Proviso Township High Schools District 209 - BOE Committee of the Whole Meeting - 5/27/2025 Part 2

001Yes. M. Okay. Thank you. Can I get a motion to reconvene the regular meeting of the township board of education committee of the whole Miss M please stand for the pledge of allegiance. I alian to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. comments. We have none. So, we're going to go right to number seven, discussion item. All right. Well, thank you everyone. Um, for our first Yeah. Hold on. Sorry. Oh, no problem. I didn't have two seconds. So, our first committee, the whole meeting, I'm really excited about this. I'm not so crazy about the AC acronym POW that has been for, you know, whatever. We're here. Um, so a one of the reasons I wanted

002to have the committee as a whole is because I want to make sure that I'm giving board members as much opportunity and as much time to consider um items before going to formal action. And so for this meeting, we're going to be talking about um have four opportunities to engage in meaningful dialogue before having to take action at that final meeting. So at the first the first opportunity would be at a committee of the whole meeting like we're having here today. Um Then the second opportunity would be two weeks from now when we have a board meeting. The third opportunity for those who choose to participate is we will set up times to have board briefings. And so this would be no more than two members at a time will be able to come in

003um and have these conversations. I will say those board briefings since it's gone to the first board meeting, those discussion items are now on the agenda as action items and then you'll have that second board meeting where we'll have an opportunity for discussion before taking final vote. And so essentially you'll get a good 45 to 50 days to to sit with an item as opposed to 30. Um and then providing more access to you anything that's going to be voted on or discussed in a board meeting would be also would also be added into the weekly board updates as well. So there's another opportunity for you guys to read about that. But I think it's important for us to have this opportunity to discuss and this can be the whole it's I think it's beneficial

004for board members to ensure that you're better informed. It's also beneficial for us because before that first board meeting, we're getting an opportunity to hear questions from you as we kind of craft that final board memo that will be included in the board packet for the first four weeks. Any questions? All right, we'll we'll see how it goes. We'll adjust as we need. Um but I'm excited that um you guys are willing to to go on this adventure and try this structure. Um always have questions. Are we going to be meeting in this room for or did was this the meeting that we discussed moving around? I think during the summer we we all all meetings happen at PMSA but then perhaps for the school year we would alter Let me send you a different

005one. Okay. Sorry. That's okay. during the school the summer they do heavy construction. So that makes sense. I mean if you guys are okay with this space I think it's more conducive to conversation in here rather than kind of reading trying to see each other's faces read body language. It's a little more difficult. Um yeah so if you guys are open to the space Um I will say so the the one of the purposes of the committee the whole also is to bring us all together. So we'll have a facilities meeting but not all the board members are there or have a finance meeting and not all the board members are there. So this is an opportunity to combine those uh combine those meetings. um not looking to combine the the pairing agent that that

006type of structure takes on a different um type of need but they're trying to collapse these just make it more efficient at the same time for everybody. May I ask something please? I think this is a great idea as most of you in the office of school board member for school district 88 and this is something that they do but they call it all committee okay and it does work it really shortens everything I think it's a really good idea that we kind of you know adopted a little bit to it a little bit but make sure it does I think we should make it ours so you know and honestly I I'm not trying to dissuade us from having conversation in board meetings but I do want the board means to be business meetings.

007Um, so I think it would be good to remind our community that we're having these meetings as well as far as for like all the other opportunities so you're fully informed before mention well I'm excited that we're moving in the direction of most so that's a positive step forward. Um so as we move into discussion items, the first thing I want to just talk about are the facilities information. Um so LT has two pieces he'd like to talk through what's transport. Let's go to transportation while we fix that. I apologize for that. Well, good evening everybody. Uh tonight we would like to talk about the student transportation extension for proviso township high schools. Uh proviso bided this out roughly August 21st 2022. We had one responsible bidder. It was first student and first student actually

008been the only bidder for our transportation since we started it in house. I'm sorry since the state approved it. So first student is looking to give to extend the last two years of The five-year agreement. The five the five-year agreement is three is mandatory. Year four and five are both optional for proviso. As we speak, per student charges proviso $228.75 for AM route for east west science academy and the same thing for uh the PM route going back home for first students proposing a 3.5% increase. So you'll see in the column 2526 it says $239.94 would be the route charge if we are seven routes or less per school which we will not be. So our route dollar amount will go to 23676 which is in that column where it says seven bus routes and

009then in year 2627 it would be 248 for seven or less routes or 245 for seven or more. We have eight routes at Math and Science Academy. We have 19 routes right now at Proviso West and we have 16 at Proviso East. We do organize those route to trunk truncate students to save money. So if we have to reduce those routes because we have 10 students on route number one and five students on route number two, we will ask for a student to truncate those routes so we can save those dollars per day. And then the same thing if we get uh extra students to be uh enrolled at the proviso high schools. Uh during the conversation with first student I wanted to make sure that we highlighted a few items that were problems for

010proviso. Uh one of the items were to make sure the first student understood that we needed students to get here on time. So the first bullet point that favors provo is to ensure that they guarantee routes to be on time and if not there would be a discount on the rates. Uh the second one that anything that was 20 minutes or more it would be a 75% discount. Uh we did have about six to eight of those this school year. A few was inclement weather. One was a train over on 25th Avenue coming over um by St. Charles from North Lake. And then we wanted to better the evening activity support runs to make sure that students were getting off at 3:30 cuz last year first student was getting off at 4:30. So we're getting

011to Grove North, Dro South too late and they really didn't want to play that late. So now we're going to be getting there on time and be able to uh work with our conference as we have done in the past. Uh the last one is to make sure that all of the uh supervisors provide a field observation report. They come out, they look at the buses to make sure they're queued up correctly. Make sure the drivers have all their safety devices on. Make sure that they're speaking to the students in a kindly fashion. So on and so forth to make sure the experience for the students are um pleasant. Next slide. I'm sorry. Can you go back one slide? Is there any questions about uh the dollar amount per route? Anything about the routes or

012the favor favorable changes that ask for? So the discounts it's uh when it's weather or train does that go on them like right or is it like oh because it's this and it was like an act of God essentially then they don't have to discount. Great question. So two things we agreed upon for proviso west because proviso west on the east side there's a train track. So the bus is coming from Bailwood. If they get caught at the track, there's nothing really we can do. But the first student is running late because they had an absent driver or the driver had a flat in the morning. If they don't have redundant drivers to replace that driver, then we're going to get that 75% discount. And mechanics is their responsibility any sort of Yep. All that

013all that is strictly on first. We we in good faith. We pay them every month. Thanks to Dr. Hill and Mr. Mod. Um, so we are putting some hard lines in the sand, so to speak, to make sure we're getting a great service because two years ago was pretty bad. I have a question. Now that u we're looking at extending a contract with them, increasing their their pay. How has this year gone? Like has it been I mean it didn't start well. There was issues in the beginning, but now we're coming to a contract with the last two years where we have some options to kind of stay where we are or renew. Has it been a significant diff difference from the previous to now the service that's been received? Yeah. So each morning, Sergio

014and myself, we get together the first two minutes at 6:00 a.m. and we have their cadis around. How many drivers are absent? Is there anything late? Is the first few app working? The first six weeks of school, we did have some trying situations because we had late enrollies and because a lot of parents just didn't know how to download the first view app or navigate the app. So, what we're doing this year, we're hoping to get together with power school. I'm not sure if that's 100% rolled out, Mike. Yeah, we got a power integrated house so that p families have one place to go and get their route. Okay. Their bus pickup time and their bus drop off time and they won't have to look at a sheet that's online. and all of that will

