001think we all just hanging out we tried to get in here so that you know 15 minutes you didn't feel like like colle you could leave oh yeah I don't know okay welcome everybody to the Board of Education meeting for Tuesday February 2024 a roll call yes I don't have okay Sila here Bradley here Stacy here here no here L here Denny here miss forbs here we okay we have a forum and um everyone please rise for the of ALG followed by an invitation by Pastor Ben Ritz ofan Baptist Church Al of the United States of America and to the Republic for it stands one nation under God indivisible with liy and justice for all let's have a a moment of silence uh we would before we pray for the student that was lost in
002our district this week or we do thank you for our school district for teachers for families for kids that are learning and for uh the hard work that's done and I just pray that you would bless our board you would bless the administration of of our schools and our families and our kids and they would become all that they can be and learn thank you Lord amen amen thank you thank you so much for being here you have anybody for public comment do have okay I think you ready are you ready not yet I'll get you you ready I'm very excited about this too the Grand City School District nine Board of Education Administration would like to recognize a Maryville Elementary education second grade student Mr Charlie flowers do you want to come on up
003Mr [Applause] flowers how amazing you are okay here we go right like this was a history geography teacher so I'm really excited okay so uh this is pretty neat so Charlie was part of a geography be uh and he placed it was held I do believe at everville high school on January 20th he was in a category that was fourth grade or below he was the only second grade uh competitor in that most of them were all fourth grade I don't even think there was a third grade that went through the list today that he was the only one that was not in fourth grade uh which is really cool um and to the Youngman competition and he placed fourth out of 24 students all of 23 of them in fourth grade okay um he
004placed fourth and was invited to to go on to a competition in Orlando on Memorial Day and if he was successful there he could even perhaps go to Vienna Austria I taught European history so I'm very excited about that right um from July so uh we are just really excited to hand you this amazing black cuz we're so proud of you so I'm going to [Applause] givee come we got everybody let me see so this is Mom okay and a brother look at big brother too let's all get a picture we get one just up your I'll get one here there one us okay all right there we go and do all right Charlie here we go and I want to tell you something Charlie so because you entered this I did some calls today
005and we're going to send information to all of our schools to make sure more kids can compete in the J for the next year all because of you cool job [Applause] thank you so much I know I'm that right marville when we talked about attendance centers and he was one of my friends that gave me lots of great ideas do I need to ask him a geography question what's your favorite country Charlie favorite country what's your favorite country what's most interesting to you Greenland there GRE it's not green right I won't ask any Capital sub countries and all that even though I talk you know you know did you know something like Austria Vienna yeah you know the capital of Estonia oh look oh Talon I think he actually why why don't we let Charlie
006in the super any we are super proud of you that great plaque and we if you're going to go to Orlando correct yes we let us know uh when he goes now he does and so we'll make sure we'll bring it back thank you so much really proud of great job one more [Applause] excited I'm also excited about this too so um we uh do a lot of work with uh SN Wilson which is a project management firm they've helped us with the master plan for our sports facilities help us at softball field um could I have Mr Greg Williams come up at the this time so um what I like do first um when we were doing the softball field they do something called beyond the build and the skill Ed here how about
007over here okay skill Ed program uh they had our kids actually go out to the softball field with Engineers with their project managers and and got to see what's going on at their own field uh they worked with them they were out there in the build in the classroom and outside for at least uh three hours or so um they've also encouraged participation in their skilled program which is why we're here tonight do you want to talk a little bit about the skill program you would you better than I would so yeah I wrote it I wrote it all down yeah look see so did I but that's great so I'll I'll try and read this and skip over the boring Parts but the great part is about the students so I can't skip over
008that so for decades SM Wilson has proudly built education facilities and our work has had a tremendous impact on our community we were born here 10 and something years 102 years ago in grite City uh so we're proud to be back here again um in addition to really supporting individual student interests which we find very um professionally and and personally um very rewarding thank you uh at the end of the day my words start stop working um we we strive to support the serious needs of our industry to promote career paths in the trades uh and provide access to those careers so in 2019 uh we started the skilled program which was really uh to provide Hands-On construction based and construction career uh counseling and uh professional counseling for students that uh we have the
