001foreign then we'll start with public comments uh we have two students and an adult here to speak about the gender neutral bathrooms um if you use whatever order folks want to go in yeah hello my name is Bailey and I'm a gender fluid team here at Brooks Middle School I use all pronouns and I'm a member of rainbow Revolution I'm here to talk to you about why gender neutral bathrooms are made here at Brooks this is a change that should and could be made and I would like to explain it to reasons why can't make me want to feel safe here at school in a way we can do that is by changing the way we see things if we see things from the perspective of a man or woman or a girl and boy
002how safe and happy with the kids really my friend uses all pronouns they get to criticize when they go to the bathroom just because they don't fit into normal growth boy stereotypes as a trans teen I would love to be able to use the voicemail but because I was assigned female at Birth I need to be able to use a girl's doctor having a gender-neutral bathroom when it wouldn't sorry having a gender-neutral bathroom would make kids about books feel like they have a safe beer that has everything that matches their needs a school that has gender neutral bathrooms Fosters an inclusive environment that shows each School District cares about diversity it also demonstrates that the school district doesn't just tolerate student and staff differences but for instance provide a safe private facility for transgender gender
003fear and gender non-comfortable people family with children and people with disabilities who made in assistance another reason gender energy bathrooms would be employers they may reduce the volume and improve the mental and physical health that kids in the LGBT use 100 worth of money thank you thank you [Applause] hello everyone thank you for having me my name is Al copel and I attend Brooks middle school and I am a member of the rainbow Revolution Club I would like to make a comment and reference about the gender neutral bathroom presentation that you will see later tonight I use all pronouns so you can call me whatever you feel comfortable some of the reasons that I would like to have gender neutral bathrooms for my school are one I don't feel safe in either bathroom because people
004are always whispering to their friends when they see me go into either bathroom some people write the F's are on the on the bathroom walls or laugh at me when I go to the bathroom or I had one person look at me I was in the girls bathroom and she stared at me for 10 seconds and just walked out of the bathroom two I get misgender no matter what bathroom I use about a month ago I walked into the girls bathroom and someone yelled oh my God you scare me you're in the wrong bathroom then I had to explain everything to them another time I walked into the boys bathroom and someone said you can't be in here that's not allowed three I know this happens to other people too so we need to reduce
005the frequency of these situations for other people in the school's lgbtqia plus Community by getting gender-neutral backgrounds we need a safe bathroom where we can finally feel comfortable no matter what pronouns we use or the sexuality we identify thank you for letting me tell you about why we need gender neutral bathrooms here at Brooks [Applause] good evening my name is Adam Berman and I am a social worker at Gwendolyn Brooks Middle School I am also the supervisor of the rainbow Revolution Club I am honored to be invited here to speak with you tonight about the project of bringing gender-neutral bathrooms to the middle schools this has been a passion project roughly three years in the making the conversations for these bathrooms began back in 2020 when students were still attending rainbow Revolution virtually as conversations
006began about having gender-neutral bathrooms we decided to invite Katie Keane and Carrie Kim to our meeting to further the conversations over the last few years Jeannie has continued to visit our club to provide updates share Blueprints and even give the students a tour for where everything would go and what the bathrooms would look like every few weeks the students ask me at the startup Club what's the update on the gender-neutral bathrooms this is so incredibly important for them as you can tell from the beautiful words of our student Representatives Bailey and Bell I am truly so excited for the students at Brooks and eventually Julian to finally feel safe and comfortable when using the bathrooms as you heard from our two Brave and incredible students tonight this matters it matters her safety Comfort feeling of
007belonging and it shows commitment to continuing to support our lgbtq plus Community I am so proud of our students for raising their voices and always advocating for Change and this project is no small exception it has been a labor of love and we are very grateful for Jeannie Keane and her efforts behind the scenes I hope you took the time to listen and soak in the words of our students because there are no better people to tell you tonight why this is so important to send them thank you [Applause] they usually don't respond people just in case usually we don't respond so the reason we're discussing is usually we don't respond during public comments what we are planning on uh talking later about it you guys might not be here let me talk about it
008yeah because it's later on but they're part of the summer big for this summer and we got there was a 500 000 Grant attached to getting the general movement I think there were any other public comments so we're actually going to move to the b97 joy and culture celebration but where I'm also making an uh an adjustment to the agenda uh just to um honor our visitors times we're going to move the superintendent um update to the end of the agenda and allow so that we have time for the audit information all that as well so um but first then we have the joy and culture celebration yep thanks um president um Kim would like to introduce our be curious uh celebration so every time we like to start our meetings with happiness um and
009so uh that that's what this section is about so we'd like to start this time with a shout out to our cast and Bravo uh teams in the you know the the tradition of Arts in our uh in our district and specifically I think oh I'm wondering why the slide's not moving because I'm supposed to move this line okay um let me see switch off oh you gotta check the power on yeah well let's see you did that on Christmas and you know please let me know I'll just do it okay great uh so here we go um so we want to celebrate our students at uh Julian and bro and Brooks uh in the cast and Bravo program so you can change the slide here um so at uh Julian Middle School we have
010had a couple of performances and we have ongoing performances all year um and that you know bring a lot of uh happiness and joy to the community and want to elevate and support that we also um had uh um we're also showing the other performances and some that are upcoming at our uh at uh cast for our students we also had at Bravo a celebration uh recently of our students I think the next slide sorry um at Brooks Middle School we did have a celebration of uh our students that recently were recognized uh when uh we had a group of uh upwards of 30 students traveled to a theater conference where they were uh you know recognized with distinction for uh for their skills in the way that they stand out and the community that
011they build around their performances you can click it one more time there um oops maybe go back sorry um I'm sorry I guess we're missing a little bit on this slide um but yes so want to think and recognize we're going to have our cast and Bravo students actually come so we wanted to show you some slides today because they were recognized last month uh the the students in the Bravo performance but we are going to have them come and actually talk about uh you know their experiences and and what it means to them to be able to to perform in these in these places so I also have today in the in in the house with us staff members that we're recognizing so go to the next slide every year for the past many
012years the district has supported national award certification which is a high level of recognition for the craft of of teaching and learning and reflection on on our practice as Educators and so the district actually has a distinction of having a large number of national board certified teachers and today we're celebrating a new cohort of teachers that is being recognized some teachers are have to renew so you can see that we have a two groups being recognized we have new teachers that are for the first time receiving this recognition as well as teachers that are renewing their recognition so at this time we'd like to ask president Kim will read your names and I'd like to ask if we think we have some of the teachers here and some are not we have certificates for everyone
013and if teachers aren't here we'll make sure that we get those certificates to you I really want to honor and um and thank you for what you did to um you know to get this recognition and for what it means for our students which is that they have a practitioner that's really thinking about how we are always getting better at what we do so at this time when we call your name we're gonna actually ask all of the teachers that are here that are being recognized to line up uh right against this wall here and um then we'll call your name and we'd like to take a picture first then yeah and called it all right I'm just gonna uh so on behalf of the Board of Education we would like to congratulate you on
014this incredible accomplishment and I know amount of time you suspend on this um and thank you for your dedication to our students and our schools um so I'm going to read the folks who are not here first so that you're the rest of you are standing over here so I'll read those and then I'll get to the people who are in the audience and so the teachers who are not uh were not able to be here tonight are Michael youngberg youngberg sorry Jillian Williams Christina welchko emergency I'm so sorry if I'm mispronouncing announcing Wesley McKinney Anjali caria Ashley Cannon Jordan Fong Pamela Gaffney Caitlyn Fox Nicole the campus Megan ablin abelin Laura stamp Shannon Fellini Gabrielle Rosenbloom Seth Roby Jennifer Raya Nora hi Patricia Groban Erica Fox Childress no Eric was here um Maria Elvira
015Alvira colmannero Joseph casanovas uh sorry they're sticking together Natalie Campbell and model Molly Bruno [Applause] um and then these are the teachers who are here so when I call your name if you'd like to come up and get your certificate uh Hannah Tatro [Applause] thank you Nora Flynn [Applause] arnetta Thompson [Applause] I'm not doing this very well congrats uh Betsy Parkinson Rocio Jacoby [Applause] Jennifer Buckley [Applause] and kitty alejos [Music] [Applause] um if we can invite Harry cam to come on up who uh is a supporter and a cheerleader for the the national board cohorts International board the teachers all right let's see if I can get you all together [Music] all right one two three one more for insurance thank you two three wonderful congratulations and I I must say if you don't mind
016go going back to those lights I I didn't in case you didn't notice I didn't feel like I didn't see my notes uh so let me just share a few things that I didn't share about this life that were up there about cast and Bravo I thought I left these upstairs so my apologies so uh if you go back to the cast slide I want to share that Cass traveled to buy Elementary School with their production of Miss Nelson is missing they performed it twice during the school day for students and they hope they will be joining cassberry school as soon as middle schoolers they also presented Xanadu in November and number the stars during the winter festival in December this year marked the return of two very important parts of the program that directly
017affect the student experience cast crew and winter auditions over 50 students are signed up to meet unselected Saturdays and for the final week of play rehearsals to help bring the magic of the cast crew to our live performances the return of the winter auditions means that 65 students student actors from the fall auditions can sign up for the second set of activities uh each year effectively doubling their opportunities to participate and on the 17th of 18th of this month cast will present Double Trouble which is a one-act play about the touching and wacky friendship that develops between three student actresses that are playing witches in the student production of Macbeth the crew and Miss Boyle are also hard at work in transforming the new acting class into a black box Studio performance space to present
018sketch comedy in this ring and lastly sign ups have begun for cast six week summer 2023 program for current fourth through seventh graders that will be presenting Newsies so here's what you also need to know this is what I was trying to remember but I couldn't get it all in my head so on Saturday with Bravo on Saturday January 21st Bravo hosted its uh 13th annual minus kovitz mine has coveted one day Performing Arts Workshop for a 102nd through fifth graders from schools in our district and Beyond it was a fun-filled unpacked day of singing dancing acting building confidence and making new friends taking risks learning the importance of teamwork and the transformative power of musical theater the participants were in for a real treat as their student teachers for the day were 35 7th
019and 8th graders from Brooks um from Brooks Bravo Team the day included learning selections from Fame scenes songs choreographed show stopping numbers like the fan favorite Can't Stop This Feeling from trolls and so here's a quote from Tina Reynolds the artistic director of Bravo said it was beautiful and so fun to watch our seventh and 8th graders teaching inspiring and infusing passion for their musical theater and just last weekend Bravo presented the brand new musical production of Doc and the kangaroo 66th graders took part in the production on February uh second and third and the 4th of February in the Brooks Auditorium and then finally we want to lastly and this is in Atlanta here's what happened for a bravo team they were taking home their 11th Freddie G outstanding production award at the junior
020theater Festival that took place January 13th to 15th I know because I had a family member there in Atlanta and the Annual Festival celebrates and Empower student driven musical theater programs from all over the world so each Festival group performed 15 minutes of a Broadway junior musical for judges and under the artistic Direction of Tina Reynolds the students impress judges with their 15-minute performance of Fame Junior which led to standing ovations from the five other groups as well as the judges and families so we'd like to let you know that we're going to have the students here so that they can represent their own Artistic Endeavors next time so thank you for letting me share those and I will make sure I know where my notes are next time um before those lives are up
