001started. Um, can I get a motion to reconvene the regular meeting of the board of education in open session? So move second. Roll calls. H I Johnson I Brown I Okay. And if everybody would please join me in the pledge of allegiance. There's a flag in the back of the room. I pledge allegiance 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, so tonight we have a pretty big agenda. Want to thank everybody for uh joining us tonight. Um some of the things we'll be covering, uh we've got a facility survey uh that Dr. Shackleford will be going over. Um, we're going to be looking at our ACT results and results from our seal
002of biiteracy as well as some professional development uh that our teachers have been doing throughout the year. Uh, we also have handbook updates uh that we've been working on, you know, throughout the year that are coming into effect tonight. Um, we've got a social work report out uh that's going to be presented. Uh, Schneider Electric is here. They're going to provide a little bit of a presentation on solar and uh some capital reinvestment options. uh that we have. Um we've got some cons committee assignments uh that are being assigned for our committees for the next two years. Uh facility projects that we need to review. Uh there's also a uh property that we're looking to sell on Oakill Road. Uh we'll discuss and then a financial audit as well as a uh some opportunities with
003with our police adding a police officer to our to our to our team. So with that, I'll pass it off to Dr. Shackleford for the superintendent report. We're going to start with the very best part of the meeting, which is student recognition. So I'm actually going to hand it over to uh Mr. How, who's going to share some exciting news with us. Thank you, Dr. Shaffer. We're starting off tonight um with just incredible news from the academic front. All juniors in the state of Illinois took the ACT on April 10th. Out of the millions and millions of students who take the ACT each year, only about 0.19% or roughly 3,700 test takers achieve a perfect score. OTHS had three students who achieved a perfect score of 36. When I call your name, please come up
004to the podium and be recognized for this amazing achievement. First uh perfect score is Raa Anatana. [Music] [Applause] Second perfect score Alexander Bradley and third is Zack [Applause] Rosberg president Mr. Brown Dr. Shackford you could come up here a picture I will be taking the picture. Oh you can be in the picture Mr. Congratulations. [Applause] Just an amazing achievement to have three perfect scores. I'm not sure if we've ever had three perfect scores. It is so imp to have you in our presence is a little intimidating. Yes, very much so. Great job you you three. Great great job. We have another student to be recognized tonight. Uh, OTHS has a student who has been recognized by the Illinois State Board of Education for selflessly serving on the Student Advisory Council. The Student Advisory Council is
005the voice of all Illinois students. Students who serve on this council see the role of government and policy and education and collaborate with many other students, legislative staff, and organizations from across the state. Please come up and receive this plaque from the Illinois State Board of Education Student Advisory Council, Deja Robinson. [Applause] hand to four great OTHS students and congratulations once [Applause] again. All right, good evening again everybody. I will go ahead and start with the superintendent report. Will you advance for me, please? Thank you. Um, first I attended a financial session today with the Illinois Association of School Administrators. Uh, I just wanted to give you a little bit of an update on the financial forecast as it relates to the state funding with our MCATs. That's short for our mandated categoricals. Um there's
006some news coming through from the state as they're working on the reconciliation of the budget. Again, nothing final, but what things are looking like. So, things that we need to be prepared for. Um first, as I shared with you, uh when we talked about the proposed budget, we did expect some additional proration, meaning less revenue for our transportation claim. We are currently prrated at 79% which means when we report all of our costs for regular ed, special ed, transportation throughout the year to the state, we then receive reimbursement. We're not getting 100% of what that claim says that we should get. It's been prrated for some time. That number again is 79% now, but we are looking at a likelihood for that to lower up to 10% of next year. So we could be down
007to perhaps 69%. Likewise, on the other side of that, we are starting in year two of our transportation contract. So, our rates are going up 4.5% next year. What that tells us is that we're going to be stretched very tight in transportation. With special education transportation, you'll see similar things. We're currently prrated at 69% and there's a likelihood, again, none of this is final, um that that will drop to 61%. Many school district districts throughout our state have to use their working cash funds. That's our savings account, right? Um to transfer over to transportation every year in order to fund student transportation. We've been fortunate that we have not had to do that, but depending on where this lands in next year's budget, you may see that we'll have a budget item where working cash
008instead of going into the ED fund like it usually does or into our operations and maintenance fund, some of it may have to be transferred uh to our transportation fund. Uh we'll continue to try to be responsible in planning the routes. Um we'll continue to advocate that we are funded more wholly, but this is what we're looking at in terms of the forecast. another mandated categorical. Yes. Do all do all schools kind of have the same scenario, same percentages? Yes. Okay. Yes. And how much are how much is that equating to in in funds? Um I haven't done the math for the reduction, but for example, our regular ed transportation, we get just under $200,000 a year right now. And our special ed, we get around $600,000 a year right now. So both of those
009could decrease perhaps by up to 10% and then on the other side of that we do have that four and a half% increase just on the hourly rate through our transportation contract for private facility. These are day programs that are serving our special education students that are not served inhouse. Right now there is $22 million statewide allocated for private facility. Uh there was a recently passed legislation, Senate Bill 366, and what it did is it expanded from the private day facilities to include public day facilities. Um so those that have public day facilities are going to see some revenue here where they haven't seen it before. But what that means is that $22 million, which is expected to be held flat, now instead of being spread between 200 private facilities, which is all that we're
010utilizing right now, um things like Mena, the Illinois Center for Autism, now that could be spread among up to 350 different organizations. So, we're looking at a possibility of less revenue there as well. Um, that number right now for OTHS, I did write it down, I think, is around $200,000. So, we're looking at perhaps a decrease there. Again, none of this is for sure, but we're being advised that when we're creating our budgets for the upcoming school year, if those things are not finalized, that this is what we'll expect. All right. Now, I will move on to our facilities assessment. Last month, you approved a long-term facilities assessment where we're looking not just at our five-year plan, but really what our long-term needs are, what we can do to be a 21st century school. So,
011the first people we talked to our staff, the the students that I'm sorry, the people that are working with our students every day. And I just wanted to share some very highlevel results with you. We did have 132 responses. And again, this was shared with all staff members regardless of their uh employment classification. So the first thing I asked is how would you rate the following and one was just very general condition of the building smiley. So when you're seeing the dark orange um that indicates poor and then works its way up fair, good, very good, excellent and then the dark blue on the right is no opinion. Okay. So you'll see that we see the staff has some concerns about the condition of the building here at the Smiley campus. Also, you'll see that
012theme continue when they consider the condition of the grounds at the Smiley campus. At Milbour, it's a much newer facility. So, we're seeing what we would expect to see. Um, we're leaning more on the good to very good side. Uh, conditions of ground at Milbour, grounds at Milbour. A little more concerns there. We do have a project later tonight that we've been talking about in the facilities committee and that we also talked about at retreat to do some enhancements over at the Milbourne campus in terms of the grounds. Then in the condition of the building for our OTHS South campus, you'll see a really large dark brew dark blue um bar on the side. And same thing for the transition house. That's because most of our staff members don't interact with these campuses as frequently.
013But you'll see more positive feedback about OTHS South and um and positive and some more concerns with the transition house. Again, related very closely to the age of the building. And again, this is very high level. The specifics come later through the interview process which I'll talk about in just a moment. The next question asked to what extent do you agree with the following statements when we consider the totality of facilities again very high level are they conducive to learning and teaching. Um again you're seeing strongly disagree on the left on the far right strongly agree followed by the dark blue for no opinion I don't agree or disagree. So we have a pretty balanced uh response there on being conducive to teaching and learning. Uh supporting athletic activities and events. We have a overall
014positive response there. Adequately supporting extracurricular activities also a more positive response. Not quite where athletics are but still positive. Supporting parent and community activities and events pretty aligned with the extracurricular events. Uh storage is an area that's an area of concern. And we see this when we go throughout our buildings and we see things that belong in storage areas that are not in storage areas and the technology infrastructure pretty balanced as well where we have people with both positive and um concerns about that. So highest area of need there was the sufficiency for the sto storage spaces. The next question, how would you prioritize the need for the following building improvements specifically at the Smiley campus? because we know these campuses serve differently. They're different ages. They're very very different places. And the ranks are
015on the left. So when you see the the brown to the burnt orange, uh that indicates the weight of how many people made that their first choice. When you see the light blue moving to dark blue, the darkest blue means it's was the last choice for that number of people. So the number one thing and again realizing that the majority of the people responding to the survey are likely teachers. That's who we employ the most of is classroom spaces. Then followed by restrooms as number two again specific to Smiley. Then storage, security, technology infrastructure, the building entrance and hallways, the cafeteria, the gym, multi-purpose areas, general beautifification effort such as repairs, paint, and things of the like. And then finally, HVAC was the lowest priority to our respondents. You'll see things differently when we move
016over here to Milurn. Um, as you know, we have a history of HVAC concerns at the Milbourne campus that have greatly improved, but we continue to work on. So, HVAC comes in number one over at Milbour, followed by those similar to Smiley, our classroom spaces, storage, security. So, these are more aligned with what we're seeing at Smiley as well. restrooms, building entrances, hallways, the technology infrastructure, uh the gym, auditorium, multi-purpose areas, then the cafeteria and general beautifification being the last priority over at the Melbourne campus. Again, very general terms here. The next question was, how would you prioritize the need for the following outdoor improvements at the Smiley campus? Number one was parking. As you know, we're landlocked here. Parking is an issue um for our students and our staff members alike. Number two, security,
017followed by our entrances and exits, followed by our grounds, then our outdoor fields and green space, which makes it sense to some degree because we've done a lot of athletic projects recently. And then finally, general beautifification efforts at the Milbour campus. Number one was entrance and exits. There's more specific feedback in the free responses to that, but we won't share those until we do our interviews with the staff, so we can kind of put those together and create some themes there. Um, followed by grounds, then security, outdoor fields, parking. Students don't park at the Milbour campus during the day. Does not tend to be challenging. Perhaps for some extracurricular events, it can be. And then again, general beautifification being um the last thing in need of priorities. And then finally, there was an open-ended question
018of what should learning spaces look like in the 21st century. And we took the 132 responses and put it into uh word cloud. So the things that stick out, the largest words were the words that appeared the most frequently. So classroom, technology, you see things about space, flexible seating, um options in classroom, tech in classrooms, flexible spaces. Uh we've talked a little bit in facilities about desks, the size of the desks, the desks that fit in the classroom. So those are some of the themes we saw there. Again, we'll get into more specifics as we go through the interviews and continue through the process. Any questions about this highlevel survey? This is kind of the very first thing we've done. Yes. And I I think you probably said it. Okay. Who took the survey? It
