001Laura, but I thought it didn't turn off. and Miss Malbeck, we're ready. Good evening everyone and welcome to this meeting of the board of education of the Glenberg High School District 225. Uh Miss Smith, could we have the role please? Mr. Downing here, Mr. Glowaki present. Mrs. Hope here. Miss Mullenbeck here. Mr. O'Hara, Mr. Shine, Dr. Seyberg here. Five members present. Uh, the first item on our agenda is approval of the agenda. Uh, Dr. Grall, have there been any changes to the agenda since it was circulated? There have been no changes. Um, in that case, can I have a motion? So move. Second. All in favor? I Any opposed? Motion carries. Before we begin with our regular agenda this evening, we gather with heavy hearts to remember and honor the life of one of our
002Glenberrook North students who passed away last week. Our thoughts and deepest sympathies are with the students family, friends, and all who have been impacted by this loss. In accordance with the family's wishes, we will not be sharing personal information about their child during this profoundly difficult time. We recognize that many students may experience feelings of sadness or grief. We encourage them to seek support from a member of their student support team, a trusted teacher, or another adult at school. Students may visit the student services department at any time during the school day without an appointment where staff are ready to provide care and connect them to additional resources. Students may also schedule an appointment with the social worker at the Glenrook School Health Center. A list of additional community-based resources is available on the Glen
003Brook North website. At this time, I invite us all to join together in a moment of silence to honor and remember our student. Thank you. Dr. Grall, could you please share with us your report? Absolutely. Good I was going to say good morning. Good evening, everyone. Thank you so much for gathering today. Um, as we get started, I want to take an opportunity acknowledge that the month of September of each year is National Library Card Signup Month. And if you're not familiar, each year during the student registration process, parents are presented with a question saying,"Do you have a library card? And if you do not, would you be interested in having the school district connect you with either the Glen View or the Northbrook Public Library?" And what the libraries do through our partnership is
004they reach out to the families and they make sure that all students in the household have access to library resources, which is so much more than maybe what we've perceived as a traditional access to check out books and other periodicals, but really a whole library of things, flexible learning spaces, spaces for students to be able to check out and collaborate with each other, work on projects, and certainly during times of the have a nice peaceful and quiet place to study. And both of our libraries have really worked to create these very um in some ways cafelike experiences for our students, making sure that it's not only work that they're gathering and and navigating, but they're also having some opportunity to socialize with one another and continue to build their relationships. One of the unique elements
005of uh some laws that have recently been passed in Illinois and that both of our public libraries have embraced is that even students that live in unincorporated areas of Glen View and Northbrook still have access to library resources. And this is made possible through some partnerships between this board of education and our library boards of trustees. And today I'm excited to show what those um relationships have resulted in over in the village of Glen View. Um and again this includes students most recently in what we often refer to as a triangle area of uninccorporated Glen View. Um we've been able to get 199 new library cards for residents. But the bigger number here in my opinion is 109 non-residents. So, these are individuals that might have Glen View as their mailing address, but don't actually
006live in incorporated Glen View. Um, but through these agreements, 109 uh new residents or new non-residents now have access to those resources. And then each year, if you're not familiar, the libraries ask for cards to be renewed that might have otherwise expired. And so, through this process, we took care of 42 of those uh students. Over in the village of Northbrook was the North Brook Public Library. 87 new residents now have library cards through the partnership and 11 new non-residents. So those that live in unincorporated area and then an additional 61 um cards that otherwise would pay a non-resident fee, those fees were renewed and waved for those students. So that's just another illustration of of how that partnership is not just getting the initial card but continuing to maintain that access. All in all,
00746 new library cards through this relationship. So, uh, just taking that opportunity. If you're if you have not visited your public library recently, I encourage you to reach out, explore, visit the facilities, encourage your peers, encourage your neighbors to go and experience what both of these libraries have to offer. They are truly inspirational maker spaces, and they have those, too. The second topic I wanted to talk about today um is just formally announcing that the school district is beginning its new club proposal process. So what do we mean by that? We're very fortunate at Glenrook North and Glen South to have a wide range of special interest clubs, clubs that are focused on academics, activities, athletics, the arts, and so on and so forth. And each year we provide an opportunity for students themselves to
008propose new clubs. Um on the front page of the Glen Brook North and South website, there's a news article that announces this process and it gives a link to the packet that I've displayed here on the slide. Um we encourage students to take an early preview. Technically, it's not available until October 1st, but it's available now if you look. um take a look at what those requirements are, what the process is, um and begin preparing those applications. Any students who have questions are encouraged to reach out to Dr. Moranto at Glenrook South, Dr. Targen over at Glenrook North um regarding any of the questions that are presented, the process for what's expected of clubs or so on and so forth. Um, really important deadline though, completed applications are due on Monday, November 3rd at 3:30
009p.m. And this is one of those documents that you're going to need to actually print out and have some signatures on. Um, so just make sure to have it all ready to go, submit it to the SAO. You certainly can submit it early. Uh, but we look forward to processing um, all those club applications and interests um, in the coming months here. um the whole process is subscribed but again if you have any questions please most certainly reach out. One other topic that I don't have a slide for, but I just wanted to uh mention is this school year we did not fill the assistant superintendent role that oversees our business and operational services. And on October 1st, we will be formally posting the position of assistant superintendent for operations and student experiences. that individual
010um is going to fulfill responsibilities that I previously did in that role which involves uh business services, operations, technology services, safety and security and a lot of those operational areas. Um applications will be accepted through the end of October with the goal of recommending a candidate to the board of education prior to the Thanksgiving holiday. So for any individuals um on our staff within our community and beyond uh that might be interested, be sure to check out the human resources website um after October 1st for more information about that position. As we move on, I'm happy to transition over to Glen Brook North and South. We've had some homecoming experiences and I believe Mrs. Hughes, you are up first. Yes. So, we had um a fantastic homecoming week at GBN from September 8th to the
01112th with our theme surfing with the Spartans. And I was especially thrilled to see the different spirit displayed throughout the school and within our community. Um whether that was in our hallway decorations, our paint the town window decorating, and during our dressup theme days that really emphasized um some collective themes as well as individuality and different um elements of resilience. Our week culminated in a festive pep assembly with highlights of our band director, Mr. Briggs, leading our school song and great activities such as a schoolwide heads and tails comp heads or tails competition. Um, and we were pleased to experience success on the football field for our game against Elk Grove and we celebrated with fireworks. I thought that was fun. Um, and also Saturday's homecoming dance. We had a great time. And over at
012GBS, we are actually looking forward to homecoming next week. Um so today, banner painting kicked off um with our student activity group starting to create their banners um to represent themselves in the parade. Uh we have a theme this year called game on from board games to video games. Um having a theme of all the different ways that uh games can bring fun and excitement to our lives. Um, so we're hoping everyone's going to come out um next Friday, October 10th, um, for both the Titan tailgate and our football game against Deerfield. We too will be having fireworks. Um, little competition. We could see yours at our home game. So, can you see if you can see ours from from your your field? Um, and then next Saturday, um, excuse me, two Saturdays from today
013on October 11th, homecoming parade, uh, we'll be kicking off at 10:00 a.m. with our dance in the dome. um Saturday night. So, we're looking forward to a really fun week of activities at Glen Brook South and activities are exciting beyond homecoming, we also celebrated our fall plays and I believe GBN is first up with Romeo and Juliet. Yes. So, under the direction of Mr. Tim Broker and Miss Kelsey Nichols and with our technical expertise of our technical theater manager, Mr. Steuart Wilson. GBN's fall play was Romeo and Juliet using the original Shakespearean language. We were able to showcase our new starrop and a special thank you to the donations from our various parent um organizations who contributed to that beautiful setpiece. One really neat thing about this fall play was that it directly connected to
