CCSD 46 Board of Education Meeting: June 4th, 2025

001We're going to go ahead and get the meeting started. This is the board of education meeting for Community Consolidated School District 46, Wednesday, June 4th at 6 PM here at Frederick School. I need a call to order and a roll call, please. Mac here. Braden, here. Nash absent, Halverson absent, Hume here, Miller here, and Weedman here. Very good. We have Please join me for the pledge. to the flag of the United States of America and to the standice for all. Thank you. I need a motion to approve the agenda for this evening, please. I'll move. I'll second. Okay. Miller I Mac I Weedman Braden I Hume I Okay, do we have any public comments signed up down there? Uh no, not yet. Okay. All right. That brings us to our presentation of the evening, which

002is the sustainability task force. I will hand it over to Mrs. Miller and our wonderful guests who join us this evening. Okay. Um, first of all, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We have so much to do when it comes to running the business of the district. And I was thinking about why I was grateful for this district today and many days. And what struck me is that the form of this room um is a circle. And so the people who care about kids, the people who have dedicated their lives to children sit in this room. And what a privilege it is to be part of that circle. There's something powerful about living in a country where someone like us, like any of us, can get up and advocate on behalf of children.

003So I'm so grateful for each one of you. I don't think it's an accident that you are sitting in the chair that you're sitting in right now. In this community, when we have a big issue, something that we need to tackle. None of us can do it alone. We put it in the middle of this circle and we wrestle with with it so that we can protect the lives of children so that we can protect learning and their health and our community too. So, thank you for being with me. Today um is the culmination of several weeks, several hours of work in a task force that we agreed in November to convene. We passed a sustainability resolution and we decided that we were going to tackle climate change and look at sustainability as a community.

004And again, I'm so grateful. So today we're going to give you the results of our work. I'm going to start by explaining a little bit about the greenhouse effect just to ground us in what's happening in terms of the climate and then I'll pass it on to the other members of our task force. Some of whom are behind me, some of whom are in this audience, some of whom are sitting at the table right now and then we'll end with questions if you have anything that you want clarification on. All right. So, what's happening right now? We've got an accumulation of greenhouse gases in the environment. If you look on the left hand side, you'll notice that these greenhouse gases accumulate as a result of natural processes in which our water and our land deposit

005greenhouse gases and then they're reabsorbed in a beautiful cycle that has kept us alive and comfortable for the most part for millennia until about 1980. And in 1981ish um sorry a little bit before that in the industrial age we started using fossil fuels. We use them to power our to power our trains, our trucks, our buses. We use them to advance medical care and to reduce hunger. And those are really valuable things, but as any economist will tell you, there's trade-offs for that because when we use fossil fuels, we inject them into the atmosphere, but they're not reabsor. And that's what the slide on the right is showing. Those that accumulation of greenhouse gases results in a blanket that's getting thicker and that's trapping heat on the planet. And that Heat is becoming untenable to

006us. How do we know this? We know it because 97% of the world's global climate the global world 97% of climate scientists around the world agree that this is a result of fossil fuel use. And how do they know? Because they monitor climate indicators. And those indicators are listed at the right. We're pretty familiar with the climate extremes and the increase in them. If you were part of the move a school in five days, then you're acutely aware of the impact of extreme weather on our district. And what are our climate scientists telling us? If you look on the left, they're telling us that temperatures are increasing. And in 1981, the rate of increase has become pretty steep. They also other climate scientists look at another indicator accumulation of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, methane

007and nitrous oxide. And we also see a parallel increase at just about the same time that temperatures are increasing. And I looked at a whole bunch of other things and realized that there's a relationship between these and we have control over that relationship. And I know some of you know this already, but I wanted to ground this in our this work that climate scientists have done and the work that we're doing. So, thank you for that review. How will it impact us? How is it impacting us? I love this graph. It talks just about drought. There's certainly many, many other impacts, but this shows that in the United States, the percent area that is impacted by drought is increasing over time. in the past 25 years. You can see the bright yellow shows where it's

008just abnorm abnormally dry and the maroon shows where we are experiencing extreme drought in our country. And what gives me hope about this, as scary as it looks, because it looks like fire, doesn't it? I think that was intentional. Um, what gives me hope is that little blip in 2019 and 2020 when we had a pandemic that hurt many people in many ways and caused learning loss and a whole bunch of terrible But what it did do is slow us down. And that meant and that shows that the earth can regenerate if we allow it to. And that means there's hope. So what are we doing about this? The UN is putting out report after report after report after report. They're doing their work. Those climate scientists are telling us in the summary for policy

009makers that we need rapid, unprecedented policy action globally. And we need it now. What they're saying is that 30 33 we have a 33% chance of lowering the accumulated greenhouse gases which are currently at about 57 gigatons of carbon dioxide equivalent. We have to get that down to 41 and we have to do it in the next 5 to 10 years. And some scientists are saying that in order to avoid the worst impacts of a 1.5 degree increase, we have to do it actually soon within three to five years. So there's time and we have opportunity and again many of you know this already but there's public education has huge opportunity because that report says that there are mitigation potentials in energy in land management in building transport and industry and we control the decisions

010around a lot of that every single person. So, what's going on in Illinois and in public education? We have climate literacy legislation that's been passed and we have a pathways program that's pretty exciting. I met with Gina Skyler just to understand what it is and how it works. I'm just going to read her words and how this is impacting 127. It says it's a process. The pathway program is a national program and a process by which students have access to internships and career exploration opportunities. These internships and opportunities are aligned with coursework and combined into seven pathways and sustainability is woven into each one of them each one of the endorsed pathways so that students can see that sustainability is a shared responsibility across every single we know that isby the Illinois school board is

011someone help me Illinois school board ISBY what's the Thank you. The Illinois School Board of Education, thank you. Um has created a framework for this process and D127 is actively creating partnerships across our community. So there's all kinds of opportunities for our kids and these provide again internships, coursework, and meaningful opportunities that make their education relevant. And in our district, we passed a sustainability resolution. Our board said sustainability is a key consideration in the next strategic plan. and we're going to develop targets to make sure that we do our part. So, there's all kinds of exciting stuff going on in our district other than those than what the board has done and that deserves some attention. So, I'm going to pass it on now to the other members of the task force. They've done three

012things. They've defined sustainability. We've explored policies, programs, and initiatives that exist already. And we've al we've also explored the funding mechanisms that have also been um are currently in place. and then they're going to challenge us a little bit and then we're going to hear a little bit from some comm potential community partners and what they're doing and how our work overlaps. So right now I'm gonna pass it on to Jess. Thank you. Yes. As you know, the task force met four different times and splitting into smaller groups during those one-hour meetings. And the task force members often read materials or watched videos ahead of time. And then during the meeting, we would talk a little bit about that information that had been pre-shared. But most of the meeting time was spent analyzing data together

013and conversing in small groups so that we could focus on that goal for that meeting. After three of the four task force meetings, the board of education meeting with all of you followed and the board suspended Robert's rules of orders so that we could temporarily go into the media center next door. There you got a chance to see visual representations of what the task force group had worked on earlier that night. You also had the opportunity to converse quickly with uh members of the small groups and ask questions. And a beautiful thing about those um meetings suspension of the board meeting and going in there was that a lot of uh students and community members were also in attendance. So it increased our community engagement particip participation in this process. As you may recall by

014the end of the first task force meeting the task force had generated four definitions of sustainability. And as you can see on this slide, those four definitions share several common elements. All of them mention and reference now and future generations. They three of the four mention environment, society, people community, and the economy. The definitions include verbs with similar positive connotations. We've got words like support, achieve, benefit, educate, thrive, and steward. And then two of the definitions give specifics that align with the UN's sustainable development goals. And on the next slide, you can see where we sought to combine those four definitions into one definition that honors the thinking of the whole group or the large group, the task force, and reflects the task force task force's best judgment. I'll let you read that. Um, I'll

015read it out loud, too. Sustainability thinking provides a foundation for responsible use, protection, and management of resources to support current and future generations. This is achieved through the use of renewable energy sources, responsible environmental practices, resource conservation, waste reduction, and healthy environments. And next, Dion is going to talk about what policies, programs, and initiatives the district is currently doing. Thank you, Jessica. Another area of focus, excuse me, for the sustainability task force or um the policies, programs, and initiatives currently in place. In reviewing numerous policies, we rated them using the Skullville spiciness scale. Generally meaning that generally meaning that a policy would be classified as mild, medium or spicy as the wording would relate to sustainability using the focus areas of leadership and constituent engagement, commitment to resources, timeline for change transformation, and implementation and

016accountability. For example, as you can see on the slide, a review of the policy for green cleaning products, as stated, would be deemed mild. The policy does not specifically state who and where the products are used and does not indicate a timeline to implement the policy. While we found much of the language in the current policy to be mild or somewhat medium, we concluded several policies do align with the new definition of sustainability, but would benefit from more direct wording. For example, on the other side of the same slide, you can see the wording of the current policy that could be updated to reference the compost program that has already been implemented in a dis in the district. A consideration to the su success of this initiative is that it had someone to champion the

017initiative and that inspired more buyin at each building in staff, students, and volunteers. Again, by updating and by updating policy with firmer wording that focuses the leadership commitment, timeliness, and implementation areas would further the commitment of the district to the new definition of sustainability. So what exists now in the current district policies which we found in positive which we found positive in relation to the new sustainability definition when considering many such topics as nutrition, transportation and energy efficiency. We found a large portion of the current policy had aligned with the new definition of sustainability but mainly in mild language. We also found that many of the policies had further potential to overlap. For example, policy 895, parent involvement, and policy 4160, environmental quality of buildings and grounds, were found to have large overlap potential. As

018the garden coordinator for Woodview School, I can attest to the momentum there is for land management that involves student, faculty, and community involvement, particularly regarding outdoor learning, green, and garden spaces. Such initiatives have momentum linked to several board policies affecting multiple stakeholders, thus impacting the triple bottom line. To conclude, we found the next step would be to evaluate current policies to align with the new definition of sustainability and look for more opportunities to inspire change. Now, I'd like to introduce Shannon and Larkin to discuss the funding mechanisms. I'm not Shannon or Lin. There you go. Yes, I do. So, all of these policies are great, but they're not enough. First off, we need to understand two things. We need to understand the why of this. We need to understand why we're trying to reduce greenhouse