019was teachers. All staff members. It was offered to all staff members. They did not delineate what their job was within the school. Okay. Thanks. I did mention that we employ more teachers than any other employee group. All right. Uh next uh some wonderful news. So the first week of May we had OTHS educator appreciation week. I know it is usually called teacher appreciation week and of course we appreciate the teachers but truly everyone that is here is an educator. So we celebrate everyone that week. Uh wanted to shout out to our future educators and leaders association that is run by Libby McGee who contributed student council with Madison Zedlar and Kate Randall. Um the school board, thank you. We had several parent and community contributions. Thank you. And we also had some local businesses uh
020provide things that we provided as prizes. There were even scratchoff tickets that Miss McGee put together. Had meals dress up days throughout the week. So it was a really great week. So, um, thank you everyone who helped make that a special week for our staff. And, um, next, um, before I get into this, um, this is our our last full week of school. And while we are, uh, looking, uh, you know, toward finals and all the exciting things that have happened, we suffered a tremendous loss unexpectedly this past um, Sunday night. Um, so I wanted to honor um, Cadence Eileen Prince lost her life Sunday. She's one of our junior students. Um, so I would like you for a moment to just join me in a moment of silence in her honor. Thank you. Um,
021along with that you will see gratitude because This is something that schools never want to be prepared to deal with ever. Yet, we have to be. And I can't um explain to you enough the heroic efforts specifically of our social work staff. We have a bereavement plan that they have developed along with the other staff. Um it's again something we never want to have to use, but they provided such meaningful support for our students and our staff members. This is hard for all of us, not just the students. Um, our school counselors were a big part of that and and while they're uh primarily responsible for implementing that care, um, our entire staff and school community has been um, absolutely wonderful throughout the week and has been, as I mentioned, I I mentioned that when
022people check in on me, I said the staff is acting like the superheroes that they are. So, um, while we deal with all these day-to-day stresses and and things when when big things that are so meaningful occur, I'm just really proud to work at a place that takes care of people so well. So, thank you to all of you. Appreciate that. Okay, that's all I have for you tonight and I'm going to move on if there are no questions to the financial report as Mr. Schmali is not with us tonight. First, we will review our revenues at the end of April. We have collected 95% of our revenue for the year. We were just about the same last year, 94.9%. We connect we collected 1.9 million in the month of April. We have received a
023higher percentage of budgeted local funds this year compared to last year. Again, very very close to where we usually are with regard to our expenditures. We are 83% through the year and we have expended 72% of our expenditures as compared to 71% last year. Uh 3.1 million expended in the month of May uh April. We do have higher IMRF rates. That's part of the retirement that we must pay for our non-TRS employees or our non-teers. Um and the it's the difference is shown there for you. The other pieces are really tied to these large projects that were going on. um again exactly where we expect to be. And then finally um later on in tonight's meeting you'll have an opportunity to approve our fiscal year 24 audit that was presented to the finance committee on
024May 13th and we had the opportunity to ask questions there. I do believe our entire board was able to be present for that meeting, but wanted to share with the public that the audit opinion was the same as it has been in prior years. So, it was an adverse opinion, but it had nothing to do with how we're doing things here at OTHS. It actually has to do with the Illinois State Board of Education's rules for the single audit are different than the standards that are nationwide for accounting principles. Uh they also shared with us that we are financially healthy. We did have some higher expenditures both in our health life safety that's the HVAC projects we've been working on. We'll have the cafeteria flooring project coming up. Uh so you'll see similar things next
025year and our operations and maintenance fund due to we have a very large panther athletic complex project that has just been completed. Um, it does indicate too, which is aligned if you consider our district and board goals, that we will be assigned financial recognition, which is the highest recognition you can receive. That means that we're handling our funds responsibly. There's multiple measures that the state board of education has to measure the health of a school district and the responsible ways of the school district is approaching our fiscal responsibilities. Um, so all wonderful news about the audit. Uh the details of course are attached for you to approve later on this evening. And Beth, the adverse opinion is because we use cashbased accounting and not acrruel bas. Correct. So the general accounting rules would expect that
026approval. So if we know something is coming, we're accounting for it. Then we use a modified cash basis. So um we when we actually get the deposit is when we're accounting for it. When we actually expend or write the check is when we're uh accounting for it. And that is aligned with many school districts, but it's not aligned with the national accounting standards. That's the reason for the adverse opinion. Great question. Thank you. All right. Thank you, folks. All right. Next up is uh the curriculum report, Mr. Graham. Yes. All right. Good evening, everybody. Um I just wanted to share with you tonight some data on our ACT scores that have come out where I saw we had three students per score. I'm going to dive more deeply into that. Um then I want to
027share kind of a recap of the professional development that our teachers did this school year. Uh so the ACT scores were released in early May. We know we had three students get a perfect 36. Uh our average score for the class all juniors about 603 students took the test with a 21.4. Um I went back to look at the data history. We last gave the ACT as a classwide test for the class 2017. So I go back there to see what our averages were uh back several years ago. Um then in starting with the class 2018, we take the SAT. There is a score conversion you can do that SAT ACT both provide that shows that a score of X on the SAT equals the score of Y on the ACT. So, I've done that
028just to kind of give you the average score for our SAT, but convert it to an ACT score. So, you can kind of get a comparison. It's not perfect way to compare, but that's the best we can do. Um, most of this is baseline data this year. But it appears that the ACT score for the class of 26 at the very end of the chart was an improvement over the average for the SAT. The previous six, seven school years. The Illinois has not released cut scores yet on what would be considered meeting or exceeding. So that's how schools are measured on their SAT in the school report card is the percent of students that are meeting or exceeding. They haven't released the scores yet for what that will be. Um there's a committee that ISBY
029has that's going to do that this summer, but ACT has provided some benchmarks. It's very small. You can see in board docs, but uh the ACT benchmarks are different for each test. anywhere from 18 to 23 um is a meeting 18 on English or 23 on science. So I what I wanted to do is kind of get an estimate of what the meets exceed rate could be and I used a different couple different benchmarks to look at that. So the first one is the ACT provided benchmarks. So meet succeeds means if a student meets they are ready for college. So according to the ACT and their benchmarks our meet succeed rate for English 63% for math, 43% for science, 35%. And you saw that the the scores are different. The science one's the highest one.
030So that's why that person's lower. Um, so that's one way we could look at benchmarks. Another way is to convert the SAT to an ACT score. The SAT to meet was a 1080. And a 1080 equals a 21 on the ACT. So if we use that benchmark, we have 45% English, 46% math. If we looked at local colleges and universities, SIUE gives automatic acceptance to any student that scores a 19 and 57% of our students were at a 19 or better. So that's 340 students um that SIUE says were college ready. So it could be that we don't know which one they're going to use, but any of those is an improvement over 23 24 and the school year before that as well. So we we do think that the scores will look better with
031more students looking like they're ready for college based on the ACT scores. So that's great news. Um score distribution just to share a little more detail. Uh at the very top it's 36 with three students and then I kind of broke it down into three point uh spreads. So 33 to 35 and down. Uh if you look at 18 to 20 we have 105 students who are very close to these. Those are our double students. they are approaching you. If you if you want to see your your meet succeed students, the next highest group should be involved group because you want people who are really close. So, we do have a large group that is very close. How do we how do we target those students both in their senior year, right, for college readiness,
032but also as we think is that indicating that we've got students in the bubble coming up, sophomores coming up to June? Yes. So, now we will have also access to our sophomores took the ACT 10, our freshman took the ACT 9, and we have some teams of teachers this summer that are going to dive into all that data. So, we have a team of math, team of English, team of science teachers. They're going to meet in June um and analyze the scores and determine do we look like algebra 2 is where we want to focus or do we want to focus on this writing course. So, that's what the teachers are going to decide with the scores. Um, and it's all baseline. It's brand new basically. We're kind of starting from zero and we're going
033to build it up from there. Future plans are look into some prep programming we could do like was done in the past year. So that's the ACT. The next topic I wanted to share was a professional development recap of what our teachers did in their in their early release days and their institute days this school year. Uh so I'll start with our institute days. We had one in October, one in February. On our institute days, what we do is uh we ask our teachers, are there any topics that you feel um you have you have expertise in or that you went to a conference and learned about and you want to share with other teachers in school? So these are teacher le mostly. Um so in October we have 19 sessions offered um and in
034February the 13th and then teachers are able to pick their schedule. So I basically have five sessions throughout the day and teachers pick five topics they want to learn about and go to. So that's how we do our institute days. That's just a list of some of the the bigger ones that were the highest attended. Um anywhere from I mean we did a 40 active intern training with the found police department. We did CPR training. We all learned cannabis because cannabis is it next year. So we did get all that in. Uh we did some great restorative practice training on our institute days. That was actually a full day. Those people were weren't for eight hours. So that was that was a very good. Um so that's those are the topics that we presented on
035at our institute days. We also send teachers out to conferences. Um and we send them out using title funds and DOIA grant funds. Uh we mostly go to state conferences like the state drivers at teachers conference, the state math teachers conference. Uh we also do a lot of national conferences too for for like an AP course teacher to learn uh and meet other teachers around the country. So we do both mostly state. The idea of these conferences is that you send a couple of teachers out and then they come back on our institute day and present as experts. So just an example um there's the social emotional learning institute. We sent Megan Buck social worker and Beth Schroer one of our teachers to I believe it was in California to a institute for a full
036week. They learned a ton of stuff about how to implement social emotional learning at a school and then they brought it back and you see it's one of the topics they taught at one of the institutes which was very well attended and well received. So that's the idea that's why we submit people to conferences to become experts and come back and train the rest of us. Um it's a much more economical way to do it. Then I want to quickly and I have every department listed but I'm going to hit it fast. Um, it's all in board docs if you want to read every detail, but I want to share a quick overview of what each department did in their departmental PD. On our early release days, we mostly uh focus on departmental time. So,
037I I task the chairs with creating what they believe their department needs the most and then designing the training specifically for that department. So, this is just a couple highlights of what each department did. ROTC has a lot of preparation and work they do outside the classroom. stuff they use that are under these days for planning for ceremonies and awards and scholarships and community service. So they're always planning all these events. So there's just a couple examples of their events. The art department worked on preparation for art shows which they did multiple of this year. Um and they planned a course uh wrote some grants and uh worked on curriculum. You'll see all the departments worked on improving curriculum. A lot of it is ACT alignment. So that's kind of going to be all these
