OTHS School Board Meeting 5/21/2026

001to reconvene our meeting in open session. I'll make a motion to reconvene the regular meeting of the board of education open session. Roll >> call. I >> H >> I >> Richtor. >> Hi >> Johnson. I >> Brown. >> Hi. And if everybody would please join us for the pledge of allegiance. There's a flag in the back. >> I aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all. >> All right. Agenda wise tonight, we've got um we're going to spend a little time on our facilities plan. I I think we're going to talk a little bit about kind of the immediate planning, which we call phase one. Um as well as some conversations tonight about

002kind of the long-term plan and uh you know, things that we're calling phase two. Um we've also got some guests uh that are part of our CEO program. They'll uh address the group tonight and share some of their experiences with the program. Um, we've got some results to cover for the 2026 seal of bi literacy. A lot of recipients this year, so we're going to recognize them. Um, we've got a review of our professional development activities that have been happening this year. Um, as well as an update from our social work department, uh, Miss Mueller. Uh, food services. Uh, we're looking at, uh, a change in food service. So, we'll talk a little bit about uh the process that we use to uh to identify and and select uh our our food service provider. And

003then uh I think the administration is looking for a review and approval tonight from um we've got some AC projects coming up that are going to be part of health life safety. So, we need to take a look at those and uh provide approval to the district uh for a whole whole bunch of air conditioners. I think we're struck by lightning. So, I think they they do need to be replaced. And then uh a lot of student handbook changes to cover as well. And then lastly, we've got uh kind of part of that long-term uh facilities plan that I mentioned. We're uh talking with the marketing consulting firm uh who would kind of work with us to be part of the phase two. So we'll spend a little bit of time tonight talking about that

004and uh I think the district will be looking for approval to uh uh do at least the initial funding of of a market research consultant. Okay. And with that, we'll do the administrative reports. Mackleford. >> All right. Thank you. Good evening, everyone. As Mr. Brown mentioned, we'll start with a facilities planning update, taking us all the way back to gosh, over a year ago now to where we are finally ready to move forward. Um, so phase one, which we've been talking about in facilities committee, talked about at retreat last February, is a Milbourne additions project. So when we were identifying what we could do now without a referendum that would also support the long-term goals that were identified, we recognized that growth at Milbour is more appropriate than growth at Smiley. One, because we have

005no room to grow here, and two, because we're still really trying to figure out whether it's more appropriate to salvage all or parts of Smiley or whether it's more appropriate to start to shift more and more over to the Milbourne campus. So this phase one would include as we've discussed alternative education space. Right now we don't have physical spaces dedicated for that. Also expanding and creating more spaces for our self-contained special education programming such as Soore and Rise. It would also move administrative offices that are not building specific over to the Milbourne campus and would allow us to address more holistically the HVAC concerns over at the Millburn campus which have been improving but still aren't improved completely. So we'd really like to roll that in there in this new construction as well. So the

006impact outside of the alternative education, the offices, the special education, the HVAC is it does relieve to some extent some of our crowding issues over at the Smiley campus. For example, it will open up three classrooms here. It will open four larger office spaces. Um when I say four workspaces, those are kind of open spaces in an office area. Um could also be used as a commons depending on what our needs would be for those spaces. over at Milbour. It would also open three classrooms there. It would open up an office and it would create for the entire district a new large conference and meeting space. Right now we have our gymnasiums, we have our auditorium, we have this space. It would be something between this space and the small conference rooms that maybe seat

007only 12 to 15 people and it would function as the boardroom. We're also thinking uh one thing I did want to mention here with the three classrooms opening at Milbour, you might think, well, Milburn's not overcrowded, which is 100% true. So, ideas that we could look at are one, we still have storage issues over at Milbour. Um we we are max capacity in some hallways, especially in the athletic and performing arts wing. We could utilize some of it for those temporary storage needs while we continue to work towards the long-term vision. Um there's interest in expansion in our esports program. So, we did have a dedicated esport sports place over here, the Smiley campus in a classroom, but we needed that classroom for instruction. So, that's something that could be relocated there as well. Obviously,

008um I I think it's kind of if if you have the space, we have things to fill it with, but we would work through what to do at those three classrooms over there. what the timeline would look like. Uh formal board approval of these items would begin at the June board meeting. So we'd be looking at the approval of the overall project. We need to secure our construction manager. We need a board resolutions and hearing, I'm sorry, bond resolutions and a hearing that would begin to be initiated next month. Those are things that we've briefed in our finance committee uh over the last few months. And then our design phase would begin as soon as the board approved those. Then construction would actually begin in spring 2027, about a year from now. The project is

009expected to be completed, could be earlier, by summer of 2028. And we're looking for an open of those spaces and the revamp of spaces over here for the 2829 school year. For phase two, addressing the long-term needs, we've done a lot of this work already and we've done a lot of internal engagement with our stakeholders, our parents, our students, our staff members, of course, the board. We've reached out to the community, but we recognize that if we want these long-term plans to be successful, that we need to engage our entire community. So, our potential um way forward for this would be to get a community survey that's going to capture more than just an email coming from the school or a Facebook post or a newspaper article. We know that's reaching some people, but it's

010not reaching all people from that. And this is partnered with the Discovery Works um which is the the the marketing company we're considering partnership with. Uh there would be a facilitating team that would be developed and it wouldn't just be staff, parents, students, board. It would also include primarily residents of our community. Uh also making sure that the entire community is informed of what our current challenges are. Uh we've done a great job communicating that on our own, but again recognize that our reach hasn't expanded to the entire community yet. Uh making sure we're engaging the community in the decision- making beyond the meeting we had last December, beyond the that we're putting out through our social media, through our email, and through um the newspaper. And then through that uh committee, we would engage

011the community and then get our locked in path forward on how we'd like to move forward. So that's our phase two that would begin potentially this summer with administering a community survey to see where the entirety of our community stands, what their perspective is, how informed they are, and what they wish for OTHS. questions on that right now. We'll talk more about the marketing opportunity later on in the meeting. Okay. Next, I want to celebrate we just finished our very first class in our CEO program. Um we had a breakfast a couple weeks ago and u I'm very thankful that two of our CEO students have joined us tonight and they're going to share with you uh even though they don't have to come to school anymore. this was their last day of school and

012I said, "Please come to a board meeting." And they did it, which shows how awesome they are. So, I'd like to invite Jaden Anderson and Brettton Hunter up to speak to the board. Thanks for coming tonight, guys. So, when they were at the recognition breakfast, there were a series of questions that were asked by their facilitator that they answered. So, we're going to be using those questions so that they can share them with the board and with our guests tonight. Um, I think Jaden's picked a couple questions that he'd like to address, so I'll just hand it over to you. >> So, the first question that I chose was, "How does CEO defer from my actual expectations prior to taking the program?" And to be honest with you, I didn't realize that it was going

013to be as team built as it is. I thought that it was going to be extremely individual because the objective was to start our own businesses. But in reality, it was a class of 20 people who all had the same end objective, which is to build their own individual business and learn how to do that. As the process went on, we all together work together to understand business and working together was something that I honestly wasn't really foreshadowing. I thought it was going to be extremely almost like loving, but it wasn't. It was we were all able to like work together and really help each other out with their own individual businesses because we were all going through the same thing. And then the other question that I uh came up with the answer was

014how does um how does it help or it helped to enhance the education that I'm already receiving? And to be honest with you, I have gone my entire high school career wondering if I was going to get a class that was really going to fulfill my desire to be an entrepreneur. And as I went through my high school career, I couldn't find one other than accounting and finance that was really going to fulfill the desire that I had to start my own business. But when CEO came up, I realized that I was going to really get that opportunity. And although I didn't know exactly what it was going to be, I knew that the end goal of that class was going to be to start my own business. So with CEO, I learned all of

015the minor details and the small things that really go into being a business owner. And without CEO, I don't think that kids in high school are really going to get that opportunity. >> All right. and that I get to pick I get to pick the question. >> Yeah. >> Okay. If you don't like it, just tell me next. >> Okay. >> Um, can you uh answer this? >> How is the CEO program changing your perception of your community? So, talk about that community. >> I think I talked about this at the breakfast. Perfect. But um for me it changed my perspective on the community because like a lot of times for me like I'll ride around oon and uh you don't really like you'll see a business but you won't actually know what happens whenever

016like you walk past it or you ride past it. But uh there was one day in CEO where we actually walked through downtown. We got to tour like every business down there. We went to bike surgeon and peel and they made us pizza and we actually got to interact with the people who own these businesses and it was cool just to see like these people are regular people but they you know they pour into the community and they provide these services for us and I mean obviously it's also to make money but without them we also wouldn't have the great pizza appeal or bike things like that so it just makes me more appreciative and grateful for you know what Allen has to offer. >> Thank you. And then One more question. Um, if you

017could think of the biggest takeaway from the program that's going to help you in the future, what would you consider your way to take away? >> I think um the biggest takeaway is uh connections matter there. The cliche cliche saying is like it's not what you know, it's who you know. And we really learned that in CO. like this one kid in our class, he got a job because he we met the business owner and they connected. So, um I think just going to events like this or just putting yourself out there uh meeting new people uh really was beneficial just to see like um just the power of connection and meeting new people and you never know what what these connection will take you. So, >> awesome. Thank you. ANY qu I'm sorry before

018you go oh man I told you not quite yet I think you might have a question for you. >> So you told us about the CEO program and everything you learned but you didn't tell us what businesses you started tell us what business did you start >> so the business that I started is called Everthread Vintage and what that is is a curated subscription of vintage clothing. So, you go to my website and you choose you take a style quiz of your style and I get that information and I basically put together a box for you and I ship it out to you over a subscription. So, yeah. >> And your website is >> everthreadvintage.com everthreadvintage.com. >> I created a Christian clothing brand called Forever Faithful. And uh yeah, it's pretty simple. I just um

019basically like the message is that like faith is uh it's not seasonal, it's like forever and uh that's it's a big part of my life. So I just want to put that out there and just >> Yeah. >> And where do we find you? >> Uh www.forfaithful.net. >> Thank you. >> All right. And uh the last thing before I let you go tonight is earlier on in May, we celebrated our staff appreciation week. So on Monday there were donuts, Tuesday a nacho bar, Wednesday popcorn and pop, Thursday, Sunday bar, and then Friday bandanas barbecue also had gifts and prizes throughout the week. A huge shout out to all the people who made that possible. our future educators association, student council, yearbook, First Baptist Church, the school board, and it is tons of parent and community

