Board of Education - Oct 14 2025

001And Miss Mullenbeck, we're ready when you are. Glen Brooks High School District. One of these days I will remember. Sorry. Sorry. Welcome to this meeting of the board of education of the Glenburg High School District 225. Um, and Miss Smith, could we please have the role? Mr. Downing here. Sorry. Mr. Glowaki present. Mrs. Hope here. Miss Melenbeck here. Mr. O'Hara here. Mr. Shine present. Dr. Steinberg here. Seven members present. Uh, next item on our agenda is approval of the agenda. Uh, Dr. Grall, have there been any changes to the agenda since it was posted and circulated? There have been no changes. In that case, uh, could I have a motion to approve the agenda? Second. All in favor? Any opposed? Motion carries. Okay, moving right along. We will uh start with uh item three on

002the agenda, which are board and superintendent reports, but we will actually start with the superintendent report. All right. Good evening everyone. Thank you so much for being here. Um, as we get started today, I have uh three different uh kind of sections of my report. The first one actually comes and very important for Dr. Steinberg, which is the true north updated articles of agreement. So, we've mentioned to our community um over the past probably about month that a group of superintendent, special education directors and assistant superintendent of personnel and business have come together to talk about what True North could look like. We've called it a reimagining committee, if you will. And we have finally reached that point where tomorrow the True North Leadership Council will be presented um the first phase of implementing some

003of those reimagining plans and that's through the uh first read of new articles of agreement. Now articles of agreement are a little different. School districts don't have them but joint agreements or cooperatives do and they ultimately kind of serve as bylaws for the organization. the rules for which certain things must be handled in addition to board policy. Now, these bylaws are really important with respect to true north because some of the challenges the organization has faced is lack of clarity regarding financial elements. In particular, um over time, membership fees for being part of True North have gradually increased. Just to put that into perspective, Glen Brook High School District's uh membership fees for this year are well in excess of $500,000. And in addition to the membership fees, there was also a capital projects assessment

004in excess of $100,000 um to address capital needs that certainly were in the organization. But the important takeaway is that bill exists whether or not we're utilizing any services from True North. And so if you're an organization that's a member of the cooperative and you're getting a half a million plus dollar bill and you're not using services, it naturally leads you to wonder, is this the best utilization of my resources that otherwise could be utilized for my community, for my students that I'm that I'm educating. And with that in mind, the reimagining committee said, you know what, we're going to move completely away from membership fee. And so the new bylaws dictate there will be no membership fee. In addition, all the financial status of district will be uh in many ways guided by a

005zerobased budgeting approach. And the way you eliminate membership fees and you leverage that zerobased budgeting approach is that when you're setting tuition rates for programs that True North offers or when you're setting service rates, if you're contracting with them for certain services, maybe not full programs, but itinerant services, um those rates will reflect the exact amount of money that the organization needs to operate. It's the same thing that a nonfor-profit would need to do or a private therapeutic day school would do. They would determine what their expenses are. They would determine any excess above expenses that they would need to collect, for example, to pay for capital projects and those would be reflected in the bills. And you would always make sure that you account for some years you might have high enrollment, other years

006you might have low enrollment. So you you balance all of that out. The articos agreement put all of that into black and white text. But also importantly, let's say something comes up under the prior model, the administration and the leadership council that did not uh have voting representation of superintendent or school administrators. Um they would make adjustments and then you would have um additional unanticipated expenses. Under the new articles of agreement, that condition, that financial status cannot change without twothirds of district superintendent agreeing to go in that direction. And that's a really important element that goes to the final uh final component of the changes which is when you have a governing board that's one um school board member from each district that comes together at most once a month to have conversations. What you're

007lacking um consistently is are these decisions in the best interest? Are they not in the best interest? How does this impact my individual district and so on and so forth? And that's because typically when local decisions are being made, the district superintendent is there. It's sharing feedback along with the special web director, but the structure lacked a lot of that clarity, lack of input. And so ultimately the the organization will be transitioning from uh being heavily run by um a large group of representative schoolboard members to that group will still exist just to to ratify things. But most of the decisions will be made by a group of superintendent, one from every district um that will be meeting uh almost monthly to make sure that everything's in align in True North like we would expect

008it to be in alignment uh at the local district. And so that's kind of a little overview. Dr. Steinberg ultimately serves as school districts representative to what's referred to as the governing board. Um and so he'll be presented this information tomorrow along with a few other things. Um assuming uh that everything goes as we anticipate. Um there will be a special meeting at the beginning of November where the governing board will approve the bylaws and then in January 1st um this new structure, this new uh design will be fully in effect. Um and I would serve as the district's representative for that uh new executive committee. Um really important elements doing this work has resulted in a transition of at least 15 districts that had indicated their intent to withdraw from True North. um now

009saying if these changes are made which are responsive to all of the feedback that's been shared uh for quite some time then they're not going to withdraw because there is great value in providing that service. So that naturally leads to what about Glenbrook? While we do not have the need to leverage True North for services today because we have built tremendous capacity in our own programs. Having the flexibility and access to True North is a direct benefit to our students for what we don't know today or tomorrow. And if that access is provided at no cost to the district and the district still has the ability to leave the cooperative um later on if we wanted because there's also a new law that we assisted in in drafting that takes away this confusion if other

010districts have to approve if you can leave. Um then there's there's no downfall in remaining a member of True North. Um and I would say that our efforts to help especially from a financial side bring about a strong foundation for the cooperative. Um us staying in I think would be very meaningful to the organization showing that um we were always interested in having these hard conversations prior to um Dr. Steinberg um Mr. Dowy uh Mr. O'Hara um and um Mr. Kraki, you had attended some of True North meetings, didn't you before. We had been bringing up these concerns for at least three years and they would be brought up, the vote would happen. We would vote one way and everyone else would vote this the other way. Um so we we've come a long way

011and it's very exciting to see where we're at. Um, but once these article agreements are approved, I likely uh will bring forward a recommendation to remain a member of True North. Again, because there is no financial uh detriment, there's only benefit and I will have a piece of paper that shows there is no financial consequence. I just need that paper first. So happy to answer any questions before I go on to the next portions of the report about True North. We've talked about this in many different phases, but I want to provide a little opportunity. When would the effective date be in terms of our fees and when we stop paying provided this goes through? At the end of the fiscal year of this year. So, yep. So, July, it's very important, Madam Treasurer. on

012July 1st, we would not have to maintain that membership fee allocation in the budget um because you would no longer be paying it. Thank you. So, we started or we were in the middle of a legal proceeding. What's going to be the status of that? Yeah. So, what would ultimately happen if we um remained the member is I'd present a resolution to the board to resend our notice to withdraw and then the proceeding would would end. Um the proceeding has not moved forward because to be very candid so many districts were going to be going through that proceeding and the um uh North Cook ISC said why don't we why don't we hold for a moment uh to see what what's going to happen. It's a great question. Any other questions on True North? Okay,

013this is now a very exciting moment because for the very first time as a superintendent, I get to take an opportunity to recognize some amazing individuals. If you're not aware, every October is National Principles Month. And in the state of Illinois, um October 19th through 25th is principles week. And on October 24th, we officially celebrate principles day, right? At the federal and state level, we have all come together. Um, and so with that said, more than I did, I just want to take an opportunity to acknowledge that the heart of a school are our staff, our teachers, our support staff. Um, the individuals who we contract out with making sure our students get to school safe through our transportation uh, services. the recognition of all the individuals who may not work full-time here but come

014in in order to embrace and support the 4A especially activities and athletics. There are amazing people that make school life happen for our 5100 students each and every day. But there are individuals that really serve as that glue that bring us all together. And those are not only our principles, Dr. Georgees and Mrs. Hughes, but our associate principles and our assistant principles. These individuals are oftentimes assisting not only our students but their families through difficult times through hard conversations and really working strategically to make sure every student regardless of what pathway they choose um is able to reach their destination following their high school experience. And so as we celebrate National Principles Month, recognizing the role that they provide in not only supporting our students, our families, but overall communities, on behalf of the district

015as a whole, I want to say thank you to all of you. Um, and the individuals that you see up here, I'm going to take a moment to make sure I recognize all of them in case you don't recognize faces. I'll go left to right. We have Dr. Georgees, principal at Glenberrook South. Mrs. Hughes, principal at Glenrook North. Uh, Mrs. Barger, our assistant principal of deans over at Glenberrook North. Mr. Bean, our assistant principal of deans over at Glenberrook South. These are alphabetical by the way. Moving forward, uh, Mrs. Bonner, our associate principal of operations and student experiences at Glenrech North. Miss RSelli Canola, our associate principal of student support over at Glenrech South. Miss Rebecca Holstar, assistant principal of student services over at Glenrech South. Dr. Joyce Kim, our associate principal of teaching and

016learning at Glenrook South. Uh, Miss Jennifer Corber, our associate principal of student support at Glenrech North. Dr. Mark Morantel, our assistant principal of student activities at Glenberrook South, Mr. Tommy Midas, our assistant principal of athletics at Glen Brook South, Miss Lauren, Dr. Lauren Ali, um, our assistant principal of student services at Glenrook North. Dr. Mike Taran, assistant principal of student activities at Glen Brook South. Uh, Ms. Mrs. Molly Tomlinson, assistant principal of athletics at Glenrook North. Dr. Maria Vasilopoulos, associate principal of teaching and learning at Glen Brook North and Mr. Casey Wright, associate principal at Glen Brook South of operations and student experiences. That is a whole large amount of names. I wanted to make sure I recognize each and every one of them because they are part of this glue. They are part of

017the fabric that makes so much happen in our schools. And while not all of them are here today, perhaps they are sitting at home watching because this is a very exciting opportunity for them. Can I ask everyone here to give them a round of applause for Thank you to our principles for everything that they do. Final comment today. Um I had shared uh through our uh board updates a PDF of this booklet right here. I'm sorry I don't have a booklet for everyone, but if you'd like one, I would happily lend you mine. Uh this is the Illinois Association of School Boards uh resolution committee report. Um each year the IASB at the joint annual conference which I'm very excited to that I'm going to see so many of you at this year um brings

018together a group called the delegate assembly. It happens on the Saturday of the conference and typically there's a variety of position statements that the organization puts forward. And to be candid, some of those position statements need a little dialogue uh at local boards because sometimes they're controversial, sometimes they apply to some districts but not all, so on and so forth. This year, there's only one, and it's really not a controversial one. It's all about an unfunded mandate that should be funded. Um but there are a large amount of constitutional amendments to the um not for-profit organizations uh constitution. Um we have two representatives that will have some influence here. One uh first is Mr. Glowaki who is part of the North Cro North Cook regional group. they have a meeting on October 22nd where they'll

019talk as a region just about these changes in here uh kind of process them through and and uh oftentimes the regional groups might identify an individual that will speak during the assembly on behalf of the region. Second, Miss Mullenbeck serves as our official representative uh or official delegate in the assembly. So, she will actually cast our vote. Um, and so we will review all of these proposals at the next board meeting, have a little dialogue, but I just want to encourage you, please take an opportunity to review this. If you have immediate questions, maybe share them with Mr. Glowaki since he'll be at the regional group as well as Miss Mullen, and then we can talk about them all together. Right. Very exciting time. With that said, I have concluded my report and I'm happy

020to transition. I believe Mrs. Bonner who is representing Glenberg North this evening. Yes, I am. Thank you. So, first we want to congratulate our flag football team. We had a great season and what's amazing, it's only in its second season, our flag football team, and we rostered three levels of athletes, which is really exciting. So, thank you to Coach Haggus and Coach Sweeney for a great season. Also, congratulations to our boys golf team individual qualifier, Alex Lee. He placed uh 13th in the state overall at the state tournament. And so a big thank you to coaches Justin Gerbitch and Pam Harnick for that great season. Our girls golf team saw some amazing success this weekend at the IHSA state tournament. They are state champs for the third year in a row. Each of the girls

021performed amazingly well with Martha Kuahara entering second place overall, earning second place. So, thanks to coaches Mike Schroeder and Chris Cooper for that great season and thank you to the Northbrook Police Department for their support with the police escort back to school on Saturday night. I'll turn it over to Principal Georgees. Thank you so much, Miss Benner. We just had an absolutely phenomenal week at Glen Brook South with homecoming. Um the BAT team at South just de debriefed it today and we were all in awe on a couple things. first is we're seeing a bounce back in our student uh Titan pride. We're seeing an increase in the amount of students participating in homecoming activities and it was just a really feel-good week. Um so our theme this year was game on uh which was

022a really exciting theme for our students related to board games and video games and a lot of good childhood memories and favorites. Um we had activities throughout the week related to competitions and trivia uh door decorating contests. Um, a lot of fun in the building. On on Friday night, we had a fantastic uh football game where we beat Deerfield 42 to nothing. Uh, and then we got to enjoy fireworks in celebration afterwards. Um, for those of you who were with us Saturday morning, we had a lovely, lovely, uh, community parade. Um, we're one of the few high schools that still does our parade in our downtown area of Glen View. We had a huge community turnout um for beautiful weather where we had 30 student groups uh that marched with either their banners um or