015be right there for the parents and the students to review. Uh first student at the beginning of the year was bad probably about a 90 or 95%. There was a lot of internal problems um that we investigated that was on proviso. Um quite a few people did not know how to navigate the sheet online. Um quite a few of them were sitting in the car playing music with their student and the bus kind of zips by because you don't see anybody on the on the corner corner. Uh but we got all those corrected and we did have a few um really late buses getting to activities in the late like 45 minutes and every month we have a once a month cadence with them before they invoice us and we make sure that we hone

016in on those and we use text messages and emails to keep up with those to make sure we're getting the proper discount from first student. So overall I would give first student a minus. Uh but the first six to eight weeks is always challenging because we get Mr. Ashaw put about 25% of our students are enrollment late or more. So that it's pretty it's pretty bad. So that negatively affected for sure. But uh we're working with families and doing enrolling. No, I'm talking about the routing for sure. And to speak to Mr. Taylor's point, what we have now is we have it set up where every night our power school data is sent to them so they can route them automatically in their system and then they send us back the routes. So it's pretty

017automatic now. Before it was a manual process where the kid would enroll, they would fill out a line on a spreadsheet and then um I would say I don't know maybe 6 months ago we got it finally all automatic. So if they enroll late it's still going to be a problem you know for that leading up to the enrollment. But if we have their first name and home address, they're going to get routed. Yes, I had a question about how are we documenting any anomalies, right? So if someone if a parent were to call and said this route was ghost, you know, ghost bus, right? Never showed up phantom bus or uh it was late. Are we documenting those and do we have the data for in order for us to negotiate those discounted rates?

018So for last year we do not have a flowable charge to identify those KPIs but this year we've been working with Miss Lee and Mr. Mohip to come up with a form that we believe is uh conducive for reports throughout proviso because some parents they call the main office. Some parents they call the parent coordinator. Most parents call me and Sergio and we should be populating all that information and the student ID numbers on those sheets so that when you do want to see it quarterly or monthly, we can say, "Listen, these were the 94 issues over the last 90 days." So, we do have a plan for the upcoming year, but we did not have a sheet to organize those last year. Have we talked about optin options? Because I mean, I filled out

019my registration as nothing about transportation and I know that I would like to see at some point us ask on the registration form, do you plan on using a district bus, right? So that we can gain because if we have five kids on a bus, 10 kids on a bus, we combine a route, that's a lot. That's a lot of money, right? And there's probably a lot less. How many students do you have? 4600. And how many kids actually use the bus? Do we even know that? No, we don't. We've been asking first students provide them a badging in and badging off the bus. I mean, even just a head count, how many kids are on the bus? If they don't have a clicker on them, right? They should be counting heads as they get

020on the bus. They don't. But that that's something we can like to see that put into the contract if we are going to go with renewal because we need data. We have no idea how many heads are on the bus. How can we negotiate? Because the line for drop off is extremely long. And if we're estimating these kids are actually on the bus and we're paying for them to be on the bus, but they're really being dropped off every day, it's a waste. So, we did talk about that internally. One of the main issues is that you might have LT jumping on the bus on Mondays and Fridays and then mom and dad bring them home on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. And he opts out, right? What does he got to do for those days, right?

021Or you you always get extra ridership, high ridership in the winter months. It's cold outside. Kids don't want to walk. They don't want to bike. So ridership goes up. But as soon as we get 75 degrees outside, kids want to bike. They want to, you know, carpet together, do their best way to get to school. So I think it might be, in my opinion, it might be a mistake to have a hard line in the sand. opting in or opting out because a challenging situation should occur in week number 10, right? And we head to help us determine if that's even because you can plan for seasonality, right? Knowing that like in the winter time, thousand kids, right? Well, springtime goes down. I think we can get there. The struggle is we don't have a

022daily count of students, right? So to get to that seasonality piece, we want to look at trend to say, you know, when it's when you know between November and and March, we know that ridership goes up 25%. Like I can't point to that yet until we can get so to Jenny's point or I'm sorry, board member Barban, president Barban to her point is like we need to know ridership ones. So I think LT, I think that's something we could build into the next contract. Well, ideally, I would love them for badging, right? But I mean, there's some very basic we know like this kid is supposed to be picked up on this spot or dropped off at this spot, but that does come through. But I think I like the the in out because as

023a parent, I knew my kid was never getting on the bus. That's just plain and simple. And it's not like they can't decide like halfway through the school year like, "Hey, mom's car is no longer existing and I need transportation." They can reach out to you and says, "Hey, I need to be I need bus transportation for my child now." But to just start this year off with a clear idea what parents because these parents know, the ones that's dropping their kid off, for the most part, they know if they drop off every day or if they don't. So they can say, "Yep, my kid needs bus service. I want them to catch the bus whether they do it or not, but this is what I want for them. So, it should to me it

024just it could be an option in registration for yes cuz I know 88 is on their uh registration form. Do you want bus service or not? And if you don't, you say no. And if you do, you you get a route and there. So, the books have been questions. So year four is optional or we can renew and then year five the same or is it two years together we can renew? Yeah, they prefer to do the two years because right now as they rebidding contracts throughout districts that are similar to proviso the escalated values anywhere from 11 to 12%. So they're giving us a 3.5 which 3.3 of that is salaries. They're taking two ten of a percent as a profit because it provides those longstanding relationship with first student and because we've been

025pushing them to be a better partner for people to uh in my opinion because of elevated gas cost elevated bus salaries we should not go out to be because for sure it's going to be more than 3.5 once we have that data right then I think by Yes, by the end of this term place to make this make a more important decision, but we this is why we're doing this. We we have a lot of questions here. We'll work together as a team to address these and update our board meals to incorporate some of this stuff as possible. Just curious, did you say that there were other other people that bid in for this contract or did you say this was the only This was the only So this is AM to PM morning and

026even transportation. And so think about this right first student main hub for East and Mat is located right by Maybrook. No other bus company is close. So if you go away to Summit, which is the closest bus company, they have to fleet all of their vehicles this way. The prices are going to go up and they won't be competitive. So most most districts receive a bid from the local hub within their township or community. All right, I think you got this right. This is the transportation JC. Here you go. So this is JCI Johnson Control Incorporated. This is for our building assets control system which is your ID badge to control your printer access and also get you inside the buildings. Uh this is year number two for our access control system. We uh installed

027it a year ago. Uh we do believe it'll bring a lot of value if we have a professional looking at the software. keypads get antiquated or go won't illuminate um and any other virus could be severed or any other catastrophic dangers could happen to the system. Uh at the speaking with Michael Swanson, it is u highly favored to make sure that we hire someone to manage that. uh that is in the magnitude of around $36,000 for East West and Math and Science Academy for a three-year term of $199,942. Um we do have roughly 18 units here at Math and Science Academy, meaning badging to get into the administration center and also downstairs and a few other MDF and IDF closets. Over at Proviso East, we have roughly 24 uh stadium building, main fieldhouse building, and

028also the aid in the B building. And then over Proviso West, we have roughly 24 as well. Um really important that people be able to get in the building 24 hours a day. This help us counter measure who's in the building. Uh if I badge in, Mr. Motive can see that I came in the building at 6:11 and I was on time for work. Um it's also a security issue. Sometimes an employee goes away, doesn't turn their keys in, we can't get a hold of them. That's an issue. You lose a key. And then the cost if that continually happens, anytime you have to reash or re key the exteriors, it can get pretty expensive considering how many doors some of our schools have. Any questions about the access control? Any concerns with JCI? No.