014our freshman English curriculum. They will eventually be reading Romeo and Juliet. And so we took advantage of this to host an in-school field trip for all of our freshman students to view the play during school. So they had this unique opportunity to see the play and then they will read that and be able to draw those connections later on. And so we're curious to see how that helps to um increase their understanding of the Shakespearean language. It was beautiful. And over at South, uh, we had a fantastic rendition of Pride and Prejudice. Um, which I don't know about those of you who attended, but, um, as a as an adult, I appreciate the mild humor in Pride. I think you, Dr. John's and I were talking about this. Um, the cast did an extraordinary job
015of, uh, displaying uh, both the overt and covert humor uh, involved in Pride and Prejudice. It was an outstanding play. um they had over a thousand people come uh through the evenings to watch the performance. So, we're incredibly proud of our Titans and uh really enjoyed the performance. Thank you so much, Mrs. Hughes and Dr. Georgees. Um before we transition uh to board reports, I just want to take an opportunity to acknowledge today was a new beginning, if you will, for our board of education in that we had the first meeting of our brand new communications committee. The communications committee uh was um identified as as a need within our district last uh spring and it will be meeting at least four times uh during this year to review topics related to internal and external
016communication. But without saying anymore, I do believe that Mr. Downing has been appointed as the reporter for this meeting. Um uh yeah, it's a new uh as Dr. GL said we had a a a meeting. It's a it's a newer committee, but um I think some of you experienced or hopefully a lot of you experienced our new way of uh communicating externally and we've really been focused on that uh for quite some time. Hopefully, you've signed up for parent square, but we've really been intentional about trying to make sure that we push as much information out as we can in the most efficient and easiest way that you want it consumed. Um, from and we'll continue to to make that better. But I think the good news is is we'll be able to get uh
017emergency info out as fast as we can as well as all the other stuff too. But then we started looking at trying to uh be proactive and gather information uh from the community from our parents. So uh we are now engaging in kind of a second part of that and trying to figure out ways that we can um and I think we'll talk about that at the next meeting but ways we can get more engaged with the community and really understand your needs and wants. That's about it. Thank you, Mr. Downing. Miss Malenbeck, that concludes our report. Um, are there any other board reports? Okay. Um, in that case, we will move on to item four on our agenda, which is recognition of community visitors. And today, we do have a couple of people who
018have signed up to speak. Um, our public comment period um is limited to 30 minutes. um individuals who would like to address the board can sign up and indicate their intention. They let us know um their address. Um that way we're able to follow up with them um about the topics that they raise if necessary. Um you will be called to the podium in the order in which you signed up and you will have two minutes to address the board. Uh the first person who signed up to speak with the board today is Sarah While. Hi. Um, thank you so much for this opportunity. I'm a graduate of this district. I have two graduates also of this district and one student still in the district. Um, I've never been to any of these meetings, which
019is a sign of my complacency, but also I think the the good job that um, you all do. So, thank you very much for everything that you do for our community. My comment had to do with the recent email that was sent out with security protocols that um are in place for our schools and I think they're very robust when it comes to an external threat. Um I may have missed it but what I did not see is anything that um deals with an internal origin of a threat which concerned me as a parent. So I just wanted to voice it may be there. It may be that it's not publicized for strategic reasons, but it seems like um something that I'm hoping that you all are considering as well. That was it. Thank you,
020Miss Wild. Uh the second person who has signed up to speak tonight is I'm sorry. I'm going to get my glasses because can't really read this. Pano Diamatopoulos. Sorry about that. I'm sorry I said it wrong. Could you say your name, please? Uh, good evening. My name is Ponard Danopoulos. I'm a current senior at Glenro South High School and I'm here coming in front of the board today to ask a question and a statement at the same time. So, me and my colleagues over here, Jason Spiro, we're currently starting Turning Point USA at Glen Brook South. And we have a lot of student movement. We have a lot of help from other adults as well as parents. And I just want to ask you the board, what can we do to like make our process
021a little faster and speed up a little bit? And also, how can we ensure we get guaranteed to um be accepted into the school as a club? Um I just tonight uh we talked about the packet that you'll have to fill out. I don't think that the board is in a position to guarantee that a club would be um proposal would be accepted, but if you fill out the the packet and have all the requirements that I'm sure it'll be looked at carefully. All right. Thank you so much. Thank you. Hey, listen. Somebody else wants to speak. Yes. Are there any other people who'd like to speak? Okay. In that case, we will move on to item five on our agenda, which is the consent agenda. Um, Dr. Grall, have there been any changes to
022the consent agenda since it was circulated? There have been no changes. In that case, could I have a motion, please? I move. Oh, there you go. Miss Smith. Mr. Downing. Yes. Mr. Glowaki, yes. Mrs. Hope, yes. Dr. Steinberg, yes. Miss Mullenbeck, yes. Five members voting yes. Moving on then to our discussion action agenda. The first item on the agenda is the 2627 school calendar. This is our first item for discussion today. Just want to emphasize that we will not be asking the board to vote on the calendar. It's always our typical process where we present information and then bring it back uh to the board for consideration. And this one would be at the October 14th meeting. Uh this evening, Mr. Breag will walk the board through uh a bit of the process that the
023district goes through each year to establish a school calendar. Um, I do want to emphasize that this school calendar is a bit unique from prior years, meaning the one we're in right now, in that it's the first year we've ever had final examinations prior to winter break. And as interesting as this might be, we're talking about next year's calendar, but we've only lived in this calendar for about a month and a half. Um, so with that said, um, just kind of measuring expectations, um, Mr. Bree tag has really developed this year's or next year's calendar recommendation based on the current calendar parameters that we have for this year. Um we really feel it's necessary for us to live through a year of a calendar as well as to gather additional feedback before any any larger
024substantive changes would be considered. But with that said, I'll turn it over to Mr. Brit. Well, good evening and and yes, we are talking 2627 tonight. So, I have to constantly remind myself which calendar we're on. Um, just some key dates as we talk about this. First and foremost, in this proposed calendar, our first school date would be a August 13th. So, that would be the first day of school. It's a Thursday. What's really important, I'm going to anchor in some of our parameters here. One key parameter when we're developing the calendar is that we start on a Thursday. that allows our students to have a blue and green day and a gold day in the first week and then actually have a weekend a little stamina reset after a summer break. So that's one
025of our key parameters. The last day of the first semester would be Friday, December 18th. That's another parameter for us that we want to ensure that the last day of the first semester ends on a Friday leading into winter break. What's important about that is our second semester and our first semester, we want to get as balanced as possible for our semesterbased courses. And it's really important with a number of breaks and different experiences during the first semester. That tends to be the shorter semester in a year. So, by placing the end of the semester on a Friday, we've really elongated the semester as best as possible. And then obviously last day of school, I'm going to skip the third one that's the most exciting is we would be out of school on May 25th.
026So if you didn't hear the news, this was a short summer for a lot of folks as we went to the first semester. So there's or to finals for semester before break. So in this case, um that would be when we would be ending the school year on the 25th. What's important in some of these parameters is that when we construct the calendar, we first need to ensure that we're aligning with the state parameters. Clearly, the state uh lays out a few things that we have to have 176 school days and it has to be 5 hours a day. One of our other parameters that we have locally is we would like to exceed that number. So we have 177 days and we have 6 hours and 3 minutes a day f versus the five.
027So we exceed those numbers throughout the year. The other two things that we do on top of these clear Glenbrook guidelines that help us build the calendar and the state guidelines, we also collaborate a lot with our elementary schools to understand what are their needs, where do they find it important for us to stay in alignment and where is some flexibility. This year, Dr. Grall had met a number of times with the superintendent and then when we had this calendar, he was able to then also work with the libraries and the park districts to get their feedback. Again, this is a townshipwide initiative. Our calendar impacts businesses, recreation activities. So, it's a lot of people that we want to ensure their feedback is sought and understood. Outside of that, we do have calendar adjustments. Dr.