023as you can see some of the absolutely awesome floats. This was our senior class and the theme of their float was the game clue. Uh and that center area actually spun like a hidden bookcase. It was amazing the work our students did on their floats. And then finally, Saturday night, um we had 2,000 students at our homecoming dance. Uh everything was packed. The dome was packed, the taco um food truck had a line. I mean, it it was a glorious, wonderful, and fun evening. Uh and as uh I shared with Dr. Maranto, my my favorite part was that the kids keep coming keep kept coming. Um, it was apparent kids were texting their friends saying, "This is really fun. Come on out." And even though they weren't necessarily in a suit, they put on their

024best dress shirt and they came out. Uh, and it was a wonderful, wonderful event. Um, so shout out to our SAO and all our class sponsors and all of our, uh, chaperones and and club adviserss. It was an absolutely amazing evening. Um, in terms of athletics at GBS, you're you're going to have to, um, bear with my distraction this evening. Our girls flag football team did win regionals. We are currently competing in semifinal semi, excuse me, sectional finals. The game is going as we speak. There's 3 minutes and 28 seconds back. We were down, but we just had two touchdowns. Quote from AD Tom Midas. This is unbelievable. Um it is an amazing game. So, I'm going to I'm going to keep tabs on it, but super proud of our young ladies and hopefully they

025will win in the next three minutes. Um, in addition, uh, we had some great performances at golf as well. Um, we had, uh, two state qualifiers this past weekend. Um, Lara Konahali, who is only a freshman, uh, for the girls, and Tad Colette for the boys who finished 13th overall. So, super proud of our athletic programs as we approach the end of the fall season. Thank you so much. Okay, thank you so much. That sounds like a great week and congratulations to our students on all of their tremendous success. Um, that moves on to a report from the board from the facilities committee. Do we have someone from the facilities committee who would like to share? I do believe Mr. Downing has volunteered for that. I lost the nod at game. Uh, so we actually

026had a really good meeting. Um, we talked about the uh recommended uh capital projects that need to be taken care of in the next year. Not to go too deep into it, but uh um the things around updating the bathrooms, elevators, uh roof repair, chiller maintenance. Um you'll see it come out in a memo. Uh but we're kind of have to tweak it because for safety reasons, we don't want to put the whole school um map out there. So, um, but, um, and it'll be brought up at the next board meeting, but it it was productive. We also touched on the master, uh, facility plan going into the kind of a 10-year vision, and it was kind of based around a lot of security and safety and and things like program program enhancement. You know,

027some culinary kitchens are pretty outdated and we have a lot of kids that, you know, might be pursuing that after high school and modernizing of cafeterias and modernizing of uh departmental uh departmental areas as well as our athletics all around safety and and modernization. But that'll come up uh at the next facility meeting. So, we don't have to, you know, will not be brought up at the next board meeting. Okay. Questions? so much, Mr. Downing. Uh that then um does any other other board member have any reports they'd like to share? I can just briefly I guess uh parent associations have been very active over the last few weeks uh both South and North along with the booster clubs and stuff. So it's been uh some of my colleagues at some of the meetings and

028stuff and so very enthusiastic with the season school season starting up with them getting involved. And I know one was on the career and college preparedness, which was interesting stats to be shared. I know we're waiting to get some from South as well too to compare the two and everything, but we have a lot of kids going on to college. Despite our focus on trying to be more broader, there's still a heavy focus on college readiness uh with that and everything. What can we do for that? Uh but at the same time, I know this board's always been supportive in the past of trying to find more resources to help these children find a path and looking forward to more conversations on that front. Excellent. Okay. Um in that case, we'll move on to item

029four on our agenda, which is recognition of community visitors. And we do have um one person who has signed up to speak tonight. Um, our public comment period is an up to a 30 minute period for public participation. Each individual may speak to the board for up to two minutes. We ask but do not require that each speaker state their name, address, and relationship to the district to facilitate followup if needed. All speakers are expected to conduct themselves with respect and civility towards others. Please remember that this is a business meeting of the board. All comments should be addressed to the board and should concern board business. The board receives public comments as a source of information and considers them in making decisions and in the establishment of policies. It is board practice to take

030no action on any items nor to discuss any items that members of the public have raised until the board has had time to gather information and then objectively discuss available options. However, during the meeting, the board at its discretion may choose to address an issue or correct any misinformation raised during public comment. While the board does not control the topics brought to its attention or the substance of public comment, speakers are reminded that their comments are not automatically protected by any immunity or other legal protection. Uh with that, our speaker tonight who's come to join us is Sarah While. Hi. Uh thank you for the opportunity to address you. Um what I wanted to talk about tonight was the application for student clubs that was announced at the last board meeting. Um, and particularly what

031I understand, um, and let me put a caveat that my understanding is based on talking to my student and other students. And so you will be well aware if I'm misinformed and take that into consideration. Um, my understanding is that previously we did not allow political clubs to be approved in the district. And I noticed in the application that that is a category that is being included for this application process. It's possible that many other categories have also been added because I have not seen prior application processes. um in the past. Um my understanding is that um there have been students that have been agrieved by not having their clubs approved on political bases. Um I know one of those clubs was like a gun safety club that um some students wanted to form after

032the Highland Park shooting. Um and I also know that there was an incident some weeks ago where um students were agrieved that their club was not approved and that ended up in some incitement to violence that then um led to an announcement to the district community. um which led me to come two weeks ago to talk about student safety um in the classroom. So all of that brings me around to my reaction on seeing that political clubs were in scope was initially um uncharitable and thinking that maybe the board was appeasing um the incitement to violence and seeking to deescalate it in by allowing it. Um on reflection I realize that that is not at all consistent with what this board and this district does. Um, and I do think that the expansion of clubs

033is a really good thing because we want to en, you know, encourage our students to I don't have the timer, so let me know if I go too too long. Um, we want to in uh encourage our students to expand their involvement and their advocacy. But I would ask that we have a little more clarity on the criteria and maybe a little more transparency to um who's applying, who's approved, and who's denied so that we can understand what's really going on. Um, again, we hear things from students, um, and it's hard to know if they're true or not. Um, but that that's really my request. So, thank you for the time. Thank you, Miss Well. The next item on our agenda is item five, our consent agenda. Uh, Dr. Grall, have there been any changes

034to the consent agenda? There have been no changes. We did um upload an updated uh personnel report earlier this afternoon. So that's the only uh note. Okay. Um in that case, could I have a motion to approve the consent agenda? A motion. Second. Mr. Downing. Yes. Mr. Glowaki. Yes. Mrs. Hope. Yes. Mr. O'Hara. Yes. Mr. Shine. Yes. Dr. Steinberg. Yes, Miss Mullen Beck. Yes. Motion carries. Thank you, Miss Smith. Uh we move on now to our discussion action agenda. And the first item on our agenda is our presentation on supporting students mental health and well-being. So this is one of the topics that some board members had brought forward as an important topic that not only the board have an opportunity to learn about but our entire community. We know that from our prior conversation

035um a few meetings ago that student safety is paramount. It's a focus that all of our educators, all of our administrators, all of our staff um think about each and every day. We're always looking at ways to make sure that our buildings are secure, that we have procedures in place should any emergency happen, but so too are we consistently monitoring and aware that our students have other needs. And sometimes our those needs are best encompassed with terms such as mental health and well-being. This evening, we're very excited to welcome Dr. Dr. Laura Cummings, our assistant superintendent, as well as our two assistant principles of student services, Dr. Lauren Normali and Miss Rebecca Hol, who will be sharing perspectives and and activities um that go on each and every day at our schools. I hope that

036the board has had an opportunity to review the memo. I hope that the entire community takes an opportunity to pause and reflect not on what you hear today but what we've written down here because there are a lot of great things that we're doing each and every day for our students and that list is ever expanding. And to that uh as I turn it over to Dr. Cummings, one of the things that we recognize is so very important is that we pause ourselves for a moment and reflect. And so as you are guided through the next activity, I encourage everyone in the room here today to participate, share your thoughts, and understand why it's important to pause, reflect on how you're doing, and also letting trusted adults and educators know how you're doing so that

037we can help you even more. Dr. Cummings. Great. Thank you. All right. Good evening. Thank you for the opportunity for us to come speak with you. Um, a couple weeks ago, Mr. Joel Reyes was here to talk about the physical safety um in the district and tonight we're here to talk with you more about the social, emotional and well-being. Um the district remains committed to student wellness and well-being. Tonight's presentation is going to highlight some of the proactive measures and things that happen on a daily basis within the student services department to ensure that our students are seen, supported, and safe throughout their days in the school. So, for those of you who were at the board meeting with our colorful popsicle sticks, which was a fun activity, I know a couple of you missed

038it. So, you're going to get another colorful activity. Um, tonight we're going to look take a look at the mood meter, which I placed in front of you. Um, and this is a tool from the Yale um center for emotional intelligence, Mark Brackett. And what it does is help build awareness of your emotions. Um, it's very important when we start to work with students that we are helping them to identify their emotions so that we can teach them the skills should they want to move to different brackets. And we're going to show you um about that today. Um right now some of our clinicians and our teachers within the PE health department are utilizing the mood meter and different um modules within the ruler um to help students identify their emotions because we know the

039more they understand and can identify and understand their emotions, they can start to make the connection on how emotions impact their thinking and their behaviors. So in front of you, you have a mood meter. on the screen you have a QR code or a website. What I'd like you to do is take a moment, think about where you are at in this moment and how you are feeling. The sheet you have in front of you gives you a variety of different words. It's no longer about being happy or sad, but really truly identifying that specific emotion that you're feeling. Um, there's no right or wrong here, just like we were with the popsicle sticks. No right or wrong. Every emotion is good. It's really how you utilize it and how you have the skills. So,

040feel free to either take out your phone and scan the QR code or you can enter in the web address and complete the mood meter for yourself. It is anonymous so no one is going to know whose results are whose unless you want to share, but I'm not going to ask you to. Anyone can participate in the audience too. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Nice. Well done. Students, you could use this as a screenshot for your evidence of being here today. Oh, yeah. We do selfies, too. Cabinet members, you can also feel free to join if you'd like to plot where you're at right now. I know there are a lot of words. It's a lot. must be so much Laura. While they're doing that, do you want to just talk about the quadrants that exist? Absolutely.

041Um, so again, there's no right or wrong in terms of how you're feeling, right? It's about you and how you're feeling. There actually is an app that goes along with this. I get reminded like 12 times a day that I need to enter my mood. Mr. Breag probably enters his 12 times a day. Um, I do not. Um, I should. Um, but it is so cool to start tracking how you're feeling given different situations like whether you're painting or coloring or you're in a meeting or you're at work. Um, how you move through the various quadrants, your unpleasantness to pleasantness. Um, as you move to the right um, and how you're feeling and being able to document what you're doing in that moment when you were feeling those things. Okay, you ready for some results?

042Oh yeah. Okay. So, so one of the the things I gave you um on the back side of your mood meter, these are some of the skills that we work on. Oops, I forgot about the microphone. I like to walk. Oh, I won't. I'm gonna stay right here. Um, so these are some of the very specific skills that we use with students. So let's just say you're that one individual in the red. I don't know who you are and that's okay. But if you are feeling irritated, frustrated, angry, stressed, you know, now might be a good time to write a persuasive argument. Um, advocate for something you believe in. So it gives you different strategies. Sometimes it's okay to be in the red when you are, you know, um, advocating for rights or with customer

043service on the phone or things like that. It's okay to be in the red, right? But sometimes in order to be available for some of the learning or a meeting that you're in or a conversation, you want to try different activities that you can so that you can move throughout. So, this is just a little helpful sheet to teach you some of the skills that we work on with our students. It's a work in progress. Okay, we can go back. I am happy to also pass along the QR code for the app should you want to start kind of tracking your lives um or your days. So um all right, I am going to pass it on to um Lauren Ali and Rebecca Hol to kind of walk us through um a typical day in

044student services and I'll be back towards that. Awesome. Hi, good evening. I'm Lauren Ali. I'm the AP for student services at GBN and I'll share a little bit about our student support teams that we have across the buildings in the district. Um and really a student support team or we call them SSTs are really um focus on intervention planning and support students and every student has a student support team at both of the schools and really at its core SSTs consist of a school counselor, school psychologist, a school social worker and a dean. So really multiddisciplinary group of people who come together and really kind of focus on three different areas um you know evidenced on the screen. Number one proactively identifying student needs. So SSTs meet on a weekly if not more frequent basis

045to look at data that we have on students um and hopefully have early indications of where students might be struggling and need additional support. So specifically we might look at attendance data, discipline data, uh academic and grade data and social emotional data to support students based out of that information and that teameing process. We start to talk about providing individualized support for students. So determining the support plan based on what the student needs. Um triangulating the data that we have about a student and really pulling in the right people to be part of those conversations to support students and identify the supports that they are going to need to find short-term and long-term success. And then we do a lot of uh crossf functional collaboration. So I talked about those like core members of the

046team who I think we pull together in in crisis and in preventative planning. And then we also do a lot of collaborative teaming with our school nurse, 504 coordinator, MTSS coordinator, home hospital coordinator, teachers, case managers, administrators, including those in student services. Um, but also administrators across the academic departments depending on what that particular student need is going to look like. we invite them to come to SSTs or perhaps to join a PST structure, a problem solving team um where we talk about issues that students are having that are maybe not immediately solve that require some cross collaboration across departments and different members of student services in the academic departments. Um so the student support team is like a really just comprehensive way to support students and identify what it is they need. Um on

