GCSD9 Board Meeting - May 24, 2022

001Board of Education meeting to order. Roll call, please. Stacy, Vinnie, [Applause] Oh my gosh, this is terrible. This is on. Yeah. Oh, he did. Eric, go ahead. Sorry. McMasters is here and here and for Thank you so much. Please stand for the pledge of allegiance followed by an invitation by pastor Nathaniel Mjikian from St. Gregory Ardian Church who is from Syria, ordained in Syria, spent a couple of years in Lebanon and most recently from Boston, Massachusetts. So, welcome to our community. We appreciate that. I aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Before the opening prayer, I would like to take the opportunity to thank you for giving me the chance to be present

002and do the invocation today at this meeting. Wishing you all the best and success in your in all your endeavors. In the name of the father and the son and the holy spirit. Amen. Almighty lord we ask you to guide our reflection action and endors. And we ask you for guidance, your guidance in the deliberation of all the decisions of this body because a strong wise and visionary leadership is essential for the well-being of our schools in Granite City. Give us your wisdom, oh Lord, to speak, do and think all which is good in your sight, especially in all the decisions we are about to make today for the benefit of our school district. Today with thanksgiving and praise we ask you oh Lord to bless the schools and all employees the students and families

003keeping them away from visible and invisible enemies forever and ever. Amen. Amen. Now please I will ask you to have a moment of silence to respect the memory of the kids and the teacher who were murdered today in Texas elementary school. May God illuminate their souls and grant the counsel of the Holy Spirit to their families. Thank you, father. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. A tragic day today, but pastor, thank you so much. We appreciate it. Um, next on the agenda today is public comment. Did we have any public comment? body in the audience. Good. Um, and Miss Cam with that recognition. Looks like quite a few things are recogniz. It's always good when we have more things to recognize. With um, Principal Jack Spoolie, if you'd like to come up, sir.

004Yes. final cake. You could have talked about it at the time. I just uh want to make sure 23 years is when I'm pretty sure that he has given the district how many point4. That's I don't really need to say anymore, do I? Right. No. Uh we we're sad to see you go. Um I know you're going to have a lot to do. We have two grandkid babies right here already. Um, we do have a really nice plaque for Jack, but on the machine went down. So, we do have a really nice certificate to sub in for when the actual uh plaque comes. And we just, like I said, we're really proud to have had you in service and we wish the best of both. I appreciate it. Thank you. [Applause] No, try to behave.

005I know that's hard for him. My daughter told me to come here. Dad, you got to act like she's over there. Come on. Thank you, Jeff. Thank you everyone. [Applause] Make sure you have Dina take a video of you playing your song on the left. Oh, you remember that, huh? Uh I don't think some of the board members would approve it. I took it. I took it to I took it one of them today. Oh, that's really good. Okay. I like it. That's a It's a song about teaching and school out. Yeah. Oh, I think I might know what you're referring to. You can hear it throughout the neighborhood. Oh, really? Been doing that since the first year. Is that the school's out for summer where they get all We used to do that as

006well. Another school district. Good. I'm not aware of So, I need to come listen on Thursday probably. Probably here at the board office. Oh, we could be. That's true. Except for us. It's really not over. Like school's out, but it doesn't matter. But uh thank you Jeff. Thank you again. Um we'd like to recognize now this there's a Madison County uh career and technical education board. Uh they do a lot for students and school districts in the area try to uh sponsor and promote vocational throughout the the county. Um certain businesses will participate and be and allow kids to come in and to facilitate tours and things like that. So they pick a business partner of the year. Uh it's based on uh what they've done to help the CTE program, what they've done to

007help vocational students. And our very own board president, Mr. Dennis Wilms, he doesn't like this either, was there and the port America's Central Port uh was chosen as the business partner of the year for Madison County. Wow. They have done we I have personally been on at least one tour. Um he has arranged for tours with different businesses that are located in the port that I think most people don't even know are there. Um and they need people and they need kids. And he facilitated that, had lunch, had them arrange the tours, came on the tours for I mean I don't know how many did you do total? There was probably 10 all together at least. Not just for us. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Where he's done he's done at least 10 for a lot

008of school districts in uh Madison County. So we're very proud of him. Would you come up and [Music] so much for students and for particularly our students in the CT. Just so you all know, I asked for her to take this off the He did. I said, "Nice try." That's what I said. I was going to ask, did he sign his own certificate? No, we see I made sure, right? So, so thank you. Thank you. Now, what you do for for the school district and for those kids and to allow them those opportunities that they probably didn't even know existed. So, thank you. There you go. Dennis, no one's in the back. You're not in this photo in the background. Okay, this is um kind of exciting. So, we have um Miss Amy Panel Davis

009if you would like to come up. She is the honorary speech. She took this over kind of mid year a speech and debate team coach. And who was your assistant when you called up? Wesley Copper is speech coach. Do you want to come on up to Mr. Copper? Sure. Since you I know your mom and your dad everybody knows. That's a good thing, right? So, uh, what's really cool this year is you had one student, Anna Forbes. Would you like to come up as well? Nationals have qualified. You probably know more about this than I do. So Anna qualified for nationals for us for debate which allows us to take three more students with us to compete at the national level. So we have one of them with us, Caitlyn Linger, Joseph Somerville, Evan Peters,

010and Annie Hail also qualified as well to be um options to go with us. So, we're very excited to take our our students to Kentucky and for a week, correct? Or four days? Uh, yeah, a week. Seven. Oh. So, because it's seven days and it is an ele it's an IHSA sponsored event, but that is a long time. And so, we had some community members. Mr. Mrs. Copper, would you like to come up as well from the Elks Club? He has to come here. They see if I do this right. They had a benefit barbecue just for the team that will give them extra money to be able to go on this trip which I think is incredible. Not just because you're related. So, but it was the inspiration. So, yeah. And I just think

011that it the fact that they stepped up to do this to help this team is just amazing. I mean, it shows you what kind of community we live in. So, I'll let you present. Yes. On behalf of the grant flush number 1063, we'd like to uh donate this check for $2,120 proceeds from the uh barbecue. We also wanted to uh thank Wesley and his students for coming and working the barbecue. Oh, wow. Uh with us. Um it went really really well. And you know, anytime they'd like to come back and and work a a food night, that would be awesome. That's And thank you. Thank you so much. pictures here. He has to come back. You have to come back for pictures, dude. So, I do I I mean, once again, um that will help

012you immensely. You we are sponsoring as a district, but to be able to know that you have extra money to get there and thank you uh for what you do every day to help these kids. You guys want to say anything? Thanks to our coaches that have That's right. That's right. Well, thank you very much. And we're going to wait till they come back and have a special recognition in July. So, Okay. Okay. Thanks, guys. We can get a photo named Els and the two students. Can we get two? Can you ladies? Do you mind getting in front? Thank you. There you go. All right. Here we go. Thank you. Tell us where the barbecue is next time so we can email. Thank you, sir. Say good night tomorrow. I'll do beef, but thank you.