038redundant so I won't say it every time but everybody did that. The alt ed departments a brand new department so a lot of their work was just streamlining their programming and and analyzing it as they go. If they did something for the first time they'd meet and then determine was did that work or should adjust it. So brand new department that's how the first year goes. Um CTE department did a lot of site visits um to different industries. They went to steel mill was one of them. Um so that's what they spent their time their So those are the release days. The English department did some articulation with colleges and uh with Swick and SIO and Slooh to talk about what writing expectations there are at university. So that's some uh vertical articulation upwards. Um
039and then the ACT alignment was a huge one for English. Um health drivers NPE worked on policies, procedures, guest speaker planning, curriculum mandates. They have a lot of mandates in that department what they have to teach that to make sure they're aligned. Uh the IMC worked on reading challenges incorporating AI. A most of their PD is going to be based on either media literacy or getting students to read. So that's what all their all their uh development and all their early release focus on. Math department uh worked on ACT again has a new calculator program that they got trained on. School counseling um again kind of perfecting processes that we have here. So they look at improving course selection process by using data to improve it. They looked at expanding the credit recovery program and
040figuring out how we could get students enrolled in that at the nth grade level. Um the science department did some horizontal articulation through their tracks. Um and then they uh did some field trip research and planning. Social studies department worked on developing some new courses that they'll propose as we had talked about trying to expand our AP programming especially in social studies. Um social work department updated some plans, agreement plans, uh suicidal ideiation plans. So, just updating plans, protocols, and they got the therapy dogs going. Uh special ed did some presentations on student behavior, how to write IEPs, how to set goals for students on IEPs, um and talked with colleges about accommodations at the college level. And then lastly, the world language department spent a lot of time aligning their grading practices to a
041national rubric, the actual rubric, which I actually show you on the next slide. Uh because we have one more thing about world language, but a lot of their work is kind of shifting to a rubric base where students are basically ranked and working through a rubric levels one through nine as at novice to advance. So that's our PD recap. Any questions on that? I'll jump into my last topic which is seal of bi literacy. Uh so lastly, last thing I have also world languages. We give a test or the state gives a test every year to students enrolled in world languages who believe that they are ready to be considered literate in that language. Uh and so it's available to 10 from 10th to 12th grade mostly seniors and juniors. There are very few sophomores
042that are that are able to be bi at that age. uh but it they can be um so they take a test and then they earn what's called a seal of biiteracy which is a stamp that's put onto their transcript and onto their diploma basically so it's part of their resume saying I speak English and Spanish or I speak English and German or whatever it is uh so that they can kind of expand their their job potential. So there's two ways to earn a seal. It's either through the seal diversity test which is a ninepoint scale you can see on the right or taking an AP language exam as a senior in our final level uh final class for that language. You can earn three types of awards either an ISE seal which is the
043highest um either getting six out of nine on the seal test or four or above on the AP test. You can earn a commenation from the state or you can earn a global seal which is more of a transferable other states and countries seal. You can also earn the global seal and the ISBY seal or the global seal and the foundation. So that's kind of just a bonus one. Here's our numbers. Um the ISBY seal, this is the highest one. We had 38 students earn in Spanish. Um that is a two student increase from the year before. For the commenation, we had 11 students in French, 11 in German, 77 in Spanish, which is a 22 student increase from the year before. And then our global seal, which these are all repeated students, two in
044French, seven in German, 81 in Spanish. That combines two school years because that test is um not given every year. I know juniors take this, but is it is it just juniors or juniors and seniors? Both juniors and seniors with a couple of sophomores. I think maybe three sophomores took it. Okay. So, you can take it your junior year, but then take it again your senior year if you want to you want if you don't get it the first time. Yes. I will say that 99.5% of the students that took it got my question. How many students did we have take? Um, that'd be 77 + 11 + 11. everyone. I was about to be really impressed, but for us 99 plus 30, so that's not that bad. That's took it got a seal. Uh
045almost everyone 99% got the global seal, right? Got either a seal combination or a global seal. So, and again, that was an increase over the previous school years. So, that is all I have for tonight. Thank you everybody. Thank you. Next up will be the principal department, Mr. H. All right. Well, it's been a very, very busy month uh here since our last board meeting. We're going to get tonight started off with a prom recap. Prom took place on April 26th at the Regency Center here in Fallon. It was a great great night. Uh 915 students bought tickets. All the tickets were purchased online, same as last year, but and it went seamlessly. went really smooth. Um the the dance itself was great. Kids had acted perfectly. Okay. Uh it was just a great night
046all around. Uh in including of course after prom at the St. Clair Bowl. Over 300 students attended that. Uh there's free bowling of course, gift cards for every student, uh tokens to play games, a lot of tokens, by the way. Uh some karaoke. Uh just an incredible amount of food for the entire night. And then the amazing thing is there's prizes given out every half hour. And these are not just your garden variety prizes. These are TVs, computers, um amazing amazing prizes that uh you know, kids were trying to bribe me to get their name in there more. Of course, I did not take it. Uh but but it was a real fun night they had there. And and you can't say enough about the offen township because it's it's the generous community members and
047local business support for the after prom under the organ organizational efforts of Gary Hersy and Nathan Huard and the entire of Fallon Township group really who gives their time, their financial resources and efforts to make this a fun and safe night for our students. And and they're there till 3:00 a.m. volunteering their time at the bowling alley. just a special group of people. And I can't say enough about of course Miss Jody Cythe, who is the person who organizes the prom, I always say when somebody asks about prom, you know, about the organization of it. Imagine trying to plan a wedding for a thousand people. You know, if you think about that's what she does every single year. Uh and she just does it. And it's just an amazing achievement she does every year. I
048can't say enough good things about about Miss Cipher and how much work she puts into it. So much so that um you know other schools call her, other schools visit the prom just to see what it looks like because of her expertise. So um real big shout out of course to her. Next item of course is our band. it wouldn't be a month ago. We can't give some kudos to the band uh here. And uh congratulations to the OTHS win ensemble on being named the 2026 class 3A honor band at the Illinois Super State Concert Band Festival at the University of Illinois. Uh just an again an amazing achievement. They just keep setting the bar higher and higher. And of course that's that is led by our wonderful band director who's in attendance tonight. Uh
049wh I went too fast. um Dr. Gustin Heights who of course this month won a very very prestigious award. She is one of only 30 educators nationwide to receive the prestigious music teachers of excellence award from the country music association. And of course Dr. G is in attendance tonight. So just once again the bar keeps getting higher and higher for our band program and our band director. Another great thing that happened uh this last month on April 30th and May 1st, the art department hosted a student art show at the Milbour Smiley campuses. This show was a culmination of a year's worth of work done by our OTS students in their respective art classes. It was truly an amazing display of artwork done by all of our students here that was displayed in both IMC's
050at Milbert and Smiley. Again, the entire depart department really deserves a big shout out again. Uh Ben Brooks, Elizabeth from Mundy, Julie Linman, Pton Nap, and of course, our department chair, Nikki Wilson, uh put in just an incredible amount of time and effort over weeks of getting this thing prepared of getting us set up in our IMC's. Um and they handed out, of course, the awards and just did just an amazing job for for these students. It was a great night there. We also uh I love that picture by the way. Um on May 5th, the World Language Department hosted their annual international cultural fair culture fair. Students learned about the culture of over 50 different countries through food, traditional dress, authentic heritage, artifacts, and family members who were in attendance. This was a wonderful
051experience to expand our cultural awareness and to learn more about our fellow students. And you can see here um our world language department which made up of Elena Alden, Amy Bogs, and there's Mr. Alfrank there in the hat in all his glory of course uh Cecilia Alvarez, Stephanie Gman, Norm Henry, Michelle Lier, Rebecca Herford, Jordan Sanchez, and of course, department chair Libby McGee. Uh this was a great event that was in this room after school one day, and you could just see how well attended it was. And always good food helps. uh and it was there and they got those kids to be involved. So, it was a great afternoon here. Okay. Um we're going to tonight is going to be hopefully we'll see um the the student handbook is going to be finalized for
052board approval. And what I wanted to do tonight is just to give an overview of some of the notable changes in the handbook. But before we talk about the the handbook, I want to explain the process of how the handbook is done uh throughout the year because this is truly a year-long process every year to update the handbook. And so it starts off really whenever it's finalized, it could start off in the summer where the administrative team, teachers, other staff, parents put in suggestions for their student handbook for the following year. Um and that's also led throughout the fall semester where we have uh department chair meetings. We have department meetings themselves where teachers give input to their chairs and bring it back to the administration at the department chair meetings. We have PTAC committee
053meetings that take place in December and in May. And then starting in February, the administrative team, we meet weekly uh once a week for an hour where we literally go line by line through the student handbook to correct any punctuation problem, whatever, you know, any kind of problems in there to to major changes in the handbook. So, this is a truly year-long process that we as a school take very very seriously. Students have a lot of input in it. our assistant principles visit classrooms, specifically the American Legal System class where they have an assignment to look at our student handbook to ask questions about it. And uh so our our assistant principles go in those classrooms. So we get student input as well. So um I can't say enough how much work is done to
054to get to this point every single year. And what I'm just putting up here are just some of kind of the notable changes. And obviously the big change coming for 25 26 is uh the new electronics policy. All right. And this has been um really probably a year-long process in itself to try to get this policy set. It started back in the fall where we did a book study with with the staff on a book called The Anxious Generation which I've mentioned numerous times up here. Um, and in that book it what it talked about was how cell phones have been a major distraction for students in the classroom. And so from there we did surveys. We first surveyed all the teachers and staff who were in the book club. Um, from there we surveyed
055then all the faculty and staff here at OHS on their feelings about cell phone policies and then went to the parents and guardians for a survey and then the students for their thoughts in the survey. and the administrative team met and took all those factors in and came up with the new electronics policy for next year. And in a nutshell, what it's going to be is is a policy where from bell to bell in the classroom, the students wearable, we call it wearable technology because it's not just a phone, but it's smart watches, it's going to be smart glasses, earbuds, anything that's wearable cannot be seen or heard from bell to bell in the classroom. Okay. And this is a shift. This is no doubt a shift. Um and so it's going to be an
056interesting year and how that's worked. We're very confident it's going to it's going to go very very well. Okay. Where can students use their phones? They can use their phones at lunch. They can use their phones during passive periods. Okay. And they can use their phones well during advisory. It's there's instruction given during advisory. They cannot. Okay. during the advisory periods. And so, uh, we fully expect this to go smoothly. Teachers also have the autonomy to have pouches or something in their classrooms that allows a little more accountability, but this is the baseline policy for a schoolwide policy going forward. And I think the momentum is there throughout the country really. You're seeing states now who are putting a statewide policy. In fact, I think Missouri just did that a week or two ago. Okay.
