Regular Meeting - Apr 14 2026

001All right, you're good. All right, thank you, Michael. Um all right, good afternoon good evening, everybody. The time is now 7:03. Um let's call this meeting to order. Playing, can you please call the roll? Arthur Jackson Here. Ross Jernigan Here. Sollie Here. Ford Here. Douglas Here. Kent is absent. Hammond Here. We have Foster. Before we have public comment, comment, we're going to start with Brenna Connor. Good evening. My name is Brenna Connor and I'm a parent of a first grade student at Maywood Elementary. Thanks for the opportunity to speak tonight. I'm here to raise a concern that a growing number of families in the district share and ask our board to take some concrete steps in response. My concern is about how much time our elementary school children are spending on iPads and technology devices

002during the school day. In fact, last week a petition calling for systematic reform at the district level here in D97 garnered 655 parent signatures with children in the district or with children who will be in the district in the coming years. This number tells you that the concern is widespread and urgent. The research in this area is clear. Excessive screen time hinders cognitive development, reduces memory retention, impedes social development, and is linked to increased anxiety and depression among young users. And these findings are backed by the American Academy of Pediatrics as well as Common Sense Media to others. However, here in the US, students average 98 minutes of screen time during school the school day. A March 2026 New York Times investigation um that this is not meaningfully improving academic performance. And our national reading

003test scores bear that out. So, the 2024 Nation's Report Card reading test scores show decline across reading scores across every state in the US. And this is on top of declines from 2022. Today, one in three eighth graders now read below the basic level. And this is the highest percentage ever reported. The states that have the strongest reading outcomes are those that have maintained low-tech and book-centered approaches. Education technology is a fast-moving national conversation, and I would like to know where our district stands. And how this research is being factored into the 2026 and 2027 school year. I would like to respectfully share a few specific asks as it relates to this topic. The first is to restrict screen time on school-issued devices so that our elementary students are spending no more than 15 minutes

004per day on a device. I would also ask that devices are banned during free time. I would like to ask for an audit of current usage by grade level so we can establish a baseline and measure progress against that. And lastly, I would like to ask that families receive weekly screen time reports by their grade level, by their classroom, and that individual students so that parents can understand device usage happening in in their grade at home, and what their specific student is doing individually. These are concrete and achievable steps that other districts are taking in other states. And I would like to see the same steps taken here in Oak Park. Thank you. Thank you. Laura Johnson. Good evening. I am Laura Johnson. I am mom to two boys, uh and Lincoln. Uh for six

005years I have been increasingly concerned about screen addiction for my whole family. I had a fully formed frontal lobe by the time I was 10, by the first grade, so. In 2020, the year we all lived online, District 97 handed out iPads to all students, right down to our little kindergartners. Since the global pandemic, I've been waiting for the district to pull back and re-evaluate use of digital learning. I'm here tonight to invite the District 97 board to engage in a meaningful community discussion, re-evaluation of the role screens play in our children's education. So, a few questions I think are critical to this discussion. Since I'm going to do a beautiful job highlighting the research and the requests, we would like district data on screen use. How much time on average per day are students

006spending on each core subject on devices versus the analog learning? Does this vary from class to class, from grade level to grade level? Are there norms or expectations per grade level? And why are we allowing our screens to be used as rewards for PBIS and during free time when we're so strict about food? No pizza parties, but why do we get the board building parties where kids can hang out on their iPads all of the time? As a community and as a district, how can we better support teachers in shifting away from iPad use? How are teachers taught to use technology in the classroom? Is it supposed to augment learning, or is it the primary means of education? How pressured do teachers feel to incorporate more apps and more learning platforms? Some of these questions

007may be coming from conversations I've had with district educators. How are tech boundaries created and enforced from IT standpoint? Why are students still able to go and have a burrito when on school park? I'm not even entirely sure what that means. What criteria define a website as educational versus being blocked? Why do we have abundant access to YouTube [clears throat] during the school day? Would parent training be valuable? Children learn to outsource these parental controls before we even figure them out. Can we do a better job publicizing resources that the district already has, such as the Securely platform, which as I've connected with dozens and dozens of families I'm finding no one knew it existed. Um, how can we encourage students and families to be more responsible with personal devices? How can we equip teachers

008with policies to remove these distractions? Um, analog watches and smartphones are problematic even in the elementary school years, so we need policies that back up teachers in being able to control these distractions. Um, to that I'm going to be partnering with Smartphones on Hold, which is another local organization, um, to make sure that's part of this community conversation. So, we don't know why iPads were handed out even to kindergartners in 2020 during a global pandemic. Why are we still doing it 6 years later in spite of what science is showing us? My concerns aren't unique to my family's experience. Um, as Brett talked about, we've connected with literally hundreds of people who are saying, "Yes, guys, I have these same concerns. Ask these questions." Um, you know, we're having these conversations now. Showing it's in

009the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal every week. It's in the education publications. It's in science literature. So, we want to have these same conversations here in the park and have a a critical look at what we're doing in a community conversation to move forward. So, Screen Sanity Park really looks forward to working with District 27 to help make improvements to them for all our children. And if you would like, this is the petition as of 12:15 today, it has grown by about 100 since then. So, would anybody like this? Thank you very much. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Dr. Lisa Pelton? Pelton, you got it. Thanks. All right. My name is Lisa Pelton, and I want to talk to you about the eighth grade class trip to Washington, D.C. And

010I would like to start by sharing a new term with you. Knowing that you are all as a village and we're all committed to the idea of equity. Um the term and sometimes having a term for something helps make it easier to identify when you see it. So, the term is schmequity. This sounds and looks like equity from a distance, but when you get up close, you realize it's actually the opposite. The National Equity Project explains that equity in our schools looks like ensuring equally high outcomes for all participants in our educational system. Schmequity is when we give up on that high outcome, and we lower the bar for everyone and say we're doing it for equity. I'm worried that we may have slipped into a schmequity approach with the eighth grade class trip. I

011am grateful that the district has collected data on how these students have participated in the class trip and broken it down by demographics. We need these numbers to hold ourselves accountable for equity. When we see in the data an indication that cost might limit some children's access to the trip, we face a choice. The equitable choice would be to keep the high outcome and work as a community to raise money so that all the kids who want to can go to D.C. The schmequity approach would be to lower the bar and say it's more equitable to just go someplace like, say, Moses. Now, some people might say a trip is a trip. The whole point of the eighth grade class trip is to get the kids out of town away from their parents for a

012weekend. It doesn't matter where they go. But where they go actually is a huge equity issue. Democracy depends on an informed and engaged citizen. As parents and school board members, the D97 staff and our community, we have a responsibility to ensure every D97 student understands how our government is supposed to work and how they can participate in making it a more just system. We know our country was founded with the words all men are created equal. And yet it's continuing continually falling short of this ideal. Progress has only come when ordinary people have fought for it. All of our students should stand in the footsteps where a million men marched. They should see their rights outlined in the Bill of Rights and witness the devastating human cost of a war our government lied to its

013people about. Given the anti-democratic tendencies of our current administration, equity demands that every student knows how to make their voice heard. The truth is all our children deserve to be inspired by a trip to our nation's capital. If the district decides not to go to DC, then only some of our students will have that experience. That path might be easier, but let's not kid ourselves and call it equity. I stand before you today because I want my 13-year-old son to experience DC with all of his classmates. They will all benefit from hearing from each other's unique perspectives on the foundation of our country. I'm doing my part. I'm teaming up with other parents to fundraise and ensure every kid who wants to go on this trip can be there. I ask for your support. I

014join Join our efforts. Encourage others. Reject [clears throat] schmequity arguments and push the district leadership to connect to ensure all children have access to our government. This should be a community-wide effort and the district should be leading it. And finally, I encourage you to increase the funding that the district allocates for this trip. It's the equitable thing to do. Thank you. That concludes our public comment for this evening. Uh next up we have 6.1 transformation goal area of state. Oh, if you could give your comment if you have comments that you would like to leave behind you can do Michael, do you need more chairs? Yeah, I'm thinking I'll bring I'll bring these up. And we have All right. Um thank you for coming today. Last time we talked uh so 2 weeks ago we

015talked about the master facility and kind of presented what we're looking for and recommendations and all of that work we've done. Reminder of that process. So, today I'm going to walk through just a reminder of where we left off last meeting and then the last part of this section would be really talking about the financial stuff. Rob will go through the projections and conversation there and then Elizabeth Crystal and we'll we'll talk a little bit about the options and fundings and those things. So, and then a lot of questions with the idea I'll go through next steps what we talked about when we left last meeting. But, what we're looking for or what we're looking for at the April 8th meeting. So. And then Jennifer will jump in So, we we left and walked through

016everything. The recommendation was recommendation C for our one, two, and three in the first in the 10 years. Focus on priority one and two in the first five years, and then priority three in years six through 10. Right? And then that total is between those as well, about $84 million. There are a number of considerations that we talked about. Um additional we'll talk in a second. Elevators, um and then we have a solar RFP as well. Um so as part of that recommendation from FAC, we discussed last time, was LED lighting to be included and uh throughout this process cuz it's A, there's change in the law in Illinois that you need to make that change position for that which can provide some uh the current light bulbs that we would have. Um and it

017makes sense cuz it's in all of our work spaces. This is low hanging task force or it's low hanging fruit. It makes more sense. Uh and then elevators was the other uh recommendation that we talked about uh with FAC. That would be a recommendation to the board and the district to uh move forward with the last two buildings that do not have elevators for a number of accessibility and access issues. So, those two are there. So, those are add-ons and then next week we are next board meeting will also include the solar RFP results and recommendation to the board as part of all of this. Uh and that will go through like what's the cost over the 25-30 years, what's the payback, what's the potential offset, all of those things. Um but we're looking at

018that cost of all four buildings from the proposals and all of I can I can you now all of the vendors did supply a proposal for all four buildings and it does look like it would make sense to do all four of them rather than just the two larger ones. Again, there was no structural and we'll talk more about that. Um and that's to be a route a 1.5. Again, just depending on what comes back from some of the structural work that would need to be done. But again, we'll go into that later. So, the recommendations are 1, 2, and 3 and then these three items. Which totals about 91 million. And then I'll show you those numbers. Um and then we did not have a recommendation at this time of AC, but what we

019heard at the last board meeting was to build out what would that look like if we were to do that. What are some funding options? So, that's another share as well tonight of what that would look like for a decision for that. All right. And I talked about this again. This was on the financial and provided us options. Um and then we would come back next week looking for it like, "Here's the approval for the master facility plan." And then whatever that dollar amount is with that approval over the next 10 years. All right. Okay, we'll turn it over if there are no questions. Thank you very much for your time, sir. Robert, you're going first, right? Yes. Is the library separate? Is it a new Is it combined as one? Uh no, it's I

020have two of them in there. So, um so first of all, what the Board of Education is doing right now is at pinnacle best practices. And very few districts do this. They're lining up your long-term capital decisions with your long-term financial projections with within within your debt structure and and and and what options you have available there. This is exactly how it's supposed to be done. So So So what you're doing now is great. And And the ultimate objective, I believe, is to find the sweet spot that gives you as much as you can with the capital without even without you know, challenging the current long-term financial condition of the district and recognizing that some or you know, there may be some funds that might you might want to throw at this to do you

021know, to create the capital needs that you are address the capital needs that you have. So So what I the portion I'm going to talk about is the district's financial projections. And normally, uh when I do projections, I go out budget year let's 5 years, but the board asked me to go out 9 years, which I think is makes sense because the capital is long-term decision. So Just briefly to talk about the history of the district. Okay. Um you can see that So this is a comparison excluding 160 expenditures including excluding capital investment. This is revenues minus expenditures. So the zero bar is revenues equaling expenditures in a given year. So in 2017, the district ran a slight deficit. And then in 2018, the district began to receive the proceeds of the referendum. And 2018

022and 19 are skewed because of the way the county distributes a successful referendum. They force a lot of money into the first year that would have come in the second year. So those kind of blend together, but the important point to note is that since 2018, the district has done a very good job and has made some very tough decisions to ensure that it ran operating surpluses. So operating surpluses every year since the referendum passed. >> The other area of operations that in fact impacts fund balances and financial position is capital investment. So, the district invested a little over $100 million between 2017 and 2025. In the next slide, we'll kind of talk about how that was funded in the past. So, so cumulatively, if you exclude capital investment, revenues have exceeded expenditures by $62

023million. The district issued at the very beginning of the projections $6 million of non-referendum bonds, which are no longer are outstanding. And they issued $57.5 million with the referendum bonds. So, beyond a balanced budget, the district improved its financial position by $125.5 million. In terms of sources, in terms of uses, $102.3 million went towards capital. And the district used the remaining money, $23.2, to increase fund balance reserves. So, consequently, um the district's fund balance reserves have have increased from a little over 20 million before the to uh about $50 million in 2025. The one of the things that I I I mentioned when we do projections annually is the district also has a very unique fund balance Target. Okay. I I I I wanted to clarify something on your last slide, but I'm waiting till

