001Oh, sorry. I don't know if we're on yet. We're on. Uh, welcome to the Glen Brook District 225 uh board of education meeting. Uh it's exciting time of year with lots of culminating events and we're going to hear a lot about those I think probably during our superintendent and principles reports. Um but for now uh what I need I think is just a um roll call to start. Mr. Downing here. Mr. Glowaki present. Mrs. Hope here. Miss Mullenbeck here. Mr. O'Hara. Mr. Shine present. Dr. Steinberg here. Six members present. Okay. And that brings us then to item two on our agenda, which is approval of agenda. So, we'll need a motion for that. So, move second. All in favor? I. Any opposed? Motion carries. That brings us to item three on our agenda, which are
002our board and superintendent reports. Um, and we will start with Dr. John's. Thank you, President Mullenbach. Uh it is an incredibly busy time of year for our schools. Uh we have retirement dinners, we have the impending graduation, a lot going on in terms of athletics, and we wrapped up a really busy period of fine arts performances. Uh at the same time, we're well on our way in developing the master schedule, which is one major aspect of our late spring and summer work. This is a project that began in the fall with student uh students indicating course request with our new tool for course registration school links. We provided a lot of information to families including webinars by our director of curriculum and instruction and our director of student support uh based who gave a really
003effective webinar. I think he had three of them three webinars they gave to help families and students through the process of indicating the interest in classes that they have for the upcoming school year. Based on those student requests, we have staffed the buildings and determined our workforce needs in order to meet the state required staffing deadlines that come in March and April. Since that point, our building leaders with uh interview teams have been hard at work hiring the needed staff. Since then, we've been working on the master schedule. I'll delve into an explanation of the complexity of building a master schedule. The mathematics behind the complexity is quite staggering. Just imagine there's 5,000 plus students making seven to eight course requests that need to line up with approximately 4 to 500 faculty. As a district,
004we need the course requests to lead to an outcome when specific classes are held at certain times to maximize availability of courses for all students. Even with the power of today's computing, we're fortunate that power school can generate viable schedules for between 92 to 95% of our students at the first couple cuts. The rest has to be done by hand which is an in incredibly timeconuming process. Additionally, we know that the course selection is viewed as being extremely high stakes and we want to make sure that we have a fair and sound practice. In district 225, we're very fortunate that we have schedule builders at each school. In most districts, some of this work is done by an assistant principal who has a whole bevy of other responsibilities um that coincide with trying to build
005the schedule. Since we are building the master schedule off the course requests and our goal is to meet as many student requests as possible and we've staffed according to this these requests, it is important that we don't change things. Otherwise, we could end up with the wrong staff. Students would have less likelihood of getting the requests and we'd never finish the schedule in time for school to start. Ultimately, it would be unfair to students and staff. Recently, we shared updates on the status of things. Here's the information that we shared in the principal's newsletters to indicate our rules basically for requesting course requests uh for the balance of the year until we get to August. Limited schedule changes will be reviewed while the master schedule is being built. Currently, schools are only reviewing level change
006requests initiated by teachers in August. Additional schedule change requests will be considered, but they're based on the availability of seats and courses that fall during open slots in a student's schedule. Schedule change request criteria include level changes, summer school completion, failures, graduation requirements for seniors, scheduling errors, or IEP and 504 changes. Students can review section 2.63 of the student parent handbook for more details. Schedule change requests must be submitted via the required form uh from early August until the fourth day of each semester with some exceptions for level changes. No changes will be made for preferences like specific teachers, lunch, or aligning schedules with friends, which we know is is always valued, but is impossible if we're going to make a schedule that meets the needs of everyone in our school community. So, that's a
007quick update on really a massive process that is underway right now behind the scenes. And again, we're really fortunate to have two schedule builders who are quite skilled at making sure we have the best master schedule possible to meet the needs of as many students in our in our schools as possible. With that, we have some exciting news. I think I'll turn to is Dr. Ger I'm sorry, Dr. Georgees is introducing this exciting news. Good evening. Um, I'd like to take a moment to um share some important news about our Oracle students. The Oracle is our newspaper at Glen Brook South and each year the Oracle publishes seven issues representing the news celebrations and editori editorials about Glen Brook South. I have the honor and the privilege to meet with the editors and chief and
008other reporters each month for a monthly press conference and I am constantly impressed by their professionalism, passion for journalism and effort to report with accuracy and ethics. Based on these interactions and the quality of each issue, it is easy to see why we are here today to honor and celebrate our Oracle students for their success at this year's IHSA state journalism finals that were held on April 25th in Normal, Illinois. These three students placed in the top six in the state and two of them, Anna Ivangh and Molly Tomic, were IHSA sectional champions. Tonight we have in attendance with us Anna who placed second in state for caption writing, Molly Tomchick who placed third in state for review writing and senior Caitlyn Jen who placed sixth in state for page design. Now Molly and Anna
009were selected to be co-editors and chief next year along with Ellerie Moran and Caitlyn was one of the Oracle's managing editors for design this year. So while tonight we're here to celebrate their achievements in the state competition, they have also had stellar performances, placing in nine other events and taking fourth overall. In addition, the paper was awarded sixth place in the nation of schools our size in the best of show competition in JA at Seattle. Finally, the Oracle was named the top newspaper in the state by the Illinois Journalism Education Association, beating out similar size schools, including Nutri and Stevenson. I just have to say just have to put that out there. Just have to get have to say that. Um I would also be remiss to not acknowledge the tremendous leadership of Mr. Bob
010Wasaki and Mr. Marshall Harris who are English teachers at Glenrook South who have nurtured and guided these young journalists. Their mentorship, expertise, and passion for journalism have played a pivotal role in shaping these young minds and bringing us to this achievement this evening. Can we please congratulate our Oracle state champions? Congratulations, ladies. Yes. And Dr. Georgees will continue with the Glen Brook up Glenn Brook South update. Good evening. Good evening. Um it is such an exciting time at Glenberrook South as we're finishing up the end of the school year. Um we had a lovely evening. Don't know who's got clicker. Thank you. Um celebrating prom at pinstripes. Thank you, ma'am. Um so we had over 650 students at attendance. It is incredibly joyful to watch them all dressed up in formal attire. They danced the
011night away enjoying great food, bowling, outdoor spaces. Um we're incredibly grateful for that partnership with Pinstripes and we're um all happy that our kids had an amazing night. We also just celebrated our honors and awards ceremony last week where over third awards and scholarships were given to our graduating seniors which included over $100,000 in scholarships for their post-secary pursuits. During this ceremony, we also enjoyed a wonderful speech from our distinguished alumni, Mr. Eric Carlson who is a member of the graduating class of 1997 and we celebrated our 2025 distinguished teacher Miss Lisa Nye. Uh Miss Nye also happens to be a 1985 graduate of Glen Brook South. Uh and her instructional supervisor Mr. Adami notes um that she brings such fun humor and energy to her classroom. Her comic relief and genuine enjoyment of her
012students as both learners and human beings provides an optimal energy to accompany the seriousness of thinking that happens inside her classroom. Um we also enjoy the culmination of the final projects in our STEM showcase maker fair. It was absolutely phenomenal. There was over 90 science and engineering projects created by 300 students that were presented for those who attended. Um the students were able to not only show their engineering projects but some of their scientific research. Um I appreciated the punching bag um and the driving um drowsiness detector. Um there was also a really great um use of atmospheric rain to be able to circulate back to water plants. Uh, and I spent a long time talking with our students that studied um plastic degrading microbes uh in the oceans. As a former marine biologist, I