019emissions and why we're trying to better our earth because it's better for everyone. And the how is that we need allin thinking. We need everyone to be concerned and we need everyone to be ready to actually enact change. And practical practically we need to increase our resource and knowledge of the actual events going on in our community. And then we need to fund when necessary through this. We need to rethink the three Rs that were from the past in the 70s. Reduce, reuse, and recycle. But those are great, but they don't fit our current needs. We have the new system coming out pretty much today of the five Rs. refuse, reduce, reuse, remanufacture, and recycle and repurpose. These are useful because it changes our way of thinking from just reduce, reuse, recycle. And it opens

020up much more things that can be reputed into our system or made manageable in our community where we don't have to compill. And through this with our community, we get the idea of a shared economy or the circular economy, which Shannon will introduce. Thanks, Lurin. Um, I'm standing here going, this is not the best time to insist that I don't need glasses because I can barely see the slides. Um, so bear with me. Um, so yeah, the uh transition from the three Rs to the five Rs sort of way of thinking um ties directly into circular economy, right? Um if you're unfamiliar with what a circular economy is or another term uh which is cradleto cradle, another way of looking at how products and services move through our system of use. Um it begins with

021refusing. If you don't need to purchase something, don't purchase it. If you don't need to use something, don't use it. What happens when when you refuse to buy something? it doesn't get made. Uh waste doesn't go into the air, water, land, etc. Um and you can actually save money. So we'll go into f funding mechanisms in a little bit. Um a lot of the times when people say sustainability is great, but we can't afford it. It's so expensive to make these changes, to make these upgrades, etc., etc. Um, true if you want to continue to live a certain way or produce a certain way or to move a certain way. Um, but if you slow down like Christy said earlier, you can actually keep your funds. You don't necessarily need to look for new funding

022mechanisms. So, let me get back on track with the slides here. Uh, circular economy cradleto cradle way of thinking begins with inputs, your raw materials, right? You make something um you distribute it, it goes through its useful life process and then the end of life um that's typically when things are going into uh landfills, right? Or um maybe into our environment. Circular economy includes responsible sourcing of products too. It's not just um buying something uh on Amazon, say in China, having it shipped here, using it, and then trying to reduce or reuse it here. It's um it's about sourcing from companies that understand that they need to have responsible manufacturing practices as well. Um so for example, renewable energies to produce it, etc. uh and and practices, information, and policies on how to uh dispose

023of the item or reuse the item when you are done, when it breaks down. Um, so you want to keep existing products for as long as possible. Hopefully, they're made really well instead of really cheaply. You probably heard about fast fashion, things like that. When your shirt goes through five washes, microplastics go into the water that go into our drinking water systems, and you have to buy a new shirt that comes from thousands of miles away. That's fast fashion. Uh so keeping existing products for as long as possible. Hopefully we're having um better quality or we're turning things into new products. Uh we want to design out waste and pollution regenerate as part of a circular economy and that ideation is um about not only you know having little impact little negative impact on our

024environment but it's also about making it better. Um, an example of that is taking uh a backyard and turning it from turf grass into native plants, planting a couple native trees, things like that. Um, because not only are you improving your local ecology, you're pulling CO2 from the air. Um, use of natural systems whenever possible. Biomimicry is another term for this um, the sort of behavior. Composting is a great example. Actually, community composting is a even better example. Composting machines are wonderful, but you still have to make the composting machines. And then what do you do with them when they break down, right? Oh, is this you lock in? Here you go. I'm not tall. There we go. Now, we go into what we're actually doing as a community here. The things that are actually

025happening currently. And a lot of this stuff is better to better our community, but it is not happening on a very large scale like the collections for electronics to be recycling, separating out the mother motherboard from the wires and recycling that to create a new, which is an example of repurposing recycle, which is great, but it's still happening on a small scale scale. The same thing with the carbon capture device from D127 where it's only in one school. It's only in Grey Lake North and it's taking carbon out of the air and taking it from the off gases that happen in the school and then making it into the carbon compound that you find in soap, sending that all the way up to Canada, which more emissions to get it all the way up there

026and then making it into a sellable product. It's great in theory, but in practice it is adding more waste to our system rather than trying to take so much away. A lot of these examples are happening currently, but they need to be expanded upon and they need to be bettered because when we have all of these small things happening, it's going to lessen the impact than if we're going to do all of these things largely or a couple of these things largely where it can be bettered in future generations because it will have more of a long-lasting impact if you do a lot of lot of things in a large way rather than all of these tiny things because it's not going to add up in the long run. And for these opportunities, Shannon is

027going to tell us more. Um, so opportunities for we've labeled these examples um to sort of fit with our circul circular economy and the five Rs uh examples that we had or pictures um that we had earlier. So I'll kind of explain them a little bit. um solar expansion, community solar investment in geothermal energy um if possible. It's a little bit more a lot actually a lot more of an investment up front, but in the long run, you save a lot of money and it doesn't actually take that long. The payback period is fairly short. Um solar expansion's great. So, solar panels are wonderful. Community solar is better because you have one place where it's being made and everybody can draw on what is produced there rather than making more solar panels for everyone uh

028to have. You can tap in without the panels on your own home or in your own yard. Um that's an example of reuse because we're reusing natural energy if that makes sense to you. Um retrofitting with LEDs. So a lot of buildings have already done this. I think a lot of our schools do uh quite a bit of this already but expand if you can. Um BAS for HVAC let's see if I remember BAS is building help me. Thank you. So a smart system building automation system. Thanks everybody. uh reduce your use of um of energy, right? Smart systems would include uh automated light systems, for example. Um community card garden expansion, awareness around local farmers markets, etc. Uh reuse, we categorize that in um community use of um a product. Sometimes it doesn't really

029make sense, but if you think about it, if you're using the land for multiple families, a community garden, uh that's reuse. It's like a shared community. It's a shared um system. So, community garden expansion, people can tap into locally grown, hopefully organic food um instead of needing to have something shipped. A lot of the times if you want organic, it's got to come from California um or other places that are pretty far away. Strengthening our connections and partnerships between institutions is part of a healthy communities um or shared system. That's going to uh that's going to help us not reinvent the wheel, I guess. Um so if somebody's already doing something, we can tap into what they're already doing, a system that maybe is already created. And then a greater awareness and partnership with Swalco.

030Um Swallo is the solid waste agency of Lake County. I bet everybody in here knows that, but if you don't, they're amazing. They're an amazing resource if you're trying to figure out how to dispose of something. There's a lot of really weird things that we use that we don't want to get rid of, right? Um you don't want to say you can't use this, but how do you responsibly dispose of it? Lin, I'm forgetting. Is this yours or is this me? Markin, take it away. So, all of these things that we're already doing, we there's a lot of things that can be catalyzed and furthered like the awareness of the climate crisis throughout our entire community. We need people to be scared because this is going to directly affect the next generation and even this

031generation. We need people to be aware of it and how the costsaving and efficiency can build up over time. Just because you're spending one thing right now doesn't mean it's not going to save you in the long run because a healthy earth is a happy community. We also need to keep in mind that the more people you teach about this like through the opportunities through multiple different communities and places like Liberty Prairie as you teach people other people teach people. A fun way to win that up leaders teach leaders. The more people that know about this and teach other people about this the more people are going to be concerned. So the best way to catalyze this impact and make it better for our future generation is to uplift students and to get people knowledgeable

032of what's happening on our community and what can be done. And through that I'm going to transition over to who's the dean of the charter school for Liberty Prairie. Thanks friends. We are all engaged in world changing work and you cannot change the world alone or at least you can do a whole lot more if you work together. So as you heard my name is Naomi Hersheiser. I'm the dean of sustainability at Prairie Crossing Charter School. Um and at Prairie Crossing we have years of experience and expertise in education for sustainability and place-based and outdoor learning. Both of these things research shows increase students academic achievement and social emotional outcomes. And to us, it is important that every student be given the opportunity and every teacher and faculty member as well be given the opportunity

033to spend their days in a healthy and sustainable school. And so all schools should be working together towards this common goal. I would love for our communities to explore ways that we could partner that would allow us to improve the education that all our children receive and to improve the world as a whole. We could explore professional development partnerships and collaborative learning experiences for our teachers. We could partner in service learning opportunities that bring students together to learn from each other and from the community and allow them to feel empowered as citizens of planet Earth. Or we could explore other ways to work together. I don't know what it's going to look like, but ultimately we're all here to provide the best educational opportunities for our students. And sustainability, it's relevant. It's authentic. It's integrated

034and it's incredibly important in terms of assuring that our students are prepared for the world that they will live in as adults and indeed that the world that they will live in as adults is livable. I hope that we can explore ways to engage in this meaningful and important work together. And now I'm going to pass it to Karen to talk about more potential partnerships. Thanks Nate. Uh hi, I'm Karen Wilks. I'm the executive director at Liberty Prairie. Um we are working to become Lake County's learning farm. Um so this is a really exciting conversation that um is going on here. Um I'm celebrating three years in the community of Grace Lake and I am so excited to be part of such an innovative community that is working together for big change and big outcomes

035for our students. Um that slide back a little bit ago where it said it's allin thinking. This is an example of all-in thinking. Um so um we are D127's agricultural pathway. So, Liberty Prairie is the D127 agricultural pathway. We are in our third year of that. We are a district-wide initiative that's actually at the like approved at the budget state level. We're the first of its kind in the state. Um we're having amazing student outcomes. Uh Larkin is one of um one of the students that have come through the programs. They are super inspiring. Um young people are reporting that they want to make a change in the world, but they don't have the skills and the experience to do so. So, we're excited to be a component of that part and we're looking forward

036to other ways that we can do that. Um, we keep teasing that we're working on trying to make Lake County the healthiest county in the nation and there actually is a metric for that. Um, right now we're number 199. So, that's pretty good in the plentiful counties that there are, but we can go up. Um, and so when we're thinking about what does this mean for students or what kind of opportunities or what kind of partnerships, it's kind of hard to imagine uh what that looks like. So, I brought a little video with me. Uh, it's 37 seconds. Um, if you have questions or thoughts about it, I'd love to hear them. But may I have you play the video, please? So words that have been thrown around here today are regenerative. We're a regenerative

037farm. We're an organic farm. We're 95 acres right here in your backyard. We're the farm in Prairie Crossing. We have a farm store also in the Prairie Crossing station square. We grow organic produce. You can find it there. But there's also 42 farms within 300 miles. So, we're working on how can we bring food and solutions closer. How can we expand timelines in the way we're thinking about that? And how can we collaborate together? Um, we're working on regional food system work. We're working on hands-on learning. and we'd love to partner more deeply with you in any kind of way. And here's our mayor. Thank you for including me in this important work. So, I appreciate the opportunity to share a little bit of the initiatives that the village has embarked upon over the years.