057Anybody have any questions about the electronics policy or anything? No. Okay. Um, dress code, uh, dress code is is a year-to-year situation. You know, I I've been an administrator now for 16 years. I don't think there's a year gone by that even the administrative team we get in arguments good good arguments by the way but uh heated discussions about how the dress code should be enacted and that's because fashions change you know they change and we have to adjust as a school and really kind of the main thing that's changed was this I put up here but students may not wear see-through or revealing apparel causing inappropriate body exposure this includes but it's not limited to tank tops spaghetti strap tops strapless tops sports bras and or exposed undergraduates. So, you can see how specific
058we get with this, but again, this is a year-to-year thing. Um, another change for next year that's fairly significant is the final exam weight. This was brought forth by teachers uh because teachers did not feel like a 10% final exam weight was enough. They felt like students did not take this the test seriously. Um and so therefore there was discussion amongst teachers in in their own departments and we brought it back to the department chair meeting and came to an agreement to raise it from 10 10% to 15% for next school year. Okay. Any questions on that? And then um one one change it's not really in the handbook but is going to be we're going to purchase parking passes completely online for next year. Okay. And this is a change from the past couple
059years where we were having students camp out in the front and that's just not safe. That's not a safe environment. So led by Mr. Ko, our assistant principal put this in effect. Did a great job of organizing this and it's going to roll out this summer where uh starting with seniors first and I believe the date Mr. Kad is July 29th. Right. Correct. Okay. So at July 29th at 8:30 a.m. it goes live. Okay. So, what that means is all senior students will have their fees paid by the Friday before. Okay. Not on Sunday night, but on the Friday before, okay, by 3 p.m. they have to have their fees paid. They are eligible to get in the queue to purchase their parking pass just like you would a Taylor Swift ticket. So, uh it's
060going to be an exciting moment and how that operates for next year. And that is going to go out to all of the Mr. Kad's already sent that out. uh a variety of different methods and so yes the students have word of that and parents too parents have already so it's going to be a good change and finally uh wrapping up our school year this year next week of course we have our final exams on Tuesday and Thursday graduation practice is next Friday on May 30th and then graduation for the class of 2025 is Saturday May 31st at 10 a.m. Thank you. Thanks, Mr. H. All right, we have some a few other reports tonight. Uh, first up is a report out on social work. Mr. Be can work this out. Okay. I just wanted
061to briefly do a rundown of the social work department. So on the Smiley campus, we have Miss Johnson, we have Miss Buck, we have Miss Prrenal, we have a new department member, Sylvie, and she belongs Miss Prrenible, um Miss Flair, myself, and at the Milbour campus, we have Miss Brown, who is involved with the Soore program, Miss uh Erdie, and Miss Randall. So those are the faces of our department. We also have an intern at the Smiley campus. Um she's a former OTHS student. Um and she's here three days a week. Uh so what do we do? We we support the mental well-being of students. One one question we get a lot is like what's the difference between school social workers and school counselors? And what we try to in a nutshell tell students we're
062both departments are here to support your mental health and wellbeing. Um, but we're we primarily are focusing on the social emotional component and the school counselors are really helping you with your academic and your college and career. Although there's there's like like a marriage of both departments. We're supporting all students with that. But that's kind of how we try to differentiate it with kids. Um, so supporting their mental well-being. We collaborate a lot with parents, staff, um, community. We have a lot of therapists, psychiatrists, social service agencies, the Oalon Police Department that we collaborate really closely with. Um, and then likewise we connect a lot of students. We do a ton of referrals to agencies and therapists. And then here at school we provide a lot of um brief solutionoriented counseling. We have seen a
063trend over the last couple years of us becoming more the front line. well, always been the front lines, but really providing a lot more in-depth counseling to kids because there are long wait lists. That is not our intended purpose. Um, so we're really trying to find ways to [Music] um find partnerships where we can get kids into treatment or therapy quicker. Um, because we just we usually only see kids during their advisories. Um, and that's about 25 minutes and we usually only see them for about 15 minutes. Um, so we're not we're not providing like hourlong therapy sessions. Um, I'm sorry. You said there's a long wait period. There can be really long wait list to get kids into therapists right now. Um, and psychiatrists. So, uh we we always try to provide uh the
064support while they're kind of in the process of being on a wait list and then we'll continue to work with them um and their therapists. We have a ton of partnerships. Um but unfortunately, we're seeing like a month to two month weight list even for people that have private insurance now too where it used to be we we could kind of expect Medicaid and that it was longer, but we're seeing for private insurance too where there's significant weight times. Um so typically we're seeing students for you you know social emotional mental health issues such as anx these are like the top I asked my team to kind of rank the top reasons why they're seeing students anxiety depression trauma grief emotion regulation um with with staff amongst each other um and then social and academic
065issues. We do a lot of um discussions and restorative circles with peers regarding peer conflict. We hold space for any family issues, divorce, that type of stuff. Um academic pressure. In the last couple years, we've seen a huge increase in needing to work with students on school motivation. Um and then just overall problem solving when there's adversity in life. um teachers, parents, administrators, and students can refer themselves each other. And then we can also just have walk-ins. We'll work with students that are in general education, um special education, kids that have IEPs with 50 and kids that have 504 plans. So any student in this building can access a social worker. Year in review, we've seen 1,183 students, so about 46% of the student population. that holds pretty steady from year to year. Um, we're
066we're typically over that 45% threshold. Um, we offer social skills groups. We've had 10 this year. You can kind of see the breakdown at we're in the Smiley campus, Milbourne campus, but then also we go across to the transition house across the street to the south campus as well. Um, some of these groups are facilitated by the social worker and the speech pathologist. Some of them are just social work le and then we have the life management skills classes um at both campuses. We have two classrooms at the Milbour or two sections at Milbour and we have one over here. Um we have a we have a social worker that pushes in to do services within the Milbour campus. First semester we had someone do that over here but we have kind of rebranded and
067gotten a new curriculum. So instead of us pushing into LMS here at Smiley, um the teacher has a phenomenal curriculum that one of our social workers used when she was a social worker in Indie. Um and we researched it, we brought it here, but we're now having uh conferences with the kids in our offices and holding them accountable, the goal setting and stuff that the teachers doing. So it's more teacher le now over here. that that 1,183 that can be um one student 10 times. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Often often we're seeing kids like multiple sessions at a time. I can get that for you. Question is the A3 are those unique students? It's not touches. It's unique. Sorry. Yeah. Unique unique students. Um I can get you guys the breakdown of like of average. I
068mean most of our case loads or kids that we're seeing we have scheduled every week. Um but you'll see here the mental health days per Illinois law schools have to provide um we have to notify students of mental health support services at at at school once they hit two days once they've called in for two mental health days. So we send an email out to students at two days. We used to call them in at two days, but we have found that a lot of students are taking them for reasons that are not necessarily a mental health need. And so it's a huge I mean if you see 56 53 60 80 seniors have taken two days we're calling all of those we we were calling all of those kids in and we would find
069on average like three or four of them maybe you know had something that was mental health related loosely um that required the check-in. So we moved to an email just to be more si like to just be more sensitive of the time of the of the social work staff. And so now we've bumped it to the three days. So we're calling all those kids in once they've hit three days. So about 27 students we've called in and Donna to to your question earlier some of those kids are we've just seen one time and oftent times again it's not yielding true mental health crisis or need. Um it might be a vacation. It could be they just needed a break. They had a soccer tournament. Um they're medically excused. So, kids are also using them for
070that purpose as well. Um, I'm not saying that the mental health days are a bad thing. I'm just saying that it can be frustrating to have to call a bunch of students in, 207 students, and only have like three of them that we're identifying that need the true services. So, we're we're trying to find a way um that we make those check-ins really meaningful and we praise kids for using them. But I don't want you to like look at this and think that there were like 207 kids that were in huge crisis. Um, parents can call the kids in and use them and we no questions asked. Uh, we've also students about like when it's a mental health day is probably needed. I'm sorry. Do we ever talk to the students about like when a
071mental health day is needed? Uh we we do but it's slippery slope because you know uh it's appropriate what a parent and a family decides and a student decides is a need for a kid to stay home is their you know family decision. And so we we don't really get into that but we do talk about why they exist and why you can use them and the the appropriate use of them. But we never like we ne we we try to keep it very positive. we're proud of you for taking care of your your mental health and your well-being. Um, and we we try not to uh get too much into that because legally they're allowed Mr. How and I've had these conversations a lot. They're allowed they're allowed the five days a year. So,
072um, it's we're we're working through it. We're open to feedback, of course, on messaging to families and students on the use of them. Another initiative this year that we kind of took over was um positive praise. So, if a student is caught doing something good in the hallway, in the classroom, in the community, um staff can submit a form that indicates the kids' name and what what they're getting recognized for. So, we've had 206 students recognized this year. This is kind of an example of a certificate they get. And then they'll get a a gift card to our coffee shop in the cafeteria or they'll get a reusable OTS water bottle. Um, so we're very proud of the 206 students that have gone above and beyond and done something positive this year. Um, the big
073initiative in our department this year was implementing the therapy dog program. Um, Miss Printable is pictured up there. This is Sylvie, her golden. and um she worked tirelessly since Sylvie was a puppy to get her trained through got your six and um we appreciate the board and Dr. Shackleford and Mr. How's support in bringing this program. I think it's it's been beneficial not only for students but staff. Um and so we're very very appreciative to parents and um some students came back in the fall who are involved at Perina and they have done some really awesome spons sponsorship of Sylvie. Um on Thursdays when the weather's nice, especially in the fall and the spring, we have uh Sylvia and her friends from Goty. Um six, they do therapy dog Thursday and they greet the kids
074and staff and it's just a very positive experience. Um and Fur Child is also sponsoring. Sylvie gets she gets her haircut there. Um so we're appreciative of that. So, like I said, Thursdays has we've developed their uh therapy dog Thursday. We've done 26 of them this year. Uh Sylvia and Miss Prrenible have gone into 31 classrooms. Teachers, we have a a form that teachers can go to on our website to request a visit from Sylvie. So, they've gone into 31 rooms. They visited the South Campus. They've pushed into our social skill groups. Um, Miss Caveney had her come in to their regional science department chair meeting. Uh, she's had several Panther B interviews. Rumor has it she has a pretty big spread in the yearbook. And then just recently, she's supported students um through grief
075counseling. So, that's been a wonderful addition. Year in review, we've we've had a lot this year. Um, Miss Slair has spearheaded the last couple years Mental Health Monday for our staff, um, where she comes up with the logo and the design and staff can order t-shirts and once a month staff wear their mental health shirts to school. Um, as I mentioned earlier with like peer conflicts, we do a lot of restorative circles. We team up with the administration to do those and we also just host them ourselves in our rooms. We have a great partnership with the IMC. Thank you. It's a very unique opportunity where students are very overwhelmed about being in the cafeteria at lunch. They can um eat and have an assigned spot in the cafeteria and it's created a very very
076safe place. I wish I would have asked you for the numbers but they're high. Like we have a lot of kids utilizing it. Um and it's been a very very very beneficial program. Uh we like I said earlier are coordinating a lot with community therapists um for continuity of care. We continue to support our homeless students through buying them bus passes, taking them um on the holiday shopping trip. We pushed into new student advisories to support them and have offered some groups for them. The family for families shopping trip. I want to thank the security team, board members, teachers who all financially donate to that. We've done it as recently as yesterday and today grief counseling. Miss Randall and Mr. Wallace and Mr. Hatton went over and did some eighth grade orientation at the middle