021there so um with that I think we're ready for the next item are we doing the being a learning designer or is that bombing yep we can do that so at this time like to call up Dr ebony Lofton and we also have other members of the team here is everyone here okay we have a principal Susan mura we have uh Katie Noonan come on up yep oops yes we have a couple of cheers and then we also have a Podium for whoever is speaking yeah okay thank you um so first of all thank you everyone we're so excited about one book one district elementary Edition um [Applause] so we're here to give a priority update from the be a learning designer team and a lot of the work around one book one District was
022done by here so I just wanted to make her so happy to have you guys here and I'm about to Tee It Off in just a minute but this is um really exciting to talk about our book for um one book one business Elementary Edition next slide so um we as the pre-k through second grade team Joey and love is we're affectionately known the beauty of the designer team um so our team members and I want to take a moment to thank all of our amazing teacher Librarians that are led by Katie Noonan um so they are really responsible for all of this work and it is work the imagination yes please um the website the design the implementation the excitement I'm so really excited that they are a part of the team alongside Emily
023fenske Sarah Mendez Anna Middleton Susan mura Marianne Rayfield and myself and really our goals in terms of thinking about one book one District go back to our video learning designer goals which makes sure that every student in pre-k through second grade is in love again team join love with literacy and is able to read right speak and listen at grade level by third grade and for us um you'll see this kind of throughout the book we really want to know use what we know about standards that we need to make sure our kids Master to invite all of these really smart and cool Partnerships with our families and their communities to make sure that it's all grounded in student identity language and culture affirmation so excited about the book and I'm going to hang it
024out to you ladies Susan yes next month so as ebony said we partnered with our Librarians I'm on the team with Ebony and we were thinking of all those things that were just there how to partner with communities how to partner with family how to really make the joy of reading be something that is a community instead of just a teacher student relationship our Librarians have done individual work on this in their schools but wanted to bring it more to a district level so we partnered with them and just this past Friday kicked off one book one Elementary one district elementary Edition it took us a long time to come up with the name so a lot of opinions um next slide so I'm going to ask Katie some questions here about what um she
025did a lot of work with our Librarians of coming together so Katie what is one book one district elementary well um throughout the years each elementary school has done one book one school in each of their buildings um for the past I don't know maybe five to ten years and so one of the things that we talked about even last year before this committee was created was to to have a book that we can all read together as a community and include the public library in it and just have something that we're doing together instead of all these separate entities so this year with the committee's help we worked together to bring one book one district elementary Edition to the schools so that we're all reading the same book at the same time so what
026is the title of the book why'd you pick it so and tell us about the author right so am I on the robot by Eve L Ewing is and this is a big deal because it was a secret to teachers to committee members you kept it until like last week I don't even like it was a title of secret so it was so um one of the challenges to choosing a book this year was that we had to find a book that not none of the eight elementary schools had done previously since we'd all been doing this for a while um and so this was a book that was discovered actually by the Lincoln librarian Rebecca messenger she had read this book and and followed ebuing um on a lot of social platforms she's a
027professor at the University of Chicago um African-American woman and very involved in stem technology writing she has a lot of Publications and so we felt that this book was just a fabulous choice for multiple reasons um maybe one of the biggest being that it's a local author that we were able to bring to our schools so we also liked a lot of the themes that the book would discuss and we could do a standard to link K through five so there's a standards of character traits yep so it's rl3 is a character traits and how characters change throughout books and stories and so that's kind of standard that we're focusing on across all grade levels with this with this book so Katie tell us what the book's about so the book is about Maya she's
028a fifth grader she is struggling in fifth grade doesn't have any friends in her class um just feeling a lot of identity things um she discovers a robot in the storage closet of a convenience store that she is really close with the owner so she discovers this robot wants to Build It Up Make it be able to work and do things finds out that it belonged to his son in the past and so just like her being really involved in stem and and science she brings it to the science fair she does a lot just in that sense but also it gives her a sense of her power and her ability to make new friends and sort of navigate Fifth Grade which can be a tricky tricky time next slide um so our community right
029now here is some families listening and board members is expectation kids will read this at school at home so it's a little bit of both um historically one book one school has been a lot of reading at home and reading with your family and making it very much um sort of a bonding experience in your houses we are also hoping that that will continue but we are encouraging teachers to do a lot of the reading at school as well and do it as a read aloud in classrooms each of the schools will also be doing trivia questions and things to keep kids interested each week and make sure that kids are keeping up with reading and able to um participate in that way too we have you'll see at the end we do have a
030website with lots of discussion questions for teachers to use that they can use during their class discussions whether it's a morning meeting or during reading block or whatever it is that they want to do so a little bit of both is that the website that if kids need recordings on yes and they're all we've recorded all the Librarians and the principals of each building have recorded a chapter and doctor after the last the last chapter um or did you get the ending first I then we just decline to answer okay [Laughter] so that's all available on the website too so you can always listen um at your homes as well so even if they read it in school it might be nice to listen to it two um so how long does this initiative last
031what do we do at the end so this is um a month long it will end the last chapter is being read on March 2nd and we have a culminating event at the Oak Park Public Library we're calling it steamfest science technology art engineering Arts sorry and math um Steve Knight which historically The Librarians have done coding Fest code Fest nights and things at the library so we decided to coordinate with them and do a steam Fest at the end of the book to culminate the idea of Maya and her love of science as well as showing off things that we do in our libraries in terms of technology and then also incorporating some art stations and things like that so it's basically a night of stations at the public library that families can come
032and participate in um that's going to be on March 2nd so that is the last official day of one book one District so if we bought a book for every family in this district and staff members how did you pay for all this so the district thank you very much provided books for each family and then each individual school PTO provided books for staff so it was a joint effort we got all of our books at Book Table local bookstore um we love to support them next slide okay do you want to take it away and tell us about it so our kickoff was on Friday every single School kicked it off on the same day everybody did it a little bit differently some schools had assemblies you can see an assembly here where the
033librarian and the principal and some children actually acted out some science experiments to introduce the book um some of us did it in our we did it at Irving in our Eagles Nest so every staff member read the first chapter of the book to their group we did a robot art project um all together and then other schools also did assemblies different things like that so the next slide also has some photos of some of our kickoff events you can see we have a little blow up robot there we have a principal reading lots of robots hanging around the buildings so that was our kickoff it was really cool to do it all on the same day um I just think like knowing that every kid in Oak Park in elementary school that goes to
034do 97 heard the first chapter on the same day it's pretty cool and what's really cool is we partnered with our special area staff they had a department meeting on the first and planned a way that they are going to incorporate the books into music Spanish arts and stuff like that so that it isn't just a it's a whole school and same with the public library just getting that whole Community involvement so that kids know they can go to the library and be like hey we're reading my own robot and the public Librarians also know that and next slide so the author did a kickoff video for everyone to watch last Friday so we want to show it real quickly here it's just one minute long thank you foreign [Applause] one of the things I
035love about being a writer is that I get to connect with people from all over the world and something special about a book is that once you read the story you and I will be connected in a way even never actually made a person I think that is very cool now I know you've had a little bit of time to guess what the book would be so if you pulled it off God would tell you congratulations you should consider a career as a detective but you know mine and the robot is the book about friendship they spoke about dealing with tough feelings that all of us have sometimes and it's a book about science which I love and maybe some of you love too so I really hope you like it I hope that there's
036some there's something in it for every single one of you and if you didn't like it if you have ideas for another book I hope you'll write one either way thanks for reading and I'll catch up with you soon maybe go to the next slide we have just reference for people can you want to share what this is yeah so this is um you can scan QR code to get to our district 97 one book one district elementary Edition website that we created and that's where um it has more information about the author the book it has um all the videos that we mentioned before of each chapter being read it has questions for teachers but it also has a family um page where there's activities that you can do at home there's also a
037pad that if you'd like to put pictures up of your family reading together so just a place where you can get all that information thank you thank you and let me oh yes go ahead well I wanted to I wanted to thank the team and on also I know that around the board table we have uh board members with older students I think we have some in elementary if you're an elementary parent you would have gotten information about this um and if you have middle school students only you will be hearing for it uh for the first time and I think I want to just name that there's so many things about what the team has shared that are really important and that are part of what we're trying to do which is create some
038unifying Traditions across our schools with that local Flair like you know only Patrick Robinson can wear that you know we've got to be able to have that that unifying Traditions with that local Flair is something that we want to hold up it's something we're talking about with our ptocs with having a calendar of every year what are those traditions and those identities that we celebrate like black history month right now in an ongoing way just the way you're seeing being done here and also with the incorporation of the library there's also a few themes here that are really important and part of where we're going which is around being a learning designer and really designing this experience this isn't something that we've bought and created here it was designed by our Educators and our administrators
039all working together the second thing is it is grounded in standards-based learning and so it's not only in wonderful activity it's also a grounded in what exactly needs to be taught and learned in order for our students to become literate and there's a real focus on partnering with families to do that and these are really important elements that are part of those that priority of being a learning designer so I just want to thank you for exemplifying that so beautifully and for being here tonight thank you any questions comments yeah first of all I love this this is awesome um just like to say I gave you that book she did so that was part of my question what about the suit like is there an alternative for kids who've read it or but I
040I do but I guess part of that is their activities so it's a little bit different and I my kids read the same books over and over again like right now they're reading five I'm like how are you reading five books at once um but then also can parents teachers students recommend books or is it like a committee that decides like what book we're going to read so first for kids that have read it again I think you're exactly right the kids do not mind reading again and I think learning remembering the trivia facts and things like that the night before it was revealed we had a PTO meeting and a kid was there with her mom and was like this mirror just tell me I think I know she was so excited to have
041like got the trivia and excited to read it with her class and not tell so I think there's still an excitement of reading something um I did want to add for our pre-K in kindergarten we are getting picture books to supplement um of course they'll do the read aloud but we know younger need more picture books and visuals um in terms of selecting new books The Librarians have always done that together um but then of course always take we're looking for new books always yeah yeah there currently is not a committee but we're not opposed yeah it would be cool to see them like suggest new books and like they do their voice is so important voice yeah and then I would love to see so I was at three out of nine for a
042class for a base camp but I noticed that they're doing like a girls Robotics and they have a couple of other um classes geared to our system so if there's any way to incorporate like science at the the captain to this um because I think it'd be really cool like my kids think school's over but like if you go to summer camp and you're like we read that book it gets them a little bit more excited about those classes and an opportunity partner but that's just ideas but the person in charge of um the base camp autonomy uh and one of the parents is an Irving parent who's in charge of a lot of it and I can make sure she knows yeah this is this is awesome I love it and I'm just I'm