028Grall mentioned it. This is the first year. It's odd. It's not October 1st yet, and we're talking about next year. We haven't lived through this brand new calendar of 2526. We do feel the calendar that we're putting in front of you is thoughtful, is aligned with our beliefs, but we haven't lived through this calendar that we're experiencing right now. So there could be minor adjustments coming as we continue to collect feedback, but we do feel these key dates that you're seeing here would stay true, would be part of the process. There could be tweaks inside of our proposed calendar that again we would bring forward if said changes needed to be made. So with that, I'm going to open it up to any questions. Mr. Gloaki, I was just wondering in light of some of
029the I think there's a new bill that just signed off in August with recognizing new dates or working with the state board, does this calendar take that into Yes, it does because I don't think they posted the dates yet. Yeah, we looked at all the calendar rules that they had published out and took those into account. Now, again, they could bring further changes and then we would make adjustments along the way, but we have adhered to everything they had put forward. So I guess do it because my understanding is they haven't even posted the dates that we should be recognizing for that year yet. Well, they bill just passed in August. Yeah, if I understood, the bill just passed in August, so now it turned over to the Illinois State Board of Education to come
030up with dates and they haven't posted their dates yet. Yeah, for the following year. I'll take that question. Um, so a bill that was actually um, uh, championed by uh, Representative Catz Maul uh, of Northbrook um, put forth, if you will, a task for the Illinois State Board of Education on an annual basis to prepare a calendar for guidance purposes. And the calendar would include all of the different religious and other cultural holidays that schools should take into consideration when planning their calendars. Now, if we think of that specific bill, there were two topics that were brought up. One is the the general structure of the school calendar, uh days students are in session, days that students are not in session. The other element actually had to do with planning large events such as homecoming
031uh or if you have uh our Glen Brook musical uh like large scale events while also providing awareness for all of our teachers um and Mr. Brea I'll have you talk about this in a moment of what we call homework free zones. Um Isby is still working um to develop that. However, we use a few different services that give us um a lot of that same information. The difference is the services that we use right now you have to pay for whereas uh in the future is we will just provide it to all school districts. There's also one bit of challenge that you run into depending on what holidays you're looking at. Um sometimes um there is variability in the dates and so the approach that the state board would take is these are the
032dates that you should navigate through. Um we have uh implemented the same calendar structure we have for this year with respect to days that students are in attendance or not in attendance but Mr. Bag as well as the township um are starting to do a lot of work with respect to this homework free zone. So you want to just kind of explain how that works? Yes. So on an annual basis, we send out a message to our staff as well as to students in support of what are known as homework free zones. These are in adherence to holidays and the impact it could have on our students. So from our breaks as well as holidays, we send out to our students the ability to say, "Hey, I'm I'm celebrating this." and they would be allowed
033to not have homework due on those days and the days preceding their holiday event. So, they vary depending on the holiday and the extent, but these are ways we've been able to honor different beliefs and different structures that are in place while allowing students to have that time that is precious to their family and their belief structures. No further questions. Mr. Mr. Downey, you have any questions? Miss Hope, Dr. Steinberg, just on clarification maybe couple of things. We worked last year with the group in terms of changing the final structure. Is this implemented this year or is this going to kick into next year calendar? No, it will be implemented this year. Okay. So normally when we in the olden days for lack of a better way of saying it, we used to have parents
034coming when we were starting to talk about having finance before the end of the year and asking about some students that participate in holidays activities, but now I've noticed we finish I won't say way before we finish before the holidays. So is this allowing for flexibility or should we expect people that that are finding out about this today a year in advance that may say how is this you know conflicting or not with I'm thinking of choir singing at different places or now because I think we're finishing earlier than we used to finish. So we are finishing earlier. Correct. Okay. But in terms of final exams our students have three days of finals. That's what we went through as a process. As part of that, they have the ability if they have three finals on
035one day to move and go through that process of saying that's too many finals on one day, so I'm going to move a final. Um, from there, the expectation is that our students are there for final exams and taking their final exams. Okay. And which is part of the reason why we try to produce this calendar ahead of time so there's an awareness. Okay. My last question. It's again I'm trying to go back to comments that we had years ago parents because these questions may come back sports that we start on August 13. Do sports start week before? How this this match with the calendar? Yeah, from an athletic perspective, actually, this calendar is much more aligned with our conference and the structures of of most schools because we were the uh last remaining, I
036believe, or second to last remaining school that had finals after break. So, this has put our sports more in alignment with other conferences in the area as well as non-conference games. Right. Thank you. Yep. Um I had two questions. Uh the first concerns the bill that Mr. Gwaki had um brought up and that you had elaborated on a little bit. Um Dr. Grall, I just want to make sure I understand. So the calendar that ISBY is working on currently is sort of a overview of as I guess as many possible dates that should be taken into account when um setting up a calendar, but it does not dictate any particular days that must be taken that are in addition to those that are currently like Palaski Day, you know, the ones that have traditionally been
037taken as holidays. Correct. The bill is a guidance document. Um, it seeks to further help expand what's in Illinois school code, which are those specific commemorative and legal holidays at the state level. Okay. Um that kind of leads into my second question and I know this is something that um you've been working on and and that others in the district and in other districts around us have been working on but perhaps you could just share with um uh the folks who are attending and are listening today. You know, as we are getting information and requests from community members and families about making changes to the calendar about um adding certain holidays or and recognizing there are a lot of constraints and we have legal requirements and we have the balancing issue and other things. Where
038are we in that process and when do we expect to be able to um respond to some of the folks who've brought those concerns to us? Certainly. So, um, from a a professional connection standpoint, I meet with the Northfield Township superintendent. So, those are our elementary feeder uh, superintendents as well as myself. Uh, typically once a week when uh, all of us have that schedule uh, scheduled time we're able to attend. Um, when we go through a variety of topics about alignment between our districts, um, we have had now three conversations that have gone into a lot of detail. Um, one of the things that Mr. Breag mentioned, um, and it's on the slide right now is the alignment that I didn't personally realize as much until it was brought up by our elementarymentaries about
039alignment with the park districts. And so, it's it's one thing to talk about um just uh field availability and activities and things of that nature, but our calendar greatly impacts the availability of summer camps and availability of daycare. And so one of the things that we've talked about is if all the high school kids who might serve as camp counselors or things of that nature are already back in school, that means that many of our community members that rely on those services uh might have a period of time where they don't don't have that support uh that's built in. So trying to keep that gap between when the high school begins and when the elementary begins is is really important. Um, we've also talked about different requests we've received from members of the community about
040recognizing other um other holidays throughout uh throughout the school year. Um, at the high school level, our greatest area of challenge in looking at at modifications specifically comes to the fall semester. The fall semester already is a shorter semester with less academic instruction days just due to the nature of exams being before uh winter break. And that is the condition that exists at the overwhelming uh number of of high school districts within our region. The difference being Glenrook as a way to offer more of our students flexibility and choice and opportunity has a large number of one semester classes in both the first semester and the second semester. And so if you have a lot of one semester classes and you have Mr. I believe is seven uh academic days or eight academic day difference.
041Um then then that's kind of difficult to balance from an instructional quality standpoint between semesters ensuring the same level of access. And so adding any more days in the fall semester would require the school year to start earlier or to transition exams which we've just made the decision on. On the flip side, now if we go to the spring, we have a little more flexibility, but again, every day that you look to add would result in the school year uh being longer. Um and so we're trying to balance all of those. Um the elementary schools have been working to gather feedback from their administrative teams. Um we've talked about this for about a year um uh in much more detail than some of our elementarymentaries have. Um and so we're trying to all navigate through
042that. I anticipate we'll have more information uh towards the spring of this year, but we are also waiting for ISBY to officially release their guidance document as a helpful starting tool. One of the things I just want to emphasize, and I know it's not directly to your question, Miss Malenbeck, but we recognize that many of our students have different personal commitments throughout the school year. And a lot of those commitments are are specific and personal to their own faith-based backgrounds or cultural backgrounds. and we work to support all of our students in ensuring that they have the flexibility to devote time to those obligations as well as fulfill their school uh responsibilities. And one of those ways is by informing our staff, keeping everyone in loop and providing those homework free zones. Uh but there
043is a there is a an operational or a logistical challenge in modifying the calendar um in many different ways. Well, thank you for explaining where we are in the process um and the complexities. Oh, Dr. Steinberg, thank you. Sorry, short followup. I think we talk about this um and maybe we are already doing this back to the holidays. It's even if we don't take the days, having some sort of recognition so people in school know that somebody is celebrating or group of people are celebrating things. Even if we even if we don't up to when we get to a point that more holidays or some sort of things will happen at least having some self-recognition. So if if you whatever your fate is if you're attending school because you feel you want to attend school
044and your parents maybe like well we need to go to wherever we need to go le you feel that you're being acknowledged by your peers or or there's something doesn't have to be a celebration or anything else but you know we all have special days at certain point depending on whatever faith we follow. So at least will be a small step you know on the way through announcements or something. Absolutely. I think um we'll have to explore all avenues because this is definitely going to be um there's there's a lot to take into account lots of different perspectives and um it'll be already a big task just with moving this moving this to this new calendar and now we will have this in the mix. But um thank you for your efforts there and we'll