013may have hung out at that station a little too long. Um, but they had performed that with Argon National Labs. It was a wonderful, wonderful evening. There's been so much um we've had so many end ofear celebrations between Oracle and Yearbook and Orchestra and concerts. Um there's literally something every night and it's wonderful to see the pride and joy on our students faces as all of their work from the year is coming to fruition. Um over in athletics, it's a great end of spring season. I have to say congratulations to our 20 seniors who signed their national letters of intent to play collegiate sports in the fall. Uh we wish them the best of luck and will enjoy watching them play uh after they leave GBS. Um, playing tonight is our girls soccer team. They
014were regional champions, beating Buffalo Grove. They are literally playing as we speak at at Libertyville. So, I apologize for my buzzing phone as the updates come in. Boys volleyball was also conference champions. They finished 8-2 in the CSL and they're heading into regionals writing an eightgame winning streak and they finished their regular season 24 and 11. We have state qualifiers already rolling in. So, our boys tennis team, we had Bryce Aban and David Kaminsky won sectional in doubles. We also had Shahan Harjani and Gavin Johnson for doubles and Alex Pop for singles. They're all advancing to state. Um, over in boys track, Matthew Veramini was our sectional champ and Anthony Nassiff qualified for the 110 hurdles and Mason Cornwall qualified in pole vault. Um, we have a lot of teams who have just headed into
015their regional and sectionals. So, if you're looking to watch the Titans, um we've got softball competing today, soccer is going on, volleyball, uh is today, lacrosse is tomorrow, and baseball is at Leiden on Thursday. So, come on out and cheer on the Titans. Thank you. All right. And at Glen Brook North, similarly, we um had prom success um at Chvy Chase Country Club in Wheeling. Our junior class sponsor Stephanie Bassford and our junior class board members prepared and executed a fantastic prom for night in the city. One of the fun activities of the evening included a red carpet live reporting with Mr. Sam Alex, one of our broadcasting instructors um and late night popcorn and cake pops as well as iHeart prom t-shirts as giveaways which were really cute. Uh we also had our awards
016assembly on Friday um awarding an amazing amount of scholarship funds to our seniors and celebrating achievements throughout the 4A's. Among the many awards highlighted, we also acknowledged and recognized So Chico Majoros, our GBN science teacher, as our distinguished teacher of the year and Mark Corman, class of 1982 as our distinguished alumni. Mark is a partner in the William Morris entertainment firm and he has shared about the importance of teamwork and collaboration within his work representing television and feature writers um feature writers, playwrights and filmmakers. Athletics is having a busy time as Dr. George has mentioned. Um tonight at GBN they are celebrating their spring athletic awards event tonight. Um, and in addition to that, we wanted to highlight our girls bad mitten team who placed fourth in state at the state tournament just before they
017headed to prom. Our boys gymnasts who also went to state with Jacob Cooper placing in the top 10 for both Pommel horse and vault. Our girls track team sent Kristen Kelly and Danielle Yaknas to the state tournament last weekend and boys tennis secured the sectional championship. So, we're really excited for all of their success. Um, this Saturday, please join us for the concert in the courtyard this Saturday um, for an enjoyable afternoon in the principal's mall before heading to graduation the following day. Um, and I wanted to also just note that GBN recognized our retirees this past week at our annual retirement dinner where we had 14 of our 24 retirees celebrated. We're looking forward to continuing those celebrations throughout the year culminating on June 6th on our Glen Brook Day. So, we'll save a
018picture for after that. Um, we're very grateful for their dedicated service to GBN, District 225, and our overall school community. Thank you, principles. That's it for our buildings and district report. Um, really grateful for the staff's energy at the end of this year because we're all kind of running on fumes as we march to the end of the year. Those are great reports. Thank you so much. Um, that takes us to item four on our agenda, recognition of community visitors. But I do not believe that we have any visitors who wish to speak at least this evening. Okay. Um, in that case, we'll keep moving right along. Um, item number five on the agenda is our consent agenda. Are there any changes to the consent agenda, Dr. John? Uh, we have an updated personnel report
019was uploaded earlier today. Otherwise, there are no changes. Okay. Um, are there any questions, comments? In that case, can I have a motion to approve the the consent agenda? So, move. Second. Mr. Downing. Uh, I Mr. Glowaki. Yes. Mrs. Hope. Yes. Mr. O'Hara. Yes. Mr. Shine. Yes. Dr. Steinberg. Yes. Miss Mullenbeck. Yes. Seven members voting yes. Item six on our agenda tonight is our discussion and action agenda. We have two items for discussion. The first item 6.1 is the 202526 school calendar um with including the final examination and late arrival schedules. And I believe Mr. Bag will be will be presenting on this one. He's sneaking up to the podium here. There we go. Well, he gets situated. Uh, following the initial approval of the 2526 school calendar of May in 2024, which shifted first
020semester final exams to December, the administration has worked collaboratively with staff to evaluate the impact of this change on instructional planning and school year operations. This review included an analysis of the final exam schedule, late arrival structure, and professional development activities and opportunities. Mr. Retag will provide us with the administration's recommendations which include a revised f final exam schedule, an updated late arrival schedule to expand professional learning opportunities that are needed with uh the work that we have in curriculum instruction and then the addition of of one institute day to further support staff development. So walking through this work that he has he has led uh which is in which is include review by many stakeholder groups including instructional supervisors many of whom are with us this evening and our uh academic leaders along with
021the GA and teacher leadership teams. Mr. Bree when he starts talking please don't be shocked his he's he's suffering a little bit um and let's all kind of will him along through tonight's presentation. I think um my my children are loving this moment right now that I'm so silent in this in this time period. So I do apologize for my voice. I think we'll be we'll get through this just fine. So about a year ago this time our maybe there. Okay. um about a year ago, we had our calendar approved and one of the the pieces was actually May 27th last year was that we had the change to the final exam structure that we were moving the final exams before winter break. So in that process there was a lot of work about what
022would that look like. So we knew at that time there may be changes coming forward. I am beyond proud to say that there was what we affectionately call the committee of 40 um who spent a lot of time working through this idea of what the final exam would look like and they had a number of key items up there that they said hey this is what we're looking for and Dr. Drezy really challenged them to dream big, to think differently about what we wanted for our student learning experience. Throughout that work, um they continued to ask deep questions about what is the value, what is the meaning of final exams. And as they came forward with their recommendation, like all big dreams, you start to go, okay, so how do we actually bring this to
023life now? This wonderful dream. And so an implementation team over the last two months took their dream and said how do we stay as true to this as possible in order to create uh bring that to life but also ensure that it's still meeting some key pieces for us balancing the four A's making sure that testing accommodations can happen and of course that there is operational efficiency and by that we mean that lunches can be served students can get here and and leave on the correct time that well-being is taken into account. So with that, we went ahead and this is the proposed final exam schedule. So it's a 3-day final exam schedule as opposed to a four. With that, we are still able to offer a very consistent experience for our students. So each
024day has a very common end time. Also, lunch is provided, but as well, we have built into each day the ability for students to do any makeups that they may need as well as accommodations that um they may have based upon their IEPs, their 504 or other needs. So, with that schedule, we found a couple of key things. Once we have the final exam schedule, what does that actually do to that calendar? For us, it meant that how do we keep this balance of days between first and second semester? That has been a large concern for our stakeholders. And so what we did with the reduction of final exam days, we decided what if we moved the traditional institute to the start of second semester, therefore building one additional day. So that's the first thing