043just I'm excited to tell my girls about it yeah selecting a book that we haven't read and that is good K through we're always looking for suggestions because it is hard to find okay through five that one of the rest schools didn't do because I know like Whittier always did hashtag Urban like so some had already done one of the books um I liked that it was a local author too many God I was just gonna say I love I'm not gonna lie but I saw I'm scrolling through because I have middle school kids and I saw that this was the book and I literally squeezed because I love this book so much so I'm so excited about that um I also there's so much to love about this with it being the full District
044I love that you branch that out and that it's standard space and that we're looking at how that I do have a quick question that your goal is at the beginning which are great about you know in enjoying reading and being enthusiastic readers how are you evaluating that piece of it do you have any qualitative evaluation plans going for this so that the actual Beauty learning designer's hand is bigger than like it's a whole right if there's one book one district elementary middle school did not let's call it one book one District so that's why so there are a number of ways in which we'll look qualitatively and quantitatively as we're kind of going along because the ultimate goal is to for students to own their learning even at a young age and to really
045build that love of learning and at Sanders learning map um as we think about also three five and six eight so the answer is yes and it's evolving it's a good question though because it is a hard one to match your Quan chicken quality right well it's such a great program that well the more we can know about it it's good for the district it's also good to share with others you know I think your question too and this is something we have been talking about need to talk about is like what are those ways that we can maybe plan to measure on the front end um and that's something we can maybe think about um what are those things that we can do on the front end uh we measure engagement at each school
046and so we work with our instructional coaches on how to measure engagement in K through two because three through five can tell you through their own voice a little bit more but I know a lot of principles that's engagement but then we can also look the love of learning how that fits in thank you for the book yeah are you guys going to share some of her adult stuff as well with parents just because I mean her stuff is like [Music] the summer in Chicago it's all poetry it just might be interesting for parents to be like oh I read I read one of her books too that's a cool connection between a parent and a kid that we're reading the same author did I hear you say she's coming yeah yeah some dates and
047yes we wanted her to come to the steam night and it was already the date was already planned and she had a conflict and one can wish yes it's hard when you're also saying that should we do something for the whole District the first one you like come and do one school um well the video was a great substitute yes she was speaking to our students directly so yeah she was very nice and asked like what have they done ahead of time so there were Clues given every day and so having fun thank you guys so much for your support [Applause] black history celebration updates what a nice segue from this African-American author to our Black History Month celebration I'm excited to share tonight our cultural celebrations that are planned district-wide as students and staff
048celebrate Black History Month tonight we're sharing with you a brief snapshot of the celebrations and classroom activities that are underway and we plan to come back to you on February 21st at our second meeting of the month to give you some visuals and some snapshots of student experience as they engage Black History Month throughout the month so the slide up here just embodies some of the excitement that our principal leadership has shared with us about some of the things that are underway and we're very excited that we'll come back this later this month with some of those visuals on student experience I'm biased because my daughter was in the kumbakidz dance performance but it was it was just a beautiful night at Lincoln on Thursday in honor of black history month so just wanted to
049shut that up you can send us pictures and we can show them at the next one sure will sweep those out hashtag Joy you so can I ask a question is the uh harambe celebration I know it has historically been at Longfellow is it still going to be a long fellow that was the one at Lincoln on Thursday too they did it I just want to qualified I was like I know the combination one is it Helena is also good student feedback from my middle schooler about the divine nine and sororities and fraternities happen today yeah my son Carlos said some of your sorority sisters are here I said we're everywhere else to say things like deaths fraternity brothers are on stage these experiences are super fun and the kids and their understanding of it
050especially the whole divine nine sororities and fraternities those whose parents aren't as involved in that um they really get a chance to see these visuals there are display cases with a lot of the colors and Heritage so it's exciting and we're excited to come back later this month with more details thank you thank you okay then that brings us to the consent agenda appreciate I move that the Board of Education approved the consent agenda sorry yes all right Johnson Hall yes Spurlock yes Kim yes more yes currently yes motion passed that brings us to this dress uh administrative items summer construction bids good evening how are you guys doing I'm gonna talk about these phase thanks Peter uh big group two which includes the following change General trades Plumbing mechanical and electrical we're going to
051go really quick just a quick refresher of what bid Package 2 consists of uh our bid release was December 22nd we're just going to go through our sustainability summary the summary of the projects and then if we have any questions so at Longfellow we're going to finish stair floor finishes and replace the ECT with rubber flooring for our current standards we're going to do some minor toilet partition replacement and we're going to replace the Antiquated electrical panel boards and enclosures at Buy on the third floor which this is the penthouse there are currently no adapt doors in this code talk classroom um it's not a quote classroom it's two classrooms but they keep it open and kind of work with each other because of egress and safety issues we were not able to just install
052a door in that area next line um so we're going to be doing is putting in a fire rated wall moving over some Cabinetry and then entering installing two doors on each side so that if there is an event of a lockdown that we could go ahead and secure those areas safely and this is what everyone was talking about tonight gender neutral toilet bathrooms at Brooks so that student group rainbow revolution has asked us to research for solutions for gender neutral toilet bathrooms currently there is only one gender-neutral bathroom which is located on the first floor by the nurse's office so our proposed solution is to provide these stalls in such a way as to maintain code distribute facilities more evenly within the building address their privacy needs observational needs and adhere to accessibility requirements
053as Holly mentioned we did secure a 500 000 grant for this work So currently this is what we're proposing in the blue you'll see the current gender neutral toilet bathroom the first floor we have an extra boys bathroom per code so we are renovating that and also the same location on the third floor this is what they look like on the left currently it's the gang bathroom a toilet bath and a custodial closet over here is what they'll look like on the end we'll have observational from the corridors we will have a staff gender neutral accessible bathroom and then two gender neutral bathrooms one being Ada accessible sustainability so at Brooks um in bid package one we're replacing all the light fixtures that are currently in the building minus the auditorium with energy efficient LED
054lighting lighting controls which an adult allow for additional Energy Efficiency with daylighting and occupancy sensors at homes we will be replacing one area of the roof increasing the insulation thickness and then the roofing is white to reduce the heat island effect long follow the same thing four areas of the roof this will mean as of this summer the entire rocket long pillow has been replaced and also four rooftop units which increase Energy Efficiency with improved controls okay so on January 25th we opened the seal bins here based on the review what we did is we awarded General trades to bullying address Plumbing to Terry Plumbing mechanical to how mechanical and electrical to proacted all of our work over at Julian so they're very familiar with that this I don't know if you can see that
055very well but with bid package one that was already approved and including bid package two which you'll notice up top they're labeled with which package they were we're coming in at under 373 000 under budget that is including the 500 000 State grant that I got and then another 50 000 School maintenance project grant that I got that I put towards the Longfellow roof foreign that's an additional bathroom no we're renovating so perk code you have to have a certain number of boys dolls and girl stars for your advocacy that you could have in the building okay we actually have additional more than code for boys so that allows us to renovate those two additional boys bathrooms so they will turn into it will turn into bats and then they're okay sorry that's okay okay
056too far too far go one more yeah so on this left here is the current look so you'll see it's the gang bathroom single boys and then on the other side is the staff toilet this is what we'll be going to so we're renovating that entire area making it a full single stall kind of like what we have here in the family bathroom two Adas wheelchair accessible and then one single Ada stall and then all of those will be windows we have an additional hand washing station outside because we currently have the plumbing there as well just in case we have other issues just additional hand washing areas okay that's a question thanks sure um oh will there be anything will there be any process for who can use the restrooms so because if the
057if the bathroom is for those students to have a safe space then we'll kids well all kids be able to use those because what I what I would like to avoid is that this bathroom is always in use so I can't go to this bathroom so we end up with like another problem um or if it's a like it's at the middle school and kids sometimes they they're being a little bit funny um so will there be like a process that you know like you have to I don't know like just something to make sure that the bathroom's available when they need to use it I think what we'll do is really rely on like the hallway monitors that we have in that area and make sure that instead of maybe that they're on the
058other side if they're closer to this area so they can kind of monitor like our kids messing around in there are they available for the kids that need them realistically anyone can use them yeah we just want to make sure that they're available for you yeah as I say even if there's a way for them to light so we can kind of check in and assess like are you able to use it when you need to are you still having issues with using the restroom like silly example but sort of close no I'm still involved with that group okay so I'll be continued to be involved with that group and we're going to go forward to do some other projects um so we'll definitely keep in mind and touch base with them let me just
059say I think part of the intent of gender neutral bathrooms is that we don't we don't restrict who uses them or try to police it so great inclusivity I would be very as hesitant for us to try to like suss out whether it's a pro like a I think the concern about it being available is legit but I don't I be very hesitant about it well yeah that's why I changed when I say it because I'm just thinking like the family bathrooms for example right it when my kids are little it used to follow me on the inside when I was just seeing like random people just going in and I'm like this is for people who have like small children or people like so it's and it's so limited so I'm like why can't
060you just go in that bathroom so I'm just wondering like you know I don't want the same thing to happen for those students like someone's just like it's closer or I want to I mean might as well take a number two in private so you go into that bathroom as opposed to going into the other room yes now we'll keep in touch with them and just make sure that they're still comfortable with what they are they're available for use um can I just want to comment generally we Nancy and I went to the fact meetings on these bit packages and there was the do you want to comment just on the electrical part because that was the per most of our discussion actually was about the electrical panels so if you notice here Billboards a
061little bit differently um we removed some of the lighting bid that we had in this scope originally because out of the four rooftop units that were replacing three of them their end of life they're done so in order to replace them they're either going to be replaced with a small gas boiler inside of them to do the reheat otherwise we can go with an electrical reheat but due to that that also caused us to install a completely new switch gear to accommodate for that electrical use so to accommodate for that additional cost we removed the lighting um which I kind of allocated it to like we're not redoing those rooms so let's hold off on redoing that lighting until we can do the entire room and do it right um but in light of the
062village climate action plan we really kind of want to Future proof what we can do is this going to save us a ton of money right now no but it's going to give us the electrical capacity for when we want to do additional projects we're working with one of the back members and Jennifer who is on Str to kind of come up with the metrics of how we can measure how we're saving money and how we're reducing just to throw in the lifetime of those the switching and panels is such that if you don't replace it now it's going to be quite a ways into the future before you can switch it over right it just didn't seem to make sense to add an additional gas when we have an opportunity to change it out
063the questions are coming thank you guys thank you thank you um up next then we have an e-rate report or action yes um so um Michael ahrensdorf who would usually be here is not here tonight so I'm gonna uh welcome uh will Brackett to come on up uh the memo regarding this topic is in the board packet and we can have some background music yes will walks up here uh so will is here um in case you have any uh questions about this item and thank you for uh allowing me to come up and uh take this time this is um this deals with an e-rate purchase for continuing services on our two firewalls um we have one at Brooks and one here in the central office we anticipate we will not have to upgrade
