CCSD 46 Board of Education Meeting: October 6th, 2021

001hey good evening uh welcome to the community consolidated school district 46 board of education meeting for wednesday october 6 2021. 6 30 p.m here at frederick school first order of business i need a call to order and a roll call please weedman here mac here brayden here lacroix here miller here and nash here okay so that gives us a quorum next if we can stand for the pledge of to the allegiance of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice okay uh next is i need an approval for the agenda so moved second miller i mack i weedman hi brayden i lacroix hi and nash bye okay and next is uh public comments is there anybody signed up for public comments

002tonight either nope okay all right very long we are now up to board reports any board members have anything to report mr weymouth yes ma'am um i just wanted to give a thank you to courtney donegar of the grace league public library who attended our recent equity and inclusion meeting so i know we'll get into more of a deeper dive into what that committed report sounds like but i just wanted to thank her for coming and and lending her time and talents to our committee and then i also want to thank um sue uh for making arrangements for triple i so i know there's a lot of logistics and things that go into all this coordination and planning for our board and administrators and i just wanted to thank you for pulling all this together

003okay anyone else nope okay we are up to the superintendent report good evening well um i'm starting with some good news and actually mr vipend i have a graphic if you could put that up there for us right thank you so i simply wanted to share the good news that throughout lake county we have a nice downward trend of the virus and um if you could take my little picture off the screen then we could see the downward trend thank you so so the important part exactly you don't need to see me so if you look over to the right you're going to see that um although there was you know things were were going up pretty high for a little while there they are starting to go back down and that's conversation that we've

004been having um with lake county superintendents and the lake county health department they pointed that out to us and i wanted to point out to all of you as well and also that's all we need for that thank you i wanted to share how successful our shield testing that's again our saliva testing that we do every week in our schools has been in our school district and here's the specific data that i wanted to share with you as you well know parents need to give permission to their for their children to go through that testing process and we currently have about 90.4 percent of our students testing every single week and that's a really really strong statistic and so i just wanted to share that really good news with you that includes students who are

005vaccinated if you remember back in the day the thought was that only children who are only only people who have not been vaccinated should go through shield testing but that recommendation was changed with the um the variant and so again 90.4 percent of our children are going through that testing plus many adults as well and i'm going to hand it off to mr lewis to talk about institute day so just sharing very quickly that this friday is our full day institute day for the fall season our instructional coaching staff and many other staff members are going to be presenting that day inside the district we also have a few vendors and support people coming in for that day the majority of the staff will actually be participating in a full day expository writing training and

006so it's connected to our rollout of new writing instruction we're very excited about that training our middle school staff the majority of them will be working on response to text so again from expository reading materials and how they can use that to share and to communicate what they've learned from reading so we have a very busy day and it's going to end with a technology needs assessment and i'm turning that over to my colleague [Music] thank you mr lewis i'm excited to share that as work has continued uh since last spring and throughout the summer behind the scenes on our technology goal for the strategic plan that some of that work is now coming to light and coming to to fruition i guess on friday over the past few weeks we have been creating a

007technology needs assessment that will be shared with all of our teachers on friday as part of institute day then in the coming days next week we'll also be sharing a survey with all of our support staff to get their feedback the technology department certainly has an idea of where our immediate focus should be but getting input and data from all of our staff will greatly benefit be greatly beneficial in creating a comprehensive master technology plan for our district i will be excited to share much more information and those those results in the coming weeks and throughout the entire planning process and then i'm going to move on to another update with our chromebook refresh for our fourth through eighth grade students as you remember this past july the board of education approved the purchase of

008new chromebooks to replace our current fourth through eighth grade devices our current fourth through eighth grade devices are coming to the end of their lease and as part of that lease agreement are being need to be returned to the leasing company our tech team is in the process of going to all of our schools beginning last week and throughout the next couple of weeks and collecting all of the current 4th through 8th grade lenovo devices collecting those and and reissuing a brand new device to our fourth through eighth grade students at that same time as you can imagine this is a very time consuming process and a lot of prep and planning has gone into it and i definitely want to thank our entire tech team especially mark and brian from the tech department as

009well as all of our info specialists as well as our building administrators for helping make this such a smooth process for our students and our teachers i'm excited to say that within the next couple of weeks all of our fourth or eighth graders will have a brand new device that they will be working on and then a final update uh relating to a digital equity grant that we are excited to share some good news about that last year the district was awarded a digital equity grant from the state of illinois funds from this grant were spent to help support the purchase of chromebooks as well as numerous other items that supported our students and our teachers during our remote teaching and learning as well as our hybrid learning models last week we received word from

010the state that we have been awarded funds again this year these funds do have some specific technology related funding requirements however i am extremely excited to have an additional two hundred thousand dollars for our district to help support our technology needs across the district and i'll turn it back over to dr glickman thank you thank you so much we're really excited about that news so thank you i wanted to make public to the board a conversation that jim and i have embarked on regarding my evaluation the superintendent evaluation i wanted to share that at the conference that i was at last week i went to a session about the use of an electronic superintendent evaluation tool and a number of my colleagues folks that i do know are using that tool and they were presenting

011they all love it and they talked about how their boards love it because it's an opportunity for um board of education members to be to in their own way and on their own time to go in and interact with the tool and that way the board president is not having to ask board members for feedback constantly so it's a really very interesting tool i shared out with all of you a sample of it and we can have more conversation about that and i do want to know if i know you may not have had a chance to take a look at it yet because this just came up but if anyone has any questions about it i'd be happy to talk about it now you probably haven't had a chance to look at it yet

012yeah all right well take a look it's we have time but i did want to mention it to you and finally i just wanted to comment that we have some younger than typical members in our audience today and as much as i love to believe that you are all here because it our board meetings are unbelievably interesting i'm going to go out and make a guess that you're doing an assignment yes that's what i thought and where are you all from the rams that's right now i'm seeing the t-shirt well welcome we're really really glad that you are here did you all go through district 46 some of you did and so some so then you uh did you go through through frederick's school well welcome back we're really glad you're here tonight absolutely and

013that's it for the superintendent's report okay uh next is committee's report we have a community engagement committee report no report today no equity and inclusion report all right thank you so much um the equity and inclusion committee actually met for our first meeting yesterday evening am i my days running together monday yes monday um monday at 6 00 pm we met virtually and that was our first uh session post summer break so the cobwebs were a little fresh as we often times do we start our meetings by reviewing our norms to make sure we stay grounded and connected to the reasons why we are there together affirming those statements and making sure that if any of the norms need to be optimized or enhanced that we take the opportunity to do that at the onset

014of the meeting there was one or two that i believe got highlighted for the need for enhanced clarity so we'll continue to work on that and then we also had a call for membership so we tend to have a little bit north of about 20 or so members on our equity and inclusion committee we had a smaller than usual group on monday night i think there was roughly nine of us 9 or 10 of us and so one of the things that we recognized as a body is that we've we have new teachers coming into our district we have a lot of new families that have moved into our district so we wanted to take the opportunity to place an open call for membership so dr glickman and her weekly communication announcement email rather communicated

015that to the community so for those community members that are interested in joining the equity and inclusion committee please take an opportunity to review that communication from dr glickman and reach out to myself or mr lewis or other committee members such as mrs braden and dr mack if there's any questions that anyone may have and then lastly we had a really great opportunity to engage with a special guest from the grayslake public library again courtney doninger from the grayslake public library was able to join us in we had a really rich conversation around pragmatic joint ventures that the library community consolidated school district 46 as well as the community can engage in together allowing us to ultimately educate empower and engage our community for the benefit of our collective success right and our in our

016students at the center then we closed out with talking about some topics for future and so one of the things that we did not get to on our agenda monday was the equity audit so we'll take the opportunity during our next equity and inclusion committee meeting on monday november 8th at 6 pm to take a deep dive into the equity audit work and discuss any findings and or next steps we may want to take as a committee again it was a great meeting i'm looking forward to our next session where we take that deep dive anything you'd like to add well i wanted to to add something and and because we didn't have any time at all to talk about the equity audit at the meeting i just wanted to clarify that we won't have

017results at any point you know in in november so we are just going to be starting soon the whole process of collecting data and doing focus groups so we were just going to outline all that so i just didn't want to leave anybody with the idea that we'd have results by then absolutely thank you but you wouldn't know that because we didn't have time mr lewis anything that you would have missed no thank you i think we have found our spokesperson because you did an amazing job um but i know that um lynn and i were also very happy that we have had a number of applicants already just in the short time that it's been open we've already had a good number and so we will find ways for them to even be part

018of the committee or part of the equity audit or some way be involved because we want to grab hold of volunteers and have them help our district absolutely thank you my colleague mrs braden anything additional nothing to add except to echo your thanks to the graze lake public library and for the partnership um you know we've all been looking for ways to partner and so you know to have the library come to us and say uh you know let's do something it was awesome so thanks again good deal thank you dr glickman okay thank you very much uh next on the agenda is i need our motion to approve the consent agenda so moved second braden hi nash aye lacroix hi miller i mack hi and weedman hi uh okay on to our one and