077schools. Miss Randall has identified current Milbourne students that went to Cariel, for example, or went to Fulton. And she brought Mr. Wallace and Mr. Hatton brought them to Kielle to talk about life at Milbour and it was cool. Some of the kids got big cheers and stuff because f faculty and students remembered them from when they were in middle school. Um the therapy dog program was our biggest one. We're very very grateful for the Maddie Best Foundation. they donated um a a very nice amount of money so that we could pay for uh prom attire uh for students. And um there's a quick story I'll tell, but there were shoes that were coming from China and we didn't know that when we ordered them. Um, and they arrived at 5:30 p.m. Our director of security
078came up to grab walkies and for prom and the shoes were sitting at the front door for a student. Um, and they had butterflies on them and that is a symbol of the Maddie of Maddie's foundation. Um, but I also feel like Maddie was really working um, that night in that student's life. And um it was just a very we're very grateful for her parents and that foundation um because I had kids crying in my office when we told them we were going to be helping them with prom because it was just such a relief otherwise they probably wouldn't have gone just because of the financial hardship that it kind of presented. [Music] Um, in the fall we led an anxious generation book study that kind of it was it was highly attended. I think
079like 60 staff members. We had to do it in two different days attended that which then kind of initiated the discussion of the phone policy. Uh, with the new alternative ed program, uh, we we pushed out with Mr. Printable quite a bit and did a lot of home visits with students. Uh we did health classroom presentations and then we've updated our bereavement protocol, DCFS protocol, um suicide ideation protocol, like not the fun stuff, but the stuff that needs to be reviewed every year. Uh future initiatives is we want to look into writing a grant which would get us access to therapists and psychiatrists. Uh the promise is within a week turnaround time. A lot of area schools have have used it this year. I've reached out to them first semester. It was still too recent
080for them to give me some really solid feedback. Um, but the feedback I've gotten this semester from them is outstanding. And there's also a very, very great parent component to this with psycho education. So, I'm very excited to look into that. We want to get out into the community this fall and really try to raise more money for our family for families account. um which takes which we we take kids to Kohl's every year to shop. So, we want to be able to take more kids and spend more money on the kids through that initiative. We're excited to continue working with Mr. Graham and Miss Librick um on the school climate culture grant. Um there's been some really great mentoring programs happening this year that we're continuing to identify kids for and that'll continue next
081year. And then this summer there's going to be anal summit and then that team's going to continue into the school year to look at ways to improve student connection. Um pending board approval. We're really sad to see one of our social workers pivot career-wise, but we're excited to hopefully soon tonight welcome Tara Rottman. For some people, she's a familiar face. She interned in 201 12 13 school year here at OTHS. Then she has spent quite a bit of time in a therapeutic school in Alton, some time in Highland. Um she's a principal of an alternative ed at an alternative ed school in Alton as recently as this fall. And hopefully soon with your approval, she'll be joining our team at the Milbourne campus next year. Questions. Okay. Thank you. [Applause] Okay, next up is a
082presentation from Schneider Electric, Mr. Pavles. Good evening, uh, OTHS board and admin. Really appreciate you letting us come tonight and present to you. I know, um, going to try and make this brief and just go through this really quickly and then open up the end for questions. My name is Cameron Pvelock. I'm a program manager in Illinois for Schneider Electric. And this is Hannah White. She's a program manager in o just over the river in Missouri. And so a little bit about me, I actually grew up somewhat close to the district. My dad was at Scott twice. So I was a student at Moy back in the day and then I graduated just down the road from a scuda. And so um yeah, really appreciate once again you letting us come up and talk. Just
083before I speak about the our solar and capital reinvestment program, just wanted to really give kudos and commend Tom Goodridge and his team. Um, when we first started the preliminary energy analysis of your guys' buildings, we noticed a few outliers of just, hey, maybe switching over some LEDs and looking at some things, just some of the lowhanging fruit could really help. And Tom said, hey, we're actually doing all of that this summer. And that's something that me and my team were able to to get essentially for free and help out with. And yeah, he is a very good asset to your guys' team. He's doing some some very wonderful things and just really wanted to com commend him and the team before I get into this. And so after hearing that all the LED switchovers
084were going to be happening this summer, we kind of pivoted to talking about solar and what that could do for the district. These three arrays that you see here are just preliminary assessment arrays. There's nothing set in stone of different ways that you have to go. Um, but you'll see we did assess a an array at Milbour on the ground. Um, and then a rough array at Smiley and their carport array at Smiley as well. And on your sheet, you can see a little bit of the estimated project value, cost, and savings for that. And and yeah, so the the other thing you guys were looking at doing, if you can go to the next slide, sorry, I apologize. The difference of of what we can help with along with other different solar providers is
085a power purchase agreement versus a system purchase. The system purchase is really actually purchasing that system for you to generate all that energy on site and then utilize it to spin back your meter. The power purchase agreement is a a no upfront cost where you lease out your land or your roof space so that then a third party entity would be able to construct a solar array on that and then give you essentially a fixed kilowatt hour rate for whether it's 15 or 25 years. Us as an energy service company electric can actually help you do both. But there on your sheet as the board you can see kind of the difference of what that system purchase versus a power purchase agreement would be. Once again, we can help you navigate the the one or
086the other further down the line as well of just which one would be better for the district as one is more of an upfront cost and then the others with no upfront cost where you're in an agreement with another firm for 15 to 25 years depending on that agreement. What type of maintenance, you know, so so looking at like the return on investment for these things, right? What type of maintenance fees do we typically we own the array. Yeah, and that's a great question. And normally that's something where it's handled from the upfront price of the array, whether we're going to do the maintenance or somebody else that we contract out is going to do the maintenance. There's the same type of thing with the power purchase agreement where that entity that owns it can
087do the operations, maintenance or we as an energy service company also come in and do that operations and maintenance. Um, as far as the actual costs that go into that, normally they're not too costly just because if you're putting it on your roof, there's not much that can can necessarily happen as well, especially if it's a new roof. And then if it's going in a field, we're really going to make sure that it's going to be gravel or dirt on the bottom. And maybe you'll have to mow a few spaces. But as far as the other types of operations and maintenance, we would be monitoring the the energy production for that array. So So the costs here on this part of it here, the estimated project costs, does that include what we would expect maintenance
088to cost for that array over the life of the array? Yeah, it would. And then the other thing too is a lot of the general maintenance can be completed in house. So Mr. Tom and his team could if it snows, make sure that all the snow's wiped off and that the panels are achieving sun. So I guess more time perhaps on the staff for things like that, but generally the weather would take care of it. And then the other thing is that the inverter would need to be replaced at year 15 and that would be that is included and is built into the cash flow. So you can get about 30 years of life cycle after the panels are installed. Yeah, the panels last for 30 years. Inverters are anywhere from 15 to 20 depending
089on the manufacturer's warranty. Um as far as these costs you see, you'll see there's some ranges. That's just because we're in a fairly preliminary state. Further down the line, there would be actual line item numbers where you would be able to take a look at. So, how many inverters are we talking about? Um, it really just depends on which array you're you're talking about. Um, normally inverters example of like the Milbour, the first picture, Milbour, if you see those like green lines right there, you see the through the middle of the array, that'd be it. So, probably, you know, anywhere from 15 to 20 there. Um, inverter inverter cost. It really just depends. I wouldn't know off the top of my head. That would be something that's instead put forth like in these savings numbers,
090it's the 15-year savings. That savings has gone down a little bit because we've already put in that 15th year you're going to have to expect to replace that inverter. So yeah, at this stage um with the preliminary high analysis, if the district were to move forward with any type of solar project and enter into an official agreement with another firm. At that stage, we would get into the really detailed costs of how much each inverter is, what you can expect for each year. Um, so those details would absolutely be presented in a further stage. And then the incentives here, these are tax incentives, right? So, one of them is a tax incentive. I I will caveat, yes, that um and Dr. Chapper, you don't know this because this happened eight hours ago. Um, there was
091a little bit of a scare from the representatives bill that was just passed on to the Senate. Um we are unaware of if these some of these incentives are going to be available in the near future. We don't have a yes or no as of right now. We have an internal team that's monitoring those that situation every single day and giving us updates. So as soon as we hear a definite answer from that, we will relay it to all the districts that we're currently working on in talking and through these talks. I will tell you that the brute incentive, the the majority incentive on that number is the Illinois Sustainable Renewable Energy Credit Program, which is actually through Illinois, the Illinois Power Agency. That is not at risk of going away right now. That's not
092a tax incentive. It's actually a program through the state of Illinois through the Illinois Power Agency. So, the majority of that incentive is the Illinois ESREx. There is a portion of that that I can show you through a different cash flow of which one would actually be affected if it were to be impacted over the next couple of weeks. Thank you. And so the next um as far as another thing that we looked at and I think it was touched a little bit earlier on throughout the initial facilities assessment that you all had done. Um the building automation at Milbour was something we identified that could potentially be an upgrade along with something that could help with energy savings and potentially comfort at Milbourne. And so you have all these HVAC units. You have some
093that are newer that you have just replaced. You have some that are older. And the automation system is supposed to be talking amongst each other and making sure that it's one being energy efficient and then two operating the way that it should. And something we just preliminarily analyzed was what could the potential for savings be like if we recommissioned that building automation system at Milbour. And so right here you see further on we can identify exactly what these savings would be but right now annually you're looking at around 26,000 annual energy savings and through the state of Illinois we're able to guarantee those savings for 20 years and so that number right there a little under $700,000 would be the number for a 20ear savings mark. That's a contractual guarantee then. So if we're not
094achieving it Yep. So through 50 ILCS 515 is the legislation that we work under for energy performance contracting. Um if if we go to contract and say hey you are going to save $26,000 a year and you only save $22,000 a year we owe you a check for $4,000. So contractually we are obligated to guarantee those energy savings. Okay. So along with this below on the list I just have some references as well. Um, like I said, Hannah has worked with a few districts just across the river over in St. Louis. And then our internal solar team, where you see all these solar projects on the bottom, they're actually just four hours away in Indianapolis. The majority of them sit there. And so the the facilities committee had the had had our national solar developer,
095Brian Stout, drive in for that meeting a couple of weeks ago. And yeah, they would be the team that has done a lot of these solar projects for us throughout the nation. They would be the team that would be working on your guys' solar projects as well. Can I ask this isn't a weird question. So, we could own a we could buy an array that saved us like 113,000 a year, $1.3 million after incentives to do so, right? And then you could also do this uh it's on this, but you could also, you know, basically do the lease and then get a Could you combine those projects? So, could we purchase an array? Purchase an array and then we another piece of land and say that's a power purchase agreement as well and just double
096the solar capacity. Yeah, I don't see why not. Um, has anyone done it though? I don't I don't think there's any case studies where that would have been the case before. Um, one thing I will say is as far as you're talking about blending it. Something that an energy service company like us could help you with as far as a power purchase agreement is helping with the contractual agreement of that PPA to where you sign an agreement now that says, "Hey, we're going to lock in this kilowatt hour rate through this power purchase agreement." And then in 10 years once the private entity has taken up a lot of those um major incentives that they were already going to plan on taking there could be a a contract a clause in that contract that says
097we we can then sell the school district that array further down the line whether it's 10 or 15 years or after that array is is finished with the power purchase agreement. We just have we but we we use I think the last time I checked 800,000 we spend about $800,000 a year across the district on electricity, right? And I'm just trying to think of ways, you know, nowadays you can you can basically build a power plant, right? And so I'm just trying to think of ways that we can invest to to actually get rid of that cost. $100,000 a year is great. You know, it's even better $200,000 a year production, right? But, you know, how do we get there? Yeah. And I think that's where this Millburn array can definitely be upsized depending on