064the firewalls for another year so this has a budget neutral uh cost and it's uh but it is required by e-rate to go through through a board process so I'm just curious um not that I'm not going to go on this but uh why there was such a big jump it's from 1400 to 93.98 increase is 40. 1400 between two of them so it's like a 700. uh and it's just I'm uh you know it's software they just wanna uh okay recoup the cost it's an aging piece of equipment so any other questions okay thank you very much yes this is action next next board meeting so next we have uh Patrick King who's coming up for the tax levy abatement bring an extra chair our next steps it's not that it's a preferred chair
065it's an extra chair one has rollers it's my way sitting on it while he's up here hi good evening um some here to discuss the issue related about 2022 property tax levy extension um I'll just do a quick recap on my on my memo so this was a new new law passed last year in 2021 commonly referred to as the refund recapture la viwa which the state passed um so we discussed this last year it's essentially the county will add another amount to the property tax extension automatically unless we tell them that too it's really the refunds certificate certificates of Errors things like that um Revenue that we lose out on when people appeal their taxes I'm essentially celebrity the new law essentially adds up to the extensions it's kind of being retaxed everyone um
066so I kind of laid out some of the reasons we discussed last year and why we abated it to remind us um for this year so the amount last shot we were made it was 614 000 this year the amounts 981 000. um so this is a cam above and beyond the five percent that we we Levy so um so some of the reasons you know I can always make a reason to recommend more Revenue but I think we need to keep the tax terrors in mind given a five percent yes in December um and someone you know some of the other reasons I laid out my memo um you know this Revenue Source isn't something we include in our projections or we budget for um so um we're not relying on it there's no
067Perpetual effect if we Abate this it doesn't decrease our extension next year it's just an additional line item that goes back and I laid out so that if we did nothing and it would be an additional 58 dollars at everyone's property tax bills as well so um and I just you know it's a general policy matter it's you know the largest refunds are typically a commercial commercial properties so you know there's a thought out there that you know this is kind of spreading out their refunds to residential taxpayers as well so we call from our discussions last year just want to remind everyone so um our initial recommendation is to Abate the levy again but I'm happy to discuss or take any questions we did not have a scheduled Fork meeting to discuss this is
068our fourth meetings coming up but based on the conversation last year that Venus and I attended I'm sure they would agree with this recommendation I don't want to put words in their mouth they're the community members but if they were to operate consistently with last year it seems very unfair to me like I don't even surprise this law stays on the books I mean if people come and appeal their taxes and they win then they're going to just go charge everyone else for those with the people that appealed I has there been challenges last year when we talked about this we thought there would for sure be a challenge that this might not even stay in place for another year in light of it there was some tags periodic advocacy groups I know that sent
069letter is saying they're going to challenge but I haven't heard any updates on that um but still maybe in the works um and just to clarify the point about that we don't have it in our budget we I it's it's because we know that people appeal and therefore every year we pay attention we figure there's going to be a certain percentage that are going to win their appeals so when we say that it's not in our budget we never thought we'd get that appealed money back yeah we have an allowance every year of two percent but we think we're not going to collect I don't recovery taxes so um that's always what we factor in our projections and community like look we're not taking all the money here we are now I think it's worth
070it to put it in the weekly yeah update as our part of board action right not yet we're not doing it for two weeks but yeah I'm just saying like or put in social media so that way when we get the they take all our money for everything They Don't Care About Us okay here we go one of the things we have talked about related to that is kind of putting out some highlights after board meetings and similar to what D200 does and so um I don't know that we won't be there by February but that is something that we want to do by the time we get to the end of the school year so this would be a prime example if we have that system in place but in the meantime we can
071after uh board action next time we can think about making sure that the message gets out to our our regular channels thank you I mean I'm gonna tell April 1st to obey the follow up with the county but start working backwards from our meetings and they have two more meetings before then but foreign [Music] we have chairs for you all right I didn't bring my lucky share with me [Laughter] yeah thank you all right well thanks for having me here tonight my name is Nick campbellari I'm the audit partner for the district's financial statement and seeing a lot and this is Sebastian dabrowski he's a senior associate he actually runs the audit for the school district and he has done so for several years I put together a presentation this year to go over the
072results of the audit um you know however you want to work the questions you know if you get through I'm on a slide and I'm talking about a subject that's of interest to you and you want to ask a question in a moment just please interrupt me um or if you want to wait until the end whatever works best for the board I'm open to so we completed the audit of the district's financial statements and we rendered our reports on January 17th of 2000 into 23. let's see if this is working here there we go so the scope of the district's audit is is pretty robust we provide assurances over the financial statements uh the annual financial report form which is a regulatory report that has to be filed with the State Board of Education
073um because the district expends over 750 000 of federal Awards you're required to present what they call a c photo or a schedule of expenditures of federal Awards the district is also required to provide a Consolidated year-end Financial reports to the grants accountability and transparency unit of the state of Illinois and then of course your federal awards are subject to a single audit which is a compliance and control that we perform over certain major programs and also because you're gardening is conducted in accordance with governmental auditing standards we have to render a report on internal controls over financial reporting and compliance matters so it's a lot we actually spend quite a bit of time going through all of these different reports and performing a series of procedures to render our opinions on the financial statements
074and on the compliance that we audit so the results of our work rendered an unmodified audit opinion on the financial statements I'm also an unmodified audit opinion on the annual financial report the schedule of expenditures the federal Awards and the Consolidated year-end financial report so an unmodified audit opinion is essentially a clean audit it's the highest level of assurance that you can receive from the external auditor that the financial statements and these corresponding schedules and reports are presented in accordance with a regulatory basis of in addition to generally accepted accounting principles we didn't have any scope limitations all of our audit procedures supported that so when I come to talk to the board you know everybody has a copy of the boundary financial statements it's a robust document there's a lot of different schedules there's
075notes to that document um but I'd like to go over is the income statement from the fund financial statements this is important because it gives you some some insight into how the district performs um in all the individual funds you can see at the top we have the revenue category individual funds are presented in column formats the general fund consists of the education accounts toward immunity accounting and the working cash accounts so those three funds are Consolidated together for presentation purposes and the financial statements page 18 is on the left you kind of see that divider line right in the middle I like to look at page 18 as the operating funds of the district you have the general fund which really accounts for the overwhelming majority of your costs for Education the operations and
076maintenance fund is strictly for the for the running of the the school um you know in the administrative offices Transportation fund is used for for the movement of students back and forth to school and then the Municipal Retirement Social Security fund is used to account for costs associated with FICA Medicare and imrf contributions to that pension system and then and then the right side on page 19 you have The Debt Service fund which is used for the accounting of long-term debt payments things like leases bonds debt certificates can be repaid out of that fund the capital projects fund is a fund that is encouraged to be used when school districts have identified a significant funding source for significant projects your your district has utilized that fund for several years now proceeds from Bond issuances were
077placed there in addition to fund balance transfers the fire prevention and life safety fund is really kind of a dormant fund right now because it doesn't have a significant amount of resources within it but for the most part that fund can only be used for projects that are on your approved 10-year Life Safety plan the fact that you're not using that fund doesn't mean you're not addressing things on your life safety plan the the purpose of that fund is only to be used for those types of projects so not seeing the activity in that fund doesn't necessarily mean you're not addressing those needs um you know what I like to just point out to the board and members of the audience is that the school district's operations have you know trended within your financial resources
078you can see that the general fund after you go down a few lines the net change and fund balance had generated you know three million dollar increase to to fund balances the operations and maintenance fund had a small reduction in fund balances um the transportation fund I lost power there we are the transportation fund had a reduction of about 1.9 million dollars but a lot of that is is due to school kind of coming back online from the post pandemic also the timing of your state funding is looking a year in the rears so your transportation claim in fiscal year 22 is based on your transportation spend in fiscal year 21 so we have seen a reduction in the transportation fund and several school districts it's not generally overly concerning um it's just something to
079be aware of the reasons behind it and then you can ultimately adjust your your fund balances um in future years by a reallocation of 11 and other funding sources as well the imrf fund or Municipal retirement fund you can see has a significant reduction of about 2.8 million dollars in fund balance positions that was planned um Levy was reallocated to other funds in need um the fund had a significant Surplus at the start of the year and as a result of that revenues were shifted to other areas of focus um and then you know I know that there's a plan that it's being worked out there so you know looking at the operational results you also see that there was about 10 million dollars that was transferred into the capital projects fund that was funded
080with about three million dollars from the general fund which had to be moved from the general fund to the O M fund ultimately make its way over to the capital projects fund based on the advice of council and how the Steve Ford likes to see these transfers performed um and then about seven million dollars was actually transferred out of the O M fund to cover that Collective 10 million dollars which almost paced with the Surplus and the O M fund so you know when I look at the financial statements and it looks like there's a great deal of care going into how they're being managed and how resources are being allocated foreign one thing I just want to point out this is the balance sheet for all the funds so it essentially shows your assets
081your liabilities there's a category called deferred inflows of resources that's predominantly used for things that are owed to the district but may not be to be used for that particular fiscal year or may not be available within a certain period of time after the end of the year to be recognized in governmental financial statements one thing I just want to point out to everybody and I think there's a light here ah there it is this unavailable state and federal aid receivable here in the general fund see about 1.5 million dollars so so that 1.5 million dollars is essentially money that was owed to the school district but that was not collected yet as of August 31st within 60 days about 1.2 or 1.3 million dollars of that was related to the emergency connectivity fund award
082that the district participated in for connectivity devices for students through the FCC program had those down has been provided to the district more timely you would have had a bigger increase in your fund balance reserves in the general fund this is a screenshot from the annual financial report this is a state regulatory report every school district has a financial profile score assessed to it they call it estimated because it's estimated until the State Board approves them all and actually issues the final determination there's several metrics that they look at fund balance to revenue ratio expenditure to revenue ratio how much cash you have on hand compared to your expenditures with a focus on on the ad operations and maintenance Transportation working cash funds that's what's really kind of pulled into this analysis and they have
083a waiting score I mean what you can see is that the district received a 3.8 out of a 4.0 schedule which puts you in the recognition classification which is the highest assessment rating that you can receive ask a question about that one sure um one of the conversations we had was with regard to how many days we have and I thought that we were actually on the lower end of that I know we got a three two years ago it was was it two years ago so it's because it doesn't count sorry we're not fund okay that's why we've been spending that pound we had like six million dollars sitting in the imrf fund so we reallocated the lobby I think that was one of the main causes of it got it that makes it