045look forward to hearing in the spring where we are as a progress report. Um, if we don't have anything else on the calendar, we will move to item 6.2 on the agenda, which is an update on the Glen Brook School health center and nursing services for students and staff. So, this evening we are really excited to welcome some of our colleagues that I get to work with each and every day. Uh, Dr. Cummings, our assistant superintendent of student supports, Dr. Joanna Lewis with um Advocate Lutheran General Children's Hospital, and our new assistant director of nursing services, Mrs. Julie Schullard. Um I think the board knows that I'm I'm very excited about um our creation of the Glen Brook School Health Center over at Glen Brook South and how that environment has served as really a
046platform to help keep our schools healthy. Um I am one of those staff members who have taken advantage and been very grateful to the uh flexibility of the staff that's right there. Um but especially as we're entering into this time of year when flu colds and everything is is going around. Um I have recognized and and we recognize on the educational side that it's really difficult for students to always get into their pediatricians or get into their primary care providers. And so having this service uh I think you'll see from the numbers um has been a great asset. But the other thing I just wanted to mention before I turn it over is for the longest time I had a perception of what happens in a nurse's office. Um and as the board is now
047learning through different alerts that they receive, the nurse's office can be a little busy from time to time. uh before school starts, during the school day, and after school, and on days off, and on weekends. Um, our nurses offices are amazing places, staffed with complete uh professionals that are dedicated to supporting students and staff um and making sure they get the support that they need when they need it. Um, we are so fortunate to have um only registered nurses working within our nurs's offices. So, highly skilled, highly credentialed. Um, and then this unique thing of the health center allows that care to be elevated even to the next level. So, if you've thought you knew what happened in a nurse's office before, I encourage you to sit back and listen to what uh Julie, Dwana,
048and Laura might have to share with you. Laura, well, thank you, Dr. Grall. Uh, good evening. Um, thank you for having us tonight. Um, so my job entails a lot of different responsibilities. Um, but working with the health center and nursing happens to be one of my favorite. Just don't tell all the others. Um, so we're going to share some real exciting news with you. Um, and and really share kind of a typical day in the life of of a nurse and the health center. Um, so I'm going to get us started here with just talking a little bit about outreach from the health center and then I'm going to turn it over to Dr. Lewis to talk about some of the statistics. So last year we added consent for the health center to the
049pre-registration process for our incoming students. So that happens in the month of September right now. Um and we are currently at 96% of our students um have agreed to consent which is amazing. Um, the health center does help any, you know, student that comes in, whether or not they have consent, achieve consent, but the process goes so much quicker because we already have it for 96% of our student population. Um, in the spring, we start to offer physicals for compliance for our eighth graders, and they certainly do take advantage of that in the spring. So, it's really nice to be able to start that process a little earlier before the summer. Um, a couple of things that events that our health center has been present at are the back- toschool nights um at both south
050and north and then they also do the activities and athletics night um really talking about those sports physicals and compliance and all that good stuff. So they are around and about and visible and and constantly marketing um the services that they provide. In addition, Carara Ralph, one of our nurse practitioners, along with Julie this year, visited the health classes at South and North and shared about the services that the health center provides and also talks about students advocating for their own medical and health care needs. Um, we do have a community advisory board. Um, the Illinois Department of Public Health decides who we need to have on it. We kind of go above and beyond with that and have some community representatives there helping drive some of our decision making. And new this year we
051have a student advisory board. They had their first meeting. Yay. Um they're great. Um so students from um both South and North participate on that. Um a couple other things that the health center has taken on are the pre-employment physicals for any of our staff getting hired here. it is super easy for them to make that appointment, head over to the health center and get their physical and be ready for working. Um, we hold menitis clinics. I know sounds like a real good time, right? Any seniors out there? Um, so, uh, they'll be holding one at Glenchrook North next week. Um, so any students who have that outstanding vaccination can come to that clinic at North or South for that. Um we had heard from our staff that there were concerns about um sudden cardiac
052events. Um this was a result of of several family members and and staff struggling with some of these concerns. And so we worked and collaborated with Advocate to offer a health heart health heart healthy heart lunch and learn um that was put on by Advocate um for our staff which was a great great activity. And then two other quick things. Um we started a schoolbased health center consortium where the health centers from the main district 207 from Evston and from Wheeling come together to talk about ideas, share, collaborate um on different struggles um or things that have worked really well or grant writing any of those things that we're now able to collaborate together. So that's been a wonderful partnership. And starting next Monday, we are starting to offer in-person in-person mental health services at
053Glen Brook North. So, we are fully staffed in the health center. Um, we had a short period of time that we were hiring a new therapist and she is going to begin on Monday providing direct services to students and staff in person on Mondays um at Lumbrech North, the other four days at South. and she can still do in-person and virtual visits for any students and staff. So, I'm going to turn it over to Dr. Lewis to talk through some of our stats. Great. Thanks so much for having me. Um, before I move on to statistics, I wanted to make two comments. I would be remiss if I did not give a huge thank you to the staff that works in our health center. So, just for you to know who the people are behind
054the scenes. Cynthia sits at the front desk and registers patients and welcomes everyone. The nurses are very familiar with Cynthia because especially for the students at South if they come and they maybe need more than what the nurses can get for them, they walk right over. Um, and she helps them. We have a new medical assistant, Liz, who works there full-time. We have Carara, as Dr. Cummings mentioned, along with Raquel, a second nurse practitioner, and then Shauna. And Laura Uraich is our manager of operations. She fortunately for us is also the operations manager from the advocate side of schoolbased health centers at Maine and Wheeling. So brings a lot of knowledge um and also of our mobile health program, excuse me, that provides free um physical exams and immunizations to kids all over the area
055of which I also serve as the medical director. So a lot of ability for collaboration. The second thing I want to mention is just one other thing about the student advisory board. They are phenomenal. Um, they taught me so many things about Google Classroom in about 20 minutes and they knew all about Parent Square. I mean, they just like knew everything and have so many ideas and really want to take ownership. We have sophomores, juniors, and seniors right now and we will be adding freshmen to the group. So, it's really a pleasure to work with them and we're really excited to learn from them. But how about some numbers? So this is I just wanted to give a caveat that these are not just in time numbers. So the September numbers were from September 8th.
056So this is actually the first week of September. Um we enter numbers at the end of the month. But um this is our well in acute visits. So what happens um about um for peds we say I tell people pediatrics is a winter sport. And so you see that we have a lot more acute visits in the winter. So we're coming up on that right now. But um a nice balance in the summer and we're doing a lot of well visits and then a lot more acute visits. We accommodate a lot of walk-ins. Um as much as we want to empower adolescents to take charge of their health and make appointments, a lot of what we see as walk-ins. So we do our best to accommodate those. So this is our well and acute visits
057in calendar year 2025. This is how many of those are seen by students. And um just to see how this has increased. So the blue was 2023, the purplish was 2024, and then 2025. So you can see a really sharp increase every single year. Um May and June were a little bit less. That's actually because we did such a good job like in February and March getting people in earlier. Um if you notice, there's these really nice peaks like the week sports physicals are due for the next season. So, um, we really help a lot of students be able to get to practice. This is our staff medical visits. So, those have always continued to follow a similar trend. I want to point out it wasn't that all of a sudden the staff were so
058so sick in October and November. This previous year, we provided most of the flu vaccines for the staff. So, that was that big peak in numbers that um that we saw last year. excuse me, mental health visits. Um, like Lara mentioned, we did have a change in our staffing. So, our one therapist left um at the end of April and we um had some help from outside people through advocate in June and July until we could hire our new therapist in August. So, I'm sure we will continue to see the numbers increase. Most of our mental health visits are um 45 minute visits that happen and we work very hard to schedule those either like during SRTs or lunch early release. We are I just want you to be assured we're not pulling students from
059classes in order to do that. Um but we have a great person on board and really great teamwork. We pulled the top 10 diagnoses. We've been doing this every quarter since we began and they really sort of fluctuate up and down from all of the same things. I would say the one thing this was last quarter usually in the top five is either anxiety or depression. Um we did not have a therapist during the last quarter. So that's why that was not documented as much but I would expect if we pulled this for next quarter um which doesn't mean that things are going badly. It actually means things are going well because people that need help are coming to see us. So um these are the top things we're seeing. sports physicals, immunizations, and school
060physicals. And then what you can imagine, sore throats, upper respiratory infection is what a URI is, headaches, sinocitis, weird rashes, um, and then just general nausea. Yes. Um, there was one other thing that I wanted to mention and I can't remember it, but um, no. And then I'm gonna pass it over to Julie and I'm happy to answer any questions after. Thanks. All right, the nurse's office. What do we do there? Uh, I have to tell a little story. When I left the floor, I was um on a telemetry unit, so a cardiac unit. My cardiologist looked at me and said, "You're going to work in a school. You're going to put band-aids on students all day." And as my former principal's laughing, that's probably the least of what we do for our students. Um,
061so in general, and I kind of want to follow what Joanna said. Um, you know, I'm very humbled by the team that I have, the teams that I have in our buildings. We're all registered nurses, as R.J. said. We've all spent time in a hospital on a floor. We have a variety of backgrounds, labor, delivery, telemetry, ICU, emergency department. So, um, a varied, uh, background of services. What do we do on a daily basis? We treat our students acute illness injury. Uh a healthy number I would say at least at Glrook South is between 80 and 100 students within an 8 hour shift. Um plus or minus a little bit at North. Uh during the height of flu season, COVID and the fall our record last year was 128 students we were seeing uh daily.