019only action item for tonight uh we need a motion to approve the website refresh with schools by floodlight which is what was discussed at our last board meeting i'll make that motion second uh anybody have any other discussions they want to have with this i had a point of clarity that i just wanted to make sure that i understood before we went to vote part of the discussion during the last board meeting spoke about like step level um step level i guess packages for lack of a better word that we could acquire as opposed to kind of soup the nuts did we get any additional detail as to if we were starting out with like a basic solution at this time and then looking to be progressive or are we are we doing the soup

020the nuts package wanna come up yeah i i i guess i would say that the the package that that we still have on the proposal is the kind of the the package to move us forward with a a robust website package to lead us into the next five years and then meet us now and meet our needs now and in the future the work and the the details kind of in the design and and as we talked about a couple weeks ago the amount of of impact and and support from leslie in that process will and as not just leslie but the district in in helping with some of the designing and the and the the creation will still be able to help scale some of that back potentially but to start it this is

021kind of our well i'll call it our our base package but also the the all in the model that that i still um while it may seem extravagant i i truly do not believe that that it is extravagant this is this is what what i i feel confident in meeting our needs for our district so comparing it on the the cadillac to the chevy there's you could have that discussion but i didn't i feel like this is a good landing spot for it for us moving forward thanks for the clarity and remembering the analogy yes thank you anybody else have any questions no i have one chris is there a sorry is there a deadline for do you need this decision tonight or or could we wait till after the finance committee meeting in november

022or is that not an option there um i'll answer that in in kind of two ways is is there a sad deadline no the the launch date that that makes sense to launch a school district website is over the summer and in order to hit next summer as as strange as that may sound the work really does need to begin sooner rather than later the the leslie and i had this conversation a couple of weeks ago and and in fact dr glickman and leslie and i had this conversation a couple of weeks ago because we we pushed it a couple more meetings from where we really wanted it to bring bring it forward to the board and at that time i was like okay now that tight that timeline to launch in the summer just

023gets tighter and tighter each each time that we push it so is there truly a deadline hey if we don't if we don't approve tonight is there it's just not going to happen no and in all honesty that is not the case but it it starts putting a lot more stress on on our department and and on our vendor to to make that launch happen okay we'll call weedman yes miller i mac hi nash hi brayden hi lacroix hi okay uh next is unfinished business there's nothing there listed but i know we have appointment of board new board member coming up so that'll have to go on there at some point um we'll have to discuss about the interview process i'll probably do some of that tonight as of now we have nine people that

024have applied for the one open spot so i think our plan to try and get them all done in one night uh as far as interviewing is probably not going to work very well we may need to find a second date to do so unless uh tamika or jason do you know what what's the earliest time you can be here for interviews i think they're the two that probably have the greatest concern right can you have a time yeah currently yeah kristy do you have a um conflict from getting here earlier in the day give me one sec okay either we're gonna need to find a second date to uh do interviews jim i also have a potential meeting that's gonna go till five that day at the earliest four and then potentially till five

025so okay yeah four for me as well four so we could we could gain an hour if we could get it at five right can you get here by five okay well let's see if we can get see what type of schedule we're going to need to do yeah i could let you know this is a hold on my calendar so i could let you know okay if it falls off then i'd be done at 4-2 okay all right so we'll let the put out the dealers for everybody tonight and see so we can try and get some scheduling done for the nine candidates to come in um the other question i had for the board uh i think typically we did 30 minutes for interviews we can probably potentially bring it down to 20

026minutes if the board is comfortable with that that'll give us a little more time to get him through the night and then give us some time to debate afterwards or do you want to stick with the 30 minutes i'm good with 20. that's fine okay i am as well there's just one round of interviews right we don't just one run back finalist yeah yeah i think that'd probably be all right okay does that work for you soon okay i think we've covered everything we need to cover regarding that and then we'll get a uh sewell gonna pack it out to everybody of all the resumes and cover letters okay next is new business the first is a discussion of a student-led sustainability committee yeah very excited to share what i learned with you all i'm

027gonna wait chris okay so just in review um the last meeting we were taking a look at the question how can we assess and monitor our carbon footprint and possibly reduce it and i went ahead and interviewed two more people from the u.s green business council and then also someone from the green schools alliance and the benefits that i talked about last time were that we could use a student-led sustainability advisory committee to help us craft a narrative about sustainability in particular it would be easy because we already have access to the data through energy star and the tools that i'll talk more about in a minute are compatible with energy star and then third is to engage students in governance and citizenship so just as a review slide please so um when i thought

028about my process was just okay what do we currently have what can we build with what we currently have and i'll let you take a look at the bullets but basically we have students we have volunteers we have federally funded resources uh specifically arc that you'll hear me talk about in just a minute we've got green professionals outside of our community architects engineers and others who are have expertise in green building that are willing to help us and we have seven buildings that can act as kind of living laboratories for our students when i was as i talked with the two women who run these programs really the needs are pretty basic we need access to utility bills we need the ability to distribute surveys to building occupants in some cases not in all but

029in some and it would require a little bit of staff time and that i think is a significant concern because all of us are very cognizant of how hard everybody's working and know that everyone is stretched then so that is different than what i originally thought it would be two to three hours at the most sometime between january and may for mr halperin um so what would it look like just as a at a high level my initial thought is that we would invite middle school and high school students so nice if they're with us tonight to serve on this sustainability advisory committee we'd ask them to inventory their resources what how much time do they have how much bandwidth and energy do they have around this and then assess our carbon footprint and come

030up with ways that they could contribute to reducing it and then come back to the board and explain what they did and we can celebrate them and learn from them as well so that's kind of the high level framework and it takes a few tools and this is the one that i think is really really exciting so arc is a technology platform um it helps schools collect manage and benchmark building level sustainability and it looks at five uh categories so in each of the five categories energy water waste transportation and human experience the kids would would gather data and then we it would generate a score for one of our buildings or all of our buildings depending on how we wanted to use it and it works in tandem with some some resources that the

031usgbc has created building learners is a program that we could apply to and perhaps win a scholarship and be part of a cohort so the kids would be in a group here but then they would connect with other cohorts around the country who are doing similar projects then we would also have access if we won the scholarship to the learning lab which is over 700 lessons that we can use for kids all different age groups and we would also have access to a green professional mentor so the green schools project in illinois would work with the usgbc and connect us with a professional in sustainability who would come and act as a mentor for the kids and then we would get the score and that actually you can put stickers on the building so everyone

032who walks in can see how we're doing with with sustainability i had hoped to share a clip from miami-dade public schools because you wanted to hear more about what student success was and how much time it takes unfortunately the link the audio doesn't work on it so i'm just going to have to describe i i started the video at the air quality because we've just approved that assessment but the kids there were two kids a young man and a young woman and they explained all of the different emissions that they learned about and what was really delightful to listen to was how they looked at data and then connected it to their behavior so oh we saw that co2 was high in the parking lot so we decided that we would reduce the time that

033we idle in our cars which is a high school example but i think one of the benefits of this is in terms of student governance is they can really look at data literacy and understand the relationships between the numbers on a page and their own behavior so that was pretty pretty exciting for me to see so you had some questions for me and i found as much information as i could the first one was what is this going to cost the district how much time how much money does this cost us so i'll let you just read through the all of the bullets but essentially if we win the scholarship it would be free if we don't win it would be about 65 in cost time is different the biggest cost would be to mr

034halperin again i think that's a significant cost and we should probably think about that carefully but two to three hours over 16 weeks um and then it would require adult volunteers in our community i have three already who are interested in doing this again we'd have a mentor and then the kids would decide the scope of their project so some of it's tbd i bring or i listened carefully to the people that i interviewed and to a couple different webinars and tried to identify every unintended consequence i could think of and these are mostly anecdotal so students typically if it's a student-run group outside of a classroom they typically will focus on campaigns what was exciting to me is the theme for this year is environmental justice so they would be looking at the at

035the connection between equity and the physical buildings that they're in um and then i'll let you just read the others i've already explained some of them um but i will highlight that it's pretty responsive to the un's climate report which says that we are going to experience extreme more more frequent extreme heat more frequently we'll have extreme precipitation and we are looking at ecological and agricultural droughts which is which are food shortages and deterioration of the tree canopy and of of plant life so it's not a matter of if that's coming that is what the reports say um and then and i was spitballing here it might reduce our administrator retention rate my anecdotal again conversations is that adam will will be front and center with this and we'll have to work hard to keep

036him so i thought that might be an unintended consequence and uh last so why and and why not why now um so again the question is not if we're going to spend time on sustainability and climate change the question really is when and over what time frame and i included some some information from the un's report and if you're interested i sent it to a few weeks ago but happy to send it again the second is that it's it's just a great investment in our students and in our community to empower learners to contribute to our schools we can cultivate commit community by engaging volunteers and work that they find meaningful improve our buildings resilience to climate change reduce emissions and sequester carbon and then um probably most importantly it's consistent with our our mission