084I mean that's six million yeah how much is six million extend those days all right does it I mean I guess six million is 20 it does extend enough you know what's what's interesting I mean we're all through it now but I mean the county was delayed on me well that's and that's the conversation that when the context of the conversation we had when we were talking about taking out the loans in order to cover the difference for salary the conversation was about the number of days which put us lower than our peers but it looks like we're not lower than our peers anymore you know I think with any government a delay in the primary revenue for that many months after you you know you have a burning that's pretty quick you know um
085and to not be able to you know there's things that you could do sometimes you can initiate loans between funds um it's extra work you know is it going to be enough I think the The Prudent thing to do was to have that short-term borrowing in place to make sure that you had you know liquidity to run the district until the taxes came in but you know if you weren't alone in that there was a lot of school districts in Cook County that had that challenge yes that shows so this is as of June 30th so I didn't get another distribution for got it until December so right until December so we had 115 days right on hand so so the the timing is different than because we were lower are we in less days
086on hand when we were on the loan conversation yeah you had to be under 120 to apply for the loan so it's about what that is yeah thank you so I'm going to get into um the report on internal controls over financial reporting so it's part of conducting a financial statement audit we will assess um control structure over the preparation of the financial statements themselves so look at Key processes the accounts payable process the payroll process the treasury function Financial close also give consideration to all the results of our audit procedures to see if the if the district's financial statements have any errors in them essentially um during the course of the audit we did identify a material audit adjustment that audit adjustment related to the allocation of revenue between funds so um as you're
087all aware of the district was the large recipient of the Esser dollars which is the education stabilization fund it's a pandemic related award and there's funding that's provided to all school districts nationally Matt Grant is very Dynamic excuse me is to its use so you could use it for educational purposes you're also using it for a lot of buildings improvements HVAC things and like that so the district claimed a certain amount of expenditures under that award and the dollars were placed into the general fund but those expenditures were actually incurred in a different fund it was the operations and maintenance fund so when we were performing the audit we had a reclassing entry to move 420 000 of revenue from the general fund to the operations and maintenance funds so that the revenue was aligned
088with the fund that claimed the expenses the value is sizable under our calculations for materiality to talk about it with the district did everybody agreed that the adjustment was necessary it's reflected the financial statements so one of the things that we've we've reported you know for a few years now are these this concept of a significant deficiency a significant deficiency under our auditing terms essentially is a risk that we identify that's important enough to Merit the attention to those charts with governance and to management and we have a few different um risks identified but they all kind of have a similar theme it's it's the concentration of segregation and duties slash kind of systemic asset you have a lot of access rights in the software system and it's really focused within the accounts payable payroll
089and the financial close process the district did Implement a new software system during the year it's got more bells and whistles there's just a little bit more movement I think that could be made for some systemic access right limitations that can help kind of band down some of those hatches a little bit more in some cases it would require some other duties to be assigned as well within the HR department payroll department you know finance department as well and potentially give consideration to Staffing if you really wanted to address the risks in their totality the first one really is focused on the accounts payable process um what we what we would like to see probably improved upon is access rights within the software where certain users can't add a vendor and have the ability to
090to process a payment out of the Software System itself there are some compensating controls that are in place which is why we haven't elevated this to the highest level of risk called material weakness um you know the monthly budget tax will review the review of the bills list um there is a positive pay file that gets transmitted these are on controls in place there's just some opportunity to move this need a little bit further forward within the payroll department um the payroll specialist has essentially access to change the pay rates and process the payroll um and the ability to disburse the checks if you really wanted to improve this process in its entirety you would limit the payroll person's ability to change rates in the system now there is a control in place where they
091can't add an employee that rests within the HR department so they can't add somebody and then establish their rates once the HRA is the person then they have the ability to use different pay codes and change rates and things of that nature and then the financial close process is kind of focused on this ability to do a journal entry in the accounting system a journal entry is essentially just moving money between account numbers actually having the ability to change account balances um within the system journal entries are sometimes done for reoccurring month-end transactions but then that also can be done to correct things that are identified during the year um right now the the senior director of Finance has the ability to post journal entries without any approval process is ultimately that position he has
092the responsibility to approve others doing journal entries um best practice would not have that person have full access rights to post their own journal entries and approve them at the same time well you know during the course of the audit we did not identify any material non-compliance that had an impact on financial statements um you know instances that were required to be reported under governmental auditing standards so I'm going to segue into the single audit which is a federal compliance audit the district expended about 5.4 million dollars of federal Awards during the fiscal year as a result of that we were required to audit three major programs the education stabilization fund a commonly referred to as Esser the Child Nutrition cluster which is essentially your food service program and then the emergency connectivity fund program
093which was a new program this year um that was sponsored by the FCC to assist districts in getting connectivity and Broadband services to their districts the total amount of federal awards that we audited was about 3.5 million dollars so when you're when you're conducting a single audit the federal government publishes up what they call a compliance supplement and they tell us what areas as Auditors they want us to focus on we focus on those areas if they're directed material to the award and we we will render an opinion on the compliance based on our audit procedures but then we will also test controls to ensure that controls are operating to ensure compliance if we identify risks in the internal control process we report those if we identify compliance matters we report those as well the
094results of our audit procedures yielded unmodified audit opinions for compliance on the education stabilization fund and the emergency connectivity fund program on the Child Nutrition cluster program we qualify in our opinion for compliance as it relates to the compliance area called procurement suspension and environment I'll get a little bit more details on that next so we have a compliance finding on one particular award but then we also have some risks reported on internal controls we reported a material weakness on the Child Nutrition cluster regarding the procurement and suspension Department compliance area for the education stabilization fund we have a risk reported regarding the compliance area called activities allowed allowable costs and then we have significant deficiencies reported which are kind of a step down on the risk Matrix for the Child Nutrition cluster for reporting
095and activities allowed allowable costs so I'm the Child Nutrition cluster the compliance area that we had a qualification on essentially we simply did not comply with this area and we also issued a material weakness really relates to the fact that the district purchased about 125 000 in goods from a vendor that was paid under the Child Nutrition cluster and that particular vendor services or goods were not bid out they were over twenty five thousand dollars the federal government kind of points towards your internal policy or the state policy if those policies are more restrictive than what the federal government establishes which they are and as a result of that your your District would be required to bid out this particular purchase um and and that was not performance so is the vendor um so do
096we don't we do that every year all that I mean do we have I guess I'm asking this question because even without the Child Nutrition at Maria do we do we always buy the same milk from the same vendor yeah so we use Bob's Dairy which about 100 over 100 school districts use um as you know is the high school as our food service provider above story we pay them separately High School also uses Cobbs Dairy and they actually they created this Cooperative actually the high school wanted creating this Cooperative of 75 districts and they bit it out and they use Bob's Dairy so I think at some point you know I think we'd probably use that for 20 years you may have been kind of like a silent partner through the high school and
097so I've been talking on we need to be fully part of this Cooperative so we're part of the bid process so kind of got lost in over the years I think it's part of that process um so I was meeting with the high school last week to give us part of that mid process of just join the Cooperative together because we do a procure supplies and things like that through the high school so we're covered in that area but I think the milk just kind of got lost as part of that so so it might be too late for this school year or seven months another school year or two so just warn you might have this fighting next year but I think for school year 24 you want to get your specs on you
098know you can see from the screenshot this is a fairly prescriptive process that you kind of go through yeah I was just curious what we spent 125 000 yes draw your attention to the fact that no there's whenever you report a finding with a federal award is part of that is we're going to question costs were there things that you tested that appear not to be allowed under the award and the milk is clearly an allowed to purchase for that program so we didn't necessarily yield question costs as a result of our our finding but uh you know our recommendation is to just get that on your radar to be part of that so um the next matter that we reported on is the education stabilization fund it's a material weakness under the category called
099activities allowed allowable costs and really for the most part the the condition that existed was the district claimed about 420 000 of expenditures for HVAC improvements on the March 31st 2020 claim but those those expenditures were not actually paid by the district until October of 2012. so what typically you would do is you would the grant is managed really in a reimbursement capacity the federal government does allow for you to um anticipate the spend and really kind of pull down the draw request very timely with with when you're going to need the money so like you didn't have cash flow and you were going to spend 420 000 it would be fine with you initiating a draw request a few days before the actual disbursement but but this was a significant lapse in in the
100time um March reimbursement requests an October payment um we did actually extend our audit procedures out past the fiscal year to verify that that spend did take place for the allowable cost and the grant we were completely satisfied with our audit result that this was an eligible expense of the award um we have noted that there were no reportable question costs but an internal control matter that needs to be remediated in the sense that you should not be claiming costs that have not been occurred yeah could yield bigger problems later on this was not a bigger problem in the sense that you did actually have a loud expense that was was supported um at the end of the day if that if they had not been paid by the time we're out for the audit
101it would have been a question cost because there wasn't a spending for it so that's a pretty specific number 421 -462 did we have an estimate in hand and is there a supply issue was it a labor issue um yeah I was like miscommunication between all of us I think so yeah the rooftop units were supposed to come in and they did not come in and I have reimbursed it after we had ordered it um a couple months after and then they still did not come in and then they didn't come in until because it just looks so my point is it wasn't 400 000 in March like let's just go for a round number it's very specific well we have budget for like grants essentially I believe so okay let's see one more time
102for good luck oh I did it twice and I went on okay all right so uh the next two are focused on the channel nutrition cluster there are the significance of a significant deficiency and this one is focused exclusively on internal controls over reporting so the district compiles a meal claim every month that gets submitted to the state board for reimbursement under the food service award um that claim itself is being essentially compiled and submitted by an employee without a secondary level of review in place our our recommendation is that the district implemented control and the process so that prior to submission somebody outside the preparer performs a review and then it's submitted what that'll allow for is to ensure that the claim is filed and then it is filed for the appropriate amount very
103important to understand that we did not identify any question costs there were no issues in our testing this is just um or you know essentially a best practice that should be in place and then this particular matter related to payments on invoices that are charged to the Child Nutrition cluster essentially um Food Service vendor payments they weren't going through the routing process through the accounting system where the PO would be put in approved and then routed through for payment with all the appropriate sign-offs um the invoice would be brought in paper form you know signed off on by the the food service department that it was okay to pay but not necessarily reviewed through the other processes that are in place um what were our recommendation on this is essentially to have those invoices routed
