001welcome to 2022. it seems like we were just in 2019. um this is the uh community consolidated school district board of education meeting for january 2012 2022 at 6 30 pm uh first part of business tonight is a public hearing this is a conductive public hearing concerning the intent of the board of education to sell 9.1 million dollars in working cash fund bonds for the purpose of increasing the districts working cash fund so i need a call to order and roll call please weedman here mac here braden here albert here lacroix here miller here and nash here okay that gives us a quorum uh next we need to stand for the pledge of allegiance please [Music] and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice [Music] uh
002okay uh next we have a presentation from chris okay this is the public hearing concerning the intent of the board of education to sell 9.1 million dollars of working cash fund bonds for the purpose of increasing the district's working cash fund at the december 8th 2022 regular board meeting the board bravely courageously approved a three-year capital plan aligning improvements all the districts buildings including roof replacements paving hvac and air ventilation projects to finance these investments we have the option to extend taxes for bonds which were issued without referendum at a level called the debt service extension pace or dsep using our dsip to issue working cash bonds will enable us to immediately begin the work of planning for these projects the administration is recommending to the board of education this option as it maximizes the
003bond proceeds available to the district and aligns the capital work with the life of the bonds so a quick reminder about what we've done on december 8th the board approved the resolution of intent to issue bans a notice of the public hearing was published in the daily herald on december 13th a notice of the public hearing was posted at the district office and on the district's website with the board agenda on january 10th we received no petitions regarding this issuance which closes today moving forward we will begin the rating the bond trading process in which several board members will be involved we expect to receive up receive our bond rating on january 31st and at the february 16th bond meeting approved parameters bond resolution authorizing the sale of the bonds we expect the market price
004for the bonds on february 22nd and the bond proceeds to be received on march 16th do you have any questions about the schedule timetable or the process moving forward anybody from the board have any questions for chris do you want questions just specific to the timetable right now or or can i ask do you want to do your presentation first or or no i'll take any question from you okay all right you know what i'm gonna i'm gonna go wait i'm gonna wait th th that the presentation is done that's i've outlined sorry okay all right thank you um my question is in the memo that we got you in the last line i wanted a little clarification if you could just walk us through the following statement it says the taxable and tax exempt
005refunding components of the financing plan it does not will not incur a tax increase for our taxpayers is that and then the second part was that the net interest cost savings is based on current estimates can you walk us through just in layman's terms sure there's a long a very long answer that an underwriter would be able to walk you through but i'm going to try and answer it as best as i can so the issue of the non-referendum non-referendum bonds when combined with refunding will not increase the taxes for the debt service this is because the small increase from the non-referendum bonds is offset from the savings from the refunding in the long term if we were issuing this this bond without refunding it would cost 53 on an assessed value in taxes of
006250 000 but for because we're doing this now combined with the refunding of our present debt it will not cost anything for the life of those bonds does that hopefully that answers the question without an underwriter which is a very long answer about refunding 2012 bonds going out in august it's it's a little bit more difficult beyond for me to answer that but that's the crux of the answer and thank you that was that was what i wanted was just the crux of it so thank you the 2.53 is an estimate of today so that is with a 7 i believe a 75 basis point cushion so i hope that we will do better than that based on current market rates okay great and then my second question is that raymond james we talked before
007they agreed to monitor the secondary market for us specifically around flipping the bonds is that what's the follow-up for that if you know yet um i can tell you the bonds cannot be sold until the district approves the bond resolution rent bond resolution is a regular meeting schedule for february 16th so they will monitor them but we can't do anything about that until they're sold so they will be monitored and we have passed on your concerns to our underwriters fantastic but we'll have that information going into future decisions is that like we can learn from this and then go so that we know more about the secondary bond market for future any kind of future considerations that we need to make we we could definitely bring our render writer back to talk to you about
008that okay thank you thank you any more questions does anybody else have any other questions okay um we just need to do a little bit of housekeeping here because evidently uh we missed something here so i need a motion to approve the agenda for the public hearing so moved now second miller hi albert i mack aye weedman hi brayden aye lacroix aye and nash hi okay our next uh is uh public questions or comments um for the for the public hearing itself not for the next board meeting that is immediately following is anybody signed up nope okay what topic are you looking to speak on [Music] okay so let's save that for the following meeting and if you can come if you can come up and put your name and information on the signing sheet
009up here and once we go into the public comment of the next meeting which is in a matter of seconds we'll get you it okay okay so being no comments public comments on the public hearing we will i need a motion to adjourn the public hearing so moved second lacroix hi nash hi miller i mack hi albert hi weedman hi and braden hi okay so now we will go into the [Music] regular board of education meeting um so i need a call to order and roll call for that weedman hi matt hi brayden here albert here lacroix here miller here and nash present okay and since nobody took off running we still have a quorum i need a motion to approve tonight's agenda for the regular board meeting so moved second miller i albert hi
010mac hi weedman hi brayden hi lacroix hi and nash hi okay okay now we are back up to public comments so if you'd like to come up and take the podium i think you're the only one at this point hi um so i'll keep this very short and sweet there's no issue um so i know alice's law the the videos that have to be shown can i just ask you to introduce yourself oh my gosh yes please finish go ahead introduce yourself please okay my name is michelle connie okay um so i know those videos were shown and they're completely appropriate i agree with them however i know that my husband and i were not alerted ahead of time we didn't receive the emails that were sent out on the 11th right after right before
011right after christmas break started and it just feels like kind of like it i know it's a slit through the cracks we both didn't get them and you know so it's just something i would have liked to have been alerted to so i just wanted to possibly suggest something instead of opt out can people maybe opt in for anything further or sexually educate sexual education wise possibly i just wanted to suggest that okay really that's it thank you okay i appreciate your time thank you okay no other public comments okay um next is board reports uh if i can start off with that um the the end of the year we lost a former board member tom meskel sadly it's also only was only eight weeks or so from the passing of his wife mary
012so both of them have passed away recently tom was on the board for a four-year period and he was also a member of the foundation 46 which is the not-for-profit educational support program that we have in town he was uh very active in education he was a teacher for many years down in niles i believe was middle east he also taught out in ohio ohio yes um that's what i have right io um so you know uh tom will be missed uh his stories will be missed his little off-color jokes will be missed um and i just wanted to pass that on to the community that we uh we lost tom muscle recently one other thing i wanted to talk about or wanted to state real quick was uh you know i wanted to thank