013Do you have other stuff? Uh, I can always do a pork chop. Oh, there we go. Pork chop. Right. Thank you so much. I just want to thank you and great job um team. We're looking forward to seeing how you do it and thank you for taking it and stepping up into that role. Thank you very much. Okay, next um uh we're going to recognize we have uh a group of teachers of the high school that have been part of a dual credit program from St. Louis University. Um it's one of the earliest schools in Illinois to partner with Slooh in this program over 15 years ago. Um they were also recognized April 27th at Slooh um in a ceremony there but we felt like this um dedication they've given to our kids for this

014long is just really important. I really wanted to recognize it as well. So I'm going to call up there's some people that aren't here but the ones that are here I'm going to give some some facts that Slooh sent us. So can I start with I know Denise is here. to the math department. Miss Denise Albrech 15 years. She been doing dual credit for 15 years. And think about how many kids that she's helped to get more credit in school. So just Thank you. Thank you. Another one I know is here from the science department. This is Amy Heath. I don't know how many things they don't they don't do. I could just keep giving things out and it would be something that they do. So 15 years also credit. Thank you very much for

015kids. So the other ones that were recognized, I don't think they're here tonight. Foreign language Aaron Miller. So it's five years. Um science department Shannon Muskov and social studies department Vince will erect and social studies department Randy Burgess. Um Shannon was five years, Vince and Randy were 15 years and Aaron was five. So we I mean we couldn't we couldn't provide these opportunities for our kids without these teachers. So we really one more hand. I'm just Okay. Now this is kind of important. I'd like Maxwell Forbes to come up here, please. He's bringing his torch. He's not real. Don't worry. Uh Max served as our 2122 like student board member advisor. I can't tell you. I mean, I've had Kaylee was amazing. I've been here since my second year. Max is just a uh been

016an incredible asset to the board. Like I said, I have a kind of connection with him, his grandfather who was one of my husband's mentor teachers in school. And getting to see Max and getting to know his family and Anna has just been really a delight for me as well. Uh I like to kid that Max might be the next Bill Gates. He just finds a way to he has just such a wide open mind to so many different things and it's really fun to talk to you. I love that you love life and you love opportunity. He went on a field trip today and I heard he was talking with everybody as well today. So, um you always hear things about Max. They're always positive and we I know as a board we're just

017thrilled to to have you this year. So, um we want to make sure that we recognize you and your achievement all the work you did for us. We have a little gift for you. Oh, that's okay. Let me turn this off. Why is it on? Looks a little strange. Okay, so this is a special gift for you, Mac. So Oh, no. Do you need to take an ink or we didn't think about this? Oh, no. Here's signs. No, dab it with a pen. Yeah, I only doing this because it's pretty cool. So you can do it. I know that we get to, you know, we do have a gamble. The board president has a gamble, right? So as a student board member, he gets his personalized gamble written on there. school number 2122. So, we

018thought that'd be great. Thank you. Max thought you would like that. So, you can put this all here. Max, let's take a photo of Miss K with your new gavvel. Made kind of a mess down here. [Music] Okay. Here we go. So, we'll do this with the gabble and you can act like you like. All right. [Music] Okay. So now we're also going to um Zach, do you want to maybe talk a little bit about choosing the student advisory member? I went through the process. Erica, you want to talk about as well? Again, so me, Erica, Mr. Dew, and Stephanie um interview. We usually get three or four candidates every year from Mr. Willerette um who are recommended to us and apply. We do a whole interview process and everything. And we always joke that

019every year, Linda was also on it previously, that it gets harder than the last year to pick one. Um, and each year is just we have an amazing one and Max was great to work with. Always had input on student issues on the school board and just like uh Miss K said, it was just invaluable to have him on the board. So, I definitely appreciate all your hard work and appreciate us. For sure. And we're going to be doing an interview process for a new student and you want to talk. It's um she's here tonight. Yeah. You want to bring her out? Sure. Miss go. Caitlyn Linger. Can I say her? work. She turn, like I said, it was very difficult. It was hard choosing. We had a difficult time. You want to give her

020a few words of advice here on the spot. You can do it. What? I don't know what to say. Really? You speechless. Give her advice. What? just stay true to the community. It's one of the best ones out here. Everyone's willing to help. I can't count um how many people were willing to give it their input on what's going on in the district whether it was I think I talked with like the department chairs whenever it was the eighth grade stepping into um they were picking their classes and then also students are wanting to give their opinion at the time and everyone from parents to just anyone that I remember um whenever we worked on the website page um talking with um different principal and whatnot there's I mean everyone is going to willing to

021help you out and um you have a really good community behind you. So, I'm looking forward to what you get to do next year. And you're passing the torch. Yeah, we'll get a photo of you passing the torch. S&T is do I make the whole science and tech? That doesn't matter. Anyway, he'll be attending there in the fall, but we're going to turn trying to get him to come back once in a while, too. um he also helped um with the web page development and and with some other teachers and served on that as well. So like I said, we're excited to see what what Miss Linger does and we'll miss Max. So good job. One more photo with you guys. Just you two out there. Yep. Here. One more photo. Thank you. Good job.

022Yes, ma'am. All of our honores, those who are recognized tonight, you're absolutely welcome to stay. However, it's up to you all the state tonight. So, I just wanted to throw that out there to you. If you'd like to stay, you're more than welcome. I got to burn my baby. I'm sorry. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I get three strikes when we walk on vacation. I tried to get father. We were disappointed there was no cake. So, I asked you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Bye. Bye, guys. Bye. I'll never speak to you again. Okay. Item number five is minutes approvaluc People say that over and over again today. Okay. All right. You got the first I get the first and second that keeps coming up to check. Okay. All

023right. On the minutes, all those in favor. Those opposed. Very good. On the consent agenda item number six, we have Treasury Reports, bill list, and some gifts. So, thank First American Credit Union teacher appreciation week, Weber Chevrolet and senior decision date. Appreciate that. If there are any items there that anyone wants to remove the consent agenda, otherwise I'll be happy to take a motion to approve all those. So move second motion to second any discussion, please. Curran. None. I McMasty. Denny and item number 8A retirements administration is recommend the following retirements resations be rescended. Susan geti secretary high school effective 63024 Joel Wilkinson cafeteria GCHS resend 53024 Kowski secret offices res 63025. Second. Any discussion? All those in favor? Those opposed? Very good. The eyes have it. Mr. Skoolie, I should ask, is it okay

024if I do it that way? Yes. All right. Very good. Thank you. Now that we've been doing it that way, item AB, retirements and res, please. Administration is recommending the following retirements and resations be accepted. Nicole Schmidt SLP their resation end of 2122 school year. Deborah Deborah B Cafe Bricksby resation 52622 Christine Canada speech and language of prayer retirement of DARI speech language of lake resation effective 2122 Susan Gedi secretary GCHS retirement effective 831 2022 Rachel professional professional resation 73122 Kim Bailey professional resation Joan Wilkinson, cafeteria at GCHS for time22 and secretary administrative offices ret. Those opposed the eyes have it. Uh item 8 C request for leaves of absence administration recommend the following request for absence be approved. Tanya wet cafeteria prather effective 51622 to 52622. Alan Kirgan special ed teacher GCHS effective 5922

025to 8122. Karen Phillips music teacher 51022 to 822. Cynthia N effective 32822 to 62022. So second any discussion all those in favor I those opposed good item 8D extracurricular resations for the 2223 school. The administration is recommending the following extracurricular resation be accepted for the 222 school. Miss Paige Evson GCHS swim coach second. Any discussion? All those in favor? Opposed? Very good. Uh for items 8E, extracurricular assignments for the elementary for elementary for the 2223 school year. Extra and item 8 F, extracurricular assignments for the Koolage Junior High School for the 22 23 school year. Item 8 G, extracurricular assignments for the 22 23 school year. And item 8H, extracurricular volunteers for the 22 23 school year. There are a whole lot of names here and I would be happy to set them all. All

026those in favor opposed. Very good. Item eight. I the administration respectfully requests board approval for the following applicant to serve at Junior High School for the 22 23 school year. April Rumley Junior High Cafeteria A second motion second. Any discussion? All those in favor? Those opposed to the volunteers page. Yes, that was included in that motion that item 8J is secondary library aid for the 222 school year. The administration respectfully requests board approval for the following applicant to serve as Junior High School in the 222 school year. Miss Lenna Evansson Junior High School by 8 second. Motion second. Any discussion? All those in favor? I those opposed. Very good. Item 8K, certified classified substitutes. Uh the administration has recommended the following applicants be board approved to substitute for the 2122 school year. Although some of

027them I think are teachers as well. Certified Hannah By, Caleb Riddick, Megan Busy, Heather Key, Angela Russell, and Ashley West. Classified Jordan, Ashley Roine, and Cara Showski. Second. Any discussion? All those in favor? I. Those opposed. Very good. Item 8 L, employments for the 2223 school year. L1 is start with rescending employment of a Granite City High School special education teacher for the 2223 school. Due to Andrea Keller declining the offer of the 2223 school education coach teacher at Grand City High School, the administration has requested recommendation. She's closer. Any discussion? All those in favor say I. Those opposed. Very good. Item L2 is the GIS fifth grade instructional special education teacher. The administration interview committee is recommending Marcela Sadus for the fifth grade instructional special ed teacher position for the 2223 school year. Second