020donations, um, which was just really awesome and made a special week for our staff. So, just wanted to, uh, show appreciation for that as well before I finish. And that's all I got for you tonight. >> All right, break is next, Mr. Graham. >> All right, good evening everyone. I wanted to share results from our single literacy testing, our professional development recap, and one pretty big announcement about conference next year. Um, typically at this meeting, I also do the ACT scores. You may have seen that the ACT scores were there was errors in the release and they had to pull back the scores to recalibrate and they'll release them in June. So, I'll give that in June. They said that no one's going to look down but they may have some literacy and this is

021all on board documents and it's very small so I won't read the details off here but the seal of bio literacy is a test students have the opportunity to take in 10th 11th or 12th grade to demonstrate their proficiency in a language to foreign language um the test is scored on a rubric that you see at the top left and the rubric basically basically shows how fluent you are in that language. If you score a six, which is an intermediate high or above, you can earn an iszy seal of bio literacy. If you score a six on every part of the test, which are four skills in the test reading is easy. If you score a four or four or a five, you accommodation. We had 78 students test and 77 of the students either

022earned a commenation or a seal. So let's just jump to the results. The resox the results on the left is so awards on the right is a global seal which is for students who are in a four or above but it's beyond the state. So students will earn a seal seal and global seal. They're just just there because the same group of students eight students earn a seal in Spanish and one in German. Again that's demonstrating a very high level of understanding of those languages very high fluid level. And then we have four French competitions, eight German competitions, one Japanese competition and 55 Spanish combinations. Um so again the biggest take away from this 78 student test 77 of them earned a sealation they also made the story harder to be proud of the rubric

023was changed but we still next thing I want to share with you all is the professional recap for the 266 school year these are just a variety of topics that we covered in our institute and our release days from ACT curriculum alignment to artificial intelligence which is a huge topic for us this year. Uh we learned a lot about some of the programs and subscriptions that the school uh provides for teachers like near pod and giving kit. Uh and we had three large events uh this year at Institute. We offered 19 breakout sessions. In February we offered 25 breakout sessions all on artificial intelligence. So that was a huge day of new stuff for everyone. Um and then in March our release to do uh a new concept called wellness day which was um there

024was a yoga option, there was there was walking the track there a lot of wellness options for our teacher. There was art, there's crafts and so people love that one too. I thought that was a great day and we also send our teachers to a lot of different places outside of you. You don't want to be the smartest person in the room. Sometimes you need to go out and and learn from others. So we people to conferences and national conferences across the country. So this is just a sampling of some of the big ones. We took two large teams and administrators up to high school to see the PLC model that they do there. Several teachers this summer we course training for some new courses we're offering and for some new updated curriculum for those

025classes and we send teachers national and state conferences of all our subject areas. Yes, >> question. So when we send people to n state national conferences what what happens after they go after they attend? >> So some of them are going to be subject specific for that teacher learn the curriculum to deliver to students. So like the a European history some it's a five day training that will attend in June and then be able to teach that course qualified teach course teach others so like the health program like conference we will send a couple of teachers and they'll come back to the department and present the updates from the state on on new new trends or new rules in that subject area. So a lot of it is specific to a teacher delivering to students

026and others is teachers training our teachers who didn't go >> I'm just curious how are the teachers selected to go to the conference >> depending on usually a teacher will put in a request and it's approved for that department chairs can select teachers to go assign teachers to go on the courses have to go. So it just depends. We don't turn people away from these kind of things unless it's redundant and we've got already multiple uh we were selected to host the do the department of board education that's a new name national conference uh next year next school year December And the reason we were selected is because back in September early this school year we hosted a site visit for the DoD leadership of the James Bank to observe the four grants that we

027have here. And so our four grant directors Laura Stevens Sanchez and Christina took the leadership around the building to show off everything we do with our four grants which is what going through all of our CT classes, our tech lab, all of our world language classes and they met with a lot of students that are involved in the program. So they were very impressed. did an amazing job and after they left they they sent us a summary report and said hey we want to come back we want to bring more people so they selected St. Louis as the host city for the do national conference December 2026 and OTS and will be site visit locations which is typically attended by 250 teachers so we'll have a lot of teachers coming through here in early December

028to see what we do to get ideas for their great Okay, this is great. >> Good evening. I am presenting numbers for April 2026 revenues. In April, we received $1.8 million in revenues, which is 94% of our annual budget. Um, compared to $ 1.9 million, 95% of the budget in 2025. And then on the expense side, um, in the month of April, we received $3.3 million in revenue, which is 71% of the annual budget compared to $3.1 million, 72% of the budget in April 2025. So, we are trending um the same year-over-year, >> Mr. Good evening everybody. I'm going to start tonight's report with a prom recap. And as I mentioned last month, our prom was on April 25th, 2026 at the Regency Center here in Of Fallon. 860 students bought tickets to prom that

029was there. And of course, a huge thanks goes out to Miss Jod Scythe who organizes this. I'm not sure if I said this uh last month or not, but imagine trying to plan a 860 person wedding every single year. And that's what she does. It's it's a spectacular night. It went off great and she is amazing at organizing this and uh real real big thanks of course goes out to her. Uh the after prom was held at St. Clair Bowl. Over 300 students attended that and they could bowl, they could play video games, uh they could sing karaoke, uh lots of free food. Every student gets a $10 gift card when they walk in the door and prizes are raffled off every 15 minutes. Anything from gift cards to computers to video games. Uh it's

030really an amazing thing. And that that of course is put on by our found township group. And these are just volunteers uh that do this every year and they stay till 3:00 in the morning uh clean up afterwards. They get all the food. Uh it's just a really special night for our kids to have a safe fun night at the bowling alley there. And so real real big thanks goes out to that group. On April 29th and and 30th, we had our pop art show. And at the Mildren campus and here at the Smiley campus in the IMC, the art department every year puts on this art show uh that throughout the year our students make in our art classes at the Milbourne and Smiley campuses. And again, a big shout out goes to our

031our art department, uh Mr. Ben Brooks, Elizabeth Raundi, Julie Linnamman, Pton Knap, we had a sub, Shay Hunt, who was in for for most of the semester subbing in for Julie. Uh, and then of course our art department chairperson Nikki Wilson. Uh, they put on this incredible uh two nights here. Lots of lots of work they put out uh put into this thing over twoight periods. So, just a fun couple nights for the for the art students there. All right, student handbook updates. Now, um just for our public how they understand the student handbook, every single year, uh the student handbook is updated. Okay? And this process, believe it or not, is extremely long. Um it's a year-long process. Uh administrators go into classrooms, uh we we have department chair meetings, teachers give input, public

032gives input, and we come up with these things and try to make changes for the better. anything from uh you know grammar changes to major changes. This year we really don't have anything major. Uh but it was a lot of work this year because we wanted to align our handbook with the Illinois Principal Association model handbook. And so Mr. Wallace did did a fantastic job of of heading that and making sure that it's going to align as best we can with the Illinois Principal Association model handbook. And so we have to finalize it tonight for the school board to approve. And here are just some of the changes. And really we didn't have anything major, but here are some of these changes in the student handbook under loss of privileges. Um this what that is

033is when a student gets a certain attendance mark. Okay. um or if they get a certain amount of out of school suspension days, they lose the privilege of going to extracurricular events, okay? AK going to football games, going to basketball games, you name it, homecoming, prom. The change from the previous years is this. In the past, when a student got six or more out of school suspension days throughout their high school career, the loss of privileges would kick in. Now, we changed it to where if they get four days of suspension in a year and then it resets every year, okay? Uh and and the thought process behind that was, you know, a student can make a mistake their freshman year. Um and then it's it's so-called kind of wiped off and so they start

034fresh their sophomore year. Okay. And so that's the only real change with the loss of privilege part of the student handbook. >> Question. >> Yeah. So if you let's say you got in trouble right now suspension so I guess privileges reset as soon as you start school >> uh no so the loss of privilege would it's a two semester penalty okay meaning they can't attend extracurricular activities in the semester you're in and the next semester okay >> good questions >> okay tardiness um the tardy policy nec in the handbook didn't necessarily change because students are going to be marked tardy when they're not in their seats. The change is is how we're getting rid of of teachers giving tardies for bathrooms. Okay, that was something throughout the PTAC meetings and over the years um there

035were some real questions about that and so uh going into next year uh teachers tardies cannot be given to go to the bathroom and so we've devised some some some methods because we're going to have a new digital hall pass system which I'll get into a little bit later for next year that can hopefully make it so that we can track students better and how many times they use the restroom throughout the day um so that privilege is is not abused. Okay. Um, but it's not in the handbook that says that, but I just wanted to make sure that everyone understood that. >> So, what does the teacher have? >> Say that again. >> What does the teacher have in that regard then >> to to what >> as far as a discipline for going

036to the restroom? Is there anything at all or not? >> Well, I mean, they can set their own classroom policies, you know, how many times they can use the restroom, that sort of thing. Okay. And then also the security and the administration will have and even every teacher will have access to the the amount of times that student went to the bathroom. So let's say student A went to the bathroom third, fourth, fifth period in sixth period and you've already used bathroom three times that day. They can see on the computer how many times they >> That's one thing I'd like to thank the administration for taking that on. We talked about it on a couple of times. There was some conration wasn't consistent. So thanks for teachers, you've got the new system. So, >>

037yeah, and it's going to be an adjustment, you know, and and we're going to have to come up and brainstorm some what what Mr. Richtor said there, uh, some ways for teachers to make it easier for teachers, right? Um, and we'll do that. We we will we will make sure to get some some ways and and the assistant principles will be helping with the teachers to make sure it go smoothly. Okay? And there's always going to be hiccups, but we'll work through those. Um, all right. Eligibility. Really, the only change with eligibility in the past always said that a student had to be passing five classes. Okay. But with the CEO program and then next year getting to the Collinsville area Vocational Center, we have some different unique classes because for example, the CEO program,

