001okay so this is the Board of Education meeting for Wednesday December 14 2022 at 6 30 p.m uh being held here at Frederick School I need a call to order and a roll call please Weedman here Braden oh sorry she's absent Albert here Lacroix here Miller here and Nash okay that gives us a quorum if we could please stand for the pledge and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God people with liberties for all okay next I need a motion to approve tonight's agenda including the Personnel addendum that was sent out earlier so moved I'll second Miller I Albert I Weedman aye Lacroix aye okay um has anybody signed up for public comments nope okay um okay um so then we're going to uh the recognition of the Frederick School kindness
002Club aren't you standing right next to me Mrs golden so I'm going to turn it over to you pretty quickly all right I turned off now on we're good all right um so thank you for having us I was really excited uh when Dr Glickman mentioned we'd like to do some more things uh this year and bringing students to our board uh for these types of presentations I've had the uh honor of sitting here a couple times when I've seen some uh the softball team getting recognized from from GMS and and last uh last week we had uh Miss Jones who is now we have her sister here tonight so we're keeping the Jones family busy at the board meetings it's also a great way to bring people into our board meeting to see what
003we're doing uh you know as a school district so that's real important so I'm gonna I'm not gonna talk a lot I'm going to turn it right over but one thing I want to say is that we've been kindness you know it's called the kindness Club we've kind of tried to move away from Club even because that kind of sounds a little you know oh you have to be in the club exclusive and we want everybody to be involved in this so it's more of a kindness project that we're working on this year and uh two of our leaders Mrs golden and Mrs Miss palitner are our staff sponsor so I'm going to turn over them and they're going to talk about our kindness project um so when this first started it was Laura and
004I should not be left alone in a room together um so this started actually in 2017 we started with rack week we used um the random kindness Foundation as our framework for it this was just one week we introduced the kindness pledge we did activities during homerooms and the notes and lockers which I think is the favorite fifth graders you don't know about this yet but sixth grade we like the notes on the lockers right okay and then we saw it and we were like this is cool but we can do more so what we used to do pre-covered was we would have a kickoff assembly and this picture is actually every student at Frederick and it says make kindness the norm at Frederick which is kind of our theme um so our mission is
005I'm gonna move this up our mission is it's we are trying to make Frederick a safe place for students to learn make mistakes and feel like they are part of a caring Community which I think is an amazing mission for a school so the objective is to be kinder to themselves others the world and the environment and we try to bring in different types of activities to hit on all of those so it is again to make Candace Norman Frederick to provide opportunities for students to work together that's a whole lot of it a lot of our things are not go off by yourself and do this so let's work as a team let's work together let's share let's you know look at things from different perspectives and then it's to encourage students to choose
006kindness outside of school so we're trying to provide opportunities that they can take outside and do at home we sent home the Gratitude jars which I don't know if everyone in here has their gratitude jar up and going but we're trying to teach them how to take these lessons and move it out of the school and into the community all right so how does this work um this is much more organized this year so it's a good time to be presenting uh we we just got our act together so we this year was something that we started off instead of waiting for February which is when the random acts of kindness uh organization does their random acts of kindness week um we decided to kick off with the school year just makes more sense and
007also um it's not just random acts it's basically kindness all the time trying to make kindness cool again so we start off with a kickoff week there's lots of fun activities there's dress-up days just to get the kids understanding especially the fifth graders that when you come here now at Frederick kindness is the norm I may not always happen all the time but that is our expectation the teacher's expectation and hopefully the students are starting to hold each other accountable so we have a Google classroom for the kindness project the kids get to sign up and through those they'll get announcements on when the next kindness project is we post the pictures from the event so families can see it as well we do announcements on broadcast on what's coming up and then they sign
008up and typically if we we try to get everybody anything that they sign up for we do our best to do that nobody's turned away for anything that week maybe if we can't get any we actually that hasn't happened recently but if there was like the kindness rocks were a big one um but I I think we did fit people in but nobody's turned away we may just have to shift things around a little bit uh and I do want to know they come during their recess so they give up their recess um and the teachers don't force them to do it these are really kids that just want to come um it's a nice time to meet other kids and to feel good about yourself so how do we oh so basically this is
009just a brief slideshow of all of the activities we have done this year uh just to make it more current and then we'll talk a little bit about what each of them was oh foreign I did just want to point out something new this year is the Friendship Circle if anybody can come up with a better name we'll take it but for right now it's the Friendship Circle uh and it really is a way uh to get kids to and it's been really good for new students that have come in and then we just play games just do fun things some balloons and things show up uh and we usually do that twice a month um so but I'm just going to briefly talk about rack week because this is intended it's labor intensive and
010it does require some funding okay um alrighty so uh random acts of kindness week this is basically the same thing that kind of happened with the kickoff but it's um we'll have to change it up this year to make it different but basically it's some silly days just to remind the kids that this is a special week it's just a good reminder we have a kindest Mission every day where the entire School the kindness Mission will go up and the whole school is going to try to stay positive say hi to five new people [Music] um and then also during Rec week during homeroom and the intervention block we have created activities for the teachers to do just surrounding empathy there's a lot of writing the complement Compliments are a good one um where they
011each everybody has a compliment on their desk and all the kids go around and um and put something nice uh so we focus on kindness to yourself kindness to others kindness to the community kindness to the world um Earth week was something that we kind of started um right before covet and then last year we were like we gotta go bigger so we had five different days of activities plans we made birdhouses out of reclaimed wood and those are all over um you can see them all over the place it's fencing that my dad stole from somebody um then we we started doing the Planters so if you've noticed every once in a while we are trying to refresh the Planters to keep the front of Frederick looking a little prettier a little friendlier um
012then we had the cleanup I think we had over 100 Kids volunteer to come up and clean up around the pond and around the area you should have seen the pile of garbage bags um I did have to keep him from climbing into the pond though then we made a recycled bag bracelets and then the last thing we got in was making soup paper um which was I'll it's scratch paper from testing that we turned into paper to be recycled so kind of reusing what was going to go into the garbage and we're planning another big year our big week this year too um so this year we started we did this last year and then we upped it even more this year but we have a kindness t-shirt design challenge um and the shirts