013the staff for their work over the winter break with the constantly changing cdc guidelines and idph guidelines and keeping track of everything that's being changed and communicating that out to the families and to the community and keeping the board apprised of what what has been changing what needs to be done i wanted to thank them for that work and to keep our kids into school as best we can at this point so i just wanted to pass along that thanks um so i also wanted to offer condolences to the family i know tom muskel also served our country in the navy and that was something i'm personally very grateful for and then also a couple thank yous first to the equity committee the focus i attended a focus group this week as i'm sure many
014of us did and it was not long before i got a text just from one person saying thank you for hosting this and so thank you again to the to the equity committee for making those conversations possible and then also um adam if you could pass on the thank you to the custodial staff as i was going through the financial reports i'm looking at overtime over time over time and i'm going oh my gosh these guys are putting in a ton of work so thank you for that and finally um from the community engagement committee we're in the middle of dare to lead so we've got i think it's six people and want to offer thanks to jordan debbink lesniak who has joined us from the performing arts uh collaborative here in grace lake too
015so jess i don't know if you have anything to add but that's our my update for for cec am i forgetting anything no okay that's it for me good anybody else have anything that you want to share christy um i just i know dr glickman and mr lewis have also in and uh ms nash have also been working on onboarding conversations for new equity committee members but i have mine tomorrow night so i'm excited about that and i just wanted to give everyone an update that those are happening and i believe our first official meeting with our new members will be in february is that correct dr glickman i think okay great okay [Music] up to the superintendent superintendents report well first of all it looks like we have some younger members in our audience
016today um did you all just wake up today and decide you wanted to come to a board meeting or are you earning a badge badge badge well we're glad you're here we're glad you're here so welcome tonight good to see you it is not in any way possible to convey how hard everyone is working during this unprecedented time we know that's a phrase we keep using right unprecedented time and it keeps being true so the teachers just managing their classes providing lessons for students who are in isolation or also subbing in for the many absent staff members some of them some of our teachers have also jumped in to help with our quarantine tutors for quarantine students so last week we didn't have nearly enough quarantine tutors so our reading specialists many of them jumped
017in to help with that this week excuse me some of our teachers who are at home quarantining but who are not symptomatic or are not very symptomatic are serving as quarantined tutors for them for their home really the work of our teachers is just incredible then we have our program assistants who are also subbing into classrooms if they're qualified to do so and subbing for each other during lunch recess duties some of them doing period after period after period of lunchroom duty thank you to those program assistants office and health staff there are simply no words to convey the level of pressure that they are under on a not just a daily basis but a minute by minute basis managing the communication and the data load of the number of absent students it's it's not
018possible to to really even talk about that clearly we're thankful to our custodial staff keeping the place uh clean and safe along with our tech staff making sure that we have the tools that we continue to need and then there are our administrators many of whom are sitting around this table the others at home and i hope not watching this board meeting i hope they are resting they are following ever-changing guidance while being the management hub of everything that i just talked about um and still functioning as instructional leaders and then finally our students and families coming in going out making arrangements and just living in this world that we're all sharing together right now we just came back from winter break and um we're really really really tired already we're we're trying to pump
019ourselves up but people are tired but it's all worth it and i i have to share with you one teacher wrote to me just today she didn't know she was going to be in the board meeting but she wrote to me and wrote the last couple of days of work have been the kind of days that remind me of why i became a teacher and so despite all of what i just described to you that's how people are feeling just pitching in and helping out looking at the kind of faces we have sitting out there right now and knowing why they're doing it as you know guidance has changed in very very slow increments one drip at a time over the past week and it already appears that the change from a 10 day to
020a five day exclusion from class is making a difference in our absences and we expect those numbers to continue to improve as omicron peaks and then goes down and um and again we have that that decrease from 10 to five day exclusion which really is making a difference so um we're going to look at some numbers so um of course i'm going to ask you to throw those slides up for me thank you all right so this first slide is about positive cases and i want to make sure everyone knows that when we when we share information about positive cases we do it on a week by week basis and that's because information is coming in all the time so doing it and having a cut off on a week is much more accurate than
021doing it on daily basis so that's what we've been doing so um i have for you three different dates the week that ended december 3rd the week that ended ended december 10th and the week that just ended right january seventh and you can see back on december third we had only 50 positive cases across the district and that include this is students and staff so that was 1.2 percent of our students and staff back on december 3rd that week december 10th even better 28 positive cases across the district throughout the week 0.7 and now we have our first week back the week of january 7th 357 positive cases about 8.9 percent across the district students and staff that shouldn't be a surprise to anyone because it mirrors what we're seeing in our county what we're
022seeing in our state what we're seeing in our nation what we're seeing in the world so nobody was surprised to see those numbers but i did want to have them displayed and you can see them on a chart just going up we look forward to being able to see those in another chart sometime soon starting to go down next slide please okay this is some student data from this week this is easier to you know this we can show reasonably easily on a day by day basis because it's about attendance so i have for you tuesday's date that's the 11th and today's date the 12th so this is again district-wide on the 11th we had 293 students involved in our remote learning working with the the cove the quarantine tutors so that was about 8.2
023percent of our students now if you look at how many students were out of the building across the district it was 654 which is 18.2 percent of our students many of the students in that list are likely students who their families took them out because they're symptomatic but they have not yet tested positive they are not yet considered you know they weren't yet eligible to work with the tutor they're not in remote learning yet because they just went out we do still have some families that are have not yet felt comfortable bringing their children into school so some of them will be those students but many of them are likely symptomatic students or students who are stick with other things and you can say see that already today well we've had already you know shared
024the news a couple of days ago that we are going to the five-day quarantine the numbers have already started going down so today we are at 7.4 percent of our students um in remote and 16 students across the district out of the buildings so i'd like to tell you that i know it will continue to come down i cannot predict the future i hope that we will see them to continue to go down and we have one more slide this one's really encouraging this is about our staff so i have information from last week and to end this week so the fourth that was our um that was last tuesday we had 80 students excuse me staff members out and 37 unfilled positions that means that you when we have people who are absent if
025i'm absent for example i don't have a sub but if i'm a third grade teacher and i'm absent i need a sub so um we had 37 people last tuesday who needed a sub and we didn't have one for them that's where people are subbing in for each other where we're closing services down where a program assistant is is filling in some of them are people where we were not necessarily classroom teachers but a program that we've cancelled something like that and you by the way the chart is the the blue shows the actual absences and the red is the unfilled positions so that number went up on wednesday to 90 staff members absent and 44 unfilled positions we were really concerned went down a little bit the next day 80 to 32 and then