028motion on a second. Any discussion? All those in favor say I. I. Those opposed. Very good. Item L3 is speech and language pathologist. Due to the resation of Nicole Schmid, interviews were held to select a candidate for the open speech and language pathologist position. The admin interview committee is recommending Kaylin Rosenberg for the speech and language pathologist pending the completion of ISB certification. Second. Very good. Any discussion? All those in favor say I. Those opposed. Item L4, Gran City High School health teacher. The administration and interview committee is recommending Beth Darling for this position pending the submission of all required paperwork. Second motion and a second. Any discussion? All those in favor say I. I. Those opposed item 5 Grand City High School attendance secretary. The administration and interview committee is recommending Melissa for this

029position pending the submission of all required paperwork. So second motion in a second. Any discussion. All those in favor say I. I. Those opposed. Good. And it L6 junior high school assistant principal. Yes. Um the administration interview committee met and is recommending Miss Megan Wedkin for this position. Category 7 step one. So moved. Second. Motion a second. Any discussion? All those in favor? I I miss here to welcome her to the district. Yes. Our new And we have Jason Baker who is the new Wilson principal but wasn't at the last one. So I wanted to make sure he was recognized as well. [Applause] Thank you so much. Excellent. You all did very well on getting through all those. Thank you. Uh old business on item number nine. I don't believe we have anything. New business

030item 10 a multifunctional school activity bus lease I'm just okay the law regarding transporting students went to effect July 1st 2010 the law references transporting students to and from inter school or school sponsored activities because of a law we have been leasing a multi-function school activity bus allowing us to transport up to 14 students to events this is a four-year lease extension agreement for the bus we are currently leasing the cost of the four lease $8,268 and is calculated at 20,000 miles per year. Approval for the new 4year lease agreement is respectfully requested. We use this often. I know Darren can speak to that for smaller groups of students. It's really invaluable. Absolutely. We have we have the one that we purchased years ago through the environmental grant which is the propane one and then

031we have the lease one that we utilize. Oh. There's a lot of old parked outside. We did put stickers on them now. Now they're old, but they're getting there. I'll know. Any other discussion? Let's keep going with this way. All those in favor say I. I. Those opposed. Very good. Item eight, I'm sorry, 10B is open bid posting for the building trade house 4833 B seeking approvals of the folks the advantage paper in the news Democrat is an open bid. Building trades house at 483 Bailey Drive 197 will be posted for three consecutive weeks in both newspapers. All seal bids will be due by Friday, June 24th 22. Approval is recommended. And you do have a copy. Yeah, the house looks fantastic. Open houses on Juneth, Sunday, June 5th to Can we put this up

032on our Yeah, I took photos this week and we're gonna put them up on Let's do that. I know. Good job, guys. Yes. Motion by Bill. Motion. Second. Second by Zack. Any other discussion? All those in favor say I. Those opposed. Excellent. I've got some paperwork here. Something to do with this. Do we all need to sign that? We'll get them afterwards. I got excellent. All right. Item 10 C is the boiler system. Uh we request board approval to upgrade the boiler system at Bricksby Intermediate School. By upgrading the controls over the boilers, we can now heat the building with um three 97% efficient boilers. Um this now we're going to be able to upgrade all HBAC and bricks. the handler units and then we'll have it done. The total cost to replace and remove

033the old boilers and upgrade the controls. I know this seems high but that is a ton of work is $462,781. This is through rates. So we do have money to cover this and it is for air quality. approval. I get really excited. Any other discussion? Excited about. Yeah. Well, all those in favor say I. Those opposed. Excellent. Item 10D, district paper supplies bid 12-22. Following vendors sent invitation for paper supplies 1222 includes all paper white and color which we are trying to reduce at the computers. The tabulations have been completed and listed below. The recommended vendor CPG is bold with asterric CPG. The bid was 109,69180. We are trying to lower these costs every year. So hopefully we'll eventually see more reductions. Approval is recommended at this time. Second motion second. Any discussion? All those

034in favor say I. Those opposed. Item 10E, accessible preschool and elementary playground equipment service bid number 10-22. Um Mickey Watkins has done a great job getting this. This is all through the idea grant. Correct. Hawkins, right? I'm gonna just give just let you give a quick little real. All this stuff is in your packet, but just As a quick synopsis, we have some wonderful playgrounds at we have the early childhood playground and the kindergarten playground. However, um for some of our students to access the equipment independently, um we needed some that were at a zero entry. Currently, students who utilize wheelchairs, someone else has to take them out of their wheelchair to put them into the equipment they so they can play. This way we have some merry grounds that are zero entry so the

035students can roll right onto the merry ground and there's a bench on there for other peers to sit with them while they play on the merry ground. Um so the the bed includes the two we have two one for kindergarten and one for early childhood. Um it includes the the rounds themselves. We have to have a um safe landing zone they call it. Um so we have to have materials for that and it includes the installation of the materials and everything. So five thank you very much. Five companies requested details regarding the project but only one bid was received. We are recommending acceptance of that bid through the time factor. Uh spaces for the play are 85,298,000 and all funds will be done through the ARP idea. So moved second. Any discussion? I'm really excited.

036I know a lot of effort got into this and I'm sad my son will not be there for me. I know. And I'm always amazed at how much playground equipment cost. So I don't know what this looks like, but I'll tell you that seems like a really good price. We'll let you come on for it. Will it be ready for next school year? Um, it will not unfortunately due to shipping um issues that we have. We may be able to get the materials in by September. So hopefully if we can get them by September, we can get ground. Great job. We have a motion and a second. Um, all those in favor say I. I those opposed. Wonderful. Item 10F, donation of equipment to St. Louis school. This is pretty good. The special education department

037has two iPad Chromebook cards that no longer being used. Permission is requested. Generally, the two cards to St. Louis school. Um they are listed here with their tags. Approval is recommended. So move second. Any discussion? All those in favor say I. I. Those opposed. Item 10 G. actions of the region one board. There's um basically the actions of the region one board were reiterating what we had talked about before with the region 3ision contract that we approved at the grand city meeting. Um we had the election of region one officers which remained the same. Um and then we asked for approval for um special education administration to attend the FY23 director's conference. So approval second motion and a second. Any discussion? All those in favor say I. Those opposed. Item 10H, special education coordinator summer

038hours. permission is requested to allow one of our special administrator Stephanie Berer. She's secondary ed coordinator to work um in the summer. She always comes in continually all the time to do things. I asked Miss Watkins to give me some actual information which is listed below. We'd like to to be able to offer her up to 10 additional days paid instead of coming in all the time. During the summer, the crest is being made due to the scope of programs and duties that must be carried out summer in particular this year. But we're looking and doing a lot of of additional work we don't normally do. So approval is recommended. Second, any discussion? So this is not like a number year kind of thing. No, right now there's just so much we're just reevaluating looking

039at everything departments right now. So she usually comes in and doesn't get paid and so uh to allow her to come in and get paid some extra time. contract requires. So this is saying it isn't something that is it might be right now for this year. This is how we're solving it. We might look into that's part of the process. Look into what exactly everybody's doing with their job descriptions included. So that's where we are right now. Yes. Most definitely. Good. We do have a motion and a second. All those in favor say I. I. I. Those opposed. Item 10 I is the 2021 I safe routes to school funding. This is pretty exciting. We were in for we worked with the city of Granite City to collaborate on this because Paula Hover works on

040grants for them as well. Um so we are requesting to Oh, this is Am I on the routes to school? Yeah. We respect board approval and collaboration with the city council to accept the 21 22 safe routes to school funding from IDOT. She was awarded the grant up to $250,000 to put in the sidewalks from Griggsby along Cargill Road, which is extremely necessary. It's a dangerous place. So, uh, we really appreciate all the work that Hover put into this and we work directly with them and it'll be a match situation. So, we're really happy about this. And they came and right, they came and talk. So, this is wonderful. So, four years of the board notification letters will be uh resended as well. So, um, approval is recommended. Second. with some dismissal and things too