047the next slide uh when we think about like the data that we utilize to um run our SSTs and think about early warning indicators and preventative measures that we can put into place. One tool that we utilize um as a tier one universal screener for all students is the Panorama SEAL benchmark survey. Something that's administered three times across the year. uh most recently administered in October um which yields a lot of data around SEAL that our student services departments or student support division utilizes to support students. Um for today we kind of like highlighted three areas for you all um though we have a lot more data than this. Um one area that we have seen just like consistent positive response from students on is supportive relationships. So if we think about the past year,

048students are pretty highly and pretty consistently reporting that they have trusted adults and peers in the building and that they report that they have supportive relationships in the building. Um so I think this is like an area of celebration that we have um that you know we have uh great community great community of you know teachers and support staff and family community and students are really feeling that and recognizing that. So I think that's important to share with you all and to share with the community that students are identifying this. We also have um data on sense of belonging. So this is an area where a few years ago we noticed that there was um perhaps a lower than desired number of students who were reporting that they were feeling a sense of belonging in

049the buildings um across the district. This has been a really targeted area of both schools or across the district I should say on sense of belonging. I think we can see from 2022 up until our most recent administration of theCCL benchmark survey a pretty steady increase in students reporting that they feel like they belong in their school community and that they have you know a home and um you know group of people in the building that they feel very connected to and like their their school is for them. Um so I think this is um some some great work that's happening in the buildings and so I think we sort of like see evidence of that work um come through in our benchmark survey and then we can identify an area where students are not

050reporting um I think as desirable strengths which is on growth mindset. Um so we have you know fewer students than desired who are reporting that they feel like they can um sort of grow and with effort can improve uh over time. And so I think that, you know, as we look at our data, we think about individual student data, we think about schoolwide data and areas where we can see some um room for growth as a school. Um and so like one area that I can think about as we like respond to growth mindset are high yield practices um that we're working on across the school community both in student services and in our academic departments. um to really focus on those likel instructional strategies in the classroom to help maybe progress some students and

051the way that they think about themselves and their own individual like growth and in pursuit both you know academically and and personally. In addition to the benchmark data that we have as like a universal screener, we also administer or we do the signs of suicide curriculum in our ninth grade PE classes. Um all 9th grade students um have pushin services in their PE classes um to engage in an evidence-based suicide prevention program that help students to identify early warning signs of suicide. And we have clinic clinical teams and counseling teams who respond to students survey responses immediately and in the days to follow based on what they indicate in the signs of suicide curriculum. Um and some evidence suggests that through this program there's a 64% reduction in um suicide attempts um AC for students

052across the nation. Um and it's our belief in our district that this program um does save lives um and really helps us find and identify students that have not otherwise been on our radar. Um and so we regularly are surprised sometimes by some of the responses that we see. So we find this a very valuable and worth worthwhile programming that we do as a you know tier one universal way to like understand where where students are at. Um the value of doing it at 9th grade um is you know students have they've just come to us so just learning who they are um and they we do this in the fall of our um of the nth grade year. Um so these are just like a couple of examples of some of the universal ways

053that we collect data about students um some of the structures that we utilize in our SSTs more preventatively. Um, and I'm going to pass it over to Rebecca Holst, who's going to talk about some of like the day-to-day operations when we can't necessarily prevent um, but we're like in the moment about some crises that like emerge and um, occur uh, on the day-to-day basis in our in our department. So, pass it over to Rebecca. Thank you, Lauren. Um, as Lauren said, sometimes we're not preventing, we are managing the situation live. And this is where all of what was just said kind of comes to fruition. When we do have to talk to a student that might have um thoughts of harming themselves, if you look at um your mood meter, those are the vocabulary words

054that we're looking and trying to tease out from the student. How are they really feeling at that moment? Can they put a description to their emotions or are they are they all over the place or can they not find the vocabulary? And that that's a skill we try to learn. But really specifically in that moment, we hand our clinicians some protocols to make sure that they're on the same page that they're asking very, very similar simple questions to the student so that we can gauge the risk. Once we gauge the risk, then we can really partner with the family and get any outside support that is needed. So, if you look at the screen, you'll see some of the questions that um the Colombia model, that's what we call it, the Colombia protocol um asks

055whether or when they've had kind of thought to suicide, which is which is called ideiation. What actions have they taken to prepare? Have they done research? Um, and this is not this is really heavy material for um a clinician. We tend to always team these scenarios and it can take hours to to go through this. You can't just have a student come in your office and jump right into these questions. You have to build some rapport. It might be a student you've never met. It might be a student you have a long history with. regardless, you have to make sure that there's trust and and rapport there before you can ask these questions. So, they are our clinicians are incredibly skilled and and they do work through this all the time when they're going through

056it. They're asking these questions. Somebody um is most most times is taking notes and then they're going to debrief it. Um especially in this in this last one, whether or that they have attempted suicide. Um, that's a really key question that they need to know to plan for the future. Often it is um, this is where Lauren and I come in where we also are debriefing with the team afterwards. This is not it's not at 3:15 this is done. It's not out of their brain. Um, this is heavy stuff that they absolutely go home with and they have to tease out this information and sometimes they have to share really crucial details with the with the family with the guardians who may or may not have any idea. Um, this is what we categorize as

057as harm to self and they're gauging that risk. This is what we do coming out of the signs of suicide out of that data. They're meeting with kids at Glenn South. We did signs of suicide last week. So, we're really really working through um our students this week. Then sometimes we're talking about harm to others and that is what we call a threat assessment. Um we use what is called the behavior digital threat assessment. This is what we have um registered with the state as our threat assessment tool and it's a three-step process. The first step is the screening step. And again, it goes back to those words. Are students just reacting emotionally with a hand gesture, with a doodle, with a an oral or verbal um phrase? Are they writing something? Are they just

058being a little high schooly, right? a little flippant, a little um unfiltered in a little maybe robust in their vocabulary. And we have to tease that out. What's what's just a flippet statement and what is very very very significant and important and we have to tease that out. And this again is complicated and can take hours, but this model walks everybody through it. So again, they're teaming with us. It is a it is a team when we realize we have a threat assessment. I mean I it is often that I will walk out of a meeting because I have to go meet with the team and just get everybody on the same page so that we are following all the steps. That is absolutely best practice and we want to make sure that that's being

059followed. We'll do the screening again. and it's teamed and then we come back and we debrief and we make sure are we comfortable just ending at the screening calling home creating some interventions for the next week or do we need to go to the comprehensive model and really conduct um some interviews make sure that we're interviewing the family the teachers the student really diving into a little bit more of the student's portfolio and then depending on on what we find what interventions do we need to take place and then again that's always followed up with with a debrief. So these two things happen um within the building. It's not often that that other people are aware because it is in the office and it is always teamed. We make sure that there's always more than

060more than one person in the room and that the student is absolutely cared for in that time and that it is followed up with parent guardian communication. Um, and often we ask the parent to come into the building, so those can be face-to-face conversations. Um, we get this information from a variety of places, and that's really important to know. Some of it is signs of suicide in that programming that we do. Some of it is um, a teacher's grading a paper and they see a doodle. Some of it is the teachers walking around the classroom and they see something on the desk. Others it is some of our reporting systems and our community partnerships. So, we partner with text for help, which was previously text to tip, and safe to help, which is an an

061Illinois um a free Illinois tool for all schools. But these really allow for immediate reporting. Um text to tip will just contact an adult related to the school immediately when this comes in. They have our cell numbers. They either call us or text us. And the top presenting pro problems are going to be social media. That's that's number one. what did somebody put out there um that we need to dig into? Or they're calling and they're just saying, "I know this about somebody else." It could be that they're just worried about a friend or that they know something happened. Somebody could call on themselves um that they just have tremendous anxiety and they need support and we will make sure no matter what category that is on here, we will get them that support either

062immediately or the next day depending on what time we learn about it. Um, if you look at the bottom of that slide, we've been partnering with text forhelp text since 2017. Um, over 3,000 conversations have taken place. And we do have a lot of data. We do know that a majority of our data, um, we get it on Thursdays between 12 and 6 p.m. So, it's it's interesting how it comes through, when it comes through. Um, there's an eb and a flow to that. and and sometimes um it's it's interesting to look at the data to predict some trends, predict some topics, and then we're always surprised. Um the next one that we have is just our anonymous internal concern forms that students can fill out. Both schools have this. All of these resources are

063on our web page. Um and that's just some interesting again some interesting data. we have seen a spike in the reporting and that goes back to those supporting relationships that Lauren was talking about. The more supportive relationships, the increased sense of belonging, the more we're going to learn, the busier student services is going to be and that's for the benefit of everybody. Um, so year to date right now as a district, we've had 60 submissions and we'll we'll just continue to track this data. It is on all the time. Laur uh m geez, sorry. Uh Laura's gonna talk a little bit more about our community relationships. Yeah. Okay. So, obviously you've heard about a lot of the the meetings we have, a lot of the planning, the teaming, the collaboration, but we also do provide

064direct services. A lot of the work of the social workers and psychologists are providing direct interventions to students. And so I couldn't possibly list all of them on of the different interventions, but I just wanted to highlight a couple that I have on here. Um, we do h we provide counseling. No surprise, right? We provide individual and group counseling. Um, typically it is for skill building um or solution focused. Our social workers provide counseling, our psychologists provide it and our counselors provide counseling as well. Um, group counseling is typically based on a need that arises that multiple students have a similar need that we will then create um, a curriculum for. We provide homebound tutoring um, sometimes one for students who qualify and require homebound tutoring, but also for additional support and services depending on

065a situation with the student. We have several research-based interventions. I just listed two of them that are probably our top two favorite ones for the student services members. One is called check and connect and it's a way to check in with a student on a daily basis and be able to set goals. And check in and check out is for those students who need someone to check in with to get their day started and to check out with at the end of the day. So those are just two of the ones. I would say the most valuable and important on this list is our relationship with parents, guardians, and families. Um, it's really important once we start to identify concerns that we are reaching out to families and they are part of our team. I

066know we didn't include that on the SST like as part of our team, but we do invite them to come in to meet with us. They know their kids the best and they can help, you know, reinforce and help us structure interventions um that the students are going to be successful. I'm hopeful if you'll have me, I'd like to come back again another night um and talk with you about our personalized learning plans of all freshman parents being invited into buildings at both South and North, meeting with the counselor, meeting with the student, and talking about their goals um and their courses for four years. and what a benefit it is to be able to start a relationship with a parent, a family, a guardian um on a positive note and an introduction to the

067high school and then when you have to make that call later on about a concern or about a health and safety, it's that much easier to have that conversation. So, I'm really excited about that taking place next month. Um and then the last thing I just want to mention are our community partnerships. We have so many. Again, I couldn't list them all here, but I just thought it would be really important for you to know how we partner with our community. Um, as you know, we have the health center with Advocate Health. Um, so we're partnering with them to provide, um, we have a licensed clinical social worker there full-time, spends a day at North, four days at South right now. Um, they came in, provided that lunch and learn I talked about. We work

068with family service center quite extensively. They um do help provide when we are doing the SOS screening and curriculum, they provide therapists to help the teams with those assessments and should we have a crisis situation or need additional grief counseling, they will always volunteer to come support. Same with youth services and compass. Again, another resource for us. They typically um have helped provide safety assessments for us. So, we might do a a safety assessment um that we just previously talked about and we want another set of eyes, another clinician um to interview and meet with the student to help us plan. And so, oftentimes youth services and compass will help us with that. Um Catch and Glen View North Coalition for Youth, they actually partnered together to provide mental health coping kits for all of

069our freshman students. So, both South and North got enough kits for every student. and during that SOS curriculum time or orientation, they received those coping kits through that um organization. And then the Joselyn Center that has provided us with mental health first aid training for staff, for students um and recently has provided for security and our instructional assistance and then also some psychiatric support. Again, not comprehensive, but we are incredibly fortunate to be in a community that values um mental health and well-being and is willing to partner with with the school district. That's it. So, any questions? One of the three of us would be happy to Mr. Sure. Um, so I know we've had some tragic situations over last few years and stuff and kind of unique. Any lessons learned that would help us

070in the future? How have we incorporated that and changed or the warning indicators or anything else? And I guess this is also for you as well too. Given the the system has some some of those triggers. Absolutely. I'm good. Okay. Sure. Okay. Um, so what I would say is after every crisis, um, so whether it's a threat assessment that we've done that we found a weapon or something concerning like that or a grief situation, a crisis situation in the community, um, the team does come together to do an afteraction and and debrief, right? Um, as you could imagine, being a clinician, my background is as a psychologist, like of course the first question we're going to ask is, did I miss something, right? like did we miss something? Um and so we do do a

071deep dive um into students records to see like what are those warning signs. I know I can't give you a number standing here but I know we have saved so many lives with our um reporting systems with SOS um and and sometimes unfortunately there there aren't those warning signs um for the school to be aware of. But what I would say is I think we continue to grow and evolve and use additional data points that we've never used before. Um, so now that we have all this data in it in and of itself, you're not going to really find anything in there, but once you we use a system called Panorama, once you use that to be able to look at the whole picture of a student, you learn a lot. So you incorporate that

072regularly after each instance and stuff. Um, why Thursdays? But is there Yeah, good good question. I was given that it's been now a few years, I'm sure you have some thoughts on it. I don't know if I do, but I was surprised like going through the data, we have a dashboard and so you can look each year. Tuesday is a is a close second. Um, but but Thursdays was our most popular night of getting texts. Um, and and just to clarify so you all are aware, students can reach out to those text to tip services and communicate back and forth with a licensed therapist, right? The school district only finds out about it if a specific name is given and a specific concern is given. Otherwise, we are not we get the report, the summary