038it's considered one class, but it's meets for two hours. And so now we change it to where a student has to be it's two and a half credits. Okay? So it's just really more to adjust to what we're getting into with some of these different type of classes. um ACR in school suspension. Um the real the only change here is this year a student can get as many as three ACRs in a year in a semester, excuse me. Next year we're increasing that to five. Uh the reason being is we're going to have a full-time ACR instructor. Okay? Uh that's going to be here all five days a week. And so we're going to have the ability to to house more students. And then also what we're finding most likely this year because the electronic

039device policy be put into place, we have had more situations where students get to that ACR mark. And what we don't want is when a student runs out of ACRs, they get suspended. And so we want we'll have to see the data at the end of the year here and what how it shows. We wanted to um so that students wouldn't get suspended from school for things like uh cell phones. You know, that just didn't seem right. So, we're adjusting it up to students get more ACRs. Any questions on that? Okay. And the next one is the final exam exemption policy for seniors. This has been a talk for a lot of years uh because OTHS is for probably the last 15 years or maybe not 15 years but at least 10 years has everybody

040take final exams through their senior year just like our seniors did today. Um into next year, we're going to give a final exam exemption uh incentive policy. And you know what one thing through these PTAC meetings and through department chair meetings, there has been some push to make some kind of senior exemption for final exams. So what we wanted to do is to tie it to our school goals. Okay? And one of our school goals is attendance to increase attendance. And as we know, generally speaking, uh, second semester seniors miss a lot of school. And so, one thing we we decided to do was to attempt to, um, make it to give an incentive for seniors to be at school and to get out of their their second semester final exams. And how that would

041work. As you can see here, to earn exemption, seniors must not be chronically absent or truent during their second semester of their senior year. So it's only the spring semester. Seniors must not have nine or more absences that count towards chronic absenteeism or truency as defined in our student handbook. Okay. on on page 48. So seniors with nine or more days of absence counting towards chronic absenteeism truency will be required to take all their final exams and that includes individual class periods because what we find students tend to miss first hour the most. Okay? Uh and seventh hour. And so if you miss if you get nine or more absences in one period, you have to take all your final exams. Okay? Okay. But if you have less than nine, then you you can get

042exempt from taking the final exams. Are there questions on that? >> There requirement. So be getting a D plus. >> Yeah, there is no grade requirement. We tied it strictly to attendance. >> And our thought process too is baby step this, you know, and see how this works. We want to incentivize coming to school being at school. The hope is of course that school, the grade's going to be up. And by the way, a student can always choose to take the final exam. Okay? So even if they're exempt, they can take the final exams if they want to to uh raise their grade. They can always choose that. >> So what percentage of our students are true? >> Okay. It we we did the numbers on that. So in this situation here we this year

043there would have been 145 students okay that would have had to take final exams >> of the senior class. >> Yeah I think it's 59 >> it's about a quarter >> 20%ish >> but they could still get the absences the first semester >> they could so they have to take final exams no matter what first semester. only second semester. >> So for the 80 kids that are back, do you think this is a motivation? >> Well, that's the hope. The hope is that and in talking to teachers too, uh they teachers who teach seniors truly think this will help. Okay, that that I talked to. Um and so that's that was the baby step into this final exemption policy. It's worth measuring, worth trying. >> I think I I agree. Bring this up, but I

044really think we're being a little lenient with nine parties or how did administration come up with a great question to eight and each class and still be able to miss my >> That's a great question. The the thinking was that is where a loss of privilege mark is and so to make it so it's uniform loss of privileges to make it a nine >> but it's also uh consistent with's definition of absenteeism the state >> 10% >> I understand that we're trying to increase the absenteeism or increase but the reason tried to decrease absenteeism that help them on their grades that slideshow you showed before you know for every 10 or whatever I don't remember but there was a clear correlation so that's the purpose of the absentee trying to get them to school get

045better grades if now there's nothing it's not tied to grades at all but just to get them in school and I hear what you're saying that you're assuming their grades are going to go up I'm not quite that confident because just because they're in doesn't mean they're going to We're going to do the homework. That just means that all I got to be is passing D plus I can skip eight. Got it. Plus my five mental health days. So I'm out for 13 days that semester and then eight the prior semester. And we talked about the grades component, but because of that high correlation between attendance and grades, um we decided to focus on attendance because we do see that correlation. So, and if we see that there's a lot of kids failing who are

046exempt and then they fail or get a D, then we could reconsider that in a year. We don't know how this is going to go until we do it. >> A pilot program. Student with an F would still need to take the final graduate. So, those students are going to be there. >> D, >> but the D is the issue. Right. >> Right. >> But we're going to kind of extreme, aren't we? I know you want to ease into the program, but we're going from all seniors taking finals to >> all seniors that aren't true. >> True. And seniors are taking finals, but 80% of the kids are not. >> And what if they take the final and it actually hurts their grade? They bomb the final because they've had a bad day. Then what?

047>> Well, I mean, that's impacted. No doubt. Yeah. >> Right. Right. >> They're just not going to take Yeah, I wouldn't take it because >> I guess question to the board. I want to take I want to take an exam question. So question to the board is are board members concerned about letting providing an incentive to seniors to not have final or board members concerned about where the line is drawn I think in terms of >> but being able to get out of finals >> I'm not the educational expert I'm just the board member here and the educational experts of the district have proposed proposed a plan to address truency and potentially grades in for the senior's years and they've acknowledge that it's a pilot program. Why not run the pilot program? Worst case scenario,

048we run it for a year the we change it then we tinker with it next year. >> We finetune it or do with it. So >> agree with James. >> I'm in favor of the program. in favor of one. I'm not sure I'm in favor of this. I think it's just a little bit too lenient in one semester in one class. That's that's not incentive to be to be released from a I agree with Donna. In addition, our main goal is to educate the students. They're getting a plus in the class. They learn the material. I'm not sure we should let them not take a final and have to study and learn the mater. >> I know later on um in the board meeting the board will have the opportunity to approve or not approve

049these changes for the handbook. I just want to take you quickly where we've been and when we get to that we'll get to that and see what happens. But um as Dan shared um we got a lot we've received a lot of feedback from families over the years which is fine where that we were looking for an exemption. We talked about this about a year ago right and last but last year the board had shared and I think I'm hearing consistent messages from the board here that the only way that they would be open to that exemption is if it were tied somehow to our district goals. So that you that's what we were trying to do. So, as we went through in the fall with the administrators, department chairs, getting feedback from the teachers,

050um that's where we decided to really focus on attendance at least for this pilot piece. Um throughout the spring to just what gosh within the past months, Ethan, we sent a survey out to the staff for feedback, which they actually came up with a new right on how we would make that work. And so then we surveyed them again with the new thing that they had put out there. And we have uh the staff was in support correct am I I don't want to misar >> okay >> wanted this plan a smaller group wanted there were two other different scenarios but this >> I just want you to have the whole picture and >> what were the other scenarios >> uh one scenario was uh the same exemption but the seniors uh would get out

051like a week early and take their finals during 55 minute class periods if even if they didn't earn the exemption, they would still get out early um just have to take finals. >> Then the other option was having the seniors with the exemption attend those last two regular days of school, which we found those are going to be final exam review days. So student with an exemption would be in a room for no reason because they're studying. >> So the other scenario is more about >> it about the house. It wasn't the the cut off for the incentive was determined at administrative level. >> The teacher level was should we do it instead? >> Yeah. And then just to follow up, I I know that we had sent this out in an update. Uh we

052discussed an education committee and PTAC as well. Um we did have part of that great discussion at the PTAC meeting. I just wanted to give everyone a picture of kind of how we got this >> that I understand and I understand tying it to the goals, but we can't lose sight of our ultimate goal being to educate students. And so nothing came up of a passing grade to be able to be exempt along with um >> it was discussed at the PTAC committee. It was considered as we were I'm sorry I don't mean um it was considered as we were going through the year but again we wanted to do something that we feel confident that we can be successful in. We didn't want to put an additional burden on teachers to go through all

053right who's getting what? what is this going to be at part of it was that consideration as well >> but one focus and that's attendance because we identified that as the most dire issue that we're facing and attendance is highly correlated to achievement >> so other other ways to do this are unmanageable is that what we're saying >> they may be manageable but anything new is hard they may be manageable >> how can you not know what a student's grade is at a given time >> they know what it It's more so man. It's more so managing. Does this person have to be here? Do they not? That's all. >> Well, we we are a little off track. >> Yeah, we can get to that when we get to the >> This is the discussion

054we need to have. We should really be having discussing new business. >> Sorry. Sorry. I checked your pitch here. >> I had a feeling this one would let you carry on and we'll talk about it more. >> Okay. All right. Sounds good. All right. Um, what I'm going to do next here is is a little while ago we had a department chair meeting and I brought this up to the department chairs and and I reflected on this year. We lose sight, I think, as educators how how much we accomplish. Okay, and so it's good to look back, okay, what do we do? What did we do this year? And all these things I'm going to show you are are months and years long efforts put on by our entire staff here at OTHS. Teachers, you

055name it. I did all the work to make these programs successful. So all these things for for the 25 26 school year. We put in a new electronic device policy. Really, it's worked great. It's been very successful. We've had some hiccups with it. We're learning through it, but it's been a very successful program. We we started our connections day, our connections night this year. We increased our final exam percentage weight up to 15%. We put in an e-learning plan. E-learning went great. Okay. Uh this year and that's and that's a testament to the e-learning committee and all the teachers who put it into action. It went really really smooth and well this year. We issued uh digital pink slips uh this year. So no more actual physical pink slips. We put in an OTS syllabus,

056meaning each teacher has their own syllabus, but we have a school syllabus that each teacher puts in to talk about tardies and absences and all those things that as a school, so we're all pulling in the same direction there. Uh Dr. Heavens issued the Walk of Palooa for sophomores transitioning from the freshman campus to over here to the Smiley campus, which we're going to do again this summer and and we're going to issue well, I'll get to that in a minute. Um, we obviously did our CEO program as we saw tonight, the success of that. We did online purchasing of our parking passes, of homecoming, of prom. A very smooth transition to these things. We for parking and again, Mr. Koad, uh, principal there was in charge of that. No more uh, kids camping out