013will be delivered on Friday for people who ordered them so students were asked to design a t-shirt with the theme of kindness matters at Frederick um these were sold as a fundraiser but here are winners and I believe we have oh Eric's taken over oh okay all right let me leave it there all right so our kindness t-shirt Challenge and we've done this with a couple different things it's it's really nice and I know uh meadowview's got one going on right now where they're having you know asking kids to make those designs so we had a design contest and we we chose three winners um and uh Carter Vivian and Avery uh were our three winners that were chosen and only Avery's here you can just wave Avery okay that's Avery over there um so
014uh they had that they they came up with different designs and then we offered that uh we'll be uh they were part of our spirit wear that we're selling so anybody can order those and then as a building we ordered them also for the the winners and for um our Representatives here tonight so they'll be getting a t-shirt on Friday when uh when those come in um and uh I I do want to read uh Carter Carter could not make it tonight but he did write a statement um dear Frederick staff students and board members I am honored to be chosen for the design of my kindness kindness shirt I chose my design because I like to be kind and came up with a B design I apologize for not attending tonight thank you Carter
015all right okay um we are going to hear from some of our students but before that I just want I forgot this in January we have partnered up with something's brewing and we are going to get the coffee sleeves and the kids are going to get to decorate them with nice kind phrases um maybe give you not only a pick-me-up with your caffeine but also with whatever saying is on the outside so we've got 500 of them to do right 800 of them to do so we'll have a lot of kindness days in uh in January all right so if you guys can just line up um just back here so we can call you up one time angel you're going to come first uh these students that are coming to speak are ones that
016have attended every single of our activities this year so my name is Angel Vargas and I'm a fifth grader for Jewish school kindness is important to me because I like to make other people I like to do when I do kind stuff other people feel love that makes me happy I don't mind giving up my recess because I like to make other people smile my favorite activity was the shoebox project [Applause] my name is Char my name is Charlie durosac and I'm a fifth grader at Frederick I love doing the kindness projects because I make other people feel happy being kind is very important because you never know what's going on in their life and saying something kind can make their day my favorite kindness project was the shoebox project because I was helping people
017in need [Applause] hi my name is Olivia kottmeyer and I'm a fifth grader at Frederick I love doing the kindness projects because I think that kindness is really important and just one thing can help so many people and so many people need some kindness in their lives thank you thank you hi I'm human Khan and I'm a sixth grade at Frederick I enjoy participating in kindness club projects because I like helping people sometimes the best way to help someone is by being kind to them kind of scope teaches me in many ways of showing kindness [Applause] hi my name is violet Jones and I'm a sixth grader at Frederick I can um the Frederick kindness project because being kind to others and the environment is important to me it makes me and others feel good
018when I'm kind foreign ER I am a sixth grader at Frederick when I was younger my friends they weren't treated very kind um so I believe that if you are kind to others it will come around and get back to you that's why I go to the Frederick heinist activities I mean I do just want to recognize Romeo he's over there he has come to since fifth grade and sixth grade absolutely every single one so thank you and that's it so we will take questions so what's the shoebox uh project oh I do have to recognize Patty Johnston for that she's a sixth grade teacher here we've done I think this is our second time doing it uh it's just for kids in Chicago it's just through an organization and the shoebox whatever you can
019fit in the shoe box um you wrap it up and that's what you give and we had an enormous amount of donations from the families here and we jam-packed 75 75 or 80 of them so it's super nice and the kids re I mean they had so much fun fun that it you know fun packing it but understanding that somebody was going to open this and it was going to make their day so that was really cool nice anybody else have any other questions yeah yay I just wanted to say thank you thank you for doing this our world right now more than ever especially our little corner of it I mean spreading kindness is never a bad thing and and it seems like we need it now more than ever so thank you for
020for giving up your recesses to do this thank you for the sponsors for organizing it and just thank you no thank you guys thank you [Applause] we'll have all of you stand up front go up go up in in front there stand a line and come on Avery come on up you too and I want to say also as you come up here uh Jim that these how many of you were at the choir concert last night face them a lot of you yeah so these these kids are they're involved and and everything and uh just real quickly uh Laura mentioned a little bit like it's great for our new students who come here new how to find friends another project that's not really related but sometimes we'll put out these cards at lunchtime just
021conversation starters and encouraging kids to to converse with people they might not know and ask them different questions so it's a great group and and I'm glad that they could be recognized thanks Jim thank you very much sorry guys thank you [Applause] before we move on I just wanted to make a couple of comments first of all to the adults who are a part of this we want to say thank you so parents your children selected to spend time talking about kindness for a reason and we all know what starts from at home so thank you very much for what you're doing that brings our students to this kind of a project thank you so much to our teachers I completely agree Miss Mrs golden and Mrs paleitner are putting you in a room together
022is always dangerous because something exciting will happen so thank you for your hard work thank you very much Mr Detwiler for bringing us this project Mr roshi for your work as well and to students thank you so much I have to just share they're here tonight because I just keep walking through the library during lunch seeing what's going on and it's so exciting so I'm I'm so glad that we're able to see those slides so thank you for bringing those finally as I've mentioned to our students and parents typically at the end of a presentation we would invite people to go home and absolutely please feel free to do that we will all understand especially those of you who are here last night for the concert but also there is a another agenda item a
023little bit later that is very important to Frederick's school and cake will follow it and so if you have a few we think we can get there pretty quickly so if you have a few more minutes you can stick around we'd love to have you uh next we have a presentation by by rep elect I guess right so still uh Laura favored Deus okay first thank you to the kindness Club I think it's amazing what you're doing and I'm here to introduce myself I am the new state representative elect for District 62 d46 Falls entirely within my district and first I want to say thank you to the board for having me and thank you also um for your public service to our community and I imagine many of you were in the pre-work that's
024it to the kindness Club because I really think public service starts with a commitment to kindness and caring about your community so thank you allowed though um I uh was I was a former public school teacher I taught for nearly a decade um and so that's where I also I get my teacher voice the experiences that I had in the classroom directly impacted my decision to run for state representative and for public office I understand that legislation passed at the state level which what I have signed up to do directly impacts the decisions that you make at the board and it directly impacts what goes on in the teachers classrooms and so first I just want to say that my door will always be open and I want to be in continual and constant consistent