024then. Okay. All right. Cuz I think it's not quite. It's It suggests something that's not like operating. That's Go ahead. You go ahead. But re- remind me. Okay. Um so, um so the district has a unique fund balance policy where it has a minimum and a maximum. So, it it basically works that if fund balance reserves go below 90 days, the board of education needs to consider some action to bring it over 90 days, which could include going to referendum, which it did when it got, you know, at or below it in 2017, or making cuts that may or may not impact student learning, but but but try to take action to stay above the 90 days. And then conversely, it has a maximum of 180 days, whereas if fund balances get above that, the

025district looks at things like abating taxes, making abatements. So, um and this is and and coincidentally or not coincidentally, this aligns with ISBE's um financial profile score. Because if a school district is above 180 days, they get the highest financial profile score uh in that specific part of the rubric. And if it's below 90 days, they get the lowest financial profile score. Um in comparison to our comp districts, um which we've identified collectively and through four, um Oak Park has has almost the lowest fund balance reserves in terms of days of reserves. So, the financial forecast I'll I'll start with on the revenue side. So, most school districts, almost all school districts, are under the belief that revenue growth is going to slow significantly over the next 5 or 6 years for a couple of

026reasons. First of all, your major source of revenues is real estate taxes, and that can only grow at 5% or the rate of inflation, whichever is less. So, over the last few years, that has averaged over 4% to 5% um combined with with with higher than average other years, um have have had revenues grow at historically high levels. CPI has decreased. So, when the Board of Education approves its levy in December of '26, the CPI is 2.7% increase. That's the maximum. If the board decides to go there, then they can increase um revenues. And it's trending right now 2.3 to 2.4%. There was a spike up with what's going on now, but um prior to that, it was 2.3%. So, your your largest source of revenues is going to grow at close to half the

027percentage increase as it has over the last few years, more than likely. This district, besides besides real estate taxes, this district is not getting help from the state and federal government to to fund your school. Uh your evidence-based funding, which increases every year but one $300 million a year, your district gets about $50,000. So, you get almost no evidence-based funding, which is the major state source of revenues. Interest earnings are likely to decline as the Federal Reserve lowers rates, and state and federal grants will be relatively flat. The state froze their grants this year, and your district doesn't get much grants relative to your budget anyway. So, collectively, we're projecting your revenues to grow 2.2% annually um over the next 9 years. On the expenditure side, um obviously this is predicated on assumptions, but we

028have base salary growth at 1% above CPI. We have staff size um projected to decrease 23 and 1/2 in FY '27. We have salaries after FY '27 to be partially offset by uh the average of 10 teachers retiring and being replaced by lower uh lower-cost teachers. Health insurance uh Crystal just notified it's going up 16% next year. So that's been a shock to a lot of school districts. So that's put into our projections now that we know that we can revise that number and we're projecting 8% annually thereafter. Our district cost will increase $200 a year that's what it's been doing over the last several years. And then we also have in this projection that the district's going to spend $2 million annually of the operating budget on building maintenance type of projects. So So

029this this these projections do not include any major capital work that Michael was talking about but it does have embedded in every year's budget $2 million for building maintenance type projects. $1 million a year on technology and other equipment and all other expenses are increasing at the presumed rate of inflation which is 2.3%. So collectively expenses are projected to increase 3.3% a year which would be a good number but for the fact that revenue growth is projected to be lower. So mathematically if expenses are growing faster than revenues this line is going to trend downward and that's exactly what would happen if these projections hold true. If the projections hold true the district will still incur surpluses for the next this this budget year and the next four years uh through 2030 but starting in

0302001 the district will start spending and the deficit spending will increase. Now this is a nine-year projection and presumably between now and then action will be taken to try to line up expense growth and revenue growth but this is if nothing changes this will happen. And then in terms of how it would impact fund balances and again these fund balances assume $2 million annual commitment towards capital but that's it. Fund balances would drop from 159 days of reserves to 122 days of reserves as the surpluses will then be uh, which which will have fund balances grow will then be uh, followed by deficits which will have fund balances decline. The district will still be between its 90 and 180 day board policy targets. Um, but but it would be towards the lower half. And and

031one point I want to make about that is at the four meetings that I attend all four meetings, um, the preference for the majority of four meetings is if possible to strive try to stay in the upper half of that 90 to 100 day 80 day uh, range. So So now this is this is where this starts to all all three of these pieces start to intersect. So without using fund balance reserves for capital investment beyond the 2 million a year, the district's projected 122 days of fund balance by June 30, 2031. The district's is projected to spend at that time about $440,000 per day. So for every $4.4 million the Board of Education wants to commit for the capital fund balances that the board wants to commit towards capital projects that Michael brought forward,

032that will draw down fund balance reserves by about 10 days. So 122 days will be 112 days, etc. So So that's that's just a good uh, back of the envelope thing to know. Every $4.5 million or so brings down your fund balance reserves by about 10 days um, in 2031. And is this is this current thing that you put on? Is this Is this the Is this the >> Correct. Yeah. And and so this is So right now, um, the the current track recommendation C1, um, is is looking to generate what's in total? Just under 92. 92 about 92 million dollars. So, um, so if the district was to embark on all of C1, it would then figure out how much of the fund balance reserves it wants to tap into. And then when Elizabeth

033speaks, then they'll look at what budgetary options do we have to make up the difference and how that how will that impact everything. Um, with Then that 90 that the 20 million is not separate, right? It's within the number. Within the 92 million dollars, uh, the district is identifying approximately 23 million dollars of projects which are considered health, life, safety items, which means they're essentially violations of of of of code and they're needed for the health and safety of the kids and to keep the building safe essentially. Um, the ability to borrow those is not going to be able to but the ability to borrow that type of bond has has no limit relative to the other types of bonds. So, it's good to know what that number looks like. Um, in terms of recommendations,

034this is the final slide. Um, primary recommendations are one, to make budget budgetary decisions to close the 1.1% gap in the growth of expenditures versus revenues. Um, issue bonds to fund a portion of the district's and and portion is to be anything. A portion of the district's future capital investment with the goal of maintaining fund balances and fund balance reserves at the upper end of the fund balance target. And they continue to monitor as things happen quickly as we know. Um, continue to monitor financial projections and adjust decisions accordingly because the capital is in phases. So, so all the phases essentially don't have to be identified right away. You could complete the first phase phase. See how the dust settles in of what happens in Springfield and Washington, etc. And then decide what you want

035to do beyond that. Holly, did you want to say something before we go to Before you go, so a couple things. For actually would like us to consider a policy to go up to 270 days and be operating over that 180 as opposed to between 90 and 180. Then there was one section there where it said um >> [clears throat] >> cumulative revenues exceeded expenses by 62 million, which makes it sound like we were keeping extra money. But the reason the 62 million existed was because all the taxes became due. It It It It was also And go to the next page. It was also It was also uh It was also part of the strategy to do capital investment without issuing any And that's what I was going to say. And then also to

036spend $5 million a year instead of $2 million a year to do the capital investment. Right. out of fund balance. Right. So so you're one of the few districts in Illinois that has no referendum debt outstanding. Right. And the $6 million that was bond proceeds that were non-referendum was the Holmes expansion. And then the other bond proceeds were used for Lincoln, Longfellow, ADA compliance, life safety, some of the HVAC, and libraries. That was all. I just wanted to clarify what this page was. So it kind of makes it sound like we like we went to $125 million. No. It It It It was It was a It was a design to address capital improvement. >> Yeah. Can I clarify Holly, when you say raise to 70, are they is uh the board recommending that we

037still leave the amount at 90 or is it also raised that high? They would rather have us operate to 180 and 270. But also just recognizing that we had to borrow money when the tax dollars didn't come in this time, we would have had the 270. And that would be great. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Sure. I I gave you both too because the numbers get small in case you wanted to write notes or something. Sorry for the killed trees. Thank you. We're fine with I think we were talking about that last week. If we If we just get digital that's fine. Thank you. So, here is where um Michael and Laura from recommendations C1 um the facilities committee, which is a total of 92 million of projects over 10 years. Um so, if we look

038at the top, the uses of funds, we've got the priority one and within those priority one projects, 23.3 million of health life safety projects is included. So, those are getting done over the first 5 years. And then priority two projects are also getting done [clears throat] uh by 2030. Priority three go uh summer 2031 to 2035. And then the elevators are 1.6 million done over 27 and 28. LED lighting 1.5 million in summer 27. And then the solar panels also in summer 27. So, you can see the totals for each year. So, what we did then is look at the sources of funds. And as Rob mentioned in his presentation, uh starting with fiscal year uh '27, we're looking at 2 million a year being spent on capital. Then we've got D-debt bonds. Those are

039bonds subject to the debt service extension base. They're part of the tax cap. The same type of bonds were shown in Rob's presentation going back to that 6 million 10 years ago. And Holly also mentioned the district has not issued capital improvement bonds for many years. So, that part of the tax rate has gone down. But that um D-debt bonds are limited to payments of 4.6 million a year that grows by CPI. So, there is a limitation there. Uh the health life safety bonds, those can be paid with uh a property tax for debt service that's not subject to any limitation, similar to our random bond. So, that's 23 million. And so, in this scenario for these nine years, we've got 46 million of D-debt bonds issued in pieces in '27, '31, '34, and then

040health life safety bonds issued once here in 2027. And that takes care of the needs for the next nine years, totaling 92 million. So, that's 69 million of bonds and 23 million of fund balance. All right. So, here is option one. And in this case, we're looking at paying the D-debt bonds that are issued in '27, '31, and '34 uh all together over 10 years. And we're also paying the life safety bonds over 10 years. So, let me first take you to the middle of the page under the heading that says debt service extension based on working cash bonds. So, we see the first issue in the 20 million issued in February 27th. That's paid off over 5 years. And then we come back in 2031 and issue 16 million. That's paid off over 5

041years. And the last issue is 10 million issued in 2034 and paid over 3 years for a total of 46 million of those nine referendum working cash bonds. Now, these are issued in tranches to meet your proposed construction needs. As those change or you have course corrections, so can be done differently. But, this seems to make a lot of sense. It keeps the interest cost down because we're paying the bonds off quickly and we're keeping it in that debt service extension base. But, because the district hasn't issued these types of bonds for quite a while, there is a tax exempt associated with that. If we go to the to the right side, we see health and life safety bonds. That's also 23 million issued in February 27th, uh paid off over 10 years. Okay. So,

042those payments are more or less basically level until we get into the last year. The point of this debt is to structure it so it combines with your referendum bonds, which are also paid off in 10 years. You've already paid 10 years of it. It was a 20-year total to give you kind of a level payment schedule going from 4.1 million up to around 11.5 million. A little closer to 12 million in the last 5 years. So, on average for the owner of a $400,000 market value home, that's about $374 on average per year. For an $800,000 home, that's $781 per year on average. So, I like the next page because it kind of shows a graph. The green line is that debt service extension base. Again, part of the tax limitation law, goes back

043to the year '94. The district had some outstanding non-referendum bonds, which created that debt service extension base. And in the year 2009, they added a CPI to that, so it grows a little bit every year with CPI. And that amount is about 4.6 million in 2026. Uh again, the green line represents that. Uh in this option one, we're paying off the three debt service bonds, uh shown by the bars underneath the green line, uh in 10 years. So, that's the 2027 brown bars, the the 2030 ones in orange, and the 2034s in kind of a brown color. And then, the bars above the line are firstly the blue bars, which are the district's existing referendum bonds. Again, 10 more years of those payments. And then, the yellow bars are the health life safety bond debt

044service payments. So, again, this is the first option. 10 years, everything's paid off. What's good about that? Your plan goes out 10 years. So, when you're ready to do the next capital plan, you have both debt service extension bonds available to you to make use of the entire debt service extension base, as well as any life safety bonds at that at point. Option two is similar, but in this case, we're paying the health life safety bonds off over 15 years. And you know, these health life safety bonds represent things you know that qualify health life safety windows. We look at the average life of the projects that we're doing and we want to make sure that the average life of the project is about the same as the average life of the bond. So, some

045of these things definitely last 15 to 20 years. Is that right, gentlemen? Yeah. So, I think that 15 years can certainly be justified from that point of view. The decent bonds in this scenario are 10 years still just to give you that flexibility after 10 years and here the tax impact is a little lower. Interest cost is a little higher cuz we're going out 15 years instead of 10 life safety bonds, but for the owner of a $400,000 house the average payment is $271 a year and for the $800,000 market value of the home it's $567. And it's also important to note in this option and we can see it better on this page that you see the yellow bars which are the health life safety bars. They go out that extra 5 years and

046that's after the referendum bonds are done. So, there's still a graph there. There's still room for additional decent bonds to to fund the next capital program. So, I still think you get a lot of flexibility with this option. It's a very good option just like option one. Can I ask a quick clarifying question? Looking at the two um bar graphs for options one and two and the totals from 2026 through 34 look to be almost identically but the proportion across colors is different. I'm not totally understanding like in option one blue looks like it's about 9 and 1/2 million and but option two blue gets us up to 10. 11 million and this yellow's smaller. Well, I have a clarifying question on the second graph on the right hand side it's 12 million at the