057on the front steps, okay, uh, at night there anymore. We implemented frontline and and our teachers know and our our staff knows how how hard this was. This was a very very difficult thing to track subs and and and and put in absence times. This was a big deal. We got through it and and and with a lot of hiccups, but we got through it. Uh we had an AI policy committee. Uh we we had administrators go to recruiting fairs to try to recruit teachers because less and less people unfortunately are going into teaching and it's getting harder and harder to find teachers and so now we're going out to colleges to recruit teachers to come here. Uh we as Mr. Graham said earlier, our teacher admin professional development with intentional ideas for implementation next

058year with with the groups of teachers, administrators that went up to Stevenson High School got fantastic ideas that we're putting into action for next year. And then this spring, we we piloted a digital hall pass system, which I'll talk about in a minute. It's going to be very successful going into next year. So, with that in mind, you know, going into next year, what what are we looking forward to? Because of all the work we did this year, okay? All right. that's going to see itself next year. And uh Mr. Graham is in charge as long as in in our academic team that's gone and and really investigated getting a new mission and vision statement. We put a tremendous amount of effort and work into doing that and uh we're going to put that into

059action next year. As I mentioned earlier, we're going to have our digital hall pass system called Securely. Um, and we'll baby step this, but it's going to be strictly for going to the bathroom and going to the nurse. And so, uh, we're going to be able to track when students leave the classroom and when they come back to the classroom, uh, through a kiosk system in each classroom there. Uh, and once again, we just got to have some accountability and and with things and so teachers can see that students uh, it can be accountable for how long they're out of the classroom. With that, um, we we're going to add an additional essential study skills teacher. It's another intervention for some of our atrisisk students. We're going to have teachers devoted strictly to the math

060tutoring lab. This is a wonderful idea by our math department chairperson, Terry Range, um, who came up with this idea to have have one teacher teach all the the math tutoring labs. Uh, it's hopefully it's going to be a real smooth program going forward. Uh, of course, ours students attending the Collinsville Area Vocational Center. I think it's approximately 40 OTHS students will be going over there to to take uh classes in vocational that we can't provide here at OTHS. We're adding a sophomore, a first ever AP sophomore class in European history. Uh, we're getting Spanish and French dual credit with Swift. Next year, we're going to have another Kex night and Kex day. And then we're going to have a connects advisory period next year as well. So we're adding on to these things because

061of the success from this year. We're going to have an updated mentoring system for new teachers that's going to be more robust and tell new teachers over a two-year period become of course master teachers hopefully. Uh we're going to add a freshman orientation day that's uh led by Mr. Principal over at the Milbourne campus. Um, and then of course we're going to continue on with the Walk of Palooa program here at the Smiley campus, the senior final exam exemptions. Maybe we're going to we're going to be doing uh and as Mr. Graham said, we're going to be hosting the DODIA National Conference here at OTS. And fingers crossed, this is not a given, but uh Mr. Graham is currently writing a grant possibility for some construction through the another Dodilla program. So, we'll see. We'll

062see on that. And these are just a few. And again, you know, we get as educators, we get bogged down in our own work. We don't see the big picture. These are just tremendous, tremendous things that are going on last this year and then hopefully next year. Okay. And then I'll end tonight with our enrollment. And you can see if you went back a year ago, our total enrollment was 2458. Currently, as of today here at OTS, it's 2433. Any questions? Thank you. >> We've got another social worker for Hi, I'm Kaitlyn Miller, social work department chair. Thanks for letting me speak a little bit tonight about our department. Um, first wanted to introduce you to our team. We have Mrs. Buck, Mrs. Flare, Miss Johnson, Miss Prrenible. Um, those social workers are here at

063this campus. We have Miss Randall, uh, Miss Brown. She's covered up. Uh, sorry about that, Miss Brown and Miss Rottman. They're at the um SMI or Melbourne campus and we have Sylvie, our therapy dog that comprises our team. Uh the social work team I always like to distinguish us all we work closely with the school counselors but the school counselors are primarily doing academic advising college and career advising and the social work team is supporting students in that realm but we're also really supporting uh their mental well-being. Um we're constantly collaborating with parents and staff um and students. We connect students and families to community resources, um counseling primarily, but um uh psychiatry like medical care, stuff like that if there's a a request for that. Um and then a bulk of our time is

064providing direct services to students in our offices individually and um in in small groups. We also push into classrooms. We see students for a ton of different reasons, but primarily um if we had to rank kind of the the top reasons, we see a lot of anxiety, depression, trauma, grief, and emotion regulation. um peer issues and conflicts, family situations and and potential issues at home, academic pressure, school motivation and problem solving. Um students are referred to social workers by teachers, administrators, their parents, outside school counselors call us and ask if we can follow up with them. Peers will come in and say they're worried about one of their friends, so we'll check in on them. And then we have a ton of students that just walk in and refer themselves, which we're really proud of.

065Um the fact that so many students feel comfortable walking through our doors. Um there is still a stigma and um as this slide represents, 42% of the student body has accessed us. Um and we're proud of that. We we always hover around this percentage. Uh we've never dipped below 40%. And um I think that goes to show the value that our teachers place in the social work services, the parents and students do that the board does that you've allowed our department to grow over the years and only help more students. Um so we're we're proud of how many students we get to interact with and and help. We also run social skill groups and the breakdown of those numbers, three over at the Smiley campus, three at the South Campus, and five over at the

066Melbourne campus. Some of those are co-implemented with the speech language pathologist. Um, some of them are run just solely by a social worker. And we also push into the life management skills classrooms both here at the SM Milbourne campus and then store has two classes that the social worker pushes into there as well. Um, we still have our therapy dog program up and running in year two and we're thrilled that Sylvie um has I don't know, she's just loved by all the students and staff. Um, she does a lot of classroom visits. She has provided counseling um to to staff and students when we've had to do grief support. Um she'll be she's with Miss Printable when she's in the building, which is most days of the week. Um and she provides support during individual

067counseling sessions. She's had her her debut on Panther Beat and she will be in the yearbook. I think she has her own spread. um she attends social skill groups and then every Thursday you'll find her and Miss Printable up at the front of the school greeting students um and that's usually a highlight of the week for many students. We couldn't be more thankful for the partnership with Perina. Um they've donated uh coupons for dog food got your six they have provided they are who Miss Printable worked through to get um Sylvie trained and for a child who does her grooming for free of goburn >> I'm sorry >> campus also >> she's she goes over there occasionally um and then Sylvie we want to try to get her over there more um Miss Rottman one

068of our social workers is actually getting her dog trained and we would love to then have a full-time dog over there as well. So, it's hard to get Sylvie over there because Miss Prrenible is seeing students over here most of the day. Um, but she tries to get over there. Okay. Uh, we've continued the schoolwide initiative of positive praise. So basically if a teacher or a staff member sees a student doing something good uh making you know gains in the classroom just being a good friend to someone um a host of different reasons they nominate a student. The social worker calls them in gives them their certificate. At Milbour the assistant principles call them in and talk to them about why they're receiving it. and then they receive a coffee shop coupon, movie tickets, um,

069or a coupon to the edge. We've had 183 students between Smiley and Milbour receive the recognition this year and 18 students within Soore. And I want to give a shout out to Miss Brown because everything that we have initiative wise going on schoolwide, she's very intentional about making sure that the SOAR program also has something similar. So, she implemented a student of the week um and 18 students received that and received the same type of recognition just a little bit differently because the program's just set up to be a little bit smaller. Um, so the nomination process just looks a little bit different. >> Do you remember how many we get last year? I want to say it was 206208 last school year. Um I can get back to you and send you an email

070on that. It was a little bit less this year. Yeah. Um, Miss Randall helps with this at the Milbourne campus and Miss Johnson and Miss Flair help with this over here and I'm very appreciative because it takes a lot of time to call the students in, but they're they love it because it's positive interactions with students. Um, mental health Mondays, this was an initiative also started by our department several years ago. Uh, Miss Flair takes on the task of developing our theme and our t-shirts each year. This was the theme and our t-shirt designs this year. We also opened it up for students and we're going to do that again this coming year. So staff we wear shirts on m certain Mondays each month and then it's usually tied to um you know bullying prevention,

071suicide awareness and there's an email that goes out to staff to remind them to take care of themselves and to have a conversation with students about all things mental health related based off of whatever the topic was that month. Um, therapy dog Thursday is still a thing and again that's when Sylvia and Miss Printable are up front at Smiley greeting students. Um, she's also been participating in some of the homecoming spirit days as you can see up there. New this year, Miss Printable, Miss Printable, and Miss Flair were the brains behind this and other people have now jumped on board to create Smiles at Smiley, which is Friday mornings where they greet students and staff. They have music going. I am not up there because it is it makes me a little anxious. I'm very

072introverted, but there's dancing and there's music and they're throwing out candy and it is very positive energy. It's a great way to start a Friday to be up there. Um, you can see some of the staff members up there and it's continuing to grow. Next year they are um having they've already met to come up with what their themes are for each Friday. And um I I love the thought of this. It's really just to make kids smile when they and staff smile when they walk through the door is build build community, build positive culture. Um and so we're we're proud of them for thinking of this and executing this. And I I will go up there. You just won't see me dancing. Um a year in review. Uh it was really cool. Uh, Miss

073Lugie this year invited department chairs to attend the eighth grade parent night and I really enjoyed going to that and seeing the the eighth grade parents and some students in the audience. That was a really cool uh night and I look forward to that hopefully again next year. We continue to coordinate with therapists, psychiatrists, um, community mental health providers to provide just continuity of care for our students and families. One thing we're really excited about next year is on some of our inservice days and some during some of our departmental meeting times throughout the month, either going to visit um counseling centers or having individual therapists come in for tea and coffee just so we can really get to know them on a more individual personalized level. because you can go on Psychology Today or

074go on a website and and say these providers are within your insurance, but we really want to know who they are. And so we're really excited to to implement that next year. We took students again to Kohl's this year. Um about 20 students to Kohl's this year to shop for items that they needed. And that's always the highlight of the year. It's it's a really rewarding um day for staff and the students have a really good time as well. Um we've provided grief counseling this year to student staff. We also were called to help at Freeberg this this spring and with any hesitation, two of our social workers went over there and were leaders in that building to get them through a really difficult time. And so I'm very grateful to Miss Bratman and Miss