009fortunate pleasure of working with um so uh we every year we put on a a competition called skill W uh this is the first year that we've done it in Illinois we've done it for the last four years in in Missouri um and really what we're challenging students to do is to create a process or a lesson or an activity or product uh that's designed to engage and or Inspire their community Through stem steam learning opportunities so the students tonight uh submitted the most creative and well thought out plans as judged by members from the Missouri school boards Association and academic Community around uh the the by state region um just like their real world programming their creative ideas were just the beginning uh these students were tasked to create a project plan with an
010anticipated schedule and budget to implement their idea uh and that plan addressed the details of their Concepts including inspiration impact on the community goals audience location and resources required to implement the project so you have to do a lot of work they do so on behalf of Essen Wilson and I'm very proud to be here for this uh I'm excited to recognize and celebrate Lucas Hutchings and Rees SMY for their project changing the rues [Applause] yeah please talk about your project and what itation like in your just like in your video she's already learning right delegation man few years ago um our high school and board approved a stem trailer which would pretty much go around to all the other their school districts and teach the middle school kids and the younger kids about stem
011and so we found this out and we put more just some more plans into it and talked about what would be inside of it and what we spend the money on and everything and eventually end up with one trailer at a time one trailer at a time which we you are still donated the trailer and we've been working on getting that ready to go out we've used utilized it a couple of times um been the coolage and did some things planning on doing more with that but do you want to tell them what award they received for doing that yeah so this year they uh win the inaugural uh Illinois uh skilled award from SM Wilson and they won a prize of $1,000 between the two of them I know right I could not vote
012for myself so I voted for them they did a job and we're really we're really proud and uh we're really happy to to be here recognizing these students this is really what you know my job is all about and it's the first time in Illinois and I like reaching over I think it's just wonderful and they did such a nice job we were in Awards was that what night was that it was Tuesday last Tuesday and they had a really nice recognition of the other schools uh the teams that won they had food I just thought it was a really nice event too that they got to go to so I wanted to recognize there's Reese's for her win and uh oh some Stu and Lucas and we also wanted to do a a little
013Flack for essn Wilson for being such a partner in education with us so we really wanted to present that to you as well so thank you them [Applause] all we hope we'll have even more participants next year and look into some more of the steam education some more of the skill program and we talked to the C coordinator so hopefully we can the more the merrier yes you want all of us goe why do I think Charlie will be up [Laughter] [Applause] here oh one more thing I know they're not official yet but this last weekend our um speech and debate group is that all right so I have Miss Forbes our student Advisory Board member uh I do believe she placed first in the sectionals in informational in impromptu speaking impromptu speaking sorry uh
014it's probably informational as well just say depends on the what did you speak on this time um I basically get a prompt from one of three categories so it's either phrases Proverbs or quotations so and then I have two minutes prepare to give a minut spe minutes um I think my prompts were my first one was a square peg and a round hole my second one was civility cost nothing oh a French proper I believe and then my last one was by Alice Walker and I don't remember what it said so she literally has to get up then and compete against others who got these things so she won will be moving on to State and poror this weekend along with our other group the performance in the round um they they plac second so
015both them the group performance the and Miss Forbes will be attending State this weekend so we want to give them all a hand at the next meeting good luck thank you okay um section five the minutes do we have a motion to approve the minutes of the regular meeting of board of education on January 23rd second okay Bradley hi Stacey hi Vinnie hi oh yeah sorry oh yes I'm looking around pass pass everybody can leave they're tell me to dismiss everyone I'm like we have so we'll see you there bye bye [Music] then uh we have a motion to approve the consent agenda which contains those items that are repetitive and routine in nature any member may make a motion to approve the consent agenda or request that any of the items move to section
016seven for individual discussion and consideration discussion I just every time we have a gift from the community which is amazing So This Time Again us steel who is incredibly generous with us uh they uh donated $250 worth of Nik crw socks to our gchs athletic e Department which is wonderful so it's just another thing there's always someone who thinks of us and we really appreciate that sty I hi no i l i Vinny I Bradley um Section 8 a uh resend retirement resignation it is recommended the following retirements and resignations be rescinded Mr King Kim custodian gchs retirement effective 2224 no I L Vinnie I Silva I Bradley I Stacy I okay um 8B retirements of reservations it is recommended the following retirements and reservations be accepted Hong Kim custodian gchs retirement effective now 1026
