excellent position for the next phase of our work. We are now able to renew our existing debt for the next 10 years, leverage our AAA bond rating to access the lowest available interest rates, and

094do so without increasing burden on our taxpayers. With that context, I'd like to turn the presentation over to Mrs. Bonner and Dr. attack will walk us through the master facility plan in detail, including how it was developed, what it prioritizes, and how it possess positions Glenbrook for the decade ahead. Mrs. Bonner, thank you, Dr. Grall. All right, so tonight we look forward to providing you with a highlevel view of the master facility plan process. This presentation is a culmination of nearly two years of discovery and discussion about what the 2027 to 2036 master facility plan will entail. Mr. Casey Wright from Glenick South, Dr. Pat, Dr. Grall and I presented this information in much greater detail to finance and facility committee members on multiple occasions over the past few years in order to receive the

095feedback that we incorporated into into tonight's presentation. Our board members took great interest in this topic. You could hear it with Miss Ballen back when she realized we were transitioning to the master facility plan this evening and they provided clear expectations and a keen eye on the positive impact this plan will have on the community. Tonight's presentation is intentionally at a higher level given that we have spent so much time with our facility and finance committee members going into much more detail. So our master facility plan every 10 years as Dr. Rival said schools in the state of Illinois are required to complete a life safety survey and that really kicks off our master plan facility process. The survey has to be completed by a licensed architect and in our case Archon who has been

096our district architect for the past three decades. Archon works very closely with our longtime construction management company Nicholas and Associates while enlisting insight from our buildings and grounds team, our building administration and our district administration to provide a detailed view of our buildings and campuses. Arana and Nicholas together helped us identify a collection of projects for this master facility plan that will be sequenced over a 10-year period of time. Our process started two years ago and went wallto-wall from the inside out and the outside in, reviewing 1.3 million square feet across four buildings and 128 acres of campus. In order to gain a complete picture, not just a list of individual priorities, but how needs connect across entire campuses. To make the plan truly comprehensive, we also included facility enhancements that support students and programs

097across the 4A. And we're really really fortunate in this process. We've been working with the same architect Archon and the same construction manager Nicholas and Associates for many years. That consistency gives us a lot of history, a lot of continuity and expertise as we plan ahead. We're also poised for success with our master facility plan thanks to the steady presence and expertise of our director of operations, Dr. Kim Patac. Dr. Dr. Pac has overseen all of our major modernization projects for over 20 years and will continue to do so in this master facility plan. With that, I'd like Dr. Patac to come up and review the components of the plan. Trade trade binders. Trade. Okay. The projects identified in our 10-year master facility plan fall into two main categories. We have our life safety infrastructure

098and enhancements. Life safety infrastructure represents all of the critical systems that we need to keep our buildings open and running. As R.J. said earlier, we're very fortunate that we don't have a backlog in these areas. We've been very proactive. Um, this is a category where you will see things like our roof systems, mechanical systems, flooring, and then also a lot of our exterior structures such as parking lots, our existing stadium turf, which is approaching 15 years in age, and bleacher replacement. And again, nothing that you'll see in the plan is in an emergency situation. Rather, these are items that are due for replacement as part of their natural cycle over the next 10 years. The second category represents our enhancements and these are our larger projects that are more visible and that support the larger

099student overall experience. Um, as R.J. mentioned, we've done a lot of work over the last several years on the interior of our buildings. We spent a lot on our massive classroom renovations and our health centers. And so given that the first few years of the plan, you'll see a much heavier focus on our exterior campuses. Um, two projects included in the first part of the plan are enhancements to our outdoor stadiums and also converting more of our grass fields over to turf fields. The plan also includes modernization of common spaces such as our cafeterias and libraries and also addressing specialty classrooms which we did not address during our total classroom initiative. So those would be spaces like our culinary labs. We also, as part of the plan, will be finishing our restroom renovations and also

100moving on to locker room renovations. So, with that, I'm going to turn it back over to Lauren, who's going to talk a little bit about the enhancements you'll see in the beginning years of the plan. So, this slide is a look into the future. And I always like to add the caveat that these are renderings. These are conceptual. This may not be where we land, but I but this is the exciting stuff of the master facility plan. So, as Dr. Pac mentioned, the over the last 10 years, much of our focus has been on enhancing the interior of our building, right? We have some of the best classrooms um compared to our comparable schools. What you'll see in the first part of this new plan is a shift to the outside, especially our stadiums and

101athletic fields. There's a heavier focus on exterior projects like improving our stadium out buildings, converting more grass fields to turf, and addressing a aging items like our bleachers and our press boxes. In fact, one of our board members in more one of our more recent meetings shared a unique perspective that we've looked at our campuses, I think it was you, Mr. Gaki, from the outside in and now we're looking them from the inside out. So, we're focusing on that outdoor. So, as part of that stadium project at both campuses, we're exploring targeted upgrades that improve the experience for our students and the community. For instance, at GBN, a priority that's emerged through feedback of that stadium project is improving the stadium entrance. The flow doesn't work. the spacing doesn't work. Finding the the entrance to

102begin with is just not quite what we would want our experience to be for our community members. So, we're exploring whether or not we need to simply just move where our entrance is at Glen Brook North. For both schools, we're looking at bleacher capacity. Is it adequate? If not, this is the time as part of this project to expand expand that capacity. Do our booster clubs and our individual teams, buildings, and grounds, do they have the storage they need incorporated into the footprint of the stadium? If not, this is the time for us to address that. So, we want to keep both schools in mind as we do this. And for both schools, as we explore additional turf fields, we're also thinking about restroom accessibility because tonight's theme apparently is bathrooms. [laughter] Right now, we're

103gathering a lot of stakeholder feedback and input. And then we're fine-tuning these drawings that you see in front of you. We look forward to showing conceptual drawings to our coaches, booster clubs, students, and teachers over the next few weeks. Actually, at this point, not even months anymore. we're down to just a few weeks before those meetings happen so that we can ensure that we're aligned to student needs and building with the long term in mind. And I had an anecdote I wanted to share with you tonight and it was further kind of driven home by how Mr. Whan addressed you after he accepted his position of the is for South. But I remember standing on the stage of the CPA at North with Joel Monahan who just retired last year and he was with us