041because you know as cars either so a lot of them walk down to their cars also is that race creek where they so they'll come down there and then they walk on that busy road and it's already so it's a farm road so um it was it's definitely I really appreciate them working with us on this thank you the city council I know city council Paul Hover thank you great job by the city too very good I think I have a motion on a second yes all right very good all those in favor say I I those opposed. Excellent. Item 10J is the Granite City High School activity account transfer. Um Zach Shuri, I'm going to ask you to head this one off, Mr. Yeah, we're just looking as we've combined activity accounts, we're just

042looking to uh fix a bookkeeping discrepancy from a long time ago that we need in order to um move everything over onto our system. It happened when the schools merged. Well, who could 1983? Yeah. When was that? And I remember 1983 was the last graduating class north. When I left, I had to close. Did you hear that? I was five. We don't like and I were born before. He says it's they closed it because he left. So So moved. Second motion and a second. Any other discussion? All those in favor say I. I. Those opposed. Wonderful. Uh item 10K is breakfast after the bell cost analysis. Um I can talk start with in reviewing possible changes required to implement the breakfast after the bell program. The administrator wanted to provide the board with a cost

043analysis and then I will turn it over to Mr. Suri. Again, this is just for information only. Um, this is part of the process. Next time we will have the public hearing to opt out. That's right. Okay. Yep. Approval is recommended. We need action at this time. I don't think we need action. No, we don't. No. Sorry. Okay. Very good. For those at home, it's very expensive to do to have Well, and we already have fruit juice for the whole No one's hungry. Right. Exactly. It's not like we're opting out. It just it interrupts during the day after the ballot. This way we have it provided during the day financial burden on the district. That's right. Yeah. I think there's a lot more clarity here now. Right. Because the sound of that it sounds like

044you're taking food away from until you read through the information and you see how how it really impacts the district negatively. Item 10L is designation of depositories. Is that also this is just the line. This is just approving us to deposit money into those banks for the next year. Housekeeping every year. Yep. And there there's one for region one and one for the district. That's right. There's one for region one also, Zach. Yes. It's all in the one agenda item. I believe it is. Mr. Skoolie, do we need two separate motions? Two separate motions. So the first one would be for the Grand School District. Second. Got a motion and a second for the first one which is Yes. Gr School District. There's a motion by Bill. Bill. Okay. Thank you. Any discussion? All those

045in favor? I. Those opposed. Very good. And then I'll need a motion for the second one for the region one. Second. Any discussion there? All those in favor say I. I. Those opposed. Excellent. Item 10M Mystic. Zack, you're up again. Sir, this is just an annual thing to set the voting members for the Mic Property Casualty and Health Insurance pool and to extend the term by one year so we always have a three-year term. Perfect. So, and Mr. Julie, do we need a separate motion for each one of these items or do we need We can do a motion for the employee benefits pool and then a motion for the property casualty pool. So, two motions would envelop. Okay. So, move. I'll second that. Motion, a second for the employee benefits pool. Any discussion on

046that one? All those in favor say I. I. Those opposed. Very good. Now, we'll need a motion for the property casualty pool. So moved. Second. Any discussion there? Very good. All those in favor say I. I. I. Those opposed. All right. Item 10N, learning without tears proposal. It is requested the board of education approve the SR2 expenditures for the learning without tears program. It also deals with the handwriting without tears. Um, all students will have access to this curriculum. that will teach children the researchbased developmentally appropriate methods of letter and number formation. Um the curriculum will provide support district improvement plan address the areas in smart goal number one. Uh Kristen Nebachas has done a great job job preparing this. Prather school improvement plan also addressed the need for handwriting curriculum. So it works directly

047with wonders eol as well and um recommendation approval is recommended. Great program. It's really great. It's a great program. I'd like to see it. I've never seen it. It's fantastic. Multiensory and I move. I don't know if there's a second. Second. Thank you, Talon. I had a motion by Erica, seconded by Talon. Um, and everybody's saying it's a great program. I'm not familiar with it, but I'm Okay. Very good. Any other discussion? All right. All those in favor say I. I. Those opposed? Wonderful. Uh item 100, back to school community celebrations proposal to a wild party. We are very excited about this. Kristen Caberna is gonna run with this. Um we are really wanting to do a back to school bash on August 3rd. Um we've talked to the city, the library, um the police

048department, the fire department, um a swick. Uh there's so many people who are going to be a part of this. Um the park district. Kristen, are you on? Yes, I'm here. So, that's going to be the first step was to get approval here. We also have this on the agenda for the park tomorrow night to get their official approval before we go running with it as you say because we want to make sure that we uh do everything correctly. Um but yeah, lots of really exciting ideas that we have shared and we're really looking forward to this community event. I think it's a positive for the community and it's a way to welcome everyone back. August 3rd is a Wednesday. Yes. It'll be on a Wednesday from 3 to 6 p.m. And there may be

049a run walk our wellness committee may be having a runwalk afterwards, but we're going to be asking to utilize the entire area right here. And um Justin Brickmire was wonderful and talking to him too and uh the library with the story walk. I mean, there's so many things that um we it's a granite centered event with the school district. So, there'll be a lot of agencies, people that can help. Each school will have a tent um so they registration will be open. I think it'll be a nice night for that. I like the way the community is invited to to put a table up like everyone. Mr. Skoolie, any requirement to work with the city on this? I think at some point yeah I will approach the city about the insurance arrangements and identification that

050sort of thing. Yeah. And just general awareness for crowds and something. Is there something the date wrong? Is there a problem? Oh no. We were saying we were going to have a tent. Oh, you are. We'll make two. Give me enough clues. Oh, somebody get a snowball machine. Somebody that's not here. That's right. Show up. You get a sign. Get a new We're planning. We're working. We're pretty excited because this week has offered to bring their food truck, their vocational truck. Um we're hoping for a fire truck. We've looked at the Louis for the blues. So hopefully it's going to be a fun fun night. Great. Great. So we're just kind of bringing that to you. Did we get a motion on the second? Other than being giddy about the walk run, I know that

051we approve this second motion and a second. Any other discussion? All those in favor say I. I. Those opposed. Very good. Item eight. I'm sorry. 10p. Gaggle purchase with SR3 funds. Okay. Very good. Okay. So, I I know I don't know if Rocco is on board so far, but he is very sad. There are two of them. Two of them. And And Kim as well. They were Rocco is going to be here tonight. We're really sad because he's very he's very entertaining. Right. There he is. There he is. So, they're going to present uh virtually, which I know that wasn't the plan. I want to give a little bit of heads up on this. Um I talked to a social worker today um in one of the in the high school and asked just about

052uh how much of her workload or how much of the kids are coming in that have to do with uh self harm, suicide, you know, and it can be as high as 25 to 30% of all the kids that she talks to. Um these are just things we're hearing. Um gas Mr. Gasparo is going to like talk to this and speak to this. To me, it's like another net I can throw out to help kids and find these kids in need right now in this time where so many kids are having so many issues. So, I'm going to hand it over to Mr. Gasparo right now and Kim and we're ready. Okay. Yeah. Perfect. Thanks, Stephanie. Thank you so much. Can you guys hear and see you on my screen? Okay. Do you see him

053over there? Yep. Yes. He's also on on Facebook, too. Okay, great. Perfect. Thank you guys so much. Um, I'm Roco Gasparo. Stephanie said, I am absolutely gutted that I'm not there right now. But as my vice president, Kim can vouch, I have the worst luck out of anybody that's ever traveled ever. So, um, delays did not allow me to be there, though. Kim, I want you to just introduce yourself real quick. Yeah. Um, my name is Kim Bolsandhek. I'm the VP of sales here at Gaggle. I also just want to mention I serve on my local board. I have five years 20 years on the board. So, I thank all of you for the work you're doing and we're excited to be here tonight. Thanks, Kim. Yeah. And I'm aiming for under that 10-minute mark