029I have a monthly case with them to make sure that our invoices are getting paid and all our concerns are getting addressed within a timely manner. Uh this will also include an annual uh inspection of the entire system so we're proactive in creating those preventive maintenance techniques uh to make sure that we don't have like huge building failures. So every June 1 through June 10th or so JC I'll be here for four to five days going through all of the intricate details of the system to make sure it's ready for the fall. All right, moving on. So looking at our policy side, we do have Press 2018 that will be going to a second reading um at this June board meeting. This is as we said free Monday. We're we're updating the information that needs

030to be updated. Uh board member Hixon has done does a wonderful job of facilitating this event last month. Um one thing that I do want to bring and I don't know if it's premature here but there has been some conversation about a facility a facility naming policy. Um and so what I would like to do is take a slower step into this if we're thinking about creating some type of policy for this to get community input. So this summer and fall, create a task force um and then have that task force make recommendations to the board of education. And so with this, the conversation here is before we name a building, before we name a bus or classroom or anything like that, we have a solid policy in place that we can follow um when

031we're making the decision. That's yes that we want to do it or no that we don't. And that is that's the the thought around this. Just wanted to get feedback before we move forward. Okay. All right. I'll move on. Right. Uh so moving into the finance section. I know Dr. has um two issues or two present well actually one's a presentation the other is a discussion. So the first is on financing and so we just wanted to give some information to the full board around and we're not looking at doing any financing but just giving an overview of what it would look like if we ever did want to go out and finance a project. So I'll turn it over to you Dr. Okay, great. So I reached out to um PMA Securities today, Mr.

032Bob Lewis who we have worked with in the past. Um just to go over what some of these funding options are. Um I did submit a PowerPoint presentation to all board members including the superintendent um just recently and this is the capital funding option document here. Uh Mr. Lewis presented to the finance committee meeting last year um in reference to what these options are. So today I just wanted to briefly give a highle overview of what those options are without going in depth but if there are any questions just let me know. Um also I did share with him that in the near future we would like for him to come out in person that he did before um just to give you guys more information as to how this process will look for proviso

033school district 209. So if you go towards page two, if the district were to seek out um available funding for school funding projects, you will see the different options that are available here. Um the first one is the fund balance contribution and then annual operating budget. I want to pause there because that is a non-baring option. That's what the district did last year, a couple years ago uh when we uh used $50,000 of our educational fund and transfer to capital projects to fund a project. When we go that route, we're not borrowing at all. And so that's what we've done in the past. However, since we are in the process of trying to rebuild um our uh pot of money, we we will want to shy away from that at this time. But I just

034want to give you just an overview of what we've done in the past and what some of those other options are. So if you remember from the previous board meeting, Dr. Hill showed a showed a chart that showed we had 14 months of reserves in the bank. Currently we have 5.9. We expect to close the year at right around six, just a little bit higher. Um the reason we went from that 14 months cash on hand to the six months cash on hand is because they did that they did that swap the trans. I'm sorry. No, no, no, no. Please add in and jump in at any time. Um, next option would be either by way of referendum bonds and then life safety bonds and I will give you an overview of those um, shortly

035on the additional slides. Um, then number three we have non-referendum bonds um, issued against the debt service extension base and then we have four borrowing paid from our operating funds. So if you move over to page three, the first one speaks to the referendum bond matrix. This is when we will actually take it to public community vote. And then you will see the breakdown as to based on the amount of $100,000 market value home, how much it will impact the homeowner. And so you'll see that breakdown here because when you're going out and doing referendums, that's the first question. How will it impact our taxpayers? And so if you were to go out for um let's say a B a bond levy for $8 million, it would the average homeowner would pay an additional $76

036and you would see the breakdown here. That's if we were to go that route for referendum. That's page three. Are there any questions in reference to that page here? Okay. The next page is on page two uh four which is dealing with the life safety bonds. So this is issued in evidence of life safety approvals received from ISPY. So right now uh we were in collaboration with operations and maintenance team this year. There's a project for our roof, right? And so in order to prevent us from going out borrowing, we literally had funs in our life safety account, right? And so we were able to utilize those, but that approval requires is we need to sign off on it. And so that process took place as well. And if I'm not mistaken, that work is

037scheduled to take place this summer, Mr. Taylor. Yes, ma'am. Okay. So when it talks about the debt service extension, I just want everyone to know that's a legal limit on how much a school district can actually borrow. We just can't say, oh, we want 50 million. No, it applies basically to really nonreferendum bonds. Okay? And that would go without vote at all. That's hey approves it. It's included within our life safety plan and we can use our life safety dollars to fund that particular project. On page five, uh there are many questions in reference to what you can use those light safety improvements for. So to prevent from running down the list, I can just allow you guys just take us lands just to see what some of those would entail. You know, cameras, intercom,

038um energy savings, right now it's the roof, you know, paving, sidewalk, playgrounds, things of that nature. So that's on page five. That's for life safety. I have a question. Number nine, Asbestos. So you could have technically taken a life safety loan out to pay for the was it as west, right? That job, right? So with the life safety, it wouldn't have been a loan. So life safety is what we have actually built up over. So that's why we were um we didn't have to take out a loan for the group because right now, you know, we had our financial consultant who came in eliminated, you guys remember Dr. Gross and his team. um since we do have new board members, I thought it was very it would be beneficial for him to come in and

039give um the new board members an overview of where we are financially. So, he will be coming in in June um at the board meeting just to give you a glimpse of where we at as a district. And last year it was saying, hey, you know, you want to pause on, you know, seeking out additional funding at this time from our dollars and just try to build, you know, our funds up again, if that makes sense. But for the life safety, we did not have to take out a loan. We built that over time and we just kept it there. So it was like a savings as an inense. Okay. But yes, so that's those as long as it's included within the life safety plan and we have funds within that pot of money, we

040are able to utilize it. Okay. Um next is the life safety bond matrix. Again, this just gives you a breakdown based on if we were to go that route, how much it would impact um our taxpayers. On page seven, it just gives you um an overview of what the debt service extension is. And I mentioned this already, so I won't go into detail, but there is a limit on how much districts can actually um take out uh utilize funds for it. And right now, for this district, it would be about $7 million for the district as of 2025. Next up, this just gives you a breakdown of those non-reender bonds with a non-referend bond that does not need to go out for public. Okay. Page three, it gives you the capacity again depending on how

041much it would be an increase for the taxpayers based on $100,000 home value within the area. And on page 10 um this is what we have done before in the past as well using utilizing our operating funds to fund cost. So let's say when we are building a budget for the upcoming year we would say okay based on what we're budgeting for we want to allocate at least two to3 million and apply it to a capital project fund to fund some project here. I know Mr. Taylor and I was in conversation um just last week actually and he was asking is there any way for us to um at least a couple um times throughout the year at least once a year when we build in the budget are we able to set aside $2

042million to fund a sort of a project that is what I was already including within the budget. So, it's good that he brought that to our attention because we will be able to build in at least $2 million to fund some kind of project um that operations and maintenance see that we need to um keep up with our buildings and grounds. The goal is we want all our buildings to be in good shape, but we know at the same time we can't fund all of them at the same time. So, we have to prioritize. So, basically based on meeting with Mr. Taylor, he will share what that priority is at the moment and if we're able to allocate it and include within the budget, we will. Um, I will be meeting with the superintendent tomorrow

043for two hours to go over what that tens of budget um will look like for this upcoming year in addition to just going over some other things that relates to our budget. And then on page 11, that's just a disclosure. Are there any? There are four options. All right, so they're all on page two, but if you want more in-depth information, we will have Mr. has come in if this is what the district wants to do at this time and that would be for future projects. So we took out a life safety bond for the roof at west. That is correct. Not a life safety bond. We were able to utilize life safety funds. Life safety funds for that. That's correct. Okay. And that was how much was the roof at west? Was three and