025conversation about legislation that will come across my desk at the state level you know I do think there have been good things that have been done at the state of Illinois when it comes to education and number one that would be that work of the evidence-based funding formula that was passed in 2017. since 2017 we have seen that the amount that the state pays to fund our education has gradually increased from 24 to 27 percent But ultimately I think the state needs to do more of its fair share and that is what I will be pushing when I am in Springfield it's my understanding that District 46 we are only meeting 65 of the funding of our funding Target and I will work to continue um to push that um I would also be remiss
026today if I didn't talk about that it is the 10th year anniversary of Sandy Hook and I was I was explicitly remember um what I felt that day when another teacher walked into my classroom to tell me what was happening and so I also give you my commitment that I will work to pass real policies that keep our teachers our Administration and ultimately and most importantly dear to all of us our students safe within those classrooms so I look forward to conversations with you all to understand what I can do as a state representative to best represent represent our district and make sure that every child receives a high quality education I think you all uh for your work on this board I thank you for your commitment to fiscal responsibility and good stewardship of
027taxpayer dollars I thank you for your commitment to creating your commitment to creating a safe space for all children and valuing diversity equity and inclusion and I also I thank you for your work on building a more sustainable and a more environmentally a friendly school system so thank you all so much I'm happy to take questions I'll also follow up with an email to all of you with my contact information does anybody have any questions I just have one is your office going to be in Gray's Lake it is yes um 10 North Lake Street in that in those commercial buildings yeah exactly I just wanted to say thank you for coming tonight and um working hard for our district thank you thank you our District 62 and including District 46 all of it I
028have a question I just wanted to thank you for running I know I take being a public servant takes a whole lot of energy and thought and I know you have other priorities as well so um and thank you for running as an educator I think we really need advocacy in public education from people who have been in the classroom and understand so thank you very much for thank you thank you all I have another I'm learning to juggle all these things I have another event so I'm going to miss the cake um but thank you for all your work and I hope you enjoy thank you [Applause] okay next we have board reports does anybody have anything to report out Christine yeah um so the community engagement committee is running their professional development again
029and it's open to our board if you're interested it's crucial conversations and to staff if anyone's interested um it is uh it's five two and a half hour sessions kind of a deep dive into dialogue specifically around conversations that are characterized by high emotions high stakes and differing opinions so if you're interested in that I I sent an email you'll get it tomorrow with days and times it's free to us except that it does require a time commitment and then the second one I'm working very hard at speaking concisely and I found that a graphic would be more useful to my next the next part of my board report so I've been thinking a lot um about the conversation that we had about the dashboard at our last meeting and worked wrote down kind of
030some of the things that I heard us saying individually and synthesized our ideas I think into three Graphics that I thought might be useful to our community what I heard are our board voice and if you're not familiar with with how a school board works we're supposed to speak individually and then that the synthesis of that of those individual ideas should be one voice from the board so when I heard that I heard Financial stability was really important and that's just a placeholder for a graphic Chris I know we've talked about fund balances but I thought anyone who looks at our dashboard might be interested in the financial stability of our district but I didn't just hear Financial stability I also heard ecological stability and I used the arc racetrack I'm not married to that
031graphic although I I have worked with it but it gives us some indication of the results from the 9.2 million dollar working cash bonds that we approved in several areas energy waste water transportation and The Human Experience and then the third we've done a lot of work with the equity and inclusion Focus it's throughout our strategic plan so I just made that up people matter here again I'm not married to that graphic it's more conceptually the idea of having a graphic but for me people include students and adults matter as kind of a play on words and I was thinking of it as a noun so kind of the the things that we're doing so instructional materials and time a salary competitiveness ratio to make that more evident to our community something about food nutrition
032metrics about health and wellness and then here is both the physical space and the condition of our spaces so ecological assets instructional spaces because we've invested in the capacity study for our schools perhaps the staff advocacy score and volunteer engagement projects so I just wanted to make my thinking visible but the point is to have potentially three pieces of information in our dashboard as opposed to just finances and that's my board report okay Jessica thank you Christy Miller for making that Visual and synthesizing what we talked about at the last meeting because I'm kind of a visual person too and that helped me so thank you um and I can see connections to other parts of the Strategic plan to when I look at that um just wanted to add for my board report at
033last week's Foundation 46 meeting one of the big points of the discussion was the challenges of fundraising and they talked about some fundraising ideas and so just want to reiterate that we appreciate all that they do in providing grants for teachers and staff and um at the community engagement committee last night we talked about how the ptos could maybe help raise more awareness about Foundation 46 and help them get the word out about their fundraising um events and things um I know that there are a lot of choir and band concerts throughout our district 46 this weekend next and just want to say thank you and congratulations to all the musicians out there and I am a former musician and I love all of it so a whole new musician that's right you're always a
034musician and I wanted to share that district 127 has a free family-friendly event this Friday night geared towards ages 5 through 12. it's at the Grayslake North High School December 16th 7 PM they'll have performances by jazz band jazz choir brass Ensemble woodwind Ensemble slam Funk their Motown group and basement brass and they'll have games and crafts and an instrument petting zoo where kids can even I don't I don't know if they get to try out an instrument but they get to take their picture with it and so it's a great opportunity to get our younger students inspired and motivated about music and we know that our programs feed into district 127 so just wanted to give up a commercial for that event this week and then also at the community engagement committee meeting we
035began design of the winter Community Cafe meeting that we'll be having and it's specifically tied to the district strategic plans facility School um in this meeting will be February 21st at Park campus from 6 30 to 8 30 p.m and we hope that some of our fellow board members can make it so thank you not tonight okay all right thank you um next we're to the superintendent report all right I'm going to hand it over first to Mrs Gluck who's going to talk with us about today's late start professional development along with a conference that she and some colleagues recently attended thanks um so we had our late start today and Dr Bolton Doug Bolton joined us again um and the focus today was on emotional regulation um and so he talked a little bit