025you will see is that the scheduled teacher institute will actually occur after winter break instead of on the front end. that elongates first semester thus reducing the the gap between first and seme first and second semester days. The second thing is that we're moving the start date obviously then to that Wednesday as so our students would come back second semester feeling very much like they do at the start of semester 1. There will be starting on a Wednesday. Um so a smoother transition. We've heard for years that that that return from winter break is pretty sharp. So this will create that. And then finally, as we looked as part of this transition, how do we move or should we move the institute day that typically functions in March and should we align that with our
026spring break? And in that case, we found that to be another effective transition for our families that u especially during this move from semester's uh final exams before winter break. So those are the three calendar moves. We do think this addresses a number of pieces for our families in terms of um travel uh break plans and a smoother transition back into school. It also maintains some important things in terms of grading integrity but also increases professional development time for our teachers. So this is kind of a summary for you. The first and last day um still remain the same. Nothing has changed there. A couple key points here. Your total calendar days you'll know they increased. That's is calendar days. So what that means is the state of Illinois wants to know between your start
027and end date, how many days do you have? Traditionally, we haven't identified all of our institute days. So this may look like, oh, are we going for an extra day? Another we're really not. We're just very clearly identifying to the state what our institute days are. You'll note that final exams go from 8 to 6. What's nice about that is while there's a reduction in total student uh attendance days, if you take out the final exam days, we're actually increasing uh instructional days by one because instead of 178 days minus 8 final exams, getting us to 170, we're 177 days minus six final exams. So, we'll have 171 uh academic or instructionalbased days. Last, you may see an odd number there. Um, we're asking for an increase in late arrival times. So, if you take
028a look, we're asking for an increase from 22 late arrivals to 31. So in essence, we would be on a weekly late arrival schedule with the exception of the start of each semester and final exams as well as during the month of May where we know a number of factors play out, especially our advanced placement exams. But this would create cohesion not only for our families and our students, but it would also create the necessary professional development time that we continue to hear about from our staff and our instructional supervisors. So in terms of that particular feedback, what our staff have talked to us long about is that we need quality and quantity of time. There's a lot of good work. How do we do this work that we can end up working together in
029course teams? How do we bridge the gap between north and south so we can have more time to work together um with new statewide initiatives uh accelerated placement act? How do we create the time to do that work in a way that's thoughtful and impactful for our students? And finally, um, we did have a chance to talk with students and families and, um, I'll I'll definitely let the principles chime in here on this, but I think they were extremely supportive. Yes, I had the opportunity to speak with both the principal advisory council that's students from every grade level at Glen Brook South and the um executive council of the parents association and the support and feedback was unanimous um that they were in support of increasing the late arrivals to be every week. They cited
030consistency for families, a predictable schedule, and having a little extra sleep every Wednesday um was very well received by both of those groups. That was similar at North. Um in addition to just sharing that verbally, I've also seen evidence. We have boards up around the school about favorite things about uh high school. So, of course, our students often list that late arrivals are their favorite thing. But, ironically, it's really also supported by attendance data, too. We noticed that we have significant spikes in um attendance on Wednesdays, which is an interesting um piece of data just to note that we have more students that are attending all of their classes consistently. Um and our parents association echoed the same thing about um consistency for uh scheduling and just planning in general, not relying having to rely
031on the social media reminders about when they um is when it's not a late arrival day. And I think you have a wonderful showing of our leaders back here who spent a lot of time this year really advocating for the need for this not only additional time but the quality of that time. How do we recommmit to course teamwork and put this time in the hands of the professionals that are closest to our students? How do we empower those teams to take these initiatives that we feel strongly about curricular alignment, high yield instructional practices and put it back into the course team so they can do the meaningful work to bring that to life? That's where we know it's going to have the greatest impact. And so they've done a tremendous job of advocating for
032that need for their staff. And so when you take a look at all that feedback, we also as an administrative team believe if we really want to do this well, the time has to be there and the organization of that time is critical as well. So with that, I made it. Um I think my voice is improving along the way, but are there any questions that we can answer? We'll start with Mr. Wonderful work on you know I know this has been a lot of pencils sharpened readjusted calendars looked at so kudos to everyone involved for that and everything and the uh the incorporating the regular starts I think knowing from personal situations that when students decide to make their own late start certain days they appreciate it. Um so but going back to the
033final exams with can you tell me a little bit more about you know how do you see without overwhelming our students taking the two days of final exams down because if I'm not mistaken we have a policy uh we have we don't have students take two more than two exams a day and so how does that work out with the six days correct so um precoid we had this implemented for well over 20 years that we've done a three-day exam. We also know that we did a study of the CSL and this is the consistent practice that districts use as a three uh 3-day schedule. So, we did a lot of reviewing that to make sure. We did go back to uh a key statement that any student that feels uh they would like to
034move the third exam, if they run into a situation where they have three in a row, can move that exam. That would be the makeup windows that occur on each day. Okay. Yep. Thank you. Yep. That's it. And just to follow up on that, is that includes the IEP? You were able to get the IEP in all that because I know some of them get double time at one or more. Correct. So each day that was one of the the key things of the implementation team when we looked at wow this there were some exciting things. Our original proposal was go to two days and we couldn't find that that room to meet the accommodations. Now each day has a built-in window for those accommodations on on each day. Um and then on the third
035day there's an even double window for that extended time. Dr. um I had the pretty good to share part of this session. So, so I enjoyed the enthusiasm in two comments and questions attached to comments. The first one is I do like the idea of having more time for professional development because things are changing at quite high pace and and I know we are ahead than many districts but it I like for us to stay ahead and and keep moving. So I think what it's important that we may not talk much here or anywhere else is what kind of professional development we get. So for parents to know that it's not just that we are having an institute day or some special times on different days but what are we doing but not not for
036what are we doing at the nitty-gritty but hey we took an initiative on whatever using AI for grading or we took an initiative on doing different things scientists are doing sharing it more because it as a parent of former students it's very little what we get to know except when we come for once you know once a semester so we kind of we try to be a a leading district so sharing what we are doing on those times could be good. The other thing that I I me we mentioned during the meetings and didn't come up here is that what I could see from many of the teachers is that not everybody's taking final exams or giving final exams. So so we don't get to a point that in three days everybody will have seven
037exams or six exams. It may be less. So one of the conversations that that were happening at the that time is things move and who knows what the direction you know sometimes depends swings one way may swing back to the other way but it may be to a point where even three days may be too much because we don't have too many finance exam coming or or the other way so I would I would suggest kind of like keeping open mind and seeing how things go and and I love the way the process was done in terms of work with the teachers Start from the bottom, figure out what's happening in the classroom, learn from that, and continue moving forward. So, kudos. Yeah, absolutely. In to your two points, the professional development, that's the the