104for four decades as a staff member and he turned and said to me, "I was here as a student when they built this." Which is amazing. But I can hear from our community members somebody like Mr. Whan from South saying after we're done with these stadium projects, I was here as a student when they built this, when they made this beautiful entrance, when they changed things so now it works better for all of the students. I remember that as our kids come back with their own kids possibly in generations to come. So the work you see here is planned for the summer of 2027 and we'll bring back the specific scope, the concepts and the cost estimates uh back to you all in May along with the rest of the recommended 2027 projects. I'll shift

105back to Kim. So, in your packet, and I know some of you, you even have binders like Lauren and I have, you have a complete list of all of the projects that are included in the 10-year plan. And we are not going to go through all of those projects tonight. Um, each project in the plan is assigned a target year for when we anticipate it'll be completed along with a highle estimate. So, it's important to note that the plan is really intended to be a roadmap. So projects may shift from one year to the next. Costs are going to be refined as we get closer to the actual design of every project. Um it's also important to note that the projects in the plan will follow the same annual approval process that the board has

106become accustomed to. So during that annual project approval process, that's when you'll be seeing a lot of detail on every project. So for example, the year 2027 is the first year of the plan. So in May, just a few months from now, we'll be bringing the recommended list of the summer 2027 projects forward. And at that time, those projects will have the detailed scope, we'll have pretty drawings, we'll have renderings, we'll have photographs, and also revised cost estimates that will be much closer hopefully to what the actual will be. and we'll be reviewing those lists at the facility committee meeting and then also at the board meeting. And it would be at that point in May that we would be asking the board for approval to move forward to work with Archon to start creating

107the bid specifications. And so then six months later in December, we'd be bringing actual costs for the 2027 projects to the board. And so by bringing those in December, a little bit earlier than we normally do, we would be able to start some of the work that doesn't impact the regular school day operations as early as February. So if we have things we can start working on, we would. Otherwise, if it will impact the school day, then obviously that's something that would be pushed to the summer months. So with that, I'm going to turn it back to Lauren and she's going to talk a little bit about the funding of the plan. So the way in which we can fully fund the facility, the master facility plan without adversely affecting the average taxpayer is twofold.

108So first of all, you heard uh Dr. Pac talk about our summer of 2026 capital projects. For those of you that have been on the board for a while, that's a typical cycle. So into our annual operating budget, we will continue to use that applica that allocation of about $5.5 million to fund the projects that are reflected in each year of the master facility plan just as we do now. Second, to complete the full scope of the plan, we will renew our existing debt in the form of life safety bonds similar to what we did 10 years ago. These bonds will fund about $95 million of the total plan. The plan is designed to move critical work forward and enhancements forward without increasing taxes. Our current debt retires in December of 2027, which allows us

109to reissue bonds within that existing debt service tax rate. And with the district's AAA bond rating, which is held for more than 20 years, we're able to borrow at the lowest possible rate. So the bottom line is the plan supports fully supports the needed facility improvements without increasing the tax burden for the community. Yes. Stay close. [laughter] Thank you. I didn't move. Okay. So, just to recap on the next steps at our next board meeting, February 9th, the board will be asked to approve the 2027 through 2036 master facility plan as presented as a long range roadmap to guide our facility investment and project sequencing. Then on May 11th, we will be having a facility committee meeting to review the summer of 2027 capital projects, which are the capital projects again slated for the first

110year of our master facility plan. And it's at this meeting that we would go through great detail on all of those projects. May 26 would be the board meeting that we would bring all of that to the board and we would be asking the board to authorize us to work with Archon to start creating bid specifications. There's one more um approval that I wanted to remind the board about and that is um to in the next few months we'll come back to seek approval for Elizabeth Hennessy who is our bond adviser for Raymond James to to provide the authority for her to reissue our bonds um in the form of those life safety bonds. So once the approval from the board has been given it provides Miss Hennessy with a window of time during which

111she can monitor the market and then seek debt at the most advantageous moment for the district. So, at this time, I'd like to see if any of the members of our facility committee have anything they would like to add to tonight's presentation on the master facility plan. I'm going to interject just a few quick comments uh before we transition to the board. Um, first of all, I just want to acknowledge that our district is so fortunate, and it was referenced already, um, that not only have we had long-term architects and construction managers who know and understand our facilities, where we have made great strides, where we have continued area for improvement, and they also have been here when we made replacements decades ago, and now we're back into that cycle. So, they're very familiar, but

112I can't diminish um the impact of having someone who has worked through 20 years of facility projects with Dr. Pac. Um she does not often take credit at all. Um but one of the great values that Dr. Pac brings forward as we're going into our next 10-year cycle is that when we make estimates, when we prepare projects, Dr. Pac has continuously demonstrated a conservative approach to budgeting, making sure that whenever possible, we benefit from uh efficiencies and that we're able to bring back bids that are lower. And one of the things that often times again we don't highlight is bids come in low. Not necessarily because there's not enough work in the education industry because I assure you there is. Often times bids will come back lower because the trades are very familiar with Glenbrook.

113They're familiar with how we treat them when they're here, the availability, the access when they need things. um we're we're partners with them. They're not just individuals who come in, do work, and go away. We see the same trades, sometimes the same contractors coming back for decades. Um and that's a testament to Dr. Pat's leadership and and the the commitment that our architects and construction managers have done. So, that's one big thing. And the second thing, um I just want to uh highlight that Mrs. Bonner was just recently promoted into a role as assistant superintendent and within um two months is now presenting a 10year roadmap. So before we go forward, can we give a round of applause to Mrs. Bonner and Dr. Pat? And with that, I just want to say I stuck on

114script and I was condensed in my comments. So I'm going to turn it to other people. Uh would any member of the facility committee like to Mr. Glowaki please? Well actually facilities and finance I want to appreciate a twofer you'll get both sides but no again echoing R.J.'s these comments. Thank you for your efforts and indulging all the feedback that you got through both committees on how to create a plan that we could keep the school district as the number one district and that means these enhancements and the life safety while also not burdening our taxpayers and it was going back and forth between that and I would encourage community members to attend these committee meetings as possible because we got some good feedback from folks at that and there will be opportunities as some