036about brain science behind regulation he spent some time talking about what regulation and dysregulation looks like some strategies for enhancing regulation and we had great discussion at the building level as well with teachers after we were able to see it and then we are also going to have a follow-up with a third session on emotional regulation that's going to come up at a staff meeting sometime between now and January 13th so it depends on the building but each of the buildings are going to be having those conversations as well um and then I also get um to talk about the raising student achievement conference and you may remember earlier in the year I shared with you that the Lake County Regional Office of Education had provided a scholarship to some of our staff from GMS
037to attend we also had some others attend with us as well and I was able to attend um and this conference is run by Regional Offices of Education across the state so it's not just Lake County that puts it on but all of the Regional Offices and it was two amazing full days of learning there were Keynotes both days and then some breakouts as well that we were we all kind of split up and went to different ones so that we could come back and bring back as much knowledge as as possible so I know Mr Goshi was there as well with me so great two days and speaking of conferences I've asked Dr Diaz to say a few words about a conference that she recently attended and got to speak at so um the
038IRSC and isbe co-hosted the multilingual Illinois virtual annual conference um some of the learning that took place the presentations were on best practice strategies school code and then I presented on newcomers it's a nice it was a nice week thank you Dr Diaz we going to hand it over to Mr Halpern who has really exciting news to share for our school district thank you Dr Glickman good evening board uh well conversation that came up a while ago has resurfaced but under good circumstances I got a phone call last week from my cohort over at 127 Mr Dan Gonzalez in regards to composting the village of Gray's Lake and swalco has teamed up together to um help out both districts because we are the largest businesses in Gray's Lake to help start the composting process for
039us last week myself two members of uh Gray's Lake another member of swalco member of bright star Mr Gonzalez and I brought Jan melchild from Arbor with me uh we toured all of our cafeterias and we toured the kitchens um to try and work up a plan well the plan comes out that we are going to start January 9th composting but we're going to start in the kitchen area uh just because of different things that have to happen with it we want to get our plans set in place uh but we are going to start in the kitchens and our plan is to eventually work our way out to the cafeteria hopefully by spring break but I'm not going to push the button on that one uh but it will definitely roll out by next
040school year at the latest so once we have a little more information on it as after we start and gather a little more information and data I'll come back with a with a full display for everybody and some data for you one of the interesting things that I found though with it was during the arc scoring on it 444 pounds of waste was generated of that 65 of it which could have been composted so that was one day that they did that So the plan right now is that we are going to start at Park and um GMS as those are our largest we will do the other cafeterias too and kitchens but those are going to be in five gallon buckets Arbor will bring them back every day so that we can dump them
041into the 64 gallon totes that waste management is dropping off January 2nd to us um it's an exciting time on it it's just one of the one of the few things steps forwards on it thank you Adam and board we knew that you'd be really excited about this because we've been talking about it for a while and we've been working on it a few weeks and just kind of keeping it under wraps so we could surprise you with this news today so thank you so much Adam for your work on this project and as Adam described we'll come back in I think we're looking at the middle of February to share more specifically how it's going and we'll do some with some other projects related to sustainability as well um and the last piece is
042just letting everyone know that when we come back after winter break our Administration and some of our teacher members will be working on next year's calendar on the 23 24 school year calendar got to that point of the Year where I can't remember what year is next right the 23-24 school year calendar prior to that though we're going to be doing a survey with our community on both our family community and our staff Community because some questions have come up actually originating with our Equity inclusion committee about the kinds of holidays religious holidays that we close for and questions about whether these are the right holidays should we be closing for other holidays should we be closing for holidays at all so we're going to be doing some surveying my commitment is to get that
043survey out by the end of the week if not by tomorrow so they'll be coming in that way we'll have data to look at um when we when our calendar committee starts working in January and that is the end of the superintendent's report tonight uh next I need approval to approve I need a motion to approve the consent agenda so moved I'll second LaCroix aye Albert aye Miller I and Weedman aye uh next are action items and I'm going to throw a curveball at the group and Sue is uh first I'd like to make the motion to approve uh James Goshi as uh principal of Frederick School for the 23-24 school year [Applause] I'll second devotion thank you so um before the board would vote I have invited um this pay later to come up
044and speak for a moment as to why Mr Goshi would be such an outstanding next principle of the school hi it's me again um so I was asked to say a few words about our new principal um and while we will certainly Miss Eric's leadership uh James has proven time and again that he's up for the task of taking the reins um we know I know that he will keep the things that make Frederick special while moving us forward and creating new opportunities to show off just what we've got he is a huge force behind the kindness project and he encouraged us to grow it and to build it and provided the support to let it become the bigger the the great program it has become even asking me what we need to do to
045get even more kids involved and I know that he's going to continue to support and help us make it even bigger and better along with all the other crazy ideas that Laura and I can come up with so James I'm very excited for you [Applause] but as our I did do surveying of those communities to find out what everyone was looking for in a new principle and Mr Goshi just fit all of those requirements that people were telling us about he's an outstanding instructional leader and one of the things that really students said and and adults said is that we're seeking someone who is easy to talk to and understands fifth and sixth graders and really likes talking with kids and Mr Goshi absolutely fits that bill so that is what we wanted to share
046aboard do you have any questions about this recommendation because I know it's still a recommendation nope okay no pressure no okay go ahead Sue all right Albert aye Miller aye Lacroix aye and Weedman aye Mr voshi would you like to say okay uh so we are re I guess re-adjourning our meeting um start back up after our short cake break that we had to have um had to have um so the next item on the agenda under action items would be a motion to approve the renewal of the GSF contract so moved a second Chris do you want to explain real quick yeah absolutely so in August 20 August of 2021 on the bottom of Education approved a nighttime custodial service contract with GSF group Services friends this is the second amendment of that contract
047of a five-year contract renewal and it's CPI related because that's the contractual amount as per the request for bid which was part of the specifications so there's no need to uh to negotiate this this is a contractual increase that's for CPA okay any questions I just had a quick question um is GSF Adam I think this is for you is it are they using cleaning products that are consistent with our policy about Environmental Quality of buildings and grounds yes absolutely they are they actually are using uh cleaning solution that is made on site it's a green cleaning solution their company also is is Green certified Green Seal certified but the solution that that is made on site here is a path of sand it is water salt with electrolysis so it's 100 natural thank you