037our vision our values and our goals so again our mission is to empower learners this certainly does that uh through by asking them to self-organize and use the lessons and engage with a mentor it creates equity um i would need help with that so i would be asking the equity committee about specifically about access how do we how do we engage kids in this in a way that makes sure everyone has access and then cultivating community and using uh using our resources and connecting with more partnerships within and without our community and then let's see it's also consistent with our values if we look at our values we we read about maximizing student engagement collaboration comes up quite often and so does community so i think it's consistent with our values and finally our goals

038the facilities goal says that we're going to expand the master facilities plan and create equitable quality learning environments for students staff and community so it's aligned with our goals as well so next steps let me pause there does anyone have i thought i answered your questions stephen i don't know that i if if we're connected to cec because i know that was your question last time um okay all right so is there anything i missed anything you want more information about i i guess i have some you know going through the presentation christy and looking at what we've been trying to get accomplished by going through our strategic planning i i worry that we might be um might we have the potential to lose focus on what we had come up with as a community

039for the goals for the district and that's really probably my biggest concern is um you know we created all these goals with the strategic planning process with uh community involvement and you know these were the goals that we had come up with for them and i'm just afraid that we are inadvertently setting a second or another set of goals through sustainability and and could take away from what were what we just established as a committee as a as a board and as a community um so that's that's probably where my biggest concern is with that you know i don't think there's anybody on the board that's up here going to tell you we're not for sustainability it's a matter of how we go about doing it um and i would hate to see us take

040away from what we just literally just finished and and put together as a package for the community saying these what we're going to work on and i i just want to make sure we're not pulling away from that um work that we just spent you know a long time on um for for a multitude of reasons so um that's where i'm i'm coming at with this um that's my biggest concern is is what what focus and how much focus is going to be put on it that it's going to take away from what we have already established as our board goals sure yeah i think i hear you it's got to be aligned with our strategic plan and i think it is with the facility's goal which is to expand and clarify the master facilities

041plan and so that master facilities plan includes the indoor air quality assessment and those can be i mean if we invited kids to to do this work it would be directly aligned with expanding that that plan and making sure that the learning environment for is a quality learning environment for students staff and community so it expands it and when you say take away tell me more about that how would it how would it take take away our focus from what we're trying to accomplish with the goals that we just established you know pulling pulling the the staff off to do something even if it's for a couple hours and a week you know it's still taking time away from them to do the stuff that they're supposed to they're they're trying to concentrate on that

042we just established um but i just don't i don't want us to lose i don't want the district to lose focus on what we just went through four or five months worth of work right now to go to go off onto [Music] it's important but i don't want to go off into a and off into a tangent and lose focus on what we we all agree that this is where we're going that's that's my opinion that's why we're discussing it it's it's one out of six right now yep i'm curious whatever yeah thank you okay so we don't want to lose focus anybody else have any comments thoughts on where you want to go with this you want to mull it over for um i mean it's awesome [Laughter] and i do i actually i

043do see some alignment um i'm just trying to think about how it gets integrated into the work in a way that feels more aligned and i can't i would really want to defer to mr halperin and his the people who set up his priorities um and like if you don't i mean if it's if it's on top of everything else that he has to do i guess that would be my number one question to mr halpern and mr wildlin and dr glickman is like is this feasible for mr halpern and or his staff right um right now so that you know so it would be so there's a couple options there um it would be two to three hours over five months so and not in one because i would they recommended that the facilities

044director attend three meetings kind of at the beginning take it off the middle in the end and each of those would be about an hour yeah we could not do that and just ask for access to utility bills and that would be about 15 minutes so that that might make it easier on staff and then the other piece is and i think it is a significant we don't we don't want to buy too far from the strategic plan um what it would mean for us is the students would come once to a meeting and just share their their findings so just to clarify what that would mean um for us got it um and then the other thing that was on my mind was it feels like i know you mentioned high school students as

045well to me it feels like something that very much i guess i can't see it being just middle school students and volunteers without involving more staff time i feel like there's gonna there will you know what i mean in some way you know can that group be self-directed without getting our staff involved um i think that's something to think about you know as an unintended consequence and you know um so my you know my thought is is there a way to to gauge the interest of high school students to kind of be that lead or even you know partner with district 137 and take a little bit off district 46 those are the things that are on my mind and i'm christy i'm sorry am i having a hard time hearing you so can i

046repeat what you said just yeah i heard you so are you saying that you would be interested i i thought you said there's concern about having just middle school students yeah yeah so yeah no there's high school interest already i've got a couple kids who have reached out to and are interested not my own either so it would definitely be probably a small group of mixed high school and middle school students i'm just trying to figure out how how does it fit without feeling like another thing because i think it's so it's really important and valuable work but if it falls like a another thing on top of do you know what i mean other stuff like how how do we integrate it more and maybe i haven't articulated my question very well and need

047to do do some more thinking about it okay but i'd hate for it to land like a burden versus an opportunity if that makes sense because i think that i think that it is an opportunity just how do we how do we further integrate it and [Music] you know get energy from i don't know i think that's a great question that probably the kids would be best at answering too is bringing in kind of us a small core group of two or three kids and saying how is this gonna land in your with your peers and how would you like to invite because if it's i mean if i think about where it fits in the work of the district if it's like educator-led like there's a group of teachers who are like we really

048want to do this and we're going to do it sort of above and beyond and that's you know our passion you know that makes sense to me if it's a group of students that raise their hand and say like this is something we want to take on as a project you know in our activism that makes sense to me i'm just trying to figure out where the impetus is because i don't know that it's a bored the board being the impetus doesn't feel like the right place of alignment to me um so when you say integrate you're thinking where does it fit in yeah yeah like where does the energy where's the ownership of it um you know i guess for the board to put out a request to say we want advisement on this

049maybe maybe that's an in in but i i don't know i it's like where's that impetus and energy come from because i don't know that it's going to come from the good question because i i think sometimes people come to the board meetings or even approach administrators as and are under the illusion that it's um that it can be combative and i think this is a great way to bring kids in to say here's what we're working on here's what we want more of and then to say here's what we have to offer and we want to help with that so i don't know if that answers your question but anyone else no i'm going to add because i i think the one thing and i agree with everything that's been said we don't want

050to add you know additional to the plate of district staff um but i i in your last comment if we look at this as and i was processing this today as i was looking at the slideshow and trying to to match it up with some of the things that we've talked about and some of the notes that i have and i think i think looking at it as an advisory committee rather than a a board committee or a superintendent committee removes a little bit of that need to integrate it into you know into the work of what some of those other committees are doing like the equity and inclusion committee and the community engagement committee which are long hour working committees right that requires a lot of time of staff that requires a lot of

051time of community members to come to those decisions and make recommendations and i'm getting to my point or slowly but trying to the one thing that we've missed i think that we've talked about a lot as a board over the years is trying to get student involvement either as a student member of the board which some many districts around the area have a student member of the board which i think at some point if this leads to that would be a fantastic development i think there should be some type of student voice sitting on this board and there's there's many examples of that in the surrounding area but i also think that this particular at least what i like about this particular idea is that it's an advisory committee and can allow us to see

052if the things that we identified as strategic goals are actually working or actually having an impact in what we say that they're supposed to have an impact in and so i was back and forth earlier today i'm like do we have enough time do we not have enough time we've talked about it multiple times i've talked about it but you know it as it was presented visually here helped me get a little bit more to a side where even if there are some brief moments of time required to get information it is an advisory committee then that can report back to us about if those strategic goals that we spent the four to five months working to develop if they're actually having an impact out there because we can develop strategic plans and strategic goals

053and then never hear anything from anybody and not know if they're working this also i think is a conduit for perhaps getting a student to serve in some capacity on on this board which is another conversation i would like us to have later on trying to get somebody on there i did i did the high school thing i i don't i'm not sure we're not aligned as districts you know they have their own board and their own set of priorities we have ours and i'm wondering the one thing about the high school thing you know that's the one thing that i'm wondering about how we you know this should be for me this is a leadership opportunity for district 46 district 127 has multiple leadership opportunities already existing for other students so i'm wondering how

054that would how that would be articulated because i wouldn't want this to become an advisory committee that we are setting up but that's run through the high school district and the in you know you know what i mean that's that's kind of what i'm trying to articulate so that that's where i land with that i i'm supportive of this as an advisory committee because i think that resolves some of the issues of time that some are concerned with thank you cheers i was struggling with how i felt about this i'm a slow processor anyway i heard a couple of things that prompted me and one was impetus right and i think i think my feelings on that are probably born from a general frustration with the problem statement that this is attempting to solve it

055clearly needs attention at many different levels but to me the problem it almost needs to be solved top down it seems to me although i mean every action that we all take in our own homes and in our own lives affects this but it seems to me a problem that's going to need to be solved top down that's just an observation or a thought stephen said something about advisory board and when you first said that my mind went to kind of advising the work that's being done kind of in the long range plans from the facilities planning point of view and that's kind of where i thought you were going with that idea so as an advisory committee that sounds like probably the right place for this to land um those are the that's the

056state of my unfully formed thoughts on this at the moment let me go and to conserve carbon i don't have anything new that my colleagues haven't already brought forward in terms of you know i love the idea thank you for the robust presentation that you brought forward and i am leaning more towards an advisory committee to the point of making sure that everything is done is being tied back to the strategic planning work that's been done so that we're telling the whole story and to dr mack's perspective we're also getting that closed loop feedback of how are we delivering against those strategic goals that we've set forth thank you i'm just writing it down let me can i pose a question that might i don't know i don't have an answer to but maybe would