038If I can think you advance this for me. All right, there we go. Um and so one of the main tenants I think of uh what we have embarked upon in the village is really kind of empowering our residents really to kind of have a greater and greener impact on the village. So we have a limited amount of impact as a as a silo as a municipality. Um we have an x amount of land but when we incorporate all of our residents and what everybody owns our ability to impact our greater environment is much larger. So one of the big tenants of our programs really is how do we exponentially grow our impact? And so it really is kind of an empowering residents program. And so we have a number of resident sustainability programs and

039these are programs that would be available to district 46 for usage. So we have um we fund each of these programs. We have a certain amount of funding that goes into it. The residents would get kind of the first priority of that. And when we've looked at that from our tree planting program to our um electric lawn equipment to, you know, we have a culde-sac partnership. If those u monies go unused, that would definitely be something that we could be able to use. school district um in that impact or we could look at those different reasons. So, I just kind of want people to a be aware of it from a personal perspective, right? Something that we can continue to push, but also a partnership with district 46 when you talk about the ability to

040impact. And so, that is something as an educator that I always see is the ability to really change and shape minds for the future, right? The reduce, reuse, recycle is probably ingrained into all of our minds from the educational system. And so, um, the five Rs and the expansion upon that is a really great opportunity and these programs really are something that, um, uh, you know, this this teaching residence really has been a core part of like our sustainability strategy, right? And so, um, we've got our through our I just I'm sorry. Sorry. There we go. I look at this a little longer, but um, really, you know, the empowering through education, right? And then we have um our uh reduced reusing uh recycling that we have at our uh Grace Lake Sustainability Campus. So,

041a great story I always like to tell is that a little while back the state ran out of funding for electronics recycling and that was something that they were no longer going to offer. And so, um the village of Grace Lake actually used our Berry Street recycling center to do electronics recycling for the entire county. So, I think it's a really great success story for us to really show that we've really stepped up and taken a leadership role when it comes to this stuff. Um, we are developing something that's uh down by the countryside landfill, which is called the green campus. And so, those services will now be moved with Swalco to that space. So, we've carried the work in the heat of the day and that is being moved over to a more countywide

042uh more countywide piece. And so, um, the partnerships that we've had with Swalco is I think a really lasting one. Um, we've had great partnerships along the way. We are a charter member of Swalco. So the village of Grace Lake is really an initiative of the one of the initiators of that group and we've been a leader in that group since its inception. We were the first community in Lake County to do curbside recycling and we were one of the first two communities to do the curbside composting program. So when we talk about um successes and things that we've had, I think it's a really important piece for us to be proud of as a community. And I especially am really proud of the partnership that we've embarked upon with district 46 um and the

043uh composting that happens in the lunchrooms. Um so that work that you guys have done is really just amazing. The statistics on the waste divers diversion and then the methane gas that's diverted from what you guys have done is really exceptional. Not to mention the impact you're having on students. So, um, we as a village are always looking for partnerships, partnerships without the county and partnerships within our own community and are very excited about the opportunity to continue the partnership and help in the goals that have been discussed. And so, thank you very much for a third one. I think that these got flipped somehow in the um in the piece, but um just kind of this was what I was hoping was coming next, but uh this is some of the pieces that we

044offer as well when it comes to the reduction in stream, which is another one of our major focuses. So as a reduction um being very close to the landfill as we all know we are um we very aware of needing to reduce the impact that's there and so that's been a really big piece of it and just that historical uh commitment that we've had and that we hope to be able to continue. Um I'm really proud to be a part of this community and was really happy to be invited to be a part of it and really want to thank Christie for envisioning it and inviting all of us into this group. So, thank you for the work. So, thank you. I know that we have a meeting in front of us and much district

045business to do. Climate change is just it's huge and there's so many partners in front of us right now. I know many of you already know a lot of this information. I know some of you are already engaged with what's going on at 127 and other partnerships. But again, just want to um thank you for committing to setting targets and making this part of our sustainability or I'm sorry, start part of our strategic plan so that we can make sure that we can not distract our staff so that they're not working um on projects that aren't reflected clear so that they're not reflect we're not asking them to do things outside of what our strategic plan already suggests. We've already done that and there's so much we can build on. So, I'm just so grateful

046to be a part of this conversation and also appreciate that we spent this time focused on it. At this point, do you have any questions? What have we missed? I have a bunch, but I have to process it a little bit. I hear you. So that just to think through some of the notes that I have. I I explain to everyone if no one has questions it's just an indicator that people are processing. I think the one thing though that I take away from the presentation I'll just share that as I noted down here is that idea of all-in thinking uh which is a really interesting way of looking at it but I've never considered that term before and I think that's important if we're moving in that direction. The all-in thinking is something that

047has to and you and I talked about the pathway programs because those exist within educational um you know communities and that those are highly effective programs to get students engaged in these types of projects clearly. So, I've got I know that I'll touch base with you, but but there's a lot to unpack. I've got their emails, too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Please, because Yeah. Now, appreciate I know uh many of you put in hours and were here and had conversations with us out on the media center and um really appreciate you bringing us all this to digest and think about as we head into strategic planning next year. So, um hopefully we'll see you all there as well as we really dive into what's next for the district. So, thank you so much. I'm

048going to jump back in because I think the most important thing too is to talk about what what are these possible partnerships? I know we've listed a whole bunch, but how do we continue to engage those and really electrify those into something that's, you know, that's that's more than just a list that we see at regular presentations, right? Like what what are the engagements with the village, right? What are the engagements with D127, right? I mean, our boards generally operate very separately. So, how do we how do we get that merge better, you know, in our in the work that we all do as boards? Um, I could go on, but I'll stop. Yeah. Are you lin are you? Um that was just it was just another observation just like what you know like some

049of those things you know how do we continue to build upon those partnerships and increase the partnerships with the village and with some of the things you know I mean the the village is going to continue to expand businesses and opportunities too. How do we connect with those future opportunities and make sure that we're you know looking at the lens through that as those things come into the village. What can we do with them? What can we do with the 127? Those are larger questions that that we don't have to unpack now, but things that I'm thinking of. Thank you. Um, and I just wanted to add building off of what Stephen said is that one of the things that I know came up in the discussions is that D46 expands beyond Grace Lake and

050so that there may be opportunities to work with the other communities um that the district serves as well. Thank you very very much. Thank you. I just want to extend my thank you to the people who have shown up um hour after hour, day after day, not only at our task force, but also in our schools, in our school yards, in our community. So, thank you very much to everyone in this room. Yeah. Okay, as Mrs. Miller makes her way back over the table, this moves us into our board report section of this evening's board meeting. I can start down here with Mrs. Hume, if you have any anything to share for board report tonight or or nothing. I do not. Thank you. Mrs. Braden. Um, quick thank you to uh everyone who made D46

051eighth grade graduation happen successfully on Sunday. Um, it went really well. The sound system worked. The chairs on the stage were comfy. So, if you were there and moved some things around, made it happen, brought your band, um, you know, read names, staff, um, our our custodial staff particularly, but also teachers who showed up on a Sunday to make this really special for our graduates. Um, thank you so much. I thought it went really well. Um, and then I also wanted to mention that, um, the Grey's Lake Pride parade is Sunday. So, um, D46 will be out. Um and whether you come and join us walk or just come and watch and um enjoy what's sure to be a joyful day in the village. Uh we'll look forward to seeing you there. And since uh

052Miss Nash isn't here, is there anyone else who wants to put in a plug for Junth or should I do that? Are you going to do that? I'm going to let Dr. Cliffman do it because she probably knows more than me, but I just didn't want it to get forgotten. And that's at noon, right? It starts at the parade. Pride starts at noon. Two blocks. So get there. Yeah. before 12:15. I will echo what Mrs. Braden said. I was going to, you know, congratulate again the class of 2025 and thank all the staff um who were there and made it possible. Also, congratulations to all the recent retirees of District 46. We were honored to be part of the the celebration the other day uh as we honored a list of really accomplished educators um

053that are that are heading out to enjoy some well-deserved retirements. So, congratulations to them as well. I did have to share too as well, was was it last week, I can't remember now, last week or the week before that we did our um annual board um self-evaluation workshop and so we like to share that here publicly. We get together as a board of course, you know, regularly for professional development opportunities throughout the year and things that we study and read and attend. But this one is through the Illinois Association of School Boards. Um and we've done this annually for some time now, I think. And it is a it it's this it's the schoolboard self-evaluation workshop. And so we get together and we talk about how we are doing. Um just to kind of really

054it's it's really a reflective workshop. Uh so so putting this out on the public meeting here is to let the public know that you know um sitting on the board is an honor that has been entrusted to us by the voters and we take it seriously when we consider time to reflect on how we are doing as a board with that charge of stewardship that was given to us during the election. So we talked about you know what what our goals have been. Have we reflected on how we did in the past year or two? some of the things we'd like to see going forward in terms of different categories of board learning is our policy, you know, do we need to do more work on policy? Do we need to do more work on

055meeting structure? Those types of things and reflecting on how what you know, what what knowledge we are all bringing to the board. Um, so just wanted to share that as a recent update for any members of the public that are interested in what we do do um to self reflect on what we do. Um, and That's it. That's all I have. Mr. Miller, I just wanted to add my congratulations to all of our eighth grade graduates and their families. I think my favorite moment of I'm going to put you on the spot, Dr. Lorenzo. But my favorite moment in graduation was watching you welcome, I think his name is Jason, to the podium. Um, I just love being part of a community that welcomes makes space for all kinds of kids. And so it was

056great to see him receive his diploma. So, for that. Um, also congratulations to our retirees. I'll echo Dr. Mack and just wanted to highlight that that was one of the best retirement celebrations I've ever been to. Our principles, they were amazing. So, please thank them on our wonderful. It's just amazing to watch them celebrate the people they so clearly care about. And I also want to offer my thanks to Dr. Glickman. I think it is telling when all the principles of seven different well eight different schools um are coming together and and working no seven schools. Thank you. Um seven principles when they come together and there's so much cohesion and so much humor and fun I think that speaks to you. So thank you Mr. Leman. Okay. Okay. That brings us to the superintendent