075Randall for for going over there and helping them. We continue to partner with the IMC and their lunch program and we're thankful for that partnership. It's a place where students who feel overwhelmed by the cafeteria now have a safe place to land and eat um and do their schoolwork. and we're just we're we're really grateful for that collaboration and partnership with the IMC students really appreciate it. Um we our team has done some deep dive with professional development with writing functional behavioral assessments, behavior intervention plans, boring things to you guys, but things that are legalish in nature and um have they've expressed they want more training in um we're also in the process of in August getting a professional development set up. It's going to probably be the third week of August with legal because

076social work and the law and the intersectionality of it all is something we face on a daily basis. If I wasn't a school social worker, I would have gone to law school, but I was afraid of the bar exam. Sorry, Mr. H. But this field has a lot of intersectionality with the law and then you throw school law into it and it's it's it's a lot. Um, we're constantly going to PD on it and we're excited to work with our legal counsel to make sure that what our practitioners and the like our social workers who are licensed and also are providing therapy in the community are upholding their code of ethics and in their light protecting their license while upholding school law and school policy. Um, and so We're excited for that. We also I

077if you recall last year I talked about how we partnered with the life management skills program over here to redo that curriculum which is going really really well. Shout out to Miss Hitzman. her LMS curriculum and class is thriving and it's it's really cool and inspirational to hear stories from the students but also from her of the success they're having with that curriculum. the freshman campus really needed a curriculum and so the um University of Colorado Boulder had been emailing me some curriculum over the last year or two and I finally decided to take a closer look at it. You know how we always get the emails and we get another email and we got another email and so I took a look at it and I was very intrigued by it. They're gonna we're

078going to implement that over there. uh the teachers um the new teacher that's going to be teaching that class over there, the director's department chair for alternative ed, myself and the freshman uh campus social work team are going to do some training over the summer. And that program is going to target social skills, self-management, and uh drug resistance skills. And so we're we're just really excited about having that curriculum in place. We continue to support all of our new students to the district either in new student groups or individually. We've provided many, many, many restorative circles and mediations this school year. Um, we've continued to help our homeless students through transportation and bus passes. And each year, you know, since I've been chair, we've been chipping away at creating protocol within our department. So, we've

079we established um the self-injury and suicide ideiation protocol the other year. Um we've revamped some of the DCFS protocol. Um this year 26A, it's a law that went into effect that supports students that may be experiencing domestic violence, sexual assault, or teen parents. Um and so there's there's things within the school and resources that we need to be providing. And so we've developed a whole protocol for that to provide services. Um and there's other protocols that we're working on just to systematize things. Um and then the last thing is the violence prevention center. We've established a partnership with them and they've been working with our health classes to provide uh push and instruction and presentations on healthy uh relationships and teen dating violence and we're we're really excited about that partnership. Speaking of partnerships, the

080Chamber of Commerce is very good to our team. Um special shout out to Jessica Lots. She takes good care of us. She just reached out the other day and she's trying to get um our supply closet restocked with hygiene items and school supplies. We're very grateful to the Maddie Best Foundation who have for the second year now provided money for us to be able to off pay for students to go to prom, purchase dresses, purchase suits, haircuts, get their nails done, things that students have specifically told us they wouldn't go to prom because of the cost associated with it. And now they're able to. Um, whenever we tell students each year that we've done this, when we tell students that we're buying the tickets for them, we have lots of tears and it's just sheer

081gratitude and it's really, really rewarding. >> The numbers on how many >> four? So, we did four last year, five this year. Um, and we can we can do up to through the endowment grant too, we can we can do more than that because Miss Scythe gets up to six tickets, too. So, um, it's a new initiative or opportunity. And so our team is is excited to continue to to expand the offering and have conversations with students about taking, you know, us up on that invitation. Student council is always really good to us. Um they it gave us some money to buy homecoming tickets for students in need. Uh they sponsored a couple of kids to go on our shopping trip to Kohl's this year and they provided money so that we could buy graduation

082caps and gowns for students um that fall under the McKenna Vento which are our homeless students. And then the South Campus they uh have helped create think of uh the frozen meal subscriptions that you have um HelloFresh. They have made frozen meals for for us to have over here to send home with families. We used to do bags of food with, you know, canned goods type things and snacks and peanut butter and jelly, but we're sending home actual meals now. Spaghetti and meatballs, fetucci, Alfredo, mac and cheese. Um, and we're really grateful. It's It's a win-win. Our students get to go home with substantial food, but also our students in the south at the south campus are getting very valuable life skills by doing the preparation and the meal prep. Um Sarah Honda is going

083to be working with the Smiles at Smiley crew and providing um by providing lanyards next year for all the new student or all all students. Um, and then, um, they're going to, I think, do a senior or a freshman shirt for the freshman orientation. So, we've connected Sarah Honda with Mr. Printable. Um, and shout out to Miss Printable for making that connection to to have them help with the overall mission of the school connectivity and culture and improving that. Um, and my slideshow I updated because I forgot to include the Elf Allen Police Department. They are our biggest they are a huge support of the social work department inhouse with our amazing school resource officers. But the order of police have donated um money to our family for families that funds that we can take

084student shopping each year to Kohl's. This year they took a group of students to academy sports and they got to go shopping. So we got to double the amount of students we helped this year by taking a group to Kohl's and then they took a group of students to academy and we're just very grateful for their continued partnership. I want to thank you. Um, and I also want to just some of the teams watching right now, which is very awkward and embarrassing, but I want to thank them. I was on maternity leave for most of first semester. We had a social worker go on maternity leave for part of second semester and someone had an unexpected surgery and they were out for a couple weeks. and our team stepped in and filled in when those

085people were out flawlessly and selflessly and never lost sight of providing support to our students. And so I just really want to thank them because I say out to them all the time, but I I really truly believe that we have one of the best departments, if not the best department in the state. And I thank the board for continuing to support us and our administration too for all they do on a daily basis to support us as well. So thank you. Positive praise 206. Thank >> I was right. >> You were um I have a question. I'm sorry. Is there anything that you need from the board? I didn't hear any anything's right department. >> I mean, there's always things we need from the board, but um I wasn't prepared to >> Okay, come

086back. You can definitely tell. I I think um one thing I forgot to mention too was we have three social workers, Miss Principal, Miss Rottman, and Miss Brown. Miss Brown came from Indianapolis public schools where she spent many years in alternative education. Uh Miss Rottman was a career alternative ed social worker in Alton. um spent some time in Highland, too. Brief stint doing um admin in Alton in their alternative ed school. And then Miss Printable worked in an alternative ed in Granite City. And they've been working really closely with uh Best Shrader for the alternative ed stuff. And they have a lot of really good ideas um from their own experiences of how to get um the AL ed program off the ground and running. And so they've been giving a lot of really good

087advice to administrator for that. Um I'll be curious to see once we get an alt ed building and we have this the the um designated like rise program trans transition life skill stuff. Um those students that we're bringing back are going to require a lot of social work intervention and resources. And so I anticipate I will be coming and asking for support potentially in hiring another social worker so that we can support those programs the way they need to be supported. Um but I would I would do that with integrity and fidelity with numbers and data to support that. Um, but I think that is going to be something we're having a we're going to have all of the kids that have been expelled or on homebound now in the building that are going to

088need support. Um, and we're going to need to find additional resources to support those people. >> Thank you. >> Uh, next up is the board reports. We've got communication first. >> We haven't had one since our last. We didn't have one. >> We reported on it last month, but we had students come >> education. Heather was at the education meeting on the 12th of May. We talked about the handbook as riveting a conversation there as we just had this evening also talked about the commission that is excited to see that I'm not going to go into detail about Mr. Pretty much discussed everything else that we went over. So happy to go into detail about that. Uh the next education meeting is the 14th of July at 4m. >> All right. Uh facilities, Mr. Richtor.

089>> Uh we met May the 12th. U my report is attached. Uh as I mentioned to you in previous meetings, uh last weekend we hosted the uh conference uh tennis uh uh tournament which everything went well. This week we're hosting the sectionals. You know that we made emergency repairs to the facilities prior to that. Uh however, since then we do have some new cracking come out. It doesn't it isn't in the existing cracks that we just repaired. It's new cracking. It's not currently it's not as extensive as the what we previously had, but it is of concern. And another thing that we've noticed, at least by our uh unprofessional eyes, Corey and myself, uh we've noticed that it appears that the level of the tennis courts is maybe we might have one end sinking a

090little bit. So, I mean, it's still level, but it appears to be uh at a uh uh a decline. So, uh, our architect is going to go ahead and look at that. And so, uh, we'll, uh, soon as we know something on that, you'll be hearing from me. So, and that's, uh, basically my report. Um, finance, we haven't last negotiations. >> Personel negotiations. >> Yeah, we've got negotiations going on. We haven't had a separate personel policy. >> Yes. 5th of May and you will see 13 policies for first reading. Minor changes some of them had no changes. So just again as we go through the policy updates that come down through press, that's what we have there. It's just for first meeting. Uh there's nothing for second meeting because our second meeting because we didn't

091have a meeting in March. Our next policy meeting is to be determined to res. We uh we didn't have a best meeting this month. I think our last meeting was in April. Our next meeting will be July 28th at 9 a.m. at Joseph Arthur Middle School PE. >> We had a good showing um at P on the 12th of May. We did go over the handbook um same as we did this evening data our annual briefing on that updates on that. Um Mr. Graham also showed us all of the and such. And again, kudos out to him for getting AP European history for our sophomores. I know that's full credits and such that he earlier turn >> uh there are some community members uh parents in the room. So, I know that's one of >>

092KPIs or parents or community members. >> We had a good survey response rate healthier years. I don't know the exact number. >> Next is the city group Mr. We uh met May the 7th and uh one of the the big thing on the agenda was the DA uh updates and currently uh I just would like to commend uh uh our mayor as well as our their superintendent. They've been really busy as far as doing everything they can in this regard. They're currently working on uh getting uh lobbyists as far as to to support us in uh our uh needs as far as uh change in the law as far as that is concerned. Another thing they're doing is uh they're going to the legion and BFW to uh educate uh those folks and hopefully they