057help to jason's point to think through this like if we had we had a group of five students that came to a board meeting from district 46 and said we're passionate about this climate change we want to do something we want to take action we want to you know do a project or you know in whatever like what would our reaction be you know we probably wouldn't probably would not be like no i don't know we might ask them like where does it fit and ask them to you know to show that alignment to us um and then if they said here's some work we would like to do and bring back to you would we turn that down you know and so interesting way a different way to look at it you know to

058the point of if it's a if if there are students who are interested in doing this work would we not want to offer them would we say would we say no to it so maybe it's just a matter of do we are there other conversations we need to have with to determine like what is the impetus for this do we have students who have sort of enough compassion and commitment to take this and run with it and not have it be and have it be an advisory committee versus a project that the board takes on a project that district staff takes on i think we'd also have to sorry steven um i think we'd also have to get to the point where we had clearly defined goals for what they're going to be involved in

059and what they're going to what was the end game right clearly defined on roles and responsibilities expectations um and parameters for which they need to work in right we we if we're gonna go down this route we can't have um like a better term going rogue and all of a sudden coming back with something that we weren't even expecting as far as plans for the district and and so on and so forth so we if we decided to go down this route [Music] i would have i would need to see some clearly defined roles and responsibilities and goals for the people that are involved and um you know what what the biggest thing is what the goal and the impact is going to be for the committee for the advisory committee so said differently like

060what does success look like not only for the student but for the board and and those supporting the work of the students i'm sorry i couldn't hear you very well so said differently or and tamika speak what does success look like from this initiative and from the different stakeholders from the different stakeholder perspectives yes okay so board student this this also might be appropriate too for you know i mean i know again this again for me there's a pretty clear distinction between a a board committee and a superintendent committee and an advisory committee but i think i think maybe this might be a good opportunity to also suggest a for lack of a better term they got a formal proposal of what it would look like like what would the structure look like versus what

061was up on the slides but similar to what we did with the community engagement committee those first several meetings before that thing got running well before the virus hit and then they got running but you know those first meetings prior to covet we you know each time we presented to the board it was a series of okay and we faced the same questions from everybody how does this fit how's the community engagement committee the exact same question how does this fit into what we're doing and what does it require and so you know until the vibe until you know the pandemic hit we had we were starting to prepare what it might look like in in a schedule i think that would would help all of us see visualize what that would look like as

062an advisory committee okay i think you know kind of consolidate those ideas that we saw tonight into and if there are high school students that are interested in this already that would be work that they likely would be able to do and you know in a separate conversation that we might have this might live very well too in some of the the hallways of the community engagement committee because that might be just a natural place for that to to take shape i don't know what that means necessarily in my head but that's i say that and then i don't know where that is going to all end up but then it just seems like that might be a logical spot for it to come from so are you thinking i would advise the community engagement

063committee well no that we would be able to help advise them on how to be an advisory committee and not take away staff time and not add extra you know necessarily extra burden to the district but also be uh a place for them to so we would feel most of that stuff sure those questions and stuff yeah i think that would take the stress off of of staff time and house it in an existing committee that's already put together for this time because it is a community outreach thing it's a community engagement advisory committee essentially right at least i see it that way yeah my brain's pinging yeah okay so what i'm hearing is that we would want some sort of clear goals for the advisory committee that the kids would need to identify clear

064goals that they would need to those goals would we would need to approve those goals and they would need to be tied and closely aligned with our strategic plan so that we're not going off into the ether i have some questions about whether to include high school kids or not and you need to know what student interest is is that correct did i miss anything no okay so the cohort application is due on the 31st and i'm guessing that application will require us to have some focus are you comfortable with pursuing the scholarship or do you want to pay for the was you said it was 65 it's 65. yeah um i don't know if you're gonna be able to get it up and running by then to be able to get the application in

065with all the stuff that we've just kind of asked so i mean it's 65 so okay if i can get it together can i send it out by email and then you can take a look if i can't then we can go into november um well we would have to approve it at the next board meeting so the the advisory committee that would be the hard part right to get all that accomplished between now and the next board meeting for us to feel comfortable enough to create the advisory committee so there's you're just in a time crunch there you know i'm not i don't think chris is going to say 65 is going to break the bank okay let me see yeah i'll check into the application too to see if we have to accept

066if we are included because if the cohort um and then i can just shoot you that information if we don't have time to put it together then i might be able to pull it together so um because the benefit of the cohort is that that is the networking for the kids across the country too so no i get it um and it may just to put a realistic expectation if i assume this cohort they have cohorts during the rest of the year or annually or whatever right you can get into a different courthouse if not this one that um yeah not this it wouldn't be this year would have to go next year right so yeah but maybe it may take the time frame from the process that it took us to bring up the

067community engagement committee it may take it till you're just going to have to get into the next one sure at the end and end of next year or in october of next year versus getting into this one just so that we can get the everything straight before we try and dive into this process yeah that makes sense um okay i will take a look at this so then what is what do you want next from me do you want me to update you again next meeting or i wonder if before the board answers that if i could um share a few thoughts that as i'm listening um can i interrupt this process for a moment to do that okay so um i want to be very clear that anything that our school board asks our

068staff to do our staff will do so you know i'm very clearly not asking mr helpfriend will he make time for this because he will make time for this if that's the the request of the board for sure um as will any staff member i as i've been listening i'm thinking in terms of um kind of operational right if this if this goes forward what what do we have to do um and i will be i will admit that it it's unclear to me at the moment who would be in charge of it um i i'm not sure i understand that yet but i've been thinking about okay so who else besides mr halperin would be giving time and again this is not a barrier to moving forward but i just want to mention that

069i do believe there would be other people so one of the things i'm thinking about is okay what else do we do in our district that's really very volunteer heavy so to speak so we have the science olympiad program that's been in place for a long time that's very we're very grateful to have lots of volunteers that are part of that process so this sounds a little bit like that in that way um anybody so if something is connected to the school district there are things that we have to do so for example mr woke would have to be involved in the process of vetting those volunteers going through background checks and such that's not a barrier to this but it's something that he would have to do um probably we would you know i'm

070not sure how we would get the students involved necessarily but i'm guessing we would be putting out materials i'm not sure if it would be a survey or just some kind of a flyer we would likely be so we'd have staff that would be translating that into spanish again not a barrier but but something that would take somebody else's time and i'm thinking and as i go back to thinking about the science olympiad although that it's very volunteer heavy absolutely we have staff members who you know get that up and running every year host meetings um advertise it for students work with parents the the principals do that so i wouldn't envision that our principals would end up getting involved so i just wanted to mention all of that to you um also as i'm

071listening to the idea of the high schoolers and the middle schools take schoolers together which i think is really interesting and kind of exciting and is something that i as a parent would have probably allowed in fact did allow my middle schoolers to do things with high schoolers i think that that's not always the case i think we would have some families who would not want their children to be involved in a program that also involved high schoolers i'm also not clear yet where this program would be where the activities would be if it would be meeting on school grounds or elsewhere so those are just some questions that are in my head thank you and just to be clear i was just coming i wasn't going to skip over so thank you for making

072those clear i do want to address um some of your concerns because i had those two um it would not so as in terms of volunteers the volunteers that are in place are already volunteers so i don't know if if it would add to mr walk at all because we've already been cleared and it's in terms of flyers that would all be the kids responsibility so it would we can give them a budget to say you have 15 minutes with mr halpern and that's it everything else you have to do on your own and that's part of the self-governance and i think that's consistent with what's appropriate for adolescents too maybe not so much with the littles but definitely for middle and high school kids and they can help each other so and as i'm

073talking with other schools and just to clarify um they really are saying it's not staff time because you can run this as an after-school club and we wouldn't even be running it as a club it would be an advisory committee to the board so that frees up and it separates what we would be doing from staff so just just as a point of clarification it would not require more than that information and in more than that amount of time and any kind of distribution and could be done by the kids through social media so and they certainly we could work with equity and inclusion to get a volunteer to translate which we've done before too so it truly would not be from what i've heard from the woman who directs 12 schools through the green

074schools project it truly is not extra staff time other than what i identified so just just as a point of clarity but i think you're it's it does absolutely need to be aligned with this strategic plan and we can think more about that and bring that back too anybody else any other questions comments okay if you think of any other things you want clarity on uh be sure to send christy an email and be appreciated okay um next is uh the 2021 resolution committee report all right thank you everyone as you guys know this year's delegate assembly will vote on items in the 2021 resolution committee report on saturday november 20th i did send out this light deck in advance however there's been a couple tweaks to it so just know that mr vaipon is

075sharing the most updated version our actions this evening is going to ensure that ccsd 46 is positioned to leverage our voice our collective voice and this voting process that's coming up okay and so how are we going to do that tonight we'll be looking at the 16 resolutions that have been brought forward by the iasb delegate committee along with four affirmations or reaffirmations and two items that fall under under belief statements so just a point of clarity before we dive in to the actual report the distinction between the reaffirmations or position statements and belief statements position statements address issues affecting or concerning local boards of education and they direct the association's advocacy efforts whereas belief statements express significant values commonly held by local boards of education so in one case position statements are looking at