057report. Dr. Lukeman. Thank you, Dr. Mack. Um, yes, I can speak about the um pride parade which will be happening. Excuse me. Well, we talked about the pride parade already which will be this weekend. Also, we have the um freedom walk, the celebration of freedom walk on Junth, and that will be occurring from 5 to 7 p.m. Um it starts at the Grace Lake Public Library and then moves through Central Park and ends at the Grace Lake Heritage Center and Museum. There will be food, there will be music, there will be a timeline walk through history, and the a mobile museum for tolerance will be there that evening as well. So, should be a really nice late afternoon evening to be together. Um, I'm going to hand this over to Mrs. Peler to talk about

058our media center. Yes. So, as Mrs. Guck shared um we have completed three rounds of our user group meetings at Meadow View, Prairie View, Frederick, and Park. Um during this process, principles, media specialists, and teachers met with Wold to share feedback and make adjustments to the media center plans. Um last week, we were able to have two student user groups, which as I shared earlier today was one of my favorite days this year. um where eighth graders um from GMS and Park were able to um share their feedback and input on the media center designs and come up with some really neat themes and ideas um to incorporate in there. So, um W will be coming back in July to share a more full update, I'm gonna say, but it has been an exciting process

059so far. Thank you, Mrs. Clark. summer school. Yeah. So, while we were, you know, happy to send off our students yesterday, we have a lot of students coming back on Monday next week on June 9th to start summer school. Um, so I just wanted to share with you summer school is from June 9th to July 3rd, Monday through Thursday. No school on June 19th. Um, and we have 95 students that are attending um extended school year. We have 76 students that are attending our title one bridges program and we have 223 students attending our adalante program. Um all of our programs will be at park this summer. So um really excited to welcome our students back on Monday. Um and then we also have um some students that are will be attending the Illinois Virtual

060Schools and Academy summer boot camp as well. Um, and that was available to all of our students that were just finishing kindergarten through seventh grade. So excited for them as well. Can't wait to see them. Um, all right. A few weeks ago, I had my annual meeting with the guardian teacher advisory committee board. As a reminder, this is a committee that I meet with at least yearly, if not more often, to talk about um the discip discipline procedures and policies of our school district, talk about how all that's been going and see if there are any tweaks that we should be making to the way we do things and ultimately in our uh student handbook. So, we had that meeting a few weeks ago. It was another really great meeting. We had participation from all

061schools that included staff and parents and administrators kind of throughout the district. Um we started really with a celebration which was talk to talk about student cell phones. Uh you may remember this time last year I did a big presentation for you because we were looking at big changes which was banning students cell phones and we had all kinds of procedures in place for how to do it and then we held our breath a little bit and my goodness did that roll out go well. Um across the board every parent who was in the on the committee, teachers on the committee, administrators all said, "Yeah, it's it's been a non-event." Um, our students are extremely compliant with the cell phones. We're gonna get back to a butt in a moment. Okay, so just hold that

062out for yourself for a moment. That sounds um we are um awaiting a potential new state law that would be banning uh cell phones throughout the state at school in schools. We don't know for sure if that'll come through or not, but if it does, if there are any changes that we need to make to our procedures and ultimately our student handbook, we'll let you know, but as is, we're not making any changes right now to the way we're doing that. Um, here is the butt. But smart watch use is on the rise. So, um, one of the things that we're seeing is that some of our older students are really, um, using their smart watches. I'll display mine. Um, which has made many comments to me during this meeting already. Um, so students too

063are using those as replacements for their smartwatches and kind of seeing messages come through. We did make it clear in our um procedures that students cannot be communicating with smartwatches throughout the day and parents cannot be communicating with their children throughout the day. However, we are seeing it happen. In fact, it's also happening at third and fourth grade. We're seeing kind of an increase there with those um I can't remember what they're called, but the kind of smart watches that people can buy for their kids that don't even have a um have a phone attached to them. I think you know what they are. So, um students are having those and then maybe disappearing into the bathroom and calling their parents and saying, "Come pick me up." And we don't know anything about it, right?

064they go down to the office and say, "My parents are picking me up, but the child has never been to the office to talk to the nurse." Those kinds of things continue to happen. So, we know we have to work on that. One of the things we talked about is that when this matter is addressed, it stops. So, when we tell our students, hey, you can't be doing that. And when we call parents when it's happening, that has made a difference. So, the one change we're making right now is making an to our student handbook. We're just adding a sentence that say that says staff may confiscate student smart watches if they are used during the school day. So, um we're hoping that that sentence will strengthen our staff belief that they can address the

065matter and we'll keep working on that. If in the future we have to actually ban smartwatches, we'll talk about that. So, we want to see how next year goes. It's also possible that if the governor does um well, if if a law is passed in Illinois regarding cell phones, smartwatches might be included into that as well, which might change our procedures. Um we also talked about how difficult it is to receive um confirmation that parents have received the student handbook. So, that's a process that we use every year where we uh have parents sign off that they've gotten the student handbook. And that's important because well, I was people have heard me say this before. I was the parent who actually sat next to my child and went through the handbook with them. Yep. Laugh

066it up. That was me. That's the kind of parent it was. you're probably not surprised, but um we know not everybody does that, but we do need our parents to acknowledge that handbook. So, what we've come up with and what many school districts do is in the future starting in 2627, we'll be doing that as a uh part of the registration process. And we're simply going to be um adding a statement that says, I acknowledge that I can access the handbook at this link. Um, and that way we can continue to update the language in the student handbook and parents are acknowledging that they know where they can get it. And we have vetted that with our attorneys that are very comfortable with that procedure. Um, and then another piece that we talked about is

067that we have seen an uptick in students making reference to staff members on social media and they're doing it from their homes, not during necessarily during the school day. And um it's not always kind. So that's complicated because there is the um freedom of speech piece of it that we have to deal with, but we also have to deal with um students can't do something from home that has a a negative impact on the school environment. So the message I bring out to our administrators is that um when that occurs, they need to bring it to my attention and we'll address it on a case by case basis. So that's kind of the update of what we talked about this year's um this year's meeting. And finally, the superintendence report would not be complete if

068I didn't acknowledge the fact that yesterday was the last day of school. Um it was a good last day of school. It did end with a bang when honestly a minute and a half before our K through fourth graders were about to get on the bus, the skies just opened up and water just poured from the heavens. It was quite a thing. And yet our staff members were out there waving at their students. I did fear for our kindergarteners who were marching out with their little crowns into, you know, the paper crowns into the water. I'm assuming not many of those crowns made it home intact, but regardless, it was a fun day. Um, and our our kids did a great job. And we wish all of our students and our staff members a wonderful

069summer vacation. A summer vacation that, as we remember, is one year, one year, one month. It's coming. It's coming. One week shorter this year, right? And next year it's actually two weeks longer. Why is that? Construction. Okay. Want to make sure we all remember. And that's the end of the superintendent report. Thank you, Dr. Glickman. Okay. That brings us to our consent agenda. I need a motion to approve this evening's consent agenda, please, which includes the personnel addendum that was sent to us earlier today. I'll move and I have a couple questions. Yeah, that's fine. I'll second. Okay. Okay, Mrs. Miller. Mrs. Glack, I know that you emailed the response to me and I haven't had a chance to read it, so I'm just going to ask my questions because I know you know they're

070coming. Um, so the first one is the plan list three board goals, student learning, learning conditions, and elevating educators. Um, not that I don't like these goals. I just am curious what when was the last time these were updated and kind of what was that process under the consolidated district? Uh, so those three goals are Illinois State Board of Education goals, ISBY goals. They're not District 46 goals. Uh, they're listed in the ISBY strategic plan. Uh, that is currently 2024 to 2027. They were also the same goals in their previous strategic plan and haven't been changed since I got. Okay. I was like, these are great goals. Who came up with these? Bisby. Thank you. And then um one of the needs, my second question is on question five, one of the newer needs that

071is being addressed is addressing the needs of accelerated students. And later in that question, there's mention of differentiated instruction methods. And I was wondering how and how you would engage and which community sters stakeholders you might engage in assessing and meeting because there's quite an emphasis in the plan on community and family engagement. So just a reminder what the consolidated district plan is. So it is something we fill out for the state so that we can get our grant funding for multiple grants. Right? So they list for us instruments that we need to use to assess our needs and then kind of ask they ask us some really specific questions about who will be be involved in each of those. So, the part you're talking about is where we we discuss that um we're going

072to use all the information we gather from the district equity action plan from our five essential surveys that go out uh the school report card um and we use all of that to help us to identify some of our needs. We then later in the plan talk a little bit about um how EMPAC is part of all of that. uh there's an advisory group for title one that's part of that and so um it we it lists who the stakeholders are that we reach out to so that we can follow the compliance measures in order to get all our grant funding to then support it. So when we're talking about differentiation we're talking about both acceleration and how are we supporting needs for our students through all of those grants. what yeah so I think

073super valuable right because we get feedback from the community from uh when we hold all of these stakeholder meetings and so then it helps us to know um what are some steps that need to be taken in order to be able to help support our students and what are some of those methods and resources that are available to us to be able to uh collaborate with all stakeholders. So when we're talk when uh the consolidated district plan is talking about stakeholders, it's talking about staff um administrators, students, um community members and parents. Yes. So it's kind of gathering input from everybody which is why all those other pieces are part of Exactly. Yeah, exactly. You're welcome. Okay. Any other questions? Okay. Braden, hi. Hun. Miller. I and Weedman. I. Okay. Thank you. We have a

074number of action items this evening. to begin with. Uh, I need a motion to approve the emergency management system raptor. I'll move. I'll second. Okay. Are there any questions? Mr. Go ahead. Um, who am I? Is it Amanda? Okay. Okay. Just It's just um $79,000 is a chunk of change. So, just wondering how it add value to what currently exists. I think the the memo listed three um three services to initiate drills, alert law enforcement and account for students during reunification. Can you just help me understand how it builds on what are we already doing to do those things and then how does this add value? Yep. So this year we used a tool called stop it. Sorry like what um which was offered through Lake County um through a grant through the ROE um

