001Sorry, I should have. Okay everybody, welcome to the board of education meeting for September 263. Start off rollley here. Stacy here. Lin here. Vinnie here. Okay, we have a quum and if everyone would please rise for the pledge of allegiance followed by invocation by Pastor Stacy Wilson of GC First Assembly of God. 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. Lord, we thank you for this opportunity to be together and to serve our community. I pray, Father, that you would touch each person on the board, lead and guide the discussion. Help them, God, to see and to do what's best for the students and families in our community. And help us as a
002community support them and rally around them the best that we can. We ask all this in your name. Amen. Amen. I want to thank pastor Wilson for always being supportive of our district for helping us out. Thank you. Next up is public comment. So is there anyone like signed up? Yeah, we don't have anybody signed up. Okay, then we will move on. Second. [Music] on this one. Yeah. Uh, this one is a roll call. Okay. Is that what voice means? Yeah. It doesn't deal with money. It's all in favor. Yeah. I think it's I think it's just an I think some of these might be got voice. boys vote is probably affirmation and then anything involving money would be vote. That's right. So we need to Okay. All those in favor? I I um and
003then next is our consent agenda for the uh I guess the items considered repetitive and routine in nature. We can pull anything out. Section seven for individual discussion consideration. Um, do we have a motion? Second. Any discussion? Okay. Um, once again, I just always have to mention when we have gifts, I think it's so important. Um, I'm amazed all the time at how many things and how many people uh support the district. I've been talking back and forth with Lindsay Timonss from the Memorial Fund. um she was donating $1,000 to school supplies, but she called to see uh what things we might want and we have some new uh reading programs we have going on and the teachers need something to put their toring. Anyway, she asked all this and she's going to bring all
004those in tomorrow and she donated all the stuff that we need and she's also doing that for women. It's just amazing that that she's giving back and we're really appreciative. I'll have some pictures tomorrow. She didn't want to come to be recognized even though she showed up. We're really They're really great. Also, the word changing uh world changing word of faith delivering ministry church also amazing. They're donating $500 of school supplies. Um this has really been beneficial. We have a lot of students. We had some students who are displaced, some people who are homeless, some just fortunate enough to get all the things that they need, including just things at the school, shoes or socks or things that students don't need. So, it has really made a huge difference for us. So, we're very appreciative
005of that as well. Thank you very Noel. Hi, Lynman. Hi, Vinnie. I sa hi Bradley. Hi. Okay, next up we have our recommendations and communications. Human resources. Uh 8A rescended retirements and resations. It is recommended that the following retirements and resations be rescended. Lyn Lantham, sixth grade teacher, rescend end of 2425. Vicky Wright, monitor at GCHS, resend 6252. And then um 8B retire is recommended also the following retirement. Actually, do we need we need Sorry, I do. Do we have a motion? Move to approve the resendment of retirement. Any discussion? Curin. Hi. Noble. I lin retirements and resations. It is recommended that the following retirements and resations be accepted. Lyn Lan, sixth grade teacher. retirement end of 2324. Leanne Sturmer, fifth grade teacher, retirement end of 2728. Non administrative assistant Mitchell retired 2627. Johnian finance
006teacher GCHS retirement September 15th, 2023. Tracy Brody, fourth grade teacher Mitchell retirement 26. monitors retirement through Noble iMova. Hi, Bradley. Hi, Current. Hi. In 8C, extracurricular resignations for the 2324 school year. Below, you've received detailed information about this item. The administration is prepared to make recommendations for for discussion in executive session. The United administration has recommended that the following extracurricular resignations for the 2324 school year be accepted. Ginger Harrison, cool junior high head volleyball coach and Mr. Kendall Lions, GCHS headachley. Hi. Hi. Hi. Okay. 8 D extracurricular recommendations for the 2324 school year. GCS United administration is recommending the following extracurricular assignments for the 23 24 year. The greatest city fine arts department head has been a voluntary position for three years uh for the teachers collective bargaining agreement. Per the collective bargaining agreement, teams,