047top but on the left hand side it's 14. Should that top number actually be 12? Sorry, where are you on the second graph? Um on the second graph if you look at the amounts on either side on the the left side of the graph it has 14 Ah, that's what you're saying. I see what you're saying. And I was wondering if the right side is Yes. It it it's the uh Right. Yeah, that's the same. Left's the same but the right side for some reason those numbers are um I apologize but I'm not sure what's going on there. Um Let's see if there's So I put the numbers I don't know why those are are off. But you know, I think the bars are telling the same story. If you look at the numbers Should

048the bars be lower on option two but because we're paying off the Yes. Yes, I think you're right. There's something wrong with that scale on the um That's what I mean it's it's the numbers on the right were correct. Maybe I think you're correct. So I apologize for that. That's okay. I just wanted to make sure that wasn't Yes, this is our the Who's graph is this? Good point. Thanks for pointing that out. I apologize. So let's look at the numbers. Good. Cuz the numbers are the graph I still like the spirit of the graph. >> [clears throat] >> Yeah, so So that scratch you did to the bar graph and then Go to the scale on the right side and Okay, okay. and you'll be in the right balance. Psychology is good backwards. Um

049so we did a little comparison sheet here on the next slide to show, you know, altogether this is 69 million. We've got the um 46 million D set bonds in three tranches and 23 million on the fire safety. Option one, the interest rate's a little lower altogether because we're paying everything off in 10 years. The interest cost is a little lower, but the annual impact is a little higher at 374 and 781. And option two, we're going 15 years on the health life safety. So the interest rate is a wee bit higher at 413. And the borrowing cost is higher at 16.9, but the annual payment is lower to 71 for 400,000 and 567 for the 800,000. There are more options, um but we thought these seemed to be sensible, meet the average life of

050the projects, give you the adequate flexibility after 10 years. Um so let's just pause here and see if you have any questions on these funding options. I have a question. So the D set bond is on a more or less a set schedule with limitations, but the health safety bonds, if we decide to go out 15 years, we're not penalized if something happens for us fiscally and we get some kind of cash um we're showered with cash. We can pay that off early with no no That's a good point. Especially on the 15-year municipal bonds are callable anytime like a mortgage. They are callable generally after 9 years. So, you can pay early if you get a windfall, which is amazing, or you could refund them for savings if interest rates go down. Mhm. Um

051so, looking at the spreadsheets in the uh the yellow the left yellow rectangle, that's about the D-cell bonds. Between option one and two, that first column is significantly different in terms of all-in cost and borrowing cost. Is that right? Yes. I thought the D-cell options one and two stayed the same. Okay. Gabby, you said that what stayed the same? The D-cell borrowing cost is the same. It's 2.5 million and 5.4 million on option one and option two. So, those are the same. So, what is the >> safety bonds are the ones that go up 5 million years in option two. What is the the left column estimated borrowing cost 12.5 million versus 5.4? That's the life safety bonds. So, if you go out 10 years in option one on the first column on the health

052life safety bonds, your cost on that 23 million is 5.4 million. If you go out 15 years, it's 12,502. It's 12,502. So, that's the extra interest cost over time going out 15 years versus 10. So, how How do the 12.5 and 16.9 But, the 16.9 is a total. Yes. Got it. >> Um including the diesel Okay. for all the funding. >> Yep. Thank you, Iris. No problem. Appreciate that. I have a question. There's so much uncertainty at the federal level and I would say a little bit state. Are Are there any trends or things that you see that other districts are doing to kind of look to adjust for this because we don't know what's going to happen with the current administration. Um and if we're going to be limited in our funding So, is

053this factoring in like the uncertainty of the market? Um I know interest rates are due to be set in the next couple of days. Um so, just wondering >> Interest rates have gone up significantly since the start of the war in Iraq. Mhm. So, these options should reflect those higher interest rates. Okay. I think um even though the 15-year option obviously costs us more I think that there are some philosophies of school districts that everyone benefits from improvements to capital and so it should be spread out over 15 years so that people pay less money, but people that are going to use it for all 15 years are all absorbing the cost and sharing in that contribution from a community standpoint. Um I think that it's hard you know, paying 70 7 million dollars more

054is like uncomfortable, but if the 374 versus 271 in the cost per individual based on how many years the community members take advantage of schools if they school-age children and then if they don't have school-age children, paying less is also more attractive I think sometimes from a community perspective. Because someone here has just asked how philosophies are like how communities to about it and I think that was the conversation you had before. Is that what he's thinking about it that way? But so one of the discussions we had at one of the joint meeting we talked about this. I think that's sort of um countervailing perspective to that is if we're going to need to borrow after 10 years, we're just compounding debt over time versus you borrow for 10 years, you pay off in

05510 years, and then like I think what you're describing how it makes some sense if we're confident that during years 11 through 15 we're not actually borrowing any more money. If we're potentially borrowing more money during years 11 through 15, then we're just stacking it on top of what we you know what we're already holding. Um and then I understand your point 100%. I mean you have a huge drop. I know I'm going to go up to McGrath here. I'm wrong, but I still like him. But you have the huge drop here in 2036. Uh so it's good. I mean really it's about uh $13 million drop. The referendum bonds are paid off. Both these issues are paid off. You have a drop here in 2036 as well. It's not as big, but it's still

056a good 7 million, and it it does give you some future bonding power. So And the master services master facilities plan is a 10-year plan, but Jennifer as we were talking about like the big cost to get items in the last 15. Yeah, the the health and life safety are are probably building related and mechanical related, and then those things will have at least 20-year to 25-year life spans. But at least at the end of the current master facilities plan are we saying that all of those things in all of our schools will be in a position that they will last for another 15 to 20 years or are we saying >> No. next master facilities plan we're going to have to look at similar needs in other buildings. Correct. So, the the one the

057items that we replaced during the first 5 years of the health and life safety will last you beyond that 15 years. But, there are other items that will fall out into needing to be replaced. >> Yeah. And so, the reason we have such a big drop-off is that we have a 10-year master facilities plan. If we had a 15-year master facilities plan, we probably wouldn't have such a big drop-off. I think we have 10 years cuz it's hard the further you get out the harder it is to have any certainty. But, I think it's pretty certain that the number won't be zero in year 11 or 12 or 13. Right. And I guess then the question is but will the number be big enough to get us back up to that three at 374? I

058mean, I guess what's the like total cost to community members? Is it 271 plus 103 or is it 374 plus 53? Do you know what I mean? Are Are we Are we Is this accumulation cumulative effect going to be more severe under 15 than the 10-year? Yes, it looks like over if we over time it's like a $515 difference. Yeah. Well, well, we don't I mean, the short answer to your question is we don't know yet cuz we haven't done a master facilities plan that covers years 10 through 15. So, if we I mean, we can guesstimate potentially, but I think it's fair to say that years 11 through 15 probably won't stay at 271. They'll be 271 plus whatever additional bonds we would need to take out to pay for the next round of

059capital. Particularly because of the projections you're sharing, Rob, which suggest that we're not suddenly going to be you know, flush with cash from our standard revenue sources. Michael, can you have an idea of what this week on years or priorities one, two, and three. I'm sure there's a four, five, and six somewhere. Like I'm not I don't We don't know the numbers, so like there is existing Yeah, it's pretty I guess it's pretty um difficult to project what's going to fail. I mean, we have this plan and 2 years from now something that we didn't have as priority one, two, and three could fail immediately. Then we have to pivot. It The farther out you go, it's programmatic. So, we have a minimum cuz we know this It won't be a zero. No, we have

060No, there's no windows. There's not a point in there's not stuff like that that are not on here that would be something The biggest thing that is like pretty firm is the priority one and two. Those first 5 years are the ones that are like we know they are. They're I know like two years are pretty firm. Like things like that are definitely critical. The second five The second five years may be fluctuation. Things are going to jump up, but there are going to be things that potentially jump back. I think that's where looking at those D7 funds of not pulling that until twice in that second five years. We may get to a point where we don't need to, but this is the best thing right now for those 10 years. >> Well, so

061this is a a question that I had. I It may have come out during the joint meeting. I don't remember, but so just to and it's been a little bit since we talked about priority one, two, and three. Priority one and two as you said like one is it's got to happen. Two is it's going to have to happen and if we're doing these other things now, it saves us money to do those at the same time. Priority three is eventually we think it's going to have to happen, but we can just wait 5 more years. It's not like oh, this is like a nice to you know, nice optional things to have. Um it's things that we're going to have to have. We just don't have to have them now. But the the question

062that I had is um is it given what we were just talking about in terms of the difficulty of forecasting with any kind of accuracy the further out we get into year 6 to 10 do we have to do 10-year D-CEP bonds or is there a shorter D-CEP bond cycle and can we do five and pay off priority one and two and revisit priority three after five years or >> that would be really expensive. And so the D-CEP is limited limited to that 4.6 million a year. Okay. So we've got that natural excuse me limitation. The thing is in priority one that's where your health, life, safety bonds are. Right. And we want to issue those separate from D-CEP. Right. So you can >> I mean both of those, not just D-CEP but the two

063types of bonds. Is there a reason that we would want to borrow for 10 years now rather than say borrowing for five and cuz we know we're going to do priority one and two and when we get closer to priority three items being able then to assess again what are our financial needs? You definitely can do that along the way because remember we're issuing those D-CEP bonds in tranches. Right. And those are the ones that are going to go towards priority three. So you can pull back at any time Right. You bring up a good point Garth that there's there's there's pivot points in this you know so so like we we can have an intention to do the whole 10 years and then structure the debt but there's pivot points. So the first tranche

064of bonds that Elizabeth is proposing is 43 million. Right. That covers priorities one, two, and I think like elevator building companies like that. Mhm. Right. It covers the next five or six years of capital. And then if we get closer to that five-year five-year >> So hypothetically let's say let's say you know something happens at the federal level or something bless you something happens crazy in Springfield or something like that. Then there's another Then we're already done one and two. And there'll be another decision point 2029 or so. Yeah. And whether we go beyond that. Okay. Yeah. That's great. >> So you're able to increase or decrease? Yeah. Okay. The other um thing I just wanted to point out really quickly is that both the LED and the solar, the expectation is over time those

065will actually save money. for those over time. >> So there's an upfront cost, right? The LED will uh will >> long run it's a it's a net Any cost that will definitely be saved for that. Uh the solar, the way that we'll go through a lot of these details and numbers, but there's there's I don't know if there's any grants. Uh they actually are right there and there's a large number of those. So we'll come back to that total. Right and and you'll be getting yes some operational >> Right. I just want to flag that that in some ways those are different kinds of expenses because If you fix a roof, we fix the roof. If we install LED lighting, there is an upfront cost, but in the long run it's actually a cost savings.

066Like we would be foolish to say, well, I will say my opinion is we would be foolish to say, well, let's save 4.5 million and not do the LED lighting if the recognition is actually that's going be a net gain for us over time. I have a question about what Kevin just said. So it makes sense to say like let's do the the priority one and then go back, but there's also the risk that interest rates will increase. And so are we locked in to these rates or could they go up? So the first tranche is the 20 million of D7 bonds and 23 million of health life safety bonds. Once you get issued those, those rates will be locked in. Okay. So, we're looking at those next February. So, that's not too far off.

067We'll see if things get resolved and at least they can get back on kind of where we were before where you know, inflation is kind of coming under control and things were going okay. So, you know, and as Rob mentioned in his presentation, most market most economies are looking at lower inflation over time. Lower on CPIs. So, that's both well for future interest rates. But, anything can happen. You know, it is a risk. I mean, we have seen dramatic increases just through this this situation. I guess I'm just looking at these numbers. Yeah, I guess I'm just trying to think it more about the option of like borrow for the first 5 years and then come back to see like do we still need this or what are the interest rates then? But, then we

068take the risk that something crazy happens, right? And we're like, I wish we would have locked it for the next 10 years as opposed to these five. So, so that's that's a good So, just rephrase again because I think it's it's worth stating again, the the ask at this point in time for the district is to to commit 43 issue 43 million dollars in bonds 20 and 23 use 2 2 million dollars a year in capital through 2030 and fund all of priority one projects, all of priority two projects, the elevators, the LED lighting, and the solar fans. All of these So, it's you we're not even at at least at recommendation C1. We're not proposing It's not at priority three ask. There's nothing and there's nothing more than that. Now, priority it's set up

069to flow right into priority three which will happen as that was rolling off. But, the but the decision point right now is so interest rates you know, we can't like issue more bonds now cuz you got to spend the money within 3 years anyway. Okay. The the interest rates are like we can't issue let's issue all bonds now cuz rates might go up. We can't tell yet. Okay. Legally. Yeah. You have to expect to spend it in 3 years. And I mean going back to what Jennifer was saying and and Michael, the priority one and priority two are the things that absolutely we have to get it done. Mhm. It's 5 years. So, I have more of like a constituent like question. I mean I sat on the board when I I this is out

070of the realm of my knowledge and so um I was going to try to rephrase what I'm hearing in terms of the impact to property owners. So, basically when we're talking about these 10 versus 15 years, I know there was a difference if I had to summarize, it sounded like there was a difference in interest rates. You know, if it's over 10 years, the interest rate is lower, but the cost to Well, the cost is lower but the interest rate is a little higher the longer you go. Correct. I just want to say that myself though. So, give me one moment. So, again, so the 10 years has a lower interest rate and a higher cost to property owners. But covers priorities one and two for our school district that are important in the capital.