115of these renderings and other things come in for more feedback. back that I know you guys take to heart. See what you can incorporate and utilize that. So, um I don't want to rehash any of the questions or anything. We've spent hundreds and hundreds of hours if you guys tallied up all the hours of all the staff and everybody involved. It was huge. And again, thank you for all your efforts in leading this charge. Mr. O'Hara. Uh no, I just want to say thank you as well. you know, you guys do a lot of work on this and and the bids do come in every I've been here five, six years now, and every year they come in um slightly less than than what we thought they were going to be, which is great budgeting

116on your guys part. You know, you want to over overthink it. You know, you a little over just so that you can be Yeah. sandbag a bit, I guess, is what we used to. Um but but I think R.J. makes a great point. The fact that low bid can sometimes be viewed as a bad thing. Um, but in this case, it's it's I would say lowest responsible bidder is what we really get. Um, and and that that's proven out year after year by our our facilities in general being in pretty darn good shape. So, thank you. only comment I'll make I said in a lot of those uh both those committees and um I thought this was a very wellthoughtout um really on chance and and very transparent process uh that I'm confident will work

117and it's really it's almost like there's no change you know with our finances I mean that's really really impressive thank Thank you. Um, Miss Hope, also just to thank you. I'm not on these committee these two particular committees, but I've heard about this, but to see all of this and hear about it from from you guys, it's so exciting. So, thank you, Dr. Steinber. Yeah, same as everybody. This is great. I just want to make two comments. One is that, you know, looking at different school districts like people were saying before, some people may look at us and say, well, it's easy to do this because we have the money. and and definitely it's not the case. Meaning planning this I I wonder if we do this but if we look at how much money

118we save by doing this proactively and plan on so we have probably less emergencies. You know sometimes emergencies happen but we have less what you were saying earlier in terms of contractors coming you know as homeowners you know sometimes a contractor comes to do one thing and the minute they start opening a wall or something find six or seven other things that are behind. So probably as as a district we should be advertising in terms of the byproduct of of planning and working and putting these things not just simply how much money we are spending but as conscious taxpayers supporting this how much money we are saving in the long run to the taxpayer and and it's great I think Mr. walk say being a good district and having the facilities to support a program.

119I mean but that you know all the work that you put and everybody else put on this you know takes a lot to have this going not just in doing the bit. So that should be recognized. My other point probably will go to to finance in two weeks but it's great that we can refinance our current bonds so we don't have to get into more debt or anything else. I'm I just my memory ls and I don't want to put you on the spot today but for many years we're saying we're going to be debtree but by 2027 and now we are going back it has to be said for the people that this doesn't mean more money because it's the money that we've been putting on the budget every year but I don't want

120to catch anybody not maybe not here today but somebody who will read this down the road and say oh I remember that three years ago we said 2027 is the mark. Sure. Um, I think there's two elements that are good to highlight. The first is when the district first went out to referendum. Uh, and I always forget 2008 2006, forgive me. Um, the district had [laughter] now you've done it. The district made a commitment um not to seek any additional uh debt service for 10 years. Um and now here we are in 2026 uh 20 years later and we are still not seeking um any additional uh referendum. Um but in 2027 instead of letting the debt retire we'll reissue at the same level maintaining status quo funding uh within the distribution plan. Um I

121think another important element to highlight a financial um uh benefit to the structure is our prior debt was 20-year term debt and the debt that we were talking about is only 10year term debt. So combining the AAA rating, maintaining same tax rate, uh same space in the budget, um but only for 10 years, I think we're doing we're doing pretty good. But we'll look to see if we can quantify some of those other things you mentioned. Great. Thank you. Um I first of all, I'm glad that Mr. Grall took a moment to talk about how much work both of you and [snorts] your teams have put into this because it's been a tremendous effort over a very long period of time and um we are all very grateful for that um and for your expertise

122and for all the passion that you bring to this but you know this is also really fun and exciting to be looking at all the the wonderful things um that we have teed up for this next 10-year um program. There's two things I want to highlight. um you know the the fact that both the um finance and facilities committee have looked at these plans in extraordinary detail. This is the little binder. There's a bigger binder that everyone reviewed. Um this is something that's been in the works. It's come back to the committees multiple times. So there's been a lot of um there's a lot of paper associated with this. And if you're interested, it's available for you to review because everything that we do here, we try to be as transparent as possible. So there

123will be links on the website for any of you who are super interested in and looking in the line item detail on this. That's great. But also equally important is um the something that was mentioned during the presentations and I I want to just call out again um and I think Mr. Glowaki mentioned it when he was talking about his um uh participation in the the recent um Glen Brook North booster club meeting. Um this is a roadmap. It requires a lot of input um and that we're going to be going out to the community seeking that input. I know that there are um families and community members who are going to be really excited about different pieces of this project. So bring that excitement, enthusiasm to us and let us know what you want

124to see from this because there's room there's plenty of time to do the adjustments on the the fine tuning and the details on this because as you say this is a highle roadmap for for 10 years worth of work. Um we obviously don't know what every little bit of that is going to look like. So there's the opportunity and um and and really honestly the obligation for the community to come and tell us because you know we're going to build these things and we want them to be the things that that people really need and want and the only way that we can know that is if you tell us. So please um come to those um I think in the last um uh newsletter there were listed some opportunities that'll be coming up for

125that. Um so please please we want you to come um and let us know what you want to see out of the master facility plan. But um overall this has been you know a tremendous effort and we really appreciate it and we're very excited. I think that's it. Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you to everyone. Uh the next item for discussion uh are the new instructional materials for the 2627 school year. So the next two items on our agenda ask Mr. Bree Tag to walk us through. These are primarilyformational items that are part of our normal cycle. Uh we invite questions after Mr. Bag uh does his presentation. We'll take it from there. Well, good evening. This is um I'm not going to save you $2 million, but I promise I'm not going to

126spend that money on instructional materials. [laughter] Um this first of all my two colleagues here are also available for any questions regarding our instructional materials. Uh Dr. Kim and Dr. Vasilopoulos they they are part of all the work that we do when it comes to the annual teaching and learning processes. This is the culmination of those for this year. Um in the fall we did our curriculum improvement that all of our IS's were here for our instructional supervisors. In the early winter, we brought forward new courses. And now we put a bow on that with what are the new instructional materials that are coming forward. A lot of which have to do with the courses that you approved in early winter or the curriculum improvement work that you heard about in the fall. So just