093can be allies for us as far as uh hopefully getting some changes in in the law. So uh district 90 shared with us As far as their proposed, they have some initial rough drawings as far as their additions as well as their gymnasiums at the three different schools in K Evans and Hinch Cliff. Uh let's see that the city has a lot of plans going. Uh they've got a lot of things on the burner that they don't want to make public at this time, but uh uh they did with us. But unfortunately, I can't reach you. I can't tell you about that. So, basically it sounds good. And then >> no, not the next meeting in June, right? >> The grants are due. applications June 5th and the first meeting June 16th review June 25th

094award >> anything else from the board for committees >> I have update we had our um visioning uh the division's governing board meeting excuse me on the 6th of May uh down in Belville and what we did there is we planned for the next year's worth of meetings So the division southwest division is going to meet on the 23rd of September 24th of February and the next governing board meeting is going to be the 23rd of June 2027. Um and that's when we'll be electing a new director because it's a two-year position. So my position will be up next year. We also discussed for the September and February one of them is going to be attendance. I believe September we're talk about attendance um get input from others from schools that have successfully increased their

095attendance of students. So we'll be able to listen to to some lessons learned there and then February is going to be AI for members. So we'll be hearing about that then um separately the registration for joint April conference is opening up on the 1 of June. news with that one big change. They're having a second exhibit hall coming up this year because we just had so many exhibitors. So, they're going to have a whole second exhibit open for them. Um, also new this year, the badges are going to be printed on site and not mailed to us. So, keep that in mind numbers that are going to have to go check in and pick up your badges. Of course, website's going to have it conference updated. Thank you. Any other committee comments from the board?

096>> All right. So, at this time, we'd like to open the floor to public for comment. Um, if there's anybody here who would like to address the board, uh, you may do so at this time. Um, we just ask that you sign in in the back of the room. Okay? And then as far as public comments go, uh please address the board from the podium and state your name and topic of comment. Um each person that would like to present will get five minutes to address the board. Um remember that uh the board may not act upon any issues that are not posted to our agenda. So the board will be hearing public comment but may not respond except perhaps to ask questions. uh matters brought forth that require response may be directed to the

097superintendent or is otherwise determined appropriate. And then I just we just ask that uh if you're an individual, you know, avoid addressing the same subject and content as a prior that presents if possible. >> Okay. >> Thank you. So before I begin, thanks in advance for your time. My name is Keegan Welch. I have a son, a student athlete on the GV baseball team, and that's the context for my subject. Before I begin though, I did send a letter to the board out on Sunday. Did all the board members get a chance to a copy and read? Okay. So once again, thank you for your time. Uh, Mr. President, I I I note the five minute time limit and I I'll adhere to that and I'm briefing off the letter that I I did send

098and we'll just cover some pertinent points uh there too. So, the subject uh for for speaking here tonight is my request for reconsideration and uh record correction concerning the teamwide season cancellation of the JV uh JB baseball squad. My bottom line upfront paragraph and and this is a summary and this is what I I want to impart first and foremost is is the way I understand it and what was communicated to me. um absent any other communication that the administration may know. So an incident was alleged, a racial slur was allegedly said, school leadership conducted an investigation and administration imposed a season ending teamwide punishment of the JD baseball program. That punishment by the administration's own admission was imposed to send a message not to address adjudicated individual misconduct. The result is irreparable harm to

099students and families. And I propose it now falls squarely within the board's authority and responsibility to adjudicate whether the process and outcome was lawful, fair, and consistent with IHSA rules and basic principles of due process. So, I'm here standing before you tonight to formally request the board review and corrective action regarding the decision to cancel the junior varsity season at Fallon Township High School. In quick summary, the district canceled the entire GV baseball season without one identifying a perpetrator, two without making individualized findings of misconduct, and without establishing collective wrongdoing by the team. The decision, as it appears, relied primarily on secondhand accounts that an alleged remark was heard attributed to an unknown speaker. No student was identified as having made the remark and knew no adjudicated finding established responsibility. Despite these gaps, the district

100imposed the most severe sanction available, which was the cancellation of the entire season. This action constitutes mass punishment imposed by deterrent messaging, not discipline grounded in proven conduct. I'll reiterate a few important points. Uh first, innocent students were punished. The teamwide cancellation punished student athletes who were not to found to have engaged in any misconduct. Those students were not found to have encouraged or condoneed the misconduct. Those students fully complied with IHSA rules and school expectations. In essence, students were punished solely because of their association with the team. And furthermore, the sanction also punished the student who is the alleged target of the racial slur. That was the student who should have received the most support and protection but likewise was barred from playing this season along with the rest of the team. Uh secondly,

101the decision violates IHSA rules. IHSA rules are explicit. discipline must be individualized and based on identified conduct. There is a specific bylaw 3.140. The states penalties apply to quote unquote any student determined to have violated IHSA rules and must be quote unquote based upon the conduct of the individuals involved. Where more than one participant is involved, penalties may be imposed only upon each participant found to be involved. Here again to reiterate, the district identified no perpetrator, made no individualized findings, and imposed the se teamwide season cancellation. Anyway, IHSA rules do not authorize teamwide punishment in absence of findings that affect that each affected student engage in misconduct. >> Mr. Welsh. >> Yes. >> Okay. Carrying on to the investigation, the sense was that it lacked due process and neutrality. Uh it re raised serious procedural

102concerns. Students were removed from academic classes. They lost instruction time. They were subject to hostile adversarial questioning, confiscation of cell phones so as not to record. And parents were not notified ahead of time and were not present during the interviews. That said, there is four actions that I'm I'm requesting from the board. I know right now the season cannot be restored. The school season is over and I respectfully request the following. Uh, one, resend or formally modify the teamwide season cancellation for the record clarifying that it was not based on findings of collective misconduct. Two, affirm that discipline must be individualized and consistent with IHSA rules. Three, ensure this decision does not stand as president for future discipline. Four, and this has already been addressed by the by the leadership of the school, but provide

103pride reimbursement of athletic participation fees. I understand that has already been agreed upon. And then lastly, issue a formal written statement to the team and families acknowledging the harm caused to students not found to have engaged in misconduct. >> Thank you. I appreciate it. most appreciate your feedback and your time. Obviously, the board can't provide response to you in this format, but do appreciate your perspective. >> Okay, thank you for your time. One last question. When what would what would be the next step as far as response or the venue? How would we is that based on time or >> contact? Okay. for >> Thank you very much for your time. >> All right. Uh would anybody else like to approach at this time? >> Uh my name is Nathan Frisbee. I appreciate the opportunity

104to speak with you. Um my topic is related in a lot of ways to some of the topics that were talked about regarding the uh social workers um and the athletic department. Um my son is a student athlete here at OTHS. This spring he took a protected mental health day um a legally policy compliant absence um because he was struggling. What followed made one thing clear that our athletic department has no dedicated infrastructure to respond to moments like that. No designated resource, no clear pathway. No one whose specific role is to support student athlete mental health. That gap is what I'm here to address. The need is that resources like Timely Care reports that among students with significant depression or anxiety, only 10% of student athletes seek mental health support. And that's largely because athletic

105culture discourages it. John's Hopkins Medicine notes that anxiety, burnout, and unhealthy perfectionism are common when young athletes tie their self-worth to performance. And the British Journal of Sports Medicine identifies depression, anxiety, stress, sleep disorders, and eating disorders as the most prevalent mental health challenges in athletes. A sports psychologist doesn't just respond to crises, they help prevent them. Careers in psychology.org places sports psychologist salaries in between the range of 60 to $80,000 annually in athletic department settings. A part-time arrangement reduces that significantly. But the smarter near-term path is a university partnership. St. Louis University, led by Dr. Michael J. Ross, a boardcertified clinical psychologist with 30 plus years of experience, already deploys supervised doctoral students as sports psychology consultants to athletes 16 and up across the greater St. Louis region OTHS athletes are already in their

106service area. SIOE minutes from Oalon offers graduate counseling and psychology programs including Illinois's only online sports psychology program whose students need supervised field placements. OTHS could serve as a host site. Both partnerships are proven nearby and available now. OTHS wouldn't be building something new. We'd be joining something that already works. My ask is for the board to consider exploring the addition of a designated sports psychology resource at the OTHS athletic department through either a part-time hire, a full-time hire, or the partnership. The need is real, the cost is workable, and the partners are in our backyard. I know that when my son was dealing with this, there was a lot of things that he didn't want to talk to um even with the available resources. And we identified that as great as they are, there

107are certain aspects of their role regarding sports and competition and that identity that an athlete or someone in a band that is a sport they may not be adequately equipped to handle. So somebody in that arena would be better served. I think OTHS has an opportunity to be a leader in this area of sports psychology at this level. As these athletes and competitors move on to the next level, they're going to be in environments in universities where that is baked in to their departments. Why not start now? I do have one followup. Um I noticed in the presentation of um handbook changes, the topic that we had discussed about mental health days being extended to cover um extracurriculars wasn't specifically called out for the change that you had said was coming. Is that something that

108is in a different package that the board is going to be reviewing that just wasn't identified there or is that in the athletic handbook? I'd like to know, Mr. how kind of where that falls. >> Okay. All right. I appreciate your time. >> Thank you. >> Would anybody else like to address the board at this time? >> Hello, my name is Zeb Mute. Uh, I'm reading this on behalf of the Aosta family. It was originally prepared to read at the meeting with Corey Patton. However, in those attending were not given the opportunity to speak about the broader issues within the program and were limited to discussing only the cancellation of the JV season. Due to how emotionally difficult and painful this situation has been for their family, they were unable to attend in person, but

109felt that it was important for the board to hear their statement. So to the parents, administrators, and leadership tonight, I appreciate the opportunity to have the statement read regarding the deeply concerning culture, lack of accountability, and failure of leadership within the uh OTHS baseball program. Last season, my son David was the victim of a humiliating, unacceptable incident in which another player vandalized his vehicle during practice by urinating on it. What followed was even more disturbing than the act itself. a complete refusal by the adults responsible for this program to take meaningful action. We were told that because no one saw anything, nothing could be done. Despite players telling him who did it and telling him just let it go because the player responsible was viewed as too important to a baseball program. At the time,