026i just want to show you what happened this week this is today 48 staff members absent only 11 unfilled positions so so much better so we're very hopeful that our staff numbers will continue to go down and i wanted our board and community to see that so that is the information that i have to share with you regarding covid and how we're handling school right now there are other pieces of the superintendent report but board does anybody have any questions or comments about anything i just shared i just have one question do you think we have an opportunity or a need to possibly put on another vaccination clinic we absolutely can pull it and uh one together we were waiting to kind of get things going the school year and actually i just today got
027a reach out that i will be responding to in terms of a clinic but i will we're going to try to do it a different way this time a different organization you know what i'm going to say as we've all been seeing the stats come across the news and flashed in front of our eyes daily um you can see the definite pattern between the vaccinated in the unvaccinated and the severity of how they get sick and hospitalization so just encouraging you know those that have not had an opportunity vaccinated to go out and get vaccinated lake county health department has got open stats almost daily and then obviously our local pharmacies are also putting out giving covert shots as well so as a public health reason if you have the opportunity and you want to
028i would highly suggest to go get work on getting vaccinated so thanks anybody else questions or comments yes thanks for that overview dr glickman um it brings up an immediate question that i have and then a maybe a future topic so the question that i have is around our strategy for the unfilled positions and just understanding what that that looks like and obviously to mr whitman's point the vaccination clinic can be like one prong of a multi-prong approach to addressing that so um not sure if there's a strategy around that but that's something that i'd like to be informed about how do we i mean obviously we know there's a teacher shortage and substitute shortage um but what other creative or proactive things are that we're looking at um to mitigate that even further going
029forward um [Music] i i'm wondering if we might be able to answer your question okay maybe we can try between chris woke and me okay um so we know that there is a a substitute shortage across the nation um are you asking about how we mitigate it on a day-to-day basis because things have been very different lately or are you asking in general how do we get more substitutes so i think it's probably like a two-pronged answer right so there's the the right now how do we address it but what's the the longer term strategy recognizing that we're going to be living with this for a little bit sure so chris um certain you know certainly you can share what what we've been doing on a daily basis and then you know to the extent
030that you can speak about long term certainly we know that you would have already done things you if you could but if you could share a little bit about what we do on a daily basis sure um on a daily basis not just over the past week but on day in day out there's always a shortage it's a very few and far between that we have all of our subpositions filled on average but probably this year about staff members out on a daily basis from fmlas regular sick leave quarantine student services so it really kind of depends upon the situation but most often we're internal subbing so we'll pull a as a paraprofessional who has a teaching certificate or has a bachelor's degree because those are some of the criteria that they need in order
031to be able to sub um per isbe and so they might be moved from their regular role into sub into that classroom um you know sometimes services may have be disrupted a little bit usually the principals have a rotating schedule on who they are able to pull so that it's not just always person a and kids a that are impacted or classroom a that's impacted long term um yeah this is there's a sub shortage there's been a sub shortage um prior to the pandemic as well um over the summer the board approved to increase our subpay it went from 110 a day to 120 a day with a loyalty rate per se that after a certain number of days worked you'd be bumped up to a higher rate um that's one of the things i'm
032waiting to meet uh just sent an email out today i'll be meeting with four individuals next week who reached out and said they want a sub in our district so it's we're starting to see people come back to subbing [Music] i i hope that that is a foreshadows what we're going to see with our teaching staff if you read the research you know we're still going to be down um teacher candidates because just nobody's coming through the teacher programs but that's you know recruiting getting local staff so if you know somebody that is interested um most of our our subs are by word of mouth um you know it's you know somebody who may be interested um maybe they don't maybe they're taking some time off from the regular job um or their stay-at-home parent
033and now their child has gotten to that age where they're able to you know go back to work so just interim so send them our way the great thing about substitute teaching is that you get to impact lives but you also get to set your hours you want to work three days a week you work three days a week if you want to work five days of work day week you work five days a week if you have a doctor's appointment on wednesday then you can you want to work monday tuesday thursday friday you're able to do it okay so i have recruitment on our end but also spreading the word um that uh we're looking for people yeah and that's hope that's helpful insight um i just want to ensure that we don't have
034classrooms that are that are unattended and how can we get creative um and so and this is just off the top i don't even know this is viable but just you know recognizing the community concern around this topic you know what type of partnerships do we have for or can create with like lake county um clc where we have you know student teachers right where they're trying to earn credits and stuff you know is that a viable one yeah unfortunately the state does have certain criteria that you have to have a bachelor's degree in order to be a full-fledged sub there is a short-term sub uh license where you have to have 60 credit hours and still it's and then you're very limited to the number of days that you're able to sub okay um
035and what's districts that have been utilizing that have seen um issues with the work they're putting into because then you have to go through this whole a big training process as well um is that the work that they're putting they're not able to get those subs they're not getting the return on their investment sure okay thanks for that insight i just challenged us to continue to think creatively about how we mitigate that going forward [Music] and then that kind of um brought up another thought that really is probably more for a future conversation but it ties in with this which is you know just looking at you know i know we want in-person learning as much as possible um you know but how do how do we anticipate now having numbers coming out of winter
036break some things we may need to consider for spring break right we don't again we don't know what the numbers are going to be i know some districts after winter break they had like applause week i don't know what it was called technically but i'm call it like instead of a gap year a gap week where they anticipated that because of the holiday travel and such that the numbers would spike up and and rather than have the absenteeism as a result of that they had that gap week that then allowed them to for folks that if they did have symptoms or were sick you know it got flushed out before school actually got restarted so again nothing to solve for but just thinking around this whole thing and knowing spring break will be here before
037we know it just how do we kind of be intentional about our strategy going forward now that we had this awesome day to your team pull forward dr gleckman thank you i missed the last thing that you said what was the last sentence oh that now that we have this insightful data coming off of winter break that your team pulled forward awesome you know how do we then use this as predictive analysis to inform what we do for spring break if anything so i can share um i had a conversation with our shield partners about um doing a what you call i can't think of a language right now but like an on an entry shield testing that we could do over spring break so we could do it right before spring break or excuse