075and the goal of that system and really the goal of this system is to have a solid communication tool during emergencies. So, a tool where any staff member could start or initiate um an alert for an emergency and that um the you know the uh core responders in the building and first responders in the community can come and and support that. So, it can be anything from there's a student in crisis in my room and I just need the building um crisis team to come support me to there's a stranger in the hallway who I don't know who it is. Right? So, it's a wide range of emergencies, but it allows um one place for communication. It also um has all of our rosters, so depending on the time of the of day, I know

076what kids are supposed to be in my classroom and I can account for all of those students. And then in the case of um an emergency and we needed to relocate, it lets us keep track of where everybody is and then reconnect is with their students because all of that contact information is all integrated into the system. Did I miss anything, Mr.? I'm just going to add one piece. It's not really an answer to your question, but just a reminder to the board that um during the um information that we provided to the community about the referendum, one of the commitments that we made was to um beef up our emergency systems. So this is one of the ways in which we'll be doing that. I'm just gonna follow up. How do we do that

077now? So one of the things that we've done through the safety and security committee um over the last several years is is to to build a build a culture of safety and security amongst our staff. So that started with Alice and the acronym as you know there's the alert which is part of this and one of the things that when we met with staff and when we met with members of the safety security committee was Alice was a really was very welcome lots of people would say to us this is really great I'm glad that you were teaching us this methodology to be able to respond to a valid critical incident but one of the things that we heard and we've heard over the last several years very consistently is that an extra need as

078well to be able to alert as well. So, this is as Amanda already said, you know, we we used a free version last year that was available from Lake County. Um, and we uh we we've decided to not go ahead with that through the committee and this is the next step in that which we believe is an enhancement. It also aligns with a visitor management system. There's various so reasons why it's a very good system for us. um the commit the the committee did a very deep dive into five different systems and this was the overall winner um amongst the committee and based on all the feedback from all those members. I'm going to I'm going to build on what Wildman shared and hopefully that'll answer your question. So right now we do it through

079a bunch of separate systems. This system unifies everything together so that in the case of an emergency, we don't have to think about like, oh, is this person texting me? Who's calling me? What's h and it brings it all together into one platform. And in an emergency is really when we need something simple and easy to use. So, um the system that we used this year really wasn't meeting our needs. It wasn't working on everyone's phones and there was all kinds of um issues that we ran into. So, we were committed to finding a solution that really worked with our systems. So it saves you time in an emergency is that saves you time communicate it. It has it's a much more standard protocol just Thank you. Thank you both. Okay. Weedman Miller I Braden

080I Hume I Okay, thank you. Motion approved. Uh, next I need a motion to approve the ticketing and inventory system incident IQ. Love these names. Okay. H I Braden I Miller I Mac I and Weedman I. Thank you. Motion approved. Third motion to approve the school treasurers bond as presented to us. So moved. I'll second. Any comments? Mac I. Braden I. Hun. I. Miller. I. And Weedman. I. Okay. Great. Thank you. Motion approved. Next. A motion to approve the Can I say click or is it CLA? Okay. Motion to approve the click workers compensation renewal. I'll move. I'll second Mac I Braden I Miller I Hume I and Weedman I thank you. Motion approved and conjoinly with that a motion to approve the click property casualty insurance renewal. I'll move. I'll second. Any comments? Okay.

081Miller I. Hun I. Braden I Mac I. and Weedman. I motion approved. Uh next, a motion to approve the contract award for the Frederick site improvements. I'll move. A second. Comments. I just have one. Mr. Weman, as we briefly discussed before the meeting, this is for the chillers, which makes this room cold. Yes. Which which makes this room a little warm, which coming into the summer months with no air conditioning. That's warm. We just may want to think about relocating the board meetings into another building logistically during that time. I'm question for Jose. Do you want to tell us what you think might be happening around here in a couple of weeks? Do you think we should be Yes, in a couple weeks. Uh we're going to need to uh move the venue. Um so

082we will we do need to have a different spot in two weeks. Yes. Uh right now they're because we're changing the chillers out. They're uh taking out the uh gas out of the unit which will right now there is no gas in the chiller outside. So that construction started today and it's a nice cool day so it's not too bad in here but come a couple weeks when we meet again we're going to need a room um that's going to be nice and cool. So GMS is probably the place to go. Okay. So shall we make a decision now? Sure. Okay. So, does that sound good? GMS in two weeks. We can just I think that's just an easy update on the um on the website, right? Okay. And then um will we will we

083be okay to be back here at our July meeting, which is not until July 16th. We will need uh we will need the July 16th to be at GMS also. Um it looks like they are ahead of schedule but uh for sure July 16th will need to be at GMS also. Okay. Well, it's a plan. So let's let's do that. Um, I am sure all will be well come the first August, the August meeting. And why am I sure? Because that's the first day of school and so it needs to be ready. So, so we'll be back in here on August 13th. Thank you very much for bringing that up, Jim. Thank you for the conversation at the end of the table. It was very timely. Okay. Okay. All right. Braden I Miller I Mac

084I Weedman I and Hume I Okay, very good. Motion approved. Uh our final motion in this one ends with cake. I need a motion to approve James Vanarden. Correct. As our new facilities manager for district 46. I need a motion. So we'll make a motion. I'll second and a second. And I'll hand it over to Dr. Wal. Thank you Dr. Mack and thank you board. Um I am happy to be standing up here with Mr. James Van Nardan uh who has served um as the head custodian in Kilder Community Consolidated School District it's always a mouthful 96 uh for many years and in his role at Kilder he's overseeing the night shift of in-house custodians um and they are responsible for both the custodial and the maintenance work within um the district. Um, James comprehensive

085experiences in his role have helped him to stand out amongst our other candidates. Uh, James references spoke very highly of his leadership ability and experiences and his drive for continuous improvement. And so we are very excited and in your vote to welcome him to the district. Outstanding. Okay. Braden I Miller I Mac I Weedman and Hume I motion approved. Congratulations Mr. Van. Welcome to the district. And now we can suspend things for cake. Do we don't vote on that? No. Let's just suspend. We're just pausing. We're pausing. Okay, and we're back. All right, I guess I don't even really need to say that. All right, the next item on our agenda are unfinished business items. We are moving to a discussion of the tentative budget presentation which I will hand over to Mr. Wildman. Good

086evening board of education, members of the community. I'm pleased to present the tenative budget for fiscal year 2526. Uh this marks an important checkpoint in our financial planning process and I look forward to walking through key updates, contacts and next steps. As always, our budgeting process is guided by our mission. Empowering learners, creating equity, cultivating community. These three principles remain central as we make investments aligned with our values and goals. Tonight's budget presentation is directed is directly tied to our strategic plan and board policy. Uh we continue to revine refine and review our budget annually to ensure we provide high quality learning for all students while remaining aligned to district goals. So, here's a brief overview of our budget timeline. We discussed the preliminary budget on May 14th. Um, tonight we review the tenative budget.

087Uh, beginning June 5th and onwards, the tenative budget will be on public display. It needs to be on display for a minimum of 30 days with final adoption scheduled on September 17th following a public hearing. As required, the adopted budget needs to be filed with these be the Illinois State Board of Education by September 30th. So, since the May 14th presentation, there have been several several notable updates. Our insurance renewals, which have just been approved this evening, earlier in the in the agenda, I finalized them and go um and have been approved and those costs have been included in the budget. our IMRF contribution rate. I mentioned in the preliminary budget that I didn't have that I usually have that at the preliminary. We received that in the last few days after the preliminary was

088presented and it's actually gone up from 9.28 to 9.34. Bless you. And that is the contribution rate that we pay for our IMF employees. Um the state budgets passed which is a really great thing. Um it includes funding for evidence-based funding. um it's full funding of evidence-based funding in including increased support for mandated categorical the continuation of the third year of the teacher vacancy grant which we're a recipient of and additional funding for literacy. So these develop these developments validate the revenue assumptions in our preliminary budget. We don't need to make any changes based on this. So our current situation, this is a slide that I think I've presented for the same three years. Um, as discussed, our budgets are not isolated events. There are symptoms of a larger structural deficit. Our operational costs, including

089necessary capital investments continue to outpace revenue growth. That's going to be something I'm actually going to talk about in a in a slide which is upcoming. Um, we are a tier one district still. We're currently at 70% adequacy with a $15.9 million adequacy gap. Looking ahead, if the state maintains EBF funding increases, we may gradually reduce the structural deficit. However, the primary revenue tool remains local property taxes. But as you do know, we are constrained by PTEL, the property extension limitation law, and the consumer price index. Fortunately for our community, we passed the limiting rate referendum in April 2024 and this will provide an additional $7.8 million annually beginning in 2627, a significant step forward. So this slide just reinforces that strong partnership that we have with the state of Illinois, especially as it relates

090to EVF and and obviously categorical funding is addition to that. Um, continuing to support the state level is critical to us as we move towards adequacy. So this is another slide again just showing that we have this is from our designation of on the Illinois report card. We have two schools which are exemplary and six which commendable and here is our all funds budget which includes all of them obviously includes capital projects and debt service and we have our operating funds only. We continue to monitor closely aligning dollars to district priorities and maintaining reserves within as recommended levels as possible. Uh here is our sources of revenue. Uh local property taxes continue to make up the ladder share of revenue. The referendum when it's received in 2627 will help stabilize this picture which will reduce

091that amount quite significantly and reduce the the amount they rely upon from state and federal. Um we will continue to receive support from the state through EVF and mandated categorical grants as well. As I've already stated on the expenditure side, salaries and benefits remain our largest category when put together which reflects our continuous investments in staff. We as we keep as I've said various times we are a people business. We are about all about students. We are all about all those teachers and all the staff that support them. Um and that's the main part of our expenditures. We're also spending on capital projects, instructional resources, and other supports aligned to student success. So, this is a slide where I just I could have gone through a lot of things, but I just went through some

092highlights of things that we're going to be doing this next year. The chillers, imagine the chillers. We just literally talked about them a few minutes ago. Um, we've just approved several that we've approved as a board and and administration. You have approved several um things which total $1.9 million. That's the total amount for the chillers at Frederick and Prairie View and the boilers at GMS and all the other supporting work. And obviously that is something which is really important based on all the things that the district has gone through over the last two years. Um I've included the new math resources both of both resources and that's the amount that the district is spending this year in both um title funding and in local funding. And now I've got an addition for you which is

093a new hand new air handling unit at Park Campus. So I'm going to talk a little bit about that. Okay. So we're going to have to spend $120,000 or that's our recommendation to you. Um and it's not currently in the budget. So depending on timing, this may land in this budget year. We can get it in before the end of the year or it will go in into the budget for next year. So the air handling unit serving the administrative air handling system at Park campus is in very poor condition and requires replacement. The existing coil was developed whole significantly compromising the systems ability to function reliably and efficiently. Um we've received two proposals. We've received one which is a temporary fix and we've received one which is a replacement of the entire condensing unit

094and the coil. Um and as I've stated is $120,000. Uh the administration recommends proceeding with the replacement option in consideration of its long-term value and system reliability. Um I was not at park today, but I spoke to someone who was at park today and they said it was very hot. So this the administrative area um it requires this to be replaced and so we are bringing it to you as an emergency purchase that needs to happen immediately and we may I said a recommendation is to bring it to the next meeting excuse me um with a full proposal on costs. So the next steps uh include the formal posting of the tenative budget on our website and the district office. We'll continue to update as necessary. Um, especially the fi fiscal impact of the GFT.