044a half. It was about 2 point about 2.5 2.7 somewhere around because we had got a disc was a rate. It was a decrease. We thought it was going to be over two but it came in under. Okay. Okay. So it's the roof on the A building and so it's not all roofs that provides OS. It's just the roof on the athletic wing that provides O. And so the looking at page six increase was there an increase then in this if we were to go out and take a bond so we didn't have a bond right so we actually utilized if you take a look at your document that I provided you guys um this is the treasury report this is coming up for our FY26 budget um but this is I wanted to give

045you where we were at as of April so under you will See here you see capital projects you would see debt service and then you would see life safety then that's where you would pull those funds from for life safety. So we had money left in fire and safety and that's where that life safety come from. So it was money that we already had accumulate here over time. Okay. Next up are there any other questions in relation to the options? One other option that I'd like to consider. I know the township treasurers office also offers financing, right? They got a bond to them and I think it would be interesting to see what what sort of options they offer in terms of possibly lower rates or better financing terms just right and again like you

046said those are conversations you know we can have with Paul Velisario um in addition to Mr. police as well. To be very front and clear, we're not looking right now to bring anything. Thank you. We just want you for all of you listening, we're not trying to go to referendum right now. Um we just want as we're a new board coming in, we just want you to understand this is one more of the more complicated sides of being a board member just to understand the finances you're seeing. You're helping run, you know, a multi-million million dollar organization. So we just want us to know what all our options are. So as we're making moves in the future, we're you know utilizing our best options. All right, moving on to a brief discussion on the FY26

047budget. Right. So as I stated earlier, tomorrow I will be meeting um with the superintendent for a couple hours to go over our budget um for the upcoming school year. Again, it's a highlevel overview. So, when you're building a budget for the upcoming year, the budgets are not approved until by law, September 30th. Okay. Um, I always like to move a month ahead of time, if that makes sense. Um, but we have been in communication with all departments throughout the year just to get a sense because a budget is just a plan of what we plan to do, right? It's not set in stone. And so, throughout the course of the year, I met with the departments. Um I'll be meeting with the superintendent as I stated and it's just our initial plan on how

048we plan to operate for FY26. Um the tentative budget it will outline all our revenues. It will outline all our expenditures um across all our funds and you would just have a highle overview on where we are at. Um so the plan of action is this. Our next step is for me to present the tens of budget to the board of education in June. is slightly early, but I know a lot of districts like to move early, right? By us presenting this tentative budget in June. After that board meeting, we have the place on display um for the community members to come in just to get an idea of where we at or what our plan would be for the upcoming year. That sits on display for 30 days. Then after that, we have to

049hold a public hearing. Once you have that public hearing, then the goal is to adopt that final budget by the September deadline. And so it's important even though it's September, I would like to have everything complete by August so that we can go on to get the budget approved, have it set up in our financial management system and we're ready to rock and roll by the time the teachers come back for the upcoming fiscal year. Um, for me, it just makes matters easier when we move moving ahead and not just waiting to the last minute. Even though by law it September, the same as I did with the tax levy last year. They said it was due in December, we approved it in November. And so I would like to at least continue this process.

050But the good news is once the board of education approved the tentative budget in June is you're just approving a plan. So we still have time throughout the course of the summer to go in and tweak that budget before we present it to you in August for final approval. And what I like about that process as well is last year we were in need of support for our bilingual program and a request came in like in August, right? Say we need $500,000. We were able for those for the teachers. We were able to include it. So it's like there's still tweaks that would take place throughout the course of that process. But with the board the weekly updates, I will let you know what those are throughout the course of that time. So when the

051second Tuesday of August is here, we're ready to rock and roll and then we can approve the budget, but the tentative will be approved um be set for approval in June. Are there any questions regarding that? And so and so this we're not just starting the budget process. We've been I know Dr. Hill has been talking with departments meeting with them oneonone. She's been doing this for months and she started in February and we sent you some updates on it. We really can't go any faster than this. the state budget is not going to approve yet. And so with a big part of the state budget is that what what the EDF amounts will be, right? So whether it's going to be hold steady and the 350 million, if they're going to cut that, if

052they're going to go beyond it, which I doubt, um we just have to kind of wait to see what that final aotment will do for us and we can't do that. This is about the time when the state will finalize their budget. I would would hope in the coming days um the state will be able to finalize and then we can continue knowing those numbers to kind of move forward more permanently. Any questions? Okay. So, moving on. Um Alex and his team have several renewals that will be coming up. The first one is for the EL resource contract for our library system. Thank you. So uh we have Felicia Fleet here with us today with our technology integrationist uh looking at renewing our Gale resource database. So this is all of our research component for

053our library system. Thank you. Okay, thank you. the um with the Gail uh resources uh over the past five years um our usage has been uh consistently low and uh we noticed that last year and we really started um placing more emphasis uh in that area to see why. And um some of our findings included um we our teachers had not received uh professional development. They went probably they went almost five years without actually being trained um on Gail. And so last year we did uh an allout effort uh during our tech update uh which was I think in October in the fall and uh we trained all of our teachers. They had an opportunity uh to come to learn uh how to actually utilize um the platform and this really paid off big as

054a result. Um, one of the things with Gail uh with our students that are doing uh high level uh research, we really need this particular uh platform to prepare our students even for postsecary once they leave us to be able to to start uh that process. on the uh first page, I've kind of highlighted uh for you the areas that we are that we're really extremely proud um that we improved in uh this year. If you turn to the second page and look at our usage, um during the year of 23 and 24, um when you look at our retrievables and our searches, our students were literally not utilizing uh at some of our schools the girls our platform at all. and um we knew that we had to to to work on that and

055and do something about that. Uh I do have another uh table that we did not include uh to give you um just a comparison this year and we we'll add that for our upcoming board meeting. This year on an average uh our students have have have searched have uh searched approximately uh they've included approximately 7,000 searches which is really good. If you look at um searches and retrievalss and sessions uh before it was pretty low but on an average the areas and the content areas that they are searching include science, biography, opposing viewpoints and also global issues. And um this is you know the areas where we want them to be again as we are preparing them uh for those postsecary studies. I think uh also for our advanced placement classes um those students have

056to use some type of search engine or platform similar to this uh in order uh to meet their graduation requirements and also course requirements. Um just to give you an idea uh about how much percentage of time was used looking at those um that's what uh this graph pretty much represents uh with our students retrieving information in those products and then total sessions our sessions increased also when you're thinking in terms of a retrieval and a search when we're when you're looking at platforms a search. A search simply means I have a specific topic and I'm going to um if that topic is um rights, I want to know more about rights. So, I'm going to enter rights. So, I'm going to look at everything that I can find in that area. Now, when we

057go to retrievalss, what am I actually going to download? Okay. So, we have seen an increase in on both sides, which is really good. We want students to do those searches, but we also want our students uh to uh retrieve information as well. So, we are pretty excited about that. the um investment uh over on the third page. Our investment for this year um for our renewal is 50,60949. Um we have a slight increase of about 5%. Um last year we paid about 48,000 for this platform. Um I think that's pretty consistent with um increases. Uh so it's it's right at a 5% uh increase over last year. And then pretty much all of our students in terms of equity have access to this platform at school and also at home which is another great

058great thing. So are there any questions? I've given you probably. So before before we jump the question, I just want to add in this day and age of AI, it's really important to teach our kids how to do how to do research searches. Um as our kids are going into college, AI will not be accepted when you're doing research projects. Nor should say it should be accepted in our in our high school setting. Um, as we're building bringing on department shares, I'm going to have serious conversations with our science departments and our history club arts because we have great opportunities to engage in the science sphere and the history which would give our students an opportunity to really engage in research using these types of resources and also open them up to um other opportunities