038me right before it's from break ends so that people could bring their their children for shield testing so that's one opportunity that we'd have the opportunity that you're describing about taking a pause i don't know if that will be possible anymore i know some school districts did that on their own prior to getting this new guidance but i'll tell you that the guidance that that came just last night is very strong on not taking adaptive pauses and not planning for pauses in that way so i'm wondering if even those school districts that did that and i don't think there were any in in this area but um you know throughout the state if they if that will even be something that's possible um the guidance may make it impossible but certainly we'll be um looking
039at the a screening opportunity for everybody who wants it ahead of time yeah certainly and chris by the way thank you for taking tamika's question and turning it into a recruitment opportunity that was awesome yes thank you mr walker i'd be happy to tameka are you looking looking to make some extra money yeah vacation money maybe all right let's move on okay so anybody else questions or comments about this information that i shared okay i want to remind everyone that we're off on monday to honor dr martin luther king jr and our teaching and learning department shared lesson ideas with teachers regarding how to honor dr martin luther king jr's legacy and board jim asked me to share with all of you that he and i were in some conversation recently about kind of the
040steps we're taking and the timeline regarding my evaluation with you so as you remember we are for the first time using an electronic tool i spent some time over winter break entering some of my own information into that tool i don't think you have a login for it yet when i am finished with my end of it then i submit it and then i understand you will all get a login you'll be able to then access it you'll be able to see my self-evaluation and then each one of you individually will have the opportunity to assess in all of the different areas and also put in your own comments so um the timeline that jim and i worked on together knowing that the evaluation is due march 1st is that i will complete my end
041of it by the end of this month by january 28th and then you'll have it come to you any questions about that okay i'm going to pass it over to stephanie diaz to talk about access yeah just have a quick announcement that the english learner uh proficiency exam starts next tuesday and we'll go okay stephanie sorry can you move on my closer sorry sure better sorry it's a very brief um announcement that the english learner proficiency exam begins next tuesday and our window will run until february 4th but is be extended it officially until march 4th for any student who is in quarantine or remote to give them an opportunity to come back and still be able to take um the online assessment then we have just under 700 students in our district who are
042participating in this assessment can you say the number again stephanie it's just under 700 i think it just under 700 just under 700 students taking access okay thank you thank you all right and the last piece of the superintendent's report is adam halperin talking about the event at frederick school that occurred just before winter break thank you dr glickman good evening everybody welcome back hope everybody had a great holiday good time i know all of you have heard before what i am about to state not all heroes wear capes this is especially true when you work in a school setting these heroes i call it come from every aspect of a district over the past year and a half i have seen it in many different ways i started back in may june of 2020
043and went full-time july 1st 2020 during this time we have leap excuse me lept over more obstacles made more turns and pulled together as a team and a family i myself get to work with a team that has overcome a change in regime ideas and a pandemic and yet they still come to work every day with a smile knowing that what they do makes this all possible on tuesday december 7th approximately 4 25 i received a phone call from the fire alarm monitoring service that our fire system was in trouble by the time i got back to the school 15 minutes later the west wing of frederick was completely flooded out due to two sprinkler heads the first one the first process was to shut the water down and call the o m team to
044help start cleaning up within the first hour we had half the team there and we started cleaning up the water along with the restoration company on their way over the next three days the restoration company worked tirelessly to remove all the water and clear the area on saturday december 11th we had 10 people from the o m team at frederick assisting in cleaning all the furniture in the classrooms so that the kids could go back to in-person learning for the week before winter break the week of december 13th was a hectic week as our timetable was very short to ensure that all material was going to be available for the completion of the 12 rooms the two weeks were already shortened because of the holidays so we needed to have all of our t's crossed
045and our eyes dotted there was no shortage of helping hands from teachers to administration and the o m all helped with the process of clearing the rooms in anticipation of the repairs we also had board members who offered help 1d46 the next two weeks in the district were hectic tiring and fulfilling frederick's west wing transformed from bare concrete floors with no ceilings back to beautiful happy and comfortable learning spaces again jc restoration worked magic in getting the rooms complete and the tight time frame that i gave them by january 3rd our classrooms were once again filled with laughing and happy kids talking about their vacations and times with their family thank you to all the contractors staff families and the board of education for making this possible i'm going to show you a couple pictures
046of a little bit you everybody saw the damage that was done going to give you a little bit of a after pictures of where we are now so up at top there obviously those were the pictures from the night that it actually happened you can see all the water as the work started going through and they started ripping things everything out over the next couple days is that you pushing it there we go with the new carpet that was installed and laid down and i don't know if anybody can tell but we had these old power poles that were right in the middle of the room so it gave us a prime opportunity and time to remove them so that we had the nice big open space next please there we go with the with
047the classrooms being put back together desks in place getting ready for all the kids to come back next please no you see as gsf is in the back there i happen to have caught a perfect picture with them as they were helping clean also to make sure that everybody can get back and last but not least that was probably one of my favorite pictures there because it had the whole library in the background of that thank you everybody thank you thanks adam and last but not least i know i said he was last but um mr vaipon has a few things to say go ahead chris thank you just wanted to share a brief update of before winter break in december we talked about the new flat panels that we would be piloting across the
048district i'm excited to show that the pilot units arrived the week before i think i said spring break the week before winter break we can dream right the week before winter break the pilots or the pilot units arrived our info specialists and tech team got a chance one afternoon that week to start learning start exploring and now since we have been back there is one panel very similar to this in every one of our schools and that panel the pilot as we talked about in december is a little bit different in each building some buildings have it in a different classroom each day getting a bunch of different experience and a variety of opinions and feedback and then some buildings have it in one classroom for a couple days or a few days at a
049time to get kind of that deeper level of feedback and experience all of that to say that overall the feedback has been very positive we continue to learn each day and and we have spreadsheets going with different feedback and different questions that we still hope to answer and i'm excited to show off a whole lot more about it at our next board meeting and share some more updates at that time thank you and i wanted to go back to a question from i don't know maybe a half an hour ago and somebody asked about our i think christy you asked about when our next equity committee meeting is and mr lewis although he's not here at the table he is watching and he just sent me a message to correct so thank you paul um
050that the next equity meeting is january 21st 24th in person if possible and that's the end of the superintendent report thanks paul okay uh so we're up to the consent agenda so i need a motion to approve the consent agenda so moved second braden hi nash aye lacroix i albert i miller i mac hi and weedman aye next are action items these are agenda items that we voted that will be voted on today at this meeting so the first one is i need a motion to approve the student fees early childhood tuition and facility rental fees for the school year 2022 and as we had discussed before these are flat we are not raising them we're keeping them as they are any questions okay i'll make the motion to approve a second weedman hi miller