048any other questions yes have a quick one so the the increase as stipulated in the contract says limited to no more than CPI I'm guessing that the vendor came to us and said our costs are Rising by at least that much so that they did they ask for CPI no they did they they didn't they just added that they work fine with CPI they didn't ask for an increase over seven percent okay any other questions okay go ahead soon Weedman aye Miller aye Lacroix aye and Albert aye okay uh next is a motion to approve the arbor emergency contract Amendment request for 22-23 uh remember this is uh more or less a pass-through from the increase in reimbursement from the state it's just going to pass through us we go to the to Arbor so
049I'll make the motion second anybody have any questions okay LaCroix hi Albert aye Miller I and Weedman aye and last on the action list is a motion to approve the certified and the psrp staff seniority list this is something that gets done every year for us it's just an annual renewal so I'll make the motion to approve that I can second any questions nope okay Albert aye LaCroix aye Miller I and Weedman aye okay so that takes care of all our action items uh we are up to unfinished business um and the first and the only thing on the unfinished business is the continued discussion of student fees I'm assuming that's going to be Chris nope I have a clicker so that's good all right let's see if it works okay good okay so we
050are here again to talk about student visas as a continued discussion we've we're supposed to talk about it just go through a quick timeline we're supposed to talk about this with Finance we didn't have enough time for the finance committee so we pushed it to the board meeting two weeks ago and we had a good discussion to gather some feedback from the Board of Education specifically about some several uh of the student fees which are approved annually by pod policy each year by you um we have tried to synthesize that in in a broad memo which is seven pages not easy to to make a discussion on that so we've decided to put a slide deck together which was just put together today to hopefully synthesize some of those discussions in a directional recommendation that
051we'll bring back to you on January 18th this is our mission obviously we start with everything preparing Learners create an equity cultivating community uh strategic plan and board policy so you recognize the top two and I've also included the focal 1304 colon 140 which is still very highly relevant to both of these discussion items both in terms of the waiver of student fees and free and reduced price Services which relate to how uh students do not pay student fees if they are eligible for national school lunch program the free which is weather so uh in a little bit about of order here we've decided to go one two three four for starting with facility rental fees the preschool tuition-based tuition fees and then we'll finish with the three and four so we can have a
052bit of a discussion about recommendations for those so we're going to start with facility rental fees um the recommendation is that we recommend that the fees stay the same for 23.24 but we would like to have a discussion next year hi you good fantastic guesting um so we would recommend uh not making a change for next school year but having a more detailed analysis for next year in terms of some of the costs that go into how we are evaluating um on the board policy of classes one two three and four I just want to remind you that again that we don't charge fees as per the intergovernmental agreement with Grayslake Park District and that also includes all the Affiliates and permittees and costly includes the Grass Lake um so the Gray's like um Affiliates
053which are like I think a baseball and various other ones so we're not talking about those but something we would like to look at is evaluing some of those costs for next year so that's a future conversation the second one which is a recommendation with no change is the preschool tuition based and the tuition fees we are making no change for next year um to stay the same as they were for 22 and 23. okay registration fees and Technology fees what we did here is we showed you the current fees which is also in the memo what they currently are as a if you pay before July 15th and if you pay after July 15th which is the late fee and then we also include some peer districts we've got Antioch we've got Fremont we've
054got Gurney we've got Woodland we've got Liberty Libertyville 70 and I think that's Mundelein showing the ranges of the comparable registration and Technology fees most school districts have already put those together which makes complete sense because it's a registration technology fee most school districts are one-to-one districts right now and you can see the ranges of them you can see that we're on the high end so that's something to think about as we are walking through the discussion in terms of the five options we're going to give to you tonight foreign got it okay so we took some of the uh conversation that was had of the last meeting and we wanted to put on one simple slide for you you expressed an interest in discussing the current structure for student extracurricular fees this has been
055an 18-month discussion the current fees range from 50 to 175 dollars that's in the memo you can see what they are individually priced at on a an activity basis the total amount of Revenue just to remind you that we receive is 150 000 that's kind of an average amount over several years it's been up and down based on several uh recovery amounts that we've done but it's about 150 000 a year the cost to the school district is 000. that includes the stipends the teachers that includes the transportation materials and all the other supplies so just a quick reminder that whatever we're doing we're already spending more than we're receiving by the student fees that we are taking in for these extracurricular fees so that's kind of some of the parameters that we're currently facing
056so we took the discussion we put them in options and we wanted to just reprise them again so we talked about standardizing the extracurricular fee the current fee if we were to take the total amount so here's the math kind of to figure this out the total amount that we receive divided by the total enrollment if we were to standardize the fee and charge the same amount that we currently do the standard fee will be 120 dollars that's enrollment for five eight thank you thank you perfect for for five eight exactly if we were to obviously look at the math in extrapolates if it was sixty dollars and goes down to if it was five dollars if we were to make it five bucks it would be the over the overwhelming amount would be reduced
057so that would be the budget impact which would be annual so that was the first thing that we kind of reprized for you because I know that um that's that's something that several school districts have done they've got rid of the individual fees and they've standardized the fees the second thing that we talked about and this is a kind of a build on to this on up onto option one is introducing a cap so an exam Gavin is a very good example of this I have that in there um under the com under the comparable information have an individual Capital so depending on what parameters we decide on with that that would be a reduction Revenue because there would be a certain amount of less that we would collect by families very difficult to actually
058estimate that the individual cup could be lower than the current range but we know what the current range is because we just talked about it family cap no family pays more than 300 that would be just one example and then finally as I've already said difficult to estimate what that would be might be worth piloting this you know thinking about what it would be you know as an estimate for the first year my only caution to a pilot is it's very difficult to raise fees against once we've done that um but then we would actually know the actual cost based on the actual enrollment of who's taking part in these extra critical activities okay a little bit abstract right now we talked about uh pay as you go which was pay what you want and
059we talked about a donation button so I reached out to the Grass Lake Park District and asked them hey what do you receive currently in your donation button and they basically told me very little little to nothing was the exact phrase that they used so um we could do it but I don't think that's the Golden Goose that's going to deliver a sizable amount of money to in a sustainable way which are looking to be sustainable because we don't want to make changes they're not sustainable reduce the extracurricular fees so we can do it we've already talked to um if it's possible to have a permanent donation button on Infinite Campus as well as one which is available for the registration so we can do that and whatever we collect it goes to the district