098what the district's appetite for something like that would be. This is the right sized array for Milbour to where it's around 40 50% of the energy production or energy usage there. And basically, when you get down to it, you're you're build by each 15 minute interval. And you don't want to overproduce at any point of that 15-inute interval. And because Milbour has such a a fairly steep drop in the summer, you don't want to be overproducing in the summer because then you're not going to get that payment that you normally would get in the school year because your usage just isn't that high. And so that's the right size array for Milbour. As far as Smiley goes, you all are kind of landlocked a little bit. And so, um, there is an opportunity to maybe
099combine some things at Smiley and look at it, but Milbourne was the most advantageous, I will say, just off of looking at the numbers. And so, that's actually a problem with our model because the most where we're actually producing the most solar electricity is when we're using the least amount of electricity at the campus. And then the the downside is because presumably we sell that back to the market, right? So, but then I'm guessing the kilowatt hour sale of that electricity in the summer isn't as much of a savings as the set off for what we pay for for like kilowatt hour. So, in the state of Illinois, you can net meter supply. Um, you cannot net meter demand. And so, that's where you do have a little bit of a discount that you're selling
100it back to the to the open market for. And that's that's why those savings drop when you are selling excess energy at that point. Yeah, that is interesting. Yeah. And when you look at the different projects, for example, like Cameron said, we could help with either a PPA or a direct purchase. So if you wanted to say direct purchase Milburn, which would produce the highest energy savings for you, but then do a PPA at a smaller array like the smiley roof, you know, we could absolutely explore that if you were to move forward with something at a a later stage in development. And on the PPA side of things, at the end of the 15 20 year life of the system, what happens to the system? So there's really three options. Um, you can either
101purchase the array normally that's either built into the contract upfront or it's a mutually agreed upon time period that you would purchase that solar array. Um, the second option would be you do another PPA with the same firm or a different firm and they continue to occupy their land. At that point, they would switch out the inverters, they would switch out the panels and they would basically have a brand new system as far as incentives go for themselves. And then you would continue doing that power purchase agreement or um they would completely deconstruct a system, reutilize other parts of it for another power purchase agreement and vacate your property as if I mean it wouldn't be as if nothing was ever there but it would be open to your use again. So that's the contract.
102Yes. Right. Last last question. I promise as you can tell I'm interested. Yeah. Exactly. Is there so one of the like one of the downsides is is that during the summer we're not we're we're generating the most but we're using the most. Could we make agreements with other entities in the area to to do offsets like that too in the summer since we're not using that energy? I don't have a direct answer for you there. I think that could be a conversation further down the line if you were to look at a community solar situation um with the city and you all. But then also a community solar would need other constituents as far as residents from the community to sign on that they would offtake power from that and then and obviously if we
103did that we just speaking out loud we want the community to benefit right I mean sure we could gouge I know Dr. pay a dollar a kilowatt hour, but I would be like maybe 99 cents a kilowatt hour. Yeah. And that that's a whole different kind of contract. Yeah. That that would have to have a lot of different funding and financing aspects to where constituents from the community would have to buy into the solar array as well. have to buy. That's what a community solar project would entail as far as um yeah to to be honest I don't know all the legalities of it if a school district wanted to put it on their own property. I've heard of school districts offtaking from certain community solar projects but never one doing a community solar themselves.
104Any other questions? Questions? No, thank you. Thank you all so much. Thank you for the opportunity. Just to add really quick, I know that you all are looking at a long range facilities plan and we heard from the staff and community surveys earlier tonight. So, we hope this is helpful information as you just consider how to move forward and we're happy to answer any questions that might come up after. Thank you. So, for this is one of those things where we're spending our next dollars, right? Spending it on a project that reduces our overall yearly spend. I just think that's where you put your money early. That's my two cents. I know it surprises you guys. Solar All right. So, we'll move on. Next up is committee reports. First is the communication committee. Miss Johnson.
105Uh the communication committee met on May 13th. Um we uh had our first discussions on um our looking at our goals, redefining them to help develop our KPIs, our key performance indicators, and then what our targets are going to be. So, we're at the beginning stages of that. We broke out to into groups to discuss what our what we thought may be key performance indicators and then when we meet in June, we're gonna uh Ethan's going to bring that together and we're going to look at them, redefine them and determine what they will be. So, we're in that phase stage right now that for the communication committee and that was primarily discussed. All right. And then we've reassigned committee chair positions. So, uh, you've got the chair for communications and Mr. Is you're on the
106communication committee moving forward. Um, next up is the education committee. Um, Mr. Dernac was the chair. Uh, the new chair will be Miss Johnson and uh, Heather Le will also be on the the education committee. Um just without Mr. Durbeck here a little summary of what was discussed in the last education was uh we they went over e-learning um and and the support for going to an e-learning uh system. Uh we talked a little bit about our ACT results. Um, in addition to some of the policies conversations, AI policies were discussed, uh, we talked about potentially looking at Collinsville for their, uh, CABC program, um, as a, uh, potential expansion of RCP program and then, uh, also talked about setting KPIs this coming August. And, uh, I'm not sure if I'm missing anything, but that's
107it. So, next up is FAC. Mr. Richtor, we met May the 13th. Uh my report is attached. Uh however, there are a couple items I'd like to just uh make you aware of that's of uh great concern. Uh in regards to the pack uh construction, we are finishing up a couple projects. However, I have some issues in regards to a couple of the uh things that have been done. One is uh we uh everybody knows we have a ditch that is basically between the uh football leers and the tennis courts. And now with our new construction from the uh entrance to the pack uh basically all the water is coming down that hill and entering into that ditch and basically filling up. It's not draining. So, uh, our architects are working on that and with
108the engineers to see what we can do in that regard. And then another issue we have that has just become an issue that I didn't think was going to be an issue, but uh, last Thursday night uh, after this uh, at halftime of the soccer game, we were evacuating the stadium because of lightning and uh, Cory Patton and myself were walking out. We were behind a gentleman that was on crutches and he ended up uh tripping on our new drainage system. So that's uh something. And then in fact he even uh uh emailed Corey the next day in that regard. So that's something we have to look at too to see if there's anything that uh we can do in that regard. So uh our next meeting is June the 10th. All right. And Mr.
109Richtor will continue to chair the committee and Mr. is joining facilities move forward. Um next is our finance committee. Um we did have a meeting this this uh this uh this past month. We reviewed our audit. So a little later in this board meeting we'll be uh approving the audit financial audit of for the past year. Um moving forward Mr. is taking the chair for finance and Mr. Richtor, you're you're still on on the on the committee. Um personnel negotiations, Mr. Huff. Yeah. Um so gosh, was this just last week? Uh we approved I think it was I think it was just last week we approved uh the most recent bid for uh our employees health insurance. Uh I think the raise was ended up 16%. 12.9 12.9 was 16 initially and then it got
110down to 12 12.9% still too high of a raise um but it was the lowest uh offered raise of the vendors that we went to there um benefits other other benefits stayed the same the only thing that would change the premium cost um and expensive personnel probably for the board the next personel meeting will be in late June maybe July for uh superintendent. Right. All right. And committee chair Mr. Huff and then I I'll join you in the personal comm um policy and governance is Muse. She wasn't able to make the meeting tonight vacation. Um but there the policies that were reviewed. We're going to be uh doing a first draft review tonight. So we'll see those and she will continue to chair the committee and Mr. R is join the committee as well. Uh
111special committees uh first up is best Miss Johnson. Uh the best committee um well we didn't meet last month. I think you did outreach in April when we did. I'm not sure when it Yeah, June 9th at 4. and Miss Johnson will continue to chair the best committee and I'll join join the committee as well. Um PTAC is one that Heather's involved in and we did have a PTAC meeting this past month um which is an annual meeting for us. It's really our chance to gather feedback from a lot of different stakeholders, teachers, and other administrators, parents, uh, students. Um, but it is it's something to help us identify things that we're working on and really set our direction, you know, and make sure that we're moving the school in the right direction. So, some
112of the things that were discussed were the surveys that were sent out and came back providing feedback to us. We spent a lot of time discussing the uh student handbook and the uh changes that are taking place in the handbook. Uh we talk through special education procedures, restraint discipline and our academic programs. Um Mr. Lev also has a conversation over coffee. Uh so that'll continue. So um moving forward uh Miss Le will be the lead for PTAC and conversation coffee and Mr. Joiner there. Last is the city of Ballon. We we did not have a meeting this past month, but we plan to have one back July 7th at 9:00. And Mr. Richtor, we believe because a lot of the work that we're doing with the city has to do with share facilities and then
113trying to uh utilize facility and spend uh jointly if there's opportunities to and uh being on facility committee it makes sense for Mr. beating that and I I'll be rejoin to support. Um so that that wraps up our committees and anything else to add to that board um on our committee selection. What if our new board member wants to just When that happens, I'll probably look to get some of my spots. Then I'll fill it to to the newer where I have at least. All right. And next is comments from visitors. Um there was a written comment uh communication to the board. Um, but I think uh we're going to have public speaking tonight, so I I won't go into the uh email conversation. Um, were there any other written communications? Okay. So, uh, that
114takes us to public comments and, uh, would anybody members of the public like to address the board at this time? Okay. Um, so, uh, if you would please address the board from the podium and state your name and the topic of comment. Um each person will have five minutes to address the board. My name is Becky. Um I am a parent of two OTS students. One graduated in 2023, one rising senior, class of 2026. Um I am a OTHS alumni myself, class of 94, as well as my husband who's here. Um, and I had written to the board, but I decided to come and and talk as well. Um, with just being this time of year, this was just on my mind and I had been contemplating this for a while. So, I just thought
115I'd come and hear him. So, um, basically, I just wanted to talk about the topic of uh, our senior our current policy regarding seniors um, having to take finals. And just kind of in light of uh all of the other districts in the region, we seem to be a week or two behind on our seniors attendance on having to take finals. Um, and I had actually written a an email to the then superintendent Darcy Benway uh back in 2023. And uh she had given me some several talking points about and given the the rationale at that time for why OTHS continues to require seniors to take finals at the end of the year, you know, with the whole student body. Um, and uh, I don't know if those rationale still align with this board or
116uh, Superintendent Shackleford, but I thought I would just kind of go through a couple of those really quick uh, just to as as discussion purposes here. Um, so one of her main comments was um, taking final exams through the spring semester better better prepares students for college. Um, and I I would argue that by the spring semester, your seniors have pretty much decided what their future plans are. They've either already been accepted to their colleges, gotten their scholarships, or if they're going a non-traditional route, they've kind of have plans for that as well. Um, and so taking the final exams in that spring semester is not as consequential, I guess, as the previous seven. um they've already like I said their their previous coursework, their GPA, all of those things have kind of been in
117consideration for their future plans at that point. And um and I I again I don't know if there are statistics out there. I haven't seen any that support, you know, or or compare stu seniors who do take their spring finals or those seniors who live in districts that have options uh to opt out of those based on attendance, GPA, class grades, those types of uh eligibility requirements that might give them an option to to not have to take a final in certain classes. um you know when we and at some point this district did not require seniors to take finals based on eligibility requirements uh when we were in school we did not have to take senior finals our spring semester um and I know several other classes I don't know when that pivoted or
118why um but I would be curious to know if you guys know what year that changed and what the rationale was um and any statist statistics that might support again kind of going back to what what what would be the rationale? What's the stat statistical reasoning as to why you know we would kind of stick with this sort of policy versus other districts in the region who have not um she did mention uh this is Dr. Dr. Benway back in 2023. Um, one of the things she had mentioned was uh that we are we stand out as a uh as a what would be designated as an exemplary um school in by the Illinois Board of Education. Um although just looking at uh doing some research, it looks like as of 2024 OTHS is not