110that same player was already serving disciplinary consequences from an unrelated incident earlier in the school year. Yet instead of protecting the player who was targeted, the focus became protecting the player who vandalized and protecting the team success. When my husband and I attempted to address the situation directly with coach Causy, we were not met with concern, accountability, or leadership. We were met with excuses, intimidation, and dismissal. The message was made very clear. The program had no intention of holding the player accountable. And if we did not like, sorry, if we did not like how the situation was handled, David could simply be removed from the team. We stayed quiet at the time because we were trying to protect our son from further humiliation and retaliation during the season. Looking back, that silence only protected the

111adults who failed him. Adults leading this program chose to excuse it, minimizing it and covering it up. What is even more alarming is what happened afterward. This year, David was cut from the program entirely. After everything our family experienced, it is impossible to not to recognize the message being sent. Families who speak up, ask questions, or demand accountability are viewed as a problem. What is happening now with racial slurs, suspension, a canceled JV season, and public outrage is not shocking at us to all to us at all. This is what happens when leadership ignores serious behavior and only acts when the situation becomes too public to hide anymore. The culture did not create itself. Coaches allowed it. Administrators ignored it. Certain players learned very quickly that the rules did not apply to them. Coach Causy

112repeatedly chose avoidance over accountability. This is not about one mistake or one player. Teenagers make mistakes. The real issue is that the adults running this program who failed to set standards, enforce consequences, or protect players equally. Accountability appears to apply differently dependent on a player's value to the team. And that is exactly how toxic cultures are created and sustained. Parents should not have to fear retaliation for advocating for their children. Players should not learn that talent excuses behavior and no school program should operate in a way where protecting its image becomes more important than protecting students. The current situation is the predictable outcome of leadership failures by Dave Causy. Period. I read his uh pathetic apology. Your statement about core values and building a program players building a program players can be proud of is

113insulting to families like ours who experienced firsthand what your leadership actually looked like behind closed doors. And while you ask for healing, our son lost his team, his school, and his relationships he cared about. I hope tonight is not treated as a public relations exercise or another attempt to minimize what has happened. Real change requires honesty, accountability, and leadership willing to admit this program has serious problems that cannot simply be blamed on a few players. Our students, families, and community deserve better. Thank you, Mr. Sera. >> Thank you. >> Yep. >> Any other follow? >> Okay. Well, appreciate everybody taking time to to speak to the board tonight. Next up is our consent agenda. So we'll make a motion to approve consent agenda items in their entire including but not limited to prior minutes, financial

114reports, payment of bills, freedom of information act requests and the disposal of equipment. So second >> I >> Richtor >> I >> Johnson I >> Brown >> I didn't have any old business this month so we'll move on to new business. Um first up is the personnel sheet. So I'll make a motion to approve the appointment compensation discipline performance dismissal personnel items as presented. >> So moved >> call I >> Victor >> I >> Johnson I >> uh we got contractor pay. >> So motion to approve the pay applications for construction projects. >> So second RTOR >> I >> Johnson I >> um next are trips of in excess of 200 miles. A motion to approve trips that exceed two classes. >> Second roll call. >> I >> Richtor >> I >> Johnson I Brown

115>> I. Um next is what we discussed earlier. Health life safety for HVAC projects for some units that were struck by lightning. Um but a motion to approve health life safety amendment for the smiley project. So move >> second >> I >> Johnson I >> Isel >> I >> Brown >> I uh next is a contract for food services and um I know we didn't have presentation tonight we had a tentative placeholder agenda um but we're changing vendors so if we could just take a minute would you mind explaining the uh the process >> recommendation the recommendation the process we selected selected. >> So, we are currently in year five of our five-year food service contract. And so, that requires Illinois public school districts um to seek bids or proposals. Something that's changed from the

116last time we did this five years ago, um Isby had only one method to get food service proposals and it was an invitation to bid. So, as long as the vendors who submitted proposals u met all the ISB related requirements, all school districts went with the lowest bidder. That's how the program was set up statewide. Um they have since changed that recognizing statewide and through the request of several school districts that there are more components to a food service program than just the lowest bidder. Um so they offered um a different lane that school districts could opt to take. Instead of an invitation to bid, they can do a request for proposal and we opted to do that this time. It's very similar process but instead it involves scoring cost being one of the elements

117of scoring um other elements and again this is determined by ISBY um menu selection use of USDA foods food quality portion sizes and and when you consider these proposals they are 200 to 300 pages large. Okay, so they're big proposals. Okay. Um the experience of the food service management company, the management plan, the references, um their service capabilities, their financial conditions, accounting and reporting systems, the way they manage personnel, their professional standards plan. These are all the criteria judge that's on. I'm reading this to you. Um a resume of their proposed on-site supervisor, what their staffing plan looks like. And then some items are Illinois statemandated such as promotion of the health and well-being of students, the use of local food products, hormone and pest practices, animal welfare, and contracting with small and minority businesses,

118women business enterprises, and labor surplus area firms. So, a combination of all the things that I just shared with you went into the evaluation of all the proposals that we received. Um, the recommendation you have for organic life, organic life was not the lowest price um was not the lowest price for the contract. Um they were the second lowest price for the contract, but out of the five evaluators we have within the district, four of the five rated organic um life as number one. And the one who did not rate them as number one had them rated as number two. There's a scoring mechanism that is determined by Isby how it works. Um we send that to Isby uh with the successful recommendation which was organic life. ISB then goes through a process where they

119review all of the proposals that were submitted. They have elements of each proposal that school districts have to send to them to make sure they're compliant with what's needed for Illinois Food Service. After they review that, as well as our scoring and recommendations, they then give the school district the authority to award the contract. We received that two days ago. >> I got question two questions for you. As usual, anytime you make changes for that matter anytime there are rumors that are going around. One is uh that they're bringing their entire staff in that all the current people will be laid off. >> And that that that I don't understand to be true at all because they've actually already requested, but I didn't want to do it before the board approved. They'd like to meet

120with the staff to talk about the staffing plan. >> Great. The other question I have is that uh there's an understanding out at the Milbour campus that they're going to have just uh one person at the registered, one person in the serving line. >> Their staffing plan is consistent with all the other steing staffing plans in every in every offer we received. >> Good. >> Yeah. >> Thank you. >> Any any other question? >> Okay. Sorry to be on the spot. >> No, that's okay. I mean, we've been working on it since February. So, >> every student a big cost to the district. So, >> just appreciate you taking the time to explain everything. >> So, with that, I'll make a motion. If there's no questions for the board, >> I just want to make

121a statement. Does the board has had opportunity to taste the food at one of our um meetings that we most of us all attended and we we were happy with their food. Of course, they were impressing her us at that venue. So, I hope that this is a good sign for uh the company that was chosen for the references were very positive. We checked the reference checks and and they have the I think the second or third largest school district in the state of Illinois um as well. And I spoke to the CSDO there who oversees the food service program and he's very satisfied. >> Anything else? >> No. Then I'll make a motion to approve food service contract to organic life as presented. >> So second >> I recctor >> I >> Johnson I

122>> H >> I >> Brown >> I All right. And then next is uh the student handbook. So we had a pretty uh lengthy conversation on this uh earlier today. So I think before making a motion I'll just open this up to discussion so we can finish finish the conversation we have. >> Uh normally we get a draft like we do policy. We read the first draft and then we come back at the next board meeting to approve this. >> We didn't do that last year. Last year we just went through education and PTAC and those were our draft reviews and then we approved but So close to this year was Tuesday, right? >> It was a week and a half ago. So >> yeah, but that's normal. I think last year it was something

123with time too. So but that's all the years past that what we normally do. So I was just wondering >> I wasn't aware it's what we normally do. >> That's like policy. you get a chance to read the whole book and then discuss it and then >> Okay. I wasn't aware. >> So I I guess where it stands is I think we have board members that I I think everything everybody's appears that everybody's happy with the uh handbook changes. Uh it sounds like we're down to one item which is seniors taking finals. where there's some conversations. I I I guess the question comes to uh you know where people stand on on on that on that senior state finals. So um I think we heard pretty much everybody um you know myself personally I would

124like to see if if it's an incentive I would like to see it be an incentive that motivates more people maybe the 20% that are True. But I mean, I guess we can take it up for a vote. I don't know if anybody wants to add anything else. >> There's a The administration proposed a project to solve a strategic goal. They say that it will mitigate our absentee problem and they want to run a pilot program. I'm very comfortable with that. I don't think we need to micromanage the project to that. They're ing a strategic question of ours. You know, they'll clearly present how it went, if the results are statistically significant at the end of the year, right? You know, I don't have I I hear some of the concerns. I do hear some

125of the concerns about is the incentive correct? Is it motivating enough? But that's just all subjective. We don't have any objective evidence that this is the wrong plan because we don't have any data from the pilot project. I'd say let the pilot project run, see how it is and and then we can make changes. >> Just to be clear, my problem isn't the incentive. >> My problem is the fact that you could have a kid basically D+ getting out of finals and getting out, you know, getting out of classes if we haven't met our main mission of educating a student. >> Again, I just I don't think it's an issue. I guess that utilization at that I don't believe it falls on the administration to say that this final exam is the catch all be

126all opportunity for them to It's not that if they do well enough in it, they could potentially get a C. But if their risk is they could also fail, I think that's a problem because I think that's exactly the student we want to encourage to work hard on that final that we've moved up to 15% now that could potentially bring a D+ up to a C. But now we're saying don't take that risk student because you might fail and then you don't get credit for that class. But if they do take it, Mr. House said if he gets the word, if that would hurt their test, their final exam would hurt their final overall grade. That's a risk they take. They're going to get the grade they earn. >> But we were also told too

127that the goal of this program and the correlation that they're trying to adjust is absenteeism has negative overall negative impact on grades, not taking final. >> So if you're lowering absenteeism, the expect is you'll have some limited grades. They chose that that's more likely thing the motivation of the final isn't working for the D plus right and so maybe the motivation of not taking the final actually may lift lift the sales there >> so what are we expecting >> from a truency improvement we're currently 20% true >> for only the second semester not the let's be clear about that they could be true in the first semester >> they could be already nine absences or more the first semester plus eight absences the second semester plus meal So if this is a program >> and