051hi mac aye nash aye braden aye lacroix hi and albert uh next i need a motion to approve the durham contract renewal for the 22-23 school year so moved i'll second any questions i have one um so when i was reviewing the contract or the the latest update that we received coming into the to this evening the way that um it looks like there's a an area in there where i guess some of the costs that they're um are the need to raise base rate salaries and some other costs i'll jump back over and pull the email up to be more specific but it sounds like it's pass through cost straight pass through costs on to the district as opposed to i guess what we were originally looking at and i was just trying to
052understand because i didn't think that we had that that language in there before the last paragraph in the event market conditions dictate that employee wages are necessary and then including adjustments for dot dot dot i'm just trying to understand is that standard language that's been there before and maybe i just missed it because we did just have the you know the rate increase and the concession given the um the need to raise wages et cetera i'm opening the contract are you referring to in the in the event market conditions they take yes i believe that's been in the last contracts the last at least last year and the first corvid contract that was passed that language was it was added okay thank you for clarifying that anybody else have any questions okay lacroix hi brayden
053aye albert aye miller hi mack aye weedman hi and nash hi uh right next is unfinished business and we're so good we don't have any so we're going to go on to new york business we i had asked everybody to kind of report out on their isb conference sessions that we attended in november i can't believe it was in november already um [Music] so i will go first since if i get it up there we go all right so um i went to in total i went to five um sessions uh but three of them were probably more uh beneficial than the other two the other two i kind of didn't get a whole lot out of which is sometimes typical when we go uh but the first one was effective financial transparency um which
054um you know they talk about us when we um when we have our meetings and we have an opportunity to tell our story to the community of where we're sitting financially and the importance of that it makes it a lot easier when it comes down to levy time and referendum time and passing the bonds and stuff like that so some of their suggestions were increasing the the visibility of what our budget looks like and not only in the numbers i mean even when we you know something that i would like to talk to chris about uh in the future is when we look at our board packet there are times where i look at the board packet and as i see the numbers and they suggest putting in graphs and pie charts and stuff like
055that to give you a better idea where they act because some people much like every student in this school district learns a different way there's board members that view things visually differently and can learn from that publishing stuff like our newsletters our annual report our foia information which i know are on our some of those most of that is on our website already but accessibility needs to get to with us putting together a new website coming up in the over the summer break i think it gives us a great opportunity to upgrade our transparency in our financial situation with the community at that point obviously doing anything too much right now would probably be duplication of effort uh but going forward i'd like to see us work towards that um second one was trends in
056collective bargaining uh i usually go to some sort of collective bargaining session when i'm there because there's always something to learn in there um and looking back as i was looking at my notes and as we had gone through the interest-based bargaining i know i missed parts of it but going through the uh the powerpoint slides that she provided a lot of what was talked about in the you know topics of or trends in community collective bargaining were kind of covered in our interest-based bargaining you know communication is the key honest open communication with both from both sides make sure we're following the illinois labor relations act being prepared to explain or tell our story of why and our rationale behind our proposals and not just putting out a number but telling them why and
057where we're sitting um keeping it on a professional level no personal attacks um was a topic that came out of there and then clear concise language so that there's no ambiguity and there's no going back and forth at all what did this really mean that the language needs to be pretty clear what what is desired the other one i went to was a legal review they called it can't make it up they talked about political speech in schools and how you can't necessarily ban all political speech in schools they talked about the impact of covid on teachers and students which you know as a lot of our meetings nowadays kind of touch on that they also went over uh critical race theory um and how that is looking to heat up and how it'll be
058probably in discussions for many years uh and then they talked about the impacts of the universal pre-k bill that uh i think it was passed but it might have been just proposed and the final financial impact on the on the school district and just to give you an example for that it was an 18 billion dollar bill for the first uh three years it would cover the student's cost at 100 percent uh by federal zero by state there we go fourth year go to down to ninety fifth year ago seventy five six years sixty percent seventh year you're all on your own so it wasn't a bill that was going to be providing finances all the way into the future so that would be something that we would have to then look at funding on
059our end as we go forward now it's down the road but or that's part of what they were talking about so those are just kind of the highlights my biggest one i'd like to work on once we get to that new website getting up and running is the financial transparency part that's what i had would you like to go all right all right i think mr vipend i think you've got mine right that's right yep uh so similarly i was able to attend five sessions as well and um highlighted a couple of the big ones that or a couple of items from the ones that stuck out to me the most one of them the first session was the integrating new technology to promote learning in a pandemic and the topic obviously focused on you
060know the major challenges that the epidemic caused within access to technology in our communities and the discussion around that and and i've highlighted in yellow the things that stuck out to me the most to make it a little bit easier to look at but the ways in which we try to access learning for our staff and our faculty and potentially for best practices within the community and the interesting takeaway from this particular session was looking at ways in which professional development learning can morph into more of a conference type atmosphere rather than a series of meetings on institute days specifically for teachers and i experienced that myself you know in in the school where we you know we're dismissed to our to our plcs and we simply just you know sit in a room and
061talk about things and this particular um uh session was you know how do we it kind of comes back to some of the things i've talked about a lot before how do we do education differently in all the different ways um and it was fascinating that this particular session uh had a couple of ideas in that in that respect uh the second session that i went to was continuous inquiry uh cycles of inquiry i think we've talked about that a lot as a board over the years and the the large takeaway i took from that highlighted at the top there was that con that continuous improvement process that we all experience and we try to integrate into our work as a board um and i didn't look at it this way before but this was
062a very um you know enlightening comment that one of the presenters made that allows us to communicate in a way that captures multiple moments of an academic year both for students family and staff rather than it being at moments where we receive a report or an initiative right it's it was it's like a constant frame-by-frame understanding of how the year works through those cycles of inquiry and so they recommended that you ask yourself questions about you know what what questions do we need to ask how do we expect to answer those questions and going in this ties into the stories that that jim shared with his session what narratives do we want to share in that process how do we want to frame our story and i think we've talked about that a lot as