060um but I'm not sure it will deliver what we thought it would deliver the option far is what we kind of thought about as a taking from one part and moving to another now the value which we would call an option for if we were to increase registration fees and move the revenue that that was received and move it to the student extracurricular fees now the one good thing about that is if we want to be equitable families which would not pay the fees because they would qualify through their income for national school lunch program wouldn't pay them so that would be the one benefit um it's an estimate if we were and this was just a hypothetical offsetting the student curriculum fees for five and six resonated by those two amounts we could reduce
061the standard fee to sixty dollars which as you could see is half what we would be the standard fee so just remembering that math that's 75 000. and then intramurals is a little bit of an outlier because I think it relies upon material so that one would stay 30 to 50 dollars and then we've got option five which is to do nothing which is still an option we can just keep the fees as they are and assess it maybe with a small change or looking at some of these other options and make a determination in the future I put that on because I think being sustainable and not making it a long-term decision could be something that we might want to look at I put this on here just to remind you um this was
062the Baseline model if we don't pass a referendum and as you can see we passed the 25 both the lines there's only a small difference between the two between operating funds and all funds and the only difference between those two is capital projects and Debt Service in fiscal year 26 which is three years so any money that we would Reduce by Revenue we push that line closer to passing the 25 line so that's again reminding you about sustainability um because it's important that we don't make a decision just for one year two years we want this to be the the forever decision for our families because just to be transparent so what we're looking for today is I know there's no recommendation formally but we are looking for acceptance of recommendation one and two which
063is no change I'm looking for broad Direction on the registration technology fees if you say no change that would be no change but we're looking for one of the options for a student extracurricular fees or any other feedback you've got to be able to bring you board approval for January 18th meeting foreign just a couple of my thoughts is I would prefer to try and stay Revenue neutral right so whatever changes we do make doesn't end up having to come dig into that budget you know you said 150 000 a year you know any changes we make as long as we're somewhere in that pocket of 150 000 in those fees I think is our wise move at this point only because he said our our fund balance is on the way down and um
064without passing a referendum it's going to continue to go down and exasperating that by making this change that could cost us more I think would be kind of foolish I like the idea of trying to find a way to make it less expensive for those that are um doing the activity because we want to you know kind of a whole child thing right that participation in these activities helps round them out uh besides the education part that we provide um so I'm for any type of change is going to be kind of Revenue neutral at this point um for those reasons um I struggle a little bit with the um raising the registration fees on all kids a little bit and then lowering it for those that are participating in the sports only because unless
065all kids are going to participate in the sports you're kind of Shifting the Shifting the dollar amounts to them um not equitably right they don't get that they're not participating maybe they'd be more encouraged to participate because it's already paid for but those are some of the my thought process is as we sit here forgive me if I'm wrong Chris but I'm pretty sure that there's only two options that we've talked about so far I mean maybe there are other options we haven't thought of but the only two options that we've talked about so far that are budget neutral are not making any change to our fee structures at all or doing exactly what you just said which is incorporating them into our registration fees raising the registration fees actually more than this frankly probably
066um well we could do it that way so that they're raised for everybody but still students do have to pay for some of their activity fee or you could wipe out activity fees altogether and raise them up for everyone but it does spread it out so that children who are not participating their families would still be paying registration or paying the fees I think we like last meeting when we talked about it is the event that we rent them at that point maybe eliminating that altogether right because then if you want more easier for us to absorb that dollar amount so I can tell you that when Warren was going for its referendum it's registration technology if he was 500 and they put that as part of their referendum that it was reduced I think
067to I don't know what exactly was but it was definitely reduced because they were heavily Reliant upon the student fees to try and res as much revenue as they could so yes it is often part of a referendum discussion when you have a registration fees which are on the high side um so I'm also probably leaning toward a more budget income neutral decision but I also when I'm zooming out and forgive me if we've talked about this and I just am not remembering but I think the why of reducing student fees is to reduce barriers for participation for students do we have more than anecdotal evidence that that is a significant problem for our residents or is that an assumption that has been backed up with data so far and if not is it going
068to be part of the equity action plan or and my thinking is that I definitely want kids to have access but I'm wondering if this is the right lever in order to increase access for them I'm not part of the equity committee you are yes give me a quick moment I'm looking and I'm almost positive but I can do a quick check that was not data that was collected as a part of the equity audit um so we we didn't we didn't collect or submit data about the makeup of our student participation groups so yeah I would say it's anecdotal evidence or anecdotal conversation I guess I would hate to to add a pretty significant expenditure if it's just on a hunch right I think the basis of the conversation is simply the study that
069we've done not necessarily within our district but what you know there's a body of research that says that students who who know that their families can't afford activities will just go undercover not pursue um so it's it's more about the research rather than the data within our school district I remember it being anecdotal as well I think Christine might have mentioned something that she had and then the study I remember that as well I was going to ask a similar question right the problem the equity problem statement that we're trying to solve is what we just talked about right the the assumption that people are foregoing extracurriculars because of cost and so I was going to ask I'm in favor generally speaking right now of not changing the fee structure at this time um are
070there points in the sign up process for extracurriculars where we can put information out to better explain hey and don't worry if if you can't afford it we can certainly push that harder we can we can make that um mostly yes um and I would think we could include um you know things and morning announcements there's more that we can than we can do that's my strong preference right now budget neutral um try to help solve the problem as we see it even if it is anecdotal I mean let's we all have enough experience to know that it probably happens to some degree or another in our district um it happened he once is not it's not good for anyone anyway so if we can try to move remove that barrier to even just the
071one family that's foregoing extracurriculars by better communication I'd be in favor of that in agreement I'm in favor of budget neutral and then um giving a little bit more information to the families I do know of families that have foregone Science Olympiad because that's one of the pricier extracurriculars and that could be a really good opportunity for some students who it's just too expensive for their family so if we can somehow let them know scholarship or whatever yeah and the foundation Foundation 46 had been giving scholarships um I'm not aware of there being discussion this year about Foundation 46 giving Science Olympiad scholarships yeah I'm not aware of that either but I can bring it up at the next meeting sounds good I do know that at our community correct me if I'm wrong just