038number one commitment this group has asked for is that they should leave every year knowing exactly what our late arrival time is dedicated for. What is the intent? What are the goals? How are we leading in and out of our institute days? so that they can be more targeted and strategic with their time. They didn't want more time. They wanted more time and better quality of time. So that's our commitment to them to give them both of that. And to your point, we same level of commitment that we know we're collecting data on the final exams. We have some people that will offer different types of culminating assessments. that's going to allow us to do ongoing review of this. And one of the things we'll be coming forward with is the idea of suns setting
039our final exam policy into our handbook so that we have that flexibility on an annual basis to do that work based upon the data that we're now committing to collecting. Excuse me. I'm sorry. Since I see you noting, I I'll repeat something that came up at the meetings. There was a clear request for our policies to reflect what we are doing as part of the conversation. This this is a two-sided conversation. I know some of you are part of the policy committee. Figure out what happens on the ground and having policies that accommodate that or that give more flexibility on the ground to work with the policies that we have. So yes, thank you for mentioning Mr. Sh. Yeah, I have three uh questions. First of all, the paper copy that's here, is there any
040difference between this and and what's in the board packet or is this just for our convenience? There was a revision um since the Friday publication of the packet. Uh that revision was uploaded today. So I don't know when you looked at the packet, there was an error that had been found. So this is the corrected version that's in front of you. So if we reopened it just like sitting here or this evening, it would be this copy. Correct. Okay, great. So that answers that. Um, and I would just like to tag on then to what uh uh Marcelo said about um I think it's important to sort of um codify the goals of of this level of professional development. This is a huge amount of time, right? 700 staff, how many hours per day? That's
041a lot of time. And I think it would be helpful to formalize, you know, these are the things we're trying to achieve and then we the board would like to see that speaking as one person. Um and then, you know, at the semester or whatever, give us some kind of feedback. Um and you may not get there. you may have some goals and and just other stuff comes up and you know that's fine but it's a it's a big commitment and I personally would like to see that this is this is why this is what we're going to do at this time you're asking for. Okay. Yeah. Um one of the commitments I would have is that part of our annual curriculum improvement process in which the IS's are bringing forward their work. There would
042also be a commitment from me to be presenting on what our professional development plan is for the year and giving you updates along the way. When would we see that then? That uh typically occurs in October. So by then we will have expended 20 something%. Would we not would you not not we necessarily but would you not have that? Yeah. Before school opens because you're you're kicking off right off the bat. Yeah. Absolutely. So, I think I' like to see some formality to that. Sure. Just to to kind of add on to what Mr. Breag shared at the July Board of Education meeting, we're going to take an opportunity to um formally review our initiatives for next school year and that will include the professional development plan, which Mr. Breag, our instructional supervisors and associate
043principles have worked very diligently on. Um and it will be almost on a week-by-eek basis what our plan is recognizing there might be incremental changes throughout the year. Um, so with with the development and the time here, can you just address differences and needs maybe between generically now between departments or schools because I wouldn't think everybody's like doing the same thing all the time, but just kind of help us understand what what this and then I have one more kind of simple question. Yeah. So from a high level highlevel perspective over half of the late arrivals will be dedicated to course teams. So there will be a highle target and by course team that means for instance your English one teachers would be together working on what is specifically needed for English one. There may
044be a highle target, give you an example, um working on what is your final exam going to look like and they're putting their dedicated time in into that at their level. That addresses the unique differences that uh exist between course teams, between departments, and between buildings. Quite honestly, at the same time, we would have dedicated strategic time that's coming that we're all working on. For example, we've committed to five high yield practices. What does that mean? Uh, give you one very clear example. How do we create inviting classrooms? How do we create engaging classrooms? That's stuff we can all be working on. We can all strategically target. So we've created a a pretty coherent structure where it's um course team, department time, course team, strategic time. So there's always an eb and flow between individual
045needs, building department, back to course team needs, back to strategic needs. So we're weaving these pieces in. The course team work leads right to the January institute day and the strategic work leads right to our March institute day. So we can outline all of that so you can see it. Thank you. It sounds really positive. My last question is I don't see the not that we necessarily would have it but the Glenn Brook days on the calendar. Are they still the two days preceding the start of school? Correct. So, and are they changing or what are we doing for Glen Brook days given these other changes? No, the Glenber days will remain the same. They will be um a mixture of getting ready um coming together as a district, coming together as a building, and
046really prepping for the first day of school. Just as a followup to Mr. Shine's comment. Since we're in our calendar mode, if I would encourage all board members to consider adding Tuesday, August 12th, which is our first Glenbrook day. It doesn't show as the first day of student attendance because this is the parent facing calendar. But Tuesday, August 12th, we typically have a gathering with all of our staff, all of our uh licensed teachers, all of our non-certified uh support staff all come together for a presentation and we'd love to have you there. Um there's always a breakfast beforehand because food always brings people together. Um and then the presentation typically kicks off around 8:00, so 8 to 9:30 or what have you. Just shameless cap calendar plug, Miss Hope. Yeah, I'm not sure when
047we get state testing dates, but were those taken into account with the late days and how would we handle if that's correct late arrival? Correct. So the so the the late arrivals would still occur on those, but we would structure around those based upon when the windows are officially declared for us. Thank you, Mr. O'Hara. No, thanks for everything you guys have done. Um, I know some of our community have have asked um about eyed and some other holidays and I know that that we're not actually dealing with that here, but anytime they talk about calendars, it's probably best to address, you know, um, some of those concerns and and why we're not talking about that. Sure. So, with the current calendar, because that was released and part of a townshipwide, what these adjustments are
048takes into account what's happening in the township. We after tonight will begin to work on the the 26 27 calendar, but we'll need time to have those townshipwide conversations regarding that. Um, as you'll see, there is uh the alignment to the spring break this year does uh coincide with it's it's an institute day. Um, but it does coincide with with a religious celebration. Um, with that, um, I would say the most important thing for us to do is we need to take steps as a township because this does impact both villages. Um, I also, uh, love Marcelo's idea about, uh, getting some, I call it getting credit because you guys are going to do all this work. Our teachers aren't just sleeping in extra or getting extra donuts or something on that day. They're doing
049work and learning stuff. So, if we can tell the parents what they're doing, you can come back and point to it. And if you do it beforehand, if you do it after when someone complains, they don't really listen to you. But if you do it beforehand and you send it to them and then point back, hey, did you read this email from two weeks ago, you can you you get I just I I hate it when we don't get credit for the work we do. And so if you if you do it that way, I love that idea. Let's get some credit for all the work you guys put in. My bad. One more item. Um just as a followup to Mr. O'Hira. This has been a topic that we have heard around this table
050for um quite some time. The interest in exploring the different days that we recognize that are part of our calendar and things of that nature. Following the board's approval of our calendar, um it's my intention to work with Dr. John's and our superintendent colleagues to gather a representative group which likely would include the superintendants and one or more board members coming together to talk about holidays. Um what that means is um as our communities continue to grow in diversity and background and interests um there has been some um some questions of why do we recognize certain holidays and not others. Um and there is a variety of of statutory reasons. For example, some holidays are defined as legal holidays in the state. Um whereas there's some other traditions um that our school districts around our