054that you said, Stephanie. So, I'm going to jump right in. Um, student safety is always top of mind here, unfortunate with the news that we've heard in Texas today. Um, but Stephanie kind of hit the nail on the head of what's drawing me to gaggle, and that's the mission of identifying students in crisis. So, we're familiar with the dangers of the internet. We always talk about social media and Tik Tok challenges and things like that, but what we don't sometimes think about is the Google environment provided by the district. So, for the sake of this conversation, we're just talking about Google email and Google Drive provided by Granite City to their students and the students have signed that acceptable use policy to to use those accounts to have those tools. So, we're not talking about

055any private social media, any private email accounts, anything like that, just school issued accounts. And again, we saw what happened, but this is this is the mission of Gaggle that really attracted me. So, I thought I'd go the route of my wife, uh, who is a a school social worker out here in Cleveland where I'm based. Um, and I was lucky enough to stumble upon gaggle. I had my psychology degree. Didn't get to that level that my wife got to, but the reason I was pursuing that is because I was so heavily affected by mental health, especially in my high school years. I had a few experiences with close friends. Um, so it's kind of been a mission of mine. Personally, when you look at these numbers, it's sadly probably not a surprise. The biggest

056two to me are at the bottom. Suicide is the number two cause of death for 10 to 19 year olds, and that's only behind accidents. And then there's actually over 3,700 suicide attempts every single day by kids, um, high school age kids. So that equates to about 1.3 million every single year. The silver lining, the good news is 80% of them do give warning signs. So that's where Gaggle comes into play and that's where our mission lies. Our goal is to ensure the safety and well-being of your students by combining technology with real people. And what we mean by that is there is technology, there is a machine learning algorithm that's um scanning, you know, the student email, the student drive accounts, looking for any keywords, anything that might be a sense of danger. But

057after that, if anything is hit by the system, two trained humans actually look at that alert before it's sent to the district emergency contacts. And every district sets up differently. So your district would tell us who you want to be the emergency contacts as far as your school personnel. And then our safety team determines how we're going to alert. So most of the alerts are going to be emails. They're going to be proactive information that principles or counselors can use to really help guide their students or provide intervention. But sometimes we do have a life in danger. And um this little statistic from the CDC um you have about 20 minutes uh from when a student or a youth decides to initiate the act of suicide to when they actually start to initiate it. It's

058much longer for an adult. Um so that's why acting quickly is very important to us. So, I want to show a few examples. This one is actually from goo a Google doc. And this is probably what we see most frequently. Journaling or chat rooms in that Google Drive environment. And the student writes, "That's it and I'm done. I've had a great life and I love everyone. I wish it could have been longer, but I just didn't want to make any more people's life miserable. Goodbye forever." And we protect the student name for privacy reasons. A few things I want to point out, and one I already have. This is a doc. This is actually a major concern we're seeing and it's the journaling and the chatting where they will share the doc back and forth

059and eventually delete the whole thing. Um, but another thing about this example is there doesn't seem to be any keywords. There's no mention of kill gun hate myself. Um, and this is a really great example of the very wide net we cast because we have a very very large safety team. So we do go through a lot of content. Our safety team themselves actually reviewed 41 million items just last school year and slimmed that down to a little about 100 a couple hundred thousand alerts. So they're looking at a lot of content and it's because we're pulling in more than just those key words. And a quick dis disclaimer for this other example here. It says a student in possession of a Snapchat image of a man in tactical gear with a gun in the

060text. Kids from school. This guy's coming tomorrow. So, I did already mention this, but I want to stress that we do not monitor social media, private social media accounts, anything like that. But what we do see sometimes is that students are screenshotting things on these apps on Facebook, on Snapchat. When they screenshot it, they will then sometimes try to email it or share it in Drive with other students in the school. So, you may see content like this come through, but it's not because we're monitoring that student's social media. It's strictly um because we're looking at the account protected by the AUP. And in this case, we are not going to hesitate. We are going to text or call your designated emergency contacts so you guys can get ahead of this situation. And I'm going

061to pass it to Kim for a few minutes. Yeah. And we just have two more slides quickly, but I wanted to mention insights from last year. You know, I think obviously many of you have been in the space for a long time and as the superintendent me mentioned, we're just another safety net. When we think about safety, we think about our doors, our hallways, the environments we give students access access to. And this was our data through the last school year. We update this every year. You'll notice that suicide, self harm, violence um have gone up. The scary statistic actually in this school year, which will end June 30th, violence has gone up. um incredibly high and I think most of you in the building know referrals and discipline have probably gone up. We're seeing

062that across the country. Some of the other things just to keep in mind for compliance sake as a school district. Uh nudity and sexual content. If that is on your drive, we pull that off. We're going to quarantine that. That is something you do not want on schoolisssued um software or environments. We're going to pull that off, let you know. Essentially, you can um execute on your policies as you would with anything else. But this just gives you an idea and a snapshot of what we're seeing and sadly elementary school we're seeing incredible increases but part of that is usage and part of it as uh what was described earlier the incidents of mental health issues are going up. The biggest thing for us is we want to give you leading data as a partner

063versus lagging data. And I think all of us know a lot of these incidents are incredibly uh detrimental to our schools and our communities when we lose students in any way, shape, or form, but ultimately we're hoping to help students early um and get that information to you. So Rockwell, I'll pass it over to you to wrap up and we'll go from there. Yeah. No, you nailed it. Um thanks Kim. And she kind of said what I want to wrap up with. just a misconception sometimes is that it's only high schoolers or even only middle schoolers. We are seeing a lot of concerning things at the elementary level, even the nudity and sexual content surprisingly um but especially as it pertains to the suicide and the violence towards others. So this is a population that

064I think we've all kind of had um in our minds as we had that you know weird sort of COVID year. Imagine going into first grade and you never been to school and that first year was maybe remote or maybe masked or maybe just you not normal, you know. Um so we're seeing them exhibit some of these behaviors that go and I'll end with this. This is just a quote from one of our partners at a district in Illinois. I know budgets are always, you know, kind of the thing we have to work through. Um but this is a technology director in the area that said if he had to pick one service, you know, that if he had to get rid of all the other ones, he would stick with Gagold. Um, so we're

065really proud to have happy partners and to be helping kids. And I want to stop there, give you guys time for questions, feedback. Yeah, I'm sure there's questions. Thank you. I do have a question. So, um, I would imagine the business is booming for you all right now and will continue to do so. So, do you feel like your organization is equipped to handle that tremendous growth that's going to be happening as you take on more clients to ensure that you're still providing quality service? Yeah, absolutely. So, and one thing, and it looks like Kim wants to speak, but I would say we've been doing this since actually 1998. So, we have been in business for over 20 years protecting schools, keeping kids safe, and as we grow, we expand the safety team. And we're

066we've also done a lot of work um on our UI architecture to make sure that technology wise we're advancing in that way, too. But Kim, I see your your eyes some. Yeah. Yeah. I was just gonna mention it's a great question. One thing that actually happened during COVID because you know I think precoid we were seeing a lot of districts 312 um what we saw during co people added on K to three or K through 12 but the big thing was the chats and the hangouts if you have those turned on. One thing that's nice because these are our staff and I'm sure many of you that are parents or even the school. What we saw during COVID is we adjusted our staff's hours because we saw more students working at midnight than 1:00 a.m.