076addressing issues where belief statements are focused on the values held by by our local board okay next we'll get into the discussion but before we do that i just wanted to highlight a couple of things in terms of order of events so the iasb delegate committee actually outlines the priority of the resolutions as called through items one through seven on the next slide and so first we'll tackle educational programs then we'll get into financing public education legislative activity board operations and duties board employee relations local state federal relations and district organization and elections as your 2021 delegate i'll be collecting the responses from our individual board members and then collating that content that's going to ultimately inform our collective vote on november 20th if any of my colleagues want to learn more about the delegate

077assembly in the process there are two upcoming webinar offerings through iasb one being on november 3rd and the other on november 10th should i go off the rails we have our immediate past delegate mr lacroix here to keep us keep me rather on track okay the full report was sent out via email in late september so all of the board colleagues should have the report if not i can have mr vaipon just pull up the website do we have a need for that you got the report in front of me okay okay so without further ado we can just jump right into um the first resolution i can organize my papers all right so the first um [Music] i lied to you i told you the order the priority of the resolutions and then i

078didn't organize mine in that way so if you guys will offer me grace and allow me to uh read them in the order that i have in front of me thank you all right so the first one is with regard to board employee relations under new resolutions on page nine and this is regarding pre-service teacher education and licensure in literacy so what this is what this particular resolution is looking to do is to require pre-service teachers seeking licensure in the areas listed to complete at least one undergraduate level literacy education course that solely focused on reading education irene and the district's rationale for this is recognizing that only 34 percent of illinois 4th graders and 35 percent of illinois 8th graders are showing proficient or above in literacy irene there's a lot of information citing

079studies um that support the need for this and the resolutions committee is recommending that this resolution be adopted are there any questions about this resolution can i ask a point of clarity are we are we giving our up or down tonight or this is just discussion for now and then so keep me honest i think this is to start to capture feedback so do the up or down recognizing that the report went out in advance but if the body feels like we need more time and we just want to use tonight for discussion purposes i can capture those as well and then we can do up or down at our next board meeting i mean there's there's several that i'm clear on and several that i am not maybe is you know what i mean

080and this is one where i i would i would want to maybe hear from the folks in our district who actually do this work and ask is this a solution to the problem okay that would be my question on this one does it yeah this problem clearly exists is the licensure a solution to that problem yeah thank you for that mr weavin i i had a concern with it i had a concern with it is how will it affect we already have a teacher shortage this is adding to that responsibility of a new teacher or current existing teacher are we going to end up losing the ability to have these as teachers as we go along you know i just worry that we would be exasperating the problem moving forward so i don't i don't

081doubt that it's a problem i'm just saying we could we could be making it worse so just a point of order do we just want to allow this forum tonight to just review the resolutions and have discussion and then we come back next month for our vote is that what i'm hearing i think we can probably even come back next or me and have the vote that's all right with you and there might be somewhere where like we already all know how what we want and we don't need to discuss it tonight you know and we can move on but this one particularly i was i was very interested in you know our district who actually have to hire these folks and their thoughts the ones that we are in consensus of we just mark

082off that we mark off tonight and then we come back next month our next board meeting and take off the rest how's that work that sounds like an efficient plan okay before we move on i would like to ask a question it's kind of a meta question it's not really on the merits of the thing but so the requirements that isb puts forth uh that they promulgate on the requirements for licensure are those mandated by law is that how that works can you answer that question again i couldn't say it again yeah so isabey promulgates requirements for licensure correct is that law driven is that codified in law oh is that how that typically works okay it's school code yeah okay right it's just a kind of a meta question i had on reading sure

083thank you i think dr mack got rescued by the governor at some point barely i don't have the student teach but i do have to go back and get my licensure [Laughter] so that program begins in october if anybody wants to know all right so it sounds like we will table um the vote on pre-service teacher education and licensure and literacy until we have an opportunity to pull our district staff to understand that if they truly believe this is root cause and then also the impact understanding the impact of doing this recognizing teacher shortages okay all right the next one is item number two on page nine around student safety and protection plan right now this legislation or this recommendation would be looking for some optionality in the student safety and protection plan so essentially

084allowing volunteer employees to carry concealed firearms and they would be required to possess a 40 card a concealed carry license they would be required to complete some additional trainings and certifications that would be set forth by the school board this particular resolution has come up before as as many of us know and really the control the the concern is around having local control over student safety procedures within any one district and so the resolution committee is recommending a no vote to this or do not adopt as we have done in the past is there any discussion from the floor on student safety and protection plan i'm noticing that the version i'm looking at the resolutions committee seems to be recommending adoption that's what i'm saying too it said that they do not adopt failed so

085then they went with do adopt so i'm so sorry do adopt they do say do adopt so i'm sorry so they had originally had this do not adopt and um and then they had additional discussion and essentially what it was so you're absolutely right so thank you for that it was basically saying hey you know let this be local to the district to determine the needs within their respective community and so as opposed to making like a unilateral mandate no let the districts make the best informed choice for their their community so my apologies i stand corrected the committee recommended a do adapt on this thank you mr lacroix yeah as you know this was brought up in previous years and it was very contentious issue as evidenced by the number of speakers prior to

086the resolution being introduced generally speaking favor local control i mean as a principle also strongly believe that more guns in any place is not a good solution while being sensitive to the particular uh realities that exist in some of these rural districts so i'm generally recommending that we do not vote for adoption of this one same and i say that because i don't ever want to see this in district 46 and this border will not last forever i am in agreement with both my colleagues i do not support adoption of this i'm going to be one that goes the other way sorry um i don't like guns anymore in the next guy that's probably sitting at this table but when you start looking at some of these rural districts that have two or three squad

087cars in a you know couple hundred square mile area that they have to protect you're looking at a very long distance travel time for kids safety in order to get an officer on site i agree up here in the northern suburbs the northeast corner of our dist of the district of illinois you we can get you know well there's four cops at any one day on duty and gray's lake plus all the people that are in the office that are all carrying you're going to get a big swarm of cops up here down in the southern ends or the very rural areas of illinois they don't have that luxury so are we putting by taking away local control from another school district my concern is that we're also putting kids safety in jeopardy by having

088all the requirements that the they have on site or in the resolution um you're looking at somebody who's trained for that to be able to protect those kids and have protection on site so i would rather adopt but i'm one vote thank you mr miller i just i don't want guns in schools so i would not support that um and my vote i i struggle with the same point that mr wieman made in terms of and i think that the rationale is called out here in terms of just the locality for the police response time and able to to get there but i too feel like you know there's other remedies that the student resource officers can can leverage aside from having a gun to to intervene and control crowds or difficult situations with children

089so i'm enough okay so the consensus would be from our board a no vote for this item okay next under board operations and duties is school board member compensation i believe this too has come up in the past and essentially the case being made to compensate board members is that there are otherwise people in the community that will want to serve on the board but for needing to leave work early or incurring some additional expenses and so it becomes an inequitable process to serve on the school board depending on your financial situation and so [Music] it calls out a lot of different demographics that are that are impacted here but the goal of this resolution is to remove barriers to the community to serve on the board and so the resolution committee recommends do not

090adopt inciting school code 105 ilcs 5 10-10 that are requiring school board members to serve without compensation so i concur see him mrs miller i just want to clarify if if the resolution is adopted that doesn't mean we have to like i don't think we're asking to be paid but it would give schools that have a harder time finding school board members because of those barriers the option to pay is that correct i think you would put it into law that you could a stipend per meeting is what it would end up being so so our district if we were as a district to vote yes as an example so this puts it out there like if if then all the other one 850 some odd districts right voted yes then it would pass that

091doesn't mean we have to adopt it right um no that means we would have to adopt it and the money would have to be then allocated for the meetings usually for many board meetings like for existence for our um for the fire district board uh they are compensated for per meeting that they go to i don't remember the dollar amount that it is but per median that they're they are compensating that is in the law that they have to be compensated so this would be changing the laws as they're going to be compensated something so a point mr weaving thank you for that point of clarity for me then um so like in the prior resolution that we reviewed if our district were to vote yes because we wanted not so much for ourselves but

092we wanted the other rural areas or more urban areas to have that ability and other districts felt the same way if that then was yes if those yes votes carried then would that then come back to us and say we have to have for that resolution it would make it so that it's under local control this isn't saying local control okay so for the for the the safe kids one that would be the district has the option and said it clearly in there that the district had the option this one is not a local it would be codifying saying you would have to then compensate them okay thank you does that answer your question mrs miller yeah i think so um if i'm understanding correctly it would come back and we would set the rate

093then so we could set it for a dollar if we wanted to or right so i would i would like to give them the choice to do that okay mr lacroix i'm a do not adopt on this one all right and i am also do not adapt on this one so as a board we will be voting nay okay next is board member child care reimbursement so again along similar lines of the compensation this is saying um this is trying to remove the barrier of any folks looking to serve on the board to have to have child care otherwise that will preclude them from serving on the board because they don't have a way to attend and engage in thinking that by providing child care reimbursement it will increase access and participation part of the