051area have traditionally um uh implemented, I would anticipate that those conversations would start in the fall and that we would have a report to provide an update um to the board of education uh no later than the spring of next year. The reason why I think it's important to measure that is if you remember the transition of our school calendar to having final exams prior to winter break. This was about a 10-year process. Um calendar changes don't happen quickly because of all of the different factors that we've talked about. It does not mean that change might not happen or what have you. I just want to make sure that um our community members, our staff, our parents know we have heard them and we want to process through this. Why Glenn Brook can't do this
052alone without the involvement of our feeder districts is so many of our families have children that are in our elementary and middle grades and at the high school. And so it's important as best as we can to do things together so that families can navigate the the natural challenges of getting kids to and from and supervise and things of that nature. Um but that request will happen after we approve our calendar and hopefully we'll have that first opportunity to come about uh in the fall and I'll work with um Miss Mullenbeck to identify um a board member who might be interested joining me through that conversation with our sup superintendent colleagues and elementary colleagues. So just a little more if I can add one more thing. Sure. Just back to what the community was saying
053recognition could have two ways right. So there's one thing about making a change on the calendar which has too many moving targets. There's another one recognizing the load on special days or even mentioning that this special day for some members of the community. Maybe it's impossible to add 10 extra days if we look at all the different nationalities and groups that we have. But there may be other ways of of making people feel that their holies are recognized or that maybe we don't have an exam a particular day something like that. Two things uh this was a great discussion and great work there. I just a couple two little things. Um, one is on the table, table two. I think you made a really, um, important point about the instructional days actually increasing with this
054calendar. And I wonder if just for the record, we could update the memo with a line for that so that we have the document that reflects that. We've discussed it here, but it's not reflected in in the the document, and I don't think we don't want anyone left with the wrong impression as to what's happening with this calendar change. Um, and then the second point that I wanted to make is, and I think this kind of goes back to a lot of the comments that we've we've had tonight, is I love how this memo ties back to our strategic plan very specifically and how this initiative works towards particular focus areas in the plan. And I think that that is a a great way to, as you're saying, you know, get credit for we we
055put this plan together. Um, these are things that that the district feels are important. Um and we are doing the work to um work towards those goals and every time we can demonstrate to our community that we are we are you know incrementally getting there um and reminding them that you know these aren't when we when we do these things it's not um um these are not ad hoc one-off things. They're part of a a larger design that's very thought out and really took into account what people wanted. I think that's really helpful. So, um, thank you for doing that and I'd love to see that we we continue to do that as we work on these sorts of initiatives, these big initiatives, um, that might take some time and have to remind people over
056and over, you know, baby steps maybe sometimes, but um, but this is great. Um, before we move on, did anyone have any last points? So, this will come back on consent. Is that what we're correct? It will come back on our June 9th for a vote and consent. Okay, great. Thank you. Okay, as Dr. Grall is getting ready for this next pres presentation, which he is quite excited about for good reason, because the Glen Brooks are going to transition to Parent Square as its primary communication platform this summer, replacing school messenger and remind. The platform offers enhanced capabilities for families, including personalized notification settings, interactive messaging, and improved accessibility features. soft launch starts this summer and it will allow the district to test the core features, get some feedback and refine our implementation and our
057full roll out will begin on July 1. So, uh, Dr. Grall and Miss Smith are going to take us through a quick uh, primer or quick demonstration of the features of Parent Square. Okay, take it away. Thank you, Dr. Johns. I just want to give the board a little bit of background on where we were, where we are, and where we want to be. Um, providing our students, staff, and families with information they want in an effective and timely manner is essential. As District 225's communication needs have evolved, so too have the tools we've used to stay connected. Recently, it has become clear that our communication systems, though well intentioned, have become fragmented. Different schools and departments are using a variety of tools, often at different times, leading to inconsistencies and confusion for the end
058users. One of our primary tools, school messenger, has served us well in many respects. However, its limitations, particularly related to dated templates and character restrictions that make multilingual translations difficult, have created challenges, especially when we're trying to share more robust content like in our newsletters. To work around this, we began using a program called B. And that helped us to design the engaging messages and then we uploaded them into school messenger before we sent them out to families which is how you get your weekly update. While this improved the look and feel of our communications, it unfortunately restricts our ability to provide automatic translations which are essential as our district strives to meet the changing needs of our of our families. So in addition, the principles use a program called S'more for theirs newsletters. It's
059a tool that offers design flexibility and also the ability to make real time edits even after the messages have been sent out. And that is something that our current tools lack. But today, Dr. Gavell and I are excited to introduce a unified communication tool that brings together the best things of what we need. Visual appeal, user friendliness, and inclusive language access. that is that also saves the district money as we're consolidating communications tools. So for the last several months, members of the communications team and the technology teams under the leadership of Dr. Gavvel have been working toward the launch of parent square which will take place in the coming weeks. As Dr. John said this new tool will move us forward within strategic plan as Miss Mullenbeck said in focus area 2C related to strong
060student and parent engagement and focus area 3E calling for the simplification and improve uh improvement of technology and communication platforms. So moving to this platform is really a strategic step toward clearer, more consistent and more equitable communication across our district. So, I'd really like to take a moment to acknowledge Christina Salanas, communications manager, who has um been tireless in her efforts to design templates, create groups, and familiarize yourself with the tool to ensure a seamless transition for our families. Um, there are many high school districts in our communities, and our surrounding areas who have either moved to Parent Square or are getting ready to move to Parent Square. In addition, I just found out from my counterpart in district 34 that they will also be moving to parent square, which enables our families to be
061familiar with the tool before they get to our district. Um, so now Dr. Grall, embracing his techy self, is going to walk us through a demonstration. Thank you so much, Carol. So, what does this mean for a parent? Parents get a lot of emails from us. Just think of the last few weeks here. We send parents one-off emails and students one-off emails reminding them to pick up their yearbook and then three more times reminding them to pick up their yearbook. We send information especially during testing time about our morning announcements because we don't have the traditional announcements happening. Uh so we we don't interrupt students focus. Um those are separate emails. We send lovely um principal newsletters and weekly updates that have reminders about when graduation is happening, how you get your tickets, when is
062summer school starting, and even to Dr. John's's point earlier today, um how do you put forth a course change that you came up with later on? We send a lot of information and in today's age the reality is that parents get a whole lot of emails and maybe more often than we would like it's easy to hit the archive button or skip past it and not look at it until you really need it. The challenge is with so many emails coming from so many places, it always seems like when you need something, you never can find it, even though you think you're putting exactly the right terms in. Parent Square strives to meet people where they are and get them information in the way they want. So, I'm going to show a few things here