062So everything from you know gastroenterteritis, ear pain, flu, we see PE injuries, asthma exacerbation that fitness testing and PE um is a tough week. IDH IDPH compliance we work to enforce um you know requirements for school attendance for our nth graders. Those are physical exams, immunization records for 12th graders uh those are their menitis requirements. So that's a long arduous process. It starts um I would say late winter, early spring and we are sending multiple communications to families and that culminates on October 15th. Transfer student management um we work with transfer families that come in. We do have to collect their physicals and immunization records. We do have to screen those students for vision and hearing. So that is um you know in itself is is a good deal of work. We co-manage concussions with
063our athletic trainers in the building in general. Our athletes are managed through the athletic training office and non-athletes are managed in the nurs's office. Communicable disease monitoring and reporting. Uh again, we're partnering with our local health department. Uh Cook County Department of Public Health. I got to know that epidemiologist very well in the last few years as did Lara. Um so we're talking about pandemics, but hopefully never again. uh what we've seen in the news, you know, in the past few years, measles outbreaks, but really uh pertasus is usually what uh afflicts our buildings and we're calling the health department and we have to send out communications and notifications. Daily medication administration. Um typically we have about 20 to 25 students that come down to each respective office that need scheduled medications. We also have
064students that take um PRN or as needed medications. And really we're also working with those students on life skills because it is a life skill to be able to manage your medical conditions. Um accident reports, we maintain those for the buildings. Uh IEPs and 504s, our certified school nurses have a play a big role in this. Um, you know, they're working closely with our building 504 coordinators, our IEP teams, special education case managers to write in medical accommodations for students that um need access to their education and need some medical support. Uh, vision and hearing screening. We are actually required to uh screen vision and hearing for all of our transfer students, all students that have an IEP annually. So, that's upwards of 250 to 300 students. and um any teacher referrals. We work closely
065with the dean's office if there's um sus uh suspected substance abuse perhaps or use uh students that are falling asleep in class. Uh teachers call us to do an assessment. Uh behavioral health, something very important to note. I have seen this grow over my tenure in the Glen Brooks. Um, it's year 11 for me and I would say upwards of 50% of our office visits on any given day are related to behavioral health, stress, anxiety, panic, they need a break from class, etc. They do I feel they do come down to the nurse's office where the safe place in the building. They know there's a nurse always on site. You know, we've all had a psychiatric nursing rotation. and we do what we can to sort of do that initial triage and then we connect
066them to the person they need to be with and their student support team. Um, and then of course there's medical emergencies, uh, staff and students in the building. I hear Barb laughing again. Uh, anything from anaphilaxis, cardiac emergencies, seizures, um, asthma exacerbation, you know, change in mental status. We've even unfortunately have um have had individuals had strokes at school. So, um it's a really really busy uh office and um I'm very proud of our teams. So, what have we added this school year since I have been in my new role? Uh we have been able to create uh a nurs's office or a nursing suite at GBT and GBO. Um that is something that will continue to grow, but uh we kind of broke ground on that. So, we're very excited for that. and part
067and parcel of that we hired an additional nurse um that will be you know transitioning to GBT eventually but she's sort of in a a dual role right now and doing um more working as a float nurse and districtwide subbing which is a great asset for both buildings. Uh we are utilizing P school for our documentation. We're using something new this year called dashboard. It's really streamlined our documentation which is fantastic. I've been working with uh the building administration on some district-wide staff training. Last week we did CPR AED Epipens at South and I've been in touch with Mandy about when we're going to do that at North. And then I've had the opportunity to start to work on some professional development for um the nurses in general. We have epilepsy foundation that always comes.
068We've worked with um the nursing program over at Oakton, our local EMS partners. I have been in communication with them just as we continually partner with them and then of course advocate is assisting and getting some other speakers on um hot topics for the nurses. So I think Lara had put this together just kind of a timeline to show you know um how our services complement each other. So back in 2022 23 we had pulled on October 15th roughly about 120 students that after many months of um communications and chances still didn't have their health requirements in. We didn't exclude all 120 but we added the health center and that those numbers dropped significantly. So we're talking about pulling two students and last year was one and hopefully hopefully maybe we'll ultimately get to the
069goal of none. So that's real. Laura, thank you. Yeah. Okay. One more. Yes. Yeah. Then I remembered what I was going to say. Yes. Two more slides. Sorry. That's good. Um, so we got this Illinois school vaccination report card in our email this year and it caused quite a ruckus because we were all like, "Wow, why did we get a report card?" So, I I chose to put two clips of this because we're doing really well. We are We are well vaccinated. What is that word? Well protected. Well protected. And when you go to the site to look at all the other like local schools by us, not everyone's in the blue and well protected. So, our nurses and our health center has worked incredibly hard to get us to that blue zone and to
070keep us in that blue zone. So, thank you both for that. Um and last um just to kind of summarize up a couple things that we are looking to for the future. Um in terms of the health center as we meet with our advisory, our community advisory and the student board advisory, we are constantly looking for new ways, new ways of marketing, social media, Google classroom, whatever it might be um to help get the word out about the services. By no means are we nervous because our numbers aren't high. our numbers are incredibly high in terms of our visits. Um we know that our students and staff are are utilizing the services. Um but we are not seeing the increase in Glumbrook North students and staff as we would like to, right? Um it's definitely
071an opportunity for growth for us to look at putting a satellite health center. Um probably a much smaller center at Glumbrook North um to be able to offer some services, maybe not all full day every day, um but to be able to offer services to staff and students. As you as I mentioned earlier, we are piloting right now the mental health services at Glenrech North for one day a week. And so I think we'll we'll get some idea and some data in terms of how that's being utilized there. And then the second thing we are looking to do is we're currently evaluating where the location of where the nurse's office is at Glenrook North um and what challenges it poses where it's located. Um one of the biggest challenges um is when calling EMS and
072having them come to the nurse's office for a student. The nurse's office is located in probably the busiest hallway of the school in terms of where there's open seating in students and it's really hard to be able to close that hallway down for privacy and confidentiality of a patient trying to get them immediate medical care and to be able to get out of the building. Um, with the location at Glenrook South, it is much easier to close down and reroute the students. at North, as you may have heard, had to go into, you know, a hold for the entire building because of the location of where the health off where the nurse's office is. So, definitely something we're looking at evaluating. Um, so be on the lookout for me to come back and probably talk
073about those two items. And then before you leave here tonight, board members, um, we are going to give you one of our shirts. We um were thanking our community advisory board for the three years that um they have been on that board helping us get things up and running. So, we'd also like free marketing um to give you one as well. So, stop by me before you leave um to be able to get that. And you had one quick thing to say before we open it up. Two things I wanted to say. One is I wanted to comment that one of the goals that we have too is to be sure that we are serving patients in the primary language in which they speak. And so we have a really incredible video iPad interpreter that
074we use. It's mostly face-to-face interpretation. We can get almost every language. So I just want to be assured that parents when they join the students or students when English is not their first language that we are providing excellent care in their primary language. And then the second thing I wanted to mention is partnership with physicians in the community. So we I am a community pediatrician. So I understand how important continuity of care is with a primary provider. So because we are charting on Epic, that is what's used by most of the community providers. So they are able to see our notes and documentation, but also we communicate back with primary care physicians when we see their patients so that it's really like this full loop to continue to provide care. So we are in no
075way wanting to be interruptors. We are wanting to be additive and we know that in the winter they certainly do not have room to see these students in their clinics. So I think they're very grateful for our presence. So I just wanted to add those two things. Thank you so much. Um, start with Miss Hope. I'm gonna ask about mental health, of course. Um, the therapist that you have working for you, is she mostly seeing students as oneoffs? Is she seeing them like continuously? At what point? Um, would she potentially engage either the school psychologist or connect them with outpatient services? Either way. Okay. Sure. I'll start. That's an Yeah. Um, great question. So, um, everything that you just said, right? You know, definitely assessing students, determining, um, their needs and then setting a schedule
076based on that. Um, we are very fortunate that the new social worker that we have hired um, had been a school social worker for many years. So, really understands the role, understands the stress of being on a student support team and what that means. And so, she is very motivated. um she's already met with all the psychologists and social workers and counselors um to get the consent so that they can speak um about a continuity of care between what's happening in the health center and and with the classroom. And I'm just curious like the frequency of utilization. I know she's only at North one day a week, but you know, are is she has she got a wait list? Are people utilizing the services? Yes, people are utilizing the services. Within um like one week
077of her being there and us letting us know she was open, she um was filling up her schedule. Um our goal is not to keep it full. We want to be able to have room. So, there's some people that she's seeing for just occasional visits and some people she needs to see longer term. She's seeing about 75% students and 25% staff. Um well, that's what I would expect. That's what we were seeing in the past. So, really being able to serve both. um and referring out when needed and keeping in when the circumstances allow for that. Yeah. And I can also add just so you know um given the situation at North, you know, she was able to um reschedule her clients that she had for today so that she could spend time at North