059to compete statewide. It's, you know, great to get that on a resume and do things like that. We haven't done that in some time here. Um, so interested in bringing that part back. Um, it is a very low cost. What I'm concerned about is the the usage rate is low. Even though that it has increased, it's still not where we would expect it to be. And that's because I do believe students are still going out to the internet and doing searches that could be inappropriate um or not based in research, right? So, and that at east we did have an issue where the librarian was not there. They had to close the library down. quietly and then again as she said training our teachers having that expectation working with our department chairs so that they

060understand this as well. So as they're doing some planning and some re or doing some planning um and engaging those conversations with teachers and directing them that directing them to these resources. Yes. So we have this platform for them to use. They're not really using it correct. So but we want to teach them to use credible sources basically and how to search correct for the right when they leave us they won't they may not have a a gale system. So, is there a component in here that teaches them how to prepare for college when they leave here? Because right now, they'll be dependent on this system, but when they leave in their freshman year, they need to figure out how to make sure the work that they're doing is credible. Yeah. So, universities will all

061have some access to some type of database like EPCO and other research areas and supporting our teachers right through that professional development that Miss Lee spoke of. Uh that will be kind of comparable from search engines or search engines like knowing how to utilize that and what key terms versus what years to put in and how to navigate that. Those are those are some of those aspects of that professional. But all universities will have access to some type of service that there's Google Scholar. Correct. My concern is why do we pick Gail versus like ProQuest ESCO host Jtore? Well, um I I asked that question also uh last year. Um one of the things that we have really tried to do with our teachers is not take them so fast and make so many different

062changes. And uh that that that is really the main reason uh we wanted to try to keep things for them as consistent as possible and um so they're used to Gail like Gail's an assistant. Yes, Gail has been here. Yes, sir. They have been they've been using Gail at least that I'm that I'm aware of the last six years. But keep in mind we, you know, we had the pandemic and everything and so they missed they, you know, there were a lot of missed opportunities even during the five years because Gail told me that they never trained our our teachers. Our teachers had not been trained. So, uh, we we're, you know, we can look at others to answer that question. Botanica, are you familiar with Batanica? Okay. But now has a very competitive platform

063with Gail. Yeah. My concern with Gail is like ProQuest and EPCO hosts are rated far better when it comes to retrieval sources. They have better partnerships with the journals. Yes. Right. Like I got nothing against Gail as a person, but I were to go like I would want my university to have proquest instead. further um the the students who are using it are they do we know if they're like dual enrollment kids at Trident because wouldn't they also have access through Triton? Um yes they would have they would try to right you haven't drilled down to to that level uh to see the usage there. Uh I I do know the impetus of Gail was related to our IB program. Yes and to AP college board was highly recommending it. So we had a lot

064of usage on the front end in our IB courses and in our AP courses with Yale um as sort of an industry standard as a universally accepted. You know, it it may evolved since then, but I believe that was the impetus for going with Gail in the first place. Obviously, we can evolve and change. I think we have a great opportunity this year though to really while still having something in place for students this coming school year, really dive deeply into some of these other options, especially having building out a research department in our schools, right? Because for me, you know, one of the conversations we had was, you know, what are the other what what are students using colleges and how does this compare? And to Alex's point, this was a a good kind

065of like dipping toe in to understand how you can do research. But I think as we build our our expertise and not only that, but our our usage um then really looking at something that's um similar to what they'll be doing if they go to a community college or to a fouryear. I think I think worthy. I think it's worthy our investigation. We want to make sure we have something in place for this coming. Yeah, I got like I'm not doctors. It's just like they're all kind of the same. And when it comes to like which database like as a professional education research, right? Like this is my job. Yes. I would not pick G. Okay. Right. I I pick for purples and that's That's my and I would love for you to also look

066Have you um have you uh viewed Batanica? I so I have dabbled with it but I haven't like explored it as much but I will explore and please explore Botanica because I would um I would I would prefer Botanica over Gail. I'm not sure about the other two. I haven't compared those two but I have compared. But so here's the thing. I don't want to make a decision here. Yes. And then we six months later we're like, "Oh man, maybe we should have gone with something else." Like we should really need to take the time to study this. Um so that's the reason why we were recommending just staying with Y for one more year as we really dive in. Yes. Do some more engagement especially with the Dr. Ber coming on to kind of

067guide us through our our process and choosing the right program for future years. I have a quick question. From a cost perspective, this is $50,000 and considering this isn't like the best of the best. How does this compare with better options? Like are this cheaper than some of the better options? Have we compared? We have to look at that. Proest we'll update the memo before again. That's why we're doing this is they get feedback to help us craft what we're going to provide to you in June. Was there on PE feedback from the teachers? Uh yes, when we um after we completed um our sessions after we completed the training, uh those teachers did provide feedback to us that attended those sessions. Uh so we didn't have that information. So um even and we've recently

068um sent a um fe recently sent uh a new a survey to our teachers regarding the use do not use what do you like what is it that you may dislike about a lot of our uh technology platforms and uh Gail was one that was rated pretty pretty high especially one of the questions was uh is this platform easy to or not easy. It's certainly user friendly. It's very like they took their time to make sure it's user friendly. Do we have a special is there um is this something that we can just offer to the laptop and kind of utilize and try it out just see it for myself. The G um account. Yeah. Yeah. We just Oh, yeah. We can look. I would just like to see just kind of see how it

069works out and how you see maybe why kids aren't using it because with your um provisal email address, you should be able to Michael Do we have data on how many searches were done at home versus building? No, I don't have that, but I can I can uh I can try research that I would be glad to research that if I heard correctly the the library at East was inaccessible which kind of drives why the numbers were lower at ease right I think this just speaks to a broader challenge for us is we need to drive our students to doing more research and and just to be clear rather we're going to go with G That's not the question. We are going to go with Gail for at least the next year. That's what we're

070recommending. Okay. But we will here at Lou and clear that we want other options pricing. So we will bring that information to you. Um yeah, we'll bring that information to you. And then how many of those students are like Trident students where it's they could use their Trident, right, credentials? Oh, okay. Because if if they're dual enrollment, if they're enrolled at Triton, then Triton's already paying for their access to the whole literary scope. Well, probably I'm sorry. Well, all right. Our next two as we're pulling uh this uh our next two items are supporting our uh English language our English learners. So we have two uh items. The first is summit which is more of our online database to support the curricular needs and the other is called elevation and that's more of a data

071warehouse uh for for our students. So with us we have uh Mr. Caleris, our coordinator everybody English learners. So uh Summit K12 actually took the place of Lexia English last year. We got some feedback from staff that Lexi English was more geared towards younger kids like age kindergarten through fifth grade. It actually provides the English language development standards which are state man mandated standards that we're supposed to give to all of our students that are considered eelss in the district. Um, our core classes right now for ELS, we either have bilingual sections or we have bridging sections, which means um, a bridging class has a teacher that's ESL certified. Um, these are core classes though, so we're talking English, math, science, social studies. We don't have a EL curriculum in place for that. So, that

072was the reason why we purchased Summit K12 um, last year. Um we didn't have an opportunity to actually train the staff until February though unfortunately and um when we take our access test is actually end of January, early February. So we didn't we weren't able really to see any growth or we saw some data usage but we didn't see any growth from it because they hadn't had the opportunity to use it yet. So my recommendation is that we we continue with summit K12 so that first of all that the students are getting the statemandated standards that they're supposed to get in uh English language development and this provides benchmark assessments progress monitoring and direct instruction through a personalized learning plans. So they have these PLPS that the students take a benchmark at the beginning of

073the school year. It'll put them on their own personal personalized learning plan. It'll benchmark them again the middle of year and again at the end of the year so you can progress monitor them and see how they're um progressing towards their English proficiency meeting the the domains um all four domains and English proficiency in the areas of reading, writing, listening and speaking. So the cost for a one-year contract, I was not looking at a multi-year contract because we still don't have a lot of data back yet, is $38,46365 which includes the PD for teachers. I like to really start off the school year within the first month getting them to professional development and starting it off with that benchmark right away progress monitoring throughout the school year and and collecting the data for you all.