017Naomi I always see her I always Administrative Assistant prart retirement 7527 Laura Sullivan English teacher gchs retirement end of 2829 were you [Music] two here L hi Vinny I Silva I Bradley hi Stacey hi hi um 8C requests for Le is recommended the following request for leaves of absence be approved George kran science teacher gchs effective 22224 to 516 24 Richard Wilson custodian cohart effective 11824 to 41124 and Tracy broy forade teacher effective 324 to 626 I I Bradley Stacey I I Noble I okay uh 8D requests for extensions to leaves of is recommended the following request for extension to Le of absence be approved Cynthia desper special teacher griby effective 4924 to 7224 hi Bradley hi sty hi hi no hi hi okay 8 e extracurricular resignations for the 2324 school year uh you
018have received detailed information below about this item the administration is prepared to make recommendations are home for discussion in executive session the gcsd9 administration is recommending the following extracurricular resignations for the 2324 school year be accepted ear Clark gchs assistant girls track coach and and brother at Banu gchs assistant boys basketball coach Sila hi Bradley hi Stacy hi hi no Hi l hi Benny I okay 8f extracurricular resignations for the 2425 school year you see detailed information about this item below the administration is prepared to make recommendations or to hold for discussion EX session uh gcsd9 Administration is recommending the following extracurricular resignations for the 24 24 2425 School you be accepted L Watkins GCS head cheerleading Hannah isbal GCS gchs Assistant Cheerleading Joy Blom gchs Assistant Cheerleading Megan Watkins gchs head cheerleading and Hannah
019isbel gchs head cheerleading L and Bradley you'll get one that's right Bradley I Stacey ien hi Noble i l i Vinnie I Sila I okay um 8G extracurricular recommendations for the 2324 school year I'm sorry you have received detailed information about this item the administration is prepared to ation are to hold for discussion in executive session the gcsd9 administration is recommended the following extracurricular assignments for 234 school year be approved Earl Clark gchs assistant voice track coach and Keith Boyd coolage assistant track coach so second Stacy hi hi no Hi l hi Benny I Silva I Bradley hi a certified and classified substitutes Bel you receed detailed information about this item the administration is prepared to make recommendations or hope for discussion in executive session it is recommend the following applicants be board approved as
020substitutes for the 2324 school year classified Miss La Mo recomend submission of hi no Hi l hi Vinnie IA I Bradley Stacey I okay uh 9A the approval of superintendent employment agreement you've received the detailed information about the item below the administrator prepared to make recommendations or to hold for discussion exective session Mo second discussion call Hi l hi Vinny I Silva I Bradley hi hi 10 a gcsd9 school calendar from 2425 school year below are two calendar options for the 2425 school year members of the Grand City Federation of educational professionals local 743 have reviewed both options Ved to recommend the calendar option b 537 essional learning days will continue to provide our staff with training and ongoing education for a districtwide focus additionally it helps our staff CPD is necessary for recertification we've
021adjusted the days through a waiver with the Illinois Board of Education to specify full days of PD the traditional hating we feel that it would allow more time dedicated profal development while we are recommending that we approve uh the calendar a option I do want to point out that the differences between a and b uh the calendar a that the administration as parent teacher conferences much earlier in November to address the to promote the time for improvement in learning and Improvement of grades um also that day that the November 4th is day prior to an election day it gives families then also a break if they come to when they could have up to four days to to have a break for that too so that's the only reason we are choosing calendary it was
022a pretty close thing but I wanted to give you some rationale for that so we are recommending that to the attached counter option A for the lny I silley Stacey hi hiest freedom information we have received three requests under the Freedom of Information Act During the period of January 17 24th February 6 24 um these were all handled they're all below the information provided they were all handled by Administration thank you Mr Mitchell Mr school and then guess with a multi-grade level schools committee update Erica Ben and is going to be kind of a longer one um we're going to go over data that we collected from all surveys including meeting with our students last week um yeah so I will say there there's a lot of slides we're going to go through them quickly
023we're not going to talk about them okay so I also will not read slides to you we G to get set in thank you um as we're getting started I have to give a special shout out particular to our committee's alternate member which is Lori Silva there's a lot of data to process and if we were waiting on that to do it probably would have been like a couple years from now 27 hours we spent so much time ping through all of it coding our data and making it in a way that we can see some Trend and it was much easier to process and share with you all all right I'll it's right there oh okay okay cool so I'm going to run briefly through all the surveys we have another slideshow that has
024like everything so if anybody's like a bunch of data wants to talk with us come see us but it like a lot okay so staff surveys were conducted is not working okay so just to give everybody kind of a scope this was a survey uh sent out to staff so that includes like certified Educators non-certified staff classified staff Administration also substitutes you can see the vast majority that responded were teachers if you think of like you know how the breakdown is of like different goals that's pretty on par we also asked people you know what their experiences were how many obviously they all working attendance centers currently now and then our uh definition for m grade level throughout all of these is more than two years in a building so you know three4 of them