078and have that flexibility. So very nice to be able to use her internally um before kind of accessing resources in the community. Is she a part of the team that also serves community members, non- students and faculty? No. Okay. No. Yep. Dr. Steamber, thank you. Um, first of all, this is great and I appreciate the numbers as well. Um, I'm so you mentioned this the consent form. Okay. So, I wonder what's the what's the priority line on all of this in terms of our population. We start with very young students, children, but we end up with young adults and I'm assuming on the mental health side, but sometimes I know maybe some of the medical stuff student may be willing to go get help, but may not want to share. I'm sure somebody who has
079a cold doesn't care if the parents get notified that they have a cold, but somebody who may have mental health issue or a question or be stressed out may be like, I don't want my parents to know. And I don't know really if if it's a right to support the privacy or if our obligation to communicate with the parents. So can you can shed some light on this? Of course. So for well the good thing is most of our students 96% of them have consent for us to see them. That consent is signed when they start whenever and it is the duration of their school year but every year they have the option to opt back out. We haven't had anybody not want to do that so far, I don't believe. So, um, that allows
080them to come and receive whatever services they want because of the laws in Illinois for medical record access. Anyone between the age of 12 and 18 through advocate with their chart, that is not the visits are not accessible by their parents unless they've signed a specific consent for them. But we do, we're never like prescribing an antibiotic without speaking to a parent on the phone or vaccinating someone that their parent doesn't know. But it does allow um if a student has a concern that they want to come to and talk to us about it without their parents knowing if we have consent from their parent to be treated at the health center, we're able to have that conversation. I would say this is um what I spend my life and career and my nurse practitioners
081doing as well as empowering students to take charge of their health and to think about how they communicate that with their parents um or those that are not everyone has a parent that's caring for them, but whoever is part of that caring circle for the children. So we have the ability for that. All right. And I'm assuming on the mental health side is something the protocol is similar. Correct. It's the same consent. Yes. Thank you, Mr. Downing. I said one comment and I'm sorry maybe I know. Can you help me please? Yeah. I'm a pediatrician. I'm Is there a nurse in the house? Is there Is there a nurse in the house? Respirator. Yeah. Yeah. No message coming. Yeah. Uh one comment, sorry. Yeah. One comment and two questions. So, um first of all, the
082comment is it's great to have such a service. We have so many students and faculty and staff and so many people in that building. It's nice to have something right there. It's what a luxury and it's run by such a great team and with so many great outcomes. So, um kudos to you guys. Um my one question is around the marketing and communication uh sorry the marketing advisory sorry the student advisory board and the community advisory board. Is that really just for marketing and kind of getting the word out or what do what is it what is it that they're utilized for? Yeah. Great question. Sure. So the community advisory board really is just that they help advise the health center. So when we are making decisions about bringing eighth graders or we have ideas
083or we want feedback or we want some insights, we have students that sit on the advisory board as well as parents as well as community members. And so we are sharing data with them and getting advisement based on the need that month. We meet three times a year. And the student one the student advisory board is multiaceted. um they um for example, we talked about how we go to the health classes to let the you know students know and they said well that's great health happens in sophomore year like what could we do in freshman year that could be maybe an education piece and also letting people know that the stu that the health center is here or they will tell us um we think that people want to get their flu shots and they
084don't get their flu shots because they don't know that they can get it here. can we talk to them about getting their flu vaccines or um one thing is we asked them one idea that we had for example is to offer these 15inut self-care check-ins that wasn't necessarily meeting with the therapist but Cara our nurse practitioner is actually certified in aroma therapy so we said hey would this be something that would be of use to the students like leading up to finals or AP exams could they would this be a service and they sort of like vet that and think about what that would look like and it's really important that We have people from north and south. So, they're letting us know. And I think if as we think about also when we thought
085about the mental health um expansion to north, we asked a lot of their opinions like tell us how this would feel. Do you feel like it would be okay to go to the nurs's office to get this? Do you feel like it has to be separate? Does it feel better to go to student services? So, really asking their opinion about how to access care um and how they understand what the difference is between what you go to the nurse's office for and what you come to the health center for. So figuring out maybe where some pain points might be. Jordan, the other question I had was um we also have great athletic training staff. I mean how much can you guys streamline services? Do you parlay each other? I'm assuming you talk. I just was
086was wondering. Um, one thing that's really been pretty incredible that I think is unique in terms of the student health center world when we connect with other people is how seamless our relationship has been with the nurses offices at South and North and with um the athletic department. So, um, we, for example, we refined how we even get the sports physicals to the athletic department when we did it. We initially were handing them to the kids and somehow by the time they got to their sport, they would not always get there. So now right we hand it to them and we fax it to them. The relationship of referring back to the trainers and when trainers refer to us has been very very smooth. So is there a way you can is there different ways
087you can enhance both besides just physicals or is there different ways you can utilize each other's knowledge and skills? Yes, we're thinking one of the thoughts we had was adding a member of that team to our community advisory board. There you go. That was like a recent thing that just came up. Um maybe from the students or from I don't remember but yeah that's like our next step. I was gonna Yeah, I was I was going to suggest that. Anyway, I'll wear my shirt proudly. Yeah, Mr. Glowaki. Well, thank you for answering my colleagues question about the uh reoccurring visits for the mental health because that's was a question I had as well and sounds like most of them are reoccurring visits. Uh so it's getting the word out. I feel like we're gonna have
088signs up soon with get your flu, COVID, and mental health check set up just like at the grocery stores. Yeah. Uh switching over I guess to GBN because we've been and this may be a question for the administration. uh when the few years back when we discussed all this we t talked very closely and a lot about expanding services and a presence there at that point but physical limitations and resource limitations at that space um but we did discuss a telmed approach and I was wondering I know it was a lot to ask at that point in time but in light of now we're a couple years in where do we stand on having a much more I guess visible telemed station and is there anything in the advocate agreement that prevents us from doing
089that? So, uh let's take the advocate agreement initially. Um the agreement is very flexible and supports telemed services as well as in-person services. There are some restrictions that the Illinois Department of Public Health places upon us uh when we're providing on-site services. So, those we're navigating. Um, I'm going to go directly though to the student and staff feedback. Um, we have been providing, if you're not aware, uh, shuttle service, uh, to and from Glenberrook South for students whether or not they have a car but they don't want to lose their parking spot, which as you know is a big commodity. Um, or if they don't have their own transportation, allow them to get to and from the health center. um all of those options um as well as providing TelMed while they have been used
090the acquisition rate is down the direct feedback um just to be very candid is it's really great that Glen South has this right in their facility how can we offer that at Glenrook North um the specific situation that Julie mentioned with respect to the nurse's office being in the most popular hallway in the entire building. Literally um uh has already led us down the process of evaluating um a location where there is available space in the uh front of the building. We'll make it general, but in the front of the building. Um that would allow us not only to relocate the nurs's office, but have a satellite uh health center. with the staff that we currently have available, we think that we would be able to uh provide services at that satellite service at that
091satellite house center. Um, and if if that happened, a more permanent telemed setup would be uh uh possible for those days when someone's not there, but we need that separate space that's not kind of borrowing from some people. So, uh, the earliest we'd be looking at having a more of a presence would be next year, 26. Okay. Yep. Thank you. Mhm. Um, this was great. I'm so glad that we had this presentation tonight. Um, and I think this is between the nursing office and the health center, you know, a really robust, um, menu of services that we're providing students and staff and making it convenient. and you know there's so many barriers for people to get their health care and to to to remove those barriers is a tremendous service that we're providing. Um so
092I think that's fantastic. I for the benefit of folks who are listening just because we haven't really talked about finances at all. Um if you could address just two things. One is you know our I believe it is the case that when we have students and staff come in um that you're not submitting to their insurance or anything like that. they just come in and they get the services that they need. That's something that people I think need to hear because a lot of times people think medicine and they think money, right? So, you know, to the extent that this is something that's available and that that that's not going to be something that blocks them, that has to be part of the marketing, I think, you know, a big part of it. And then
093secondarily, I know that that we've gotten grants and other things that fund these processes. Um if we could just elaborate maybe a little bit Laura on you know how this this it sounds great and you know but are people concerned are we taking resources from other projects so that we can fund this and I think the answer is not really we we are we have other sources that are specific to this effort. Um and if you could elaborate on that and perhaps also like thinking about what might come down the road for GBN how are we going to resource that? Sure. So um for the last two years we um have received funding from the Illinois Department of Public Health a grant for two years. Um this year we submitted again for the grant. So