104through the software system the same controls that are in place for every other disbursement and continue to file that practice important to understand there were no question costs none of the invoices that we tested and sampled were for on allowed activities this is a matter of ensuring the internal controls are proper so that you have compliance um under the Professional Standards if we have difficulties in performing our audit or disagreements with management regarding the application of accounting principles we'd have to let you know about those we did not have any such instances I'm very pleased to have reports of the board that we had a smooth audit in that regard and that you know there were no disagreements and I'd be more than happy to take any questions foreign thanks for having us here tonight
105thank you thank you thanks Patrick thanks [Music] [Laughter] uh different questions it blew up okay great thank you foreign okay great so um I am glad to be here to present uh on this next next presentation is the superintendent's update that we moved to the end of the agenda here um so the title of the presentation is really important to stop on here the equity policy and the district redesign updates that these two things are inextricably linked uh that uh and that's an important part of uh of how we're gonna proceed with the work so this next slide is important it comes from the Illinois Association of school boards certainly school board members have seen it but I think important to level set on this idea that we're representing the community here uh through the
106board that's elected by the community and those core values the mission and the vision come from the Board of Education and that then the board and the superintendent work together to identify those District goals and what matters to the district and my goals as the superintendent and then I work with staff to deliver on those in terms of principles classrooms and students so this is an important to level set on that and to make sure that sometimes I'm asked what's your vision of the district or what's your you know and it's important how we're all interlinked to make sure we're reflecting the vision of the community Through the board so what specifically has the Board of Education charge the superintendent to do an important uh part of what I've been charged to do is uh
107this is the slide that we constructed together as a board and I think it's important to to put this out here kind of the the top 10 charges and uh there's a lot of important and um uh you know important directional um indicators here and when I've shown this slide to people within the district I've heard them say and express that this feels right and good to know that the superintendent and the board are working together on behalf of the things that are on these slides because these are reflecting that we're coming together to move the forward the district forward together and then there's an eagerness on the part of many people to see this happen in our community um different people pull out different parts of this some people say wow I really love
108number four or I really appreciate number seven that talks about how are we coaching and supporting people to develop and grow in the organization different people have resonance with different things and at the bottom is this idea that all of it needs to be done in a way that reflects of the equity class y so that is really the grounding idea that the board has uh Equity the equity policy 712 with a real act now urgency and inside of the policy are um really a clear call that the goal of everyone the board the superintendent and all District staff is for race disability and other characteristics to cease to be predictors this is a clear call and there's also a clear accountability here that I'm held accountable by the board for establishing those goals and
109prioritizing the policy um and that everybody is to be informed that this is the driving work of the district I know why it takes three clicks you gotta click my heels you know I added this slide here um because it's important to also name that this is a multi-generational work that we're looking we're multi-generational things that we're looking to undo actually we're looking to create a system that's very different because it we're looking for it to do something it was never intended to do which is to serve everyone and that that work in and of itself requires multiple leaders and multiple generations of thinking and I think sometimes we lose this in the talk of annual targets and watching little needles move we have to really hold on to the bigness of this work and
110so I want to start and affirm that this work as the second superintendent sitting after Dr Kelly that when she came to the board in 2015 it was also under a call for a an equity move in this district and she built infrastructure where there was not infrastructure four curriculum review cycles for Teacher leadership for a referendum with the board built the you know built and and contributed to a foundation that we now get to build upon and I think it's important because we usually don't do that and there is actually somewhat of an incentive to become of the superintendent and to um diminish what happened before you and that's so unfortunate especially when we're trying to do this really big important work in which by definition we have to hand off the work to
111each other and so I want to name and recognize the contributions that the board and the and Dr Kelly made during that time I also put it up here because it's important to know that it was in 2019 a prom around this time of year when the board unanimously um approved this Equity policy that we're designing around now and in the policy it states that the implementation is to begin in 2019 2020 that school year and then about six months after that the pandemic begins and so here we sit now it's three years later and I'm the next permanent superintendent that's been here and that's a long span of time and this is where we are to pick up the work and so it's important to paint that historical context and what we're looking to
112do is a transformational change in the district and that's always going to come with it with its challenges and its discomfort so the equity policy has several uh bodies of work embedded in in it I I had the slide before of the reporting expectations and uh you know the different call-outs to what um how this needs to be owned by everyone there are specific bodies of work these are actually implementation areas that are outlined in the policy and when you look at the equity work we're going to look at uh the next slide I'm going to show these are all very complex each one of them and in the field of kind of change work it would be called like a wicked problem which is to say when you look to address any of these
113from an equity lens the problem itself that you're trying to address has problems and those problems have problems and this idea is really well summarized by this idea from Heifetz of technical problems versus adaptive challenges and I think oftentimes we're talking in our field as if we're solving a bunch of technical problems and we really need to you know where where we just kind of they're easy to identify we make a little few tweaks we move a little things around we buy a few packages of this intervention we look at data in this way and things are supposed to change and that is absolutely unrealistic and unmatched for what we're facing which is really an Adaptive Challenge and which is one that is really difficult to name which is why the equity policy is so
114comprehensive touching so many different things it's really easy to deny that there's a problem I think each one of these this idea that it requires an adapter challenge a way to change the way we think and what we believe and how we lead and what our relationships are with each other and it also requires that the people with the problem or the people who are closest to what we're trying to solve need to be at the table to solve it it can't be a top-down it can't be a top-down approach in order to get at the heart of it it requires cross-functional change it there's off there's going to be resistance we have to know that and that the solutions require some experimentation and some failing that really uh you know the ability to kind
115of say we don't really know here's what we're going to try and see what we learn and that kind of thinking is actually not really what we're known for in the public sector so we are trying to solve a problem with tools and approaches and mindsets and histories and ways of working that we often don't have as part of the history that we've inherited and that's why we've not we're not seeing across the country a lot of traction underneath this and I appreciate that we're in a district where the equity policy is bold and Broad and comprehensive and we also need to recognize that there is no way to do that without recognizing that it's an Adaptive challenge you might have seen this version and this way of looking at complex change the idea here
116you need to have those five dimensions in place in order to really have effective change Vision skills incentives resources and an action plan and if and when any one of those is missing you're going to get the emotions on the right hand side and we probably all have experiences that we can think about where this is actually come into play now this uh you know is you is also used in private sector organizations that are trying to kind of shift how what products they make or how they're organized and so it's an interesting challenge that I've called out in that yellow bubble there you know what really does incentives mean when we're talking about equity what exactly in a public sector organization is the incentive to make the district more Equitable and for whom and
117how do we get at Universal incentives for that you can see that without those incentives what we get is resistance and so that's what we're up against all the time is to ask ourselves and to think and to figure out how do we incentivize Equitable school districts how do we make the case for them why why do we need to make racial equity and Justice a foundational imperative I don't have one slide that's going to answer that but I will say that we know when we look at our present data one of the things that we know and this is the a snapshot of the equity Journey Continuum that is on all of the Illinois state report cards this year that reflects those three goals student learning learning conditions and elevating Educators and across the
118way there you see large gaps moderate to minimal gaps and here's the storyline in our district you can see we've got uh minimal gaps in terms of elevating educators moderate gaps in terms of learning conditions and large gaps in terms of student learning and so the takeaway headline in that green box is we've got the right people we've got the right conditions but it's not lined up around the right things which is student learning this pattern is also evident in our achievement Gap data that's what it's called on the Illinois state report card if you go to District 97 and you look on the um on the panel on the left hand side and you go to achievement Gap this is for example you can choose different grades I chose eighth grade ELA what you
119see here is the light green is our district the dark is the state and our gaps for students low-income students non-low-income students black and white students and students with an IEP or not an IP are larger than the state average gaps so one of the reasons why we need to do this is because why one of the incentives one of the reasons one of the arguments we make for this is because this is not right we also know that this is a result of these um inequities and structural choices that have been made that are baked into the system and we know that and we also know that we live in a community in which there have been deliberate efforts to design against that kind of structural racism and that that's a a strength and
120a way that we need to approach this work is by Design to undo what's already structured into the system I also want to talk about what the where we need to go in our future so this is about a minute and a half of the sustainable development goals from United Nations we've got to figure this out because we've got some serious big challenges ahead of us and our young people are the solution it isn't like the stakes are very very high this isn't uh just about making small needles move on someone's report card this is about the biggest things that they are so if you could push play we'll watch this short video [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] so even in the highest performing districts even if we didn't have uh the the gaps and
121performance that we're looking at given the world and the kinds of challenges that our students need to be prepared to face in there and need to be prepared in terms of career capacity character um it's likely the case that there's a whole different kind of teaching and learning that needs to happen than is happening even in the highest performing school districts and that's the that's the wonderful opportunity here and so I think it's important to um [Music] I think it's important to uh call out here that the system really works only when it works for everyone that we've got to figure out how to allow that potential energy that's latent in the system to to come forward and we're going to need to transform the system in order for that to happen and we here
122in Oak Park have the diversity of experiences that is most likely to yield great Solutions and new kinds of thinking of for those big big big goals that that we have for us as a as a world community and that's why it's especially exciting to be here because of the deep potential that's that's here every day and I don't know what the answer to the incentive question is but this quote from Dr King is an important guide for us through the work let me step here so we can all read it okay foreign is we're going to use the equity policy as the driver as the organizer of our work challenge ourselves over the next three years hopefully I'm here longer but for the next three years for sure to say how are we going
123to organize ourselves around this policy and how are we going to make sure that what we do what we think about how how we act when we have groups that come together that we know how we fit into that policy so that doesn't feel like we're doing a whole bunch of things and we're not sure what it's all adding up to and part of that work also means a change in whose voices are driving that and the theory here is If We Begin by centering the voices of the students and the communities who have historically not been equitably served by the current system and we use what we learn about their experiences to remove barriers then we'll take the first steps in really learning how to redesign and transform the district in a manner that