007clubs, and activities are to be considered for compensation after three years of volunteer work. We have run the district fine arts department and ped information through the extra rubric and they are recommending you placement clown seven club sponsor C of the extracurricular salary schedule. Mr. Roberts has been volunteering for this position for the past three years recommended for this position with the stipen of 20 and Bailey Frank is being recommended for GCHS assistant coach. Move. Second discussion. Hi, Silva. Hi, Bradley. Hi. Current. Hi. No. IE. Extracurricular recommendations for the 2425 school. You have received detailed information about this item. The administration is prepared to make recommendations are open for discussion in executive session. The GCSD9 administration is recommending the following extracurricular assignments for the 2425 school year be approved. Miss Ashley Richie, GCHS student council
008sponsor. I know working with her. She's amazing. Just let us say I Noble I lin I 8F extracurricular volunteers for the 23 24. We have received detailed information about this item. Administration is prepared to make recommendations and hope for discussion in executive session. No, just kidding. The GTSD9 administration is recommending that the following extracurricular volunteers for the 2324 school year be approved. Mr. Eddie Bradley baseball. Any discussion? Bradley or Noble. Hi. Hi Venny I Silva Hi 8G certified classified subject. We love this. You have received detailed information about this item. Administration is prepared to make recommendations or hold for discussion in executive session. It is recommended the following applicants be board approved as substitutes for the 2324 school year. Certified substitutes Jerski and Ruth Link. Classified Katie Barnett, Shirley Blake, Lacy Shaker. Ken Westbrook Henry
009and Seression Current Iman I Vinny I Silva I Bradley Hi 8H1 the employment of two maintenance HVAC positions uh below you received the information about the sign administration is prepared to make recommendations or open discussion session. Uh we have embarked on new HBAC projects across the district with 238 new units. That's right. Over the last two summers, these units have updated technology and equipment, but we still have equipment that is over 20 years old that we need to maintain. We interviewed a maintenance HBAC position to fill a recent retirey position. And in June 26, we will have another retirey. To ensure we have replacements and help with the transition, we would like to hire two maintenance HBAC positions. We are recommending the employment of the following maintenance HBAC candidates with the start date of October
01010th, 2023. Mr. David O'Brien and Mr. Alberto Rios. Approval is recommended pending the submission of the required paper. Second discussion. Hi Noble. Hi. Hi Silva. Hi Bradley. Hi. Okay. 10 A. The purchase of the building trade block 195 2025 B. Uh due to the progress of our building trades home project in the dial and legacy subdivision, you're seeking permission to move forward on acquisition. Approval of the attached revolution resolution is recommended. Discussion. Hi Jenny. Hi Silva. Hi Bradley. Hi Curt. Hi Okay. 10B, Grand City Saver Committee School. I'm too happy to be able to do all this again. The Grand City Saver Committee would like to request the renewal of the agreement to use the intermediate school gymnasium for the Saber School dances. The requested dates for the 23 24 school year are Friday, October
0116, 23, Friday, January 19th, 24, and or Friday, February 9th, 24 in January. Sounds so good. and Friday, April 12, 2024 who insurance will be provided prior to the first dance and we've also requested permission to circ. Okay. 10 C, the adoption of the 2324 GCSD9 budget. Mr. Siri, yeah, we need to uh make a motion to Yep. And then I'll do it in the public hearing. Okay. Um uh temporarily [Music] I Okay, we are here public and uh is there any comments? Okay. Well, I hope you guys all have something to drink because we're going to cover all 735 pages of the line item budget line by line. Popcorn. Yeah. No, I'm not. We'll do a brief overview. Uh it is a balanced budget. Um this year is pretty easy. We still have some
012of the CARES money that we're going through. So this is a pretty easy one. Um budget overview. We saw a $95,000 increase to our EBF. That's because we went from a tier 2 school to a tier three school. Um we have a $6 million decrease in our corporate purpose personal property replacement tax. We kind of anticipated that. So we scaled back in some of the prior year's budgets of that number. So we didn't have some recurring costs live in that. So we kind of planned for that. We knew it was coming. That should next year amount to additional EBF dollars because that funding formula, it will probably drop us back down to a tier 2, possibly a tier one, but I'm going to say tier two. Um we have 8 million in our budget of
013uh American Rescue Plan. Um it's used for student staff devices for remote learning, COVID supplies and retaining educational staff. Um this budget saw competitive wage adjustments for minimum wage increase and minimum t salary increase. Those were negotiated. Uh we have 1.2 million or 1.25 million roughly for a froart roof, 375,000 for a high school lab. uh staff lab top replacements that's coming out of uh CAR's money. We don't know the price of that yet, but we have a budgeted amount. It's going out for bid, so we don't want to advertise. Um we added four special education teachers. We also added I forgot to put on here because I just completely forgot because it was a while ago. We added a drum person, a percussion specialist for the high school band. Uh we had a 5.8%