094you can do it every two years. Um we were very hopeful to get maybe triple of what we got this year and we really thought we were going to get it. And then with some budgetary cuts in the government, um they were very conservative in terms of the dollar amount um that was awarded, but we still maintained $75,000 for the next two years through that grant. Um they do believe there will be some other funding opportunities and other grant opportunities that um they will um keep us updated on um with hopes that we can use that to help subsidize some of the costs. And just from to answer Miss Malbeck's question, um prioritization of resources, um the health center budget has been built into our operating budget since 2022 723 uh fiscal year budget. Um
095so it is an annual expense. We have not increased it beyond um additional support from the revenue side. Um as the board is uh has heard before, we do um seek reimbursement for um services provided to students was Medicaid. Um those are services provided through our um related services practitioners, social workers, psychologists, uh speech language pathologists and nurses. Um uh Dr. Cummings uh department oversees that and he has more than tripled our revenue um in recent years. And so that goes to supplement the schoolbased health center. But uh and I won't go into it now, but in the memo um that's provided to our community and the board um I I can't um understate that when you are a school district employing a large amount of employees that would otherwise go to doctor visits at
096an average cost of $135 cost of the plan per visit. And you're able to reduce that down to zero. In addition to saving in excess of 65 to $90 per block of a teacher being out of the classroom just to commute back and forth to their doctor's appointments. Those are massive um we do have support here if anyone needs th those are massive cost savings uh that also exist. So, um, there's decrease expenses on the self- insurance side. There's revenue from Medicaid as well as IDPH grants. And then there's your overall amount of money in the budget. Great. Okay. Quick followup. Sorry, I think we talked about this two years ago, but so we're building Medicaid, but what about people that have insurance and we Sure. Um, so when we opened the health center, we
097worked with the board. The board established that the health center would cost $0 to anyone in order to promote the healthy schools. So, we do not bill private insurance. We would only bill Medicaid. And that really comes down to some challenges when you start billing uh private insurance. For instance, um uh within the state of Illinois, uh the m overwhelming majority of plans, I say that in case there is an exception that I missed, um is required to include a wellness visit, which is that first visit on cycle that's that's paid for by the plan. If you come to the health center and you happen to be on that cycle and you have not gotten your primary visit, but you're just in for an acute visit, um you would lose access to that benefit. And
098so there's a lot of logistical challenges that we've learned about in the insurance market. I've learned about over the last few years. It's good times. Thank you. Um and then just because it popped into my head when um you talked about um at the transition um facility, our our new transition um school and then also off-campus now having more resources. Could you just go into a little bit bit about how that's being staffed and like what resources are available for the students in those two um school communities? So, um I've set up Oh, sorry. I've set up um we've set up physical spaces. So, it involves, you know, order ordering supplies, getting it set up. Um at transition, it's myself and then the new nurse that we hired full-time. we kind of collaborating in that
099regard, working on care plans, medication orders, etc. Um, I mean, we I have been meeting with uh each building administrator on a regular basis just to talk about, you know, what services might look like, especially in our absence. And then um yeah, that's really that's really And for off-campus. Oh, off-campus. Sorry, I knew it was something else. Um that's me. Yeah, just me. Okay, great. So, I float over there as needed. Um, and then I have regular meetings with Doug who's the administrator over there. Yeah. Excellent. Yeah. Does anyone have anything else for our health providers? Antibiotics. Notice I'm the only one. I'm really nervous. We do not take it lightly that um things are free of charge for students and staff. So I would say that we are we always give people what they
100need but we are judicious with our use of testing and all of those things as anyone should be whether they were insured or not. So I think we understand the financial commitment of the um district and also are doing what it takes to keep children and staff healthy. So um it I think many many people would not be accessing our services if they had to pay. Right. Okay. And before they step back, since we have some distinguished guests here, including Dr. Lewis and Mrs. Shellard, on behalf of all the work that you do and the work that your team do, thank you. And can we give them a round of applause? Thank you so much all. Excellent. Uh that was a great presentation. And now we move on to our next topic, which is an
101update on the policy manual modernization project. And we have visual aid. We do have visuals. I'm going to turn it over to Dr. John's, but I just want to point something out. And I want to make sure I don't injure the binders. This right here, my friends, this is the current policy manual. It's very pretty. And this is our first draft of the new policy manual. And I just want to point out it lost weight. Yes. See, we're making progress. Yes. And with that, Dr. Johns, thank you. This topic won't this topic won't be as much of a feelood as our last topic. Thank you. Um, but I am very excited about it. We are making tremendous progress in our efforts to modernize our policy manual. So, we now have the first draft of our
102policy manual. We received it today and the draft incorporates the most recent pressed updates all the way up until June. We know, however, that one of the biggest updates ever will be coming in October. So, we'll have to meld in those new updates. uh the size of those the of the number of updates is due to the amount of legislation that was passed last year in all those new mandates that are hitting us. Um really many of them starting this year and on July 1. Uh while we're not ready for adoption yet um this document provides us a very strong foundation for our review and editing process which brings us to the next steps. Uh we have as you've seen Dr. Grall has passed out the hard copies to board members who are on the
103committee and we'll share the 450 page PDF to the other members on the committee. We are going to put this on our website so others can see it as well. And we'll begin the process of re reviewing both the content but also the comparison to what we have old versus new. Uh participants will review in the manual. They'll note potential edits or questions. And what we'll typically do, the process typically has um members of the administration and the board review the whole thing. But then for certain uh sections, we'll ask administrator to cover it particularly closely. For example, there's pieces that are primarily about human resources. There's pieces that are about student behavior. There's pieces that are about curriculum and instruction. It will ask the targeted administrators to delve into those sections really closely. And
104then we'll begin the process of cross-checking our draft with the current MA manual in light of the individual and unique policies that we have. Uh part of that diet that you see is that we have over 40 policies of our own that are unique to district 225. In many cases, four or five of those are combined into one press policy. So we may may um be able to maintain that belt tightening that you mentioned. Um along the way, we'll also back to healthcare. And then uh along the way we'll have our attorney to review particularly in section five personnel as a lot of the P policies have collective bargaining implications and that's particularly unique and poignant in our district where a lot of collective bargaining pieces are actually built into our policy manual. So we'll
105want to use our law firm to go through those very carefully. I'll be scheduling a meeting uh our first editing meeting in November. I'll reach out to the committee members to set that date up. You should see something yet this week for me. Uh just to give you an early heads up, if you're one of those who are designated to review, we have to start right away because two weeks before the meeting, I have to send all of our edit suggestions to the IASB so they can make the changes that they need to make. So, if I set this on uh for November 20th or something, that doesn't give us if I say November 29th, that doesn't give us a full month. So, we have to get working on it. Um, other than that, we'll
106have a total of three meetings with the IASB. Once again, these meetings are all subject to the open meetings act. They'll be two to three hours typically. Uh, our last one we held next door in the professional development room and we were able to beat that time because we are the Glen Brooks. uh any edits and customizations will be reviewed uh with the IASB and we'll go back and forth with the worksheets. Finally, uh like I said, we'll have some unique policies. And so, while what we're hoping for in this process is um to be able to incorporate through Press Plus whenever there's an update, just as a reminder, anytime that we keep one of our own special unique policies, that isn't part of the update process. So there will be some work to do
107as we move in the future uh reconciling our existing unique policies that with that from the IASB but we're making really good progress. It is really gratifying to see that the board passed this move to work with the ISB one month ago and already we have our first hard copy draft in front of us. So we're making really good progress really have uh a good relationship formed with the IASB and I think we're making good progress. Any questions? Mr. Gwagi. Yes. Uh, first one, if you could refresh my memory on how does the press plus interact with our student handbook and you mentioned already agreements that you've got to go out to outside counsel to have them manually I imagine review that. But yeah, we've been migrating a lot of our policies and trying to
108get the procedures into the handbook. How does this all interact? So, the beautiful thing that's happening behind the scenes is that uh the IASB, which produces press for us, works very closely with the Illinois Principles Association, which does the model student handbook work. So, they work behind the scenes. We'll probably end up more aligned than we were, but just like with our policy manual, there's going to be some customizations that the committee, which reviews the policy handbook, I'm sorry, the procedure handbook, will have to review each each time. Is there a platform that we should be looking at then for the handbook to be supported? So these are kind of I guess thinking as there changes being made and it's for the folks on policy and the staff and administrators reviewing all this a little
109easier because this is getting more complicated. The young man who brought up a question today about the board's responsibility or which was harshly incorrect because the board does not have any policies about and about how these community uh activities get valid. There's a general policy and then the rest of the details are in the handbook. Correct. Uh so u Frank the quick answer is not that I know of but I haven't been a member of the IPA for at least 15 years. So I'm not sure something on the horizon if there's something on the horizon or not. Not that I'm aware of just the updates to the model handbook. So I will say this uh one thing that's that's really been a great development in this district is that our principles and deans and Dr.