127as a reminder, our process is pretty straightforward. our course teams and our IS's in their curriculum work determine that there is a need for something to be refined or to some degree even reworked and as part of that they bring forward new books, textbooks or novels that could better support the curricular goals and the learning outcomes of a course. In that we do follow our board policy regarding instructional materials. There is a process that is vetted where it starts with our IS goes to our associate principles is then reviewed by myself before our entire cabinet team looks at it to make sure that it's adhering to that policy and that we are assuring that it supports the high quality instruction while also making sure that it reflects the diverse perspectives required as part of our

128instructional material adoption. With that, you have a list of our pieces this year. Um, you'll see that there are a couple textbooks. Um, and then a number of novels, uh, ranging from what we call teacher curated novels, which would be choices students have in the classroom from a list to, excuse me, whole class novels. So, it's a relatively short list this year. Um, for those of you that might remember, last year was a was a large uh array of work that we put forward into this area. So, we are here to address any questions. Um, and otherwise return for consent at February 9th regarding this. I'll add just one comment that did come up um from a board member before the meeting. Uh, there was a question. You'll notice that there's uh prices that are

129listed throughout the memo. Um just to highlight, we no longer uh pass on direct costs of materials uh to parents through um them buying those individual items. Instead, we we put the totality of all instructional materials and it results in a registration and instructional materials fee. Um I do want to note for the board and we'll talk about this more at finance that the cost of goods and materials continues to increase. We do anticipate that our instructional materials and registration fee will increase between $ 15 and $20 um year-over-year. Um again, we'll go over that in finance, but just want to highlight um that element and how uh we basically take each item, multiply it out by how many copies we need, and um derive what that fee needs to be so it's not overcharging

130or undercharging. Did any board members have any questions about the proposed curricular material? The proposed new curricular materials. It's hard to say. Yes. Just wanted to say I love the I love the fact you guys put it all together for me and I always use this as my uh my list of a a decent book. So, I'm going to read The Life and Crimes of Hoodie Rosen. I was looking that up. It looks like a neat book. Yes. Naked Economics. That's what everyone's reading now. I I wasn't a fan, but I [laughter] get deeper into it. the economics last year. You said atomic habits. I did not ask you how that went. So [laughter] Mr. Gwacki, I'm just if when it comes back on consent and everything if there these are replacing books like I

131imagine the 17th edition is probably replacing the 16th edition but in some other cases this will help out when we're in finance I think as well too looking at what costs are. Uh so we have a trackpad like kind of oh we're still looking about $200 worth of materials per student or something. Yes, absolutely. The none of these books are replacing other books. If um when we do have that, we note that as dropped and which book it is replacing. So, a number of these are new courses or direct new requirements. Um for example, the AP chemistry book is in need of a textbook um because of new AP requirements. Um, as part of that, uh, Miss Tarver and myself, we meet to look at these to make sure how things are balanced off. And

132our IS's do a tremendous job of saying if I'm reducing this, I might not be adding this textbook or I'm adding this, so maybe there's not another textbook coming in another area. This way, when my daughter complains about having to read more, I can go, that's part of the requirements. No comment. No. [laughter] Uh, Mr. Downing no comments miss Dr. Steinberg I'm just saying this it's also a lot of work and and comes probably scaffolding starting at the department is and so forth. I commend you for for working on this and keeping the curriculum kind of live. I I I was just thinking as I'm reading these titles and everything else that I always do the example that when you do this a lot of kids have no idea what you are doing. So I

133wonder how much of art in particular in English and everything else some literature is really good but it takes them to a different world that they never witness it or anything else and then on the other side on technology and everything else you need to keep the curriculum up to date. So, so again I appreciate that you are sharing with us. I know it's part of our job anyways but job it's part of our our duties here but I want to recognize everybody is behind it not just the three of you which are are shown here but I know there's a lot of work put into into this. Okay, thank you so much but don't sit down Mr. Brig. There's more. I hear I'm up again. Yes, you're up again for our student benchmark survey

134results and kickoff of the annual school climate survey. Absolutely. Well, thank you. This is in part a followup as well to when we presented our data dashboard that there were some additional questions. So hopefully we are able to address those as well this evening. But to get started, just to give you some context, our district benchmark survey, we administer this three times a year. One in the fall. We consider that to be our baseline. One that will occur this February, which is kind of our midmark, and then we use that to set us up for a final one, usually in the April month, uh, nearing May, so we can see what growth did we have. So obviously with our baseline that's usually the marker we're using to then refine refine until the end mark. The

135other piece that's really important is our first administration of this was fall of 2022. So we have nice trend data for um how have we been growing in these what we call topic areas. And finally as we talk about this there's there's two really important pieces. We have national benchmarks that's based upon over 15 million students. So when you look at the instruments we use, they are benchmarked nationally against that 15 million students. So that's a really nice marker for us to understand what is our data saying, but how does that match up? And this data, one of the things that I heard a lot of wonderful questions about attendance and um my colleagues back here can attest that when we look at our data, it's never in isolation. We have a platform called Panorama,

136we think about that in terms of our survey, but it's really our data dashboard. And on that, we can look at every one of those different demographics groups. You're talking about the different what they call criteria or uh indicators that allow us to filter and say what are students what about our nth grade compared to our 12th grade? What about our students that are in athletics versus not athletics? What's attendance look like across the whole dashboard? All that data is available for us. And I can tell you, I'm going to look over at my colleague Dr. Cummings. we often have to tell each other to stay out of the rabbit hole because we can really start diving deeply into that. So, with that being said, I want to give h a couple updates on our

137overall data. So, strengthwise, when we did our min fall administration, we found that 91% of our students responded favorably to supportive relationships. This is a real important marker for us. And when I see say favorably, that means that if it it was a a liquor scale of five, the two most uh top end would be considered favorable. If we went up to seven, it's the top three. So those are your favorability answers. So for supportive relationships, were really high. For perseverance, or we often say grit, we're at 71% favorable. And then you look at belonging. We had a little dip this year, but again it's our baseline. We had trended upward uh upwards to uh 72%. This year we start our baseline at 69% favorable. All of those including seven other topics that are measured