095Well, that is a lot of acronyms. GFT, CBA impact, and ahu at PC. Wow. Um, I didn't even realize how bad that was. It's uh the Grace Lake Federation teachers collective bargaining agreement impact and air handling unit campus. So, those are the two things which we have to be monitoring. um public hearing on September 17th and then as always once we have the audit complete the budget filed that's the best time for us to bring financial projections forward um for a finance committee using all those updated assumptions and that concludes the tenative budget. I welcome any questions from the board. Actually before we do questions can you just go back a slide for a moment? Yeah, Mr. Thank you. I just wanted to um just to I know you were we were laughing about the

096initials, but I just want to make it make it really clear in public board. As you know, um we are waiting upon the ratification vote from the um GFT, which is our teachers union for their new contract. We are hopeful that that will that that um that collective bargaining agreement will be ratified and we hope to be able to bring that to you at the July meeting. Um when that happens then we will have actual new costs for um salaries and such for staff and so that will update the budget. So when you see the budget again which would be in September, correct? it would have new numbers in it. And then um the AHU the air handling unit um that is information that it's just just very recently developed board as you know we

097typically will bring something like a you know such a large expenditure to you to discuss at one meeting and then a vote at the next excuse me because this just happened and so we weren't even able to get it on this agenda for as a real discussion item. We're sharing it with you through the budget presentation. We'll bring it to you as an action item at the next board meeting. Um, but of course you'll have plenty of time to talk about it at that meeting as well, but I certainly encourage you to contact Mr. Weldman with questions that you may have between now and then. Okay. All right. Thank you for that. Questions about any of this? Yes. Comments or questions from board members? Mr. Mhm. I just had a question about the mandated categoricals.

098Was there any ch, if I'm remembering correctly, when I went to the divisional dinner, they said the only addition was for orphanages is the word in my mind. Maybe there's a fund that has a different name. I'm just wondering, was there a change that you're aware of just off the top of your head or is that the only uh I I believe the only increase was for orphanage. Is that what you were stating? I think I think it was for 27 million from memory. I might be wrong. I'm just thinking that was the number. I think I have 20 something in my memory. Something that Yes, I believe that was right. Okay. But the others are stable. They just haven't been increased. Yes, correct. Gotcha. Thank you. Is there a slight increase in EBF funding?

099Yes, EBF has its tier funding um which is this amount that we were able So this is an 8% increase from the previous year. If we didn't receive the tier, if the state didn't make its tier funding, we would not be budgeting 20 just over $20 million. So that additional 300 million is the difference between the 2024 and 2025 and 26 amounts. That's the amount that will be. Does that make sense? It makes perfect sense. And just want to it reminded me and just sharing again um this is an advocacy opportunity for us because the state legisle state legislature has turned over. So those people who were the architects of EVF have moved on. That means or are moving on some of them about half of them. And so to make sure that EVF is

100still a priority, just as a reminder, we may want to think about advocacy to make sure that we continue to get this funding. Just a reminder. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Wildwood. I'm gonna stay. Oh, you're staying. Oh, that's right. Yes. Okay. Next up. Yep. Don't go anywhere. An update from the resource conservation committee. Okay. Members of the board, thank you for the opportunity to provide an update for the from the resource conservation committee. Uh, tonight we'll share highlights of our progress as part of our ongoing commitment to sustainability in CCSD 46. Me, sorry. Our work is grounded in the district's mission, empowering learners, create equity, and cultivating community. These values inform our efforts to build sustainable systems that serve both our students, staff, and the community. So, the committee is made up of a crossf

101functional team of administrators, educators, operations staff, and a volunteer. I'd like to recognize and thank each of these individuals for their time, insight, and their commitment to this important work. Specifically recognizing Abby Petrainski for her work as a volunteer to establish our composting programs. Want to talk a little bit about that. So our work is guided by B policy 4 col70 on resource conservation which calls for periodic reviews of procurement waste reduction procedures as well as exploration of further energy conservation opportunities. We're also guided by district values of collaboration consensus based decision making and community involvement. Okay, tonight's agenda, it's three parts of what one of them is. I'm going to take the first one. I'm going to hand it over to my colleague to talk about paper usage and then I'll talk a little

102bit about our solar performance and what that's going to look like in a future agenda item. Okay. So, in 2024, uh spearheaded by our resource conservation volunteer Abby Petrainski, we launched a composting pilot at Woodview. Once this was successful, Meadow View was next. This that this year, all seven school lunchrooms participated in our lunch composting initiative, dividing an estimated 100,000 pounds of food and liquid waste from the landfill that represents an 88% reduction in weight and an 80% reduction in garbage bags. We also learned anecdotally some things. We learned that K4 lunchrooms tend to produce more food waste due to fewer food choices, while K8 lunchrooms generate more single-use packaging waste due to increased alocart purchases. That's the what they're able to actually purchase after they've got the meal. So, it's the the stuff they're

103able to purchase. Uh here's a visual summary of the impact of our composting efforts. These results are based on a waste audit data extrapolated over the school year and they provide a powerful snapshot of our success in keeping waste out the landfills. I'm now going to hand it over to Amanda who's going to give you an update on the district's paper usage this year. Thank you. Um so at the end of last school year, the resource conservation committee um established a goal of reducing printing um by 10% in the first three months of this school year. Um one of the ways that we have done that is through um paper cut which is a print management tool and the way it works is you send a job to the printer um and the it doesn't

104actually come out until you release it. So, it gets rid of the stack of paper sitting next to the copy machines um that is forgotten and not picked up. This graphic shows the amount of unreleased jobs. Um so, it's a lot of paper that isn't wasn't sitting next to a copy machine. Um it also calculates it in trees saved um and CO2 emissions as well. So, um Mr. Wildman shared um how successful the composting has gone and as you heard earlier in the sustainability task force update we really feel like having someone championing that's a hard word to say um um a program makes a big difference and so we've pulled the data for our printing um in the first three months you can see that we didn't necessarily meet that goal unfortunately Ely, we

105saw an increase of color printing, grayscale, which is black and white, and just an overall increase in printing of about 14%. So, the committee came together in its second meeting and had a chance to look at more of that data and felt like there was more of a story behind that and we really needed to um understand better what was being printed um and how those things were being used. I'm going to share how we did that in just a second. But I also want to um highlight that while we didn't meet that goal in the first three months, we definitely shrunk um the increase over this entire school year. So, um we decreased color printing by a little over 20%. Um there still was a slight increase in that black and white, but we

106saw just a point4 increase overall. Um so like I said the committee um I see you looking okay black and white is more printing so a slight increase there. Yeah. Okay. Um so as I shared the committee um saw the data and said there's probably a bigger story there that we really need to better understand to try and meet that goal. Um, so we put together a survey for um, our staff to better understand what they were printing and why they were printing um, and what kinds of things people were already doing to offset some of that printing. So, um, just in general, these are things that people print. You're not going to be surprised. instructional materials, things to support students, um assessments and um classroom management things like calendarers or behavior charts. Um some

107people had found some online resources to use to reduce the printing so that kids maybe were interacting, students were interacting digitally. Things like our learning platforms of Google Classroom and Seesaw. Um there's some interactive tools where kids are um sharing their ideas and um checking their knowledge like things like near pod and cahoot. Um we do a lot of sharing of documents and slides and there's some examples here of some assessment and feedback tools as well. So we asked teachers like what do you feel like you must print? Um, and so the things that they've shared are hands-on activities. Um, things that, um, students are going to use in a lab and they can't have their Chromebook next to them because we don't want it to get wet or hot. Um, accommodated resources for um,

108students that have different um, accommodation needs. Um, there's some student portfolios and things like emergency sub plans. While we sent this out to our our entire staff. You'll see we only got 29 responses, which is a small percentage um of our staff. It's less than 10%. Um you'll see that there are um of the people that responded, there's a big population of people that have um made a little bit of an effort to to make some changes. Um, and there's a small population that has made a lot of an effort to make some changes in their printing practices. Um, but we feel like it's probably representative based on the numbers that we've seen of the rest of the stuff. So, we took the feedback that we re received from the survey um had some really

109good conversations and started to plan for next year on how we could better meet the goal that we had set. So, some of the things that we talked about to roll out at the beginning of next school year are things like adding visual reminders near your copy machines, like do you really need to print this or release this print job? Um, we the committee has looked in past years um at the use of recycled paper and while that doesn't work for copy machines, it can be used in other ways. So we do things like thinking maps and that happens on a blank sheet of paper that doesn't need to go through a copying machine. So finding ways to um use recycled paper when we it doesn't need to go be printed on. Um we would

110like to increase communication and awareness about printing and also increase representation of buildings and stakeholders. Um so letting people know that this committee exists and um finding those champions within each building um that can really share the work and help lead it within their school community. One of the things that we've talked about um is taking some of the uh data that we're gathering and create a bit of a competition between buildings, friendly competition of course. Um, and then finding ways to recognize and share success stories of um, buildings that are making big reductions. Turn it back over to Mr. Wildman. So, full disclosure, uh, we were intending to actually have our solar information for you, but I reached out to performance services and they made they instructed me that they contractually would prefer to

111finish out the year to prevent present a whole year for you. Um, and I thought said that made a lot more sense than us trying to give give partial year information. So, they have said that they will be coming to present on their own, give a full solar performance presentation. In the that's been done by Kurt Hints. He's he's I think he's done it the last two years. So, the same individual who you've um spoken to about um our solar arrays in the past. So, August 13th board meeting, uh we will get a full update from our solar. And that concludes our update. I'm sorry. Uh thank you again for supporting uh sustainable initiatives across the district. We welcome your questions. Look forward to your feedback. open to questions or comments from just a comment.