124does what the equity policy charges us to do and I will say that this idea um our teaching and learning team our teachers our staff have been engaged in thinking about Universal Design for Learning and that framework has transformative ideas that we need to explore as a as a professional team within the district even further than that already has been done the good news is that work has already been started in our district so the other part of this in terms of centering voices is really identifying what's that portrait of a graduate and whose voices do we start with in asking that question which communities do we go to to say talk to us about what you envision for your child what is it and to share what are the what do we know about
125the developmental assets that are important for young people and to come through a process where we really have a unified portrait of a graduate as a as a whole community foreign so those are different directional areas but let's talk specifically about what's happening next so in the equity policy is also a section one of the implementation areas is called Equity leadership and infrastructure that I'm charged by the board to recommend a viable long-term plan for funding and Staffing and to get organized to do this work and in addition to that it's really about resource allocation we just saw two presentations about resources really the question is when we look at our budget expenses the fundamental question is how are all the choices that we are making Landing in the lives and the futures of the
126children of the district and so as a starting point we are organizing ourselves by District by reorganizing District level administrators and exempt staff and aligning a district infrastructure that better supports the equity objectives responding to that call for an improved Middle School experience for our students and bridging central office and school-based Leadership by integrating those reporting structures so that's what we're in the process of doing I will say that the that is a process that's going on right now uh the full new administrator and exempt role structure is evolving and will be shared in July of 2023 because between now and then there are internal and external transitions that are taking place and in July is when the new contracts take effect for all of the individuals um that reorganization process again begins with administrators
127and exempt roles in central office and middle schools and impacted individuals who will be informed in an individual conversation as soon as possible or by March 31st at the latest and it's important to say that there's a variety of different things that will happen as part of the reorganization some positions May remain the same some may be created some may be eliminated some may be redefined and also as vacancies and natural vacancies occur going forward they may not be filled in the same with the same position that is vacated as a way of evolving how we're structured foreign so it's important to say that that's a that's a difficult process and a lot a lot of uncertainty in the system and so I want to also name that our commitments through this process are like
128that quote from Dr King says to be guided by what is right even though it's challenging and to really keep our focus on improving the whole system for all students that there's not other agendas it's really keeping that honest and integrity work at the center and keeping people whole through those transitions being straightforward with people to the maximum extent possible about what is happening and why giving people good data and being invested in their long-term development even if it's not here in District 97 even if it is here in District 97 if roles are eliminated really thinking about and being as supportive as we can to getting people to where they're going next foreign so I want to also kind of Identify some um immediate steps we are planning to post a new administrator positions
129this week assistant uh superintendent of elementary schools assistant superintendent of middle schools are one of the ways in which we need to create that instructional coherence is to have really clear lines of support and Supervision in the past year the 10 schools were supervised by five different people and that means that's a lot of different ways of interpreting and different understandings of what effective instruction is and giving feedback and so one of the ways that we want to make sure that we're being clear and consistent as a district is to have assistant superintendents over the two middle schools and over the eight elementary schools that are really present and partnering and able to really focus on the teaching and learning work inside of our schools um achieve sustainability and operations officer reflecting the values of
130the community as you heard from the presentation that that Jeannie gave today we're really thinking about how does this show up in the decisions and the choices that we make as a district and making that building it in as part of how we think about operations in the district and then achieve legal and Equity officer this will this position will be the will oversee our human resources department recognizing that 70 of our annual budget is people and people are the resource that our students need so how are we building really great systems to support good feedback good performance growth good exciting culture in our district and making sure that we're always putting the very best people in front of our students and so um the other area here is that well this is going to
131be an ongoing process between now and July 1st there are specific work streams that will begin to transition from one leader or one Department to another and so I'm just naming that that's going to happen and that means that um you know we will need to make adjustments along the way when appropriate the communication about these changes will come jointly from the current leaders of the work and we'll keep people as informed as needed so that we can kind of work through all of that transition you know as part of the process and so I want to end again with the same slide and recognized um what an exciting opportunity we have one of the reasons I'm happy to be here is because um there isn't really any reason for us not to be able
132to do this here I every time I meet with people I see a desire to actually get this done here in Oak Park um and that's an exciting place to be uh and I'm looking forward to figuring out how we need to think differently lead differently organize ourselves differently and I'm appreciative appreciative of having a really robust Equity policy that kind of sets the bar and the vision for how that's supposed to happen so if you have any questions I'll take them at this time I'm just going to say thank you because I know um this is a lot of work I know that we have charged you for example with looking at the middle schools but I love that your thoughtfulness with making sure that for example we are not letting either talk about
133five different people overseeing all the district you're also looking at how the elementary schools factor in to this whole plan absolutely I think and there was also I will say in that um one slide where I named the different aspects of the equity policy I added to the top because the policy does call out early childhood but it isn't one of the implementation areas that's it's not one of the a through I implementation areas but I put it there because it is named in the policy and it is that longer term investment I I would say so we have to think absolutely about the elementary schools but we have to think even beyond that what about that birth to five and how are we making sure that um you know we're a partner with the
134Early Learning collaborative and that we're uh a player and uh have a plan to invest in the long-term development I would say you know I don't usually see smart and we don't usually see smart investments in early childhood because usually the people that are there aren't going to be around to see the benefits of that so oftentimes we see a lot more change in high schools middle schools because you can see those needles move people get credit for it you're not going to get credit for you know doing the right thing for birth to five and always going to be around that long and so it really is an Integrity check of building long-term making the right moves and again to the point of multi-leaders and multi-generations doing the right thing because it's the right
135thing to do not because you're going to be there to be the named as the ones who get credit for it and I think that's really important that's one of the reasons I would say I see that people don't make the Investments that they need to make in early childhood and um that's the way you build the long-term health of the community is start right from the beginning thank you I also just want to call it I appreciate thinking about coherence across schools because the more the more you develop coherence the more people can collaborate together so just just wanted to call that out yeah thank you and that's one of the conversations at the middle school level is um what are the opportunities to share even focused positions or how can we have instructional
136leadership positions that go across schools in a Content area for example so that we can build more options for teachers to collaborate with each other and um you know more robust learning communities peer-to-peer and so definitely across the middle schools I know that's an interest that I've heard from the lpta is just a much more robust teacher communities there's an eagerness for that starts with leadership and that starts with and it starts with new ways of no and I think I know Hannah Larry and I uh meet and talk with each other I think part of the conversation is you know the uses and thems that we've been using are not serving are us well and they're not serving our kids well the US's and thems are the US's that say we want to get
137this done and the them's are the folks whether they're administrators teachers or any other category that are not on board of the work and there's a lot of us there's there's a lot of us um to you excuse me you said commented on kind of I don't know that this is going to be hard right just for short shortened for the couple slides talked about adaptive challenges and transformative and doing things different and also emphasize that it can't happen top down so have you thought yet and I know we're early and maybe this is a premature question about how we're going to engage parents and teachers and students kind of um to get you know have everyone have ownership of this process yeah I think that um I can point to a few things um
138at the student and I'll start with um you know at the teacher level um one of the things in Hannah I appreciate you being here today like we have talked about um really using the tools around the like the National Labor Management collaboration we're using that at Council that's one of the things we've been talking about and we just talked today actually about reaching out to Nea and to aasa to see are there any um you know facilitators of our learning that we can call in so there's an excitement I think one of the things is really partners for collaboration at the administrator teacher level this is a huge huge um opportunity for us and a need and a desire that's shared I think at the parent and Community level we're talking about this portrait
139of a graduate in this room later this week we're going to get together with our other taxing bodies actually that practice District just to explore the idea of how a portrait of a graduate might be something that we use broader than the school district is there interest in that even if we don't end up doing that as a joint venture just the fact that we're all getting together to think about what is the vision of the youth in our communities in and of itself an exciting things so the portrait of a graduate for the community level and uh Dr Lofton and lagne myself I mentioned this in the um in the leadership reflection that I sent out we were at Julian with um you know with a group of student leaders the other day who
140expressed a very Crystal Clear Vision around a different kind of advisory and a vision that they had and Larry and Hannah and I have talked about the need to bring students into Ed Council and make sure that we're using their voices to to shape and that work so I will just say like the next day just to show kind of the level of excitement um you know we all were like so uh moved to have such a clear like we can deliver on that vision for our young people so the next day we reached out we're gonna have already have on the calendar Dr Lofton arranged a meeting with uh student leaders uh at Brooks and with the uh you know with the team there we're gonna hear what they have to say and what
141their thoughts are on this idea and we've reached out to District 200 to the leadership launch groups there we're in a preliminary conversations to see are there any are you know any ways that we might collaborate to use what the student leaders there know to train our student leaders to design advisory and set some ambitious goals like how can we at least give it a try what can we do so that advisory looks and feels different with our students fingerprints on it next fall and again I think sometimes we're used to like what's the full plan what's all the metrics what's everything sometimes with this work we also just have to kind of go and learn what we learn and adjust as we go because there isn't a road map for the kinds of things
142that we're doing so that's an example at the student level that's most recently like I think to me when that happened and I could see like every time I talked to somebody about it they're like oh let's make this happen for the kids we can do this and uh it's exciting because I do feel that there is just a Readiness for us to again that that slide of the top 10 charging when I put it up people are like really that the board and the superintendent are in sync about that I've actually been asked did this has the I was asked today has the board seen that slide and I was like yes we even put it together and because there's an exciting line that people want to know but we're on the same page
143to do the right thing and so yes I think um I don't I don't think that's enough uh of of the engagement but I think we're going to have to kind of like I said um some of the the what is true about a strategic plan is you can make a strategic plan when you know what the groundwork is in front of you and you're like I know I got to get there I know I got to get around this we're on Uncharted Territory and so we have these values and these ideas we've got this Equity policy and then we have to learn as we go do things that it's not up here but I think it it's like if I had to do like buckets what this says to me is like accountability um
144and I know that you just mentioned like the metrics because that was something on my mind like another metrics how do we know that this is working how do we assess the goals um but I do think like accountability and meeting people where they are um I think these are the two things that I kind of see in this because when you talk about like Workforce equity and talking about like different people within an organizations seeing the problems move up you know I think for a long time we focused on like nurturing Talent within the district and we've talked talked about it on a teacher an admin level but we haven't talked about the Tas we haven't talked about um lunchroom workers we haven't talked about like upward Mobility so I like that aspect of