138all are 90th percentile or higher. I'm going to say that again because it's really really valuable for us. 10 of our 12 topics we measure are in the 90th percentile. That is significant for us when we look at our data and to the conversation about attendance. It requires us to really think thoughtfully and start connecting between the topics and finding where are the areas we really can improve. to that point we do have some some areas that are stand out as wait a minute what is happening there first and foremost student teacher relationship that has a 56% favorability rating and that is at the 80th percentile nationally now um fortunately we are measuring that unfortunately this is our first time doing that topic so as part of our work, we will be able to see

139where's that trending. Is that is that a true pattern? Is that just our our um a finding for one point? We really need to monitor that. Growth mindset is another area that is our lowest favorability rating. It is at 37%. And it fits at our 50th percentile nationally. We have monitored that trend. We have looked at that and it has consistently stayed around that number. So, we know that to be another area. And last but not least, this is interesting. Um, you can you can read into this as much as you'd like. We have a 42% favorability for engagement, but that's at the 90th percentile if you compare it nationally um with other high schools. So um obviously engagement is something that is measured and thought about a lot in the classroom but we are

140at the 90th percentile there. So what does all this mean? Where are we going? Well first and foremost let's talk a little bit about growth mindset. It's important to understand that these topics don't have one question to come up with that rating. They are a group of questions. So when we see growth mindset is sitting at this point of favorability that's based upon often four to six different questions that they move forward with. So in purple you can see for instance that things that our students responded to seek feedback on improvement after a mistake. Only 45% of our students say they do that regularly. Um can you increase how smart you are? only 44% feel they can. Um, can you increase the effort that you provide? Only 36% believe they can. And then can you

141improve your school behavior? 23%. So those are interesting markers for us to look at. So what does that mean in terms of what we want to look at and what we want to do? First and foremost, we're really interested in that uh guided studies and our multilingual. Again, remember inside of our panorama dashboard, we can look at different groups and different characteristics, different programs we've put forward. So, guided studies is one of those uh interventions that we have. When we look at guided studies and multilingual, they are showing anywhere upwards to 14% higher in some of these markers. Why is that? So that's a really interesting area for us to explore. Is it because of the dedicated focus, the additional supports? Those are things for us to look at. Um also perhaps it's understandable the

142favorability increases year after year. When you start you're at your lowest and then you go up your senior year becomes your highest in terms of how favorable you see your growth mindset. That's something to be proud of. We know when they're with us each year, they're showing improvements in those areas. And and last but not least, um how our high yield practices and again you have a copy of these in front of you. These are what I would call our five instructional practices or frameworks that we are working on as a district. High yield practice three and four clarity and challenge have direct ties to growth mindset. So as we begin this work, we have the opportunity to really look at how are we approaching clarity in the classroom, which quite honestly is letting the

143students know what does it mean to be successful right now in this lesson? And then the learning intentions that help kids go, what am I learning? Why am I learning this? And am I actually getting better at it? And if we can be explicit by that, we have seen and the data or research has shown that that helps students realize, oh, I can improve. I am getting better. [snorts] This is the data and um color-wise might be easier for you to see if it's in the peachish looking color or the salmon if you like. Um those are your lowest numbers. That is our freshman cohort right now. And then the blue is our highest rated favorability. So you can see across five of our main topics that as they progress up, four of them show

144significant growth as they're with us longer and longer. We actually see that pattern play out with our transfer students as well. When they get to us, they're at the their lowest and then year after year they're increasing. So um as many of you know that is an area that I pay particular attention to. So student teacher relationship this is another area again this is our first time measuring this but what's really important I want to point out because when we first looked at this data we said wow our students feel they belong they love our schools they love our teacher how can our student teacher relationship be so low? Um, one question asked how respectful are teachers towards you. 85% favorability. That is off the charts nationally that our students really feel our teachers have

145a respectful relationship. Respect them. And as we go through some of the additional questions start to get a little bit more at um perception perception of if they recognize you are maybe upset or feeling off how do they respond to you do do they care and those are where our numbers are a little bit lower. So for us what's important for us is to understand um what is happening and to have more conversation since this is the first time measuring our other topics since 2022. We've had student retreats. We've had student focus groups. So we do need to spend some time unpacking this. I we have our student retreat at Glenberg South that has worked with this. We have our relationship mapping work at Glenberg North that's anchored to this work. And also we are

146triangulating our data when we talk about belonging as one of our topics that is schoolwide data and our students are saying there's we have really high level trusted adults in the building at over 70%. they feel supported relationships as we just talked about and then when you talk about student teacher you start to get into the classroom and trying to understand that a little bit better. Uh wh going the wrong way here. Um how do we use the data? Um three specific ways. School improvement. Our buildings have their school improvement teams as you heard about today. One thing that was noted was about attendance and how those school improvement works and what about the teams. It's really important just for me to clarify that all these are working together. They're not isolated teams. Attendance and

147SEAL, SEAL and instruction, they all play an equal part. So you can see right here um those four pillars, the kind of green with a little yellow, those are those four areas, attendance, academics, behavior, and our SEAL benchmark. So we're always looking together and comparing that data schoolwide and at individual student levels. Our student support teams, they use this data uh every day frequently. um whether they're talking about groups of students or individual students, they're using it to early identify students that are in need. It's our early warning indicators. And when we find those, we have the ability to work with students, understand those, and actually document in our system interventions. What are we doing to support individual or groups of students? And then this year again thanks to the expansion of our late arrivals

148our professional learning teams ha have started looking at this data themselves and say how does this work with our high yield practices how can we use that to understand those better and what we need to do but also what about our curriculum work and curriculum apps such as challenge. So those are three important ways and we fully expect that to continue. Um, next steps. One, we want to continue our development along the high yield practices. Our four high yield practices. First, inviting spaces or belonging. Number two, relationship. We talked about clarity and challenge. But the fifth one is engagement. So the things we're actually measuring, we're going after with specific researchbased strategies that our adults can use in the building, whether that's the classrooms, the hallways, or our different support spaces. Number two, continue to

149analyze trend data, especially as we get to our second administration of this. Some of the topics were asking about for the first time. So what's it look like after we identified did some work and now we're getting a second and uh finally a third piece of data utilize finding and continue the building work and the initiatives that are happening with school improvement. And number four a real important piece is that we will be doing in February focus groups with our students about these high yield practices to ask them specifically what's working? What do you find really creates a strong relationship in the classroom with your peers with the teacher? What about belonging? What helps with growth mindset? So unpacking those and then those strategies will be provided to our staff during the March Institute as