067and now we've started to see that normalize now that we're back in school. We're less hybrid. But it's a great question and that safety team is part of our staff and we've got flexibility to kind of adjust their schedules based on the volume. But it's a it's a great question. I have another one but I don't want to dominate. So, this is right up my alley. In my other life, I'm an administrator in elementary school and, you know, we've lived on Google and dealing with social media things in particular with our kids. So, um I'm very clear on the security and the safety part that you provide, you know, oversight, looking over everything. Do you offer any PD options or even digital citizenship training that like integrates with this as well for children? Yeah, and

068Roco, I might take that one. the the PD and I love that question because I always say turning on is the easy part. Part of the PD is really talking through your administrators who might receive these, you know, giving examples and saying, "Okay, if we receive this, how do we want to have consistency on the policy and procedure to handle that?" So, that's a big part of our PD digital citizenship particularly for um primary and intermediate. We have part of our tool that will actually um kind of give warnings if you want to turn that part on with the email system. uh when we're just reinforcing I always say we can teach it but sometimes we don't know what's happening on the back end because you just can't see that but I would say the

069digital citizenship component really comes into that piece where we just flag it as a violation if you want that turned on to give them kind of a light warning to say that's an appropriate language or usage of that tool. Yeah because I think it's kind of a wild frontier right now where kids have all this access so they don't really know how to use it responsibly. So I like that you provide that to them. Thank you. That's a great question. Thank you. Yeah, I just had a quick question and maybe Erica, even Max can jump in on this because I know you guys said you didn't monitor private social media, but I mean, how common is it for kids to be talking on school district emails or I feel like I mean, I never emailed

070my friends on the school district email or Google. A lot that's happening now is not so much through email, but through collaborative docs like Docs. I'm finding that a lot like especially like you're in a classroom in study hall they're all messaging each other in the chat don't they have a chat thing that they can use the chat feature even if you turn that off the dock becomes too right this is where students have you seen and I can't tell exactly who's talking but somebody nailed it is mainly that drive environment those docs yes we do still see a lot come through via email and and one thing that's great as far as what we do for email is we actually stand in front of it so if they send something inappropriate if they try

071to than like one of those inappropriate images, we actually prevent that from ever making it to the recipient. Um, so that's kind of the big benefit of if something happens in email, but I think the numbers break down to about um 60 70% occurs in drive whereas the rest of it's coming from email um and chats and if they would just Yeah. And I was just going to mention was that Max your student board member? Was that Yes, that is right. Yes. Perfect. Well, what I was going to mention, and I'm not sure what grade you're in, Max, but what we actually saw precoid was 60 to 70% were documents, and you're spot on, less students use email. What we saw in states who went mostly remote or hybrid is we started to see students

072who were using these tools where we're starting to see more of a 40 to 50%, which actually I I agree with you, teenagers. Um, we're seeing more and more kids use email than they did precoid, but it's a great it's a great thing to call out. How do uh that's a great question. Administrators log into this. Is it tied into the Google signin? So we have an incident response portal where um actually every time they get an alert too, there's a clickable link in that alert. It'll take them straight to the portal. They can log notes there if you want. You guys will have a gaggle administrator who can assign incidents to other administrators if you guys would like. Um, if you want to go in and adjust the emergency contact availability, you can do

073that there as well. But the incident, it is it is single sign on though, Roco. I just wanted to clarify. Okay. Yeah, got single sign on. Um, you can tell I've got the greatest technology background ever. He's a psychology guy. There's response where they can log in, track all of those incidents. Okay. And we can change those people like during the summer and after hours, weekends. We talked about that as well, Roco. Correct. Yep. that that happens in the same portal as well. There's a separate tab for emergency contact adjustment. So, if you guys want to do that for the summer or even if it's a weekend and you're like, "Hey, somebody's just not going to be available. You want to take them off," you guys can do that as well. Thomas, this is Tom.

074I know the contract documents calls for three designated emergency contacts, but that's just a number. Hold on. Hold on. We're going to take the speaker to him. Hold on. We need more than one speaker. Hey, Roco. This is Tom and we and we had talked about this on speaking. Can you hear me now? I think it's muted. It's red. It's red. Oh, it's red. Tap that microphone in the middle though. Is that we lost you? Oh, it's a transl. Yeah, I'm I'm over here. No, it's it's uh I don't know. It's blue. I know. No, I don't know. Hey. Hey, Brad. It's gone. I don't know what happened. Unless it's we can use my computer that's everything. It's got plenty of shoes. teacher needs support. No, he's checking. He's supposed to We apologize for the

075technical difficulties. Can you hear me? No worries. Hey, Roco. Can you hear me? My computer. Hey Tom. Yeah, I can hear you now. Yeah. Uh my question is or is more you and I had talked about the contract. The the contract calls for a minimum of three of the designated emergency contacts, but they say we have six buildings. We can we can name a a designated emergency contact at every building, right? Oh, yeah. You can have as many as you guys would like. And as part and as part of the price that the district pays, there is a professional development webinar that those emergency contacts will attend to to learn how to utilize and use the system. Yes, that is correct. And we actually have two different sessions for the professional development. So, one will

076be for those administrators for kind of um Brad, Stephanie, and everybody else. And the other is for those emergency contacts. So we actually get to um PD sessions and then again I think you hit on this a little bit once say we we've got Darren Dew here. He's our who is our high school principal. Let's assume he is the designated emergency contact. Once he gets an alert, what is his role then? What does he do? If you can just explain that to the board. Yes. Yeah. And I might take this one. So, I would say it's like any other referral that comes in across his desk or from a student who walks in. I would say depending on the severity, and I love when I talk to administrators, they say sometimes kids are just being

077kids. Sometimes there could be discipline uh discipline action. There might be a mental health referral. Worst case scenario, you would want to bring in support um from an external possibly um whether it's a wellchild check or if it's some sort of risk of violence. But I think it just depends on the alert and how you would normally handle that with your regular policies and procedures. Yeah. The bottom line is you guys provide the notice, but it's a it's incumbent upon the school district to provide those outside notices to like in our case, the Illinois Department of Child and Family Services. They will do that. Exactly. I mean, well, there's one time. Yeah. And then you you you do offer the additional services if the district would want to pursue that. We can pick that up

078with the with the gaggle therapy. Well, if there's a significant threat, don't they immediately call as a mandated reporter? Did you did you hear that, Roco? Let's assume there's let's Stephanie asked, "Let's assume that there's a serious threat to where where child's endangered child endangerment, immediate harm. Do you guys make a not do you guys notify anybody officially as a mandated reporter?" as a mandated report. So those are two different instances. So if we believe a life is in threat, um we are going to still try to uh immediately reach our um emergency contacts. If we are unable to, it's very rare, but we will reach out to your local law enforcement if we can't reach them. Now for the mandated reporting, that is for explicit content that we believe might be a minor underage.

079So we report on behalf of the district as you all are mandatory reporters as well. Um, but generally we're always reaching out to your emergency contacts first. Obviously, if we believe there's a larger threat that we're unable to reach somebody, we are going to um take that next step, but that's pretty uncommon. But they do have that. How would we be notified? Would that be through a phone call or email? I think it's a phone call. Yeah. What is the nature of the the notification? Is it through a phone call, an email, both? Yeah, most of them. Well, every every form of notification includes an email and most of them are going to be that email notification. If there's a life in danger, if we if we see an active suicide note and that child

080has indicated that they have an imminent plan to take their life or hurt another student, that's when we will pick up the phone. That's when we will call or text. So, it depends how we categorize the content. But if only if there's an imminent threat to that student, will we pick up the phone and call or text? Yeah, and Roco, I think for the group in the room secondary, there's a few administrators. Just to give you context, I you know, we think about it in two tiers. So, the first tier is the one that we want to give you the information. We don't believe there's a life at threat or, you know, in immediate danger. That's going to be the majority of the notifications. Those are the emails. There are going to be a handful

081of those phone calls, texts, and emails. Typically, they are during the day. very rarely, you know, you're going to get those um at other times of the day because we're obviously following the workflow of student work for a district of we we use 10,000 students as our benchmark. The average a year for 10,000 students is about 30 to 35 phone calls. Um so it just gives you an idea when you take your student population and kind of cut that in half a little bit. Um that that kind of gives you an idea of what the workflow looks like with those two different types of notifications. I just had Zach has a question. Yeah, just one more question. I know like I mean obviously with everything that happened today like this is hugely important but I

082mean student privacy is also a bit of concern and this is a little bit of question for Tom like we're moving more to like sometimes kids are learning at home online in their own bedroom. Is there any concern that we're monitoring them in their own home? The contract does provide for compliance with all student privacy laws as well. So if they're in if they're at their house typing inside their home even though they're on our property, we're still monitoring them at all times. I I think whenever they do, we have a a policy and the students are required to the parents students are not required to sign off on there's no expectation of privacy when they're on school the school classroom. Yeah, we had to find that out though too. Yeah, there's an assumption if