025had so then we asked them a variety of questions current like our current configuration versus that here are some compar um comparisons about students educational experiences with one versus the other again I'm not going to dive too deep into these but I do want to show you like how the data Falls we like to use like what benefits we've observed with them attending current configuration versus a good people said a good amount of people said none some um like the diversity and age appropriate peers activities curriculum allowing for Teacher collaboration again I'm not going to talk about all these I'm just going to hit the high notes on the numbers is how many times that answer came up in all the responses and so then they're sorted by frequency with the most frequent up top
026yeah thank you for that word so challenges observed lack of Role Models lack of relationships because you're there two years and you move on lack of sense of belonging owners of Pride again continuing on I will not go through all these but just so you can see them and how things fell benefits now this is talking back to when people remember working in multi-grade level centers the lasting relationships the sense of community stability being a Common Thread there um leadership opportunities I thought that also came up in some other pieces as well some challenges many don't remember any um others could be the bad inuence of older students on younger students class sizes are less stable because you're more at the whim of who's registered and where they live and I'm going to keep on
027trucking so then we asked them you know what do you think so um we gave them these options on the right I'm going to pause now and say I intentionally did not go beyond fourth grade because when we started surveying everybody I thought that it was would have been cost prohibitive so I didn't ask I didn't survey people regarding 56 but that will come up in a later discussion in a little bit so over the half said that they like the K4 model um second place kind of coming a pre core model and then asking when do you think change should be implemented majority of respondents said 55% saying next year and then almost a third saying the following year so then top factors we should consider as we're waiting the options the social and
028emotional learning of students convenience or busting and then qual I mean uniformity consistency cohesion of curriculum and collaboration and class size all right moving on to family responses again I'm gonna keep trucking through these quickly because I'm not trying to keep going my this is where we were just trying to get away of the land of like you know what gr is your child currently in if you had multiple just tell us the youngest one because they will be the most impacted by any decision that we make with this so that's nice little pretty rainbow there we have a spread across the grades and then on a scale of one to five we ask them to rate their current experiences majority being n you know neutral some positives some negatives and then a note about
029this one there was an error in the survey which I wrote so I take responsibility for that I had had on a scale you know scale one to five excellent to terrible but I forgot to put the one through five in so the first hour or two that the survey was open we had a ton of respondents so this one is skewed a little bit but if you set those aside or you know distribute them across it falls in line with what our Educators describe to their students experience as well this is where we're asking families you know did you guys ever go to mul grad you know before we went there about half and half until slightly more that had attended and then on a scale of one to five how was it then
030many of them saying five was an excellent experience for them and then same thing here I screwed up my data but again it falls in line with um what we're seeing in across the other service what is nice I mean there are a couple points of disparity I think but for the most part across the various stakeholders that we surveyed we had very similar responses and and proportions of those responses top five factors to consider fewer start and end times this is again coming from the families siblings attending one building family familiarity with staff and other families children's respect to the school those were the most frequent responses then asking them again same question we asked that what do you think's best and again I left off intentionally K through six because I thought it
031was cost prohibitive so almost half saying K4 and then about a quarter with a pk4 and then current configuration with 177% should a change be deem necessary 83% went change now well I shouldn't say now but for next school year with 11% for the following year and then a smaller percentage the year after that all right Community responses uh just trying to get a sense of what role this person has in their responses is pretty open 41% being Community member others parent student so some people might have answered a couple surveys because it could but they identified little through that would you like schools to remain in current configuration 91% said no 8% said yes would you be in favor of returning to a multi-level schools 96% said yes 3.2% said no am I MA