112Um, thank you for doing this work and I have maybe a question that is not a familiar question. Um, but given we've done so much work on then hopefully it won't be too far out of normal. I'm just wondering how you're feeling about running the resource conservation committee. What how has it impacted you personally? I I think from the composting perspective, we were all really quite surprised at the amount of waste that was diverted from landfills because and from a volunteer as well which kind of very impressive how it was rolled out. So that has been very obviously those numbers they're very large and so when you talk about such a large amount of waste and not going for all the things that we you've talked about earlier um that's pretty amazing. Um solar obviously

113we now own our solar arrays the district paid them off we own them so the savings are ours. That's great too. Um and I think that we are we we totally recognize the the conflict that there is with with regard to paper usage. You know we are a school district that requires our teachers to use paper but yet we are saying hey you know please use it responsibly. So there's a conflict there that we we feel it because as as trying to spot education for what it is um we understand that there are legitimate uses for paper. Anything else you want to say? It's hard to not meet a goal. I had a lot of feelings earlier. Um I think we've I did um I think we've reflected a lot as a committee about um

114what we could do to better support that goal in in the future. So that's exciting. Um this work is important to me just as a human and so I'm excited to be a part of it. But um hopefully we can meet that goal next year. Amanda, thank you for saying that and I want to speak to that for a moment because we did have hard conversations today as we were preparing for this meeting and one of the things we talked about is the data is the data and we have to always be transparent as to what the data is and one of the things that um you know board I know you know about our administrative team is that we work really hard to meet goals. Our administrative team also knows that our board understands

115that we don't always meet meet the mark and that there are reasons why we don't. What we don't do, however, is throw in the towel. And so we most definitely have not done that. And you can see there's a list of next steps. Um, and I think what we're recognizing even, excuse me, you know, I thought that data about how many people responded to the survey was really interesting and feels indicative of there's so many other things that people are focused on. This has not been a priority largely for our staff. And so we understand that and yet we will continue to work to make it a priority. And I just want to thank you. Like the whole world hasn't met our goals. So you're we're not alone in this. And it's just so nice

116to be with people who are saying, "We're not throwing in the towel." And the data is the data. And it's so helpful to look at your process and go, "Here's the data. Here's what we a three-month pilot. Here's what we learned. Here's so just thank you. Thank you. Thank you for doing the work." If we were going to throw in a towel, it would be a reusable towel. Yes. Let's be clear. Not a paper towel. Not a light. Nothing flushable. It's making that clear. Nothing flushable or printable. Nothing printable. I Well, and I want to I want to highlight this nuance, which is um we're always riding this knife edge of when we brought in Chromebooks, one of our commitments was that our students weren't going to be on the Chromebooks all day. Well, if

117they're not on the Chromebooks, they got to be on something. And so I think also just a very healthy recognition of this. There is there are polarities we're managing. We have to meet the needs of students who have different learning modalities, right? Just from an instructional perspective. So and I know you've thought about all of that and I want to say that I would never want to see those things compromised in striving to meet a number. That's something that the committee has definitely talked about a lot, right? like it's still important for kids to learn how to cut with scissors and they do that with paper things that they're cutting out and it's important to have that balance between technology um and all the other offline activities and so that's kind of why we were

118looking at different ways to support both. Thank you very very much. Uh the final uh bullet point for our unfinished business is the discussion of the board committees or the board structure that came up a few weeks back. This is related to I think a committee of the whole right that was brought by Mr. Weedman. So I I think just opening the floor to conversation about that at this point is where we stand. Not that we're making any decision this evening, but just to get that conversation moving a little bit more. Um I know Mrs. Miller had sent around a rubric I believe am I right? Yes to some of us not to all of us um to consider um but also just in terms each of us may have done some thinking about it

119as well. So I open the floor I guess. So thoughts or ideas? It doesn't have to be something we rush on. We can certainly have more conversation wherever we land. I have it here. I have it here, too. I really appreciate the rubric. I think the criteria um is great. Um I I would like to also just evaluate. I feel like the models feel pretty different from what we're doing now. And I would also like make sure that we're not fixing anything that's not broken. So, I would like us to also evaluate our current model with the tweak, the original tweak that Jim suggested, which would be to run our meetings like we do and uh have a quarterly finance committee focused meeting and and is it as simple as that? I don't want to

120I don't want to overlook the simplicity of what uh Jim proposed and was that Remind me because you just said that was a the one of the initial recommendations was to have it quarterly one once per quartered a finance is what where you yeah just to have a deeper dive on finance to begin you know just finance everything else kind do our action items and then spend the rest of the time you know like so just looking at Chris's like timeline for this budget right in June we discuss the budget and he gives a tenative one well maybe before the June meeting like whatever the last one was in May is we have the finance. So we see this information before he presents the budget and we going to ask our questions and have a

121deep dive into what he's looking at. Um and then when it comes to having the budget approved and everything else we have a better understanding and it's not it's not a one-way conversation of Chris giving us the budget. We're sitting here going trying to absorb it all at once and trying to questions. Whereas if we have just a a focused meeting on finance, the budget or it's a major purchase of something we have to do anything that's it can be grouped too, right? If there's stuff that you strategic planning what the financial implications are that's going to be on a budget over the years, financial projections can all be that one instead of trying to absorb it, come up with questions and then you know we can have an open discussion about so it would

122be embedded into one of our existing meetings in once okay so like we met two weeks ago that last meeting in May could have been could have been a finance meeting you know and we have we adopt this in September so before that September meeting that one before will probably be more focused on finance so we can have an open discussion and ask questions we can have a little bit deeper dive into it. My goal would be to have everybody well versed in the finances of the district so that you we all understand it. You know, we lost Jason who was good with numbers. I'm not going to be here forever either, but you know, we need those people that everybody needs to understand how our finances look going into the future and how we

123get our money. We two new board members on. I'm sure school finance is very small part of what they have a knowledge of how things are done and they need to grow that and we need to foster that for them and by having more regular regular meetings on finance would I think help foster that type of growth in everybody on the board. I like that idea a lot. Um, and I know that there's a lot to consider in terms of how this will look um, with the committees. Just a question, Jim, for you in terms of adding that to a regular board meeting. Um, I have not been through the process before of discussing this. So I'm just curious like how much time is would be required for that and is it is it a

124lot to put into an existing board meeting as opposed to having all on board for like the quarterly idea but is it would it could it be a separate meeting or would it need to be part of an existing meeting? I don't think it needs to be part of I don't think it needs to be a separate meeting. The time frame I would think unless it were really into deep on into some topic would probably be you'd be out of there probably under three hours probably most times it'll be long because you're we're not like this meeting tonight without all the presentations is 20 minutes right um so you're talking about being able to have conversation for a good hour and a half strictly on finances answering trying to get all the questions you have

125Well, what gets done in the capital budget? What's our capital plan for the next five years? What's how much is going into the education part from wherever? Where are we getting our what is EVF, right? If you don't know anything about school financing, EVF is a foreign language, you know, how it works out. It's all based on each child and what their needs are and formula that they come up with. So those are the things that I think is important for everybody that sits on this table to understand. So you when you ask Chris, Chris gets ask the question. He kind of has an idea what you already know and can Oh, I I when I saw committee of the whole, I thought it was more than what Jim had proposed. I mean, we don't

126have to be sitt and It's open discussion. Yeah. Because the only way everybody's going to learn is two way conversation answers your questions answered. It's a lot. I mean, I'm a numbers guy and it's still a lot looking at the budget, right? Sometimes I pull my right, you know. So it to me it's just a matter of being able to have an open discussion unencumbered by everything else and having to have you know 1400 things on the agenda to try and get to because we fly through the agenda sometimes with very little discussion and we can at least have better discussion on the finances because some of those even in that like the stuff we approved tonight there is financial impacts to some of that stuff that could be in you know kind of the

127up and what we have coming and say, "Okay, yeah, that makes sense." So, we plan for it. We understand what's going on when it comes up on the approval agenda. I just think there's more to it for especially for the finance. I don't know if we have to go to a I think quarterly would work for now and we can see that see how that works and if it seems like it's something we want to expand that's something we do in the future. It also sounds to me like it could be we could intentionally build the agenda differently for some of those meetings, right? Like use that tool as the vehicle. So even if we wanted to do it more than quarterly and I'm sensitive I was going to build on what Moren said. I'm

128sensitive to the to the time of the board meetings. I mean when when when you and I were first, you know, like a while ago, some of the board meetings would would go for a long period of time. I have no interest in doing that for our staff members or us. No, you run out of bandwidth. you run out of bandwidth. By the time you start hitting close to nine o'clock, you know, your learning tends to stop. But if we build the agenda intentionally and we can respect staff time and our time, then you know if if one meeting has a couple of agenda items at the front end that need to be you know tagged off on by us. So if by you know 6:30 we finish our voting items and then the like

129tonight we would go from 6:30 to 8 as a more in-depth financial discussion if we if we intentionally built the agenda for that and still keep our two meetings a month. I think that would be we could go to more than quarterly potentially if we have that something's coming down the pike that we want to look at. Right. That makes more sense to me than I think I initially understood it a few weeks ago and maybe I just wasn't thinking about it right. But what Moren asked got me thinking about maybe using the agenda tool as okay, we're going to do 15 minutes of what we need to vote on that is pretty straightforward and then we will consecrate the rest of the time to financial discussion or whatever it might be. Yeah. I like

130the idea. Did we ask people to point but The hard part is most people here aren't right. Most of the board members who need this information. Yeah. Currently, we're not which is the inception of this So then Are we willing to still have community members? I think well if if if the idea is that we all get the same information it's going to have to be it at night if if so there's a couple things I want to make sure that or at least I would recommend that we put in parameters for we all know that that things pull us away as board members as well from board meetings. So, you know, if if we're all we can never quite count on 100% of us to be here for any given meeting, right? Like, and