083you're signed on to your school assumption or privacy. It's a great question though, Max, and I don't and I I totally respect that opinion, but I will say at Gaggle, we do encourage students to go through, you know, there's a variety of ways you can express yourself online. We're not going to be in any of your personal stuff, only that that school issued um account. So, it's not every keystroke or anything like that. We're not tied to that device. Um but it's a very very valid concerning question and I and I respect that. Yeah. I have one more one more question we Max just thought of. Um so have you seen like through your data um that this is well the technology has been like consistent from year to year or have you seen that

084you'll start to pick up a lot of um um you know traction the first year and then students will do what I'm trying to say is like do students find different ways um as time goes on to avoid this? Is it something that works right away and then stays consistent or um drops off? Yeah. I mean I So I would say two things. Uh in in a lot of cases, no. Um but but one thing that I think is amazing about that because I get that question a lot and this is part of your contract if you guys want it. Um I believe it's on there is our speakout tip line. We do have a tip line where kids can reach out and send tips. And the reason that that was sort of born was

085we had students that knew Gaggle was at the district and they would write in these docs. Actually, some students would put an insane amount of curse words, but at the bottom say, "I'm apologize for the curse words. I know we have some kind of system in place and I'm worried about my friend. I think they're going they're hurting themselves." So, while you may think, "Oh, students are going to try to avoid this." A lot of students find it easier to ask for help by just typing into a keyboard as opposed to walking into an adult's, you know, scary office or something like that. So, in a lot of cases, we have seen the reverse. Um, Kim, that's interesting. Yeah. And I was just going to say we don't see a decline. I mean, we have

086clients in Colorado and different, you know, states who have been on board for years. Um, I think it's a good question. I in all fairness though these tools we're not seeing declines um in the in the notifications but we're all seeing we're also seeing an incredible increase in the usage of these tools and people who have been on the board or in schools for a long time know um pre- pandemic depending how far you rolled out we had some schools that weren't using these tools as much but generally we don't see a huge drop off um and we don't see that trend with the districts we work with as as an overall statistic and without going into a lot of detail. I'm sure you guys have some sort of like research and development or innovation

087department that's looking for all the you know tricks and trends that you're seeing with the students um activity. We are and I would tell you the one thing we're actually going to roll out which sadly is you know becoming more and more relevant. We we are beta testing right now a gun detection for images. So right now we look for explicit content, pornographic images, inappropriate content, but right now specifically we are rolling out a gun detection for pictures. So we're constantly looking for, to your point, new words, acronyms. We actually work in some communities with specific gang um terms and terminology that we will put in the system if you're looking for specific things. Uh but those are different things we're constantly trying to stay on top of from a development standpoint. And yeah, I

088just want to piggy back that staying current is very important to us. And one thing I know we did over the course of the pandemic was add language like I am hungry or I haven't eaten in a few days. So we could identify those kids that maybe weren't, you know, getting all of their needs met while they were in that home environment for learning. So yeah, absolutely. We do our best to stay on top of trends and and everything that's current. I think they've really tried to cover that's what I liked about them. They really thought of of most things. Even Max was kind of happy with it. I think they really try to stay in touch and to find out what kids need and what the problems are. So that's what drew me to

089them. I want to ask a question about the immediiacy of the trained person receiving uh the call. Would it has has it been explored to use something like we hear when the storm alerts come on our phone where it simply alerts us loudly that something is wrong and we go to it. It just seems like waiting for a phone call or a text may be a serious or dangerous delay in the in the whole system. uh I leave my phone in another room or upstairs or downstairs and well they you know it it's just something I wondered if if that had been explored. I'm just comparing it with the weather alert. I think you're muted somebody. We're getting a new one. I just thought you talk to him. I didn't get that. I'm sorry. Can

090you try again? That's not electronic. I already I think that was Alexa. Can you hear us? Can you hear me? Yeah, we got it. Okay, you're back. Awesome. Yeah. Okay, perfect. Um, trying to memorize. Yeah. Um, I can tell you that in those situations, we're acting as quickly as possible and we're not going to stop calling until we do get a response from somebody. So, we're going to make sure that that incident is resolved no matter what. This is why um the professional development is really important too because we're going to stress the um the sort of the urgency to responding to those and why we've categorized it in that way. Um Kim, yeah, I was just going to say I just want to remind everybody we typically have three emergency contacts for the phone

091calls. So we're calling in a tree. It's not just one person. So, I just want to reiterate um if we're not reaching that first person, actually a group text also goes out and I love that idea just for the reason um that phone number is always the same. And as you know on our phones, we can set a different ringtone. So, that's just one idea from a PD side. You could set a different ringtone or text tone for gaggles alerts because it does always come in from the same number. Darren's like, "Oh, great. Thank you. That's great. I have another this this question is pretty specific, but can you can you guys still hear me? Yeah. Okay. Are the terms lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender considered sexual content? No. No. So, and I, you know,

092I think it's a great question because I think a lot of our work, we actually do a lot of diversity and bias training. If we have a student who has identified that they are suicidal, that content, you know, anything before or after, if there's something in there about why they're feeling that way, it's like anything else in the district. If you had a student or a friend who said, "Hey, we're suicidal." Um, that would go to the district. It's up to the district on how they want to handle that, but we do not flag those words specifically. It really is around the suicide, depression, anxiety. any content around that though, you know, that content would be part of that to give context. Uh, but no, we're not we're not flagging that to give to the

093district if you know a student is talking about sexuality or anything like that. I guess my concern would just be someone being outed before they wanted to be if they used a term like this if they even if they were using school district property using it as a way to journal for themselves um and that ends up getting to reported to school administrators. So that's where the PD for the administrator would be very important. Yeah, that's a good point that you can. Okay. Are they done? Is that it? Are we good? Any more questions? We so appreciate. We would have loved for Rocco to be here in person, but the travel situation is not what it used to be. Yeah. I'm so sorry that I I couldn't be there in person. I'm hoping I'm hoping

094to make it happen one day soon. Um but again, I am just the worst luck. So, well, we're glad this was really informative. I really appreciate you guys having us and um inviting me out there. I will make it out there someday. Well, thank you. So, thank you very much for the presentation. Kim Roco, thank you so much for putting that together and being here tonight. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you so much. I'm gonna read this. Okay, Stephanie, are we uh Yeah, we're on PEX P. Do we have anything more on before we go forward? Well, I No, we just I just have to wait for the for the approval. I can talk. Um authorization. Sorry, go ahead. No, I I just want to say I mean I just I researched this this company

095a lot and uh found some things like that question was concerning to me. Uh there's been lawsuits in the past really. Um, just I I would propose a motion to table it, but if you are all open to going forward with the vote tonight, then that's up to you guys. But I would make a motion to table this for tonight. I'd like to hear them in person and have a chance now that we've heard the initial presentation to maybe gather our thoughts. I know it's hard with especially with today happening, but I mean just privacy the privacy aspect of this is just it's still even though it's school district property just the way that's getting intertwined with personal lives is just it's really concerning to me. I think it just deserves a little bit more

096time. Okay. Do we have any more discussion on that? Um, on this topic, um, I don't know exactly, I haven't talked to Caitlyn a lot about this topic, but, um, whenever you did your SUKO like interview when running for that, I think you talked a little bit about mental health and I think a great perspective would be of Caitlyn's for the future. Well, like I know in the past for debate that we've used like Google Docs and stuff to communicate with each other while making our cases and like even with school activities, especially with debate, we talk about like quote unquote controversial topics that include suicide and mental health and stuff like that and that would this our school work be flagged for something like that because we've included like suicide notes as our cards

097individually. And then I know like in my own class like we have chatted with each other like through Google Docs and like sometimes we're talking about things and it's not like my friends are saying that they're suicidal because if they are I would obviously tell someone but there's like talking about their life and privacy would be a great concern. Like when I was listening to this, I was definitely thinking about student privacy and people who just feel like they need to vent about something going on in their life and but they aren't planning to take action or something. So that would I think that weern worry too though that we don't the schoolwork part she me they mentioned when I asked this actual question um something about that's why they have humans. What sets them

098apart to me is that they're humans versus just a computer. So like say for instance they were doing something on Romeo Juliet. Yeah. And they they would follow that and see that there was a suicide mentioned in that but they know that that's what's going on. That's why they have people actually looking on there. But I do think too that I I mean privacy is is I did look at some of those um lawsuits. I just think that at some point we have to decide with the school property what where you know we do want I think that privacy is super important but I also know that if a student's reaching out and that's an issue that we want to be able to to catch it. So, I feel like it's a two double-edged sword.