074One of the challenges that we had with profession what I saw and what I learned um there was never really a time for our EL teachers to come together. Um and then so even when we had the districtwide PES oftent times there wasn't a cadence for them to meet. So with the the schedule that we show shared with you guys last board meeting, the team meeting schedules and the PLC meeting schedules, we have at least once a month where EL teams can come together. And so that's, you know, nine to 10 opportunities where Jim can and this team to really drive some of this professional development, some of these conversations, making sure teachers are trained, that they're using these sources correctly, using looking at data of and usage as well as overall EL data. So,

075we're really excited about that opportunity now to for our teachers to have that opportunity to collaborate. Any questions? So, the one-year contract covers a limited amount of students, I guess, accounts for to interact with curriculum. Well, it depends on our amount of English language learners that we have in the district, but it covers every single one that we have. So, we priced it based on our current adult population. Okay. What have you had any feedback from teachers about at the end of this year? Have they been Um, yes. Those who have been using it. Um, I've heard back from not a ton of teachers to be honest with you, but it again, it's not like a direct instruction piece for the teachers. It's more them looking at the data to see how the students are

076progressing over time. Um, so what I've heard back is that the students seem to enjoy it better than Lexia because it's more age age appropriate for them. And there's access to all four domains that they can practice. Uh our our two domains that they're struggling the most with are speaking and writing and this gives them like direct time to actually focus on their speaking and writing uh responding to prompts and different things like that. And it actually has an AI component that that rates their speaking and writing too which is helpful for the teachers that they you know have to spend all their time doing that. And so we and we have access to all of that data to be able to be like we can project trends and control for okay that would be

077the goal. We don't have that data right now because not enough teachers actually use it from because February was pretty much right when access testing happened and that's when you were trained. It had some some use but not as much as I'd like to see. That's why I'm really hoping for a robust kickoff to get it going, get the benchmark going, the progress monitoring, and get them on their profession, their personalized learning plans. So for teachers who don't really use it, are you just like asking all of them to use it, right? You know, you know what I mean, right? No, no, no. That's something that that we need to decide which teachers are the teachers that we need to make sure are doing it because they don't need it in every single one of

078their classes. Um because our teachers again are core teachers in the content areas. So, we needed to we need to specify exactly which teachers are going to be giving the time to do that. Most likely would be in the ELA portion of the day. So, their their English class. Okay. Thank you. Any other questions about So, this next one is elevation. This kind of came about several years ago. We had a very heavy focus on uh professional development for our teachers during every half day in service providing professional development on that. And one thing that we were doing as a result of that was sharing our access test scores with staff via the spreadsheet. Uh staff didn't have readily accessible in P school. It's in P school but it's on the administrator like side of

079powers school. So there wasn't like real time access. It was a static spreadsheet that was shared and as a result of that and when Mr. Calier came on board we uh look we looked at elevation. So this is also another renewal. So yeah and again the timing of this was very similar to summit K12 where the teachers actually got trained in February again because that's when we had the actual time during the institute days to provide the training. Um so yeah, Elevation is a is a data warehouse system for all things EL. So all the forms that we need to send home that are compliance forms. Um your your progress towards English proficiency, um your monitoring forms, and then all the just everything to remain in compliance with state and federal regulations. It also provides

080like a a warehouse of parent letters that we send home each year that we have to do um statemandated letters. Um, so this is one that most districts in the state of Illinois might have elevation and use it regularly. We don't use the instructional portion of elevation because there is an instructional piece. That portion we're using some K12. Um, summit K12 and elevation actually work very closely well together because that data can be pulled in as well. So, um, the one-year contract with Elevation is $39,4721. Again, I'm looking at a one-year contract because I'd really like to see some clear data before we do multiple years. Have a question just in general. So, we purchased these, but we didn't even implement them till February, right? Yeah. So, is our cadence off then when we're doing

081I don't have my like So, yeah. Part of that probably has to do with the fact that I came in in December of of like not this past year before that. So, I came in and we were we were lacking some things. So, I brought some things in and then our we're using title three budget for this. So, the title three budget actually opens up September 15th. Am I right there, Dr. Hill? That's correct. Okay. So, some of the timing pushed some things off, but I've been working with Dr. Hill to make sure that that we're getting So, we're not going to renew it at an awkward time like Right. We want we want to get this get it started off at the beginning of the school year and kick it off really well again.

082And actually, um, Miss Lee and I are going to be meeting with not the elevation, but the summit one tomorrow just to make talk about how we're going to kick it out for our teachers. Well, I forgot about that. Being very intentional to making sure um we're getting the training in for them and then at the very end completing our um surveys and assessments, you know, just to see how they feel about it. And um And it's I've been doing uh this is something I started this year with the little small groups uh which is what Jim and I will be doing when we work with our teachers in these small groups um sometimes like on those Wednesdays when they're all together in those small groups. It is just so much better. and um they

083they just share information and they will raise their hand and say and I had one group to say Felicia we need some more schedule us again. I said when in two weeks I did it. So so I think sometimes when we're doing it there on those large scales I think sometimes people um don't feel comfortable saying you know that oh I don't know how to do this or I can't do that or I really don't understand it. But I'm noticing in those smaller settings and and I'm excited for this schedule for the upcoming year for training. I think it's going to be a lot better with this. And just to clarify that the funding source is title three. Correct. Correct. Moving on. Next is Merit School of Music. So this is a long time partner

084of ours that we're looking to do. uh this they just had a a great concert what last week two weeks ago sat in on that two weeks ago for uh but yeah pleased with merit school music we have with us Miss Marino who is our coordinator over English and the arts yes so we would like to continue our partnership with Merit School of Music uh they bring us top-notch instructors um if you were at graduation on Saturday you heard the PMSA did the overure from Wicked. It was incredible. Not one missed note, not one missed anything. I talked to the band director afterwards and I said, "How many times signature changes and key changes were there?" He said, "All of them. They play the overure. It was absolutely amazing." So, we've been very pleased with

085the instructors that they've sent to PMSA. They help us connect to scholarships. Uh they help us connect to um you know colleges, universities, things like that. My laptop uh and we just got the service agreement. So you will receive a copy of this with the board memo for the information item. The total cost for the band instructor, breaking down the minutes based on the days, the advanced performances, field trips, administrative hours, is $71,62120. That's for the instructor. And then they have a grantfunded support equipment of $15,000. So they use that to help supply the instruments for our students at PMSAL. And that also includes maintenance and repair. And um they've done done a phenomenal job. I I remember being in this building during COVID and we needed special masks for the flute players, for the

086trumpet players to cover their mouths but have the slit open so that they could play their instrument still. They supplied us with all those specialty masks. I mean they are they are on top of all of this. Um and we have a wonderful relationship with them. So, in addition to the $71,621 for the instructor, we get an additional $15,000 that is grant supported for instruments, for maintenance, for repair, for any curricular supplies and materials that are needed. So, um it's a it's a great opportunity for us to continue with that. We want Penna to continue to be able to offer beginning band, concert band for woodwinds, concert band for brass, concert band for percussionists. Uh we also offer music history appreciation and we also have an offering of AP music theory if you need to