073report of like the different topics that came, but we get zero student information unless a specific name is given and those places will also reach out directly to the police. If there's something there's a correlation going into the weekends or something else that you guys are expecting, social issues, you know, I think it's I think yeah, I think it's like it's it's a guess and it's hard to like postulate on that. I would like suspect or surmise that like as the week progresses I think you know social interactions increase as students are together. I think that workload increases. I think we see assessments on Fridays. And so I would suspect that like some of those like anxieties and tensions might rise as the week progresses sort of like leading into maybe like some type of

074release that students feel as like Friday rolls around and we move into the weekend. Um, just like another fun fact on the data, I know not presented here, but presented before is that October, um, we see the highest number of text to tips come through historically. Um, I didn't look at our most recent data, but historically that's been the case. Um, and I think, you know, even in student services now, I think we can kind of like feel the pulse. Um, you know, the school year is up and running. Not that October is the Thursday of of the month. Um, but I think that, you know, we are we are through the first, you know, couple of weeks of the school year. the students are up and running in their courses, extracurriculars are up and

075running, we're into sports seasons. Um so I think that uh maybe students are beginning to sort of like feel some of those pressures that emerge. Um so I know as a student services department, we are aware of that and in tune with that and it's really um for us some some comforting timing to have administered the Panorama benchmark data that we do go through um sort of concurrent with some of these like increases that we see in student responses. So I don't really know about the Thursday, but that's my Thank you. my best guess. And my final question uh from the what the board do to make your jobs easier and maybe another variant of this question would be or what barriers can we help remove within our scope and stuff and I know this

076is putting you on the spot in front of your boss. You should say anything you feel is best to support our kids. I don't like you serve the time. Um I you know I uh I think that we are and like we regularly talk about this. We are incredibly lucky to have the support services that we do in the Glen Brooks. Um I think that it is uh just the the number of like psyches and social workers, counselor, support staff that we have is a is is really incredible and it's because of that that we're able to do a lot of the work that we do. Um, so I think having an opportunity to come and speak here, um, I don't know how like robust our audience is online, but I think being able to

077share what we do is really helpful. Um, because without the opportunity to communicate with families and communicate with you all, that there really is a lot of work that's happening on a day-to-day basis to support students mental health and well-being, you know, perhaps like a narrative um, can can exist about like supports that do or do not ex do not do or do not actually take place in in the building. So, I think just having opportunities to be able to share what we do, sort of celebrate the work that clinical and counseling teams and other student support teams are doing in the buildings um is very helpful because I know that the people in the buildings care very much about the work they do. They care a lot about kids and invest a lot of

078time um and experience a lot of compassion fatigue every day. We sort of like see it um as the day winds down. So I think just creating opportunities to be able to share what we do does reduce some barriers because a lot of the work is happening but I think if it's not maybe like internalized at large um some of those um maybe like ideas and sentiments go go unnoticed. So I think people probably really value um the opportunity to be able to share. So um I was excited to tell my team that I was um coming here today to share with with you all some of the things that um really they're doing. Just my my take. I think one of the um unique things that I've experienced in my last just year and

079a half um at South is our language liaison are invaluable. We have to sometimes do these health and safety assessments, these threat assessments by way of a language liaison and one that's incredibly difficult. They don't know what they're walking into. Um that's a lot for them to to hear and to take on and to have to communicate. Um, but they drop everything and that's really really important. Um, so one just thank you for allowing us to have that. Um, and thank you to them for being just so great and and put always always always putting students first. Um, and then I think we just always need training. We we have to stay current. We have to stay in the forefront of everything that's happening when it's especially when it's safe safety assessments, threat assessments, just

080always always we have to be in the know that it's really important. I think um Ryan talks a lot about anchor grading and we talk a lot about that when it comes to just evaluations. We need to also anchor grade threat assessments, health and safety assessments to make sure our reaction and and what we would do in our step by step is the same. Um our our students that are experiencing that need that from us, but the safety of all the students in the Glen Brook need that from us as well. And that just consistency with the adults is really really important. Well, thank you to you and your teams for everything you do. So appreciate that, Mr. down. Um, yeah, I just say thank you. You there's no question you've saved lives and I

081know you can't point to it, but we all know and so, you know, thank you and all your team. Please pass it down for me. Um, is there uh I just follow up on his Thursdays. That was just weird, right? So, is there is there a specific is it more self harm tips that come in or is it reporting on somebody else? Do you have know what the typical tip would be? It's it's reporting on somebody else for sure. Oh, it is. Okay. Um I think and it it could be just I'm worried about my my friend so and so. Please make sure that person gets help. Yeah. I mean I I do think I'm like thinking about I need to call my kids at Thursday between noon and six every year with them. Yes.

082Um, I do think the the buildings have spent quite a bit of time talking about see something, say something. I think they've also anchored their values in in the Titan values and the Spartan class act and and really talked through about how we have to care for each other. And so it is unbelievable what gets submitted on there. Like sometimes you read and you're like, "No way. Like could this really?" and it it had happened like one out of like a hundred you go okay maybe that person was just trying to get some attention but 99% of the time like it is absolutely true they are deeply concerned they see it on social media before any of us see it and they submit pictures they submit videos like they are like allin like here you

083go so it's amazing um I know you talked about I might have missed the connection you said ninth grade they do the uh um self assess. Yeah. Uh what is done after that? Is that is that the Columbia protocol just to make sure that you know or is it just kind of everybody looking for a sign or something? Yeah, great question. So, freshman year, um student services partners with the PE department to deliver that curriculum and that assessment. Sophomore year, student services partners with all the health classes, both semesters, um on a unit on mental health, um and talking about identifying um those who need support, identifying depression, very similar to like the mental health first aid training in terms of um what they co-e with the health teachers. Um and we are currently working

084on junior and senior year. Okay, final final questions. And unless you if you mentioned it, I apologize. Is there a protocol when to engage with parents as it relates to self harm or any of that? I guess. Absolutely. Um they are part of the process. Um there protocol. I mean when you when you say it's time to get the parents involved. Yeah, great question. It it depends on the specific situation, but they will always call come in before we will release the student. Even if the assessment is unfounded and what was the word I think flippant, you know, a a comment made, we're still calling home usually with the student in the room calling home, making sure the parents are aware of what happened. They're the eyes and ears after they leave the school and

085so we want to make sure parents are always aware of the situation. Um, nine times out of 10, they're actually coming in the building. Thank you again for what you guys are doing. It's invaluable. Thank you. Mr. O'Hara. Yeah, let me just reiterate. Thank you so much. I mean, you guys, you can't point to a number. Um, but prevention is is everything we're looking for really. Um, a couple of quick questions. You say you're working on junior and senior. That means you're working on a a touch at at that time as well, so that you're in front of them in a every year at least once. Okay. Yes. Um I I think you know our counselors right now have multiple touch points and we didn't really touch on that curriculum tonight at all. Um we'll

086do that when we come back and talk about school links and college counseling. Um so there are multiple touch points with them. We're still getting all that data from our juniors and seniors but we're also looking for some additional touch points. Yeah. Another reason to be in front of them basically, you know. Um and I guess you have data going back to 2017. So like back the envelope 3200 call 3200 over eight years is 400 a year. So you're getting at least one a day. I mean that's that's more significant than I thought you'd be. I mean and that that's even counting the summer, right? Where you're probably not getting as many. Yeah. No, it's still active in the summer. Quite active. Um but keep in mind um the conversations that folks are having with

087text for help or safe to Illinois, we're not being told about all those. Um so there's even more then 400 is what we know. the 400 years what we know about no we know about all of them because we can see a dashboard so we know what category they fall in um our assistant principles um receive a text message or a phone call when it go it needs to go beyond that so when it needs to get escalated for some you got it okay yep um but do we know if that's since we have data going back to 2017 is it higher now than it was then like is there a trend I know you you'd actually have co in there so you could kind of see We hear a lot about CO affecting students.

088Did it? And the numbers for that. So I can I can Yes. Every year our numbers Yeah. have significantly increased. And and I think I think it's for a couple different reasons. I think we are intentionally talking about a sense of belonging and intentionally wanting student voice to be heard. And so I do believe that they're starting to feel more comfortable. They have relationships. they feel more comfortable. Of course, we always encourage students just walk down to student services, tell any adult any concern you have. Um, but now being able to give them mechanisms outside of the school day um and anonymous, like there is no way for us to find out who submitted um any of the the forms unless they disclose their name. Okay. Um, and I guess, uh, you mentioned the personalized

089learning plans. Um, and we started that this year, right? Yeah. So, we should Yeah. So, we should have some neat information because you're right. It like the first time you're meeting the people prior was when there was a problem, but now you can meet them under not under a cloud as it were. Um, and and you're going to meet all the students that way, right? So, that all I'll Yeah. Going forward. Yeah. So eventually it'll be all the student you'll in four years. Um, no, thank you so much. I guess the last thing I'd say is regarding Pete's last question about um anything you might need. Obviously you're kind of in the spot right now and you'll be driving away and you'll think of something. Just just remember we are here and we're more than

090willing, you know, um I think Pete's point isn't like you have to tell us now, but if if something occurs to you, I'm pretty sure the board is more than happy to to hear whatever you guys need. Thank you. Miss Hope, thank you. Um, do you have information about what percentage or how many students are accessing mental health related supports, whether it's through an IEP or 504 or just drop in or wanting to meet with people? Go ahead. Yes. though not at the not specific data um to speak to right now. But we do in both buildings um record students who are coming down for check-ins. We maintain a comprehensive list of students who have counseling services whether it is through related services on an IEP, a 504 and also we see a um subset

091of our students who have no plans um who come and connect with clinicians or counselors for counseling services. um either like a short-term intervention or like a longer term um planning with an individual student. So, we like maintain the records and in in both the buildings. And how do students find out what like who all is available to them and how to access them if they especially if they don't have like a formal plan or support? Yeah. So, uh, one example is, um, I think it's I think it's in both of our buildings. Um, is we push into all of our 9th grade, um, support periods at North and South. Um, we do a tour of student services. Um, we introduce them to their student services teams. Um, we both at both buildings, we have

092like support resource documents that we share with students. A lot of our staff are moving towards linking that into their email signatures. um we've posted it anywhere that we are like able to potentially post um the support resource documents which might also contribute to an increase in students who are like submitting these forms because maybe it's just more visible in their general engagement um with online resources. Um, so I think for at least for like our ninth graders, um, they have that experience right when they start. We did that in September. Um, meeting meeting the folks in student services and having access to the resources that are available to them. Um, and that will continue over the course of four years. We also have our SST structures where we identify students and find them. Um,

093teachers make referrals to us. So I think students who are potentially in need of support, we've we have a lot of ways to identify them preventatively. Um, and then I think we have some supports in place and some systems in place for students who may not otherwise show up on an indicator. They might have good grades, report positively on the well-being survey, come to school every day, are quiet and um uh complacent in the classroom are compliant and complacent in the classroom. Um, and so those are the trickier students that we have to go and uh and identify. Do we know how have we looked at how mental health factors and absenteeism factors for students are are linked and and like do we do anything mental health-wise for students that are struggling to attend school

094consistently? We do and we do a couple of things. One, try to just really get them in the building and and then also give the family the resources to get outside support if that needs to be the first step for them to get them in the building. um once they're in the building, obviously we're available, but that then is a tricky balance, right? We don't want them missing more class to come meet with us. So, we need to make sure that we're meeting them where they are. Is it maybe during a quick lunch period? Is it maybe during a guided study or or an SRT or really quick before after school? That's where those quick check-ins, check-in, check out, the check and connect are really important because we really want to lay eyes on that

095student, but um just we're we're so excited that they're in the building. that that we're there kind of in the the background a little bit to for when they need us, but to just keep them in the building is super important, but that is a super important relationship with us and the parents. Sorry, I just have two more questions. Um, it sounds like we have so much for reporting and catching and focused on, you know, assessments and suicidality and and safety. Um, do we have you talked about pushing into PE classes and a unit during health that's focused on mental health? I guess the question is I don't know how if you can answer like is that enough? Is there and and what are we doing specifically and proactively to teach kids who maybe aren't

096unsafe or meeting that threshold that they need more? But just to teach them coping skills and strategies or how to manage things that aren't necessarily suicidality, but panic or just not being able to cope with the stress of finals, you know, is that built in to our curriculum? Is okay. Um, and I to go back to your first question, is that enough? I think we would say nothing is ever enough, right? We'd like the whole day. Um, but it goes back to the relationship between student services and teaching and learning, which is so important and those high yield practices and um, our tier one interventions in the classroom and what classroom teachers can can teach to all the students that that might need it at some point. Um Mark Brackett, the ruler guy, um his

097book Permission to Feel is he really wants kids to learn how to name what they're feeling. And that's what sparked the mood meter and to really know the difference between stressed and anxious and to then be able to identify how you feel, create a coping strategy, then find a coping strategy that works for you. What works for me might not work for Lauren. Um, but we might both need a strategy during exams. Um, so that that is absolutely something one we need, we're working on, we're talking about all the time. Um, that right there, that topic is part of our PLC time that we're working with our clinicians on is a lot of those coping strategies around academic testing kind of anxiety. And lastly, the I'm thrilled to see the increase in terms of the