099Um, but I think that I understand where you're coming from, but there's school work. That's why I like this company because they have a human component versus just the computers like that. Well, and I would add um I still maintain my second to your motion to table because I think the privacy issue needs to be explored further. But as an administrator who uses some I don't use gaggle, but I use something similar. There's always I'm always the human component. I get flags all the time and I look into it, right? But you know, I think that's something and you as the school board member for students now, yeah, you working with Mr. Depw and everybody to kind of work on kind of setting some norms around this. You know, Mr. Dew learns about all kinds

100of confidential stuff. Just because something is flagged does not equate to bad and to make sure that we get that message embedded in the culture as well. and for the students voice to have you know like we entrust him social workers you know basically everybody on that side of the room and this side of the room with sensitive issues but there's a cultural component to that to where we make sure we maintain that trust and confidentiality and to understand just because something is flagged he's still got to go into the system and look like that's not going to be like you're in trouble you came up with suicide on your thing you know so there is that human component in addition to other human cyber people you you know, so there is a lot of

101discretion involved still. I kind of liken it to like writing a note at school and you find the paper on the floor like passing a note. I don't know. That's probably dating myself. Do you guys even write? Yeah, we're just like giving they're just coming to us with the information. What we do with it then becomes the human component like she's saying, but I think it's worthwhile to explore the privacy issues because in the interest of security and safety, we don't want to alienate and make others feel insecure or safe too. So, I think it's a valid point. I think what I think that might help is the fact that if this if the signal goes out to three adult people that they have the ability to to decide is this really something serious. One

102might say no no no this is not reasonable to get alarmed about and so that has that that component that it goes to three people I like instead of a single I think definitely I mean it having Should we move forward with this or something like this, particularly at the high school and middle school levels, it's going to be rolled out differently than like in an elementary school. In elementary school like, hey, we're going to do this. Okay. You know, like there's not going to be a lot of like, well, what if my sexuality is calling the question? Probably not. But in middle school and in high school, the stakes are so much higher because so much of their lives are online, whether it's school issued accounts or not. So, I think that's a valid

103point to raise. But but isn't this part of the training that goes into this? The discretion that is needed to be used. You know, I think this has got to be something that that that the training has to has to entail. But so many of our administrators, they they'll know a lot of these students that are being flagged. They will they will understand maybe what's going on. They're trained already to kind of understand what they shouldn't do. I do think it's important though with the part that uh Zach talked about, they need to be aware of making sure that information isn't getting out, but they pretty much do that when someone comes to them anyway. So, I just kind of want to point that out that there are things that they're doing already that are

104very similar to this. This is just allowing us one more net to to catch PE kids that maybe wouldn't come to them is the way I look at this. So, Caitlyn, your first member or first meeting in September and you already have all this work. What were you about to say? Would students and like their parents be alerted that we'd be using this software or like are they just not going to know if that makes sense? Oh, no. We would have that out there. We have a release that would go out about that as well and then it's online. Students be able to opt out if they don't feel comfortable having the software. No, I'm sorry. Okay. Yeah, I think that's like I mean the the mission behind the company and all the concerns are

105totally valid. I mean, I think they probably do 95% amazing work and I'm sure they save lives and and I appreciate that. I just think the the reason for my motion to table is one because of the events today. I would hate for us to make a decision based fa based off of that even though that should absolutely factor into our decisions, the threat of school shootings. And then the second thing is just for one meeting I just think this is a fullscale mandatory surveillance of students that I just think deserves a little bit more thought into it. Tom, do you uh do any red flags just jump out at you about privacy issues and opening ourselves to litigation and something like this? It's not. No, not when we have board policy that has already

106been that is in place and has been in place for years that whenever students are on their own technology, there is no expectation of privacy. That's been that's been the law for I don't think I have reservations about the litigation of it. But I think from a cultural perspective and you know building where we want our kids to feel safe and secure again I don't want to create an unsafe feeling environment for some students in the interest of creating one for another. So I believe ultimately we should move forward with this whenever we decide but I want us to do it in a right way that's inclusive as one and again leaves everyone feeling safe and not targeted. So I I asked a liability question to to Roco and Kim is look what if let's

107assume the board wants to sign on with this and we get an an alert and we don't act on it. Yeah, we're opening ourselves up for a lawsuit there. So and again that's when they they said well no no we we make sure that we stay and get a communication from the designated emergency contact and make sure that they respond somewhat somehow some way. Yeah. So, and and they do and the ability to archive the responses and stuff. It's kept for 30 days and you you can request an additional archive element about the one year. I had him review the contract and all the information. I think Jason has a question. I might have missed this. Is it starting districtwide or is there a certain grade level? District wide. Districtwide. And then does it save

108the keystrokes or is there like a time frame where if someone writes I hate myself, I hate myself. I hate myself. Delete like is that does it look at the revisions? That's a good point. I'm just curious question. I thought he said that. He said it. He said it it didn't keep track of keystrokes. before he did say that the system that I use will flag it immediately to me and then I can go into a Google doc. Now, as the administrator, I own all of the docs that the kids own. And again, I'm an elementary school independent, so we have a little more leeway, but I can go back in version histories and see, but it doesn't show me keystrokes, per se, but I know the doc was problematic. And is it 365 or

109is it just student attendance days that they do that student? No, 365. I think it's 365. We talked about summer almost done because we talked about summer and weekends and all that. So are are we done till we get to we have a motion and a second to table this till a further meeting under Robert's order would be brought up at the June meeting under business and then if we roll yes uh Kenobyl I Curran I none I McMasters hi Stacy disabilities uh he Now is he Vinnie? Hi. And on Meer has is gone. Okay. So it uh we have tabled this temporarily and it will be revisited. I am sure what we have left is uhformational. Is that right Stephanie? We have we don't have any uh reports. Correct. No freedom information act. Mr.

110Mitchell. Oh. Oh. Okay. Okay. Do you have that in under is that under reports? You want me to read it? Yeah, I don't have it in my reports. All right. We received one request under the Freedom of Information Act during the period of April 20th, 2022 through May 17, 2022. The first request were received on April 20th from Dan O'Brien of North American Central School Bus. He requested the following copies of full and complete proposals submitted by First Student. Copies of all proposals, scoring and evaluation metrics. Copies of all analysis of pricing sent to transportation committee schoolboard members. Copies of all communication with first student regarding transportation contract over period of last 6 months. Copies of all communication with transportation committee schoolboard members regarding award of transportation contract and copy of fully executed transportation agreement

111contract between the district and first student. The request was handled by administration. Thank you very much, Mr. Mitchell. Okay. There's nothing no action required on that information. Uh we have an executive session this evening. Is that there's a district activity funds? Just the statements are there just to review. So you know that as it justformational so those are included in your in your packet. So now we do have an executive session. We do have an something. Do we have an executive session real quick? Yes. Under two and two under Yes. Uh under the executive session open meeting uh the appointment of employment compensation discipline performance or dismissal of specific employees for the public body. Student disciplinary actions the purchase of lease of real property uh for use by the public body and setting price thereof.

112collective bargaining matters between public body and employees and their representatives. Litigation uh when when action is against behalf of public body has been filed and probable it's probable or imminent to discuss school uh building safety and security and secure uh security procedures and student uh student safety. Do we have a motion to go into executive session? So moved. Second. And all in favor? I. We are now in executive session 738.