150an opportunity for them to take this research and put it side by side with with what the students are saying makes the biggest difference which is really exciting to see. And last but not least, our next administration that is this February. I am excited to say in the past we've had a climate survey uh the five essentials offered by the state of Illinois and then we've had our seal benchmark occurring at a different time. Thanks to a lot of work um as a as a district and at the state level, we're able to combine those into one using the tool we're already using, which saves instructional time and allows us to use the data. Now, the five essentials climate survey data usually arrived in the summertime, leaving us little room for improvement. Now we'll be

151able to have that that data in almost real time and begin our process so that we can actually act on the data. So that begins February 3rd with our students and also we'll go out to um this one only will go out to our staff and families as well. So with that I will take questions. Thank you so much. Um Mr. Glowaki would you kick us off? No. No, just wonderful work on this and thank you for pulling it together and everything. I know. Very eager to see all the details yet to come. Y Mr. Downing had one. I forgot it. Come back. Okay. [laughter] Come back to me. I'll come back to you. I'll come back to you. Uh Dr. Steinberg, again, great. I think this is great and and I'm assuming so get

152greater as you said as we keep going through these iterations. two two things that I was thinking that stood out on the numbers on the metrics that you mentioned for different reason. I'm thinking I did a lot of study on growth mindset at a different level but sometimes the metrics have to do with the mindset of the students. So at 10 you think you are great at math. If you're asking you what's your expectation to become better, I'm already very good. So if you're asking me the question, do you think there's room to grow? No, I probably will learn more. I still would be good. Right? So, and we are talking about teenagers. And on the flip side, you get the people who say, "I'm really bad at this. I've been having tutors since I've

153been in third grade, and I don't see the difference. I'm passing the classes, but I don't think I'm going to learn." and and there are plenty of studies done in different areas of the country where first people work with students on the growth mindset regardless of any topic on there's always room to grow and no matter where you are and and there was there was a project in I can't remember somewhere in California where they change grades by doing great not there yet and different things mostly not because of the grades but to get into that mindset into no matter even if you're the best one you still have room to grow and if you are the worst one means that today you are the worst one and in athletics it's easy because coaches say

154you haven't gone to your growth spurt or you haven't you but sometimes with curriculum is not that case so I hear that the numbers don't look very good the question is maybe there's not yet an good understanding from the people that are filling out the surveys of what this means or where they are at so so I just want to put things in perspective the other thing that's to me it's interesting if if you are having conversations on the student teacher relationship. I go back to your first interaction at least that I was here on the board when you and other people work in changing the environments of the classroom. I think the roles of the teachers have changed throughout time. So I wonder what is the expectation of the student teacher relationship. I get

155along with my teacher very well. So the question one is great if he or she teaching me a lot. Well, I don't know. I'm really good at googling stuff or going to Khan Academy or something else. So I think what the work that they are doing is is relevant but not so relevant. So maybe with every survey the David is on the questions that are being asked to come up with the metric but maybe there's something there as as people work on it or you already have some insights on. Yeah, absolutely. I think uh two things in response to your your first point. I think that's why we're really intrigued about the focus groups with students. We s there's a 12% increase in favorability between freshmen with growth mindset and our seniors. That's statistically significant.

156And so what's happening there? What we're going to learn a lot from our students specific to what they're experiencing. And I'm not sure they can frame it as growth mindset or not, but what's helped them to say, "Hey, I I can get better. Uh is it seeing improvements?" And then we know okay that transition might be rough but keep encouragement along the way and that goes back to our persistence scores are high. Um to the to the other point, yeah, I I think we we need to see some trend data in terms of what is the relationship. We've talked about um our student is it okay for students to feel transactional in that um in that relationship with with the teacher. My teacher respects me. They they they help me get better. I'm respectful. Um

157the classroom environment is good. it doesn't mean we have this wholesome connection that but if I look [clears throat] at our other data our students are saying at almost 80% they feel connected to at least one teacher adult in the building so that's when you compare those two you go oh and I think that's important to your question how do we look at all of our data points and say are we okay with this maybe they don't feel that um that depth of relationship with all teachers but they feel respected by almost all their teachers and they feel connected to at least one adult which is where the research really points us to but uh time will tell as we look at the trend data. Thank you Miss Hope. Yeah, I was had a few

158things I was thinking of, but I think within the same categories. I was looking at the questions that related to growth mindset and I'm sure they've been validated and like I think about how a student might interpret, can you improve your behavior at school? Well, if they're behaving, no. Um, and so I just wonder, you know, like given that that's our lowest Yep. I don't know that that's so telling necessarily about our students growth mindset. And so that's why I'm so excited that you're doing these focus groups because I think just reading through all of the questions, so much is up to interpretation or what the baseline is. Um, how are you deciding who's in these focus groups? Um, I have a few questions about them, so I'll start there. Yes. Um, so we have

159two different categories. The first one, our f um excuse me, our student voice group often looks at students that are saying they're they're not feeling those senses of belonging or those connectedness. So, that's the ability to unpack that. We're going to look at groups where kids are saying they're excelling and asking them, "How did you get there? What are you feeling? What changed for you?" So, we're hitting it from all angles. Um especially because we want to share this with our staff and say this is what our teachers are our students are saying you're doing exceptionally uh an exceptionally good job at continue to do these things. These are these are the things that are making a difference. Are we you know focus groups are great and teenagers don't always feel comfortable sharing in front

160of others especially if we're talking about barriers or challenges not necessarily the high value targets. Are there opportunities to get ideas for what they'd like to see changed or what might help them feel better relationships or more of a sense of belonging individually or anonymously or some other way? Yeah, absolutely. So, we have a variety of mechanisms, a number of things in student supports where those opportunities exist for one-on-one conversations. Our teachers are exceptional at that. Um, the trusted adults are another area where the students reach out to. So those are more informal uh formal in the uh student support realm, informal with their teachers, and then obviously we're constantly seeking feedback whether it's through large groups, small groups or even individual. Lastly, I saw for the questions I think they relate to belonging, but

161all of the questions about friendships are about do you have one person around whom you can be yourselves? Do you have one close friend? And I know that that's really important. I think when we and a lot of of what we hear from kids and parents is that they're feeling excluded or they're feeling left out or they don't have someone to sit with at lunch. And so I wonder how we get at sort of the the group piece because these groups of friends or these social groups are so impactful on the kids' mental health and if they have one friend that's wonderful and they go through their day not feeling a part of things. How how are we gathering some of that information? Absolutely. So you you are referencing uh supportive relationship category which is