128a deep >> and a program a pilot program and it's to boost truenc truency what are we what are we what's x and y we're going from 20% to what >> we don't know that that's we have to figure that's what we have to find out but what's your goal for the project and I understand that you don't know percent about 10% >> James uh question >> that's what we talked because we feel like it could shave off 10%. That that's a win and that's working. >> So reducing so the goal would be at the end of second semester truency that we reduce chronic absenteeism by 50% total by running this program run the program. >> I mean with that goal >> I I don't see this as a true program which I'm a big

129And I've been every I've been on the board 11 years. I brought up this subject 11 times and I thought it was going to come with a true incentive for kids not to have to take a final and um with um things that Heather laid out. I I just don't see it being an incentive to not have to take the final. Um with one semester you're getting that many absentes. parties and you can still have a lower grade. Um, I think at least a C or above or something would make it more of a incentive because we want kids to try to get better grades along with coming to class. Um, and I just don't see this as an incentive for them to do that under the way the pilot is set up. I don't

130even see it addressing the truency attendance necessarily for one semester. >> We don't know. But what we do know is two years. >> This is I would like to give the baseline have to Move on. Keith, you haven't really >> It's just It's just a year. It's a pilot program that they're recommending. I suggest that we go forward with it and if it works, great. If it doesn't, we make adjustments or do away with it completely. Okay. All right. So, I think everybody's had a chance to speak. I'm going to make a motion to approve the 26 27 OTS student handbook. Um we'll do a I'll make the motion. Yes. >> Second roll call. >> Richtor. >> I >> Johnson. Nay. Is >> I >> H >> I loo. >> No. >> Brown. >> Um

131I'm gonna I'm gonna say I but I I'm cautious here. I'm a little skeptical. I like 50% improvement in truency and if we get it super excited. Um I hope we have a plan if we don't get it. Um because I I do think that we should set the bar higher. We're setting the bar on this. But I think it's it's one year. It's a pilot. And uh I can't wait to see the improvements. >> So if we don't get 50, then the pilot is unsuccessful. Is that what we're saying? >> That would have to be discussed with the education committee and board as we review the data whether whether there should be a I don't think I don't think a percentage was discussed or put out. We just threw that number out here. >>

132We discussed it within the admin meetings. >> It wasn't before. >> Oh, the goal was not shares, >> right? Okay. So, >> yeah, I don't have an expectation on a percentage. 30% would be awesome too. Well, that would be part of our KPIs and we'd have to see are we >> are we moving in the right direction >> specifically with a lot of discuss >> population and we'll briefly throughout the or next year. All right. Next is uh the proposal from Discovery Works. You know, again, this is uh phase two of the of the facilities plan. So, before we go into a motion to approve this, I'll ask you if you could take a minute, give some background to the board. There was a proposal. I think you are making an ask for how to

133fund it. Um but there was also more to the proposal. second steps and third steps and additional costs. So, you just got to roll that whole picture up. >> Um, so Discovery Works is a company that helps with um community engagement, communication, that's especially as school districts are facing things like we are right now, long-term facility planning where we need to know what our community thinks about that planning. Um, they recently I have posted an order here, but in case you didn't read it, um, they've most recently partnered with Pontiac William Holiday, um, Triad District 2, Collinsville, and Edwardsville within the past, uh, several years. Um, I know that some of you have spoken with them before at the conference, and I've been in touch with uh, Jennifer Bolt, who is their um, vice president

134who would be working with us. Um, she's over across the river in Missouri, and she provided uh, a largecale proposal. However, um where she was very impressed with what the board has already done in terms of we've already engaged our community, we've come up with some plans, we've engaged with the staff, with our architects, but um as I mentioned in my report earlier, we really need to know what's representative of the entirety of our community. And specifically um when you start talking about taxpayer dollars and taxpayer impact um interest peaks probably more so than the what 50 to 100 people we had here in December. Um and so they would really help us with first getting a feel for where our community is at. How do you feel about our school facilities? Where do you

135think our school needs to go? Are you informed of the challenges we're doing that? So, my ask tonight um is for that first piece, which is the public opinion research um with it, and I'll explain to you uh what that would include. So, I I'm going to be reading to you, my apologies, but that way I make sure I get everything right. So, what they would do on this first step that I'm seeking approval for tonight is they would do a random sample survey. They would do a blend of telephone and text to web surveying and a public survey link that we could promote for an opt-in version of the same survey. Um, oh, it says, and then it says statistically valid public opinion data along with an added opportunity for broader participation. Um, the

136reason this matters is they're going to reach the community members who aren't already engaging with us. So the random sampling achieves that the public can click a link to make it happen and we're going to be reaching out to them individually. We with the help of Discovery Works would be reaching out to them individually to get them to participate where before I sent an email and put a Facebook post out, right? So just the reaches improved. Um then after that we could really get an idea of what could potentially be added to that. So, the cost of that original uh largecale public input through the survey is $30,000 or $29,000. I'm asking the board to um authorize $30,000. After that, there'll be opportunities to go through more community engagement methods um that could cost anywhere

137from 30 to $60,000 including strategic communication and things of the like. Um this company is the gold standard and it's been successful with school districts. I think that we have exhausted our reach that we can do by ourselves and we do need to engage um with some experts in this area. So my ask tonight is that we would figure out the answer to phase one is what does our community know? What does our community think? Um, and then if we would choose then to move forward beyond that with them, we'd have opportunities to create a facilitating team that's not made of, and I think I mentioned this earlier in my report, not made of just our staff, our students, our board members, and our kind of internal stakeholders, but truly residents of our community who

138are going to help shape this. Um, because if it's communitydriven and not school district or board driven, um, we're going to end up with better results and a better picture of how to best serve our community. Um but again just that first step is figuring out where our public is now. They did say because the work we've done previously and we would know more after this initial survey. Um there may be steps that um we still determine that I just mentioned that are needed or because of the reach we already have. Maybe they won't be to that greatest extent. But I don't want to make uh I don't want to rip a band-aid off for an entire um comprehensive package when we don't know what we need yet. But I would like to have the

139opportunity to do the outreach with our community and survey them. >> Okay. >> Yeah. Doing it in steps does make sense because I mean we'll find out if there's interest in moving forward. Right. Exactly. >> You know, and then if there is obviously there's additional cost to get these guys involved and help drive public awareness, things like that. So there's a lot going on in our community, period. How can they overlap with because it it shouldn't be separate what the other districts are doing, what the city's doing? It's all part of one big growth. How does this overlap with that? Do they connect? I mean, we're not we're all one community here. >> Sure. And I and something I didn't mention, it's kind of related to what you're saying is we can if there's other

140things um the board wants to know about, whether it's other things going on in the community or the city or whether there's other things that aren't facility long-term related that we want to know that we can we can model that survey however we would like it. Now, are they going to be working for the city's initiatives? No. Um, if we're I guess are you saying we are aware of the city's initiatives? Is there going out and talking to the same citizens? >> Oh, sure. Because >> they might not understand what they're, you know, who are you talking to? What are we doing? There's so much in our city. I make sure that it's a comprehensive but it's not three and four different entities coming and asking the same question. >> Oh, sure. So, we would

141try make sure that as we would plan that survey that there's not overlap and there's clarity in the intent. >> Just that we that we coordinate because we've all got the same goal. >> We just all need to be working together and not against each other. >> Sure. And that's what our we're working with with our city collaboration meeting. And we have shared, you know, we have shared these plans with our city collaboration committee in that regard so that they know kind of what the timing of our long-term planning looks like. So we're not competing with one another. >> And I would assume that as we progress and depending on which direction things go, it's only going to get more, not less collaboration with the other. >> To tie into Heather's question, have we reached

142out to the city or other districts to see if they have a marketing team or company that they're working with that we could tie into. So, it could be one big push from a marketing committee. There aren't any others doing that kind of work right now um within our our committee and discovery works is again the gold standard for school districts. So, >> so do we know district 90 is planning? They don't have intentions for anything of this scope right now. >> Okay. And is that the only one that we only company we reached out to? Did we reach out to a couple? >> It is the company. It is the only one I am aware of and it's the one that was recommended by all the neighboring school districts. So no, I have not

143reached out to any other companies. >> I'm not aware of any others that focus on school districts. They may exist. >> I saw I found it very interesting and I hope that's all factual. But everyone they worked with seemed to have a positive outcome with the voting which was truly amazing if every school district all got the most yes accomplished by working with this company but also um are all they're going to be doing focus on focusing on with this 30,000 is survey and nothing else >> and analysis of the results looking at our population who is represented in our community population and in our voter base information gathering and analysis and reporting and then strategic planning for the next step. So I guess those are in that phase one. But then if we choose

144to take the next step, that's when would be additional financial commitment. >> And when would this be accomplished by? >> If the board would approve it tonight, this would occur the this first phase would occur this summer. >> Okay. >> Questions. Any any other questions? >> Um then with that, I'll take a motion to approve uh up to $30,000 for community serving engagement from Discovery Works. >> So second roll call is >> I loo >> Richtor >> Johnson I Brown >> I motion passes and next is uh conference in the fall. So this would be to uh allow our board to attend that conference. So I'll make a motion to approve participation in the IASA ISBO conference or schoolboard members use the previous roll call. >> So moved. >> Second. >> All in favor? >>

145I oppose. That motion passes and last is a first reading of board policies. So just just a discussion at this point. Next month we have a second reading and we will vote to approve policy changes. Um Next regular board meeting is on June 18th, which will be a big meeting. Looks like we have a a pretty detailed agenda with extracurricular assignments, um, bank deposiitories, treasur authorizations, appointment of FOYA officers, wage resolutions, ISB delegate and alternate interest for the year ending in June 30th, 2026, the appointment federal impact aid agency and student lunch crisis. So we'll have a lot to do in that meeting. And lastly, some upcoming events. We've got Memorial Day this weekend and then graduation next weekend. And then well, I think a lot of us are a lot of people are already

146on summer break. So summer's now >> and uh with that a motion to adjourn the regular meeting of board of education. So move second. All in favor? Two more things.