098percentage of kids who feel a sense of belonging and 72% is still hurts to feel like 28% of our students don't feel a sense of belonging. And I'm curious if we ask questions around like what the barriers are in their minds versus just trying to like what does that mean exactly a sense of belonging and and how are like what can we do about that to keep it going up hopefully more right um we don't ask those specific questions that's the anonymous part of the survey but um it goes back to that classroom and overall school experience and and it's okay to and I would say couple that with resiliency, right? It it's okay being uncomfortable and they have to be able to sit with that. It doesn't mean you don't have a sense of

099belonging. It doesn't mean you hate school. It just means some some days are hard. Um, but we really think about that climate of the classroom and our kids able to take risks and and feel like they can still grow and come and that is then where that whole growth mindset and sense of belonging and all of that kind of collide into that healthy kid. Yeah. That is going to thrive and succeed no matter what is put in front of them. I would just be so curious to ask them what do you think would help you feel like just you know what are their ideas? So there was uh a part of the panorama survey that's a short answer question. Um so I think I had 6,000 to look at. Uh but thank you Ryan for

100doing that first. Um and it it is it asks like who are your people in the building? Do you have people that, and that's a really important question, do you have a trusted adult in the building that you can say, "I'm having a bad day," or, "I need help." Or, "How about I'm having a good day?" We don't talk about that enough. Um, celebrate those successes. When you celebrate those successes, you're innately going to think positively sometimes or or not as down when you when you do stumble a little bit. Um, so, but that was really really interesting data to read. Thank you. I just want to quickly add um this the instrument we do use when we talk about belonging. It's uh more robust than just asking do you belong or don't you? It

101actually unpacks it from so we can look at the direct question to what degree do you feel you belong in your school but then it unpacks it to uh feeling of support, feeling of being respected and feeling of being understood. Those are the three kind of pillars of belonging. So, we're able to take that overarching and then break it down into those three categories to determine where we fit. And as my colleagues were mentioning, one of the areas uh we talk about these high yield practices and inviting spaces is is our number one high yield practices which really starts to unpack that belonging. So where we target our strategies is based upon what we're learning from our students in those different pillars. Thank you, Mr. Shine. So um a number of years ago, a superintendent

102came to the board and I believe it was Dr. Charles and he requested uh an expansion of mental health services and I forget the year um but we added psychologist it's been six years roughly six so we made a very significant investment in personnel and over that time there have been many changes and tonight After viewing all of this feels like the culmination, at least the reporting of a culmination of a lot of work by many people to improve the mental health of our organization. And so it feels really good knowing that we started something with a vision a while ago. We put resources behind it. staff came in here with strategies and implementations and it really feels good to be here and listen to your um input tonight. So, a couple of questions I

103have um in terms of finding the students because you're got the needle in the haystack thing going here and I'm wondering if there's any relationship between students who feel that, you know, more challenged um are they students who are not in any club, activity, sport or art? And I know this is not exclusive because I can unfortunately think back through the many years I've sat here and we've had stories and you know it's been like the most popular kid in the class and they're in 12 activities and but I'm you know there's always outliers in situations and I'm wondering if there's some relationship because that's that point of connectedness. I mean because you can sit in class and just do your work, turn it in. There's no no real connection necessarily with the teacher. As

104you said, student is not a problem. You do their work, they go home. But it seems like if they if they're involved, then there's another adult at a much closer touch point with that student. I'm wondering if you got you know, are we I'm curious. That's all. You're you're absolutely right. That is um another touch point. We I do not have data at this moment um to support or or contradict that. Just it is yes we we know that all data across the country the more involved the student is the the better their support system is going to be so that I can get a phone call at at 8:00 at night from whoever is on the bus home and and we can talk through a problem. That that is that's I would I would

105love that. I would love for every kid to to have that experience, to have that trusted adult at some point in their in their day. Mr. Shine, just to follow up on that, one of the um areas for growth that we identified as we were actually reviewing the new clubs process is it's one thing to be rostered in a club. It's another thing to actively participate in the club. And so over the coming months, we will be working with Dr. Targan and Dr. Moranto to define what is active participation and what are the ways we have to track that information in order to feed into all of our systems to further identify what we oftenimes refer to as watch lists students that might be seeing a decline in participation, a decline in grades, a decline

106or an increase in disciplinary challenges which will just help us further identify. I see an opportunity for AI here. What? What a wellstated concept. Yes. So, yeah, exactly. So, in order for your work to be successful requires a lot of input from staff who have the actual interactions with students. And so how do you drive through the organization the common language and the uh expectations so everybody's doing the same thing. So many years ago Glen View had this um character counts thing with like five pillars or whatever and it started in kindergarten. They brought it right into the high school. You know banners, posters, everybody was kind of saying the same thing. It looked the same. me go to the library and business was put the little p, you know, sticker in their windows. I

107like it was ubiquitous. It was everywhere. How do you get staff to to with all the things that are on their plate to to to take some to take the ownership to feed you the information? Thank you. That's L. I'll hop in. So, I think the common language is so important in both buildings, in all buildings, as a way to talk the same language with students. Super easy in an elementary school. Okay, maybe not super easy, but they have one teacher, right? They don't have eight different teachers, eight different personalities, eight different combinations of students in there. And so, that's really where we've leveraged the Titan values and the Spartan Class Act. So when you walk into classrooms, it'll say, you know, these are our values. Respect, curious, inclusive, proud. What does that look like

108in a classroom? What does that look like in a bathroom? What does that look like in an athletic competition? And so you'll see those around the building, being able to identify how we utilize those values in their daily lives within the building. So, when a student um makes a bad choice, which they often do, um it's, you know, what are the Titan values that that didn't work there and and how do we repair that? I I understand that. But when you're talking about emotional cues like the words here, Yes. How do you get this kind of language to a place where it's common and comfortable? I mean, I can't imagine I think back to my high school, which is like it's hard to think back, believe me. But I I don't remember a teacher ever

109talking to me me about words like cheerful, proud, uh you know, sad, fatigued, maybe fatigued in sports. Maybe that's bad example, but you know, there's a lot here. Um so I'm kind of curious because this is sort of driving identification. Yeah, that's one tool. um is what I would say students. Yeah. But it is one tool um that the PE teachers and health teachers are definitely using and other teachers in the building. The teachers, like you said, are the eyes and ears of for us, right? And so we do have um referral forms that teachers can submit concerns. We also have teacher feedback forms that we then send out to, let's just say one teacher identifies a concern, we can send it out to all teachers to get that information. I think trust me, I

110hear what you're asking in terms of how we're like delivering that and teaching that and um really having that training training that absolutely I want to add I want to add a comment. So Mr. Shine, when you first started talking, you were mentioning how do teachers utilize these terms and become familiar with them and be trained. And one of the things that we know, whether it's any of the topics we've talked about tonight or or other things as teachers, we have to experience using the language ourselves. And so, um, for example, over at Glenchrook North, um, uh, Mrs. Hughes had utilized the mood meter and asked her staff at staff meetings to actually identify where they fall to provide them the opportunity to have to navigate, oh, where where really am I? And as we

111slowly introduce those concepts as they're built into our dayto-day from a staff side, it naturally transcends into the classroom. And then we leverage um different tools and modes for our teachers to incorporate into their class. But I I always believe it starts with us as teachers modeling and part of modeling is learning as what we expect our students to do. Somehow, pardon me, staff have to feel comfortable asking and dumb it down a little bit, but h how are you feeling today? you know, Jenny, you know, how how's it going? Or something, but you you're more specific here, trying to elicit more than, oh, I'm fine, right? The kid comes home from school. H how'd it go? Fine. Had a good day. Fine. Otherwise, it's like radio silence. I think I think one of the

112things, one of the messages we try to give is really talk to us about a change in behavior. And as the teacher, you're with the student the most during the week. So if something doesn't feel right, does something doesn't look right, let us know. We'll take it from there. They don't need to be the expert on this is exactly what's wrong. This is exactly how the student's feeling. If something is different, let us know we got it. We'll tease it out. And then that keeps the teacher and student relationship really intact. And then and we can we can do it. And I do think there are several different strategies our teachers use. Sometimes you'll walk into a room and they grab a red or a green or a yellow post-it note depending how they're feeling.

113So it might not be that exact question of how are you feeling today, right? But they have a way to get a sense of where the class is before they start the lesson. Kind of that mindful moment piece. I also think it's really important that while we're speaking directly about the Glen Brooks that this idea of ruler, this is one tool, but what ruler is really about is how do we help all people to recognize, understand, label, and express their feelings. So there's numerous strategies that's also being taught in our elementary schools and our middle schools that this notion of ruler is something as a township a number of districts have been embracing. So this language we know we don't want to lose the generation of students we have but we're slowly bringing that language

114the language of being able to recognize understand and label that those are the steps. the mood meter. That's one expression of that. It's also when you look at our teachers high yield practices, we're not specifically saying do ruler or do the mood meter. Um you can imagine if every class, every moment you were doing that, uh you would be mood metered out very quickly. Um so how do we help with the with the language of our high yield practices have the idea of inviting spaces and relationship? One way to get there is to help build the comfort that I can I can express myself. I can recognize my emotions. I can understand those. I can label those. And in the room, you have the relationships that can support that. The more we're doing that, the

115more we're teaching them a skill that for life that they can use. And and that's the it sounds overly simplistic, the the acronym, but really that's that's at the core of being humans. uh then I'm I'm recognizing what I'm feeling. I can understand why I'm feeling that and I can actually put a label on it. Um if we can get there, we're going to be very successful. But it will take more than um a couple training sessions as as you're alluding to, Dr. Steinberg. Thank you. and just an anecdotal basis. But as as you Google or you read these things about people living longer, one of the three common indicators is socialization, being around other people. And and we're here kind of like the last line of defense. This is the last time that our

116kids are going to be going back home after they leave school. So So your work is extremely critical and and hopefully I I guess you hear our appreciation. Hopefully you hear from families and and everybody and I start just going back to to my colleague Chris Hope in terms of curriculum. I'm I was surprised when my kids were in high school that part of the PE education included like a health and terms of food doing exercise ingraining on the minds of okay once you finish school but this is like style of life right so back to to her question do we have a part of our curriculum where it's like check your mental health every day you know the same day like brush your teeth every day make sure your weight is okay do your

117exercises when are you doing your selfch checkup right and and could reconize what do you do when you don't feel okay things that takes a little bit the I know socially I think we are better that we were 10 15 20 years ago but there's this stigma about mental health we don't talk about this it's easier to talk about you know my feet hurt that to talk about I woke up feeling blue this morning right nobody walks into the office and says and and normalizing it making it something where it's important to check putting it somewhere where is is something that would be a skill for our students, you know, forever. And and this probably is the last time that they can do it in a protected environment because they can go back home after

118class versus when they go to college or if they go somewhere else. So, I definitely support what what Miss Hope was saying in terms of I know our help is limited here, but whatever it is that you can push through to get somewhere in the curriculum to make it more more common to deal with. And I think as I'm listening to everybody, you know, there's this dynamic between being proactive and being reactive. and and a lot of these things happen to be reactive more than proactive because we need to wait for for something that alerts us. But but are there things that we can do to be more proactive to it? I know you mentioned a lot of strategies, but it in terms of giving our kids, our students tools to to self-identify, to be

119able not only to look for help, but to get help. So anecdotally this story on the Thursdays I'm part of my research had to do with stomach pain in K through nine through a group of pediatricians and everybody feels stomach pain on Mondays and these kids they need to go to school and then by Thursday everybody feels okay because it's only one more day until the school it's over. So maybe there's some kind of complimentary kind of issue here where where the beginning of the week is really bad for certain age kids and the end of the week is really bad for other age of kids. But that that's just uneat evidence. I'm I wonder in terms of questions you talk about languages. I I wonder if if we get I'm saying we if you

120get if the staff get some sort of sort of training on cultural awareness. You know, we have so many different families and cultural origins in our district. Cultures where they don't like to talk about certain things. Cultures where it's better to show yourself as strong. Cultures where saying I'm feeling happy means something totally different than somebody else feeling happy. And we also have generational differences. So, how how we are we addressing that at least with our staff? Yeah, I'll take that one. Um so part of a social worker renewing um their license is taking classes on cultural awareness. So that is part of their yearly um sessions that they go to um and typically bring back and and share with the rest of the clinical team. Um, I think we have, you know, I think

121you learn a lot over the years and learn a lot from our family language liaison who are really connected within our community and the culture um, and help us navigate those situations. Right. Thank you. And I think Skip mentioned AI here and the more you read about this all these chat bots that people use for everything including having conversations. So what what are we doing in terms of bringing back the human component into it which is nice to ask Chad GPD or whatever copilot about where to go out or things like that but where it's not so reliable to tell the machine tool I'm not feeling well what I should be doing all right it's so normalized these days that the answers are online that how are we working with our community in terms of

122it's okay to be online and it's okay to do many things but this particular thing even if may be great it may not be best may not be the best thing for you because it's just giving you an answer it's not analyzing your feelings so so do we do any work on on that area yeah I think that's sort of like a multiaceted um question probably depends on the area of the school that you're talking about you know like when I think about sort of like capitalizing on or utilizing AI from like a student services lens, you know, tools and filters and panorama like kind of like subsup supported by AI might be able to help us in like aggregating data, identifying trends, which is all very helpful. Um, and like reduces some of like