014increase in health insurance. We've been doing pretty good. Last year was a little high. That's still a very low number in the health insurance and area. So, we're pretty good with that. Uh we will look at about 1500 student devices with the American Rescue Plan money. Uh we did some traffic solutions at Wilson for about 200,000. We continued expansion of summer school programs and after school programs with SR3 funds. Uh we did uh $400,000 for Griggsby's parking lot and we also put in a football auditori or we're going to do a football auditorium and annex sound system upgrade. Um this is just a brief over overview of revenue by fund. You can see most of our money lives in fund 10 which is the education fund and fund 20 is the op or is the
015operations and maintenance or on and m basically Eric Smith's budget. That is pretty much where everything lives. 40 is transportation. When you hear me speak about operating funds, 10, 20, and 40 are what we're judged by for the state. Uh the rest of them just kind of exist and they're there, but 10, 20, and 40 are what we have to have balanced to stay in good standing. Um you can see, um real quickly, last year's budget, I didn't I used the October budget, not the amended budget. Some of the care stuff wasn't in there. That's why you see the light blue is last year's budget and then the dark blue is the actual light blue dark blue. Some of that is the care stuff. We just didn't have it in the budget. We amended. I
016just like to see how I did in my original. Um and again with that over here you can see we're just a little above budget. Most of that was cares. We wanted to make sure we got it all in. Expenditure by fund. Same thing. You can see here um a little bit of in or a little bit above budget and a little bit above budget. That is again car's money because we didn't know what we're going to do or not yet. So those overbudget amounts there are that you can see there's a pretty slight a good decrease in fund 20. That's because he had a $9 million HBAC project that was all paid out of last year and American rescue plan for the high school. um budget expend or budget revenue and expenditure history of
017operating funds. You can see we've in the years that CPPRT has ticked up, we have had a pretty good uh surplus of revenue to expenditures. But you can see this year as CPPRT came back down to reality, we're a little tighter and a little closer. Um we'll see where next year goes. I would preach caution, not panic. We just have to see where we end up and how our how some of our revenue sources turn out after we have more data. We're hoping it's not that close. Um fund 10 revenue local property ticked up a little bit. We had a pretty good increase. You can see I took most of the CPPRT losses out of the ED fund. Everything else remained about the same. We've got pretty much spot on. So, we were okay. fund
01820 revenue. I bumped a lot of CPPRT into that. That's to cover some of the offset of this year um to last year and some of the projects that we're still doing and just to balance. And then there's no ESSER money that is all gone. I use ESSER American Rescue Plan tears intermingle interchanged. So if somebody goes, "Oh, wait." It's all the same. And it all means the code support. It's all means CO support. Yeah. Fund 40 revenue. Same thing. I had to use a little more CPPRT to cover some increased costs. Um we expect regular ed and special ed to bump up a little bit because the costs went up. We get reimbursed. I'm waiting to see if they prorate it or anything. We just don't know yet. Fund 10 expenditures. Um most of
019our increases are going to come in the salary range. Uh the benefits are holding steady even with the increase because we have um a few less people in uh federal funds. So that brought some of our expenditures down. So that's why it didn't grow as well. It usually grows in conjunction with the 100s. It just didn't this year. we'd have a few less people in uh federal funds for TRS, so it held steady, but everything else is pretty much within where we thought it would be. If anybody has any questions, interrupt me. I'm better interrupted. Fund 20 expenditures. Same thing here. Uh 300. This was the uh the budget for this was for the HBAC. The state moved it into the 300s for a purchase service. That's why there's the weird discrepancy on budget to
020actual. I just move it where they tell me to. Um five uh as far as the 500s go, we still have over 5 million in capital improvement this year in uh operations and maintenance. So, we're doing we're still catching up on some projects and some deferred maintenance from 10 years of not being funded by the state. Same here fund 40 expenditures just enough to little bit increase in supplies or in the contract cost from the bus company. We add a couple routes that we didn't run last year that we didn't get charged for. So we expected a few more routes expected increases surplus plus deficit. You can see I go back to 2014 and 15. The blue number here is what we budgeted for surplus/deicit. You can see that we've had we're pretty good here.