032corre which configuration would you like to see created again to keep it consistent across I did not go up into sixth grade option we just kept it C four over half saying K4 second to that being prek4 so again the same Trends across all of our stakeholders we did not go into what factor should we consider just because we knew that this would be a wider range and we just opted not to have those opening responses student responses this is my favorite be honest with you so last week um Becky Lori and I all divided up and we went to different buildings I had the joy of visiting our four elementary schools and meeting with all of the students and so again these aren't tabulated but they are like we don't have a number on
033there to show you but most frequent responses are up top decreasing in frequency as they go down so things that they like about their schools are their teachers the learning they had lots of opinions on the playgrounds um they gave me lots of good ideas what can we do to make your school better more PE and PE every day I thought that one was almost consistently every group I spoke with said that um more space more time for play how do you feel about changing schools every other year the V like almost all of them said scared or nervous nerve-wracking missing your old you know people in Old buildings that didn't want to leave some did say they were excited and happy and looking forward to it we also talked about how you have a
034mixture of emotions and they kind of shared both of those they had positives and negatives I asked him how would you feel about staying in there a little bit longer the vast majority like to have more grades in a school they would like to see their teachers and principles and staff for longer they like the idea of going to school with their siblings and to have some older or youngers the older younger conversation it skewed more in favor of having buddies but bullying and you know that fear of it mixing with older students did come out in their responses and then here are just some notes as I went down um I already talked about that but I just had okay so then coolage and griggsby and I'm actually going to kick it over to
035the person that spoke with Co and griggsby so you can right right they they like getting to move they the benefits now they like moving from building to building because they got to meet more people their age so they would know more people in Granite City their age than if they were just in the same building for four or five years uh and then of course one of the students said if you get a bad reputation you get start over when you go to your new they might not know what they did at the last school um disadvantages their number one answer was anxiety every year that sometimes it's it's weeks or months before they feel comfortable in their new building rules are different at different buildings um it's hard for parents to get them
036I heard stories about ants that have to get up at a certain time to get one student there to another one and then different start and end times the students said that like they had at coolage that got out at 2:00 the parents just went to every school and picked everybody up regardless of if that child goes to griby till 3:45 they're getting picked up at 2:15 so they're missing the entire end of the day so that was a big deal uh can't see friends at different levels because you know if you knew somebody you're in fifth and sixth grade building and they've gone on poage you don't get to see them uh the long bus rides they didn't like they felt like there was more fights because everybody's the same age and it's like
037everybody's kind of like trying to show off for each other and then of course noisier I think that's the same okay all right and then um okay and then uh benefits of multi- level I really had to do some explaining here because they had no concept of what this was what what does that mean when you're all together they like it because obviously their number one was that they wouldn't have to move School so often they like the idea that their younger brother or sister was there cuz they could look out for them and then they said it would be nice to know the families in your neighborhood because a lot of them don't realize who lives one block away because they they may get on buses but they're they don't necessarily in their classroom
038so this way they get the normal families in their neighborhood older St students they like that about being patrols and reading buddies and so forth uh less competition at your grade level so he felt like you know you could stand out more uh better Behavior they thought that there would be less fights because you you have to show off for the younger kids you didn't want to like this do whatever uh same in start and end times they said that would be so much more convenient for their parents disadvantages of course they wouldn't get to meet as many people their age and then of course they were worried about their reputation following them right okay and then they did a vote and so so the fifth graders ended up voting for the current configuration and
039so did the seventh graders whereas the sixth graders and eighth graders both voted for Melty level school so it was it was a little bit both they they gave good insight though and then they also visit visited Lake and the high school and these are students that have had high school did most of them remembered freshmen were second graders when we went to the current configuration so they remembered having reading reading buddies and those things um the little bit older ones remembered they were fourth graders so they kind of remembered a pre a k through four option um so they uh oh I that was like first but uh Lake School was fifth through high school who we asked and they some of them like changing having new um a new reputation every other year