087get some more students involved in that. So we want to continue to offer these to our PMSA students. Um you know we have band programs at East and West as well. There's something very special between PMSA and Merit School and uh it's a tradition um and it's a partnership that has worked for for several years since the beginning of the PSA. That kind of leads me into my question too. We got east and west, we've got the marching band, we've got the band program there. But there seems to be like where is the equity piece and why is specific school right? You know, we house instruments and we support east and west financially with instruments as well. But why can't this not that I want to replace Mr. Seals? He's amazing. Like if you are

088looking [Music] performance homerown. Yeah, absolutely. I'm just bragging you about being absolutely Mr. Seals is homegrown and what he is what he does for the students. I'm just trying to figure out why this is so different, right? I would have to go back to find out the very beginning of this relationship, but my inkling would be that when you're looking two large comprehensive high schools in Provisa East and Provisa West. You're going to get band directors who want to lead those numbers. This is a smaller scale school um with less than a thousand students. It's sort of a specialty. It's a obviously selective enrollment school. The band program is its own kind of cohort, its own special population pulling from the selective enrollment students. Um and so it's not a large scale band. It's not

089a marching band. They're not performing at football games and parades because they do separate concerts. They do something a little more advanced instrumentally. Do they have an opportunity then to come in to PSA? Because I mean we have students of all musical levels, right? So if you have an advanced music student at the east or west that wants something more challenging, more orchestra or to even receive the to even see like that's that's we're not even equity, right? Quality, right? Are there options for the other students to come into this band program? No, not because this is during the day, right? For PMSA students have band or Oh, yeah. They have concert band and they have um beginner bands and things like that. East west. It just seems very specific east or west. When I

090was sitting at the the graduation, I've never heard anything like that come from east or west. It's more so marching band. That seems to be what's drilled more so at those locations. Um I think part of that is also based on student interests. And so I know I've had conversations um more so at West about how we can drive more participation because we were all at graduation. We saw differences between each of the schools. I think that's where these conversations are coming from. We saw this great performance. I think you know had a solid show east wonderful and then we saw some west and I think it's you don't know what you don't know. So you got east and west they're accustomed to marching where you got Paya. They're on a whole another level and

091those kids at the other schools don't know anything about this. So we we got to kind of figure out a way so it could be equitable for everyone so that everyone can kind of have the same opportunity. This seems like a great thing for PSA. But you know we we need to kind of balance this out because I mean even even you have the MSA programs over at both schools they're not getting access to the very same thing. We're saying we're putting these programs at each school and if it's for the MSA program or the MSA, those students are aren't even getting access to it. I mean, I would like to see like I'm sorry, I would like to see a comparison of all three schools and what is offered in the funding because I

092know in regards in regards to the music and and and everything so then I can have a clear picture of of what's going on in the school and I think that would be a good start. So we kind of figure out how we a little bit more. So we could work on that that comparison. And we recently bought instruments at both east and west and like I I can't off the top of my head remember how much we spent. Thank you. East was last year. That's correct. Just to make sure like are the instrument quality that east to west camp, right? Did they are they afforded the same like quality of instrument music and sheet music and things like that? Like I'm assuming this program comes with sheet music for all those different pieces, right?

093Does east and west get sheet music that's relevant, contemporary, exciting to kids that we're not just using the same thing. like how do we elevate program east and west while maintaining something high quality at PSA as well. Quick question about the program itself. So PMSA has like beginning band concert band the their main their main two bands, right? Yes. And they have a band director at TMSA who's a full-time staff or parttime staff at TMSA staff. Matt Brown and Matt Brown doesn't doesn't do that side. He does choir. Yeah. Matt Brown is the full-time staff member for choir and theater. Our band directors is um is a merit school music. Okay. That was going to be so the the banding yeah director is not not an employee. We contracted. Yes. He is a contracted employee

094still attends you know staff meetings. That's why it's in the contract for how many administrative hours. It's very laid out so that the the band director hired knows what their professional obligations are within the culture of the of the MSA. So, we're paying that person outside of this agreement. No, this is this is Okay. Just making sure. No, actually, it's um it's the 71,000 for the the salaried employee plus the grant funded $15,000 for musical. Is there an expectation of that grant? I'm sorry. No, no, that's what it is. It's those two buckets of money. The the contract itself is the 71,000 for the instructor and then it's grant funed. That's also in there as sort of a note in the quote that it's grant funed. Is there an expectation that that instrument grant funding

095is going to continue for the next subsequent years? They have not given any indication that that is ending anytime soon. I believe it's the same grant fund source that they've had since they opened in 2005, but I can get further information. Yeah. I'm just wondering is it a federal or state? You know what I'm saying? Like is it a private funer? Is it the gates fault? Like who is it? So that's my uh question. And then back to what we since this person is a merit school employee, is it possible to get supplemental merit school district or something to that extent for East and West to make it equal in the first place? Does that does my question make Oh, I'm sorry. Well, I just I'm thinking so the idea of having a full-time employee

096here versus a contractor have because you don't want to get give Mr. steals and Mr. Acher at East and West and there isn't a full an FTE here. So is it then additional like merit at East and West in addition to what they have or is it I I think that comparison will be helpful so we can see I think we also need to look at at generating student interest as well. Do we have enough students to really form an orchestra? But so right now at West we're struggling to build that band forward. I'm glad you mentioned that because I mentioned to Mr. Aer jokingly, but I was serious. You just had this bid. So, you just entered his requisition. So, I'm expecting to see the band do some jamming like we had the conversation

097already because that's a significant amount of funding for instruments. So, if we want to ROI, right? We want to see return on our investment. So, he said he could he will he assured me that that would take place next year. So, for example, at band at West right now for beginning band, we have 130 students that requested that. And that's in addition to our incoming freshman uh projections that we have. So, it's 130 students total for beginning band. There were two requests for concert band. So, not running concert band, uh running beginning band. And then there were enough students for marching band. 50 students from marching band that requested that. Can I ask a question? My understanding is the meeting that we had um regarding the festival that we wanted to have made that we

098also have like a mariachi band which I'm assuming we are taking some of those band members and using them in the miachi band that they have at west that I didn't even know that we had. So this a club but they they do they do pull students out. They do the same thing for the gospel choir at provisor west. and pulls those students for that. At uh I think it's at East uh they have no yeah it's at East they do the drum line so they pull the the drummers as well. So each school has its own niche based on student interest and you know where where uh their instrumentation was in their middle school programs but Mr. Seals is full-time employee from beginning to day end of day. He's the one that had all

099those classes all those numbers does all the sectionals does all the games you know Mr. Ash West as a full-time employee as well for PMSA it's half the day for the numbers so it's you know it's a a different portion I didn't fully understand thank you and I just want to make it perfectly clear I didn't bring it up because I think less of east west man because the work that Mr. has put into building that band which I've seen since 2019 he puts in tremendous effort he is everywhere and I've seen like I have one of Mr. Seal's students in my house and the first time he trumpet so like after Mr. seals help and I'm like thank you. So that was it's not intended to be a day. No, not at all. I

100think it's a fair question and we definitely want to do that comparison and provide that for you. And I was just going to say that Mr. Seals he is running our summer band camp. So that is generally a highlight of the summer programs and so we love to see that director actually does work at the elementary schools to help gain interest and bring our students. There is a nice recruitment effort. There's a nice like pipeline recruitment effort going on at East which I think is really Do any of our students go to like all county or like all state band music educator association the IDA all state we do send our students yes that's the merit school I don't have a musical so next is a curriculum here called Teach Town and Teach Town is

101a curriculum specifically for our most severe and profound special education students. So, this is for our students office. It's called our life skills uh students. There are five teachers currently that would uh that are teaching our life skills students. Uh this curriculum is a full comprehensive curriculum. We do not have anything currently uh right now uh for our students. Uh so this is filling a need. Uh this is something that has been slowly in the works. Last year we've had a very recent professional development uh for Teachtown for our for our teachers. Uh we've not purchased it yet, but doing an extensively long uh introduction to that even began last year. So, with the five uh teachers uh with this and for our students, uh it's not on here, but the cost is relatively high.