021Right here the major change that you would see. This was we borrowed money and this is when EBF started coming along. So as we had that we've we've done really well at managing our expenditures to revenue. these two year this is esser money and uh being offset with some stuff and just CPPRT. I mean it just exploded. We went from 12 million in a year to 24 million without any real like hey you're going to get this. It was just massive and now it's back down. So it's going to end me. I mean I'll do this for 10 more years. I know uh I just for consider just for like clarity clarification it went from 12 million to 24 million. That doesn't mean we got like 12 extra million just sitting around hanging out. No,
022we used it. That's it's what allowed us some luxuries of doing extra projects and stuff like that. Just wanted to emphasize that point where people understand we're not sitting really pushy. Yes, we we but remember financially sound. We are very financially sound. But please remember we have to have a cash flow to cover our debts depending on how stuff goes. We are still only the last as of last year our fund balance was about a million dollars over what the state recommends as excellent. So it's not massive by any stretch. um items for consideration. Uh as we move forward this time next year, we will be talking about negotiating because we will be done with contracts. We are going to need to maintain competitive wages. Um we are also going to have to look at
023scaling back after CARES after the Esser money avoiding a financial cliff. We don't want to get ourselves too out of whack because we do have some stuff from CARES that we're going to want to keep in our budget and just make sure that it's there and that we can maintain. Uh one sustainability um that I don't think will be as big a deal as I thought it was at the beginning of all this. We get pretty good deals on Chromebooks. Once we had to make that jump then it was scary, right? Uh we'll look at some long-term projections. Um, I get the first supposed to be reduced CPPRT in uh October. Be paying attention to that number. See where it is, where it came in from last year. Uh, and then this used to be
024at the top of the list, but the infrastructure concerns and capital improvements, we're doing pretty good. We have some money that we can still move forward with some projects, some one-time expend expenditures, uh, repair. I think we got Wilson's proof that we still need to do and we will go from there. But uh that is all I have. Any questions? I just have a comment a couple times. I am super proud of the way that the district spent our co care money and our you know explosion of funds in the moment to where it set us up for a brighter future, more stable, sustainable future. The good thing about having a little fund balance is if we were at zero or barely a month or two or three months in the bank, we would get
025really nervous with the 6 million with a fluctuation of a revenue source and it's already o I mean it's basically October when we're passing our budget that we started in July. So if some of that would happen we would be panicking. We can at least now make if we have to we can reduce through attrition. We can plan for uh any type of reduction or surplus. We don't have to stop a project to say oh my god we have cash issues. We we've been in pretty good shape. Thank you. Go ahead. It's a low. [Music] It's a low. [Music] I I Okay. Uh and now that we are back in the original board meeting, make another motion to adopt the resolution and the 2023 24 GCS9. [Music] Discussion. Roll call. Benny I Silva. Bradley Irin.
026Hi. No. Hi. Li. [Music] Okay. Yeah. Now we're on 10. uh GCSD9 safe routes to school grant application. Um this is pretty exciting. It looks like the school district has the best opportunity to to get the funding for a sidewalk um in front of Griggsby. They can't you're familiar with the area on the pontoon road. They can't really walk from the parking lot or from the into Griggsby and it's hard there. So there is a grant available. Jun Associates is help associates is helping us with that. So this is just um to make sure we can submit the grant. They working very hard. We've done surveys with people. This is approval to submit all second. I hi Noble. I Vinnie. I Okay, next one. 11A discipline. Right. So I can just say we received detailed
027information on the item. The administration is prepared to make the recommendation but you already have for a discussion in executive session. This is approval is recommending a hearing was held on September 13th administration for student services. We have a motion [Music] Bradley. Hi. Hi. No. I lin. Okay. And then 11 1B. The discipline of Grand High School. Um detailed information about this item is given to you at another time. Administration's prepared to make recommendations or discussion executive session. administration is recommending their expulsion with services available. Approval is recommended. Hearing is held on September 18, 2023. Dr. Ke, I did need to ask um was there um services available? There are services available for both students. That's so [Music] second. Hi Kenobyl. Hi Lovan. Hi Denny. I Silva. Hi Bradley. Hi. Okay. 112A Freedom of Information
028Act request. Two requests of the Freedom of Information Act in the period of September 5th 23 through September 1923. First well they were handled by administration request. We don't need Okay. Uh reports and other communications. First, we'll start off with the multi-grade level buildings and committee buildings committee updates from the board secretary Eric Vinny and member. All right. So, it seems like you know once a month we're giving an update on this, but that's because we're moving right along. Um Miss Bradley and I have completed meeting our meetings with building administrators. So we had one mil uh meeting with basically prek through sixth grade and then we had another meeting with secondary building administrators 7th grade through 12th grade. Um we did that for a couple of reasons. One share numbers keeping it smaller so
029we had better discussion and two we were able to have more targeted discussions because the conversations with elementary grades would vary versus um secondary. So again we thank those administrators for their time. they stayed late to meet with us. Um, it was really wonderful conversation. Again, similar to with our district administrators, we were talking through lots of pros and cons and just trying to collect as much information as possible for various scenarios. Currently, this week, Miss Bradley and I are working on creating a survey that we hope to send out to district staff that includes teachers, basically all of their staff. It'll be in the form of a Google form. Um then we'll go through that data and then the step after that would be to be reaching out to families in the community and