040fresh start um some did say it was kind of a good point they get to know other parts of the city like they get take the bus to the whole other side of the city so they see things they don't get to see um being together with a large number of students in the same grade all the way through school so like your 2027 class would have started together in second grade so those are some advantages disadvantage uh anxiety of a new school and adults every two years no Role Models um they're not with their siblings so consistency was kind of the over they were lack they felt like they lacked consistency um was anything else no that was was pretty in the high school same um they remembered having um Role Models um the
041K4 wasn't popular with the high school overall they like staying the same they did like the fifth and sixth grade option though they but that was just they felt like like I said if they started with a group of kids it was almost like your freshman class started together as fifth graders so you had that but um yeah I think the overall high school students felt the same way as community and same and they didn't one of them mention like a 5 through eight option they like that so they were all together so then we we surveyed the board office which would be District administrators but also any District staff um so here are some responses s again we try to keep questions the same for comparability between the different stakeholders so this is their
042perception of educational experiences currently for students 80% had worked in our previous model 20% had not of those that had worked in their previous model this was their perception of Education experiences for students in those multi-grade level schools and then important factors to consider same thing I mean again everybody the same same kind of thing you know like parents with families in multiple schools busing class sizes class siiz stability and how that will fluctuate these are all things we need to be considering as we move forward looking at the whole picture getting input from administrators basically everybody which is what we have I believe we have captured um has had an opportunity unless you were a kindergartener um and again I just kept this we don't have to go into the detail on that asking
043District admin which Attendance Center configuration do you view as best half 50% saying K4 again I kept the k6 option off because I thought it was cost prohibitive and second place in this case 40% going to the current configuration should a change be necessary when should it happen half staying 2526 which would be not this coming school year following school year 30% saying next school year and 20% saying in two years from now that's it so some takeaways from this now it's very clear that majority of our stakeholders and a very I say majority for the most part what change next year um our committee has met we've got we went over all this data in much more detail with superintendent can and also so what is he superintendent hired I mean not you know
044Donnie Dr Harris sorry for the informality um what is it hired appointed incumbent whatever anyway so we talked through scenarios options um and so we would like for the District administration and you know in coordination with M Dr Harris superintendent can to be looking at we're not saying specific model right now but we want to explore a k6 model because even though it wasn't shown on the survey because of cost things on my you know my perspective I think it's doable and I think it's something worth exploring um so when I say k6 I can also I think we also talk about pre6 as a possibility K4 and prek4 so those are four models that we're looking at now we don't we've taken our time with the survey because we want to make sure we
045got as much input from everybody as possible we also have to allow for our district administrators in addition to their daily job of running the district to have time to thoughtfully consider and weigh options to run lots and lots of numbers from redistricting to costs to Staffing to certifications and to everything else that we don't even think about in our first few brainstorm sessions and so we are setting a timeline of 25 26 for implementation which gives a year plus for everything to be rhun in terms of what are the scenarios we would honestly like just because we know the kind of implementation what kind of undertaking this is we would like to get a model set pretty soon you know because then we want to spend that time working on all the pieces of
046how can we make this happen we don't want this to be a oh here we're going to do this and everybody's going to move over the summer moving classrooms alone if anybody's ever been a teacher or in a CL a school one teacher having to move a classroom alone is an Endeavor and we're talking about a complete Paradigm overhaul in our district and so we have to give them time to allow that to happen this is not dragging feet this is you're asking for a team of District administrators working with the union with the teachers with the building administrators with all District staff to make this happen and completely overhaul our schools so we need to give them the time to do that and to do it well because if not we're going to be
047cleaning up a lot of mess and I've said all along and Miss Bradley and Miss Silva agree we want to get this right because this is what is good for our children and for our community and we don't want to end up with egg on our face and going back and trying to plug up some holes we want to do it right and so we're going to be thoughtful and purposeful in doing it we are going to continue to make progress on it though so we are asking you know Donnie and Stephanie are working on you know coordinating how this will work speaking with the administration um at the March you said March right the March board meeting so not two weeks from now come on let's be realistic okay um at the March board