063and I'll kind of explain how this functions truly from a parent perspective. So, welcome to my children, Bobby Titan. Bobby Titan is a dualenrolled student. Maybe he's in the Academy of International Studies. Maybe he's taking he's a GBN student taken um a course over at GBS, uh the way the schedule works out. And so Bobby gets a lot of information because he's at both schools and so too do his parents. And sometimes trying to piece all of that together with all those emails coming out can be hard. Parent Square simplifies that. And I'll show you how. If you take a look at my mouse right over here, you'll notice I'm on Glenrech North. When you have a student who might be in multiple schools, think of our students who attend Glenberg off campus, our therapeutic
064day school, or our students who might uh also be uh taking a class out at an outof district placement. They would see all of these options here and parents can easily truncate down what are the announcements from Glen Brook South, what are the announcements from Glenrook North. when they're scrolling on through here, I'm going to go back to North. You'll notice again to Christina's credit that they're nicely organized. It's the small things that really go a long way in building confidence, having consistent fonts, not using capital letters for everything, not using three different colors, bold print. I think we all know those things. or my favorite, I still associate it the the print shop uh uh graphics of the 1990s. It's great times. 90s were good times. Um but they're they're very nice, attractive items
065that can feature not only um images and text, but also hyperlinks, big buttons that are clear to click on, and even videos being embedded. No matter what post is sent out, there are two features that are made available to parents. And in today's world of social media, I think we can all appreciate these. The first is we can appreciate something. You can heart it or like it, however you want to refer to it. Why is this important? These small abilities for our parents allow us to see overt engagement with our families. If we're not getting any appreciates, any likes, or things of that nature, maybe we're writing too much, maybe we're not connecting, maybe we need another follow-up. But let's go a step further. How many times as a parent do you get information that
066comes out to you and you have a follow-up question? You know, in my my my prior role, if you will, I fielded a lot of questions about bus passes. um why can't why aren't we offering door-to-door service? When will my child get information about their bus routes? And sometimes that information is very overtly included. Other times it's linking to other things. But one of the things that parent square provides, and I'm going to make it just a little larger so you can see it, is next to that like or appreciate, we have comment. And right here, a parent can ask a question. And here I'm using capital letters. We're going to change that. Ask a question. Hit comment. Unlike a Facebook or a traditional social media post, this isn't public for anyone except the person
067who went ahead and made this post that sent this message out. And they get an email directly from the parents about what the questions are. The goal here with the commenting feature is if we need to go back in and modify because we missed something, we can do it right there. If we've made a a pretty um uh big uh uh mistake, leaving something out or what have you, we can correct it and then resend it to everyone and say, "Hey, we we found that there's an error. Here's the updated information." This eliminates the need for someone to go searching for someone's email address, making that phone call, which sometimes is difficult when you're looking at these emails at 10:00 at night or what have you. We try to make it simple and it's all
068right here. But I want to go a step further and we have Dr. Anderson here. So I'm going to leverage the multilingual importance. One of the cool concepts here is for our families who speak other languages as their preferred language. They can use their own language when leaving these comments and they will automatically translate for the other user using a variety of Google translating tools. it automatically does it. And so again, we're expanding our access for families who may not otherwise feel comfortable with this. Let's go a step further. We already uh know based on the home language survey, based on dialogues that Dr. Anderson and her team have with our multilingual families, we know what preferred languages are. And um mom might have a preferred language that's different from dad and different from student.
069Everyone can define their own language. And the entire interface is completely compliant. So I'm just going to switch over here to Spanish. And you'll notice that all of our messages automatically translate in. So again, with limited effort of configuration, parents are being met where they are and being provided that that tool that they need. I'm going to go ahead and switch back here. A few other cool things you'll notice when you're logged into Parent Square, um, and logging in is is so simple. They they type in their phone number or they type in an email address and it says, "Hey, are you this person?" You confirm you get an email sent to you and your account's set up. It's very simple. But when you log in, you'll notice that we have these calendar events. I
070want to point out a real important thing. These calendars synchronize directly with our websites. Same information on the website as it is in Parent Square. But with one click, I actually have the ability to add that calendar to whether it's Outlook, whether it's Gmail, whether it's Apple Calendar. Right now, trying to add or link to a calendar is a multi-step process, but let's go a step further here. I'm going to go back, Tony, I like this stuff, right? We're going to go a step further here, and we're going to go I have a graduation email. when we send an email out, we can automatically put um a calendar link on there. So when they get the email, when they're in the system, they can click on it and they get all those options to add
071it to their own calendar. Again, whether Google Outlook, I say, wait, there is more. Because in addition to sending out emails with information, the ability to appreciate, the ability to add content, the ability or comments, the ability to add to your calendar, we have all those features. You might have heard of tools like signup genius. We need x amount of people to bring Diet Coke, best thing ever. Then we need X amount of people to help set up tables and tear down tables. All of those types of crowdsourcing features right here available. But these tools and these the ability to create posts are not just available to our principles, to their offices, to the district office, the Carol's team. They're available to every teacher, every staff member in the district. So if I am, this
072will be funny. Um, if I'm a head football coach, I can correspond directly with my team. I can send them, hey, we have our banquet coming up. We're needing X, Y, and Z done. Hey, we have our triyouts coming up. Hey, we have our retreat that's happening in the summer. Remember these things. And right through the parent square interface, we have this this messages option here. We really embraced the importance of keeping students in the ecosystem. So we we do not allow students to text their coaches or sponsors right here in one system. They can send direct messages to their coaches and again the auto translation features exist. So if a parent wants to have a direct message instead of through email, they want to leverage the tools that are here, they can do that
073here. Everything's archived compliance with record requests and things of that nature. I'm just going to show one other thing because I think it's a real cool thing throughout the spring. Um, actually, we'll go back into the fall. When we think of the the challenges we had with um with different alarms going off and and we had to uh relocate our students for a period of time, one of the pieces of feedback we heard was that parents and students embraced text messages and they wanted the information as quickly as possible. Our prior system um allowed you to send text messages, but only if the individual opted in before you're trying to send them a message. And to be candid, trying to get individuals to opt into things uh before they need to can be a challenge.
074Parent Square doesn't have that same philosophy. So, all of our students cell phone numbers have already been populated. All of our guardians with custody, their cell phone numbers have been populated. And so the next time we have an incident, we can send instant communication to them. But let's go a step further here. Some parents don't want to look at email. They just want everything texted to them. So parents independently can say, "Every email you send, I also want the text message." But they get two options. They can have an instant one for literally everyone that you send or they can get a daily digest. What that text does is it gives them the subject of what was sent and a hyperlink that brings them back into parent square. All right, my one last thing. I
075promise I'll stop then. I mentioned that it's hard to remember to find things when you need them. Right within parent square, think of an important thing that's happening. Graduation. So, I'm just going to type in graduation right from a simple search. Yes, it actually works. Just throwing that one out there. Here are all the posts that have the word graduation in them. All accessible to our families. So, Parent Square is about first and foremost making sure we have consistency in our communication, making sure we're using one tool that people become familiar with. And yes, there is an awesome benefit to the fact that our feeder districts are starting to adopt this tool as well because they'll be familiar with it. Here's a real cool thing, too. If you're a parent, you don't need three accounts.