072better Community engagement meeting last night we talked about whether individuals think outside of school well I guess we asked if ptos could apply for Grants from the foundation and we learned that they can so perhaps a PTO could help with that too they already helped with five point s and that kind of thing so I don't know if that the reason it's Salient is because that could be additional information that could go out in the registration materials to make families aware that there are options if cost is an issue but I think transportation is another issue for that's what I've heard anecdotally right right and we talked about that a little bit last time as well and what we acknowledged is that um we aren't at this time able to be you know able to
073provide after school busing but guess absolutely it's another another issue for sure Maybe that just made me think about how if people are in the know and they have cell phone numbers of other families they make arrangements to do carpooling but if if someone is newer to the area and may not have the tools and the communication um they may not even know who to ask and who to contact so if maybe maybe we can somehow provide tools or I don't even know what I'm trying to say you know what I mean like connection connection yeah okay so did we give you enough confusion no actually I think we're good I think I got three out of the four of you for Quorum um for yeah to do no change so I'm just kind of
074reading this accepting administrative recommendation one and two making no change for registration technology fees I'm making no change for student extracurricular fees but Gathering more data about any impact of current students in our school system that are being affected by not being able to take part in those extra extracurricular activities and using that as a basis for discussion next year is that really what we're looking at sure that's what I heard from three of you I think I could see us doing and I'd have to work with our middle school principals about this but doing some kind of an anonymous student survey that kind of thing with you know questions about the decisions that they've made regarding after school activities yeah yeah I'm even thinking about what that revised communication would look like at the
075point of entree into the extracurricular and families aren't eager to raise their hand and say well I'm not a free and reduced lunch I can't afford this right so I don't have the answer I'm just asking that we all think about you know what it how can we what's the mechanism to let them raise their hand and say I would be doing this if it weren't for the cost right and currently what we tell families is please contact us which really means contact the principal and the principal just works it out and you know there are some children who will get a reduced fee because their fan you know when the family states that they can't afford it um so it might just be being even clearer and more um assertive about letting families know
076that that they can you know have those conversations at the school level I just want to state to the board um and to you Mr Wildman that I really appreciate this conversation because we've been talking about it in a very kind of esoteric way over the last couple of years and I think being able to develop clear options and identify what the cost of those options would be is you know a step in the right direction even though we're not making any change right now perhaps with the passage of a referendum perhaps we'd be able to do other things and make other decisions but at least we can clearly know what we're talking about right now rather than just kind of a vague we'd like to lower fees then this was helpful I just had
077an idea that may or may not be fruitful but it seems to me when I register my kids I I answer a survey that asks a bunch of questions about this you know emergency contacts is there a way to add you know what I'm talking about is that an infinite campus or where do I do this Infinite Campus and you you have to provide us with a lot of information indeed you do can one other piece of information be a question about you know extracurricular fees um we ask about do we ask about free and reduced lunch there well it's a separate application so you're talking about the registration process there's a separate application for the national school lunch program which which is I think it's part of infinite campus but it's not part of
078that registration I don't know how we would ask that yeah just a thought thank you yeah I'm not sure if it would be part of that process or or we do it at the school level but okay we'll think about it sounds like we're all on the same page all right all right I think we know what to bring back to you then all right uh that was the last of the unfinished business uh new business is um discussion of DreamBox math learning purchase I assume that is yeah thanks so um I shared with you as I shared my um memo that I provided in the board packet DreamBox is an additional supplement for math instruction and it is a math intervention and it is the reason we started looking for this is because we
079had data that was showing us that in grades five eight that we had um a gap in an area for some need to be able to support math instruction our math instructors or math Specialists had also reached out to our department to have some conversation about that and so this was identified because what DreamBox does is it works as a an Adaptive engine and so that is it's a platform that's digital just like map our NWA map assessment where students are working if we assign them to their grade level as students are working it gets either a little bit more challenging or a little bit easier in order to really hone in on skills that students need to work on and so what we have been doing right now is for about the past month
080our Math teachers have had the opportunity to in grades 5A to be able to utilize um DreamBox and they are all doing us where they are assigning so they are either assigning weekly or assigning daily um an amount of time that students are spending utilizing DreamBox so DreamBox would be in addition to Carnegie and Matthew um where it is being used as a supplement we are in the contract that we are have spoken to DreamBox about what they are offering us as they are offering us an 18-month contract at the a 12-month rate and that will also have a deferred invoice to July of 2023. so we wouldn't receive that until next school year and then in addition to that the funds would come from the teaching and learning software licenses from our funds and
081then also the professional development that teachers would need would come from Title II so from our Title II Grant and this is an opportunity for students the platform is us and it's a platform that looks a little bit different for our students that is engaging and so one of the things that our math Specialists as we were learning about this that we were looking at was that even if a student is working below grade level that the platform still looks like a 5A platform so it's not bringing it down where a lot of platforms for students when they're working below grade level to bring down and look a little bit more a little younger yeah a little bit more Juvenile and so this is allowing students to be able to see a similar platform but
082get the skills that they need you have any questions this is just for discussion tonight it would start the end of 2024 yeah 2024 school year I just have a request if you would please the next time you talk with the rep could you ask about their commitment to sustainability and EDI measures I took a quick peek online I didn't see anything overt but it would be great to have a little bit more information about what they're doing as a company yeah sure Jessica do you mean Dei measures or no EDI okay I guess I was confused yeah okay okay I think I've always thought of it the other order so um [Laughter] so is there I'm hoping that there's evidence that students retain what they're learning from this program and that's why the math