094rationale here was that there are members of the community that would otherwise support but due to the reality of child care it disenfranchises certain members of the community all right the resolutions committee did recommend a do adopt on um on this particular resolution all right discussion i would distinguish this resolution from the prior one i think there's a broader win that's blowing towards the inclusion that can be gained from you know providing reimbursement for child care i'm a do adopt on this one i don't think and i don't think it has the optics problem of the other as well i think it's just you know someone needs child care to attend these meetings and they can gain access to to this service this board service by having that i think that's a good thing and

095i don't think it has any of the optical problems of the other thank you all right mr mac is a yes amios as well okay my biggest concern is where the dollar amounts going to come from i'm sorry my big concern with it was where the dollar amounts are going to come from are they going to come from the state level to reimburse them or they going to come out of the district pocket and for a district that's 40 at 64 percent advocacy as it is that becomes an issue so i'm actually do not i think we know the answer to that question though right it's going to come from our budget yeah then therein lies the problem it's another one of those unfunded mandates that we have to bear the burden for that's my

096concern and women benefit i understand that i'm just i'm not arguing with that part i'm just mr um again if it came back to our district we would be able to set the rate right we would say how much money for child care not that was it would be an hour unless i'm not reading this correctly this does appear to be within local board control but keep me honest mr whitman okay uh i don't have the answer for that that's the honest question yeah it's not really clear in my reading of it i'm in favor of it and with the understanding that we would set the i understand it's not clear but i it seems to me it's going towards local control so i would that would be in support and remember this is potential

097legislation not actual so that would all have to be hammered out if legislation would come up to the you know that would definitely have to be a point of decision for the actual legislation that's a good point for all this stuff is we're just voting on what we want them to advocate on our behalf for all this stuff is i mean even the most popular stuff is a long way away from being legislation [Music] good points thank you and i too am a yes for this one so our board would be voting in favor of board member child care reimbursement okay all right the next one item five remote virtual school board open meetings right so this is allowing to remove restrictions around remote meetings so outside of it being like an emergency mandate having

098the ability to conduct to allow for open or closed meetings to be conducted via audio or video conference right and it goes on to say without the physical presence of a quorum of the members and so we would just have to ensure provisions to validate that um the board member that is attending virtually um is vetted or validated confirmed right and this is um recognizing that with kova with the covet pandemic um that boards were able to effectively conduct the public's business um with increasing transparency throughout this time and so the advocacy is for allowing us to allowing boards to be able to do this even when there's not a public health emergency the resolution committee recommends a do adapt to this resolution so we need discussion i vote to adapt i think it's recognizes

099the new world that we live in and i like it and i think it's more inclusive and and more accessible for board members who might have disabilities that preclude them from physically getting to a meeting okay mr mac is a yes yes mr lacroix okay yes from mr wheaton yes from mrs miller and i too um i'm a yes okay all right next page 12 number six district organizations and elections looking to reorganize the board from 28 to 40 days so currently um when there is a newly elected board the the guidance is that it is is to be installed within 28 days and oftentimes boards are citing that they have to call special reorganization meetings because of how the calendar cycle time falls to make maintain or meet be seated within that 28 days

100and so the concern is that this is putting a burden on elected volunteers and so as a result looking for an additional 12 days to allow for the seating of the new board the resolution committee recommends to adopt the change from 28 days to 40. any discussion needed here all right sounds good consensus yep no concur okay so we will be voting yes all right next is page 12 number seven which should have been the first thing in terms of prioritization my apologies again is the indigenous people curriculum inclusion and so the district's proposal here is that native american history culture and current events can help give a more comprehensive view of american history connect us to one another inspire empathy and see the whole picture rather than viewing society through a limited point of

101view one of the causes or one of the the points made for this is that other ethnic groups are included in in the history curriculum and so the indigenous people was an area that was missing in u.s history requirements all right so the resolutions committee recommends that we do adopt this anybody disagree okay so we have a unanimous yay right the next is science of reading curriculum number eight page thirteen all right the district um here was looking for teachers to possess a science of reading or urging the science of reading in their k-5 curriculum it it provided more in-depth phonemic education to help students that aren't necessarily literacy proficient there's a lot of content in here around research that connects the science of literacy and why the district feels like this is important in

102terms of developing phonics a little bit more for students the resolutions committee did consider this heavily but they felt as though the proposed resolution was being more restrictive than what's already already there and would lack some flexibility in the resolution language so as a result the resolution committee recommended to do not adopt all right discussion around science of reading curriculum do we need more time to gather insight from our okay i would be interested in hearing from our curriculum experts i mean i don't feel like i have i think we can do that right now so i can give you just a little bit of context and i'm just going to go quickly in it um you know that one of our board initiatives is for us to investigate a new literacy program and so

103we have my colleague and i have begun researching them and this is a true statement that many of the new literacy programs have phonics instruction as an add-on and not part of their core curriculum surprised me because i feel strongly that phonics is a basis of the beginning of reading and so i do believe in the concept of that we should be including that is actually the reason why we came with a proposal earlier later last school year to have a new program called from phonics to reading which is based on phonemic awareness and phonics instruction that i felt like we were missing and that is going to be part of our discussion so i'm struggling here a little bit because i'm reading that it says the wording in the in the legislation or the

104proposal is restrictive i think it's just part of what reading instruction should be that phonics phonemic awareness all of those things should be part of a reading program i'm not seeing anything that i think is too restrictive and the science of reading is kind of the new buzzword in literacy uh in in literacy instruction right now um and as everything in curriculum things move on the pendulum and we had moved away from phonics instruction and now we're wholeheartedly back in the need for phonics instruction and i will say that that was one of the hardest things to teach during pandemic it's also one of the hardest things to teach with the mask that we're all wearing at the moment because part of that is having students actually see the letter formation and what your mouth

105and tongue are doing to create all those things so it is a need for us here in district 46 for the new program feedback has been great that we're loving the new materials but i'm not sure how many more details i can share i am not against the whole concept but again this is just a strategy a recommendation to go to say yes don't forget about phonics instruction if we didn't i wouldn't be doing my job in bringing a proposal to you that's going to have something to do with the science of reading thank you so much mr lewis for that context i just wanted to add in thank you um that um paul did such a nice job explaining why we know phonemic awareness is important what i'm seeing here is that the concern

106is that perhaps curriculum would be required to be updated in school districts and yet teacher preparation would not be updated and i think that's what the resolution committee was trying to avoid and anytime we're looking at any legislation that mandates specific curriculum i think it's a time to take a pause and wonder about that even if we as a school district believe in that particular practice or that particular curriculum i was going to say something along those lines paul you mentioned the pendulum swinging towards phonics now a resolution or legislation that was passed that mandated it if if the current best thinking on the subject went away from it then this would be restrictive in that way i was wondering if we're going to go a whole board meeting without hearing your voice so i'm

107grateful that you had a chance all right any other points of uh discussion before we go to a vote okay mr lacroix since we're locking us i recommend do not adopt thank you didn't yeah i recommend not only because we still have the local ability to put in what he wants or for the you know if it was you can't do it at all then i'd be a different story but since we have local control i'd say do not okay mrs miller do not okay so then we are a do not a nay for the reading curriculum all right moving on to item 9 page 13 the health and sex education curriculum the the genesis here is for advocacy for local school district control of over the content and curriculum for health and sex education

108courses offered in their their district so that there are optionality concerns indicating that you know as it stands on senate bill 0818 currently states a school district may rather than shall use the new curriculum and so the rationale here is that the local board best understands what's appropriate for their community and demographic and with their constituents um would want to hear excuse me to have as part of health and sex education curriculum the resolutions committee recommends do adopt to allow [Music] to allow this resolution to proceed forward do we need to have discussion about the health and sex ed curriculum yeah i think i need to understand something a little first um so so the resolution is that support and advocate for local schools to control of content curriculum are there any guard rails around

109that like i think it it needs to be and i'm quoting from this um so that is the intent of the recently passed legislation age and developmentally appropriate medically accurate trauma informed all those things are those guardrails still in place if this is adopted and legislation is passed based on our advocacy of this yeah as i understand this has recently passed and what the concern is is that it says may and the argument is that it should say shall yeah so we remember that these are each written by us and submitted by a school district so in this case mercer county school district 404 is saying we already like our curriculum it's medically sound and our community is behind it and we're not interested in changing it to anything different and so they're asking to

110continue to have that local control so that it doesn't need to be changed right i'm not sure i understood what just happened there what i just said so the could you repeat what you said the current law senate bill 808 was passed and said that they they shall follow these rules right they want the right they want the the bill to say may follow which gives them that optionality gives them the option of being local control but the law the law that was written says may use the concern is that the legislation the legislature sorry will go and say no we're going to replace may with shell yeah they're just they're just asking to not have any specific new requirements in sex sex ed and their concern is okay this was written as a may