076They will consolidate even if you have students in multiple districts, which is really cool. You just have more drop-own menus. It's a tool that allows parents to get the information into chunks that they want to see it. Do they want a digest where they only want one email a day? Do they want no emails? Do they want text messages? We have our defaults, but they can modify that. But it's also a tool to make sure we acknowledge that some of our parents need certain features that other parents may not ever use. Some parents want to search for things. Some parents need translation. All of that's in here. And it's not a part of our strategic plan because it's something that's so well embedded here. But I think it's important to acknowledge the communications team efforts
077that the adoption of one tool will be leading us to saving over $20,000 a year by consolidating and dropping subscriptions. So we have so much power here, cost savings and improved experiences for our families. With that said, you know, I get really excited about this stuff, but I am happy to answer any questions. Let's start with Mr. O'Hara. Nothing. He loves it. Miss Mr. talk a little about security. Absolutely. Um so Parent Square is a modernized platform. So for our staff, multifactor authentication is required in order to get in. Why is that important? Um, you don't want anyone potentially being able to get access easily to a system where you can mass communicate uh through text messaging, uh, actual telephone calls, emails, and things of that nature. Our parents when they log in or when
078they go to create their account, um, they don't just get to create their account. There is a multifactor there where they need to confirm the children who are being associated. If they add a cell phone number, they have to validate that cell phone number is theirs by uh typing in a uh code that's been sent to them. Uh and the same for email. So we have authentication at both sides. Um in terms of how individuals can be added here, um parent square does allow parents to manage their own accounts if you want. We do not. Um so all the only parents who get attached to students are in power school. the only way you're in power school is by having all of the required communication custody information on file and so we've kind of addressed
079that as well. Absolutely. Dr. Steinber, I'll start with a follow up to that question because so many ways of communicating and and use the classroom as the example. Are we letting teachers broadcast message to the parents of a particular class or things like that? Do we have some guidelines to avoid Yes. parents to students, students to other parents, you know, communication, but at the same time it adds layers of concern of who can communicate with whom. One of the things uh that Mrs. Smith and her team have developed is a one-pager um guidelines of communicating and that's our real focus initially was on making sure that individuals sending messages to large groups of students. Um had some parameters that they needed to follow. Um we're looking to create that same thing for our coaches and
080sponsors. our coaches and sponsors will be really limited to communicating with those groups that we have what we call rostered. Um, and right now we're focused on athletics and activities because those are the folks that use a system that we have right now called Remind. Um, so we'll be transitioning into Parent Square. Um, and then over time there might be benefits for uh regular classes to be rostered. Currently we use a different tool called Google Classroom for instructional uh conversations. Um but if we go down that route we would have standards and and work to provide that training. A great example of why the late arrival days will come into play and we talk about those standards for communicating and making sure that um it's those best practices we don't think about. Don't send messages
081at 11:00 at night when it's convenient because now you're you're pinging students and things of that nature. making sure that we are um having all of the information and just as you would send a formal email that's how your messaging should send so you always maintain professionalism. Um those would be all incorporated into our training program. All right, my second and last question. Um what do parents what's the relation between parents and their sons or daughters and they have access? Are they still separated by firewall? I'm thinking a kid who may be writing to a teacher and vice versa and so forth, but maybe like is my parent being able to see what I'm writing or not? It's a great question. So, every post, here's the leadership opportunity reminder that was sent out uh this
082morning by the student activities department and Mrs. Hughes. um we choose um when a message goes out does it go to students students and guardians students guardians and staff and what have you. So that's one control. Um a parent and a student are two separate users. So a parent uh while they would be able to access that information through a records request by default a parent won't see those direct messages uh that a student sends to their teachers. Thank you. Mr. Downing, if we order now, do we get free shipping? There's even there's no need for even shipping. Technically, you can log on right now and see the power of parent square. You just won't have any books. Get one. Um uh so just question around sports. So, I I know uh Coach Grall, our
083our football team uses Huddle. Yes. Uh will are they going to be our teams going to say, "Listen, this is what you got to use because it's kind of like double the work because a lot of the work goes out in Huddle." It's a great question. Um for those who are not familiar, Huddle has had a a an evolution of product since I first started as a tech director in 2010. Um, it is a tool that allows you to easily capture footage, send clips to students. Um, we live in it. There you go. Um, our athletics, I'm going to use very rough percentages. 50% use Remind, 50% use Huddle to communicate. For our teams that are still using Huddle, they'll continue to use Huddle. And we have entered into a license agreement uh that is
084aligned with all the state requirements. for those that previously use Remind um and I think we mentioned earlier Remind was bought by parent square so they'll be transitioning to Parents Square. Sure. And then if excuse me if you answer this already but you're going to have when you send out stuff you're going to have stuff for notes and I'm automatically went to thinking of great Facebook discussions that never end. Is there going to be monitoring of that? Yes. So any of the comments are only visible by the staff member who makes the post. So they're not available for parents or anything. Everyone can see how many people appreciate things and I encourage everyone to appreciate everything. That's good. Uh but you won't be seeing the two-way dialogue. Mr. Gwacki, I guess my question was just
085in relation to long Mr. Downings with these other calendars that some of the activities use. Huddle. I know there's also our school Illinois that feeds our website and everything. So we have some triple entry happening already. What efforts or supports do you see to try to collect this information one place because this is not a new issue and while it's a wonderful tool, it's not going to get rid of those other challenges we've been facing for a decade now. Yes. So calendar management is a fun challenge to make life a little more exciting. In addition to our school, in addition to our calendars that you see on our website, we also have our facility scheduling tool called FMX. Um, fortunately, there is a new integration that's forthcoming that will automatically take care of one of
086them. One of the challenges I'll say, uh, opportunities for our communications committee to talk about is how do we manage calendars and how do we make them more accessible? we can easily make club by club team by team calendars available through parent square. Uh there's some technical ways to make that happen but it's easy to do. We have heard though from our community that it would be nice for all of that information to be available in a single calendar. So we had a little fun as we were trying out some parent. Does anyone know how many pages if you were to print one week of everything that's on everyone's calendar for activities? How many pages it is if you go to print it just for one week at one school? 17 pages. 17 pages which
087was the north one um of just one week of activities. So one of the challenges we have is how do you consolidate that? There are some schools that would say the football game football game goes on the basketball games basketball games go on. But what about your badminton? What about your lacrosse? What about I did coach fencing? What about your fencing tournaments? Um so there's there's those challenges. We have to process through them to make them easier. Uh we hope that by populating calendars here and giving parents the option that will help them over time. Uh but that is that is a challenge right now. So there may be more requests down the road. Oh yes. Okay. And the tool is expansive without additional charges for more calendars. And I know that may sound silly
088to say, but this is a real thing where many services charge you for the amount of feeds that you're giving. Thanks. Great question. I had a couple questions as well. Um, and this is something we've struggled with on the communications committee. Um, district versus school. So, we have the drop- down menus for the schools, but sometimes you're not getting communications that are school specific, but rather districtwide. Will they just be popular populated under every school or how how will that be addressed? So, let's take an opportunity and look at our live example right here. I have a whole lot of GBN examples. GBN student activities. Student activities. Oh, district enrollment office. One of the intentional efforts we've been doing as we've setting this system up is clearly defining whose message is whose, what's for what.