145valuing lived experience because I think some of the the lunchroom workers probably know these schools they've been here for so long they have the institutional knowledge that they can come in and you know transfer a lot of those skills so I think valuing lived experience meeting people where they are and I think getting rid of some of our uh regular Norms right of like what is professionalism what is like what does it mean to be polished or what is what type of degree you need to have in order to do this work sound like that aspect of it or at least that's what I kind of see with like Workforce Equity professional development um but then I do think somewhere about how do we hold ourselves accountable um so and I think the first slide
146talks about like egos um and I think that's a huge thing is like you know people come in with like a million degrees and they're like well I know best because I have this degree um and it's like yeah but then how are you holding yourself accountable what Pro like show me that like you're committed to this work um so I think like that's the one word that's missing is accountability but I think it's like implicitly implied a little bit what would you like what would I'm not I'm not suggesting any change this is what it kind of says to me and that's why I'm thinking like I think being held accountable is important but also like not being so rigid and and what what success looks like it's your point like we talk about
147Equity a lot in this town but we don't take a really hard look at it we don't have a shared definition that for sure um but it's interesting even looking at the um the standardized test scores like for me I kind of it's interesting because the the the scores span covet right and there's so much discussion about like when people clamor for like a return to normal it like highlights normal was definitely not working for a lot of kids um and we don't I know there's not the longitudinal data on this slide but we've seen the longitudinal data and it's not been working for a long time even as we talk about equity in this town and so like without trying something different like we don't we're not going to see a change and if
148anything we're seeing it get worse right so like I'm really curious why our disparities have gotten so much worse over this band of covid like you know to the point where we're bypassing the state averages like what is it about the car that makes us so special in a really negative way in that regard um because I think it's time that like I mean I think that's what I've seen so many folks kind of bemoan is like there was so much discussion during cobit about this is the time for Innovation because so much of public schools don't work for kids and it's in really powerfully consequential ways but we didn't see that um and so this is the opportunity to try and figure out like what we can do um and I know it's like
149not a silver bullet thing you know like nobody's really figured out the whole achievement opportunity Gap it's bits and pieces here and there um but I think that's partly why like I like kind of echoing some other Focus points about the comprehensive nature like where do you start um in terms of like just moving structures like what are the things that actually you know like get in the way or not get in the way or you know um to help you kind of be able to do the more fine pieces of like curriculum or these other things so I think just to build off on that I think at a certain point it could be helpful to do for lack of a better term like an equity audit to more deeply understand where the gaps
150are where they most most pervasive what the theory of action is for why that might be to help think about what change might look like specifically thinking about number nine and seven we brought up I think we brought up Equity audits before and I'm not opposed to them I just know don't know if it's counter to the idea of moving quickly because they take a long time and then the processing takes a long time and we lose too much I use like a but yeah but I'm just I'm just saying from a count balance it balance determining what you just described yes against a an urgency which sometimes I think you have not done well I would be on I would agree with that about the balancing urgency it reminds me of like I remember
151when I was doing my teacher program like someone's saying like at any one point someone should be able to come to your door and ask you why you're doing what you're doing and how you know it's working and I think like we I mean it's interesting that we have the national board teachers here because part of that process is about being a reflective educator and I think sometimes we forget neither chasing like standardized test scores like we get kind of lost in the weeds like we don't think about like how do we know it's working in really robust ways because that by no means am I saying that we should be chasing standard test scores I'm not a huge fan of that as a measure it's one measure you know and I know we've talked
152at this board table about like the ways we've changed like gifted or accelerated you know we're trying to tweak things not always it's not always welcomed um but you know we'll look at the number of kids who have access to potentially enrichment you know we've been trying to increase access and so like even those are different I mean when people talk about the opportunity again part of it is like do our kids all have at least you know big you know equal or Equitable access to things and like kids were getting locked out of gifted altogether and so I feel like we're making strides but that doesn't mean we can't keep stopping and like thinking about you know does this make sense well I think you can move quickly and nimbly I mean I think
153part of why at least I voted yes on on hiring in a data person um having an Anna was because that gives us the opportunity to be thoughtful about what type of valuation what questions can we ask along the way that don't have to be rigid in the sense that you're turning it into the federal government or anything like that but for our purposes internally what questions do we need to be asking to see if what we're doing is working what changes is it making how can we then you know improve it as we go and I think that's the critical piece of it is it doesn't have to be a full-on you know published report for you know to make it valuable to the district we can actually do evaluation pieces we can ask
154questions we can hold accountability to ourselves without having to make it something that's so onerous that it stifles moving quickly I'll say there's a um section in the equity policy that envisions the possibility of engaging external Consultants it doesn't use the term audit but the concept was something like that but I think there were a couple of reasons that um that's there one is I think there was concern to the point so much to the point you were just making Nancy about whether we have the internal capacity to do that kind of assessment work that is important and is Dr Shaw sort of articulated this sort of taking steps where we may not have a direct linear sense of where it's going to go with being able to assess and course correct Etc and then
155the other reason that it was there is that there's a there was a concern and this relates to the charges there was a concern about whether um internal folks would be willing to um sort of engage in a critical Assessments in ways that could be sometimes uncomfortable or like anxiety producing Etc versus somebody who wants it externally and doesn't feel like they're implicated in what they're assessing may feel more liberated to um to sort of be frank and candid I you know my own opinion in terms of like where we are now is I feel like one it's much better to have the capacity internally because it is an ongoing need it's not a one-time need uh in two like I think it is critical to our long-term success that we do create this culture
156of where we're willing to engage in constructive self-criticism so um you know at some point if we decided that there was a piece of this that would benefit from that kind of external work I think it's sort of provided for the policy although obviously there's a budget associated with it at this point but I do think that it's there as a sort of um contingency in case these sort of capacities and sort of willingness to be to hold ourselves accountable um you know wasn't exactly where we wanted it so any other questions okay thank you thank you all right that brings us to board assignments uh first up standing board committee reports I feel like back and forth came up during the meeting yeah I will just throw in that base camp registration started this
157last weekend it's been going extremely well but there are also still spaces available they've changed how they set up the systems that they can expand more easily so if you are still looking for base camp cases get your name on the wait list if it's waitlisted and or go check out to see if there are any camps that you're interested in your child might be interested in foreign remarks so I just want to share um if you have been on social media you have seen the park district had a little bit of controversy um this past week and so I had the opportunity to happen um we didn't Focus too much on that we talked a little bit about their diversity committee how we can avoid this kind of thing in the future but then
158we also talked about the rec center and I was really excited to learn that um the engagement the person over like engagement is going to be she has a social work background she's from the community so really excited to hear about that we talked about like how they would discipline so much Progressive discipline um because I was really worried a lot of community members have engaged about how black and brown boys will be disciplined because we know their discrepancies in it and so I was really happy to hear a little bit about that and then we also talked about transportation and so I know that there has been an effort to work in partnership with the township and some other organizations to raise money but she talked about like is there even a need so
159I was like yes because I'm thinking about like my sixth grader who lives on a North mid middle part I guess Northeast part of Oak Park thinking about like in the winter months when it's dark at four o'clock I'm also thinking about children who may attend Julia but maybe went to man and so that my transportation is not as easy and so just encouraging us to keep our eye on that that that is going to be even though it's Park District you know it's going to impact our kids um so I'd encourage you to have those conversations and I tell her like if there are classes you know if we can talk to our kids about what classes they're interested in seeing I mean I think one thing she also she also mentioned that I
160thought was really cool they're gonna they're gonna have like a little forward I don't want to say little but they're gonna have a board that a student LED and those students will be responsible for coming up with classes that they're interested in as well as just kind of thinking through some of the problems and issues and I thought that was really cool that she's like including kids and allowing them to step up and be leaders um a question on the Progressive discipline it's kind of going with this theme we talked about the IGA Progressive discipline requires you to keep a record of first infractions and second infractions so I'm curious about how that paperwork will be maintained and how it'll be used and whether or not someone could get access to it later and use
161it against see this you know this kid had three infractions at the rec center so now they're you know labeled in some way so curious about if you have follow-up conversations or and I'll raise it too if I there's opportunities to discuss it as a community but very curious because Progressive I agree with that I think that's that's you should want it done but at the same time it does require a trail of record keeping yeah and I worry about that that's a great point and I think that um the other point I wanted to follow with her on we talked about like drug users of zero zero tolerance policy for that um and I understand that but then my husband works with high school he talks about the like vaping like it's out of
162control but I was like I want to make sure the kids aren't just being disciplined but they're actually getting support so they need um so it can't just be like you're out because you've had an edible or you've baked or you ate a cookie just like why are you doing this um yeah we're sort of Justice um so those are just a couple of the things that we're continuing to have those conversations because I think the um those are conversations almost have anyway but I think the whole slave trade class cooking class just really ruffled not ruffled all of us but it really upset uh members of the black community um and now people are like I don't want to be involved I don't want to sign up for the classes um and I think
163it's really unfortunate because I think that the rec center is going to provide a safe space for our kids so I just want to continue the conversation one other thing I saw and I'm not trying to put this on you to communicate with Jim but the other thing I I've been wondering is there was someone said that they're limiting after school age to 13 to 18 partly because the supervision levels aren't going to be able to accommodate the younger students and also you don't need 17 and 18 year olds hanging out with six and seven year olds right it makes sense but I'm concerned that 13 is kind of like it's like all eighth grade seventh grade and eighth grade I wonder if they could think about doing it by grade only I mean like
164my daughter turned 13 in January like if all our friends turned 13 in May so she just doesn't like so I just wonder if they should think about doing it by grade instead of by age I feel like kids turn are you letting seventh graders go then you should start in September just from uh because they don't pick their friends by their birthday and that's a good point because like at base camp we couldn't uh sign KJ up so I had to like write them and say you can't sign up for seventh grade selling because he just turned 11 and she was like oh I'll do it manually so but what if I was like oh we can't do it and I just gave up so right so just thinking about it by grade it
165happens with sports too they go by January and then you've got half the friends on this team and half the friends have to go play with the eighth graders and have them play with them anyway I just I know we go by age and there's a reason I'm developmentally but I think in this community and for this purpose it's actually about ish grade it makes more sense or for soccer they do it like birth year they can't though because like half the eighth graders are in 2009 half or 2008. a little weird um but any more comments for or any other board remarks all right then all in favor of a journey [Music] thank you you guys um everybody