111but we want to put a stop to this now because it might turn into shao and then we have a different kind of problem but what follows may or shall is it the culturally appropriate developmentally appropriate trauma informed and what follows shallower as it reads be it result that the illinois association of school boards shall support and advocate for local school district control of content and curriculum for health and sex education courses offered in their district i didn't mean in the resolution language i mentioned you're asking about sb 0818 you're asking for information about that okay so i think maybe what would be helpful as we pause on this one and when we come back to it next time we'll provide you with more information about what's in there okay and then we can talk

112about me and shell as much as you want okay it's a plan all right the next item page 13 number financing public education other cannabis sales so the resolution is indicating that legislation would allocate 20 percent of state taxpayer revenues from cannabis sales to public education programs that support youth development violence prevention and health education these funds would be divided equitably across the state based on a disproportionately impact area map [Music] the district rationale is that illinois that won we're already getting general revenue schools are already getting revenue from cannabis sales through the general revenue fund in that this is about 175 million dollars in taxable revenue that you know schools certainly could benefit from and it would also help to support programs in school that include funding racial justice and anti-racism education efforts this

113would be considered new money so not replacing any current funding concerns raised was that this could potentially send the wrong message to students as it pertains to anti-drug campaigns and then again countered with the fact that well the money could be used for educational awareness around anti-drug campaigns i tried to do some quick math but quite honestly without seeing that dia map it would be hard to understand what is considered equitable i mean just doing it just straight you know um 175 million i mean you know divided by the number of districts i mean you know it could be a sizable amount of money and could go into reinvesting into anti-drug campaigns if the district so chose so the resolutions committee recommends to adopt a do adopt on this particular resolution any discussion um just

114two two things um so the 175 million is what their state has brought in in tax revenue and it would take 20 of that yes so that'll be 35 million 30 divided by 859 districts that were roughly 40k if it was truly even but i think that dia map may have some nuances yeah and then just interesting enough about three years ago i sat down with sam yingling and discussed basically this is taking half of when i said half because i was greeting um of the new canis cannabis revenue and pushing it towards the school is new money so this is a start i guess i'd rather see it higher but i'm all for it all right any other discussion okay any other other than uh any nays i guess that's probably the shorter okay

115so then it would pass as a yay for our district all right moving along page 14 item number 11 clean energy infrastructure federal funding this is looking for iasb to urge congress of the united states to provide federal funding to school districts for clean energy infrastructure including but not limited to solar panels geothermal heating and cooling and wind turbines so the rationale there is a lot of science as we know from our own colleague mrs miller about the benefits of clean air and the significant savings that can be achieved through solar panels and and such however um school districts often times just don't have the funding to be able to support these type of large capital costs and investments but certainly the impact on student achievement is noted by having cleaner energy and air the

116resolutions committee is currently at a do not adopt position recognizing that there's already federal funding within the current system and that they believe that it's working overall do we need discussion all right mrs miller i see your finger on the button ready to vote sorry i would support it okay mr whitman um i guess i'm uh i would go against their recommendation i don't see harman trying to get more federal funding towards clean energy mr mack i would agree i would actually support this one okay based on what we've all been talking about 100 okay mr lacroix i don't see how the current system is necessarily working that great i i would support this i would agree that's a unanimous yes from our board okay all right next item 12 page 14 electric school buses

117charging stations federal funding so this resolution would urge congress to provide federal funding to school districts for clean electric school buses and charging stations the rationale is around the amount of diesel fuel the push to going electric and the health risk associated with continuing to use diesel fuel buses not only in health but physical health but mental health as well the resolutions committee had concerns in terms of this resolution being exclusive to electric buses only and didn't consider other types of cleaner burning fuels such as compressed natural gas and also questioned the practicality of it for rural areas that may not have access to charging stations and so as a result the resolutions committee recommends do not adopt discussion i mean those reasons not to adapt might be true at this very moment but with

118the trajectory of elect of electric vehicles in general i mean i don't see any reason not to recommend this yeah it's not a it's not a mandate to go electric it's if you wanna if you have the capacity and it will work for your district there's funding available and i think that's a good thing okay yep okay mr wheeler i'm for adopting this one too okay i know i don't think i even needed to ask you mrs miller all right our board is in support of this resolution page 14 number 13 landscaping federal funding this is to provide federal funding to school districts for landscaping and infrastructure improvements to mitigate the effects of environmental problems um there was some concerns with this particular district in champaign where they had sustained some flooding and so having

119had improved landscaping they would have prevented the flooding issues and so there is so the committee suggested an amendment and the accepted amended language now reads be a result that the illinois association of school boards shall urge the congress of the united states to provide federal funding to school districts for landscaping and infrastructure improvements to mitigate the effects of environmental problems as such the resolutions committee is recommending do adopt discussion ready for a vote all right looks like we have yays all around so we are voting in support okay moving right along page 15 number 14 under legislative activities expand broadband internet access this is seeking to advocate legislation to expand broadband internet access for for families across the state of illinois covet 19 highlighted disparities in internet access so even for districts that were

120able to provide the one-to-one um um hardware the computers for students many of the students were unable to connect with their school issued device um and then more importantly when students were able to get on there's concerns around i guess connectivity speed so this is looking at high speed access to ensure all students have the ability to learn in remote situations the resolutions committee as a result is recommending a do adopt position on this resolution any discussion all right we are all in favor and voting and support okay next page 15 item 15 child safe gun storage okay so this is regarding [Music] this would advocate excuse me for legislation to strengthen child safe gun storage laws in the state of illinois requiring gun gun owners to store firearms whether they are loaded or unloaded

121in a secure locked container if a person under the age of 18 is likely to gain access to the weapon without permission so illinois already has already prohibits any person from storing or leaving his or her firearm unlocked accessible to a minor under the age of 14. this resolution is looking to raise the age requirement to cover k-12 school population and recognizing that high school students they provided statistics around gun violence and high schools and such and the trends there as part of the rationale the resolutions committee was recommending do not adopt indicating that there's potential for overreach here that the resolution went too far and that it was not the place of the local school board or isb to determine the actions people take in their own homes discussion is there any yays for

122this okay i think i might be okay at first i didn't think there was really the nexus here the rationale that the committees put forth but um i'm kind of moved by the idea of the the school shooters gaining access to the guns at home and um i think i could support this but to emma yay mrs braden i feel like overreach at this point is kind of secondary to if no one else is going to say it then the school school board should that's omiye okay so that is a yay mr mack these are always hard but i'm going to support the do not adopt i don't i i don't think governance is i don't think this fits into the governance role of the school board the other one did that we talked about

123this one i don't think so mr whitman yeah i don't think the we should be dictating what people do in their houses um sorry before you go to the next one to finish this one before you go to the next one i'm sorry pause a second before you go to the next one after you get the rest of the vote sure absolutely mrs miller okay okay who did i miss i put myself down got jason jamaica [Music] my math is off somewhere guys it's probably time for a break [Laughter] you say it jason was a yay tamika is a yay christie is a yay steven is a no jim is a no christy is a no so it's tied so don't vote we'll have to wait until our new member gets seated i guess right

124our first task yeah board member and i'm like wait how are we tired now keep this going welcome we have a question i think i just came up with an interview question all right so we will uh pause here mr whitman yep so um interest of staff not uh wasting their time listening to us those that don't need to stick around can go home so mr walk this is lorenzo leslie everyone but me the rest of you gotta stay guys yeah i mean yeah guys the rest of you will see you tomorrow everybody else can go home there's no need for you to listen to this drone yep and i need to go back have a good night so uh we just have uh one more actual resolution and then the rest is amended there's

125just one more resolution and the rest are getting into like amendments and belief statements you can go ahead sorry okay all right and so we are up to our uh last new resolution which is school code review all right so this resolution is being brought forward to make a systemic education change to the general assembly [Music] that was specifically focused on race socioeconomic status special education and english language learners with the goal of making sure that illinois school school code doesn't disproportionately harm students of protected classes while unfairly benefiting advantage students the resolution committee is recommending a do not adopt citing that this proposed resolution was just not focused enough it was unclear and the focus would need to be narrowed before further consideration do we need discussion okay any yay votes yay yes okay

126okay so it sounds like we are i universal nay or a pose all right so with that we have three new resolutions that we've tabled and we'll consider we'll do some investigation and bring back at the next meeting next we'll get into amending existing resolutions excuse me amending existing positions the first one is page 16 number 17 position statement 20 constant constitutional amendment on school funding the resolution committee is recommending that we do adopt and just as a reminder positions are issues where beliefs are value based all right do we need to have discussion on this one we're good universal yes okay universal yes okay the next one page 17 number 18 position statement 1.16 charter school renewal of charters so this is concerning the local board's ability to participate in renewal proceedings as it

127pertains to charter schools despite the local school board funding the charter school the resolutions committee recommends a do adopt position i am a yay are there any nays all right seeing none we are urinae okay all right mrs miller is a nay are there any other nays okay all right the yays will carry and we will vote and support of this position statement all right next is position statement 1.17 or 17 excuse me it's getting late charter schools at risk students all right this resolution is looking to hold charter schools accountable for balanced enrollment of at-risk students at state authorized charter schools with a special emphasis on educating at-risk students making such language aspirational and not a requirement really has allowed charter schools to perpetuate discriminatory practices that deter at-risk students and these are the