110Grall worked very closely together to bring kind of an antiquated student handbook up to speed. So minimally we have a group of people on the team who are very uh well-versed in in the manual. So I think those kind of upgrades will go pretty quickly but we'll still have that manual process. So we just I guess in terms of timelines and everything when questions arise about we need to recognize that there may be some of these policies don't go into effect for a while to allow the other things to catch up. Yeah, we will definitely have that situation and that happens anyway because uh for example, and I can't remember what the law is, but I noticed last week I was in a legal seminar where there's a new law that comes in into effect
111for schools on July 1, 2026. Well, that doesn't fit with anybody's handbooks. You know, it's just something that someone didn't think through when they were putting together new pieces of legislation. So, it's kind of normal that we'll have a little bit of variance. typically the wording between what the state law is and what the policy is is not too far away from where we're at where our teams keep an eye on those things. So while something's going through um the legislative process, we're all kind of keeping an eye on those. Um partly through our uh our professional organizations keep us informed, but also our membership in Ed keeps us informed of beware, this is going to impact your student handbook. Thank you, Mr. down. More of a question. How much help do you need from
112the other people who aren't on the committee? All the help. No, I'm just saying is that's like that that's a huge are we going to divide and conquer? Have we put a plan together for that? Uh we actually have not started a plan for that. Um in we received this this afternoon. So um part of the what we need to do is first designate um the critical chapters to the right people. Um, and then I think the rest of us will be more of utility players. We're going to break the policy manual into thirds. So I think we'll start off with chapters one, two, and three because one and two are really short and do one, two, and three for their first bite. Yeah. One is like four policies and they're all short. So okay.
113Yeah, you don't want chapter uh six and seven. So we might even try to do four. One, two, three. Four is great. Just to to put in a plug, um although Mr. O'Hara and I are the official board members on the policy committee, every one of these meetings is public and of course all board members are always welcome at all policy or any committee meeting. Um so I just that's a lot of work. You're going to need help. So I mean it should be all hands on deck. Excellent. Um, Mr. Steinber, Mr. Dr. Steinberg, did you have anything? No. Yes and no. Because we're going to have to be reviewing this and and back to I think Mr. Glowwalki's point in terms of students understanding of what in some cases what is what we can
114do or we can do or other areas of the school can or can do. Two comments. One is there has to be some sort of cliff notes of this so people know and I'm assuming with the new system if I want to learn on how something works in a particular case I don't have to go on a Google search chase where some hey if you're looking for these kind of policies that I think the numbering system helps with that this should be here this should be there make it simpler so everybody can have easy access to it the second point is and I think that's also part of there but this is borrowing from my computer systems side large books it's always important the first couple of pages said this is version whatever these are
115the changes from the previous version I have a history of changes so if you grab the book two years later or three years later you're only going directly to things that changed because everything else has been the same again I'm assuming this is part of that yeah I I completely agree I I you know if you think about what's really happening with these handbooks and the policy manual is is that all of this is the work of a policy manual is originating with case law and school code changes. And so this is our interpretation of all that. And then the student handbook is the interpretation of the policy as it applies to students and staff. So everything kind of cascades down. And I really appreciate your idea of saying here are our updates because it
116really does get overwhelming and and 10 years from now uh Dr. Grall will still be here. But um it you know it it does require someone to to be able to keep track of all this and say and you know for example I remember being really adamant thinking a policy said X uh it had been changed 5 years ago and so it is important to keep be able to see that instead of counting on a wise person in the room with a good memory. Uh I uh went to um a interesting session at IAESA's the superintendent association's conference last week in which um there is uh local work being done to um incorporate policy manuals into Gen AI and so that you can put your question in it will generate an answer and footnote it.
117We all know there's some hiccups and the hallucinations are all interesting, but it would certainly save a tremendous amount of time to be able to to have a layer of that on top. Not saying we're going to have that right away, but it is something to foresee in the future. Thank you, Miss Hope. Um, just on uh Dr. Steinberg's point, you know, one thing as far as um you know, each year when we do the Glenberg days, I know that we do updates of policy. we we inform the staff of major policy updates. So that seems to be like an opportunity, you know, to piggyback off of that to use that opportunity to um put together something that maybe more than just the highlights, but you know, each year I do think that with having
118once we've gone through this process, we will have we'll be starting with a fresh slate in a sense and we'll also have the um the support of press and their um processes and procedures and it'll just make it a lot simpler for us to go through that. But this is going to be a very heavy lift. Yes. Because there's a lot to do in the first instance, but it's will pay dividends once it's done. And each progressive update it we will be quicker and faster and and smoother and um you know, we'll just have to get through this one. So you're you're absolutely right. Think of the amount of time savings when we can go to a relatively maybe within a quarter or a year update from press versus what we were doing when we
119had a 10-year-old policy we turn to and then we'd have to find out have there been any legal changes since that policy was made. So this will bring us up to like you said a clean slate. We'll have confidence in what we're working with. I think it will save everybody a lot of time. Difference between proactive and reactive. Correct. correct be in a good good spot. Um, okay. Unless anyone has anything further on our policy manual modernization, um, we will move on to item seven, which are possible topics for future board meetings. And just as a little bit of a recap, um, uh, Dr. and the administrative team had put together a calendar of um when we could address certain items that various board members had brought up and we have a couple of them
120on the agenda for tonight, but it is a always growing changing list. So board members, you know, please feel free to chime in with anything that you would like added to the list. Um, if you if something occurs to you not at a board meeting, you're certainly welcome to of course send an email to me or to Dr. Grall and we'll make sure that we get it on the list. We have two topics. We have two topics that we'll focus on next week. Um, one is uh continuing to be that that expansion and kind of pulling back the curtain of student services and student supports in both of our schools. and that'll be looking at uh supporting students uh mental health and well-being. Uh we'll also take an opportunity at that time to explore um
121an SEAL screener that we offer to all of our students giving a little understanding of data uh as well as um our constant um seeking of feedback directly from our students. Uh and then we will also talk about a real important topic which is identifying opportunities for members of our board of education to um have some outreach efforts with our parents, our students and uh community members. So those will be our two topics. Uh the second one will be a little more of an open-ended discussion uh with some ideas to kind of frame uh and this was also a topic at the communications committee. And then um with respect to Oh, forgive me. Miss Mback. Oh, that's right. Um uh we do have um close session this evening. Um and the topics that um are
122appropriate for closed are collective negotiating matters between the public body and its employees that are representatives or deliberations concerning salary schedules for one or more classes of employees and student disciplinary cases. Um those are sections 2C2 and nine of the open meeting act. Um so I think I need a motion to take us into closed. So moved. Second. All in favor? I. Any opposed? Motion carries. Uh, so we will take a break. 10 minutes and up. Anyone? Y do less. Yeah. Five. Five minutes. Five minute break and we'll come back and close. All right. I love that center presentation. That was fantastic. That was great. Oh, that's No, no, we're lookingus school profile, I guess. But there is confusing with the report that they share with clarify just going to get out in front of
123the parents. I'm not sure. Oh, it's it's been cold in here. Been cold in here. randomness. It started and I was driving here today at 5:15 for the communications meeting and my dashboard said it was 82 degrees out 82. I mean, I'm not complaining. I kind of feel like I feel like the season has shifted, right? Like now it's cold until the middle of June and then all of a sudden it's hot. But just in terms of again kind of And we are back at 9:47 p.m. Okay. Uh we are back in open session and we do have an action coming out of closed. Um Dr. Steinberg, do you have a motion? I move that the board of education approve the administration's recommendation to get to expel the student identify as disciplinary case 2025-09-29-1 second
124I said no um Miss Smith Mr. Glowaki yes Mrs. Hope yes Dr. Steinberg yes Mr. Downing. Yes. Miss Mullenbeck. Yes. Motion carries. In that case, we have a motion to adjourn. I move. Second. All in favor? I. Any opposed? Motion carries. We are adjourned at 9:48 p.m. That is it.