063a board many times as well so that was very positive uh the the and you would think that i would have more to say about the positive pathways for students with disabilities that was a program available through multiple school districts in the state of illinois and so i'm going to be bringing that to some of my conversations with cedal the big one is the next one and i also uh hyperlinked the actual presentation to this link that i sent in the email to you all it's a it's it's 60 slides so it's a big presentation but it's got a ton of great information in there and it talked the the title of the session was from virtual distortion to rebuilding real-time connections and they opened with prior to the pandemic and this is not even
064this was even before covet hit the average teen would spend about 30 percent of their year on the screen for entertainment that was prior to the pandemic and that that multiplied uh with the pandemic and so some of the things of course naturally that we know that they see are you know that potentially are exposed to or you know social media challenges which which happened very recently misinformation pornography exploitation uh although you know drug and hate and harassment and so this was a really impactful session because we talk about building resilience and so if you see the highlighted part there on the on the sheet we talk about building resilience but they they had some recommendations or some new ways of framing it and the two that are on that list that hit me the
065most were cultivating optimism and nurturing relationships the cultivating optimism is the one that sticks out most to me because we also hear conversations about toxic optimism you know for lack of a better too much optimism i guess and there the the way that this particular panel described it was a way of acknowledging the trauma by allowing that trauma to help that student or that staff member or that family build pathways to optimism without simply dismissing it and saying well you really should just be positive about it and that was very very impactful and they asked the question as well how can we do education differently i would have gone back and listened to this one a second time and the the final item that's highlighted on there that i took away from this that i
066would love for us to discuss at another time is they paired up every board member with a teacher and a student throughout an entire academic year so that board member could schedule time to come into a classroom and visit the teacher and visit with the student and develop a relationship over the course of an academic year and i think that would be an incredible opportunity for our board to be able to be involved and be able to be you know go into a classroom participate get to know students get to know teachers i think that would feed into our you know into the things we talk about with our interest-based bargaining and give us a whole new view those of us who are teachers get a different view those of us who are not teachers
067would be able to experience that as well so that was i would like to go back and see that session again so and that was it thank you okay thank you christy braden um mr vipend i threw mine over to you an email if you want to throw it up it's just a word document like stevens but um yeah so i was the delegate for a delegate assembly which ended up taking most of my day um because there were some technology issues there was uh was the first time that the i guess they were using electronic voting so um there was about 90 minutes of fun well everyone first of all they tried to get the technology up and running and then tried to educate 400 people on how to use it uh correctly so
068but was great it was really interesting and so i wanted to just give everyone an update on where we where everything landed the first thing that i learned was that there were several items the first thing that they do is actually put a bunch of the ones that they think are going to pass on a consent agenda so there is in fact a consent agenda so there were and then what they do is they ask does anyone want to uh does anyone want do does anyone want to pull anything off the consent agenda for debate just like we would um because they use parliamentary procedures just like we do so i listed here and i know that's really small but there were there ended up being seven items that did pass through the consent agenda
069those are all items we supported there were a few that got pulled off that that i'll talk about in a minute the other interesting thing i learned and i think it's a learning for us for next year is that if the committee did not recommend supporting a resolution and no one filed an appeal before this session it was not considered so there were six items that were just not considered that we actually voted on but that were not considered the science of reading curriculum the school code review the school board member compensation the federal funding for the clean energy and the school buses and then the child safe gun storage so one of the things i noted for us next year is if there is a resolution that's not being recommended by the committee another
070discussion that we will need to have is do we want to appeal that and bring it into the room and have them vote on whether or not they want to vote on it it's very parliamentary very interesting but so it's just you know it's it's there were a couple i think we probably would have wanted to put on the table because we were very in support of the resolutions around the federal funding for some of the infrastructure and the clean school buses so just something for us to think about next time and then everything else i'll just go over the kind of the ones that didn't go the way that we wanted them to go most of them you know that we supported did pass the child care reimbursement did not pass that was really
071interesting and kind of a shame i know this board was very interested in having that supported mostly because they felt it was an unfunded mandate and so where would you come up with that money which i get i understand don't necessarily agree with it but i understand the pre-service licensure did pass i know that's something we talked about with mr lewis about the fact that you know we didn't necessarily think that that was a solution to the problem and the other thing that was brought up in opposition was it's a test and so that benefits somebody and that somebody is a testing company however it still passed that was interesting and then the student safety and protection plan did failed and interesting thing about that is the committee recommends it has recommended it three years
072in a row and it's failed three years in a row um of course that was most heated debate but it did end up failing and then the health and sex education curriculum also failed so those were the two that i think were probably the most heated so the two things that i think takeaways for us is first do we want to propose any resolutions next year so be thinking about that i think that's something we should come back to maybe over the i'll have to look at the timing but just you know is there anything that we want to put on the table and then next year making sure that um if there are some that the committee is not recommending but that we would like to see debated and come up for a vote
073that um we could file an appeal and then see that come into the room for discussion and a vote so it was great and uh appreciated the uh you know the ability to be a part of it for sure really interesting um discussion and debate and just kind of got me keyed into like what's on school board mines across the state and then the other you know i had like jim a couple that were you know it's funny i the i went to this federal update and what i wrote here is that there's not much that chris wildman hasn't already educated us about i feel like mr wildman's done such a good job of educating us about the funding that is available and how we can use it um that i i was like yeah
074uh-huh so thank you mr wildman um and then i just wanted to mention the anthony jack keynote i thought that was a great session and and he talked a lot about um as a first-generation college student he got into a prestigious school it might have been princeton harvard ivy league but what he found was even though he had access to that education he did not know the language there was a hidden curriculum that he did not understand he didn't understand because he was first generation college student that he was supposed to go to office hours and that you know those kinds of he called it a hidden curriculum and so i wrote the question i had for us was what is the hidden curriculum the k-8 level so just because we're giving kids access do
075they understand how to go to school and how to make the most out of the resources that they have you know as a first generation college student i experienced that too i didn't know how to go to college i had to teach myself and so our you know do we have kids that are kind of having to teach themselves how to do school and how can we help kids who may not have that language already how can we help students decode the language of education and where are we assuming that access equals inclusion so that was a really it was a great session and really had me thinking about this idea of just because we put it out there doesn't mean that students know how to take advantage of it so that's me okay thank