102It's $166,000 uh for this that would be funded through grant grant funds. And this is the first time, right, that we had an actual curriculum for these students. So, it's a it's a major step in the right direction. So, we are collecting as much feedback as we can from those five teachers. Right now, we've gotten feedback surveys from three of those five, trying to get those other two. So, you'll see that in a future board update as well to let you know their their feedback on what they said about the program because again, it is a rather large investment for for a small population, but very very much needed for our students. Oh, 40 students. Correct. And we have one teacher um that will be um that will be pilot uh that will pilot this

103uh this summer. Correct. Yes. So at the beginning of summer school, we have one one of our teachers that will be this. Any questions? All right. So that concludes the information or discussion items for that meeting in June. And I said typically at the committee of the halls we won't go over approval items but because this is our first time doing it just want to take a few minutes don't have a lot of approval items anyhow so this should go really quickly but the first one is Mike the mind hindsight you heard about in the last meeting so just uh yeah just to reiterate this one again we've been with my site for about three years since I started here um came on did infrastructure assessment got quotes from a bunch of vendors and mindsight

104came back to be the uh the most cost effective So, we've been with them for three years now. Um, looking to renew um a three-year contract and increase it. Um, we currently have a managed services in VC. So, what that is is essentially virtual chief information security officer that does all the scanning backend penetration testing all that um and makes the recommendations. You know, that position at like corporate levels very high paying position. So, we pay a small portion of that person to um to help us with those services. You know, obviously it wouldn't be a full-time job for us, so it's kind of outsourcing that. Um and then we also use them for our managed services. So, that's all of our servers, switches, um you name it, they're monitoring it with the team engineers

10524/7, um updating it, patching it, and um so since we we worked with them, we started it was we had an F, if we could even get lower than that. Um and we've now gone up to a C++ which is actually higher um cyber security posture that might not seem great but comparable to districts our size is most of them are C minuses. So we've made that huge jump and just looking to continue that growth with them. So just looking for sorry a three-year contract with them again to lock in that pricing as everything you know continues to kind of go up. Um there's a lot of unknowns but looking to just increase the VCO offering slightly. Um and the managed services pretty much stay at the similar monthly cost. So that that increase what

106you see is the increase of the circle security services. All right. So next one is power school. So again power school is our student information system. So all of our data about our students during enrollment and registration is housed in power school. This is how our teachers get their schedules. to help parents see their their students are going to class and what their grades are. There's an incredible amount of information within the power school. This is a partnership that we've had for a very very very long time and we are continually looking at other aspects that connect with powers school. So for instance, schooly schooly was uh was purchased by power school recently that has been our learning management system. So that is the system that we also use for our teachers to lesson plans

107to assignments. Uh so all of that aspects even the the conversation and discussion piece on there as well. And we are also using our online registration this year as well. Also using powers school and supported by apps. I'm sure if you're a parent you probably have uh that app so you can look at how your student is doing and communicate with the teachers as well. So we are enjoying this partnership. There are many SIS's out there. Again, light power school, we're looking at a cost of just over $100,000 at $116,000 116 18121 cents uh to renew uh this and all of the aspects of our power school usages. We also did a very took a close look at the aspects that we were not using that we did not like. There were a couple things

108that we uh shaved off of there as well. Working closely working closely with the IT department uh on what we were and were not using any questions. Just a comment. I love it for registration. I was able to register my kid in like five minutes. If anybody was listening to Yeah. registration he read that very easy to use. Please please please go on for whether you are new or returning. Please uh go in register. There's all steps online uh that show you how to do that. Just go to our district website. Yeah. I was going to ask how how effective have we been with online registrations because I know two years it was like two years ago they were still using paper. We had an online system and we dropped it went back to paper

109and now we're back online. So we did a yeah very big learning when we did online for the first time and then switched away from it back to paper. uh then when we went back to online looking very closely at what were the fail points and making those corrections. So being very intentional with that we were very pleased with the progress so far. I know that all of our support staff and all our administrative assistants are actively working to approve all of those forms and look at those and communicate to the parents if we need something else back from them. So regularly looking at that data and our residency um is still going to be Yes. So for new or returning uh we are asking to verify that that res residency and submitting the proper

110documentation whether you are new or returning. And all the new new parents out there too if you're listening all you have to do is basically come into the school and provide us some basic information about your student so you can get the access credentials to then complete registration whether you want to do that in school or go home and complete it at home. doing workshops like for like open sessions for parents to come to get that initial, you know, like 5 to 7, you know, at their local school like West East MSA for some parents to come and kind of get their log in, get themselves set up so they kind of have an idea as to what they're doing. I mean, that's something that's community engagement I think would be a a big part.

111um and teaming with you guys to make sure we're reaching the new parents and welcoming them so that they know how to access the power school system and navigate through uploading because last school year I helped a lot of parents with just basic uploading. They they just didn't know how to do it but you know walking them through it so to make sure that we give that access. Yeah, absolutely. have someone that speaks Spanish at each one of these locations for a time. So is Power School also does it have the ability to switch between languages? Yeah, Spanish on the app I believe. Yeah, you could you could choose it. It's like it's not a perfect translation, but it does do the forms in both like I think you have to fill them out in

112English though in that sense. So, and do we have any video recordings of our trainings of registration registration? Yeah. Someone can go to YouTube and there's a video on how to do it yourself. I don't, but we can look at that. The only thing we have is a step by step of just the payment aspect because that is something new this year. So, adding kind of a a step-by-step guide. We didn't have any videos. So, that's something we take. Yeah. screen record. Screen record while somebody's registering a face. You know how to upload if you're on your phone what it looks like a screen record. You know, you're going to save the picture of the item and you're going to, you know, attach it. You're going to click here. I believe question. Yes. Was there

113like so for the Spanish um uh accessibility. Is there a way to just poke Power School and be like, "Hey, are you guys working on this? Is it even on your radar at all?" Yeah. Right. We have good context. Yeah, I'm sure it is. I'm sure just to, you know, cover our based based on like I'm sure the requests are getting from districts, but it'd be good to see like what the road map is. Yeah. If like, oh, we're actually going to, you know, roll out next or whatever, then that's something we can let our community know. Just Yeah. That that was it. We know some people I think the biggest. Yeah, they almost have district or you could be logging to more than one district at the same time. If the schools use it,

114you're working to try to get data sharing that would be so helpful. So, a few other things that are going to be on approval. They're not on the agenda. Just give you a heads up. We did have a few things that we talked about at our retreat that would be on the agenda for approval. And then there's an item that we're show that is our ready. Um, so may I have a motion to approve the May 27th, 2025 amended personnel reports, including the hiring, resignation, separation, site, and position, and visa absences. The um amendment that we're going to make is 41A. That individual is um comp right now. So we replacing 4 A1 with Katrina Singleary. I was I was too busy trying to second that. Miss Morris. Hi, Dr. Fisher. Hi, Mr. O' Campell.

115Hi, Miss Smith. Hi, Miss Barberham. Hi. All right. And we are going to table or 10. We are. We're going to pull any old business. New business for abandon. There was a time.