030and then after that community stakeholders. So timeline, you know, it kind of depends because we don't want to rush each spot. I know people are really um you know anxious to know what's the timeline, what's the timeline. We're moving forward and we're continuing to moving forward, but we're not going to commit to an arbitrary timeline that is going to make us rush without taking things into consideration. That does not mean we are dragging our feet and prolonging it either. We're continuing. I feel speak for you, but you can correct me if I'm wrong. I think it's a it's a it's a smart efficient pace. We're we're being very thoughtful in what we do because any decisions that would be made are going to have exponential impact over many many years. We want to make sure
031whatever changes, if there are changes that are made, are sustainable and don't drive us off fiscal cliff as Mr. S was just talking about his budget. So once we collect that data and then we'll survey people, we do hope and again I have no idea when this would happen, but when we get to that step, I I I think it's safe to say this year like we're talking through these. Um we don't want to waste a lot of time, but we also want to make sure that we're educating and informing the public as much as possible because this is a very complex issue. It seems kind of like a slam dunk or a no-brainer to some people, but you fix one thing or you move one thing and you're going to tangle up about 17
032other things. And so, as we've been talking about in our conversations with everybody, we want to make sure that, you know, everything has a cost and a benefit, right? And we just want to make sure that the benefits are outweighing the costs and that any cost that we incur with this, be it, you know, fiscal cost or culture, educational, whatever cost, we want to make sure that that's worth that the outcome for us. And so we just want to be really thoughtful for that. So we'll keep you guys updated. We've pretty much been doing a monthly update. So we'll continue to do that. I know many people have been um you know kind of rallying talk not not rallying in the rally sense but like there's a lot of chatter talk about that. We encourage
033people to send us information. What's the email address? Is it info at information at gcsd9? Information not info information at gcsd9. Yeah. And then they can get that to us too. Of course, you can also reach out and talk with us, too, but that's just a format if you don't really have a way to get in touch with us individually, although our emails are online. Um, but we promise we'll be getting you a survey pretty soon. But we first again, we're trying to make sure that we we general generally speaking, I think we like to involve our staff before we open it up to the whole public because they have specific just kind of the they're doing the job the way to do it, right? Exactly. All right, I think that's it. Thank you, Eric.
034Yes, the question. Uh would this be a good time to discuss the difference between what uh or what has been called uh not community but the neighborhood schools versus multi-grade level buildings? Yeah. Um this clarify I discussed it a few times but I can I can give that clarification reminder again. It's easier to say neighborhood schools. that rolls off the tongue a lot easier than multi-grade level buildings or centers, attendance centers. But, you know, anybody that knows the city knows that you're not going to have a neighborhood school because to do that, you'd have to have a lot more buildings throughout Granite City. And we do not have those. And I don't want to give Mr. Siri a heart attack and say we're going to build about seven different schools around the city. So, we're
035we're trying to do this. Again, this is one other lens to look through. We want to be fiscally responsible with it. That's one of our number one charges as a board, but also to be sustainable, to have this work. We don't want to create, you know, further issues for us. So, we want to do it in, you know, whatever changes or improvements we can make in a way that makes financial sense. And short of building a bunch of buildings around the town, you're not going to have a neighborhood school. And so, regardless of the configuration we land on or if it stays the same, you're probably going to drive past another school to get to your school. You know, the days of like riding your bike to school are probably not going to happen. Years
036ago, we had buses anyway that I mean because you had a slice that went out to another part of town. So you had buses, the kids were busting, but that was their school for so many years. So and I can tell you like I mean common sense is going to tell you. I think Miss Bradley would agree. Whatever configuration you end up with with when you say redistric redistricting, which would be sending different populations or different pieces to different schools, it ain't going to be great. It's going to be messy, but that's something we're weighing with what are the costs and what are the benefits and we want to do what has the most benefit with not the lowest like cheapest cost, but again, like we want to make sure that we're being responsible. That's
037part of the equity thing to make sure you don't end up with, you know, 500 kids here and 200 kids here. And that actually that's happened in the past where we actually had to move a line but you're affecting maybe 10 15 families start going to a different school as opposed you know to the whole district being redone. So something else to keep in mind like it's not just and this is another piece I don't want to get into all of it. We'll have a bigger presentation whenever we have all of our data but you have to think about too like it's not just residential lines that we would be tweaking in families. because I mean you're going to be slicing up figuratively speaking buildings and their cultures and teachers and people are going to
038be reassigned and moved all over the place. So a a change will result in a major upheaval. Again, that's not saying it's off the table, but we want to make sure that those benefits and our ability to do that are are sound because we don't want to just have a knee-jerk reaction and do something arbitrarily without really thinking through the problems we're going to create with it because we got to live with those problems. So, we just want to make sure we're doing it with as many voices and trying not to overlook anything, I guess I'd say. Was that okay for clarification? Thank you so much. All right. Thank you very much. Um, up next, we have our district manager of communications, Chris Mitchell, with a report. All right. So, I'm here to give the
039board a bus update. As you know, we are in our second year with first student. Um, so I'm going to go through a couple things here. We're going to give an over here over overview of district view, parent view, and first acts. Um, we have they a first student has done a much better job this year of recruiting drivers. So, I just want to go right off the bat with a positive that we do have 74 bus drivers as of right now and 38 bus monitors, which obviously has made our life a lot easier this year. Not going to go through all this in here, but I do want to talk a little bit about First View. So, First View is our product that we launched um earlier this year. It's broken into two things.