076you i'll just keep going around the table jason sure i don't have any visual aids for you sorry um christy on that general session i had the same note for for anthony jack's session the catch phrase or catchy phrase was accessing inclusion and i noted the same example he gave because i didn't know what he was what he meant at first and that's probably my privilege speaking right i knew about office hours i you know i had him in high school it never occurred to me that someone wouldn't know so yeah the hidden curriculum that was that was a very powerful thing to hear um i also attended the session on the legal review that jim did i won't recap it in gory detail but the main takeaway i got from that session was um
077a warning to the board members in the audience that the culture wars are coming to you um there are well-funded groups who are kind of winding up agitators and pointing them in your direction is basically the message i got on crt in particular i thought it was very interesting one panelist mentioned and i appreciated this he said he said crt is a college level framework that is not synonymous with culturally responsive educational practices and to paraphrase him he said rest assured crt is not being taught in any of your schools so i i thought it was great that he was very clear about that and um jason i'm sorry can you repeat what you said crt is not being taught where in your schools in your school okay thank you yes and uh i got
078to tell you i went to a session that i wish i wouldn't have gone to it was on the pension problem it was grim to be sure um the panel went into the reasons for the situation that we're in basically uh politicians shorting the pension obligations over various reasons so for convenient politically expedient reasons they had pension holidays that they decided not to make the payments that were required to keep the pension healthy they talked about the edgar ramp of 1994 where they they set a goal of 90 percent funding level by 2045 and then put forth a schedule to pay into the pension system that had almost no contributions in the first 15 years and basically it was just a giant kicking the can down the road and someone else's problem to deal with
079so i left that one pretty desolate i have to tell you um and those were the highlights of the of the triple eye sessions for me thanks okay jessica so being uh such a new board member i really appreciated being able to go to this conference i'm really glad the timing worked out the way it did because i learned so much it was very valuable experience and i wanted to quickly thank christy miller and tamika because i had reached out to them recently asking how do we do these board reports so thank you both and then um so the three sessions that i got more takeaways from are uh every voice matters engaging those we serve and um makes me want to explore a public participation spectrum that i believe i think someone has shared
080with me before either christie miller stephen mack from the community engagement committee involving and collaborating with the public telling the public how we're using their voice and seeking student voice were all big takeaways for me and that civic engagement is different from public relations that we want actual civic engagement not a one-way push of information and that civic engagement takes work time and intentional conversation um the second session that i learned a lot from was the navigating municipal zoning processes and i have a great appreciation for the complexities and the patience and the time that it must have taken to do the solar panel projects now that i've been made aware of how many different districts and municipal districts there are that can affect those complex projects and so a key takeaway for me was
081being aware of involving the different uh different people in those discussions not just when you need approval for something like not going to the village and saying we need to approve we would like this to be approved blah blah blah um let's see uh the next one i did share the slides for this the electric school buses and future greens buster grid initiative i shared those slides back in december one of the things that most intrigued me was the bi-directional charging that could make buses an asset and store energy that could also put energy back into the grid and it was something that i hope durham and other bus companies think about for the future and in keeping in mind the voice of students and community members who care about sustainability it got me thinking
082what if our solar power panel our solar panel arrays could charge buses and eliminate the costs not only economic costs but health costs and pollution costs of diesel and then what if durham in the future thinks of itself as a transportation company not just as a bus company but they could maybe lead biking groups and walking school buses in addition to traditional buses just an idea and then i wanted to make sure that durham is aware of all these resources through the epa the environmental law and policy center and that a variety of different funds including the volkswagen environmental mitigation trust fund um according to the contacts there is a lot of funding coming down the pipeline potentially five billion over five years nationally and then i had gone to um a few other sessions
083and had some similar highlights from the uh the anthony jack session pretty much the same takeaways and the unconscious bias in education was important to go to as well and i um appreciate that the equity committee is meeting with focus groups and having these conversations and sorry i think i went a little over but i didn't know i set a timeline you're good was nash so due to illness i wasn't able to attend triple i this year but i've been taking copious notes and i would like to share a few thoughts thus far mr wheatman first thank you again to christy braden who you served as an awesome delegate for our district so thank you so much for the robust well one for your patients during the tech challenges and then just for your copious
084notes and recommendations back to the board great job another thing another board member so dr mack um you know reviewing your presentation i think miss braden also referenced um anthony jackson sounds like that wasn't something to behold and and i missed um but one of the things that you guys the things that i heard coming out of there around access and inclusion and hidden curriculum in k-8 i'm just wondering if we have the opportunity to lean on either or both of you or any one of the board members that attended that session to perhaps give a presentation to our equity committee at our next meeting so i know dr lewis is watching so if we you know have a space for an agenda line in a future meeting i think that would be valuable for
085our equity and inclusion committee to hear jason i found a very insightful around you know kind of hey boards get ready you know the critical race theory fight is coming to your doors and so i know we've talked as a board on occasion about how do we get in front of this and and start framing the conversation um not only about that but it just fits into our overall strategic goals around creating a narrative right we've talked about that as a as a board for some time making sure that we're creating the right framing and narrative and communication for our community so perhaps sooner than later that's something that we can just start to take a deep dive on i know many of us have different you know thoughts and maybe we can have a
086session um to dive deeper into that and then um miss albert oh my so kudos to you for absorbing so much information you know just as you were sworn in it kind of feels synonymous to me in 2019 the timing was awesome so i'm glad that you had the opportunity to go and take advantage of triple i it is amazing and i haven't heard from mrs miller but i'm sure it will be outstanding mr wieben i yield my time again i didn't set any time miss miller okay so i split my takeaways into three themes and the first one is sustainability and when i think about sustainability i'm thinking about three things and the first is economic impact social impact and then environmental impact so while i did not attend the huntley district 158 presentation
087this year i did attend it in 2019 and i liked what they the headline on their presentation which said we must divert every dollar we can from building to learning and as they explained all the different things that they were doing i felt some recognition knowing that they they talked about building envelope and i know that that's what we're doing too so it made me very hopeful economically and environmentally that huntly after their improvements they spend less than 92 percent of districts of all kinds of all kinds in the chicago area as a result of their sustainability efforts so that was impressive in 2019 this year i attended the sustainability academy and was pleased to listen to the river trails school district 26's csbo uh her name is lindell schuster i think i'm pronouncing that