123the cognitive load I have to kind of like go through the data and like the 6,000 responses Rebecca has. Um, but we still have the the individual personal check-in with students. Like we still bring students into the office. We still talk to them face to face. uh we still call families on the phone versus sending an email when possible. So I think we try to like value those like human connections that we have with students even though we're sort of capitalizing on AI as a tool um from the lens of the dean's office for example. I know they're not here presenting but they will deliver a digital citizenship lesson um to our nth grade students. So they'll talk about their digital footprint, interfacing online, utilizing AI, um communicating with peers and adults online, utilizing AI

124tools to engage in that communication with peers and adults online. So we'll find some tools to be able to like do some like push-in services to help students accept the reality that AI can be like a complimentary and supportive tool. Um but taken too far can like lead to social isolation and exclusion. Um, and I think we see that students engage more online than sometimes in person, which I'm very happy to hear 20,000 GBS kids showed up to to homecoming. So, I think we have these like tools in place um or supports in place to be able to encourage those human interactions um versus just the online interactions. And then I can't really speak to teaching and learning, but I know they have some things in place um to sort of uh navigate what AI

125looks like in the classroom space. that's more of like a curricular piece and a little less about that human piece that I think that you're that you're getting at that we still try to um make sure that we engage in. Just to clarify and appreciate the answer, I think the confusion that happens right now is at certain point the individuals forget that they are chatting with with just a computer system and I I I like for them to use AI as much as they want. I think we don't repeat enough that if I go to the computer and I say I'm not feeling well. What should I be doing? I'm going to get a good answer. But the path from that answer, if I trust that answer, can send me the wrong way. Not because

126computers are transient, because it's just responding language to language. So there's nothing on the AI tool that will say I'm identifying that you may be a risk for suicide right now. you will answer whatever question you have. So in many places people are saying it's great to use as a tool for learning for expanding for doing different things but remember what your minds are still developing. It doesn't replace talking to a people when it's about your feelings about everything else 100% rely more than anybody else but talking there are cases and you can Google these things where where they go into a spiral going down because the AI will always have an answer for you. So if I feel sad what happens and an answer will come back and if I want to address feeling

127sad what will happen and the answer will come back because it's not a human being saying hey hold on this conversation is going to a dark place and I want to change I want to address it differently so I think we don't say it enough on on our daily interactions because it sounds like we are like older people that we my whole job is AI I do research in AI so I'm all in favor of it but in this particular case I think we need to be very clear on they will never replace the social worker that will never replace a counselor that will never replace a mental health support person that you need to talk to. Even if he gives you privacy, you do it from your home, you do it from your bed,

128is not the same. That that that was my question slash comment. It I have the last thing and I think it going back to the curriculum and everything. I think it's important that that and probably you do it but I think to skip's point we let people talk more about these things we we just we need to remove that stigma about mental health because that's what start these things on the first place. So if it's okay to talk about everything else it should be okay to talk about mental health. you you were talking yes doing the metric may get people tired after the third class or the fourth class but asking people how are they feeling or knowing that something happened and asking it again not have I don't want to take your jobs away

129but not having to limit mental health to one part of the school or one particular service provider but being open to everybody you know could could help us you know go a long way um Well, uh, I want to thank you all for presenting. Um, this has been a subject that has come up, you know, over and over around the board table that this is something the board wanted to know more about and I'm sure people in the community wanted to know more about. Um, so this has been, you know, very illuminating. Um, and, uh, it sounds like we have some great systems in place. Um, as you say, you know, we're always looking for how we can do more. Um, but, uh, I do think we we are making progress. um from what you've

130described. So that's great. Um as Skip says, it's nice to see when you put resources against something that you know those that bears fruit. Uh one thing that hasn't been brought up tonight and perhaps it's outside of your belly wick, but um I'm just curious to to understand sort of where um Glen Offcampus kind of fits into all this. I know that that is a tremendous program that provides, you know, incredible um support for students who need incredible support. Um and I'm not sure that a lot of people in our community are even aware that Glen Brook off campus exists necessarily. Um and if you could just because you know, who knows how many thousands of people are listening out there. um if you could explain a little bit about you know when that that

131um that uh school is available to our students um and what what you know supports they can provide for students who need something that's you know really robust. Yeah, absolutely. So Glumbre Offcampus is a public therapeutic day school um for students who have an IEP and individualized education plan. um they just because they're off-campus, they have the same protocols that North and South um utilize and transition services. So the things that we talked about tonight, whether it's the behavior digital threat assessment, the Columbia suicide screener, they are implementing that within off-campus as well and then transition services as appropriate. Um and that curriculum that we're utilizing is shared with them as well. Many of the students at off-campus do go to one of the schools for part of their day. They remain basically a south

132or a north student. Um oftentimes they are coming over for a class or two and so they are also participating in that within the main building as well. Excellent. Um and then sorry I'm just like jumping around here a little bit with the questions that came up in my mind. Um, it looks like we're making good strides with belonging and I agree with Miss Hope that probably 72% isn't where we want to be, but at least we're, you know, moving up the ladder there. But it did seem um that um on the uh the the last metric that you showed, which I think was um growth. Yes. Um, and I'm I don't mean to put you on the spot, but just curious as to what you might think is driving the that that's so so

133much lower um in terms of um the favorability um growth mindset. Um I I to me I that sounds like we have students who are afraid to try because they're afraid to fail. I'm not sure if that's the correct way of of putting it. Um, but could you expand on what that means a little bit and where where we think we might be falling short and what we're doing to try to improve that? M, just out of curiosity, Mr. Bree, do you want to share insight into this because this is more in your area. See, I put something. I'm sorry. Sorry. I gave a cough drop. I a cough drop. So maybe candy. Um um so growth mindset is your in short your belief that you can improve that are you is your intelligence your

134behavior your social emotional skills are those innate or can they be developed? So part of the thing to consider with growth mindset is that this number concerns us because if a if a significant number of our students believe they come to us with what they have and they cannot grow then we're fighting that battle in all facets the facets we're talking about tonight through the academic area. So for us, we're doing a number of things that one, our high yield practices take on the notion of challenge and engagement and also what we call clarity. And that notion is how do we make it clear what we're doing and what it takes to be successful so students can start taking greater ownership of their learning. That's really what growth mindset all the research points to. How

135can students start to take greater degree of ownership of their learning so they see they can actually improve um from where they started and to see those um outside of just every few weeks when they see a grade or when they look at their report cards but actually see progress towards mastery or growth. So we are concerned about this. This is this is um we've we've seen this pattern. it's not going where we need it to go. We do believe our high yield practices are there. We also um as a starting point again, we are always going to be facing a data point that's a little bit behind on that work. But the other thing that is clear is looking at our systems and our structures, what may be giving the impression to our students

136that um you are where you're at and there's no ability for any kind of growth. So, we've done great work with the accelerated placement act um and how we've constructed that to show students opportunities. We've we talk extensively here about pathways and different opportunities. We're also another area that is really important is balancing um not just advanced placement courses, but our dual credit courses to show students those opportunities no matter where they are in their sequence or where they start. Those are system structures that lead to those numbers. If they see I start here and I end here, there's no opportunity for these other areas, then we're reinforcing that how you start is how you're going to end. So that's it's it's very much packaged that those two words up there mean a lot to

137us from what we explicitly say to what our structures say in our actions. And we have to align those two. The last question that I had just again because these were things that came into my head as we was listening to the presentation. When you talk about welcoming spaces um or inviting spaces I think is the terminology you used. Inviting spaces. Um can you elaborate a little bit on what that mean? just made me think about, you know, the the whole new all the new stuff and the the the classrooms and how much more inviting they are. It sounds like it's probably more than just that, although I bet that actually contributes to it. That is the fourth of the nine on on the structure of inviting spaces. So, inviting spaces um is how a

138person feels uh socially, physically, emotionally when they enter a space, when they're going to a space. Um, I won't tell the story of of high school and the anxiety I would was having when I would go to my French class. That is not what you want. You want excitement and energy. And when you get there, you want a feeling of, wow, they recognize me. They know me. They know my name. They know about me. And then it's not just a student teacher relationship. It's how the space feels peer-to-peer. So there's all those interactions that take place in an environment. Both the physical spaces help um and then the relational portion of that space is equally important. So we have a number of indicators that we're working through right now as part of this. I think

139it's really important. I don't want to get ahead of ourselves when we talk about high yield practices. That's a language that we have a we are working through. Um, we what I would call soft launched that language last year and we have a five-year plan. You'll you'll hear more about that when teaching and learning is is up there really sharing those pieces. But it's important to know that this is early in the process, but inviting spaces includes a lot of indicators. Even something as simple as how do feel students feel at the threshold. Some of the research says it's five steps before the doorway that we start to understand a student's going to make a decision about the impact of this space and what that space is going to do in this moment. So they

140do what's the first face they see? Is it a smile and a hi? Is it a greeting? All of those things matter. And I would say unequivocally our teachers uh believe deeply in that and they go after inviting spaces because they know if we can create that so many other factors fall into place. Great. Yeah. Just to follow up back to grow mindset. I I really like Ryan what you mentioned in terms of structural issues that may lead to this. So that led me think also to how students think about this because the type of district that we are I know we we are set to offer many things right from from the academy program to this even when we talk about accelerated you know ways of getting advanced credits or even some people were

141like but doesn't this dilute a little bit the value of it. So it seems like it's inherent to us to be in a competitive district, whatever competitive means. All right, for the goodness and the not so good of it, but there's a big difference between I was never going to be a basketball player or anything like that, but I could feel if I improved through the year, I would be happy if I make three free throws in a row. I shouldn't feel bad because I'm not going to be a pro. My height and different things wouldn't make it. So there has to be some equivalency here in between. I came in I got you there has to be some equivalency as you learn on the process in terms of hey how did I started my

142process of high school and where I'm at right now and definitely I would say most people experience a lot of growth here but maybe the issue is we don't know we being the individuals not the systems don't know how to capture that growth that keeps saying you know I remember one of my kids I shouldn't say this. I'm sure he's not listening. He would say, "I'm not an A student. I'm a B student." And I would be like, "What do you mean with that?" Meaning, are you defining yourself as being an A student or a B student? Are you defining yourself by how much you know? And he went and and I think got perfect score on the math ACT. And he's like, I thought you were a B student. So sometimes kids self-define themselves

143by comparing to other people instead of looking at their personal. So I know we ask many questions from them. Are we working on these assessments to be able to capture really if they are growing or not or just the impression that they have if they are growing? Yeah, I I don't want to speak for this team, but I do think the work that they're doing with the I continue to call it the four-year planning process. I apologize. Um that that is the work and that curricular work is what is going to be the indicators for students about their growth. It's also um I have a little bit of love for technology as you all know. Um I think school links is another that opportunity to see it in a digital format to be able to

144look at where I'm going to see the trajectory to see that information is just a way to put it in front of students because like many of us let alone a a 15 or a 16-year-old you get caught up in that moment. it's hard to see the whole picture of what you've experienced. So, the more we're able to take what we see in panorama on our students and what we're so proud of when we see all that and start to blend that into school links in our curriculum, the more students will see it in front of them and and also their their families, their guardians, the more we can also start doing that. We're not there quite yet, but I think in partnership that's what our two teams are are. How do we get that?

145And that's I just use the simple term, how are we more explicit with our students? Let's not assume they know. Let's not assume they're processing it the way we are. How can we be more explicit with them? That's going to start to break down what may be um a barrier that they just perceive that they flatlined or perceive they can't get better. Thank you. Well, this was great. um interesting to hear how it all ties together and you've previewed for us a little bit what we'll get from teaching and learning. So that looking forward to as well. So thank you so much. Thank you Lauren and Rebecca. You guys did a wonderful job and please know you're okay to leave. All right. Um the next item on our agenda 6.2 Two is opportunities for the

146board of education to engage with the community. Another hot topic around the board table. All right, friends. This particular topic is another topic that was brought up by individual board members, but um I I have to say it's probably the third or fourth time that we've talked about this over about a year, maybe a year and a half. Uh so it's great to finally be here this evening. Um, a lot of our conversation, um, that we'll engage in tonight comes from some difficult situations the school district has gone through over the past few years. And just to be very candid, when there's difficult situations, we often times have a a wide range of individuals with perspectives come to talk to the board uh, during community comment, and it's very much a one-way dialogue. In fact,

147that that's how it's set up in our board policy that we don't respond to individuals concerns in the meeting. Now, I'm going to put an asterisk there because one of our commitments is that we do follow up with individuals after the meeting if they express interest or sh and also share their information so we can do that and make that connection. That's often times when you'll see an administrator around a table step away and go meet that individual uh in the lobby for a conversation. But board meetings aside, one of the um important elements of governance is making sure you have opportunities to engage with the community. Um and the community has a wide range of stakeholders. Our our largest group of stakeholders in the school community are our students and our parents, our families.