048meeting we would like a sense of we what first a report of what's been done so far what's been discussed and we kind of just want a status check where are we in the very next few months we want to hone in on as soon as possible without rushing what model are we going to use and then from there we want to have goals set and a timeline set and then we will have monthly board updates in Open Session here it'll be a standing agenda item where I haven't designated the person I don't need to but they will decide who's going to give those updates so that way we can monitor that progress again I know many families in this community want change now and we hear that and we are responding to that but
049if you want your schools to be the best quality they can be you have to give people time to make that happen you don't want to rush situation because what will happen is you're not going to have any idea what bus your kid's going to ride you're not going to know what teacher or what school you're going to so I would like for you to manage your expectations a little bit we're not going to make this happen next school year we're already making hires for next school year on our current model it would be honestly negligent and foolish for us to do this and try to do it in for next year so that's why we're doing a year a year gives us that time one caveat I want to add in here though because
050all along it's been a K4 conversation or a prek conversation prek4 conversation and so so I ask and I've mentioned this to Donnie and to Stephanie let's talk in a little more depth with the teachers and the staff and then the administration at griggsby because I don't want them to feel like this is just something that we're throwing them I mean we effectively are I'll I'll own that but let's make sure we're getting their input on that as well or as we look at redistricting a couple things to keep in mind one I've said this a lot I'll say it again you are not going to have have a neighborhood school we are working with the buildings that we have right now because we have buildings that we can use and we will use okay
051if the District administration sees like maybe we need to build you know whatever you come to that with that information okay but we're trying to keep it as cost effective as possible okay so we hear stories of family saying look I drive past this school to go to take my kids to this school that can still very much happen your kids will still have bus timing because the busing it really doesn't have anything to do with the attendance centers the busing is about a staffing issue not and I'm not blaming bus drivers but until we have enough drivers to where we could change the model we have we're kind of stuck in the model we have we can always find ways to tweak it and make it better but again I'm trying to manage your
052expectations because I'm not going to promise you the universe and give you up you know um thirdly we say this and laor said it a lot too we have to really hone in on residency in terms of of where people are living in our town because as we redistrict we have to know where people are living and we have a highly mobile population in Granite City and we will continue to have a highly mobile population in Granite City but we need to know where people live we need people to approve their residency we need people to register because those numbers are going to be very important for this coming school year because that will inform a lot of the work that the District administration is doing I mean and I I said it before I
053I know we kind of go with people lived in this house for 20 years and stuff but I can tell you I know families that have moved but they didn't bother to change your address because it really didn't matter what school they were going to somebody's driving them to school anyway so they are they don't live where they are and we can't afford to base our boundaries on where we think people live we have to do a residency check like we did in the old days bring in your stuff show us that you really live there because maybe people are going to update their records then somebody could be living in South Carolina and get the emails and stuff and send back it's just it's it has to be done our boundaries have to be
054accurate especially as far as how many students we have in each boundary so that's a lot of information to process there's a lot of work to be done there will be lots of questions that come up let's continue to keep an open dialogue and go to the source if you have concerns or questions I think building principles are always a good place to start they can relay information too if you have other questions our information is posted online um and I'm excited I mean it's we're about to take on something very big and there's probably a lot of anxiety in this room and Beyond but I do want to say something changes hard but it's it's for a good reason I I'm an alternate on the committee so the only thing I did was help
055with the data and stuff but I want people to know I read every comment on every teacher said that every family said and I've had sleepless nights just listening to what parents have to go through every every single day aunts and uncles that are picking up kids and taking them here and cousins so thank you thank you thank you to everybody that filled out the survey and gave us their input because they're giving us a lot of insight and especially to those grandmas and grandpas and aunts and uncles and cousins that are helping getting the kids to the schools one we year and we won't have to do this again so hang in there guys please that's it thank you thank you very much A lot of people are happy atnel um well with that
056uh no executive session um and we have no executive session from the last board meeting so nothing to approve uh the next meeting will be February 27th 2024 right here and do we have a motion to adour all right yeah okay basketball