040District view is our web-based uh tool that the administrators use and um also the principles and our principles that are in attendance here use this as much as I do every single day. Um we're also going to talk about parent view which we've talked about in meetings before. Um parent view is the mobile app. Um and as you can see we have almost 2100 users so far. So that has been um that's been something that's been really good for us. Now the first year last year when we started with first student that was our first year okay the average time of arrival for our students was about 5:45 to 6:00. Now when most schools are getting out between 3:30 and 4 you can do the math they're on the bus for a couple hours which
041was unacceptable. We had no app last year. Radios weren't working. Tons of phone calls to Mr. Irve's office and her student. and we were short drivers. Fast forward to 23 24 students time on the bus has been trimmed down significantly. That's very important. Um less phone calls to myself and Brad and also the locations. Uh we now have GPS's on our buses, um radios on all of our buses, more drivers, less subs, and uh for a student has added a full a person in the afternoon to answer phone calls. Last year we re received a ton of phone calls saying they didn't have enough people. So first student took it upon themselves to add a another person to help take phone calls. So district view like I said this is what um our admins, our
042principles and first student staff see. Um this is for tracking messaging visibility security. I'm not going to go through all this but give you some examples here. This is a screenshot of Mville school after school has ended. This is from my computer. So, this is what I see when I'm tracking buses. If I get a call from a parent, first thing I ask them is, "Have you downloaded the app?" If they haven't, I can check right here where their bus is. And then it'll go to I can go to this page, which will show me scheduled arrival, estimated arrival, actual arrival, and actual departure. So, this should come. This should be really important uh when it when it's raining like this tonight or if it's snowing and it's cold. So, this should help a ton.
043It's Principal Banker at Wilson 12 Education Center. Um I've been out there a lot this year helping with dismissal. This is him uh watching his buses on his TV. They all have. So, all of our principles have that. So, parent view, this is what the parent, this is what we have asked all of our parents to download. And I do want to give a uh shout out to our administrative assistants up in the registration office all summer when they were when they were registering students, new and old. This is the first thing to ask them if if they chose a bus, do you have the app? And if you didn't have the app, they had them download because like I said, this is this is helping us a lot. So, parent view is very similar.
044You as a parent can receive district notifications on your phone. If it's going to be 15 minutes late, first you or first student will send something out. You know where your bus is all the time. You can track the bus. You can get some support. You know how far it is. Is it a mile out? Is it a half mile out? And as you'll see in a minute, it helps significantly with when you have multiple students. So, how do you get this as a parent there? Hopefully, there's some parents watching this tonight. Um, it's on our website. First of all, it's free. You will need your student or students route name as it appears in the district view. And then you'll need your student ID number. And if if parents don't have that information, they
045can call our office and we can assist that with. It's a free mobile app, but we want all of our parents to download it. So, with the success that we've had with uh First View, we pitched a story to Channel 4 to see if they would come out and tell our story about the success we've had and how it's helped our district. So, I want to show everybody this uh story that was on Channel 4 last week. Welcome back. More parents across the area are able to keep an eye on their child's bus routes all from their phones as many districts and companies are creating apps to help put parents at ease. First Caroline Hecker explains how the app works for a Metro East district and why one parent says it has made her morning
046routine much easier. You ready? Every morning is a balancing act for Tatiana Cass trying to get each of her four kids off to school on time. It's now made much easier thanks to the First View app created by First Student Bus Company. Trying to get four kids out the door at different times. I'm able to track when the bus is coming so we're not sitting out there. You can zoom in to see exactly what street it's on. The app allows parents in the Granite City School District to track their child's bus, set up alerts for when the bus is getting close, and track it all the way to school. The idea behind it is to cut out confusion and it cuts down like 60% of our phone calls, you know, because we have a lot