119listed as exemplary. were listed as commendable, which I'm guessing is maybe one below exemplary. I don't know. We weren't listed there. Um, one of the ones locally that was listed as exemplary is Triad. And, um, Triad does not require their seniors to take, they have an option to opt out of their senior finals in the spring semester um, based on attendance requirements that they have less than eight days missed. Um, and then something I don't know the specifics, but basically if they're getting a certain grade in the class, they are exempt from taking finals. Um, and and again, they have been deemed by the Yeah, go ahead. One minute. Oh, okay. They've been deemed as exemplary. So I'm just basically in a nutshell I was just looking for a rationale as to why we you
120know why our policy changed at whatever point it did and you know the rationale for that uh compared to the districts in the area and you know I just think one major benefit would be incentivi incentivizing seniors to do well over their four years to work hard to be rewarded you know in that in that realm of getting the good grades and attending. So, they might have the option of being of opting out of those finals and therefore letting them, you know, maybe get out a couple days early uh as they see all of their peers and all of the other districts getting out, you know, weeks before they are. So, that's my main question is just, you know, is this being considered? Has this been discussed? And if so, kind of what what's the
121rationale? What are the thoughts of this of this board at this point? Thank you. And with public public comment, we we can't really take action. I mean, we we can hear hear your your feedback and and uh take future action, but that that's the intent. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Uh next up is our say, is there anyone else? Does that mean she gets extra minutes for all? Listen, I don't know, but here we are. Good evening everyone. My name is Raquel Williams and I have a senior who is graduating Tyler. Um, this is basically my farewell to OTHS. So, grab your tissue, Dr. Shackleford. I just wanted to say as a parent, I appreciate the opportunities to be able to speak at these meetings and just have public conversation and comment. Um,
122I want to take the time to thank everyone who has played a role in my students village. It takes a village to get it all done. My first encounter with OTS was the summer before his freshman year. As we entered the school and was met in the hallway by Mrs. Dalison, she had a big smile and asked if we needed help. She escorted us to the room where his college journey would begin with enrolling to the high school. I can't thank her enough for the time and care that she's given us, not just on that day, but many instances along the way. I wanted to congratulate her publicly on her upcoming retirement and thank her for serving us well. My son started high school fresh off of be off being home for a full year,
123navigating through the virtual learning, which was awful during the pandemic. He was nervous and not sure of what to expect. But the administrators here and especially on the Milburn campus embraced our class of 2025 with calm and ease. There were many instances where they had to pivot, adjust, adjust, learn, and grow together. So many discussions were had even in these meetings about masking, not masking, hand sanitizer, social distancing, and so much more. No one truly knew what to do, but they stuck with it and held their hands through the unknowns. Teaching is not for the faint at heart, but reserved for those who love seeing minds grow and expand beyond their wildest imaginations. Teachers led him into the worlds of science, math, literature, foreign languages, trades, and so much more without hesitation, but with insufficient
124pay. Tremendous shout out to his personal finance teacher, Jana Stevens. I wanted to thank her for teaching him that money doesn't grow in our backyard on the trees, but that through the many ways that she's shown him how to save money, how to purchase a vehicle, how to how to negotiate stocks, and so much more. his math teacher, Taran Holdner. I honestly believe that she has enhanced his love for math and provides a warm environment for him to learn more efficiently each day. Teaching is a true work of heart and I thank each teacher who has come alongside him and fanned his flame to soar. As we have navigated through these past four years, we which have gone by so quickly, we can't help but to mention some of the angels who have walked out
125this life journey a little closer with us. And just fitting, Dr. Melissa Augusta Sunheims is more than our band director. She has been a constant presence who is in tune with each of her students. Her fearless leadership is the driving force behind the success of our worldrenowned marching panthers. Not only does this hard work show when they perform and travel in those raggedy yellow buses to competitions, and I'm usually on those buses with them, but at the end of it all, she teaches them how to lead, how to be good people, and how to be of service to others. She lives the example and challenges them to grow daily. and I can't thank her enough. Dr. G, for the special stamps that you place on the hearts of our students and our parents that you
126served over the years. Our family will never forget your sacrifices and love that you show. Mr. Carter, Mr. Murphy, and Mr. Langam is a force to be reckoned with in band. The many hours they put into our band program is unmatched. I appreciate them for growing with our students as they grow in their playing and love for music. As I glean in often because I'm here probably as much as you all are, it's not foreign to see those special moments when they nod at them and share a fist bump which assures them that they can do anything that they desire to do. One minute. Okay, I I I got to get to her. Dr. Beth Shackleford, you stepped into the role of superintendent with many unknowns. You held your head up regardless of the noise
127that comes with a position such as yours. Trust the process and know that your best is all that you can give. Trust your heart and know that every student plays a role in your life journey as well. lean into their thoughts, ideas and dreams to ensure ensure that they are afforded the best opportunity opportunities available them to them. You may not cross every tea or dot every eye, but take it all in, reset, and give yourself grace often. Lastly, to the parents who lost students during our four years, I honor you and I stand with you as you go through the many stages and feelings of grief. I pray that as you remember your children that you know that you have a community behind you sending you love, prayers, and support daily. I could never
128say that I know how you feel. But you're not alone in this. To the to the ones that I see in the community, thank you still for being present even though you want to fade to the background. No matter what, keep their memory alive in the stories that you share. Encourage those that you can and know that they are proud of you. [Applause] Uh, would anybody else? I'll be quick. Good evening. Um, Andy Van. Um, I have two daughters in the high school. I'll soon be one here in about a week. Um, I got most like most of the questions. Thanks Mr. Kat for talking before. It's really more just a request around the new electronic policy and it's you know you ask the parents to share you know our responses back is can we
129can we please share the back the results of that to the parents so we know whether or not what we provided what we said was that part of the thought process was it not was a waste of my time I mean I just you know it's have that open communication back to us with from really just the parents the teachers we all know what the students are going to say no matter what so I'm not not so concerned about that, but just, you know, kind of be a little bit more open. Um, my only concern in the space really is I feel like we're slowly eroding the power of the teacher. You know, it's I I feel like the classroom is kind of the teacher space, right? One of one of the biggest things they
130talked about today up on that slide was space, space, classroom space, space. I mean, I I feel like the classroom space is the teacher space. That's their kingdom. That's their domain. And we're slowly creating more and more policies up at a higher level that takes more and more of that creativity and ability away from teachers. And maybe most teachers want the this universal policy of one, but there might be some of those teachers that use situations where some of those devices may be important or not. I don't know, but we don't know if we're not sharing that information out to the rest of the community. So that's just the request. And thank you. Thank you. Anybody else? Okay. Uh that will conclude public comment. Um next up is our consent agenda agenda. I've got a
131motion approve this consent agenda items in their entirety, including but not limited to prior meeting minutes, financial reports, payment of bills, freedom of information act request, and the disposal of obsolete equipment. So second I Richtor I Johnson I Brown I Okay, that concludes the consent agenda. In old business, we don't have any. So we'll move on to new business. Um first up is the uh discipline performance dismissal personnel. So a motion to approve the appointment compensation discipline performance dismissal personnel items as presented. So moved second I Victor I Johnson I Next is a motion to approve the pay applications for construction projects. So moved second roll call RTOR I Johnson I H I Brown I um next is let's start with the discussion um but we have a uh a security office project um that
132recently went out for bid. I think the bid just came back and um I think we were budgeted for $50,000 something like that. I think the uh the bid one bid because I think only one contractor bid on the project but it was about 300% the budget around $150,000. So I think let's let's talk about this one. I would like to speak first on this. Sure. U Brian and Mandy, I'm very disappointed in what transpired during this project that we had planned for this summer. Uh everything seemed to start off great as far as uh what we had planned and then you took the initiative to go out to Milburn. Rightfully so. Got no problems with that. That's great that you did that. Then you you've got an earful from everybody that had a that
133had some uh interest in the project. However, none of that that information got back to us. You never reported back to us in in all that uh information that you received and then you went ahead and we submitted the bid with all of that uh information that we had no idea what it was. Can you tell me what what happened there? Um it was the the project really um we when we went out and met with them I I I thought I had this scope wrong when I did the budget um when we did the budget we came up with the line item we didn't have drawings or anything like that at the time I thought it was just one security window when we met with your u your security director and staff it would
134their intention was that that window would be in and then reception window also. Um so we put those in the drawings. We're trying to get the project out the bid um so that it can be done over the summer and that's where we should have we should have come back. I I don't have an excuse for it. It's like we're moving fast. Every time that something like that happens, we should be coming back to you. In this case, it got it got away from us. Thank you very much. I mean, that's uh but at the same time, what you've done to us now is we basically have to table this project. We we're going to end up having to put it off till next year. So, uh you know, I've been dealing with FGM for
13522 years and uh I've always bragged to this board about you guys on on your bids and everything. and you've always done wonderful by us and this time it just came back as a shock and then to find out that stuff was bidded on that we didn't even know about would just dumbfounding. So I'll I'll talk to you afterwards but I just want you to stay. Thank you. Yes, please. Thanks. communication breakdowns happen you know as we move forward but let's try to keep channel communication channels open and uh keep everybody on the same page um I assume you know with $100,000 over the budget I assume we want to table this and kind of make sure we're scope we can have conversations about the scope you know where it started when you did that
136preliminary approval of up $50,000. Right now, we're seeing that, you know, as the scope expanded, um, we can kind of work with FGM and talk about that scope because the goal here is secure entrance. Okay? So, we can see where there's opportunities to narrow the scope to where we still achieve that goal. So, if there's anything beyond that goal that's achieved, that may not be financially responsible for us. But I think we can revisit that to see a way that we can achieve that perhaps at a at a lower price point or at least know that when you're approving, you know, uh how much is possible for the project. With all the big projects we've had over the past couple years, we're pretty tight tight on budget in terms of uh what we can spend
137on facilities and capital projects. So every $100,000 counts for us. It's a it's a tough one for us to move forward on. We just need to get it right. I mean, that's that's the biggest thing is we want All right. So, we'll table this. Uh it's definitely still something we want to do. We just got to figure out how and when. Um All right. Next up is a uh landscape project at uh at Milberg. And I'll just let's let's discuss this one as well. It's $94,000 $95,000. Uh what what what's what is in this project? I guess what it is is uh basically rock that was originally in uh the islands out there, but it basically uh dirt has grown over and grass and weeds and what have you grown over all the islands as
138uh and it's just basically an eyesore. What comes out to the island? You mean the entry, the parking lot, the entries, the and the parking lots and everything. Yeah, I was I saw that does look terrible, but it doesn't look like $4,000. Terrible to me. Yeah. Did we What was our budget? You approved last night. So, the condition of rock is is there is it just rock or is there just rock? No way. Anything you want to add to that, but in the parking lot where the islands are, it's just rocks. So, putting some plantings up at the entrance of the school, but then the islands replacing any mulch or dirt and putting the rock in. So rellandscaping the front with lower bushes lower bushes that we you know only grow about like a foot
139tall security had you know play in being able to see out. So very low growing um shrubs and things of that nature and I would imagine low maintenance. Yes. Yeah. And plants that are hardy to hot summers and things of that nature. with um with the survey that you just showed us beautifification of Mil from our staff was was pretty was the last door last u 94,000 I'm I'm not going to 94,000 um for that um I know we budgeted 100,000 I'm sorry last month How many bits real quick? Yeah. Um there are three bits. And that was the lowest one. 94. Yeah. The lowest. Then followed by 1764 and 155. The lowest by a lot. The one keep in mind was that the reoccurring really trying to get away from I'm not saying that.