162tied to I'm sorry I just want you to be able to see it up here in case you want to reference it. Um when we triangulate our data promise it's up there somewhere. You are looking at supportive relationships that's the student like the the full network. When we get into belonging, that's when we start looking at the whole. So there's questions about how respected do you feel by your uh fellow peers, your students. So that's getting at that larger chunk of questions. How how much do you feel connected to the other students? How how much do they understand you and your unique identity? So those are the three areas I think that are targeting what you're after. So, that was a real I'm glad you brought that up. We had belonging and supportive relationships since

1632022. We added the student teacher because we felt that was the piece that was missing. And so now we can get at all of those different things. The one-on-one, do you have at least one? We know the research supports that you feel connected to one person. We're in really good spot. But how do you feel in the larger group is still important to us? Because that gets at the schoolwide. How do you how do you feel coming to our school every day? It's hard to belong if you only feel connected to one. Yep. Mr. O'Hara. Yeah. Uh thanks so much for doing this. Um so when you had um us being in the 90% of schools or I think the lowest we were 80% right um every school uses the the same questions right the

164same words so so we don't have to worry about that at all right absolutely if we change them we lose the national percentile so that is part of why we have stayed true to this we can add some questions we but you lose the national percentile and do we know I mean the national's nice but more specifically more granularly do we know how we compare say to select peers so inside of panorama it's a great question you have the ability to look and as you dive in you can sort down by show me only high schools show me high schools in the Midwest so you can look regionally you can look at population size you can look urban suburban rural and finally you can look at your free and reduced population rate. You cannot select

165and say, "Show me US versus New Trier or US versus Stephvenson." But you can look regionally and obviously that pool of schools starts to shrink. Uh so we are always tinkering with where those numbers are, how are we doing, but no matter what metric we start to to break apart there, we're always in the 90th plus percentile. Well, even even in the select groups like the the low and reduced. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Okay. You're [laughter] up, Mr. Downing. I I forgot that you So, no, that's why I said that. [laughter] Uh, and you stole it because you asked one of my questions that helped me remember. Thank you, man. There you go. I'm concerned or is there any research done on survey fatigue? Right. I mean, three surveys, same questions in nine months is,

166you know, it's kind of like, check, check, check, check. Do I have to do this check? You know, so um do you notice a [clears throat] um that's why I'm glad you're in the focus groups, but do you notice that there is a diminish point of diminishing return with that? So, we have looked at other schools that went before us. We were in 2022, we were one of the few schools that were not doing this and the majority of the schools did three um for the same reasons and spread them out the way we do. Uh some were doing two because they had the additional climate survey and what was known as the Illinois survey. So that was putting them at four to six. Um I think we're at a a nice state with three.

167We have talked about going down the two, but with the merger of the climate survey, that keeps us healthy at three surveys that are this robust. The other thing that's really important is we keep the time limit of this to less than 20 minutes. Uh our students typically take around 15 minutes to complete, but that was really important. There's another bank of questions. We have so many things we want to ask, but we kept that in mind that uh Dr. Cummings and myself as we uh produce these and share with larger groups um I think one time we're like oh that's a 40-minute survey that would not work. So we do like we do keep that in mind that survey fatigue is a real thing and how do we keep our students understanding it. The

168other piece that I I I think is important is our students see us doing things with this data. That has a real powerful impact and effect that they know we're not just another survey and who knows what's happening, but they re we really are taking action with it. Uh what is the participation rate over the course of the three? So, we're always um averaging around 90% with our our springtime administration usually being uh our highest which is usually around 91 92% as a district. That's great. Yep. We are targeting targeting getting to 95%. Um and really pushing that envelope. Um this is all very illuminating. Um and but I have a couple questions that came up in my mind. Um just just now you when you said that there's a bank of questions. Does that

169mean that when for example um when you're looking at a particular bucket that you can there's 12 questions and you guys pick these four or no? No. So I was going to say some of these questions are weird. I [laughter] need better questions. I I apologize. No, the these questions have been vetted. There's um it's four universities have worked on these and have nationally normed them. What we're talking about is in reference to topics. So there are bank of and I apologize I probably did say bank of questions bank of topics that sit out there that we can choose and say oh we really want to know about um how our students feel about academics and science and there are science-based questions that are nationally normed. Got it. Um th those are the pieces. So

170it's the topics. So we've selected the topics that we we want to have collected here. Okay. Um you know one thing h to kind of to the point of of of student participation h how are this these are administered during class time presumably. So when you say you have 90% of students participating, is that because some of them just don't fill it out or is it because we have a, you know, we have absent kids who are like never in school when it's being given. Well, I don't want to talk about our chronic absenteeism rate. But um are do we are we wrapping this? Yes, we can wrap these things together. Exactly. Yes. It will be hard to hit it will be hard to hit 90% or 95%. So, um, we do administer and we

171do what's called a survey schedule. Okay? And so, we have an extended block two period where we add an additional 20 minutes and we uh trim down our other classes um to the degree that we need to to meet that number. We have traditionally done the survey at that point during the day for students that are here. And then we roll into uh about a 24-hour period where we would contact students and say, "Hey, you didn't take this." And we'll get another four to 5% just through that. Um but then we close the window. What we are going to do during this February administration is because it's tied to the five essentials survey, we are still going to administer it the same way. We're going to make all the connections in that 24-h hour period,

172but then we're going to do targeted work to reach the students that we know did not complete it because we have another four weeks before we have to close the survey. So, we will target those students that were were not available, were not here or have chosen not to take the uh survey. I think it's important to say we do have albeit a small percentage that families can opt out of any survey instrument that we uh administer. This is one that they can opt out of and we keep that and maintain that list. Okay. Um and then I I don't really understand this but I know it's that it's important for the report card that we have a certain percentage hit each year and I know we've been working on that and messaging that. And