071And then the 15 year has a higher interest rate and a lower cost to property owners. So, lower annual cost, higher total cost. Correct. I did hear that, but I kind of still deferred to that because the economy is atrocious right now. No, no, I get it. I'm just saying when you say higher cost to homeowners, it's a higher cost. Option two costs them more overall. It's just it's >> how that Like that's what I don't seem to understand. >> So, 15 * 271 Okay. is like $4,005 or so. It's $4,065. Okay. 10 * 374 is $3,740. So, because we're paying for the additional interest every Correct. That still gets put on to homeowners. That just gets spread out over It's It's another way to look at it is if you were to do a

07210-year mortgage or a 15-year mortgage on your house. Right. If you do a 10-year mortgage, the interest rate was lower, your annual payments are higher, but you're done in 10 years. If you do a 15-year mortgage, generally the interest rate's higher, you pay less per year, but you're paying it over 15 years. So, another wonder that I had that I had is like there is the possibility whether it's the 10 or the 15 if we had that shower of money that you talked about. I mean, this was like then we could pay off these things and not really have like there's a lot of like potential what if scenarios that could also potentially benefit us in terms of paying off earlier and not having to see the additional cost. I guess like, you know, I

073want the best for our schools because it's a safety issue. I sat on, you know, the the conversations um in regards to what the the capital improvements are. They're all essential kind of infrastructure things, I think, and and behind the wall scenes, right? It's not beautifying. I just, you know, like schools, it's about safety. It's about, you know, keeping our our buildings up to date, and obviously we've had several things come up that are supposed to be in this school year in terms of the roofs um for our buildings. So, I'm not in a position of that. I think I just wanted to ask questions in regards to property owners as well given like the current cost of things. Um is, you know, we're we're thinking about um increasing, and and would this be something

074that when there is a bond [snorts] referendum for something like this, is that voted upon? This is not voted upon. Okay, it just These are non-referendum, but you do have to have several things. For the health, life, safety, the Illinois State Board of Education has to approve those life safety amendments, and you have to have a public hearing. For the working cash bonds that are paid from that debt service extension, they set limited amount. You need a petition period and a public hearing. And what a petition period is, the board adopts a resolution of intent telling the community their intent to issue, in this case, 20 million of D-set bonds. That's published in the newspaper. That begins a 30-day period, and if within that 30-day period 10% of the registered voters submitted a petition to

075the school board, that would lead the item had to go to referendum. But right now, we're looking at non-referendum options. Correct. And can I say what I think? Regardless of if we vote for 10 or 15, the same work is getting done. We don't prolong the life safety work. We're not saying that this is this is not going to get done in the same amount of time. It's just that long we pay for it. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. >> I just want to emphasize one of the pieces for consideration, that in years 11 through 15 right now, there's still a payment on there, but it could be even higher. Like that could then end up going up in those. And we're talking again in future things. We could be that way while we're all talking

076about it. >> [laughter] >> Um but yeah. But yeah. Um but that long term, you could also end up again, really raising that rate again with no other alternative in years 10 through 15. 10 through 15 of the savings of safety bond? Um well, no. Just if we ended up having to borrow more at that point. And if you're 11 you have to figure out. Yeah. At year 11. Because it would it would change the numbers. Yes, that's right. Tax masters. Because of other things that may occur. Exactly. And I just would go back to though that like some of the users district. Sure. K-38. So, some people would say I like we Must be rural. Right? Like, you know, like I would like to, you know, I might use the district K-38, but then

077other people are using the district, but I've paid for it all for the next like other generations, like we should be sharing it more. And that's why I said another reason districts sometimes get the more extended I agree. Less out of pocket for each individual as you go, like you said 27 versus 24. And spreading it across the next generation of kids that use the same spaces in the same rooms and the same Mhm. capital. I think the only other layman's terms like question I have, and this is maybe just for leadership, was for example, when we're, you know, potentially going to impact, you know, like the cost of living, right? annual or potentially over the course of of these X amount of years, um one of the wonders I had was that as a

078district, are we considering that as we're making decisions for staffing and, you know, technology, and like, how does this impact that conversation for our district? Because I mean, this is a big investment, and so if we're you know, like, we're resource-rich school, but how does that impact everything else? So, the debt retirement the payments on the loans are factored into the budget already. Like, that's what part of the budgeting process is this this this interest payment is coming out of we're going to call it revenue, and we're going to pay the expenses. Um but I think the recommendation on the last page was that we asked leadership to reduce expenses by at least 1.1% so that we are operating It's a closing gap. Right. And I would say I think if we didn't, even if

079this wasn't a factor, we would still have to do We still have to have that conversation. I was going to say, I think It's just best practice. We could always do a better job and I know individually we've had some conversations about like just being more mindful of that line by line budget and stuff like that, but I think that's something we always are like, we have to be fiscally responsible. And for those of us who might be rolling off next year, I think it's um you know, I'm hearing that any board member is thinking about those things and asking those questions like, how will this impact the bottom line? >> Yeah. Okay, thank And also, I would just say from the leadership perspective, having individuals like Crystal in the space, that's one of the

080first questions that she is asking the leadership team. We are having discussions of like, how is this impacting the budget? Like when we're having curriculum questions. And that's something that has not always been a practice in the past of having different departments in the room when we're talking about curriculum choices and things like that, but we've started having those conversations with HR, business, and those things in the room together and we're having different conversations about curriculum, technology, and those things because that's how we move towards being fiscally responsible. I appreciate that. Just on that point, I think and I think it's a great point and as I'm sure you remember back to like this was a topic of conversation with Dr. Preston And too, it's really how do we consider return on investment as we're

081spending money? And I know it's something that she had good answers for, something that she's mindful of in her leadership. And so, I think um I think there's a shared interest around that and I think in in the context of the facilities fees, which is what's in front of us now, I know throughout the fact discussions, there was a real emphasis on well, what are the things that we really need do? You know, there was a lot of stuff that was on the table that was like nice to have, but I think what we landed really is like the the stuff that that needed to happen or the stuff that we're actually better off investing in now than waiting to you know to do it down the For sure. Yeah, I'm in agreement with that.

082That makes sense. I know it's approaching towards the end. How many more questions do we see? Um I mean I want to make one more question. So you have any more questions after that? I'm good. Okay, good. Can I echo what Vena says? >> [laughter] >> Okay, I need to understand I understand this, but I don't understand it in relation to our fund balance and there's my interpretation about from what I heard was that our fund balance will be going down incrementally. When do we then begin to build the fund balance back up? And if I got that wrong, then I need help with explaining it. So all these questions are connected, these last couple of questions. Right now the projections show an underlying recommendation of crystallizing that the we could commit that we feel

083somewhat comfortable committing $2 million a year towards these projects. >> From the fund balance. Right. Um and and and nothing more. So so the trend for school districts right now talking about the concerns about the finances is districts are putting a greater weight on borrowing for capital projects rather than bringing down fund balance reserves to prepare for the future. So so this so it's it's right now >> a little bit of both. Yes. So so it's a little bit of both. But but but if you're issuing debt to pay for the capital project, that doesn't impact the bottom So, that doesn't impact the money available for salaries, benefits, operations, all the things that help the students. That part I get, but I guess I'm I still have a disconnect there. If we are committing $2

084million a year for this 10 years, right? So, that's what $20 million if I can do my math right. That's taken out of the fund balance. But, are we are we We're taking the money out, but I know we incrementally put money in, but I guess I'm not clear as to where that leaves us. Yes. So, so one of the options we could have said was we don't want to take anything out of fund balances. And and and we would be $18 million better off. $2 million times 9 years. Our fund balances will be $20 million better on the projection part of the triangle, but we'd be borrowing $20 million more money that would be raising the tax in there. Okay. And I think separate just from this conversation about capital is we need to

085be having these conversations regardless of whether we're doing this capital project. We need to be looking at how we're going to mitigate between our expenditures and revenues. That's a whole separate conversation that's going to be something that we look at across the board with our, you know, programming, you know, presenting our high quality education with other operational things that are more efficient. So, there's other conversations that we're going to have to also impact that fund balance on the side of capital. I think that's what it gets to fund balance to stick with that cuz those are hard decisions. Okay. And I guess I think I would without saying that we have to just say that we have done those things. I mean, partnership with the village on our fiber, we were able to do that.

086That's that's a huge savings that the district experienced that experience in their budget to the community as well. That's just on an annual basis to have that infrastructure and now transportation last year was a large savings that was done and will be realized for years to come, too. So, I think there have been those conversations and things that have been happening. Obviously, as Drew said, continue to help still happen. I think we continue to have those conversations and continue to be diligent about that. But, there have been a lot of good action that's been Okay. So, I just also want to remind us all, like, I know I'm horrible at finances, but we have committees working back. And so, if if anyone wants a deeper dive, we can have them to come to a board

087meeting and we can deep dive into this, cuz I know it's a lot. Finance is not my ministry, but um I I think some of these questions it would be helpful to have someone the experts come in and give us just that here's what it is. So, I'm happy to work with Patrick and having Working Back come in to one of the board meetings. Anyone have any other questions? I hate to tell you this. I have one other section. Oh, okay. Bye. I'm going to go fast. Oh, okay. And it just is in response. No, let me share with everybody I'm saying though, take take the time you need. Thank you so much. I'm not going to belabor it, but there was another question from the board and from Working Back that says, "If we

088add 50 million, 52 million, that will pay for HVAC and all the classroom upgrades, lighting bright." And Michael, if I'm describing that incorrectly, please correct me. Yes, something similar. Everything will be possible with that question. Ceiling, LED lighting, tile, paint, as well as the same like Unibed type of solution that are on the third floor in elementary school. And again, I said it before in the meeting this. The recommendation from Back was the critical items that have to happen for us, like, you know, on those 85 doors. This was an option that was considered and discussed and important. But I I take it all these things in mind and and that's what we're looking to talk about what that looks like on financial perspective. Right. So, Option three. >> [clears throat] >> Yes, if option

089recommendation C2, so that the dollars instead of 92 million over the next 9 years go up to just under 144 million adding that 50 million in So, these have bonds in this case go up to 55 million instead of 20 million and then we have subsequent 25 million in 2030 and 18 million in 2033. So, we've got a total of 121 million of a bond proceeds. So, this is much bigger program. Um, you know, just financially, I'll just tell you right now, I don't recommend it because it taps out your DESA bonds. In order to get all of those projects completed with non-referendum bonds, we have to go out 30 years on the debt service extension base bonds. So, this is just the example that's you know, answering the request, can we do it without

090referendum bonds? You can, but you're just absolutely maxes you out on the debt service extension base, we lose future boards, no flexibility for 30 years. So, simply for that reason, we don't recommend it. And I mean, I can go through these options. I know you probably got other things on your board agenda tonight, but I would just leave it at that unless you want me to go through all the various options. So, what we're recommending is option C1. C1. You want to ask the recommendation that you're also I'm on stage. Yes. Back. Sorry. Back again. but yeah that was recommended to you one but we don't have a fork recommendation on I think on the number of years. No, we don't. Right and I love your sitting right you know what I'm saying telling people

091down. On the 10 or 15. So just so I could so we could come back on the 28th and know fact those are the only meetings scheduled to leave next month and we have to have a meeting for fact I don't know if fork has any but if it's something call and if we want to do that or here or whatever but then I asked on the 28th would be we're going to plan but we're really going to focus on this first but as the issue for the first five years but as we get to that second five years that's where we love to bring both like here's here's where we're at and here's what that might look like or stay the course or you're changing it or something. But we're not issuing until next

092February we can have a fork meeting after we vote to approve the fact the plan. The plan correct I think the biggest piece is for us to move forward on and the biggest and the biggest piece of that is the middle schools because they're that's the biggest piece of the job and stuff that's the biggest piece is to start going out and Did I misunderstand we wouldn't be issuing the D-set bonds? We issue both the D-set bonds and the end together Sub 27 the petition period is 30 days in the state But my point is I don't think we're going to get a fork to show up on Monday. The restructuring questions are necessary to tell Right so we can still proceed on April 28th vote on the plan the C1 option and meet with

093a in May, and get a recommendation and start the process of the problem. So, what's a delta map? And I think delta map people to give their contributions saying these are all viable. Yes. >> You want to take the last one? Viable options. And so, I think that was the point of four just saying we support these, but let's narrow it down once we have that. >> Yeah. So, I highly encourage everyone to really dig into this a little bit more, ask all those questions. Um so, senior options to Patrick. Um but then I think Holly, if there are things that we missed or things that you're like it seems like this is the thing that the board is really like really not understanding. If we could get a little bit more guidance, that'd be

094super helpful. Cuz I know you mentioned earlier, and I I don't want to labor the point, you mentioned that that is actually recommended that we increase increase the power of the board. Um so, I just want to I also do want to know like how that factors into this. Um we didn't talk a lot about that tonight, so that would be my key message tonight. If they can I say how I would like to get there, I'd like to hear your thoughts. Yeah. I think we can get there. I'd love to hear your thoughts. Yeah. I just want to say you've got to have I would reserve what I would love to hear in my life the forecast for this. This is how we actually get there. All right. Thank you. Thank you. And also,