131I was just telling Chris, I mean, I will be missing the next two just by virtue of not being here in town for the next two board meetings, right? So, if if any if if one of those meetings were to happen on any of those next two meetings, I wouldn't be here. So, I I would still not benefit from being in the room for those conversations. So, we have to have a clear understanding of what that's going to mean for some of us because some of us might still not be able to be here at some of those meetings. Um, and then I forgot what else I was going to say. There was something else with your uh accessibility accessibility which I think is one of and I think community members are really important to

132a finance committee. That makes sense to me and I'd like to know how that looks or what we think that looks like in something like this. I I think you have to you'd have to build really specific parameters bring in outside people. Yeah. Yeah. We did for a while a few years ago we had one member. Yeah. Um Yeah. service. Majority of people sit on the board. That's my disagree. I wanted I wanted accessible to them and every I don't think I think as you go along not everybody's going to be at anyway with my job I can't there is ways to share that information it's a matter of getting but by having those good that also plays into those meetings building that good strong financial understanding of the district So if you do miss

133one, you're not missing a lot. Right? The more you're educated of the finances of the district and how it works, the better off you are if you do miss a meeting and going forward. It could be, right? It could be. Yeah, it could be. Who are we talking about accessibility for? Right. Who are we talking about accessibility for? Okay. I mean, anecdotally, those two folks have jobs during the day, right? So, just the two books you mentioned, not to get too detailed, but I'm just trying to figure out how having it during the day increases accessibility. I would just prioritize that the seven of us have to have first accessibility because we're in charge of finances and then we go from there. We're the one we're the ones charged with financial stewardship with the district.

134And so it's, you know, we have the live stream, we have the recording. So if there are people who can't, you know what I mean, who can't who need to outside of us who need to understand what we're doing, we have that. Um, and I think, you know, it would be it would be difficult for me to think about moving the meeting around to a board members can't be there. So that board members can because it's our And then when we start when we start talking about like staff time too, right? Is you know doesn't necessarily need to be here for that. Heather doesn't necessarily have to be there for that doesn't necessarily have to be there, right? They don't have they don't have to for that part of the meeting for that part of

135that meeting. They can they can stay. It's an open meeting, but they don't they don't necessarily have to stay to listen to all the all the stuff. Oh, come on. I mean, we I mean, the amount of people that are sitting at the board has grown exponentially since I got So, staff. It's fine. Sometimes we we could be a little more respectful to how much time they spend here. So So I'm going to synthesize this into a a four-pronged approach just four just for for next steps, right? So number one the so just so I'm make sure that I I got three big things from everybody for the most part. Number one is a cohesive understanding of finance particularly in this case in this this could bleed into other things but let's just stick with

136finance for now a comprehensive and cohesive understanding of finance of all board members right that's number one to that number two the theme out there is for now to prioritize board members and this goes into then Mrs. Miller's suggestion of maybe a six-month trial period and a re-evaluation of it at the end of that six months, right? And see what works and what didn't. And then the fourth prong or the fourth item there is using the agenda creation. Sorry, number one was understanding the finance. Number two was prioritizing the board. Three was the six-month trial period and re-evaluation. And then fourth is the creating the agenda to allow for this to occur. Um, and using that tool so that we're not scrambling to figure out where to fit this um to try it out. Now,

137the summer is going to be a little bit a little bit wonky for most people, I think. So, I don't know if we want to start this, you know, with with the regular beginning of the school year. So, the August meeting. Um, I would I'm already going to violate the like I said I won't be here for the next two but that's immaterial I guess but yeah my only thing is a six month trial period is two meetings yeah it could be yeah it could be longer maybe maybe we try it for the next next year next school fine next school year and then gives us gives us a quarterly one yep and see what we Yep. So I was taking notes too regarding how to operationalize this. Um and I think it would not

138be difficult for us to schedule these quarterly. I think we would want to schedule them on months where we have two meetings right already. So um August is not one of those months. We've already booked up August. It's already a pretty robust meeting. I think we'll get we'll be talking about those in a moment. But my point is that's what will typically happen right on those months where we have only one meeting. So I think it'll be pretty easy for um us to sit down and figure out what the cadence would be. Um and then we can keep our student presentations away from those meetings and you know we wouldn't have students at the table at those meetings. We keep um majority of our presentations away from them. I say majority because you just never

139know what's going to pop up, right? That we have to share. But certainly the ones that we plan for ahead of time wouldn't be on those meetings. Um so I'm hearing that there would no longer be a finance committee that meets at 5 p.m. because this would take the place of that. Right. Okay. Um and then I I don't know that this has to be decided right now, but something the board would want to think about is regarding streaming. So, um, do we just do action items first and then stop streaming although it's still an open meeting, right? So, anybody who wants to come to the meeting can come, but maybe no longer streaming it, especially if bored you want to change how you're sitting and all of that. Or you can decide that we

140can continue streaming those. So, I guess maybe think about that. Um, any comments about that before I go into one more topic? Yes. Scroll all the way down. Oh, you're just you were just taking some notes. Is that what you're telling us? Got it. Oh, look at that. Tip tips with Amanda at school. understand me. Yep. Yeah. Yes. Yep. Yeah. I I mean I'm not suggesting that we don't stream them. I just think that's something the board will want to decide ahead of time. Um and then the one last thing I wanted to mention was this conversation came out of last month's meeting where the topic was um committees because the board needed to reorganize into committees. So um just bringing us back to the truth. So So you're welcome. So, we won't we will

141not need a finance committee, but we do still need a policy committee. So, we're going to need to know who's on a policy committee. And by the way, there's a policy committee meeting in the next board meeting. Who's going to be on the policy committee? Okay. So, Christie will continue to be. You will be um Yes. Meen will be I don't know what Yeah, Moren will be. Who? Um, me third. I like to attend. Okay. Always been open. Yeah. But those two, at least those two. Okay. Okay. I'll just say it will be helpful if we could have a third person because when somebody's absent, then if there's only two, we have one person at the policy committee meeting, which is not great. So, um, maybe think about it. No, I'm willing to be a

142third given that equity may not have. Okay. Okay. Thank you. That'll be great. So, do we have board members um who were a part of why it was disbanded? I don't remember. I don't remember why that went away. What would be the what would be the goal or focus? board members be on that committee. We we get information on curriculum. We get information from regular updates. We get we get student performance updates every year. What what would we be diving into and what would be the purpose of diving into it? Is it for us to make try and make suggested changes to the curriculum or what? So walk me through what the Purpose of that committee would be that it would be a board committee and that something that would be in house. What board?

143What board work would be getting done? I don't have an answer to that. I would I I'm not sure that that's and maybe that's like the this venue and like sort of the what Mrs. Glut brings to me is the is the way that we would get that information and distribute it to the community. Like I see that as a district responsibility. Um, but for curriculum, I'm not sure what we would be like additive to to the work that's done or how we would like add value to that. Yeah, but I was I'm thinking that's table work that's to me that's that's stepping down. So are we okay with that then? Then we'd be starting then my understanding we'd be starting after August then on this trial run September I guess. Okay. Okay. That was

144a productive conversation. Okay. Uh new business forward edge contract renewal. Back over to tips with a hi. It's me again. Um so we have um two contracts with forward edge. They um are our managed service provider for network um support and they also are are um we also have a cyber security contract with them. We are very happy with um the work that we've um done together and are looking to renew the contract for three years. Okay. Any questions from the board? All right. Uh topics for future agenda items. Well, I had a schedule, but it might be about to change. Okay. Well, at the beginning of it doesn't. Um so June 18th, let me start by saying location TBA because um during the little cake break fueled by some sugar um some people started

145having some creative problem solving around about whether or not we might be able to have the meeting here in this room. So we'll see and we'll let you know if we're going to be here at GMS or somewhere else. Um we are having a five o'clock policy committee meeting. So, um, Christy Braden, Christy Miller, and Meen, we'll see you there. And, um, anyone else who'd like to come, we'll have that five o'clock policy committee meeting. So, obviously, we'll be talking about policies on June 18th. Um, we will, um, I am proposing a presentation, a short one I think, related to one of our strategic goals. will be talking about strategic goals on July 16th, but one of those um action steps this year had to do with um refurbish well working on out outdoor classrooms

146at three of our schools and we have um a significantly built up um uh outdoor classroom at Park now and so we'd like to be able to highlight that through our presentation. Sound okay to all of you? It was very hard to imagine you were gonna say no to that. Okay. Um and uh we have rolled Oh, wait. Nope. Wrong month. Uh for forward edge removal approval and um the condenser unit at Park Campus approval. We'll be bringing those. So that's June 18th. June 16th. Again, location TBA. If we need a second policy committee meeting, if we haven't gotten through everything in the first one, we'll have one that night, but maybe not. We'll do the policy approvals that night. That's the night we're going to do a strategic plan update at one point. Boy,

147I think I told you that we would be doing it June 18th, but we're going to bump that back to July 16th. Um, and we'll review the work that we did this year along with our action steps for the upcoming school year. We have our architect's W coming to do a um a robust media center update. Um we are hopeful that we have a GFT contract approval that night and if we're able to bring that that evening um then we'll also bring administrator compensation approvals that night as well. Um August 13th, which again is the first day of school, um at we have a performance services solar energy update that evening. Um That's all I have on that one right now. So, I suppose it is actually possible that we could do a finance committee

148meeting that night, but let's just not sure yet. Um, and currently September 3rd, we had summer facilities update and summer technology projects update. Um, we could bump that into the second one in September or we can flip-flop some some things. We'll see. But we kind of want to we want to do the summer stuff as soon as we as close to the summer as possible. So that's what we have coming up. Very good. Okay. Uh do we have any public comments? Okay. Uh we do have a close session this evening. So I need a motion to enter into close session this evening in accordance with public act 5 Illinois CS120 paragraph C1. the appointment, employment, compensation, discipline, performance, or dismissal of specific employees of the public body or legal counsel for the public body, including

149hearing testimony on a complaint lodge against an employee of the public body or against legal counsel for the public body to determine its validity. I need a motion. I'll move. I'll second. Second. Okay. We do not anticipate any further business coming out of this close session. So we will adjourn directly from there. We need a vote. Hun I. Miller I. Mac I. Weedman I and Braden I. Okay. Thank you everybody. I was also