148Um, but there's also individuals in the community that do not have children currently in the schools. Maybe they are growing into the system or maybe uh they've already celebrated their transition post uh high school. Um, what we've done to kind of structure our conversation is I've asked Mrs. Smith to kind of work through some categories of engagement opportunities. Before she goes through them and introduces them, I want to emphasize something that we've learned from other school districts about and also something that many of us administratively have experienced in different districts that we've worked in. It can be really easy to say, let's create something new. Let's create a new event. It's going to happen once a month. It's going to be in this situation and so on and so forth. But if we actually look

149into the feedback that we have directly heard from our families, our families similar to some of our students are saying there's a lot going on and it's hard to keep track of it. So one of the um encouraging uh bits of guidance that I would offer is what are opportunities to begin with where individual board members, maybe two board members can join something that already exists. that can also help make some of those things that already exist even better. And I'll just give a real easy one. When I first started uh in the district, some of our parent association meetings, honestly, we were lucky if we could get 10 people uh to show up. And I go to the most recent uh two Glenrech North Parent Association meetings where we saw in excess of 50

150parents come. In fact, the last one even more now it was a topic of college. So it was it was a very popular topic but people coming to learn to engage and always having that opportunity to ask questions. Um so anytime that we can really bring parents together not just for one topic but to talk about the holistic experience of their child is a great opportunity. So just maybe keep that in mind as you hear some of the things and I'll turn it over to Mrs. Smith to share some thoughts. As you were talking, Dr. Gavell, I was thinking that it's also important as the board is contemplating what they want to do that you really think about what engagement means. Sometimes when we say we want to engage in the community, we think about

151bringing them in here. And I I think that um both Mr. Glowaki and Mr. Downing tonight were talking about ways that they've engaged the community where they've gone out to the community where it's the parent association and the booster club. So we really have to think about that is a way that you that you hear from people that people stop you in the hallway. They stop you after the meeting and they say, "Hey, I was thinking about whatever it is." And you can have a conversation with them and bring that bring that back to the board. Um I've worked in several districts where we've done some board engagement and some things have worked well and some things um have worked well at the beginning and not worked so well um afterwards. And so I I

152and I reached out to some of my colleagues also in other high school districts and asked them what they were doing and what was working and what was not working. And so we were able to have a conversation with um about that as well. So we did come up with some ideas on on ways that you can um build relationships with key stakeholders and there are some of the things that are already in place. If you want to we have we um belong to an organization called Ed. And you have that opportunity if you attend those ED red meetings to talk to legislators, to talk to other school leaders from around the area and find out what are some really important topics that are affecting school districts all over the place. And so be thinking

153about um and Dr. Grall probably will let you know when those events are are possible. They have an annual meeting. They have some lunchons. Sometimes you can um join the meetings by Zoom. And so there are opportunities to engage in in that way. um when I worked now of course Springfield is a very um political um town. So, when I was the director of communications for the Springfield public schools, we had our legislators that came in on a regular basis and really just sat around a table like this and we had conversations about what are things that are happening in the capital building that affect schools and how can and our legislators that that we had there were really our state legislators were really great about asking those questions kind of like Mr. Gaki did

154tonight with the with um with the guests was what can we do to help you? And so engaging with those legislators was really gave um them an ear into what was happening in the trenches in the schools and we were able to tell them the kinds of support that we needed in the state house. Um so that might that might be something that we that we can do here but not only the um state legislators but also engaging with the villages. they each village has a state of the village. Um if you attend those meetings, have an opportunity to kind of uh rub elbows with the trustees from the villages and um last year when I attended the Northbrook one, the other superintendents were there. So I got a chance to talk to the superintendents

155from the feeder districts as well. Um and speaking of that, just engaging with the feeder districts. I know that Dr. Gavl meets regularly with the with the um other superintendent in the township and also the feeder districts. But in again in in one of the other districts where I where I worked the superintendent and the board presidents of the districts of the surrounding districts met and it was not only it it was at a time when I worked in a unit district. So the other unit districts that were kind of our like districts. So when we think about our new triers, um, think about some of the Deerfield some of those other districts that we that we kind of compare ourselves to and then they had the opportunity as the superintendent and the board president

156to talk about um items that may be affecting all of the all of the different districts. Um, let's see. Oh. Um, at the communications committee meeting, um, we were talking about going to the Rotary Club and the Kuanas Club. And that is not only an opportunity for the board members to engage with people who may not have children in our school districts, but it also sometimes those organizations are looking for speakers, guest speakers, and this would be a great opportunity for our board members to be able to go to those um those meetings and talk about what's happening. Facilities master plan. That would be a great opportunity to talk about what's happening with our with our buildings and engage with the community and also get questions from people that may not na well may not

157come to our um and and ask us questions or make public comment. Um, I know that you go to football games and and other activities, but just being um um just being visible and approachable around community events and also around school district events is is really great. But then if we're talking about bringing people to us, I've worked in districts where we've hosted community coffees, but we've gone out to a coffee shop that's in the in the community. I know the um Glen View Grind is a wonderful little coffee shop and they may they may be able to um Dunkin Donuts. Did you say No, they have donuts. Oh, they have donuts. Okay. Um that might be an opportunity for board members to just say, "We're going to be there on Tuesday between 10:00 a.m.

158and 11:00 a.m. and come and and and talk to us about whatever." Um I've worked in districts where that was not very wellreceived. you get the same people who were coming and making public comment, but other districts where it was really a great opportunity and people not only who knew you were going to be there, but people who just happened upon um said, "Oh, this is really great and I'm going to take this opportunity to ask you some questions." Um, I've also been uh part of a realtor breakfasts and again I don't want to go back to Springfield because it was a long time ago that I was there, but we did h we did have some realtor breakfast because Springfield school district and Springfield town um town are not contiguous borders. So, the city

159of Springfield supports seven school districts. And so, realtors sometimes would tout the fact that the the houses that they were selling were in the I call them the suburbs and that made people angry. Um, were in the suburbs of Springfield. And so, we brought realtors in to really showcase what was happening in the school district so that when they were talking to people who were buying houses all around Springfield, they could tout the Springfield public schools. Um, so that might also be another great opportunity to um, bring people in who are talking to those people who are moving into our community, who might be moving from one part of our community to another part of the community and really give them the information that they need to be able to tout this tout the schools.

160So, those are just um some of the things that that um I've either been part of or I heard from some of my other colleagues that are really things that the board can think about to engage the community. And so at this point, our goal was to open it up for dialogue discussion. We're here to help facilitate. I I want to offer one important reminder. Um two, I guess important reminders. One, when we talk about engagement opportunities, there is a limit on the number of board members who can be present for any sort of function. And so you're really limited to two board members that can go to a function representing the board in that capacity. different than if you happen to go to a football game and there's just a variety of people there.

161The second thing is um and this is in keeping with our communication guidelines but also um within board policy. It's important that board members in their engagement represent themselves as individuals but do not speak on behalf of the board of education. The board of education only speaks through formal meetings as a whole. Um and I I bring that up. I know we've talked about it, but it's always good to remember because sometimes you might get in put into a situation where answers are being sought and it's not the appropriate setting or it needs to come through a channel. So just offer those two things. Mr. O'Hara, what do you think? Yeah, the I don't know. It sound it sounds interesting. It goes back to actually those personalized learning plans we just talked about earlier where

162you know they're meeting the parents before there's issues. And so in some ways it's it'd be better to have more community contact. Not that there is going to be an issue, but over time something else will come up and when people get upset it's best to have a better relationship beforehand. Um so I I guess I'm for it. I wonder I think part partly hopefully we do go back to the point where there isn't as much engagement because people are happy with what you're doing. You know it feels like once people are happy with what you're doing there's less engagement in some ways because they focus their attention on stuff they're not happy with elsewhere if you will you know and and so the school doesn't become an issue they're thinking about. But but I'm

163I'm happy to be available and go to these meetings especially. I'll go to the grind and have some donuts and hang out and be ready to talk to people. Knew I could count on you for that, Miss Hope. No, I in reading this before the meeting also, I think like like Mr. Glowaki said being at the parents association meeting was fantastic and maybe there's a way and I think it's suggested in the memo to formally become a part of the agenda just to have something on there to say we're here if anyone wants to and to plan to stop and chat afterwards um in case people don't feel comfortable or don't know that that's an option but I'd love to continue doing that and these are great ideas. Excellent. Mr. Shine just sign up. Sorry.

164Is that something we'd sign up then for? I I think that the idea what we had talked about um preparing for the meeting was that um that R.J. or Carol would reach out to the board members and see what you're interested in. You know, different people might have different different things are more appealing. I think we kind of need to formalize to the pardon me. So So we create an expectation for ourselves. Yes. that we're going to go to these certain things and then we can come back and talk about them because if we leave it ad hoc I think we'll have what we have now which is best intentions but not so much follow through. Yes. So it's good. Dr. Steinberg does do administrator sorry do administrators still go to like Rotary and um

165some of these other Yeah. our relationship um with community organizations. we'll just say um has kind of fluctuated. Uh we've had active membership with the North Brook Rotary and the Glen View Northbrook Quanis Club, but our our uh consistent uh so um organization membership with the Sunshine uh Rotary Club of Glen View um has not been as consistent. So, we're slowly starting to reestablish some of those partnerships and relationships. those organizations really active? Yeah. More than like in name? So, so I'll give you a great example. All of the Rotary Clubs and the Kuanas Club donate considerably uh to our scholarship funds. Um so they definitely have activities going. Um I'm just now recently getting involved and uh just like everything um there might be the same members that attend the weekly meetings. Um but

166at the end of the day they they are a dedicated group and then when they have events more people come out. Um but they do have decent membership list. Dr. Steinberg. Yeah. I agree with everybody. I think having some some kind of like plan it's better. I do think that we need to rotate on the plan because we are not representing the board. We are representing ourselves. So we all think some things we think alike, some things we think differently. So we don't want to create a cadence where a particular group always listens to Marcelo's opinion. That may be to to you know any of you opinion. So having different faces show up in different places. I do have a clarification question because in particular with parents meeting we have PE members of the board

167that are parents. So although we don't want to have a quorum at a meeting, this is not our meeting. So if if at that particular meeting the four of us are there, but only like Jack is today the board representative. The rest of us are there like parents. Does that have a contradiction to the open meeting article or anything? No, I think I think you're open at deciding discussing topics. Correct. Yeah. Yeah. You're okay. All right. So, the other point that I want to make is I think one of the issues that we've been facing and and I don't know what's the solution to this. It's that our main issue is when we get the community extremely engaged over something and the only way they have to express this is to come here and and

168argue with each other because we cannot talk. And I I agree 100% that we shouldn't be answering on an open meeting act. We cannot even ask them more questions in terms of can you be more specific. So they cramp their their anxiety for a lack of a better word in a twominut speech that similar to social media ends up being extremely charged. So the next one that comes in it has to be more charged than the previous one or repetition. So I wonder if if we can have something that will preempt these things like having a meeting that is not a board meeting where where I remember when we did the when we presented the investigation about the annual about the about the work yearbook that after everybody complained we did the presentation of the

169investigation and then two weeks later when we had a meeting people started coming and saying oh now that I heard about the investigation. I'm happier than I was before. But in the meantime, people had to wait two weeks and then we had to listen to everybody. I was upset about something that they were going to be less upset 15 minutes later because we had a presentation that addressed most of what these people were going to say. So we generate an environment that is not needed at that point. So I wonder if if in certain cases, certain circumstances, certain topics, we can have community presentations instead of a board meeting and maybe one or two board members just to listen, not to interact with the comm. You can interact in terms of asking questions, but just

170to show the community that we're trying to get the polls of something, not we are not there to discuss things, but we're there to get a better understanding of it. So there's no need for 30 people to align here and compress their their anxiety. Again not to use a different word in a twominut speech. Yeah. So that's the purpose of the committee all the committees that we have now inviting the committee people coming to the committees. Yeah. So facilities communications and any others special work groups but they are still open meeting act. So I'm not sure we can use that mechanism for so somebody comes and says something in two minutes. The way this works we are not going to ask them for clarification. We are not going to ask them what will make this

171thing better. We will let the 10 people that came to talk talk and then we go with our business of addressing whatever was put on the agenda of the meeting. But that's what I'm saying. Shouldn't we be drawing them into the committee the committees to be raising those questions and point during that where it is more there? You don't have the same structure. It's an open. No, I think I think it's the same structure in the committee. Okay. So, in terms of community comment, yes. Um there there we follow the same structure, the same procedures. However, committees do have more of a working group feel. So the likelihood you would respond is is maybe a little higher. But to your point, um presentations, um we often times will use our parent associations, our booster clubs

172as opportunities to do those presentations and then to engage. I think the real difference is and I think you mentioned it. Um oftentimes administration runs the presentation but board members are there to listen and maybe share comments here and there but not the board members not presenting formally on behalf and that avoids all of the other challenges you could run into. But those those meetings all work very well. I think it can make a big just me okay but can make a big difference because then I know Pete and and and Matt come and say you know Wednesday we were at this meeting where RJ presented this and this is what we thought about it and then we can discuss it here because we can talk about the agenda and that's gets that idea of

173not just simply engaging it but being attentive to the community needs. Absolutely. I'm good. Okay, Mr. Glowaki, I was just going to uh suggest, you know, when I attend these meetings, I'm attending as a parent. Typically, I happen to listen, I have my board here, so you hear information, you utilize it. Um, try to be open when you can and everything, but to your point about open meetings act generally not. If they do ask for a formal presentation, then we coordinate. Uh, but in the seven years I've been involved, and I know some have been involved much longer than I, thanks to kids and everything. Uh yeah, it hasn't come up really. It's usually very breadandbut basic stuff that they're very how do I help my kid get into college? How do I help them