140Yeah. I don't think it was reoccurring expense because we weren't doing it. We weren't I don't think we were redoing it. They were for a period of time and then it's just been maintenance because now weeds are growing over it. It stopped uh I I believe if I'm remembering correctly, Tom Goodrich shared that in anticipation of this rock because we've been talking about it for however long, he's he didn't invest in the mulch because mulch is a pretty expensive annual cost as well. Yes, it is. And then when the board approved last month, he didn't approve he didn't purchase any for this spring for that reason. Any comments or feedback from board members? Okay. Um All right. I'm going to make a motion to approve the bid for the Milbour Landscape Project to Ideal Landscape
141Management in the amount of $94,930. Second. You make the motion. Huff. No. No. Rtor. Hi. Johnson. No. Brown. Hi. Motion fails. Um, so with that, do do we want to continue to pursue landscape options at a lower cost or move in a different direction? We just got I think we I mean I don't know does it hurt to put it out again or change the scope of what you're doing? No. Um, next item is a motion to approve future projects wrecked commended by the facilities committee. Um, looks like there's three of them. We can discuss these as well. We got decals for the activity bus, a wait room equipment, and the smiley marquee screen for replacement. may have questions on on these items. Is the marquee broken or we just it's just real hope. It's
142the feedback that people aren't able to see how it reads during the day and that student council is looking to make a donation. I mean, they can't pay, you know, but they would like to contribute $6,000 as their class gift. That's the other piece that came after the feedback um from just some community members who had who had emailed about they're not able to on that screen. Yeah. And Mr. Patton's not here, but I know the weight equipment. He did an assessment of the our entire conference, I think, and our weight room is pretty much significantly lacking compared to most of the all the other schools in our conference. Um, he came up with different options. I think there was like a $50,000 option which was replacing some things. There was a $100,000 option which
143was kind of getting us more in line with the other schools and then there was a 200 $150,000 attached in board as part of this. So uh the committee I think ended up at the $100,000 option to try to catch up with other conference which gives us the equipment but maybe not the most expensive. Right. So for for me you know sort of you know I'd like to see projects that are either you know, savings projects. It doesn't have, you know, when you're looking at solar arrays, you're talking about seven figure projects, but you know, we got a $249,000 project that would have a guaranteed savings for the district over 20 years, right? I want to see those projects sort of pushed to the front uh of the spend and then we can evaluate some
144of these other So, in the meantime, we're going to ignore our students. I'm not the students, but most students probably aren't using actually it's part of classes. And just to go back to um retreat, I'm not saying you know with what the appropriate level is here, but the reason that the projects that came to came to you that again the you know the board had approved the security which we'll revisit um and and per and approved some last week but the items that the board was interested in investing in now are things that would not be changed as a result of the full facilities analysis that will be done in December which is why the marquee is a place of it. The Milbourne landscaping is a piece of it. The the a piece of it,
145the auditorium assessment for repair and making the lights work in there is a piece of it. Why the weights are a piece of it because these are places where we're behind that regardless of where we ended our facilities assessment um that need does not lessen. Just to share that part too that we had talked about at um retreat. So, so Dr. This is what So what you're saying is this is where we should spend the money. Now I think I think that some level of investment in this equipment is important. It it has an educational nexus to it. Um and we are not on par with uh equivalent districts. Yeah. And the marquee I think Dr. shackle. You know, ours is a little blurry and this would be an upgrade to that. Um, the activity
146bus decals, the decals are from when our original colors were royal blue and gold and to top it off, they're all shredded up. Right. So, I guess the question here is, does anybody have Are we push back on all three items? push back on one of the three items. We can make a motion to approve two and not three. We can make a motion to approve one and not all three. Well, if Dr. Jackford, you feel like this is important for the students education, right? Or not meeting, then that's that's fine with me. I'd like to make a motion we approve all three. Hi, Richtor. Hi, Johnson. I Hi, and Brown. Hi. Okay, motion passes. Um, the next one we're going to table. Um, but we'll discuss it for a moment as well. There's property
147at the school road. I think it's a board to discuss this a little bit. Um it's it's property that's not buildable. It's it's it's not property that we can put a building on. It's um there's access issues from the uh the road um being only 30 foot wide on the frontage and then there's uh 95% of it is in flooding. So the best use for the property is as a like recreational land or you know something like that. So it's a liability issue. Correct. So, I think as a group we felt that, you know, the best thing to do is sell this to the city and that's what we're uh trying to prepare to do. I think we were close to having documentation. It should be in tomorrow, but um there was document documentation presented
148that we need to look, our legal team has to look over and we don't need to rush it. So, we can um when when it gets finalized, we can bring it to the board. you have a special board meeting that you're having on the 31st in the morning and we can make that an actionable item, the only actionable item at that board meeting before I know most of it will be closed session for you all, but we could add that there. So, I think we're just waiting on contracts to be finalized. Um, and then there is some urgency on the city side. I think the city wants to buy this or do something at least here um right away or purchase uh because they need to get to work on repairing some sewer lines. So,
149as soon as we can get to we need to. Um, next is a motion to approve trips in excess of 200 miles. So moved. Second. Roll call. Richtor. I, Johnson. I, I. And Brett. I. Uh, next is a motion to approve the 2526 OTHS student handbook. Second. All in favor? Any oppose? Motion passes. Next is a motion to approve the IHSA membership renewal. These are previous roll call. Second. All in favor? Motion passes. Uh next is a motion to approve the participation ISABO conference for the school board members. Prior roll call. Didn't we not go to the conference this year? Want to save money? I don't typically go. So I don't and that's not that's not because that's because I have a family commitment usually on that weekend every weekend. So I think it's probably
150I don't think you had a motion. I did a motion. Yeah, I did a motion. So, we need a second. Second. Uh, all in favor? I post. No. Motion passes. Uh, motion to approve the audit for a Fallon Township High School District 203 for the fiscal year ended June 30th, 2024 as conducted by Dennis Rose and Associates using prior So, second. All in favor? I oppose. Motion passes. Um, next are board policies. These are for a first reading. Next month, we'd be doing a second reading and passing these into the policy. Um, and last is a discussion on SRO services. Uh, if you want to explain that. Sure. So um we have been offered a an expansion. So right now we have an SRO here with Officer Krug and Officer Krue then um on an
151as needed basis will visit Milg. Okay. Um for $10,000 annually total. Uh the city is offering an SRO to us. So our take keep our current contract as it is. Um the agreement for next year would have an additional $10,000 on it that would provide us an SRO who is primarily housed at the Milbourne campus. Um you know we've had a lot of focus on on security and that type of support. It's a lot of bang for your buck. Um that person then would push out. So if Officer Krug is out for a day that SRO would come over to the Smiley campus. Um there's also a possibility, this is part of the reason why it's so inexpensive, if that if that that SRO was needed at any of our um community feeder districts, that
152SRO would be called there. They don't anticipate that would be um a lot of time, but we don't know that. It would be dependent on need. Um but I think it's a tremendous benefit for a very small investment. There's nothing for the board to approve, by the way, at this time, but if the board's in favor of moving forward with this, I'll get back in touch with Chief Brighamin and let him know to draw the intergovernmental agreement that reflects this addition. I Yeah, right. Okay. And I'll get in touch with Chief Brigamman to get that added. You'll probably see that in the June meeting. I think it's typically when we annually review that agreement. that kind of concludes business for the day. So our next board meeting will be June 26 month and uh in
153the meeting we look to cover liability insurance renewal extracurricular assignment uh bank depositors treasur authorizations uh foyer officers availing wage resolutions ISB delegates uh designation interest for the end of the year and federal impact aid agency and student a lot for next month. Um, Memorial Day is coming up. No school Monday. Final exams are next week. Last day of schools next week. Uh, graduation's next weekend. And summer breaks about to begin. So, motion to adjourn regular meeting of the board of education. So, move. Second. All in favor? I.