128students that deserve premium resources according to the woodland school district the resolutions committee is recommend a do adopt position do we have any nays i am nna and but i want to clarify why i'm an idiot okay um i do think it's important charter schools and specifically the one related to woodland are created to innovate and i think they need some protections to be able to operate and i know that our charter school does reach out and try to meet the needs of at-risk students already so that's why mma okay thank you mrs miller the next is page 17 number 20 position statement 2-25 state authorized charter school funding so this is not new as i understand but this resolution is aimed to provide more clarity and specifically in the spirit of evidence-based funding so

129this is suggesting that educating the same number of students with additional facilities additional administration and additional staff without additional funding from the state is unsound the resolutions commit committee agreed and is recommending a do adopt position any discussion all in favor okay so we have one nay mrs miller do you want to discuss okay so the support will carry from our school district okay next is page 18 position statement 2.4 funding special education programs all right this is a resolution to strongly encourage the state of illinois to totally fun to totally fund with new monies in a timely fashion the extra cost of educating children with special needs to include transportation and accessibility costs to seek changes in current practices in terms of local district funding to include special education and professional personnel the resolution

130committee was in the affirmative for this position statement to do adapt recognizing where the current funding level is and the increased costs associated with funding special education all in favor okay we are universally yes for funding special education next is new beliefs new belief statements all right page 18 number 22 prepare all students to succeed so this policy would be encouraging students to complete assignments within a reasonable time frame even after the due date and develop guidelines as to how to score to grade late assignments the concern is that um you know having um zero zeros or failing grades is discouraging to children and so as opposed to having them say my assignment is late i'm not going to bother this will still encourage students to complete their work on time and give them second

131chance opportunities the resolutions committee is recommending a do adopt all in favor i'm sorry any discussion discussion i'm curious about what you think about this doctor glucanide again i have concerns about us telling teachers what they how they should grade so yeah i'm i'm stuck here because i deeply agree with this concept for many many many reasons and i think a school district can certainly make decisions you know can tell their teachers we're not going to have you know what we're going to do but i am concerned this is another area where i'm just wondering if this is overreaching for the state to be making this kind of a policy to me this feels very similar to the curriculum mandates that come out we do have this policy where i teach um and i don't

132and for me it's it's gone back and forth quite a bit in discussions because some of my colleagues feel that it absolves the students of any responsibility and that's gone back and forth in many iterations for the conversation i will tell you that in um in in the language learning environment where i'm you know operating it has i feel that as a teacher i'm less constrained and more able to focus on really teaching communication rather than [Music] reserving the passing you know the success to you know formative or summative assignment in language so i feel that if a student either has not turned an assignment or you know has not put forth the full effort on the assignment if they have a second opportunity to engage the language that i'm teaching in a way that

133might be more akin to their particular learning skill set i think this policy is an awesome way to bring students into that type of environment and make them feel like they're successful and i don't feel constrained in my curriculum planning or my grading policy and i still have the opportunity to you know to grade a student low if they don't do anything right 50 is still a 50 that's not that you know it's it's a further distance for a student who might be struggling to get from a zero to a seventy percent than it is to get from a fifty to a seventy percent and that i don't think that's impacted my curriculum planning some of my colleagues are opposed to this because they feel that it should be a you know kind of a

134you know a one two you know it's either this or that type thing but that's just my perspective as a teacher and do you think that that should be within your discretion to do so well i don't i don't have any issue supporting this belief statement okay yeah i i i think it's important that the the districts have that ability to to have that in there so i would support those and this would happen i can support it in terms of it's the languages urges school districts to consider versus it's not talking about legislation either and it's talking about maybe best practice and i would be supportive of it as this is iasb best practice versus you have to do it right right speaking to our values as a district mrs miller was dead inside

135i got you jim um was that insight from dr mack helpful and are you ready to vote okay and your vote is opposite okay and mr lacroix okay all right and i am also a yay so we would support uh this belief statement as a district all right and then the last item for discussion is an amended belief statement page 19 number 23 the physical and mental health of students just as we let mrs lorenzo go this res excuse me this belief statement is putting the overall physical and mental health of our students as prime importance local boards of education and school district officials should have the authority and flexibility to access state and community health services as deemed appropriate so this would be expanding belief statement number eight to include mental physical and dental

136examinations in addition to the already stated vision screening as a result the resolutions committee agreed that this amendment is in alignment with illinois state law and an improvement to the belief statement and is recommending a do adopt are we in need of discussion or okay mrs braden okay so we are universal with yays and in support of this amended belief statement and that there are no further questions or concerns that concludes our 2021 resolutions committed report review for your benefit the items and current positions at mid-level of page 19 or just the current positions that are not new or being amended at this time mr whitman i yield the floor okay um for some reason that's going off like crazy um next is uh topics for future agenda items so one moment um well let's

137start with the question about seating a new board member um i have that on my list but i'm trying to understand how we get from here to there at the next meeting and i will admit that i am a little unclear as to what the board's hope is regarding the interviews so i have a few questions about that but also i just wanted to comment that i if we wanted to push back the seating i think we can i'm wondering when we first set the um the seating as being at next the next board meeting was that at a time that we believed that um that we only had 45 days to seat because it looks like we have 60 is that right sue yes we have 60 days to see a new board member

138which put us at the end of october if i remember right correct uh no because we unless i'm just not counting well tonight which is certainly possible but we had the resignation i am in mid-september i believe it was the 17th of september um so i think check my math but i think we could seat in november exactly correct so the only reason i i bring that up and and i i could be wrong so when i go back and look at the math on it again but i'm i'm just wondering if the board would like to have two different nights to interview candidates um you have nine people to interview i was just doing the math on it or just trying to schedule it out even you know i know the question was raised

139that maybe of having a 20-minute interview um which is you know it's a short interview but even i think you still need to have people come about a half an hour apart right it's maybe it's a 25 minute interview with five minutes to take some notes and and such and sometimes people need a break in there so to get nine people in and have a dinner break and discuss the candidates even at starting at four o'clock which i didn't get clarity on whether you could really even do you wouldn't be starting your discussion of the board of the um candidates until 9 00 pm and i'm looking around and looking at how you feel right now and that was starting at 6 30 so i'm just wondering if you want to do a second night

140yes okay so can we stick with this conversation for a moment is that okay okay so we have one night set already for next week and i would think that there's no reason not to to continue it that night so i think we just are looking for a second night so um you know the the e i mean how's the evening of the 19th sorry works for me it appears to be okay for me as well is that good i am not available that night sorry you have a conflict okay so what about the the 18th i'm available that works better for me than the 19th should be fine i'll flip the software yeah so that one works okay i know i i'm not available that evening i will be out of town at a

141conference so i won't be able to be a greeter but sue can do it thank you she just waved her hand thank you okay so um we'll put a schedule together um and i'm thinking um we do you know five on the first night four on the second that gives you time to then have the conversation the second night about all the candidates um probably you will want to have saved some time on the first night to discuss the candidates so that you you know don't forget your thoughts so we'll have a little bit of conversation both evenings does that sound good okay sure that actually still puts us on target to be able to yeah on the 20th if we need to uh yeah that's that's true we could still see it on the

14220th that's true so okay i should probably note right now while we're all here i will likely be absent from the 20th meeting that is parent-teacher conferences in my district so i'm contractually obligated to be there more in support of that elected or not elected okay all right and then um are people able to start at six on those nights or do you want to start at 6 30. six o'clock is okay yep all right great we'll get them set up okay um so hopefully we think we're sitting in the new board member still on october 20th mr woke will be bringing an mou for staff quarantine days you've heard us talk about this before i believe that he and the union have been working on this and it's just kind of a refresh of

143an mou we had last year to support our staff during this unusual time when they are needing to quarantine sometimes for their own health for in some very rare cases close contacts or because they have immediate family members who have to quarantine so we'll be bringing that um we're bringing continuing discussion of the resolution committee right so there'll be a few more topics to go back to yep and then are we having more conversation next time about the student-led sustainability committee or is that not at the next meeting depends on how far along she gets okay so can i just can i just up yeah you can let us know all the way up until the friday before the meeting sure okay so it's fine um and then potentially bringing well i we have this

144superintendent evaluation tool i can bring it to you as discussion if you want discussion i can bring it to you as an action item for purchasing the tool how would you like to have that agenda item i'm actually good with moving forward with a vote if everybody else is or if we want more discussion well we can do both right i mean we can have it as a voting item and discuss it ahead of time right you can always say okay we need more conversation we're not voting tonight yeah that's fine perfect um quick update on legislator attendance senator bush was not available for our october meeting so i'm waiting to hear back about potential november meetings so i'll keep everyone posted on that she's got fall veto session uh that's all i have okay

145all right we are up to the public comments okay um we need a closed session yes yes we do so i need a motion to go into close moved second don't expect any um action to come out of this so we will uh sorry sue we don't expect any actions to vote on when we come out of this so um we'll be returning the meeting right afterwards mccrory aye nash aye miller i matt hi weedman hi and braden hi