173I just um I I completely understand why moving to the panorama platform for five essentials makes sense and all that. I just don't want people to be confused and not realize that. And I on some of the surveys I saw it said five essentials on top, but the some of the samples, but I think a couple of them or maybe one of them didn't. I just, you know, sometimes um people might think this this survey is not the survey, you know, the one that matters because I know we've been explaining to people this is important for us, not just because we're collecting this information and it's helpful for us to have this information, but because it it actually feeds into something, you know, a larger assessment for us as a district. So, how are we

174making sure that we don't um lose that message if people get confused by the variety of surveys that are available? Yeah, absolutely. So, in in working with Panorama, they have done this with a number of districts. They recommended we change the title to five essentials for our staff survey and for our family survey. They recommended because our participation rate on the student survey is already so high being framed the ben the student voice benchmark to just stay with that. That's why that one doesn't say five essentials. As long as you thought it, I'm good. I am so happy you're the only one that's asked that and that gets me really excited that I can answer. Um, and that we and we hit n uh 95% of student participation is what we need to hit for

175the report card. Okay, great. All right. Um, you know, it's it's great that we have a few years now so we can look at trends. Um, and I hear the question about, you know, getting tired of taking surveys all the time, but I do think that, you know, as long as we are, um, making it apparent that we, this isn't just an exercise to check the box, but it's actually important information that we use. Um, I think that that, um, probably alleviates that concern and hopefully, you know, it's part of having people feel like they belong and matter that, you know, people ask them these things and then we do things in response to what they say to us, right? So, um I think that's great. So, thank you very much. Thank you. I believe

176the last item for discussion is uh we have some intergovernmental agreements on the agenda. Dr. Grall, we do. And in the interest of time, I'll give a a summary and then open up to any questions. Um today we have three IGAS presented before you. Um as a reminder, we just actually approved another IGA with Oakton College earlier this evening. So IGAS is a formalized relationship with another another governmental entity. Um the ones before you today uh two are very similar. They are with the village of Glen View and the village of Northbrook respectively for school resource officer services. there was some um recent statutory changes that required modifications to our IGAs. Um those have been incorporated in and have also been vetted by legal counsel. Um the other item that we did was clarify for

177all of our IGAs for SRO services our term period and renewal procedures. So we have maintained SRO uh relationships since the early 2000s. Um we do not anticipate that uh there is a need to review this on an annual basis. So it's technically a multi-year term but in any year should the board or the village desire to re-evaluate their relationship we have the ability to cancel uh or renegotiate. So pretty uh common terms there. No concerns uh from the administrative side. Um the third agreement is an agreement between the Northfield Township Road District and the school district. This is in essence a retroactive agreement acknowledging the work that the Northfield Township Road District had uh supported at Glen Brook South High School. As a reminder, we shared with the board back in September that um

178there was identified striping uh within the primary um roadways around our campus that could be improved. It was already scheduled to be improved within the school district's budget, but through the road district partnership. Um uh they offered to absorb uh that expense. In creating the retroactive agreement, the district agreed uh or is agreeing to contribute $5,000 towards the total project cost, which was uh $25,000. Um, in exchange, especially in the current inclement weather that we are experiencing and unfortunately will probably experience for a little bit longer, uh, there might be situations where the road district would benefit from staging vehicles uh, in our parking lots and in different areas. Um, and so if we have that ability to support that uh, during non-school hours, we would make that available to them. Um, in addition, there's

179some equipment that uh they might benefit from again in order to serve um the township residents and if it's available to us, we are available uh at the time they need it. We could make it available to them. Uh it's a limited agreement, so it's scheduled to terminate on June 30th, 2026. With that said, happy to entertain any questions from the board. Any board member have any questions? Uh I guess uh just on that last agreement, why would we terminate it? So we so next winter they won't need to park their vehicles or it won't It's a great question. Normally when we have situations where we're doing a retroactive agreement, it's a limited term. So all of our agreements typically end at the end of the fiscal year. So we would end it here and

180then engage in further conversations if there's a desire to renew it. Um, so just basically we'll bring it back uh before the board. What makes this particular agreement a little unique because it's retroactive is it references a specific project. Um, and so we would generally want a longer term agreement to be um, uh, much more flexible and fluid and not specific to a project. RJ, can you refresh my memory? the striping and everything in Glick South that was partially in relation to some studies that were done on lake and this stretch right here because we were trying to help the village redirect traffic out as well too so it wasn't so congested I it's it's a great question I would say everything when it comes to as Dr. Georgees refers to the postage stamp that

181is Glenberg South Campus uh is always about reducing traffic uh challenges. Um this particular project is actually more of just ongoing maintenance in our areas. So not tied to it uh with the exception of making sure that the large volume of traffic respects pedestrian walkways and respects no parking areas. Thank you. Any other questions? more of a comment. Um, saving money again. [laughter] No, no dispute. Okay. And on that note, um, we will we'll bring that back then on consent. Yes. Okay. Excellent. Um, that brings us to a discussion of possible topics for future meetings. Um, I money [laughter] always always on the agenda. Um, Jack, I I do have one I'd like to bring up. Mr. O'Hara, um, it occurred to me I I'd like to have a discussion at some point about the

182outcomes and how we're tracking them for our children years after they've left, like how many drop out the first year of school of of college or or how many go on and become a trade. I mean, just Yes, that's what I'd like to have a discussion at some point. So, I think a great time to have that conversation. Dr. Cummings is working with our college counselors to provide an overview of our college counseling program. Uh we can also provide um some understanding of the longitudinal data uh collections that u not only our district but our state collect. They'll give you some good ideas in there. And not to add to that but as far out as it's reasonable. Yeah. Do they have it you know after college whatever they far out is reason is reasonable

183you know. Okay understood. We will look forward to that. Any other ideas? Don't want to put you on the spot. Could always uh shoot us an email um if you if something comes to mind um and R.J. will find a place for it on our calendar. All right. Excellent. Um we do have items on the agenda for close tonight. Correct. Yes. And I just recommend we would go in. I don't think it will take too long. Um just keep that in your mind. Okay. Um in that case, I will simply inform you that this evening the board of education will enter into a closed session to discuss sensitive matters as allowed under the Illinois Open Meetings Act. Please note that no action will be taken following the closed session this evening. At this time, I

184will 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 body or against legal counsel for the public body to determine its validity. and of 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 in accordance with sections 2C1 and two of the open meeting act. So moved. Second. All in favor? I. Any opposed? Motion carries. Okay. Um so what? Five minute break. Sure. Sounds good. All right.