095I think hopefully this storm I'm also wondering, I'm just thinking out loud with the question. Okay. That that keeps you up. If there is um an appetite, I guess is the best word for me to say this. We're doing this now, and we're talking um a lot about this 10-year plan and our building plan and the finance plan. We all have a a cursory knowledge of it. So, I'm wondering would there be value in having one or two town halls where we we present this information to the community, maybe allow them to ask questions and have a some sort of moderated There's a hearing that we'd have to do. Yeah, is that enough? There's two hearings. What are the dates? If if that's enough, then Okay. It's up to you, Mr. Certainly there is the

096public forum. It's noticed. Yes. I My goal is making sure that we bring the community along with these financial decisions that we are making that affect that. And being hypervigilant about it. I appreciate that. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Can I get a motion to approve the agenda? I move that this Board of Education, District 27, [snorts] approve the consent agenda as presented. Possible second? I second the motion. Yes, sorry. Yes. The rest? Yes. Carney? Yes. Stallworth? Yes. Mr. Cassidy or Johnson? Yes. Voting? Yes. Motion passed. All right. Um discussion action item 8.1, 2026-2027 district insurance rate recommendation. Yes, and we have Miss Natasha coming up. And this is just a follow-up from our last board meeting regarding the recommendation regarding district insurance rates. Also, Crystal is also joining her. You should

097know her Crystal. All right. Good evening everyone. Um based upon Um So, thank you. So, at our last board meeting we had a number of conversations, a lot of questions related to the recommendation to move forward with our insurance rates and then what options we have. And so, um this is kind of just a short presentation to review those and provide an opportunity to ask additional questions. So, one thing that we wanted to identify is that the members of the committee do span from across our district and the employee groups so that we have voices on the team. Um and so, these are just some of the people that are on the team. So, this year every year we go through and review what legislative updates are and how it impacts our plans. So, this

098year we had um over 20 legislative updates that impacted our rates. The biggest one being um the state bill 773 and that relates to um menopause coverage and infertility treatments. That was already being covered in our HMO. Um however, this year um after some legal clarification it is being added to our PPO. And that one legislative piece alone added 1.7% to the to the projected increase. There was a question about based upon our enrollments where our where our staff was falling and what that looks like. And so, this is a breakdown. We do cover about 730 members um through our of our um almost 1,100 member staff. So, um more than half. But these are the breakdowns. Who's on PPO, how many are on high deductible plan, and then how many are on HMO. You

099can see that the majority of our staff were already taking HMO. There was also a question about what are the rates? What are the rates that the district is paying in regard to the different staff groups? And so, these are the percentages that the staff um that the district pays on behalf of the um staff member that's enrolled. So, at this point, what we're looking at, what's been projected for us is that for the PPO plan, we would go up 16.7%. For our HMO, it would be 15.4%. Dental would be 3.9%, and then these were based upon our loss ratio through December of each calendar year. Did we have some sort of um I remember a couple other times that we had seen large increase like this. We had one or two individual teachers that,

100you know, unfortunately were in a, you know, a sickness that has a lot of medical treatment, or was this more of a kind of an overall increase across the board? >> This is an overall increase across the board. This is the first time we've seen double-digit increases in years. Um, and this is happening across our cohort. It's also happening across um other areas like in self-funded plans. Um, I think maybe some of the projected increases that we thought might see a year or two ago, they're finally kind of catching up now. Um, but based upon this, this is um part of why um the next slide is talking about our recommendations to see what can we do moving forward, because because this is so um out of what we had projected, we don't have a

101lot of time to figure out different ways to um like adjust this, because our rates that we actually pay in um for the different staff members, we would need some type of MOU if we need it if we wanted to try to change any of those. Some of the things that came up also um were that we approve the premium for this year, the increase for this year. However, we start meeting in the fall to look at plan changes. So, some of the things that were identified were can we offer incentives? Can we offer for staff that take other plans? Um And so, all of those things we need time to process those and then even to do MOUs if that's something that we're going to start implementing. Um there was also a question about

102what does this What does this increase really look like for the district in financial terms? Um so, we have not projected double digits, but we did project at least the 8% increase. And so, this is double that, but we were it's not as much as you know, this year we actually only had a 5% increase. So, we did budget for more than what we received. So, this slide here um Crystal worked on putting this together for us. Do you want to explain this? Yeah, this it's just a confirmation that we of what we projected. So, when we're looking at the overall increases that are 5 to 7% over the last few years, we were conservative and projected 8%. So, that mitigated a little bit. So, instead of us having a 16% increase, it's more like

1037 and a half or 7.2. So, that is a plus. Um but as we discussed earlier today, we're fortunate right now that we do have a surplus, but when we have these type of expenditures that exceed our projections, we're only getting that much closer to our deficit spending. So, we just have to pay attention to like, "Okay, we can So, the truth is yes, we have $867,000 to cover that, but we don't want to keep using that as a tool in our fund balance. We want to be proactive and say how are we going to how we're going to work on this going forward. Um and by the way, the Holly, it's an industry outside of school, they're experiencing 30% increases. >> [snorts] >> So, tonight you'll be looking to secure approval to move forward.

104However, beginning with the plan uh beginning in the fall, we would want to review plan options because similar to what you identified um Holly, is that we do we did identify if we went to a three-tier structure for our PPO plan, we would have 25 people we have 25 vendors or 25 um medical organizations that would not be covered or it would be covered as an out-of-network instead of what it's currently covered as in-network. Um and some of the things we needed to dig in on is even for if we changed our um deductible on specialty prescriptions, um how many people are actually doing that? And so, although we might say that we only have 50 of those, we don't know how is that 50 divided by which is one per family or is it

105one family that has multiple drugs? Um because they did identify that um autoimmune um diseases and autoimmune illnesses are part of what's driving up the specialty drug space. Um again, the adding of the fertility piece and menopause to our um PPO, which was again not covered previously, and then the weight management um prescriptions are just they're becoming more affordable, but there's a large increase is in just members taking advantage of that. So, those are all things that >> So, we have the data. So, we we can and the the committee's going to look at the data. Correct. And I I mean, we might want to consider we what we used to have four members on this committee, but it's fine we moved away from that or just spent time on things, but if we're going

106to have a big financial discussion, it might be worth it for a board board member to participating in those discussions. Yes, and it wasn't if more board members participated in the past, we can definitely have that again. Um, this hadn't we hadn't had an insurance committee meeting a couple of years prior. We started having them again last year. Um, and so just trying to make sure that we're fully informed because the other part of this is being able to watch how our claims are going so that then we can even look at what our next steps might be. Because one of the one of the harder parts about this is we are also going to look at possibly seeing if we can adjust when our open enrollment is. Right now our open enrollment is in

107July. Sorry, open enrollment is in May for July 1st start, right? And so rather than many other organizations are have their open enrollment so they can be on a calendar year instead of a fiscal year. So, the reason why I bring that up is because when we got our final data, it was March. Well, it's hard to make a decision between March and April when you need to roll out open enrollment in May. So, if we can make some adjustments in regard to when our open enrollment is, that date doesn't change for the co-op. Right, the co-op. That's the That's when the board approves the final rates is in March. Um, additionally with that being said, um, some of the other things that were asked were, um, are our spaces better outside of a co-op

108or is there another co-op? Um, there was even a question about what the district the um, high school uses. Um, the high school is on a self-funded plan. They are seeing large increases as well, but what benefits are there to that? Um, and then like I said for the um, incentives like if you take your spouse's insurance, is that something that we can do? Or, um, even at one point in time the school had an incentive of if you selected a particular type of plan, they provided a benefit for that. Um, so there are some other options to support or offset um some of the costs. It's just at this point, um we have we're okay moving forward financially, um but we want to look at what we can do for the future if we're

109hit with additional um sizable increases like this. And that time also Sorry. Um conversely, do we ask um if our employees are covering themselves and their spouse, do we ask if that spouse has health insurance available to them through their employer? We currently don't because it's not something that we incentivize. So, when they sign up, they just it's they actually get a link and then they register themselves. We don't even ask them um what their you know what their situation is. So, Private sector's issue. In the private sector, the question is asked, "Does your spouse have >> Yeah. covered opportunity for health insurance through their employer?" And if the answer is yes, that employee pays a premium to have their spouse on their plan. >> Yes. So, that is also something that was brought up

110by our um by representatives from Gallagher was that that's something else that can be looked at as well. Um it's just not something that's part of our practice right now. But, those are all options as well is to say, "We'll give you this amount if you go on to this other policy or if you are insuring extra people." Um it was a um They they gave an example of like $500 um cost share or something like that. Okay. Thank you. But, and then the other thing that's mentioned is the timing of you know the changing of enrollment. It also helps for the thoughtful conversation for an employee who's got to consider plan sign changes to have a year to say, "Okay, what does this look like if I'm going to change these prescriptions?" I think

111this is a tough subject for for your average person who layman who does not do this every day. So, I would want to know what that looks like on a everyday Maybe that makes me change and it might not be bad for the district if we change more to HMO from PPO. So, that would give us the time to give employees to think about this process. It would also give them time to have that conversation with the providers. Yes, to see if there are alternatives in terms of treatments. Yes. >> And that's something similar to the people the moving to that three-tier PPO and thinking about those 29 providers, they were some of the big heavy hitter like hospitals and things like that. And so, but it all went down to dermatologist or mental health

112services. So, without having an understanding of how it might only be 29 on the list, but how many people are actually utilizing those facilities or those organizations. So, they're asking us to approve Yes, so there will be a vote to so that we could actually move forward because it's of the budget impact and So, um this will be it will be called for a vote if you guys don't have any questions or additional questions. I'm going to say anybody have any questions? Okay. Uh can I get someone to read the motion? I move that the Board of Education of Oak Park Elementary School District 97 approve the insurance rates as presented for the 2026-2027 school year. Second. Dr. Johnson? Yes. Dr. Jackson? Yes. Ms. Sproat? Yes. Ms. Elam? Yes. Ms. Roberts? Yes. Kenneth is absent.

113Motion Yes. Hello everyone. Thank you for your time tonight. My name is Sebastian. Hello. So we won't keep you long. We have the pleasure of Victor here to go over our findings. We have Sebastian here to do our review and answer any questions you may have. So we'll go ahead and get started. Thanks Crystal. I'm just going to go over the reports high level. The previous presentations were pretty comprehensive and forward projecting numbers. Before I get into the reports that we issued, I first want to thank Crystal and Florence for all the hard work they've put into the audit. Nobody looks forward to an audit. Crystal had just started with the district right as Crystal was starting the audit. But they did a great job of preparing everything for us and responding to our requests

114and doing that on top of their day-to-day responsibilities. So, it's greatly appreciated. Uh so, I'll start off with the reporting and insights letter. So, the other reports are based on the district's financial information. This letter is a direct communication from us as the auditors and governing body. Uh it outlines the scope of the audit, our responsibilities for the audit, management's responsibilities for the audit, and if there are any internal control matters or financial statement findings, those are also documented in here. Uh during our interim field work, we come out and we do internal control walk-throughs over the district's key transaction cycles, so accounts payable, payroll, financial reporting, just to see if there's any operational um concerns where we want to apply additional audit procedures to. Um those are documented in here, and they are fairly

115consistent with fiscal year 2024 results, but also with improvements, particularly in the area for correcting identified audit adjustments. Um also in this letter is a uh forward-looking pronouncements for upcoming GASB standards that I'll get implemented down the road, and also our contact information is in here. So, although we work with the finance department on a day-to-day during the audit, we are ultimately engaged by you to perform the audit and to report findings to you. So, if you have any questions, just not not just here tonight, but in the future, uh we look forward to hearing from you. So, I'll go into um the annual comprehensive financial report. So, this is a pretty beefy document. It's over 100 pages long. Uh it covers the full financial position of the district as of June 30, 2025, but

116at the beginning there is a summarization of the management's discussion and analysis. I highly encourage reading through that. It gives you a high-level overview of what went on during the year in a narrative format with comparisons to the prior. It's kind of like the CliffsNotes version of the report. And then also at the front is our opinion letter. So, it's an unmodified opinion, which is the highest level of assurance that can provide over the district's information. Basically means anybody can pick up the report and rely on the information within as they assess the financial health of the district. Uh there's also the basic financial statements and then the detailed notes to the financials that give you the specifics of what went on during the year. And then in the back you've got your your budget

117versus actuals and then long-term trend data at the very back in your statistical section, which gives you not just financial but demographic information over a 10-year period. So it starts off very uh high-level at the beginning and then it gets more detail as you progress through the back. Another report that we issue is the annual financial report. Um that has also an opinion on it. It's a kind of a regurgitation of the annual comprehensive financial information but also other statutory compliance matters that we look at for the State Board of Education. Again, clean opinion there. Uh that has been submitted and accepted by the state. Um page four of this report is your estimated financial profile score for the district, which is a 3.9 out of 12.4. That gives you the recognition status from the