088correctly and she shared a case study and looked at the economic the health and wellness and social impacts of outdoor learning environments specifically around something that i hadn't thought of and wasn't aware of that when we have playgrounds that have large open spaces and just playground equipment that that really privileges a certain type of student as opposed to playgrounds that have small conversation spaces natural spaces different types of natural areas that are those playgrounds are actually more conducive to kids social learning so something i thought we might want to think about another session during that sustainability academy talked about was also river trails and they made some building improvements which i thought were really clever just by painting things like a solar system on the floors an electron shell was painted just i know you'll
089not you'll like that there was a fibonacci spiral and that was all part of just the flooring and it had just been painted on so my understanding is that that wasn't cost prohibitive and then they had energy dashboards available to the students so that the students could see how much energy each classroom was using and they could then uh be encouraged to help lower the score of you know whatever their their classroom's usage was so i thought that was interesting and i was shocked and so proud when um i realized that district 127 what mike zelik was supposed to be one of the speakers he was not there because he was sick but he had his presentation materials available and lo and behold our district came up and so i saw our solar arrays and
090we were held up as an example to other districts of how to really be resourceful and generating steady stable sources of revenue for districts so that was kind of fun to see that and he talked or in his slide there was mention of senate bill 2408 which is the energy bill i believe melinda bush kristin maybe you can correct me if i'm right but melinda bush spont was a co-sponsor for that and it says that illinois will be 100 carbon free in 30 years and there is a lot of federal and state money available right now for solar panels and other improvements given that our district has saved again chris correct me if i'm wrong but 1.8 million as of august 2021 as a combination of energy savings solar wrecks and and that i just
091i was very proud and 127 has saved the same tax payers 9.8 million or will over the next 25 years so again i was in just very proud to see our community being held up as an example so that was sustainability and i got a lot out of that that was all day friday several sessions on that and then i attended some other sessions the most interesting one for me and the next day was on bond issuance and i learned about some resources that could help us monitor the secondary bond market which i'm not at all familiar with or wasn't before so i was able to to read a little bit more about that i shared some of those articles with you by email but learned about flipping bonds which is again in the secondary
092bond market and something we might want to monitor just so that we're well informed uh in two years or at any time and then learned the difference between competitive and negotiated sale bonds and also the roles of municipal advisors and underwriters and how they're different and who has fiduciary responsibility to the district and the taxpayer and who has different duties of care so just want to make sure that we're very thoughtful on the finance committee especially about making sure our wonderful csbo has as i'm sorry assistant superintendent of finance has all the resources that he needs as we move forward in the next two years and the last was monitoring this session i wanted to go to but i couldn't because it overlapped but i did read through the materials that we were provided and
093looked at their suggestions for having an annual schedule of policy reviews so that we look at a specific set of policies and as a whole board really consider are we is this policy doing what we wanted are we getting the results we wanted i know at one of our past meetings we talked about transportation and that the interest that we're interested in pursuing or in providing for our community is a safe equitable timely cost effective access to schools and i wondered maybe if we would want to develop a schedule so that we know what's coming have time to prepare for it and really take a look at what does what results do we want from our policies and how do we know whether we're reaching them and what are we doing about it as a
094district and then another idea might be procurement policies as we think about sustainability and supply chain and environmental justice maybe i think it would be a good idea for us to start thinking about what is it what kind of direction do we want to set for our district given that we're going to ask our taxpayers to approve another referendum so what do we want to make visible that maybe isn't visible and we could do that through a monitoring process with our policies so that's those were the highlights for me okay thank you everybody so that covers all those uh for us the next is topics for future agenda items oops yep um we will on february 2nd have cyber security results of an rfp we should be bringing you an iga intergovernmental agreement for gray's
095lake park district we expect to have a draft of the calendar for you to look at the 2022 2023 calendar mr vipen excuse me will be coming with a more formal proposal about the flat panels you keep hearing about it you're going to actually get a proposal next and finally we will be bringing you a recommendation for a new assistant superintendent for teaching and learning okay you have a question comment um just one we've made some great suggestions and i like stephen mr mack's uh label for continuous improvement and we've talked about what we learned i'm wondering what the next steps are who's doing what by when and how are we going to follow up do we i don't know what the next steps could be other than a special meeting or a working group
096perhaps or maybe even agenda items for our committees but just wanting to make sure that we don't lose all the good learning that we've had at our conference um good question how do you think we should handle that dr i'm just trying to think thoughts anyone maybe we think about it between now and our next meeting and it's just a new business or a discussion item yeah that's fine um yeah because it'll depend on what we're trying to bring forward and move forward with okay so you want us to put it on at a in a meeting or two of just a general discussion of how to move forward that's my personal opinion if the rest of us want to do that i think it would be anybody opposed to that or have a different
097idea what would you like to do could you restate the the question was it about what we learned at triple i and and taking the next step on that is that what i heard yeah just how do we manage how do we what actionable steps are we going to take next and again it doesn't have to be a big spectacular production i don't mean that but just yeah i think of i don't know it's interesting that you mentioned that i think of those sessions as something that edify us as board members to help us do our day-to-day better but it does certainly have applicability to certain projects or you know overarching themes or or so i have no objection to what you talked about thoughts yeah i would love to see a conversation about them
098and specifically how some of the ideas that were shared tonight fit into our strategic plan i know now we get you know with the reports that we get from the administration and so on and so forth usually it says you know this particular project speaks to this particular strategic plan number piece whatever and to to jason's point it's it's it's partial edification to go to that conference but are there pieces that we can just consider as a board going forward that fit into the guidance that we set in that strategic plan so i think that would be a really fascinating conversation i'd like to reflect on it you know what i learned tonight i agree okay so we'll we'll work on something like that probably in into february will that work we got a lot
099of work out of those oh we got a lot of work to do for february too so sure okay i'm open you get that so for the second board meeting sure yeah okay anybody else have anything to add to future that we want to have on the radar okay public comments no uh we do have a close a quick closed session meeting tonight um so i need a motion to go into uh closed session lacroix nash hi miller i mack i albert i weedman hi and braden aye and we will not be coming out uh well we'll be coming out of never we'll be coming on a closed session but we will not be having any uh voting uh we're not gonna vote or have any other discussion after the closed session so we'll just
100be adjourning right away and i'm gonna really learn how to talk have a good night