083Specialists brought this to you yeah so um the school districts that I've used it it is very um closely aligned to the standards and so school districts that I've used it have seen an increase in student achievement as measured by NWA Through Math and so we've been able to see that yeah it works um that and that is typically if a student is using approximately about 10 minutes a day so it's not a very long period of time that students would need to be on about 50 minutes a week okay I was just wondering if this program could be considered to be filling a learning loss that would qualify us for additional funding and the second part of that question would be we probably used to elect funds and you've already considered this and so
084this is not applicable I just want to hear it I just want to hear it I I don't think we have anything left do we I think we've now yes sir ARP I think we're done I don't believe there's anything left um to eke out any of those grunts are we doing it no so would you like a general consensus from us to move forward so you can start January 1st and then we can approve it in the January meeting that if we can do that that would be great is that okay with everybody give her a general consensus move forward okay it is but can I ask one more question I forgot my last question please okay um and it's actually less a question just I'm curious about the professional development I think I
085read that said it's a webinar is there more to it than that and do they do our teachers need more than that yeah great question so we had one webinar to start just for teachers to be able to learn how to interact with it and know how to assign lessons to students and things like that we would do additional professional development they are live webinars the ones that we would do we did a recorded webinar for our first one because of timing and subs and things like that we would be able to use some of our late start job alike time to be able to get some live webinars with someone from DreamBox and they will show us everything they need to know about how to utilize reports how to utilize get a little bit
086deeper as far as how to use the program I too have one more does this replace augment matthia great question um it would be in right now it's in addition to um and that is because they serve very different purposes and so mathia is very closely aligned to Carnegie and to Carnegie lessons and this is really supplementing some of those intervention needs that we are finding for students where they may have skill gaps and then also where students may need to be challenged in other areas or enriched and so giving students the opportunity to really dig into those specific skill areas as an intervention okay okay we're moving ahead so it's ready to go first of the year yeah yeah okay all right thanks for gender of approved already did all right I figured you
087did two steps ahead of me at all times uh all right so we are up to uh topics for future agenda items yep well here's what we have currently on the docket um so January 18th is our next meeting we'll have a policy committee meeting at 5 30 board as I've already indicated to you there is an enormously long list of policies to be discussed our cabinet is still assessing those policies and to see which you know to what extent there will be a lot of conversations so right now I don't know whether we'll be able to go through all of those policies on the 18th or whether we'll do half of them in the 18th with board approval on February 1st and then the other half in the latter half of February so we
088have I believe Sue all the way up until March 30th right with press to get those approved so we have some time um these are more than just legal reference changes then so that's what we're assessing many of them are just legal reference changes or even um even you know just reviews but we've experienced lots of questions in the past about policies anyway and so sometimes we like to have robust conversations so we want to see what's really reasonable and then there are some that are you know that are more changed so I'll know it's just that some of us are actually planning to do our deeper policy work over winter vacation I'm one of those people so we probably won't know until after winter break how how deep will go um at the January
089meeting so the 18th policy committee meeting then we'll be having a website presentation of our brand new website we're really excited about that um and then we have um student what did I do here student fees action along with dream about box action we have um oh I'm sorry earlier we're gonna We likely will be bringing some students here we had the seventh grade boys basketball team from GMS who are conference Champs and we want to celebrate them we also are intending to talk about triple I um under the heading of what ideas and learnings did you have that feed our strategic plan and what ideas and learnings should we consider for the future that are things that are outside the Strategic plan and then um I think Christy I'm pretty sure you asked for
090there to be some kind of an input from the board regarding the CEC Community Cafe is that correct so is that a like a new uh the discussion item correct I think my original thought was to get feedback prior to the design but in the interim we have moved the data so I'm going to have to do the design over break so it might not it might be more of an announcement as opposed to okay getting feedback okay so maybe we won't have as an agenda item you can just do it as part of a board report I think probably okay that would be that sounds good all right um and then uh February 1st we have a presentation of our Equity action plan so we're excited about that piece and we are intending to
091be able to approve um a new director of innovation that night we plan to be bringing you a name by the way we did start the first round of interviews as recently as today so we started them today we have some more tomorrow and into next week as well um February 15th um Adam's going to come with more information about composting along with possibly some other sustainability measures we expect to have photos and such um and that's where we are right now do we need to act on the student fees we're not changing them yeah we do we have to act on that whole set of fees right all the different ones that yeah approval yep yeah yep good question though that's it for us I've had one question yes how far out or when
092do you plan on starting the process to hire an assistant yes right so as I've expressed to the community when we get back from winter break we'll start that conversation and we'll set up a um a timeline I'll put it like this typically a hiring timeline start to finish takes about two months between make you know planning it out and posting a position and then actually bringing it to bring it to the board so I would say we're probably looking at some time in March is likely for that for the actual hiring anybody have any other questions comments just have a request I'm and I don't know when this fits in maybe summer but um I'm curious what's going on in the Arts specifically the Visual Arts and Music because I know with covid I
093think we had to cancel some of the instrument some of that pipeline got got interrupted in terms of introducing kids to instruments I'm just curious where we're at with Fine Arts so we can certainly I'm excited that you're asking the question because we have so much good news to share about that so we could do something to bring um bringing music teachers in and art teachers in if you'd like we can ask them this is just my room yes sure we will bring something about the Fine Arts in our district okay be careful what you asked for you may just get it just so you know okay am I hearing that there's going to be a recorder concert I don't know but the ideas are I think the ukuleles are back there and we could
094have it sung can everyone sing there we go we'll come up with something fun okay [Music] completely developed [Music] for the Triple I share out how are we doing that exactly do we I mean I know we have the framework of the two questions but Mr Mack was actually talking with me about that before the last board meeting and he talked about putting a Google doc together I don't know if he did or not so I don't know the answer to your question but maybe I can ask Stephen and report back to everybody sure sounds like you're in church I will take care of that one thing thank you very narrow he wouldn't hand out the ribbons so now you get that uh do we have a close discussion nope okay uh I will make
095the motion to adjourn the meeting second LaCroix hi Miller I Albert aye and Weedman aye all right we are adjourned that's a wrap thank you very much everyone