118State Board of Education, which is the highest level that they award the district. Um that financial profile score, uh one of the metrics in there is your uh days cash on hand. Um looking just at your operating funds, so you're at 146 days as of June 30, 2025, which is about 5 months, which is in that 3 to 6-month range that is typical of the board policy recently. Um and then another report that we look at outside of just financial information is we look at uh auditing the district's federal federal grant money. So this past fiscal year we audited the IDEA special education cluster. And that's not just looking at compliance over how the funds were spent but also looking at controls over the programs to ensure compliance. And the district received a clean opinion

119there as well. Uh which is very important in the granting environment that is currently applying for competitive grants. It's also one of the things that making sure that you're gaining those clean opinions on your single audit as well. And then two very small reports that we also opine on uh as your comprehensive annual financial report, which is also just kind of a summary of your federal expenditure side, but also your state awards that get submitted to the Grant Accountability Transparency Unit. Uh clean opinion there, and then we also issue a clean opinion on your self-workers compensation report. Uh those were my prepared comments, but I'd be happy to take any questions at this time. Um something that I would like to add though regarding the internal control matters, so uh working with Crystal and this

120past audit [clears throat] and the district and Torrance they're very proactive about looking at these findings and remedying them in the future. Um early discussions have also already taken place um in terms of looking at operational improvements. Uh it wouldn't necessarily be work that the external audit team performs, but we do have internal audit consulting uh group. Uh again, early conversations have been taking place to kind of look at internal control improvements, but also high-level account operational improvements knowing that um the district would like to have more formally documented processes and procedures for certain positions. Can I just ask a question actually for Crystal and or Torrance, which is um related to the internal control matters. If you flag um it sounds like you've already started to work on some of them. I'm just wondering

121are these all things we we think make sense and we intend to do or sort of what's the general kind of feeling about the different recommendations made here? Yes, so two things. Um I also want to echo and say big thanks to Torrance. Torrance has been amazing in this this process. He's been here. He's been a steady the whole time, so thank you Torrance. Um with that said, there are a number of items that continue to be on the audit from year to year that are the same. And so, we wanted to take some time to actually have some one-on-one work with um the consultant that Sebastian has mentioned, and have some really tangible processes of how we're going to fix them. Um under our structure our structure is very unique, and there is a

122there is a challenge in some of the responsibilities, checks and balances, oversight, because we have so many responsibilities spread out through so many departments. That's a challenge. So, instead of just getting those items year to year saying we're meeting them, we're going to take the time to look at it with the structure that we have in place, let's address it. Let's do that. Let's let's figure out how we can have, you know, from when an employee becomes an employee to um to when they are going to payroll, to when we're doing general ledger type items, all those things, making sure that we are following the procedures that are best practices. And when we don't have the ability to do the very best we can because of the personnel or structure, then we have something in

123place. Like, for example, uh uh positive pay is an extra external way of the double check. So, we can't have what we need with our current, you know, structure in place, then we have an outside source that makes sure that we are checking ourselves. So, yes, to answer your question, um definitely we would like to improve this. We're going to work hard and get something documented so that whoever follows me can actually see what's happening and and continue this, but more importantly that we feel confident I feel confident telling the board that we have all the best measures in place. Thank you. And I should say kudos on getting that 3.9 out of 4, and the highest distinction, that's great. That's good. We are happy to have it. So, is that Baker Tilly been amazing?

124We love working with them. They've been very responsive. They've also been responsive to issues outside of we have payroll questions or audit questions, they've been very, very helpful to us, so thank you very much and we look forward to continuing our work with them. And when that's audit is up I don't think it's due this couple It may be in a couple months. Yeah, I was going to say I know we do this in a couple months. Okay. So hopefully the the next board meeting we'll have an engagement letter that the board will look at and we'll get that approved and then we'll get on your schedule so we can be early. And then we'll get going. Any other questions? I think you're all set. All right, thank you. Thank you. All right. Um Where

125are we? Um Julie Morse School roof bid. My bad. Two sorry. So we have a memo and the bid. Come on in. All right. So um yesterday um So the the memo that I put out and talked about last week about the bids and information. So the memo wasn't generic cuz we just opened yesterday. Um so these are the results. Let me zoom in. Um so we had three three vendors submit uh proposals um or bids. Uh two that have been working and doing um one doing some of the repairs on the roof did not submit a bid. What we found is like the they're renting out tons of the summer projects and they don't have the staff. So that's why we're we're still happy to see that we got three bids to be able

126to compare to. Um so the low bidder um is Knickerbocker Roofing and Paving Company. So they did a base bid and then we provided two alternatives for two different other sections of the roof. Um so the alternate bid number one are sections that are flagged as we have for future year to be done but they are where the mechanicals are. Those are also partial that we were going to do until next year because we're looking at mechanicals that you can see specifically. And if you don't have to and if the price doesn't make sense to do it, you don't necessarily want to do the roof. Mechanicals risk potential issues with the roof we got to have to have repairs or just Yeah. So, that was that That's that section one or number one matter or

127alternate. And the other one are a few other sections that we wanted to get pricing to see if it made sense and that is the third one is the deduct. So, I'll come back to what the recommendation is or what we're looking at right now. And the deduct was finding what is that pricing because again Julian is one that has summer programming. So, to not minimize that disruption of those programmings to have them start after 12:00 we want to find out what is that cost by that pushing it back to a second shift. So. What was the budget amount for this part of the roof? Well, that's a good question. I hope to get there from what we got estimated. I believe it was still higher again. I'll I'll I'll pull that and then get

128that to you. >> And then what percentage of the roof are we trying to do in this bid package for at first is what's the cost of like and we're going to roof is our priority. What is this Is this patches that we replace when we replace roof or is this work that will be done on ex dates? This is a So, these So, these sections all these sections So, base bid, alternate one, alternate two were all part of what would be for 2027. That would have been 2027. We've got to deal with it now. So, what we're going to do now is repairs and doing that and again it still doesn't mean I mean last night I talked to John we had there more leaks. So, at least the repairs are a positive thing

129and things are happening, but it's still a temporary solution for that. So, these are everything that have been done in 2027. Um our recommendation based on where it is and we got with the mechanical that bid number one, we would not be recommending to do that one. So, right now we're recommending the base bid and adding doing uh bid number two um for the we bring back in two weeks for approval. You got it. So, um are they are they doing the same exact thing like these little track offs? Yep. Yep. Okay. So, there's no difference. No. Uh we have had conversations with our insurance provider >> [clears throat] >> because of things that are happening. So, these are all the information we've had to the repairs as well and we're working that on those.

130So, at least with this and all this information we know what would be covered based off of that, but that's a conversation that we would go into tomorrow back, but there are still repairs that are Um that they need to where we're working through some of those. Is our broker assisting with that? Is our broker assisting with that? >> What's that? Is our broker assisting with that? So, the the collaborative that we work with, yes. They came out uh I forget what day it was. After the last within the last two weeks, they came out, did a walk of the building, and took pictures, went through that and one of the repair companies we're talking about. Nature of the wealth and that see what they have and the damage and all that. So, that's where

131That's where I don't know what that cost will cover for this, but we may be some of the cost they would cover for this as well. Will we get that additional information before we're asked to vote at the next board meeting? Like uh what it what it covers and what it doesn't cover? I don't know how much I don't know if we get the insurance like what they would be willing to cover at the next board meeting. These are our budgeted numbers though. I'll get the I'll get the answer for what was allocated based off of the master facility plan. We don't have a 5% escalator because that would have been escalated in for 2027, so we're pulling that back at least. But, I will get exactly that number of what the difference estimated master

132facility plan is compared to that 10-year master facility and in the first 5 years. So, where are there's a significant dollar amount difference? Between bids, it's in red, right? I can't really Yeah. Yeah, it's red. We have baby bear, mama bear, papa bear. Baby bear is way less than mama or papa bear. And I just I think I have PTSD, but I just want to make sure that there's nothing missing with that significant of a bid difference. Yeah, so those conversations of where we're at right now for summer work. So, there's times where here's the number that we're spending, whether we have people or we don't have people. So, sometimes we throw a number, and again, I'm not saying that that is, but they don't have the staff, but if you're if that's low number

133and they're willing to do it for that, they reallocate resources. But, these are all I mean, I talked to John about this. I think Bock Associates like we've been working with them before. DCG to this company like they're doing one or other. They're doing Brooks. But, again, we're talking like the staffing to do the work and then what that up ticket cost would be to do that for a person in his zone. He felt very strong with where we're at. Again, we have Jim and the team on that to be able to do this work for what we need what is needed. So, So, you're attributing the difference in bids to staffing? Am I hearing you correctly? More people and even some of the submittals that they don't have ability because Gilford is also doing

134some work in another building. So, you'd think they if they were able to do it then they would have been on this but they would have already been been on it to be able to have that happen. Okay. I can get more Jennifer to email if there's any concerns or anything like that. We'll have that for all of this stuff. We didn't have that concern when I talked to John or even talking with with SDR when they did bid on concerns of where this is. Again, what they need to do and the company that can do the work. I don't have that expertise but I am looking at those numbers. Yep. And it is concerning. So, I'll get Jennifer to follow up on that question. I'll follow up on what was expected budgeted wise cuz

135that's also part of like they've had the rest of that cost what they estimated as part of the master plan. And um I would say the Brooks location so they have a little bit more road. Um Okay. And Julian? So, Julian's less road to do and then Brooks. Okay. Um and that would be a little bit more in line with it. Makes sense this number compared to what Brooks what what we awarded to them. Okay. I do recall from last meeting you said there were going to be conversations about I know last meeting that it shifted from Brooks to Julian but now Julian's having this proof done. Have those conversations continued? Yeah. Yeah. All right. Any other small questions? Thank you, Mike. Yep. All right. So, we'll come back in the next meeting to follow

136up with an update on those two. Thank you. Thank you. All right. 933 contracts exceeding $25 $25,000 sorry. That's part of classroom professional development. So, Michelle is not here tonight so I am following up after Michael. So, we are You don't have access to it. You don't have access to it? Yeah, we don't have >> It was in this Friday, I think. I can give it to you. I can share. I can share. >> I have it for Friday. I was just trying to click on this link. So, um pretty much following up, we had a presentation a couple of board meetings ago regarding um Michelle KPR, our director of student wellness, kind of did an update on social emotional learning across the district, and she kind of talked about K5. We're moving towards restorative

137responsive classroom. And so, this is in response to that. We're actually working with a consultant that's actually working in all of our schools, working with our teachers, and getting our teachers trained in responsive classroom. And so, this is a proposal that's working with second group of our teachers across the district. So, we started with our admin, started with a small group of teachers. Um and now we're working with a bigger group of our teachers in getting them trained in responsive classrooms. Now, just to give a little background information, this actually came out of just listening to a group of our teachers across the district and administrators regarding what is our approach towards really creating a safe and welcoming environment for our students. And so, we looked at CHAMPS, we looked at PBIS, and we looked

138at restorative classroom as a committee, a group of different teachers, administrators, and everyone, and we voted on Responsive Classroom, and we actually took a group of principals, teachers, including myself, um Dr. Leon, and we actually went to a training for Responsive Classrooms actually make sure this is a good fit for what we felt was a good fit for Old Part. And so, we fell in love with the approach and everything. And so, now we're doing a slow roll roll out of Responsive Classroom. And so, now we're coming to the board because this now goes over the 25K benchmark to kind of get a training done for a group of our teachers. And some of this will be coming out of title funds. So, it's not coming all out of local funds. And so, we will

139be doing an installment of different trainings over the next 2 years to make sure all K1-2-3-4-5 teachers are trained in our K5, and then we'll be doing a slow roll out in the middle school. So, this will be an approach that we will have district-wide in regards to how we are training teachers in regards to classroom management um across the district. Is there um Is there a teach the teacher mode so that we don't have to continue to hire consultants? >> And this is this is what we're doing. To teach, okay. Yeah. Okay. So, we're not >> now we're making sure that there is a team of teachers training at each building by the consultants. I mean >> And then we will then start making sure that we have a solid team at each building,

140and then we will move to the middle schools to make sure they're actually trained [clears throat] by consultants. Is there a reason we're not putting them in parallel, so doing the middle schools and the elementary schools? The middle school is deciding to kind of figure out advisory right now next year while we're working on the Responsive Classroom. And then while we're getting you that rolled out, they're working on advisory. Okay. Would it be a additional um compensation for the teachers for our teaching this? The And then, um But, when we decided to do it for the middle school, they will because we would have to pay the consultant to come out. The training. But, not the staff. Correct. Not when we do the training, the Train the trainers. Yeah. And then, the total that you're

141asking for today is cuz I know that when we talked about this with Judas, I mean, you mentioned that there will be some Title I money. So, the only Title I money is 4,000, but you're from the district what we're approving today is the 52,400. Yes. Okay. So, that's not inclusive of the Title I. Some of that is coming out of Title II grants. Okay. But, because of the total of five, we have to get it approved. So, do you have the I'm trying to figure out how do I how do I figure this out? So, is it the breakdown is right here. So, some of that is coming out of the district, so construction, some grants, and then individual based on the group of teachers from each campus. So, this is this is just