089When we have a district message, we post it once and it goes to all, but it is clearly identified along those same lines. And again, those those kind of standards that that sometimes we we miss, we're making sure that every message that comes out is signed so we know who sent it. So again, if there's follow-ups that can be made, so the headers will unify it. The tool allows us to mass send those out and it's clear, is it a district announcement versus a school announcement. Okay. Um, this is probably really granular, but this just popped into my head because I've had issues with this and other things. So, we you mentioned how um parents can opt into receiving a digest, a daily digest. I just want to be sure that by doing that they're
090not opting out of receiving like real-time communication about a fire that's going to be captured in the digest at the end of the day and they are not told you know pick up your kid in the parking lot now. So we're going to make this a little larger here just so whoop that too large everyone can see. That's nice. I like that. Um, do you see where I have posts, messages, and alerts and notices? When we have emergencies, those are alerts and notices. There is no opt out. You get the message how we need to send it. And in fact, when we choose an urgent alert, if you have the mobile app downloaded, which I didn't go into a whole thing about, um, and we can confirm that you got the push notification, that's your
091notification. But if we try to text you and it doesn't work, we try to send you a push app, it doesn't work, we send you an email and you're not clearly getting it, it the system is smart enough to then call you with, for lack of better terms, the robocall um to let you know that this is here. Those are no optouts and they're all present. Excellent. Okay. Um I have one other question. Oh, I'm assuming then that you could if you had the time you could just keep scrolling down. Would there just be it's it's at some point does we only have three months or we have four months or how does it So every district has the flexibility to do what they want. I'm going to share with you two stories. First story
092is if you're not familiar we have a lot of students that join us midyear. We refer to them typically as transfer students. And when a transfer kiddo comes in, imagine they get started in January and all this message came out in um October and November for spring testing. The way Parent Square works is when we send messages, we typically send most of our messages to a grade level. So grade 9, 10, 11, 12. Let's get a little deeper. Our rising freshmen, right? who can register at any point in time. When they get added into the system, they see every message that's been sent out um un for as long as the record is active. So, if you come in mid year and you're a parent, you can go back and see all of the messages
093from the fall moving forward. Again, trying to build that connection. Districts then choose when do they want to archive. The general recommendation is you do your archive in June so that you're starting fresh in July. But again, there's pros and cons with that, especially if you've sent out your registration emails in April and May. You want to make sure that information is accessible. But they would see it's like the old Facebook wall. They will see a whole feed there. Okay, that's good because people are familiar with that concept. Or maybe not. I mean, Facebook's kind of old now, but you know, remember invite email. Thank you. I my kids like literally I never do anything on Facebook anymore. It ages me. But this is terrific. I think um you know, as as a member of
094the communications committee. I'm very excited and thank you so much for all the work you put into this. And I can see how excited you are, R.J. Which is a little thing, but you know, Mr. Downing kind of uh opened the door here. So, I'm gonna I'm gonna walk through it real quick. Now you've done it and and just suggest if you want to learn more about different initiatives and different ways we're reaching out to our parents. We have two real cool approaches. One is you can certainly follow us on Instagram, on Facebook or on LinkedIn. But we also just last week launched our first podcast, Glumbre Insights. Now I was very fortunate to be surrounded by wonderful contributors including Dr. Cummings um where we're talking about everything that parents need to know to get
095their kid acclimated to high school. So if you have not yet had the opportunity to subscribe to us on Spotify, on Apple podcast or anything like that, you too can join to our account. We have achieved over 50 downloads so far. And that again doesn't require shipping or anything. It's a wonderful 20 minutes of a great dialogue. And the next episode is going to feature Dr. Moranto and Dr. Taran talking about the wonderful contributions and donations we make to our community, the great things that students did throughout the year and some real cool celebrations coming uh soon, including the first announcement of homecoming dates. So now you have a reason perennial question. Thank you, Mr. Downing for the invitation. Oh, it's good to email. We'll do that after the deadline for respons. But there's the
096email from I can't share. I think it's open session. I didn't. Yeah, you could probably do it at the end for topics from that stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. And that was anformational item. There's nothing um and lots lots of great information. Excellent. Um so we had wonderful um beginning of the meeting where we recognized our uh GBS Oracle paper um and their success at IHSA this year. Um great reports on everything that's happening in our year and culminating events um for all four A's at GBS and GBN and especially prom. Um, as far as our um discussion items were today, we got had a good discussion about um the school calendar um how it's changed slightly from what was originally presented um in order to uh deal with a new new and improved final
097schedule. Um and also um the much anticipated and apparently loved universally um more late arrival days more and more consistent late arrival calendar. Um then we had a great presentation on parent square which sounds fantastic and looking forward to having that roll out and it sounds like we'll have you know probably more functionality coming from that um as that happens. And I think that pretty much sums it up. Um that brings us then to item eight, which is possible topics for future board meetings. If there are any uh board members who would like to um bring up anything that they would like to see discussed. Just mention briefly, there have been big changes in true north within the past two weeks. And what it started with our accelerated plan to withdraw from the district open
098up the doors for a sizable number of districts that are voting within this coming weeks of what they want to do because of the potential implications of financial implications for this district. So hopefully we can talk about this next week because as I have to attend a meeting after next week before this had happened the idea that Trunor has what had was to take us and what is 34 out of potential conversations of how they were going to do cut changing the way they do business for a lack of a better word. that's not on the table any longer because if they proceed that way, they basically will have to take out half of the council or more. So I would love to have guidance from everybody in terms of what do we want to
099do in terms of participating on these conversations or how to participate in these conversations. Okay. So we will have that um brought back at the next meeting. And then Sandy, I just had one other topic. It was really exciting. I've had some questions about the treasurer's report this evening which is wonderful. It is a riveting report. Um we have with our our two new members Beth and Jack and any board member um before next um next meeting which is what June 9th um at 6 o'clock I'm going to schedule a uh I'm going to officially call it a finance committee meeting. Um, but for anyone who would like to learn more about the Treasury's report, how it's designed, how it's set up, uh, Vicky Tarver, our treasurer, will be here and we're going to walk
100through that um, and just have a little more open dialogue about um, the different uh, financial reports that we present any meeting. So, if you have a moment, we will have sandwiches and um, uh, we'll go through all the financial reporting. Excellent. Anything else? Okay. Um we will have close session tonight and close session um will will be conducted subject to section 2 C 1 2 and 11 of the open meeting act which is to consider the appointment employment compensation discipline performance or dismissal of specific employees of the public body or legal counsel for the public body including hearing testimony on a complaint lodged against an employee of the public body or against legal counsel for the public body to determine its validity. Collective negotiating matters between the public body and its employees or the
101representatives or deliberations concerning salary schedules for one or more classes or employees and or litigation when an action against affecting or on behalf of the particular public body has been filed and is pending before a court or administrative tribunal or when the public body finds that an action is probable or imminent in which case the basis for the finding shall be recorded and entered into the meeting the minutes of the closed meeting. Can I have a motion? Some move. Second. All in favor? I. Any oppose? Motion carries. Okay. So, we will adjourn. What do we need? Five minutes. All right. And we are back. So we have no actions coming out of closed. Am I correct? Yes. So that means that our next item is adjournment. I move. Second. All in favor? I I the
102eyes have it. Adjournment at 912.