047of parents that call in wanting to know where the bus is, if they miss the bus. Allows Cass and her youngest son to head outside as the bus is approaching. [Music] to save time and get back to work faster comes home at lunchtime. I'm able to plan my day a little bit better and not have my boss break out because I'd be at the bus stop for over an hour waiting, especially at the beginning of school, not knowing what time the bus would actually show up. As she's working, the kids are on their way to school. The bus is every move. to be happy. It does take some of the stress out of the entire process. Makes them feel more comfortable knowing that they can, you know, track the bus while their child's on there
048and know that their child's getting to school. When they arrive, teachers are there to greet them walking hand in hand, ready to learn as the bus drivers gear up for that afternoon rush. Caroline Hector, [Music] I like that idea. Parenting safe for the kid. Look, that bus is 50 yard away and get started today. You can visit our website for Chris. Don't we have um a very large percentage of our bus riding parents that have download? Yeah, we're like you said, we're at about 2100 downloads so far. Um but obviously, like I told you guys, that's the first thing I apparent when they call is heavy download. Yeah, because it's I mean we're going to have delays. Um you know, especially as we get into the winter season with snow and rain and cold weather,
049there's going to be call offs. We're going to have subd drivers. When a driver drives the route for the first time, I'd be shocked if I could do it in, you know, less than a 30 minute delay. So, um but obviously this has been a a huge asset for our district. One thing that I did want to show is um we do give an all clear to our principles each day. Um last year I told you a lot of the times we were doing this at 5:45 6:00 which is just too late especially for our principles that work at schools that don't get out till 3:30 or 3:45. That becomes a long day. So as you can see we're sending that out normally. I normally send it out right about 5:00. Now, um 23 of
050our 28 days have been sent out before 5:10. So, our goal is, you know, to get our kids home safely, but also to get our staff home, you know, so they can be with their families. So, um we've we're working on this. We still have things to fix, though. We still have things that Brad and I are talking with parents every day about things that we can fix. So, I do want to mention, uh First Axe, which is a new product that was just launched on um about 10 days ago. This is our web- based application that we use for our student writership behavior tracking system. So, um, this goes directly. So, if a monitor or a bus driver fills out, someone's acting up on the bus, they fill that out, it goes to first
051student, it goes to the principal at the school they're enrolled in, it goes to myself. So, this is something, you know, we're not writing everything out like the old days, and it goes directly to our principles and myself. So hopefully we can address this, you know, as soon as possible. So I hope that's been a nice uh little addition. Last thing is I've been working with Heritage Petroleum. Um we added a third tank at the bus lot. Um as you can see, um a 550gallon tank. It's 87 octane gas. How this saves the district time and money, our first student time, the district money is we will now be filling up our buses for 87 on the lot. They've been driving in the past to quick trip, which is like 15 minutes, fill up the
052bus, drive it back. So, we're we I've been working with first student on a way that we can save some time and money. So, now we have three um three tanks on site. Um, one question that did come up, um, that I wanted to share is there's only two drivers that are authorized to fuel these buses and there are drivers that do it every day. Um, and it's the same fuelers as last year. So, it's not I'm not going out there and filling up the bus and neither's Mr. um the only exception is if the mechanics need to do it um for some reason. So, they are approved to do that. So all the fuel pumps are shut off by a breaker in the garage when fueling is not taking place to ensure that no
053one can just pull up to the pumps and start getting gas. So we hope this will save some time for our drivers and also save the district some money moving forward. And Mr. Siri loves that. I'm sure I do want to share this quote as we end the presentation. Miss Bratton, the principal at Prather, we had an incident the other day. We had a bus breakdown along our circle drive and a spur of the moment which was a stressful moment. First student executed procedures effort effortlessly and made an impressive turnaround solution. I would like to make a particular note of the bus mechanic who was sent out. He fixed the bus. He was like a shining star for the bus company in a stressful situation. We have this same bus actually broke down two days
054in a row and they had to send out mechanics one time. So um that's an example where we had a bus delay first student sends out a notification to that bus so those parents know that they are going to be late. I just wanted to share that that quote and if you guys have any questions I do. Does that also follow buses that are on like field trips or sports buses? Can parents tell oh they're almost back to school? So sports we do not know. What about field trips? No, it's it's they only follow the routes. Okay. The only reason I'm saying that's usually when we had the ask those happen. Yeah. Because it's usually a different bus number than your kid normally rides. So, it's a different route. They can't cover those. They can't.