142the total. Right. So, I'm just like minus all the stuff that we have, like what's the new ask? What's the additional amount that we're asking for? The total ask is the 50 cuz of the 52. Okay. And 4,000 of that is Title I. Yes. Title II. Title II. Title II. So, the the table that's there just gives you a breakdown. >> school budget isn't the total of five for one year. You add five for one year, etc. after total school budget. So, that's a breakdown of that 24. But, 24 plus 10 plus four is 38. But, you're asking for 52. Right, that's what I'm trying to get the the number that we're being asked, like maybe I might just have to look at the numbers. So, I apologize. I might have to update the the

143number. >> 17 of it is coming from Title II. 17 is coming from Title II. So, the number is 52,400. Is it >> So, the total is correct. The 52 is correct. I just got to more in Title I just got to fix the rate down, and I will update that. But, the total amount is correct. How many, ideally, how many Responsive Classroom experts, coaches, whatever you want to call them, leaders, will you have at each building? So, the team at each building, uh we're looking to have a team of around, um eight to nine at each building. >> And that's a combination of admin >> of like admin, teacher, instructional coach, and a few uh staff teachers. Okay. Thanks. And then another question I had related to this is that I'm like, how will

144we know that this is effective, and like will there be a survey of either students, teachers, so we know like we're investing in this and it's actually working? That's a collective of all of that. So, we're looking at our SWIS data, our behavior data, and then also surveys. So, all of that combined will kind of give us a picture of this is actually working. So, will this So, this is for the remainder of this school year, I want to say fiscal This year and the following year, and we'll be actually like tracking to see if this is actually working. And also doing observations, too, to kind of see because we also got to give the teacher a little bit of time to get comfortable with the model because there's also a different There's a lot

145of different components that go along with the model. Um so, there's some training, coaching. We also want to make sure that's we're reflecting in like our student data, Um student survey data because we can also track it in Panorama all of that data. I guess I'm just wondering when both of course the updates are like we did this is working or it's not working anymore. We can start giving that that kind of updates next year. Yeah. Like before Christmas next year or Yeah. Okay. The counselors the counselors started saying we're starting to see some trends within observations, within some of the data reflected, but it will take a little bit of time before we can actually say we started off pre before we implemented our responsive classroom to like now that we know that this

146is actually like working working. Okay. I actually I know that we got a book for advisory in the middle school, but would you say like from your observations you know in this position have you seen that like is it equally like demanding in terms of like the the classroom environment and culture is like are middle schools and elementary schools facing the same challenges? Like would it benefit them for us to have considered to do it at the same time as they're planning advisory only because advisory is when potentially these like lessons could be delivered. And we had those conversations about doing it across the board, but we didn't know that would have been too much of a of a lift. Yeah, that's a good wonder. I think like only because like what it looks like

147right now is like it's about like the approach to building relationships with students and families. And like so most teachers I think they even like I feel like maybe like pre-pandemic 2017 was probably my first year here. They we out PBIS, right? And there was an effort to create classroom wide expectations and school wide expectations. So, that's where all the visuals came in, right? Like, it was like, "Be respectful, be responsible, be safe." Were the three big in all schools. And like, you know, everybody, you know, came up with a theme. And so, like, that was about common spaces. And so, like, what I'm hearing now is that now in 2026, our goal is to improve relationships between students and teachers. And one way to do that is acts. Um it does say that one

148of the principles is teaching social emotional skills is as important as teaching academic content. Cuz there's like six principles. I love it. Like, so I have nothing against like the choice. I know Michelle KPO came and talked about it. I was just wondering, man, it would be really nice to see that in But a lot of these components are actually built into the model that they're using for advisory. So, they're not too far off. It's just like the advisory model is not called response classroom. But a lot of those components overlap. So, it won't be a big lift when we start introducing this to the middle schools. I think we're just previewing that, too, right? With teachers in the middle schools. Cuz sometimes I feel like they do feel like, "Oh, we just did all

149this and then this and then this." And now you're introducing this. So, as long as they know that that it's coming. I think that can be that can be that can be a way to shift attitudes about like endorsing of something new. And then one other thing I was going to say was um I wondered our curiosity is Michelle KPO, I know we'll vote on this, you know, um the 28th. The 28th. So, like, between that and now, I just wondered if there was any way to get some more information about the collaboration between like our tier one wellness, right? Like, approach cuz that's where she kind of sits and and this recommendation came from, and inclusion from special education. Because a lot of the behaviors that often times are like how are we managing

150this idea of having kids with special needs in our genetic classrooms, especially between K and 5. And then like we can't assign a teaching assistant to every Speaking of budgeting issues, we cannot assign a teaching assistant to every single kid that pushing into a classroom. But I've been in those classrooms, and I and even in the high school we're like, "Where's the extra help?" Cuz the teacher has to teach, right? And that's the beautiful part about it is we actually had special ed as part of the committee that part of the work. So when we were actually looking at the different models, that was one of the reasons why the response to classroom was was chosen because of the approach. And because we also had like representatives from the student services department as part of

151the committee. Okay. So. All right. Any other questions? All right. Board remarks? Actually about this tomorrow. In response to some of the comments that have been made in public comment and elsewhere about um the technology audit. Um coming out of the pandemic having ramped up technology quite a bit so very quickly and impressively to make sure that all of our students had access. Um and I don't think we had a chance after that to like really take a pause and see how are we using it, where is it impactful? Technology is a tool. It's, you know, it can it can be harmful, it can be helpful. Um just like a pencil can be. So um I I think it makes sense to actually coming off of you know, that that ramp up to actually thoughtfully

152take a moment to look at where and how we're using it and make sure the communication because we do have a lot of very helpful tools for parents. Um and just double-checking on the website, there's a lot of tools for how to set this up at home, you know, what's being used. So, if we can do better communication on what some of those pieces are, especially for new parents coming in, um I think that'd be really helpful. I actually like the idea um I don't know if if it's possible or if there's capacity to get that detailed, but like what are the things that absolutely we need students on Chromebooks or what are some of the things that we can go back to work with? It was kind of funny today, my daughter was like,

153"I've never like had a textbook." She was like, "I've had a workbook, but I've never had like a textbook that was like mine." I'm like, "Do you want a textbook?" She But I think to that point, like we're we're really not seeing kids with like textbooks, which may be great for their backs, but I think that dependency on the Chromebook and make sure that it's charged and disruption to the classroom, I think it would be helpful to get an idea of like how much are we using it? What are our policies on that? So, she mentioned the policy and I was like, "I don't even know what our policy is." Like, do we have something on maximum use of uh technology and when is it appropriate and when is it not appropriate to to use?

154And I would second some of those. Sorry, were you done? I couldn't see you. >> I was not. Um [clears throat] I would I would third, I guess. I agree with, you know, the things that I'm hearing and, you know, one of the experiences from an elementary standpoint, knowing that I still have elementary school kiddos, is um I still remember thinking like I've blocked all these sites. I tried I I will say like there is there's so many different circles of conversations. I hope that during the audit if there is an opportunity to have like parents of kids with special needs would say like, "Please don't take this away, right?" versus like parents of kids who like maybe, you know, a child with ADHD that's impulsive might say like, "Get this out of my home,

155right?" to like high-functioning kids that are like coding, you know, in their spare time. So, it's going to be a very interesting conversation. I don't As a family, we don't own technology and household like what's assigned to you know, with the kids. But, I remember thinking like, "Yeah, we would be kind of lost in some of those in in some experiences." But, then I go back to like paper, right? Like, here are your books. These are the things we have. Um so, but that's also not sustainable. So, there's like pros and cons to everything. I look forward to having that conversation. I think the only other topic that I've heard families talk about is like, "Does this at all this this tech audit, could it potentially also integrate a conversation about the use of AI?"

156Um for some reason, that is a hot topic at high school, and I just wondered if that was coming up in the middle schools. I don't have a middle schooler yet, so I don't know. It is coming as they can't take home summatives anymore because the teachers There's a couple teachers saying you can't take them home anymore because they're getting too many AI Yep. uh developed um you know, responses. And ChatGPT. Yeah. So, they have to do it in class. >> Yeah. Um I just want to give a shout out to Patrick. I don't know how he does it on top of having a 90-hour work week and kiddos at home to finish to be at school and to finish your dissertation. He defended it, but Yeah, I was going to say that's a big

157step. Um so, just kudos to you cuz you haven't missed a beat with us. You're answering emails over the weekend. You caught I think you butt dialed me at 7:00 yesterday. I'm not sure, but I was just like, "Oh, home. Just be with your family. Stop working." Um so, just thank you for your continued commitment to this district on top of all the other things that you do cuz I'm tired just thinking about all that you do. So, thank you so much for your continued leadership. And congratulations. Congratulations. Thank you. I appreciate that. Dr. candidate, so that's a big deal. But, I'll be calling you Dr. Robinson. We have We have a cake, no fruit. Did you hear that, Felicia? No fruit. Cake, no no no fruit. Felicia go crazy for cake if you didn't

158know. Um so, I have no fruit? No fruit on the cake. So, I want to clarify I wasn't here at the last meeting and I want to clarify the misrepresentations about my role with the DC trip and just kind of the history of DC trip because somehow it got lost in all the years of conversations. So, just me personally, I did not launch the DC trip. Although, I participated and my kid participated and it was incredible and I agree with the public comment that every kid should get to go to DC for all those reasons. And I think it should be a priority and I think we should be revisiting that. But, um just from a history historical perspective, uh WorldStrides, who we used to use for Nashville, used to do the DC trip. It

159was completely separate from the school, but our teachers were allowed to be go on it. The PTO would collect some of the funds, but there was no kind of formal fundraising and it was very much like if you could go, you went and if your friends were going, you went. And if you look at pictures from those years, it was a very small group of kids. That was the year before my eighth grader was coming up and we got an email in February of 2022 from some parents, nurses, teachers about how awful the trip was. The trip was scheduled in a hotel with some inappropriate other guests. The trip There was some medical issues, there were logistic issues. It was It was a really, really tough experience for those kids. And these parents whose kids

160were no longer eighth graders came together and said, "We will help you find a better alternative." At a meeting in fall of 2023, I attended as a parent. Partly because I had an eighth grader. And we interviewed The meeting had like a someone who organizes like conventions for Marriott and someone that does tours in DC. Like it had It tapped into our community in a really just impressive way. And we came together, we interviewed multiple, multiple facilitators of these trips. We narrowed it down to an organization called Close-Up Foundation. It's a not-for-profit. They focus on non-partisan democratic student citizens. Um every single staff member is a fellow. They also have some permanent staff members, but the fellows are recent graduates in poly sci and history. They're young, they have a lot of energetic energy about

161democracy. And they divide you up into workshops when you go. In our case, and the case when I chaperoned the school-sponsored DC trip, you divide up into groups of about 20 and you start every single monument with a lesson. So you go to FDR and they say, "What role should government have in inequality?" And you go to Martin Luther King's uh memorial and you say, "What role should the government have in civil rights?" And that one actually ends with what action are you going to take when you get home to make sure that these things Martin Luther King's goals and aspirations and words are put into action. You go to the African American History Museum, you go to the Holocaust Museum. And with each stop, you have a conversation. And these eighth graders turn to

162each other and they have a conversation about what what want to bring back with them, what they're going to learn. Uh they take it very seriously. When I was at um just an example, African-American History Museum, if you're under 18, you can't go to that Emmett Till exhibit alone. And kids had to find a chaperone, and I stood at the edge of the Emmett Till exhibit. About five kids went in at a time, and the kids just lined up and spent time in there. I'd walk around and hear their conversations, and it was 14-year-old boys, like my son at night. You know, our children were sitting in the Emmett Till exhibit with their white friends having a great conversation. There was a representation that this trip wasn't diverse. That's not true. Um I would say

163we had I don't know the exact number, but we had approximately 15 to 20% non-white students on that trip. Um so I'm kind of bouncing back to the history. So we got to 2023. We get with Close Up. Uh we work with the administration. We took a bunch of kids there. I personally, as a parent, uh spent lots of time on fundraising. The DC PTO DC the PTO Donuts were Donuts for DC. Um there was some other fundraising There were donors and we had There was one donor who um bought luggage for everyone going on a free trip. And every kid's luggage was different, so you could never tell which kids got luggage donated. The other thing we did that was a way that we paid for it is every 10 kids that go on

164a trip, you get a free chaperone. We had parent chaperones. We had 27 parents who paid the cost of their kid and themselves, and we took those 27 trips. And we gave them to students that couldn't afford it. Uh then we supplemented that with teachers and administrators, but by having these parents willing to pay for themselves, you could give these trips to kids. And every My understanding, and I every kid that wanted to go to DC that first year went. The trip was on uh Mother's Day weekend, which you know Some mothers said thank you, other mothers got home call. Um but in January of that year, before the trip, I, on Facebook, asked anybody else want to be a parent organizer to fund raise. In January, I set up a committee. We had three