174survive uh athletics and activities? How do I help them with theater? Uh trying to think of some of the other fun topics that they have. I mean, it's very basic in terms of what it is. How do I thank the teachers? You know, it's a good one. And those are things that they're doing not not necessarily board but it's also a good place to vet things in terms of if there is something bring their attention where you have committees you bring attention to them you make an announcement or you talk to the staff which are generally working with them that they help reinforce that message. Just want to add a little piggyback on to Mr. Glowaki's comment today. We heard a wonderful presentation on what we're doing about mental health, but a lot of people

175don't know. Um, but it certainly is front of mind for a growing number and hopefully one day everyone will have it front of mind. The week before we talked about safety and security and we can keep on going through the topics. One of our goals that we wanted to do was to start building a library, a repository of not only resources that you can read, but presentations that you can review later on. This is coming coming soon. um presenting them at the board meeting, but then when people reach out and ask questions, we have a place that we can send them to that has a great starting point. Much better, candidly, than sending an email to us and maybe having a 10-minute phone call because like we really dig into things here. These presentations are

176great. And the one thing I've learned sometimes it's literally just being in the meetings to listen to hear someone have the conversation and if we have other uh we often times call them our advocates or our cheerleaders. If other people hear it they can say hey we absolutely have that you should go here. Here's the information. Um and so just sometimes being present is really all it all that matters. Um I will say that I had the opportunity to go to the village of Glen View for a presentation. I shared it with the board talk about the strategic plan and there are some elected officials that I had never met before. I was amazed at the number of individuals who reached out and said, "My gosh, I knew we were always in great schools. I

177didn't know everything like was as strategic as it is that we have this big pathway. Thank you for sharing it. Sometimes it's just getting it out there in whatever way you can. Um so um more than happy to reach out and send uh send a little uh touch base with each board member individually. You can say if there's something that that sparks your curiosity right now and then we can compile it, share it with the board members so you can see and take it from there. You know, there's a there's a pretty big exciting thing. We're talking about a master facility plan. Mr. Downing got appointed for that uh that sharing. Well, I was just I was just going to echo your comments about the village and stuff. I have a few of the folks

178that I know on the village board, they're not aware of some of the things that we're undergoing and it just comes up the the question they assume because they're overwhelmed with information. You happen to be the source of information. So, if you can be out and just available that makes a world difference. Mr. county. No, I think it's I think it's necessary and um I like the I like the local government. I think it's a really good piece that especially as we continue to try to improve the school from facilities and everything else. I mean, I think it's important that we get to know our government officials and I know I like Pete a lot. Yeah, I know. Facilities guy. Yes. But anyway, I think it's it's it it's and I'm happy to volunteer wherever

179you guys think you need me. Well, thank you very much, Carol, and our for putting everything together on this. Um, I do think that, you know, each of us will probably have our particular, you know, um, point of interest, um, that we would like to contribute to. And, um, look forward to the followup because, as Mr. Shine says, you know, need to get the ball rolling on this and I think it it um will require us to make some commitments to doing that. I understand I think Mr. O'Hara's point and agree in a sense that um you know if we don't have a lot of people coming to us, it may be because they're satisfied. Um but I also think that like establishing these relationships um in the good times are what pays dividends in

180the bad times because there will be times where we will have hard hard situations arise. Um but then there will be people who if they don't have any idea about um the commitment and goodwill of the board and the administration and the staff at these schools um they come into it cold basically. But if they've already, you know, had an opportunity to interact with board members or administration or, you know, in the community, um, that lays this groundwork for, um, you know, um, a feeling of being in it together, um, and wanting to support each other. And I'm hoping that, you know, that's something that we know we're going to have other situations that arise where there will be, as you say, people who are not happy, not satisfied, have issues, but we want them

181to feel like they can approach us, they can trust us, they know that we're trying to do the right thing. And the way that they can feel that way is that they've met us already, and they've seen the goodwill that we bring to it. So, I think this is really important work. It's something that the our communications committee is also working on. Um so everybody sign up, go to coffee, have a donut. Okay, great. Um then I believe that takes us to some sort of budget issue. Wait, let me get my agenda out here. So Vicki, as you get prepared to review this, um each year the school district engages with an external auditor. The auditor works directly for the board of education and performs an unbiased uh formal review of the school district's financial

182statements and uh operational practices. As part of that, we go through a review of a wide range of transactions that includes revenue transactions, expenditure transactions. It's through a sampling process as in accordance with generally acceptable uh accounting principles uh which is a little more specific uh to governmental accounting if you will. Um at the end of the audit we prepare a annual comprehensive financial report or an AFER. Um this report is the for is a utilizing a format dictated by the government finance officers association and uh the association of school business officials international. That format is necessary in order to be eligible to receive um financial reporting awards which the school district has received for several decades on a variety of levels. To that end, every year, school districts across the nation um go through

183a process where we find areas for growth. Um our auditors um incorporate some of those areas for growth, which are not necessarily specific to our district, but are nationwide areas that have been identified. Uh you'll hear about some of those tonight. And then specific ones to our district based on their uh review of our books. Real quick, easy takeaways. We have a clean audit with some minor recommendations. Uh recognizing the time, um I'll ask Miss Tarver to give a quick overview of which I believe she will embrace. Yes, absolutely. So, as R.J. said, um we have uh qualified for these awards through the GFOA and ASBO International. Um, for ASBO International, this will be our 17th year receiving this award and for the GFOA, it'll be our 16th year receiving the award. Um, we did

184receive an unqualified or clean audit, which basically means that the auditors did not find any um material misstatements or misrepresentation of our financial um data. So, we're good to go. Essentially, um, we're transparent. the financial information is accurate and as presented. Um the net position increased from 133.6 million to 143.4 million. When your net position increases, it means that you're financially healthier than you were the year before. Um some of the things that can happen is your assets start to um get higher than your liabilities or your liabilities decrease in relation to your assets. Um it's very important if we do decide to go out for any kind of um long-term debt to have a good net position is very helpful in our ratings. Um the total fund balance decreased this year from 127.6 6

185million to 126.9 million that is related to the purposeful use of fund balance for capital projects. Even with that decrease um our ending fund balance last year is approximately 15 52% of our um revenue budget for this current year. uh we retired 8.1 million of long-term debt and our expenditures exceeded revenues by 692,000 again related to the um purpose purposeful um budget of the capital projects. Stepping into the findings um we have four current findings and one prior finding or repeated um finding. Uh the first one is a segregation of district and parent organization bank accounts. Um we have long held the tradition of helping our um parent organizations open up their bank accounts using our EIN number. Um our auditors have asked us to work with the those groups to get their own EIN

186number because um as the treasurer I'm not a signer on their accounts. So to have their accounts under I our EIN number is a misrepresentation of our financial picture. So um myself and Scott um Rosen, my controller, we're going to work with the parent groups this year to get them switched over. Um the negative book balance on cash reconciliation is really um basically our financial system is set up to when we run our summer payrolls that we book on 6:30 so they hit the proper fiscal year. but we're not releasing those checks until July or August. It's creating a negative cash balance in the um prior fiscal year that doesn't match our bank statement balance. It's a software issue that I need to work with Skyward on to see if we can resolve it or

187if there's a workaround to that. So, it's it's nothing sign it's really not significant. It's nothing that we could control at the at this time. Um the IT awareness um and monitoring of emerging risks is something that Gazby has directed all auditing firms to identify as a recommendation in this year's um audits for all governmental um entities just because the increase of you know cyber security and risks that we all experience or all government units experience. And the last current um re recommendation is unresolved prior year transaction. Um this is again a financial system skyward issue where an outstanding accounts receivable was reversed in the wrong fiscal year which created a restatement of beginning balances. It really is a training issue just um teaching my controller the proper way to reverse a transaction that needed

188to be reversed. So again nothing major. we can learn and move on from it. Um the repeated recommendation is again the funds overbalance. This comes up almost every year with our ed fund and our capital projects fund. The ed fund over budget is due to the inclusion of student activities. Student activities isn't really a revenue and expenditure as a liability, but they include it as a revenue and expenditure in our financial reports. And sometimes that can create that uh illusion that we've gone over budget. So, I have a plan on how to approach that moving forward with our budget is to overinflate what I think the activity in student activities will be for the year. Um, the second one is our capital projects fund. When we build the budget for capital projects, um, when we're

189talking about summer projects, we're building that budget in the next fiscal year, not the fiscal year that's being audited. But what the audit does is it takes a portion of those projects that have been completed to a certain extent and it will acrue that back to the fiscal year. So while we're budgeting on a cash basis, we're financial reporting on acrruel basis. So I think moving forward Kim and I when we develop her budget, we'll have to kind of keep that in mind and maybe create that line item that says hold for acrals or hold for construction in progress. So, we're more budgeting on an acrruel basis rather than a cash basis. So, that's really the extent of our recommendations. I I'm not scared by them. I think we're good. I think we learned a

190little bit and we can move forward and be better next year. There is no action for the board to take regarding this this evening. Um, every year, uh, a requirement of ISBY is for the board to ultimately approve the financial statements of the board. That would come back to the board on consent next week, uh, forgive me, in two weeks. Um, and then the ACUER, um, serves two purposes. Um, one, this is relevant to the facility master plan conversation we had. The aquifer is a comprehensive financial report which is 30 times more than what the Illinois State Board requires. However, it is a absolute requirement when working with credit rating agencies for potential debt or things of that nature. So, this is very important document. Um, uh, so we'll use it for a variety of

191purposes and it will also be submitted to the GFOA and ASPO International for upcoming awards. And then Vicki um is uh putting the finishing touches on our paffer which is the popular annual financial report which is the short pretty abridged version. And I just want to emphasize what Vicki went over. We take transparency I would argue to a a higher level than so many districts directly in our pather that easy to view document. We list all of our audit recommendations because we want our Yes. Uh we want our community to be aware of where our auditors have identified successes, areas for growth, and what our plan is moving forward. Did any board member have any comments or questions for Mr. Tarver? Nice job. [Laughter] So this will come back on cons. Oh, I'm sorry. Dr.

192Steinberg, Vicki, can you go back to the first slide? Yeah. So just for clarification when we talk about the net position and we talk about our assets and liabilities meaning I I could see that we retire 8 million. So it that has an impact on the net position but it's not it seems like we had an increase larger than 8.1. Yes. Um part of that part of that is because um we have also invested in more capital and that is will increase our assets as well as that retiring that debt reduced our liabilities which in the end increased our net position. Perfect. The second question you mentioned this issue with the student activities. Yes. So you said we cannot have it on a separated account. It's not a cash account. Is there any way to

193clean it so you don't have to do this guessing game at the beginning of every There is. I just have to pay better attention to it as I'm building the budget to be honest with you. I have to pay a little bit more attention to how much I'm estimating there. Two comments. Glen Brookke has a very active student activity account portfolio compared to the overwhelming majority of school districts in the United States. Yes. Um in excess of a million dollars of Oh, no, no, no. In ex in excess of $3 million. I was trying to be generic, but yes. Um transparent. Appreciate that. So um but the real reason why this is a topic is four years ago the government accounting standards board Gazsby changed the requirements of reporting on student activities. So this is

194one of those we the money in student activities is not property of the school district. The money is property of the respective organizations and the funds. we simply are custodians of those funds. Um so what Gazsby said is in essence you can move everything to a revenue expenditure portfolio which wouldn't work in our type of scenario or you can record these one-time entries. Um we just need to um maybe reflect a little better more on a trend line analysis. Yeah. to hit a middle of the road where we're predicting revenues and expenditures at the amended budget time which is more towards April in anticipation of the end of the year. And where you really get um unanticipated large deposits is when you have a very large um world languages exchange tour coming that has 20

195people uh spending $3,000 plus dollars on on their tickets. That's where you can have issues. So just some trend line analysis we need to do better. Yeah, I think it's unfair. Puts a lot of pressure on on your team and it's it's a guessing game because I I just have to get better at like R.J. said the trend analysis. I just have to kind of refine what I'm looking at and what I'm predicting and do it at the amended budget time rather than the original budget time. Any other questions or comments? Okay. So, this will come back on consent the next meeting. Thank you, Miss Tarver. Uh, the next item on the agenda is possible topics for future board meetings. Um, you may recall that uh Dr. Rell had circulated to the board several weeks

196ago, maybe a few m couple months ago now, a list that we put together, solicited um input from all board members, and many of these topics have been sort of uh pencled in. Yep. For upcoming dates. I don't think there's anything right now on the agenda for next week, but if there is anything that a board member would like to bring up now um as a possible topic or would like to suggest um by an email or a phone call to myself or to Dr. Rebell, we would be happy to hear that. I'll look forward to your calls. All right. Um, in that case then next time we are going to be we will be having a close session tonight. I understand it will be short. I'm promised it will be short. So, um, we

197will be going into close session to consider the appointment, appointment, 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. Um, that is section 2C1 of the open meeting act. So, we will adjourned Use the motion. Roll call. Oh, I'm so sorry. Um, would someone please move for us to move to closed? Second. Any opposed? Motion carries. Um, at 9:56 p.m. uh we are back in open session and we have a action coming out of closed. So yes, I think there we go. So we'll have Dr. Steinberg will be making a motion. I move that the board of education approve

198the termination of Constantino Sakario as presented in close session. Second, Miss Smith. Mr. Glowaki. Yes. Mrs. Hope. Yes. Mr. O'Hara. Yes. Mr. Shine. Yes. Dr. Steinberg. Yes. Mr. Downing? Yes. Miss Mullenbeck? Yes. Motion carries. Do we have a motion to adjurnn? I move. Second. All in favor? Any opposed? Motion carries. Peter stained and then Christina