055So, what the way it is is the GPS reporting on the route. So, they track the route. Anything off that route. So, that's when the sub part that's why we had issues last year because there were so many subs that were driving multiple routes that they couldn't do the GPS routing. So, that's why the the larger number of drivers helps this entire process out. So that's the key to everything. GPS. We had a situation earlier this year where the numbers in in first got switched. Okay. So a bus was in Fairview Heights and the boys golf team and those parents could have been yourself is wondering why your son or daughter is in Fairview. Really awesome for sure. So it does those things happen. Okay. But you know hopefully that won't happen again. So things
056like that you know they do have whenever now with you know good weather we're switching buses with field trips and have to have you know the right bus for the right people. I just really want to tell Chris Mr. Mitchell we appreciate his efforts this year and last year he was out at the facility helping too with Mr. survey has done an excellent job and I thought this is a great presentation to explain all of this to you. Thank you. [Music] had for a long time. My contacts aren't working. Give me a second, Mr. Smith. Well, Awesome. I know what happened. I made sure mine worked. You know, all right, we good. See if that clicker works. Okay. All right. Sorry about that. gym floor. Uh as you see uh the gym floor they are
057doing the final sanding this week. Um their their proposed date is going to be end of October, beginning of November to be completed. So hopefully we'll be done before uh the season starts. Uh it's really moving along pretty good. Um next uh we have some playground painting that uh we've been doing. Uh we usually do this in the fall uh to kind of get caught up. This is the time of year we try to uh do the playgrounds and any exterior painting. Uh this is Mville School. Um it's just about completed and then we'll go move on to another playground weather permitting. Uh the exterior of the buildings we are painting also. We're we're doing uh Wilson, Mville, Lake, and the high school. The high school we're doing a lot of fire escapes doors. Uh
058Mville, Wilson, and Lake. We're doing the uh concrete facade that's on the front that's above the windows and any any exterior doors that are now going to be replaced. There's a fire escape at the high school. These have been u need of painting for many years. Uh our cameras um are just about completed in the district. Uh this is Mitchell School. I think the next building we're going to do is actually going to be the board office and a few additional cameras throughout the district. Uh we've been working with the tech department on getting those installed. Uh Frohard roof is uh now complete. Uh they should be getting the dumpster out of there if they haven't done it today. So that that project uh went went real well. that uh it most of the demolition
059was completed before the end of the school car before school started so we weren't in any danger of the kids. Um our door replacement has started. Uh I know we've we've been a year two years into this ordering the doors trying to get them in. Uh as the doors uh we receive them we are putting them in. This is Prather their entrance door. uh prayer. They have another door that's on the back side that has prox readers. Crox readers that have also came in. As we get the new doors up, uh we are going to install those. Prather we should have their door up going hopefully maybe this week. Uh a lot of our back a lot of the student furniture we've started to replace. Uh this is Griggsby. A lot of the uh school
060furniture is is in getting pretty bad shape. A lot of their cafeteria tables were were broken on the edges and some sharp areas and uh seating. They're having some seating issues out there. So with these new tables, that kind of eliminates that and it's easier for the custodians to clean underneath. Also, they'll fold up so they can't maybe wheel them down to another part of the building and use them somewhere else. Uh the HVAC project at high schools going has scheduled. Uh we look to wrap that up somewhere around the holidays. Uh the first of the year that should be completed. Um this is some of the the bigger air handlers that are going on the roof. Uh this air handler takes care of a lot of Grand Avenue and the pack center and Spanish
061hall. So this is a pretty big pretty big unit. This this brings in all the fresh air to the building. Uh these are all of our condensers that are on the roof that are actually going to run the individual classrooms. Uh so every uh classroom will have its own air conditioner and be able to have the temperature controlled as they wish. But our only problem our completion date has now not completion date our startup date I should say. Uh we're waiting on electrical panel. Uh seems to be a nationwide thing. We're waiting on it on uh different project also which is up next. Uh the manufacturer gave us a date this month that it was going to be shipped. They have now rescended that. We have no date. Same thing at the uh softball field.
062This electrical panel we were told is in. We're we're told that Amron has a transformer. So it's installed. I believe it. Uh and then then we'll have that scoreboard. Um a lot of the traffic, this is the traffic that Zach had mentioned. This was some of our projects we had completed. We have a lot of we had a lot of traffic action uh problems at Cargo Road and Wilson Avenue. And with the uh parking lot projects, I think it's eliminated. That's it. [Music] Um, we in consent agenda, we did approve it, but I feel a little bit badly because Mr. Hayes was here tonight. So, I want to give him the opportunity uh to talk about the EF tour that they're planning. If you want to do a couple minutes about what you're planning to
063do, recruitment thing. Sure. Do I have 30 minutes? Let's make it a let's make it a couple minutes. Then um the three other counselors and myself decided we want to try to uh do a a Europe trip with our students in 2025. So with um with that being said, we're planning a trip to it would fly into Italy, it would go through France, Spain, and then we'd be on our way back home. It's a 9-day trip. We've been in contact with the tours. They kind of explain how everything is laid out with cost of meals. um the the places that we're going to be able to visit, the accommodations, they take care of all of that stuff. Um so we'd like to promote it to our students as an opportunity for them to kind of
064get out and see the world. Total cost that we're looking at for students is going to be around 4,300. Um for any paying adult, it would be just under $5,000, I think. So, and how long is that? Nine days. if you need a board member that speaks a few languages. Sounds awesome. I'm really excited for I'm up for it. That does include like lunch and dinner, but generally two meals a day and then um obviously we've got some excursions uh set in there. So, there's a huge educational component to it as well as a little bit of downtime. UCF Education Tours is a teacher for years. They're an incredible company. So, I just want to make sure we did approve it, but I I felt he was here and I wanted to. All right. Thank
065you. I appreciate it. Thank you very much. And then that uh we would like to go into brief hope brief executive session. Um uh basically we have uh the things we talk about in here are noted under 5CS120/2 open meetings act and today those are uh 2CF56 which is the purchase or lease of real property for use by the public body setting the price thereof and 2C8 which is student safety. We have a motion over to I speak with We're