165parents from Julian and three parents from Brooks, and they started coordinating fund raising. We learned, for example, that a school dance makes X amount of dollars. So, can each school have a dance for DC? At the end of the seventh grade year, I kick off the fund raise. We calculated how much we could get from donut donuts. I talked to the Community Foundation in Oak Park, who said, "As long as you guys are really fund raising, their donors will step up with matches." Um we had we learned how much you get for bar trivia. We found out how much you get for wrapping paper. Like, we had a list of fund raising on a spreadsheet that people were willing to volunteer for. And one of the best parts about these parents and the agreement amongst

166people talking about fund raising, if you're a free and reduced lunch, you do not have to even participate in the fund raising, but money will come to you. And if you are in a group with the group of most of us, which is that we don't have the money laying around, you would if you go to a fund raiser, you get part of that money. And we had all kinds of other ways to make sure that parents who couldn't participate, needed it, would get it. I mean, we were really trying to be comprehensive. I don't know the details of what happened to all that work. My kid graduated. I didn't have an eighth grader that year. I found out they were still going to DC. There were some changes to the program, and when we

167came back to the board, the cost was significantly more to get all the kids that wanted to go. One of the reasons is we didn't have parent chaperones anymore, so we lost those 27 free trips. Um if you don't have parent chaperones, not only do you not get free trips, but then you have to pay fees for the overnight, and you have to increase your costs in that way. And the swing ended up creating I mean, a a concern. Is this really sustainable? The next year, uh the district came with um a proposal for St. Louis, which went through Springfield, which means you can use Title 1 funds. And creatively trying to solve the the question of how do we make this more accessible to everyone in light of the increase in cost and some

168changes to the program. Fast forward to and I don't remember if I voted yes or no for St. Louis. I know I spoke out against it. I remember being very adamant about DC. But when it came down to it, I don't know if I said I'll give this a try. I just don't remember. Comes to to Nashville and my kid is an eighth grader again. Now I'm operating again in that complicated place of parent and board member. And I didn't agree with the Nashville trip as a board member and I didn't want to send my kid on it. I thought and certain reasons and I asked about them at the board table. This is for everyone. What are we going to do with kids on a bus for 10 hours? Are we really sure we

169want to put them on a bus in the middle of the night and then have them keep going? What about the bus? Nashville, um I, you know, my kid asked me if we were going to see like the guy who started the KKK. Like I wasn't comfortable in Nashville. From my daughter's perspective, um I thought that the ideas that the district came up with were really good. I thought they were trying to find interesting things. I love the African-American Music Museum. Um I thought some of the stops were going to be I mean it it's great to go on a trip with your friends and go to a beautiful place and I, you know, I want More important than anything is that they do have a good time and learn something. After I voted against

170it, I got a call from another parent who had sent their kid with my first kid and had sent their second kid and they said, "Ascension is doing a trip with Close-Up." And the reason they're doing a trip with Close-Up is because the woman at Ascension who organized it went on the Close-Up trip herself. And she really wanted to bring her kids up. We asked for a date. People were confused about the date. They had already picked the date and it was in conflict with our date, but we were we were going to join their trip, we had to join their trip. So, we we I started talking to them and they said, you know, "Do you want to do this?" I was hoping to sway us to DC. I was hoping the district would

171do that, but they wouldn't. So, I chose as a parent to join that trip. That trip was open to everyone. I posted on the Facebook Brooks 2026 travel page, if you want it, come I I'll send you a PowerPoint. Every time I sent the PowerPoint out and invited them to the parent meeting, I said, "Send this to everyone you know." I had a another friend post it on the Julian Facebook page. "Send this to everyone you know. Everyone is included. Anyone can come. This is the parent meeting, but it is not school sanctioned in that we're not having teachers. We're not going to be able to provide the same kind of if you're you are concerned with your kids traveling with parents that they don't know, there won't be someone from the school. Um and

172so, it's parent chaperoned. Um in the end, the cost, I know that was an issue, the cost of Nashville was $1,092, I think. The cost of DC was $1,900. The Nashville trip went to nine places and spent 18 hours sightseeing. We went to 25 different sites and we were in DC for 4 days. Can't argue that the price is different, but from a value and a how much you get for your money, the trip is not like it's it's a it's it's an added value. Um we did have scholarship opportunities. People asked for scholarships. We were able to secure scholarships for one single mom I know of and another family I know of. Um someone came to us and said, "Will you guys do fundraising?" And the answer I gave was, "We are not organizing

173a fundraiser, but you can organize a fundraiser. We have an email list and people can participate." And nobody decided to do a fundraiser. In the end, we took 50 kids to DC and yet five parents that went. We had two bus loads. We had an incredible trip. Um these I had these kids got to do all the things you should do in DC in 4 days. Everyone should get a Bobby Danny Davis. He sat sat down with us for 45 minutes and told us his whole career and then took selfies with all of our kids. We met with the staff of Tammy Duckworth. We had fantastic conversations about all the aspects of things that are happening. Now, focus on democracy, not politics. And our kids were engaged. Like we even said at the end of

174every day, "What do you guys think we got?" We'd be like, "We got 90/10 today. We got 80/20 today." I mean, more than you could get from eighth graders otherwise. So, that was my role in this trip. I'm a big believer that we should be finding something that is really educational and powerful, sustainable financially, and that we should be really committed to everyone getting to go on a trip like that. A couple things I will say, I took 50 kids the first time I went. I was on the trip with like 350. Um those are different trips. They're They're at the district Managing a district-wide trip is a big undertaking. It's very different than 50. Um we we were able to do things that are are more difficult, and I think that there's some considerations

175about whether or not you do you break it up a little bit um from number of people. I really think bringing back parent chaperones is important from a financial standpoint. Um and overall, I just think that there is the the strong interest in making having everyone go to DC is also not really limited DC to DC necessarily. I think some I heard someone talk about Philadelphia, which has some real important historical context. Some talked about Boston. I would prefer DC, I but I I do think that there's a difference also though in St. Louis, and Nashville, and Philadelphia, and Boston from a historical perspective. Look at what you can see and what you can experience. So, think I cleared everything up, but if I missed anything, I'm happy to talk about it. Overall, I I

176I I hope our kids in Nashville had a good year that that time. There were some ice on the roads, but that happens. That's life. Um and I did hear they had a good time. I saw some pictures from some of Madden's friends. Um Oh, we did hear that with there might have been a little bit of tension with the kids. I do not I'm not aware of that and I asked my kids specifically and they they said that their friends were like, "Who's going where?" And it was just and then they came back and talked about it. Um so I don't know how much of that was adults versus kids, but in the end it all happened before I went and while I was gone at I was actually talking. Thank you. Thank you.

177Does anybody have any questions? All right. Well, hopefully if you think of anything, tell us people watching on YouTube if you have any questions. Holly's always been like call me, I'll talk to anybody. I commend her for that. >> [laughter] >> So that concludes the forest remarks. We're going to move on to theater reports. Uh start us off with Beth, Gavin, and Becky. Gavin Well, we've talked quite a bit about Beth today. So I'll thank you Gavin. Beth, you guys are meeting on Monday? I'm assuming similarly. They're meeting on Monday. >> Okay, you guys are meeting on Monday. Um sustainability case, Gavin and Nancy. Nothing since our last meeting. Alice in Committee, Beth and Holly. Which one? We turned in we both submitted feedback I think on the recent policy changes. I think that might

178need to come on agenda soon. Did you You submitted it? I did. I yeah, I did. Resend it. It's been busy. Okay, so I'm missing Uh C C C, Beth, Nancy. Um jumping to that last meeting, so the only heads up I have is that they are working on calculating our new and updated attribution costs. Thank you. Uh Council of Governments, uh we had a really good conversation about improving the coverage and engagement with our local media. Uh there were a number of concerns about the interactions with our local media and a seemingly reflectancy to engage um and how we can like improve those relationships. Um so we can focus on the great things that are happening in D97, D200, the township, uh and beyond. Uh we also talked about opportunities to create a community

179calendar. I think we've been talking about this since KJ was in kindergarten and now he is a freshman. Um but uh the village is committed to having a shared calendar so that if you're having something that D200 will love to be invited. So as we're thinking about those community events that are important to us, the Blast Off to Kindergarten, um they would love to be there because it is a continuation. So as you're think if you as you guys are hearing about community events that are happening for D97, um if you want to make sure that you shoot those either to me or to the um D200 or township or library, they want to come to our events and they would love to have us attend their events as well. So I'll get a follow-up

180on where we are with that calendar. We were just like what's on top of our heads and I was like Blast Off to Kindergarten and I can't think about the other things. Um but as we're thinking about those type of things, we want to have representation. Um that was it for COG. Um next is IGA, very similar Nancy. I was going to say I had a very similar conversation about that. Um we also um are discussing uh at our next meeting and possibly using as our foreign focus um learning a bit more about your local government. Um so things like where people are like, "Why did you not use that money for this project?" And I'm like, "Well, that's a totally different taxing body. We can't do that sort of thing. So, helping people understand

181a little more clearly [snorts] what each body is doing and what some of the constraints are so that people can more effectively participate in and perhaps enjoy the meetings and a little bit become a little bit more engaged. Awesome. Thank you. Jackie isn't here, so we'll get an update on OPJF next time. Venus with parent community council. Um community council had a meeting where Dr. Lee Williams, who's the new executive director of equity, talked about to the community council about parent engagement. So, it was I thought I had the slides. I will send them forward to you later. Can I actually [clears throat] do a quick OPJF update? I'm sorry. You're done. Okay. A quick OPJF update on just because they're having open house this weekend. Grades 1 through 8 at Julian. Um it is

182always a fun and exciting open house for them. There's lots of activities for kids. They are also awarding of the um I'm going to totally I would English say that? Yes. I think I'm saying that right. Award um to Jenny Reina um well deserved at the end of the event. So, show up at Julian this weekend. Yes. Hopefully volleyball does not take over. Um Jackie isn't here, so Holly, you want to tell us about PTAC? Um yeah, I think I I think you might have updated already, but we did have the program that we were discussing and um for a couple hours at Brooks. We're looking forward to being able to do again. We had I think between 30 and 40 people show up. We had three different classrooms um running at the same time

183talking about different stressors for kids and different development uh kind of the progressive development. We um Um then there was a second event after that with OBTA membership on April 9th and 25 teachers joined for a 2-hour deep dive into the social emotional and trauma-informed practices and discipline equity and restorative practices. Um the session had a robust question Q&A with Patrick and Felicia and the session facilitators, Jill Capobianco who we've talked about already and I don't know Sally's last name. I know she is but I can't remember. Yeah, Kramer. Um the dialogue between the administration and teachers was highly productive and revealed the strong mutual interest in continuing the conversation. Um we're collecting feedback from those teachers and at our next PTAC meeting we're going to take input and see what we want to do

184in the future. Uh PTOC, I talked to Jared about the PTA membership application so I missed that meeting but I did write to PTOC to ask if I can meet with someone to get an update and I'll send that out to everyone. Um Manda, do you have anything? I know you want to talk a bit. The only thing that we provided from the district is an update on ADA accessibility requirements that we're going to have to implement as a district and I wanted to make sure the PTOCs are aware because beginning the end of this month all of our digital communication must be accessible so that will impact PTOCs with any communication that they want to send through school communication. So I'm in the process of putting together some guidance for the community about that

185because we get a lot of flyers and information from community partners as well. Um but that was that was really really topical. Awesome. Thank you so much. Um Janice here for Ed Board um and we're all meeting. There's an update on the schools meeting minutes to be ready. Jan has to chair. Um all right, so looking forward to the April 28th proposed agenda, transformation of the area update. K-5 math curriculum recommendation for adoption, sustainability on-site solar contract, consent agenda, bank utility audit engagement. Discussion will be discussing school year 2027 teacher leader roles with action in May. Food services contract renewal, action again in May. So, all of these actions are in May. SY27 student registration and lunch fees recommendation, courier RFP contract, annual contracts over 25,000, Title 1 policy update. And then we'll be taking

186action on four items including authorization to proceed with summer tentative 2028 construction planning, approval of annual audit findings, approval of Julian Middle School roof bid, and then the contracts, any contracts exceeding $25,000 including the responsive class from PD. Thank you. Can I go? Does anyone have any I don't know. For lunch fees, I had a quick wonder. I know we had talked about this at some point and this is more of a contract like if there was an opportunity to know more about like we've worked with the the folks at OPR as like is that still the only vendor that we've ever considered? Only cuz I will say that something that's come up is that middle school like food amounts, like food amounts has been a concern. Like people are getting [clears throat] like less

187food and the cost of food is going up. And so, I just wonder if that was ever on the table like as an agenda item. I guess it's for sure. So, Michael, correct me if I'm wrong, but that is something that is for discussion in the but for next year we we're moving forward with with the current vendor, but there are future discussions around options. Correct. Okay. And there are some different options that we talked about with high school. Okay. That's part of the Thank you. That'll be part of the the discussion for today. Kids are hungry. That's all. Yeah. There's not enough food in the middle school. Like the middle school kids are all Yeah. Well, they go by calories, and so if you're getting that high calorie food, it could be smaller. They

188go by calorie amount, and we all know that, you know, sugar can increase calories. Some ingredients increase calories, but that's so interesting. That don't make it filling. All right. Can I get a motion to adjourn?